One by One

by Sarah Cain

  “Hi there,” he said and gave them his best smile.

  A thin woman with tight auburn curls and skin like leather looked him up and down and said in a gravely smoker’s voice, “Hi yourself, doll. I’m Midgie Santangelo. You’re not from around here.”

  “Used to be. I lived up past Sigel, right off of Third. Dan Ryan.” Danny held out his press pass. “I’m working on a story for the Sentinel about changing neighborhoods.”

  “Changing neighborhoods? Ooh boy. We seen lots of changes here. Haven’t we, Florie?” She smoothed down her lime-green dress and nudged her friend.

  “Sure have, Midgie.” The other woman, heavier set with black hair, nodded and winked. Her voice was slightly higher pitched but no less gravely. She wore bright-yellow, and as she gestured with her hands, her bright-pink nails sparkled in the sun. “I’m Floretta Giacomo, but you can call me Florie. Would ya like some lemonade, hon? Have some lemonade.”

  “I thought we knew everyone from around here, but I don’t remember you,” Midgie said. “What’d you say your name was?”

  “Dan Ryan. I went to Furness, but I haven’t lived here for a while.”

  “Hmm. That name’s familiar,” Florie said. “Oh, wait, Midgie! I remember. Little Danny Ryan. His daddy was a policeman.” Florie waved her hand, and her pink nails glittered. “Didn’t you grow up handsome?”

  “Oh, my God! That Danny Ryan! Now you’re a big news writer. Have you got a girlfriend?” Midgie leaned closer, her red curls bobbing.

  Both women cackled now, and Florie waved her hand toward the front steps. “Go grab a chair, hon. Have some lemonade. You look like you could use a little sun. Just grab that pitcher and a cup.”

  Danny knew the neighborhood well enough that he couldn’t just ask questions without socializing. He handed Florie the pitcher, grabbed a plastic cup, and pulled an extra chair from the side of the house.

  Midgie and Florie exchanged a look before Florie poured him a glass of lemonade. When the two women smiled and nodded at him, Danny took a swallow and almost choked. It was little more than lemon-flavored vodka. He smiled. “Thanks,” he said, clearing his throat. “Just what I needed. Maybe you could tell me something about the townhouses across the street.”

  “Oh. Them townhouses,” Midgie said and gave him a conspiratorial wink. “That was something. If you get my drift.”

  Danny leaned a little closer and pulled out his notebook. “I take it there was something unusual about them.”

  “Unusual? Oh, yeah. What a scandal that was. That crumb bum, Tim Rosina. What a crook,” Florie said, wrinkling her nose as if she smelled something bad.

  “Tim Rosina?” Danny blinked at her. Jesus, someone else was involved in this rat’s nest.

  “Oh, that man. You probably don’t remember Tim, but he was a big-time builder back in the seventies and eighties and early nineties. Had all kinds of political connections.” Florie took a long swallow of lemonade. “Drink up, honey. Don’t be shy. We got plenty.”

  Danny took another small sip. “It’s great, Florie.”

  “Aren’t you sweet? Such a nice young man.” Florie patted his arm, and Midgie frowned.

  “Stop flirting, Florie. Tell the man what he needs to know. I bet you want to hear about the fires.” Midgie nodded her head for emphasis.

  “Fires? There were multiple fires?”

  “Oh, yeah. I mean not here. There was only two in this neighborhood. Three years apart.” Midgie frowned, remembering. “The first one was in the late eighties. Mrs. Sullivan’s house. They said she was smoking in bed and whoosh! Gone. Just like that.”

  “Took out four other houses,” Flora added. “That was awful.”

  “I don’t remember,” Danny said.

  “Oh, honey, you probably weren’t even born,” Midgie said. She pinched his cheek. “So cute. No one died, but the houses were gone. So much was going on in this neighborhood anyway. Lots of turnover. People moving out. All kinds of changes.”

  “Anyway. Tim Rosina and his partner bought up all them houses and planned this big development.” Florie’s eyes twinkled with glee. “And guess what?”

  Danny leaned forward. “What? Someone wouldn’t sell?”

  “Oh, no,” Midgie said. “Everyone sold. He was paying top dollar. If anyone was reluctant, I guess accidents could be arranged, if you know what I mean. No. The thing is, Tim up and dropped dead. Heart attack.”

  “Heart attack? When did that happen?”

  “Heart attack.” Florie blessed herself. “It was the Hand of God, or whatever. I guess in the early nineties. Construction had finally started, and Tim was sitting on the crapper when he took the big one. You know? But his partners took over, ’cause the houses got built.”

  “Do you remember the name of his partners?”

  “I don’t remember,” Florie said. “I think they were Mexican. Don’t you think, Midgie?”

  “Mexican?” Danny wasn’t sure if he had wasted his time or not. He had half a cup of Florie’s lemonade sloshing about in his stomach and Tim Rosina floating around his head. It wasn’t much. Tim Rosina and the Mexicans. It sounded like a band. “Why do you think they were Mexican?”

  “The name was definitely Mexican,” Flora said. “Like that cockroach song.”

  “‘La Cucaracha’? Could it have been Cromoca?”

  “Yeah, something like that,” Midgie agreed. “Plus, he had a sister. He left everything to his sister.”

  “His sister? Do you remember her name?”

  “Sure. She used to do real estate. Livvy Capozzi. Well, she was all la-di-da. Olivia Capozzi, if you please. She made a bunch of money. Had a house down the shore and a condo in Florida. She lives in Florida now. A real piece of work.”

  “And she had a daughter?”

  “Oh, yeah. She sure did. Barbie Capozzi. Ooh la la. Real looker. I guess she took over for Livvy. I don’t know. She wasn’t a realtor, but she was real tight with Ernie Moss’s boy—can’t remember his name, but he was a big real estate guy.”

  “Tell him the real scandal,” Florie said. “The real scandal is that Tim Rosina was helping people scam the insurance companies by setting fire to their houses. Of course, no one ever proved nothing.”

  “How was he doing that, Florie?” Danny prodded.

  Florie shook her head, and she looked at Danny with narrowed eyes. “There’s rumors he could make it happen. That’s all I heard.” She grasped his hand. “You’re going to write about us, aren’t you? I don’t want you to use my real name.”

  “Is there reason to be afraid?” Danny leaned closer.

  “I don’t know, dollface,” Midgie said. “But rumors are rumors.” She glanced up as a couple came out from a house down the street. The man stopped to pick up deck chairs, and the woman carried a large green plastic pitcher in one hand and a basket in the other.

  “Midgie, Florie,” the woman called. “Do you have company?”

  Danny started to stand, but Midgie pulled him down in the seat. “Oh, no, don’t leave. Here come Sal and Rita Gentille. They’ll know more than we do. You just sit for a little while. You’ll find out everything you want to know about Tim Rosina.”

  *

  The world had turned indigo, and the moon slashed a sharp grin across the sky by the time Danny pulled into his driveway. Still no message from Alex. He sat on the back steps and breathed in the scent of roses and honeysuckle as he watched the fireflies glitter in his backyard. There was too much floating around inside his head right now, and he needed to clear it. At least here in the quiet of his yard he could think.

  He’d let Midgie feed him a plate of baked ziti before he left South Philly, because he was pretty sure he would have driven off the road if he hadn’t. Midgie and Flora and their neighbors had given him great chunks of undiluted gossip. He needed to process the information he’d learned, to put the pieces in place.

  Danny wasn’t sure how much of the gossip was true or useful, but it seemed that Tim Rosina and his part
ners were acquiring property in South Philly by running insurance scams starting in the eighties, if not earlier. Rosina left his money to his sister, Olivia Capozzi, whose daughter happened to be Barb Capozzi, Greg Moss’s ex-girlfriend. South Philly was a very small world. Or it used to be.

  Rosina had certainly bought the Jeffords’ old home, so it was possible that he had arranged for the gas leak to occur. His so-called partners may have been cockroaches, but they weren’t Mexican. They were Cromoca Partners.

  Danny paged back through his notes. Tim Rosina had been quite a character. He’d dated half of South Philly, according to Florie and Midgie. His “Saturday Night Girls.” Danny had two whole pages of names. Rosina’s special favorites got cars and fur jackets. The others got dinner and a movie. Danny shuddered. He knew some of those women. Susie Farnasi, Ricky’s mom. Amanda Fernwyler, his eighth grade math teacher. Annie Gretske, Ray’s mom. Danny wondered who had been regulars and who had been dinner, movie, and sex dates.

  He needed to talk to Alex.

  Danny wasn’t sure if Alex was working on a story for the paper or on something that pertained to Jenna Jeffords. Or maybe she was angry with him. He texted her again. As he waited for her to answer, he stood and went into the house to reexamine the package of information she’d given him.

  Between the vodka and the sun, his right eye was beginning to throb, and he grabbed a foil packet before he had a repeat of last night. He swallowed the pill with water, wandered into the pantry, and began to open cupboards. Boxes of tea. Two containers of coffee. Whole wheat crackers. Christ, he did need to go shopping.

  Danny stared at the odd little markings on the wall. The little word puzzles. It was stupid to think Mr. Rebus would have left an obvious clue. The puzzles were a distraction. He glanced at the image of the exploding pie, the only puzzle that made no sense, though it really looked more like a mushroom with light rays coming off it. A magic mushroom.

  He’d checked the oven, but there was nothing inside—pies or otherwise. Exploding pie. Magic mushroom. Then it struck him. The picture was neither a mushroom nor a pie. It was a keyhole, and he’d been looking in the wrong oven.

  He walked to the bread oven and felt inside. Tucked along the right wall was a small indentation. When he slipped his fingers inside, he grasped a small key, which he pulled out.

  The key must open something in the pantry. The walls were smooth, but he began to check the cabinets, moving counterclockwise from the fireplace. He reached the cabinet almost directly opposite and opened the doors. He was pushing aside the few cans of soup and boxes of tea when he saw the tiny keyhole in back. When he fitted the key, he heard a tiny snick, and the cabinet swung forward.

  Danny now faced a small room with a sloping ceiling, clearly under the front steps. In the light that spilled in from the pantry, he saw a black leather chair wedged into a corner and a Tiffany lamp that sat on a small round table with a marble top. Narrow bookcases lined the walls. When he stepped inside, Danny realized the bookcases were filled with leather-bound books. He pulled some out at random. They were signed first editions: The Great Gatsby, Look Homeward, Angel, Ulysses, so many others.

  Mr. Rebus had left him a small fortune in rare books. Danny was about to reach for what appeared to be an original Vanity Fair when he saw the plastic bag on the floor. He opened it to find empty bags of chips and beer cans.

  What in the living hell was this? It couldn’t be old refuse from Mr. Rebus. This was fresh, judging by the sell-by date on one of the bags of chips. There were still trickles of beer left in a couple of the cans.

  Jesus Christ. Someone had gotten into his house and hidden in this room. Watching and waiting.

  “Hello.”

  Danny dropped the plastic bag and spun around. A thin shape stood silhouetted in the doorway, and Danny recognized him from the Shamrock, from Northern Liberties. The young guy in the hoodie.

  “Who are you?”

  The kid lifted a gun, and he pointed it at Danny. “You don’t recognize me? I guess you wouldn’t, but I know all about you. Dad.”

  45

  Kevin sat at his dining room table filling out index cards, careful to slide a catalogue onto the oak surface before he started writing. They didn’t use the dining room much, except for holidays. The dining area was small, almost part of the living room, and the big china closet pushed back against the wall took up a lot of space. They used the server to collect school photos, trophies, and the kids’ art. He looked around. Crap covered every horizontal surface—magazines, school shit, candy wrappers.

  That’s how you could tell they were poor. Danny’s house was neat, and his expensive furniture didn’t have weird spots. Danny didn’t have to worry about damaging his one nice table because if he did, he could just buy another. Kevin pushed against the gnawing unease in his stomach.

  Some days, Kevin tried to imagine what life would have been like if he had told the old man to go to hell and taken a chance on Penn State. Would he have carved a path like Danny had? He might have made the NFL, or he might have blown out his knee.

  What the hell was the matter with him? What was the point in looking back? It was this goddamn case. Traveling into Danny’s past inevitably pulled Kevin down that well-worn road, and he didn’t like it. He had enough memories of the good old days to last him forever.

  Kevin turned back to his cards. He thought better when he could write things out on cards and line them up in order. It helped him keep his facts straight. That was how Danny used to prep him for history tests. Everything on index cards. Memorize a date and a fact. Put it on a card and line it up. At the time, it made him feel stupid, but it worked. Maybe Danny should have been a teacher. If nothing else, he’d always been patient.

  Now Kevin laid out the facts of this case and tried to decide what mattered and what he could discard. Greg Moss’s mysterious partner bothered him. If he was a high school acquaintance, he could be tied in with the murders in some way, and yet from what Barb said, this guy was a businessman. Why kill the guy who was making you money? That made zero sense.

  That brought him back to the party at the shore. Barb said the girl, Jenna Jeffords, had been gang-raped. Barb mentioned Frank Greer as a participant. Not surprising. In addition to being an ex-con, the sleazy asshole had gotten caught up in three domestic complaints, though the women had all dropped the charges.

  Three different women. Three different complaints. This guy definitely needed a hard look.

  Kevin stared at the list of names of Danny’s high school acquaintances. How many of these kids did Danny know anyway? Danny had shed high school like a butterfly sheds its cocoon and emerged as someone new and improved, but he always did have that gift for reinventing himself.

  “Your brother has a high bullshit factor,” the old man would say as he sucked down yet another Dewar’s in the gloom of the Shamrock. “Maybe he should stop pretending he’s somethin’ special and remember he’s just a fuckin’ hack.”

  You could always count on Tommy Ryan to put you in your place.

  Kevin wrote down one more name: Ted Eliot. The cop was tied to Greg Moss. He’d been a customer. He was clean now but vulnerable. Maybe Greg had something on him. Greg’s murder seemed like the others, and yet he was the only one who had been mutilated. Why cut out his tongue? As a warning? Out of rage? As a distraction? Something about it was off.

  Kevin yawned. His indigestion was bad tonight. Maybe he did need to cut back on some of the fried shit. The trouble was, he always ended up rolling out of the house last minute in the morning because getting to sleep was a bitch and getting up was a chore. On the job, who had time to eat regular food?

  He glanced at the clock. It was twenty past eleven, and Kelly was late. Her curfew was eleven, and he wasn’t letting her slide on this. Rules were rules. He clenched and unclenched his fists.

  She was just like Danny with her “I’m a rebel” attitude. If she couldn’t stick to her curfew, she wasn’t going on any trip to Costa Rica. He
didn’t care what Jean said. He might be the dummy of the family, but hell, he was her goddamn father.

  Kevin stood and began to pace. His stomach was on fire, the pain pressing up against his chest. All he needed was an ulcer. Some Maalox would calm his stomach, but his bottle was down in the rec room. He lumbered to the stairs and stomped down.

  Damnit. He jammed his foot against one of the twins’ hockey sticks, and he bit back a curse. Sean and Mike lay sprawled on the leather couch asleep, some dumbassed slasher movie flickering on the TV. Kevin grabbed his Maalox and shuffled back up the steps, hanging onto the railing with his right hand as he swilled the thick liquid. It didn’t seem to be working. Everything hurt tonight.

  He’d reached the top of the stairs, puffing for breath, when the kitchen door clicked open and then shut. Tentative footsteps padded across the floor, and he faced Kelly, who stood, shoes in hand, blinking at him.

  The smoldering flame in his stomach erupted into a raging fire around his heart. Oh, Jesus, she was killing him.

  Her eyes grew wide as Kevin started to say, “Where the hell have you been?” But he couldn’t force the words. The Maalox bottle slipped from his fingers and plopped to the floor with a wet splat. His ears rang like a warning bell.

  Flatline. Flatline.

  “Dad? Dad? Daddy?”

  Kevin reached out for her. Somehow he missed, and the floor crashed up against his face. The banshee was wailing, and he shut his eyes, trying to remember the Act of Contrition.

  46

  “So what’re you going to do? Kill me?” Danny assessed the kid and gauged the distance. If the kid pulled the trigger, he probably wouldn’t miss. They stood less than twelve feet apart, and the gun pointing at him wasn’t shaking. Danny figured the kid knew how to use it.

  “Why would I do that?” the kid asked.

  “You tell me.”

  “I figured it was time we met.”

  “You should clean up after yourself.”