by L H Thomson
I smiled at the thought of it, the little bulldog teaching kids to be as tough as him, as fit as him. I said, “He’d have been great at it. When we were in high school, he used to show the other kids how to throw a jab or how to keep their guard up. And it was always friendly, just having fun.”
She inhaled and blew out angry smoke. “Too bad this didn’t happen to his son of a bitch of a father. “
He’d died in a car accident when Junior was 17. A mean man who abused his children in multiple ways, no one attended the funeral except for Junior’s mother.
I couldn’t help but think about how wrong she was. “Junior probably would’ve been champion of the world if that guy....”
Karen cut me off with a gentle, raised hand. “Without that background, maybe he wouldn’t have been a fighter. He’d have tried something else, like you, like being an artist, or a vet, or a teacher. He had a gentle soul, Liam. All that fury? That was the mistrust his old man caused.”
In a way, though, Junior was much stronger than his old man. Junior just hit the crack pipe and the needle; he never once hit a woman, or pretended he had a right, that his anger gave him license to be as bad as the man who damaged him. Instead, he just seethed on the inside and busted loose as soon as he could, with predictably lousy consequences.
I told Karen about the investigation as she got us fresh coffee, and that I at least had a handful of suspects. I also told her the explosion that killed Sam Prince was probably directly related.
She looked shocked again. “So what now? Are you in danger? Liam, I don’t want youse doing nothing that’s going to be dangerous. I already lost Junior, I don’t want to know how guilty I’d feel if anything happened to you.”
I hadn’t told her about Johnny Terrasini’s involvement and it didn’t seem the time. But I wondered whether the dark sedan that followed me would be parked somewhere nearby, waiting.
The drive back to the condo was strange. I knew the tail was probably still there but I couldn’t make out which car it was, or whether they’d maybe switched up to throw me off. It was an unsettling sensation, like keeping your back to the wall in the prison Yard, ever alert.
Everyone else was in bed already, but Nora had waited up for me before heading home herself.
“So?” She didn’t need to elaborate. Nora had always taken an interest in my work, even when I was painting lousy Japanese forgeries for a living.
“So someone killed Junior because he heard something he shouldn’t,” I said. “It’s the only explanation. The question is what he heard and from who, because everyone at that club has a stake in something pretty big.”
She frowned. “I thought you said it was a small feeder club....”
“Yeah, but they’ve got a wonderkid. Seriously, he plays with the intelligence and technique of a pro, and he’s fifteen years old.”
“Ah. So.... it’s about money, then?”
“Isn’t it always?”
She took a sip of tea. “When there’s someone bad involved? Yeah, pretty much always. Anyone stand out?”
“The guy who gains the most from the whole deal is his agent, David B. Davidson. And according to the kid, they’d been arguing about where he’d go play, with the kid’s preference maybe costing Davidson some serious cash.”
She was thinking ahead. “So Junior overhears their argument about it because ... what, the agent’s going to cut a deal without the kid knowing about it?”
That also didn’t seem likely, I said. But there was another possibility. “The kid said Davidson stayed behind when he left the building for a few minutes because he had a call to make. Maybe Junior heard that conversation. If it had something to do with what the agent intended to do....”
“Then maybe he killed Junior before he could tell the kid?”
It was a theory. It wasn’t much of one, but it was a theory.
I finished my glass of wine and walked around the kitchen island to the sink to wash it out. “I need to talk to Davidson next, I guess,” I said.
Nora leaned on the granite counter for a few seconds, just studying me. “You never did answer my question the other night,” she said. “You never did say why you never asked me out.”
It was a no-win situation: if I admitted I wanted to ask her and she wasn’t interested back, it would become awkward between us. If she was interested? Then maybe the pressures of a relationship screw everything up for ...what? More intimacy? And would she be worrying about that, too?
“It’s not an easy question to answer,” I finally said, trying to feel the situation out, to figure out what to say without messing up everything.
She got up, slipping quickly into her jacket and grabbing her purse from the table. “You know, Liam, I stick up like hell for you. But sometimes, you make life a lot more complicated than it needs to be.”
She walked over to the elevator doors, and they hissed open quietly. “Ask me, don’t ask me. But don’t make me wait forever to know how you feel, okay?”
And as the doors slid closed behind her, it occurred to me that I had just messed up badly.
As a lover, I made a hell of a fighter.
CHAPTER 6
I spent Sunday morning being grilled by an arson detective named Burns, which was about the first funny thing I’d run into all week.
I managed to work in jokes about him making me sweat.
He didn’t find it so funny, it should be said. Sam Prince’s gas line had been rerouted into the basement of his townhouse, and a small charge set up outside above the line for good measure. So there was no doubt it was a homicide, and he felt it necessary to keep reminding me.
I’d already told them about Johnny Terrasini’s guy being on scene, but that had just led them down the same road as Belloche – to suspicion over my involvement,
The meaty detective leaned across the interview table, trying his best to intimidate, although the food in his moustache was so distracting it pretty much ruined his efforts. “Maybe you pointed out the house for the guy. Maybe it’s not such a coincidence you’re connected to Junior Flores as well,” he said, slamming his palms on the table with a kind of prosecutor’s confidence.
After a couple of hours, it got tiresome. “Ahhh, come on detective! You guys know I don’t have nothing to do with this.” I said. “I mean, what? You think the heavy act’s going to make me cough up some gem of information?”
He turned the seat across from me around and sat down so that he was leaning on its backrest. “So what’s the deal, Quinn? I read your file, I know your background. What are you doing getting mixed up with the Terrasinis? That ain’t your speed.”
I held up both hands in mock surrender. “I swear, detective, nothing is ‘my speed’ these days. My criminal days are long behind me. I ran into them on an art case, and I’ve been trying to undo it ever since.”
He offered me a cigarette and I turned it down. He pointed to himself with the pack. “You mind? This is the only place we can smoke in the building, and even then, it’s only supposed to be suspects.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “If anyone comes in I’ll say it was mine.”
He nodded quietly and surveyed me for a moment or two. “That’s real decent of you. You do favors for anyone else lately? Maybe... Johnny Terrasini?”
I rolled my eyes and looked heavenward for a little mercy.
After the police had finished wasting our respective mornings, I headed down to the free library on Broad Street for some quick research in the newspaper database.
No wonder everyone was so worried at the club: they’d largely kept the kid under wraps. There were a couple of short mentions of his playoff performances, and a thin, non-revealing interview with him from a small weekly just outside the city. The one telling item? An interview with another local who’d played pro, and saw dollar bills surrounding the kid.
“His potential upside is huge,” he’d said.
Still, there was nothing in the clips to reveal why Johnny Terrasini would be
interested. Maybe he had his claws into David B. Davidson somehow; or the coach owed him money for gambling debts.
There were plenty of clips on Davidson, but nothing connecting him to organized crime. The clips on Crck were thin on content and mostly in Russian. After about ninety minutes, I gave up and headed out.
I stopped at Franco and Luigi’s for an Italian Chicken sandwich before calling Vin the Shin, hoping he might have something else on his nephew’s intentions.
“Quinn, you’re giving me no end of headaches right now, you know that?” he said.
“My apologies, Mr. Terrasini. Is there something in particular....”
“Hey! Don’t be a wise-ass with me,” he said. The tone was pure authority. “Thanks to you, my dumbass nephew has decided to stake a claim to controlling the city. He’s talking about open war with my guys, members of his own family.”
None of this should have surprised him. Philly’s history was full of mob turf battles, and they never ended well.
Terrasini continued. “Now, I’ve gone to great personal difficulty to deal with this mess for good. But once I’ve cleaned this up for you, you’re going to owe me, capiche?”
I didn’t have a choice. “Yes, Mr. Terrasini.”
The line went quiet for a moment, and I could imagine him sitting in his limousine, savoring another victory. After a time he said, “Good, good. So sit tight, and I’ll let you know when things have gone down, if you don’t hear about it from no one else first.”
I promised my mother I wouldn’t keep missing church and so I caught the afternoon mass at Holy Name of Jesus. The sermon was on emotional honesty and Father Boyd made sure we knew that it was as important as every other type of honesty, for “it is associated with Godliness.”
I know he didn’t write it for me, but a lot of it applied to my situation with Nora, which when push came to shove was a kind of dishonesty, maintaining the illusion I’d be happy if we just stayed friends forever.
My family had been to mass in the morning, so I met up with them at my parents’ house. My eldest brother, Andy, couldn’t make it, as usual; he was busy with his own small congregation on the west side. But Mike was in good spirits, thankful his department at city hall had escaped the austerity knife and he hadn’t had to lay anyone off. Even Davy seemed happy to see me there.
My mother slaved over the stove for hours to make an early roast beef dinner every Sunday. She told me when I was a kid it was a worthy tradition, “as in the old country, we’d have been happy to see a roast of beef once a year, let alone once a week.”
She’d do all of the cooking – and an hour or more of dishes, no matter who protested – while my father carved the beef onto oversized grey-and-brown dinner plates. Then she’d ladle roast potatoes and veggies out while Pa poured the traditional half-glass of wine for each of us in turn.
Ma ate like a bird. She didn’t say much throughout the week, so the Sunday dinner was her chance to shine, usually by grilling her kids for an hour or two with the merciless precision of a Guantanamo interrogator.
“Liam, it’s so nice when you’re back home. Isn’t it nice Al?” she said to my father, not really expecting any contradiction and never receiving any.
“Hmmlhph,” my father said, his mouth stuffed with potatoes and beef.
Mikey chewed thoughtfully. “So where’re you staying kid?”
“With Nora’s folks. It’s a dangerous case.....”
My mother interjected. “I heard about that from your father. I thought you was going out of town. So you don’t want to get us in trouble but you don’t mind the De Sorias being in harm’s way? That doesn’t seem very nice, Liam.”
“I know, Ma. That’s what I said when they offered. But they’re on the fourteenth floor, with a private elevator, so maybe...”
“Hmmph. It’s the principle of the thing,” she said.
Davy piped in helpfully. “I know I wouldn’t let no girlfriend protect me...”
“Yeah, all you’ve got on your side are two hundred helpful cops from your precinct and a Glock Nine.”
He smirked. “Very funny. I wouldn’t get myself mixed up with Johnny Terrasini in the first place.”
My father finished his mouthful and motioned to speak, which was the universal sign for the kids to shut up. “He’s a got a point there, Liam. You done real good in the last year staying on the straight and narrow. You don’t want to mess that up, even if it’s just working on someone’s case.”
“It’s got something to do with Junior,” I said.
They were both silent for a moment, and Pa reached over to spoon more potatoes onto his plate. “You know that for sure?”
I nodded. “Pretty sure. Only one asset at the club, and that’s their star player. Only one reason for someone to kill Junior, and that’s he learned something he shouldn’t.”
Davy said, “So how does Johnny T figure in?”
“I don’t know. But his uncle Vin told me that whatever I did to piss him off, it involved his business; and it was Johnny T’s hitter at Sam Prince’s house.”
My mother put her napkin on her plate, looking disturbed. “I don’t like it when you talk about this stuff like it’s nothing; I don’t like it from none of you,” she said. “It’s difficult enough having two policemen in the family without my other boys getting involved.”
I felt guilty and moped into my dinner plate. I knew how she was with the nasty details of my father and brother’s cases, and should have kept the details for a better time. “Sorry ma,” I said.
She looked unconvinced, but left it at that. “Well fine then,” she said. “I’ll be fetching dessert.”
Right after mom’s pie, Hardaway called. The dealer had a friend in Baltimore who’d mentioned an African guy named Francois.
“He’s got something hot going on at the docks,” Hardaway said.
“Your buddy seeing this first person?”
“My friend’s a Teamster, part of a crew unloading containers.”
“And?”
“Quinn, I don’t know what the fuck Junior got mixed up in, but these guys are flashing some bills out there.”
“You sure it’s the same…”
“A tall African soccer player named Francois who never smiles? Yeah, I’m sure there’s a load of them kicking around the eastern seaboard.”
“And when you say big bills…”
“Big roll, yo, just a big slab of money, paying off certain people, getting some business done.”
“Doesn’t sound much like a soccer player to me.”
“Me neither.”
“You done me a solid, Hardaway. I’m sure Junior would’ve appreciated it.”
“Yeah, well … don’t tell his old lady, okay? She don’t see me so nice, you know?”
“Understandable on both fronts.”
“Uh-huh. Anyhow, I hear anything more, I’ll let you know.”
I planned on hitting the sack early after a long week. I didn’t have my speed bag to work off the tension, so once I’d parked the beast in the De Sorias’ spare space, I went for a run instead.
The old town is different at night; the various nooks, crevices and cornices on the old buildings guard thicker shadows, hanging menacingly over sidewalk pedestrians. People were out and about, but compared to before sundown, it was quiet, and I didn’t even have to wait for cars at most of the cross streets.
I tried to keep up a steady run; without the speed bag and my jump rope, I had fewer opportunities to break a sweat — well, other than grenades tossed at apartment buildings, that is. I was still four blocks from the condo when the headlights swept the road beside me, the brightness gaining, but slowly, as it dropped to my pace.
The tinny click of an automatic’s mechanism being cocked got my attention, too.
“Hard or easy, Quinn?” said a deep male voice.
A year ago, I might have chanced sprinting away. But I’d had a lot of near-misses in that year and I was beginning to think the odds might be
working against me. I stopped and glanced over; the sedan was parallel to me now, the rest of the street empty, one meaty hand protruding from the window with the automatic. “Get in,” said the voice, as the hand motioned me over.
The sedan door swung open and I climbed in. None of the three sides of beef inside had missed a meal in a decade or two.
“Gentlemen,” I said, “I’d just like to….”
The guy next to me leaned in my direction. “Shut the fuck up, wiseass,” he said, before clamping his palm, and a rag, over my mouth.
I did what instinct suggested and inhaled deeply, fighting for air but instead making the chloroform just that much more effective.
The lights went out.
“Wake the fuck up!”
A hard kick to my ankle. Damn, that smarts.
“George, wake this motherfucker up.”
Cold water slammed into my face and I shook my head instinctively, fighting the sharp sting and trying to shake off the dampness.
We were in a commercial auto shop somewhere, sitting in one of the bays. Or, I was sitting, my hands tied to the wooden chair, behind my back.
The guy pacing in front of me was a younger Vin the Shin, crammed into at most five feet zero inches, and garbed in an Italian double-breasted suit. As much as my head hurt from being doped, I had to stifle a laugh; it was like being kidnapped by the Capo of the Munchkin Mafia.
“Let me guess…” I said.
He wound up and kicked me in the ankle again. I was beginning to sense a theme: opening my mouth led to immediately painful fallout.
“There,” he said, straightening the knot in his tie then brushing the sides of his hair back with his hands. “I suggest you shut the fuck up until I tell you to speak.”
He paced a few more times, mopping sweat from his balding head with a small handkerchief. “You know, I don’t know what my uncle sees in you. I swear the old mook has lost his marbles.”