On the eighth night, Craigie made his nine, ten, and eleven o’clock circuits, lantern bobbing. No lantern at 12:00, or 12:05, or 12:10. At 12:15, I was dropping over the security fence at the back of the warehouse. I had a highbeam penlight in my hip pocket, and a .38 Smith & Wesson Combat Masterpiece in my right hand. I followed the perimeter of the warehouse until I found a window ajar. The owner was no more lavish on alarm systems than he was on searchlights. I edged the window up and stepped through, into the warehouse. I tried to slide the window back down, but at the first squeak I stopped. While my eyes were adjusting to the darkness, my ears picked up a soft, flapping noise above the industrial hum all large buildings, however vacant, produce. The flapping sound grew closer, the sound of running feet.
He might have had me if he hadn’t tripped over a wooden pallet some forklift operator had failed to stack. He cursed and stumbled just as my adjusting eyes picked him up, fifty feet to my left.
“Freeze!” I yelled, dropping to one knee.
He said something as he let fly two quick shots. In the quiet darkness of the warehouse, the firing sounded and looked like atomic bombs launched by a flamethrower. One slug thumped harmlessly into a bale of something three feet from me. The second ricocheted two or three times, whining crazily through the dead air above our heads.
I pulled the trigger of my already cocked weapon. I cocked and fired again before his scream from the first registered on my ears. I thought I heard the skittering clatter of a lost weapon, too. Just to be sure, though, I circled around and came in on him from ninety degrees off where I had fired.
He was curled like a fetus on the cold floor, rocking side to side with his left hand high on his right shoulder and his right hand on his thigh. He was moaning, “Jesus, Jesus.” I flicked on my penlight and caught the dark outline of his revolver ten feet away from him.
I moved over to him and held my weapon against his temple while I quickly and unfruitfully patted him down. He was bleeding freely from both wounds.
“Where’s Craigie?” I asked.
“What the fuck are you talkin’ about?” he said.
I shined my penlight into his face. He was thirtyish, heavy features, curly black hair.
“The nightwatchman, where is he?”
“Man, get me to a fuckin’ hospital!” he yelled.
I put the ball of my right foot onto his wounded shoulder and pressed about as much as you would to ease forward twenty feet in bumper-to-bumper traffic. The lump on the floor emitted a nerve-curdling scream and flopped left to right like a gill-hooked sunnie.
“You tell me where the nightwatchman is or I’m the only surgeon you’ll ever see.”
“Oh sweet shitting Jesus, man, he’s in the back, in the back!”
I took off for the back, scoffing up the torch’s weapon on the way. I got sixty or seventy feet when a wall of flame whipped up in front of me. I jumped back, lost my balance, and went down in a heap on my left elbow. It was bruised but not broken. By the time I got up, the flames were three feet closer and impenetrable.
“Craigie,” I yelled, “Craigie, can you hear me? Craigie?”
It was like asking after coal pitched into a furnace.
I walked back toward the torch, rubbing my left elbow.
“Christ, get me outta here. Get me out!” He was yelling before he could have heard me coming. “Mother of God, sweet Mary, get me out, get me out!”
I grabbed him by the left arm and yanked him over to face me. Although it was barely forty degrees outside, and not much warmer inside when I had entered, the sweat from my fire-sided forehead was pouring down my nose and into my eyes.
“Who, fire man,” I asked the lump. “Who paid the price for this one?”
“What’s wrong with you, man? Get me outta this place. Please God, fuckin’ Jesus, get me out!”
“You’re talkin’ like a baked potato, fire man,” I said softly. I looked behind me, then grabbed his hair and twisted his head to assure him the same perspective. “That flame looks twenty, maybe thirty feet closer than it was the first time I asked the question. You can’t outrun it, fire man. Now who was it paid your price?”
Lump’s face was contorting. I’ve yet to meet a torch who wasn’t scared blind, and rightly so, of uncontrolled flames. “The owner. The bastard owner. Weeks. Harvey fuckin’ Weeks! For God’s sake, man, get me out, get me out!”
I dragged him by the bad arm ’til the screaming, actually one long shriek, stopped. Then I slung him over my shoulder and headed for the window. The Coopers must have heard me going down their stairs, because the first lonely siren hit my ears just as I shoved him through the window.
The lump’s name turned out to be Joseph D’Amico. I attended his bail hearing three days after the fire, Joseph himself being under guard in a hospital room. His lawyer’s name was Thomas Smolina, a short, fiftyish man in a blue polyester suit that affected a Glen plaid. The lawyer was trying to persuade Judge Harry J. Elam, then chief justice of the Boston Municipal Court, that his “Joey” should be released on $20,000 bail, cash equivalent. The “cash equivalent” part meant that instead of a bail bondsman putting up $20,000 for a nonrefundable premium of $2,000, the D’Amico family, arrayed in the first row of the courtroom, could put up two thousand cash themselves, thus saving the bailbond premium so long as Joey showed up at the trial. Smolina argued that the D’Amico family, solid citizens of Boston for thirty-nine years, provided the sort of stable base that would ensure that his client would attend the trial. The lawyer ticked off each family member, who stood up and nodded to the judge as his or her name was mentioned. Smolina reached Joey’s brother, Marco, a man about my size and build in a black turtleneck. Marco nodded and then, as he sat back down, swiveled his head to glare at me. I smiled politely and thought that Joey’s lawyer should have screened Marco from the family portrait presented to the judge.
Judge Elam thanked Smolina and turned to the assistant district attorney. She stood and began speaking without needing to identify herself. She pointed out the defendant’s track record of four missed trials, one for armed robbery, one for arson. She mentioned Craigie’s blackened and cottony body, escalating the expected indictments to felony/murder. She also mentioned co-defendant Harvey Weeks’ suicide attempt upon hearing the police come knocking at his door. She felt $250,000, no cash equivalent, was more appropriate. In the front row, Mother D’Amico began to whimper, none too softly. Marco put his arm around her shoulders and pulled her close to him, none too gently.
Judge Elam asked Smolina if he had anything to add. “He’s not a bad boy, your honor. And he’s from a good family,” said the lawyer, gesturing with a sweep of his hand that reluctantly included Marco.
Judge Elam set bail at $250,000, no cash equivalent.
I wanted to speak briefly with the assistant district attorney, who had in front of her three or four more manila files to deal with that morning. I stayed seated and debated waiting for her to finish. The D’Amicos, lawyer in lead, came down the middle aisle. Father D’Amico was consoling his wife, Marco hanging back a bit. As Marco pulled even with my row, he paused and leaned over to me. He muttered, “If I was you, I’d have somebody else start my car for me,” and then continued on.
I decided I would wait to speak with the assistant district attorney.
She was about 5-foot-8, slim in a two-piece, skirt-and-jacket, gray suit. She had long black hair pulled into a bun. From where I sat in the courtroom, I could see her face only in partial profile. She handled two more bail disputes and a short probable-cause hearing before the luncheon recess. Everyone stood as Judge Elam left the bench. As she reached my row, I fell in beside her.
“My name’s John Cuddy,” I said, “and I’d like to buy you lunch.”
She looked up at me, then down at her watch. “Nancy Meagher. I’ve got twenty-five minutes and I brought a sandwich.”
“Can I have half? Or both?”
We stopped and she smiled. “You’re the PI who shot D’Am
ico, right?”
“That’s right.”
“Shame about your second bullet.”
“You’ve been reading about me.”
“Yes. And wondering how much pressure you had to apply to pal Joey to get him to admit Weeks hired him.”
“It was within constitutionally permissible limits.”
She glanced down at her wrist. “I now have twenty-four minutes but still a whole sandwich. Halfsies still O.K.?”
“You bet,” I said.
We sat in her shared cubicle, her officemate being out.
“Don’t Superior Court prosecutors usually cover bail hearings in heavy cases?” I asked.
“Usually,” she replied, neatly tamping a bit of errant tuna into a gap in the corner of her mouth. “But I’ve been here nine months, and I’m good.” She smiled without showing her teeth. An open, Irish maiden face, with widely set, soft blue eyes and a straight slim nose. A smattering of freckles that would reach epidemic proportions with summer’s sun. As a girl, she must have been cute. As a woman, she was damned attractive. I felt a little glow.
“Good tuna,” I said.
She wiped her mouth with a patterned paper napkin from home and pitched it into a wastebasket.
“What’s on your mind, Mr. Cuddy?”
I had no napkin so I used my handkerchief. “D’Amico. More precisely, brother Marco. Connected?”
She shook her head. “Peripherally, at most. He’s a numb-nuts, maybe some high school friends who are approaching ‘management level,’ but no established contacts. Why?”
“A couple helped me out indirectly in busting Joey. I don’t want Marco to pick up their scent to square things, and I wanted to know his likely troop strength.”
“What makes you think Marco would do something?”
I reviewed his general appearance and repeated his comment to me in the courtroom.
“Hmmm. I’d say the Coopers could be in trouble.”
I lurched forward in my seat. “I never gave their name to the investigating officer. How did you know it?”
She rummaged through a file and handed me a police report. “Seems the Coopers gave their name to the fire department when they called in the flames, and the fire captain mentioned it to the cop who arrived on the scene.”
I read Jesse and Emily’s name, address, and telephone number from the last paragraph of the report. “Damn,” I said. “I assume the D’Amico lawyer has a copy of this?”
“Got one the first night at the arresting station, as soon as he identified himself as Joey’s attorney. Per office procedure.”
“Maybe I should have a talk with Marco,” I said.
She cleared her throat. “Let me be official, Mr. Cuddy. You go shaking down Marco, and it will weaken you as a witness for the prosecution. I don’t want Joey’s case riding on old Weeks’ ‘I hired him’ testimony.”
“And unofficially?” I asked.
She smiled, using her teeth this time. Nice, even teeth. “Unofficially, mightn’t you be giving Marco ideas he hasn’t stumbled on himself yet, since he seems to view you as enemy number one-and-only right now?”
I considered it. “I’m not sure you’re right, Ms. Meagher. But yours is the better percentage right now.” I stood up. “Thanks for lunch.”
She stayed seated. “You’re from Southie originally, right?”
South Boston is an old Irish/Italian neighborhood of brick and wood three-deckers just past the South Station train terminus. Beth and I both grew up there.
“That’s right,” I said.
“Me, too,” she replied. “In fact, I still live there. On Fourth Street, number 746.” She smiled. “Third floor.”
I cleared my throat. “I still don’t deal with this gracefully,” I said, “but I was married a long time and then widowed. I’m still not … well … ready.…”
Nancy blinked a few times and stood up. “I think that’s the most graceful ‘Thanks anyway’ I’ve ever heard.” She gave my right arm a quick squeeze. “But keep me in mind, O.K.?”
“O.K.” I squeezed back and left.
Three
AS I SAT OUTSIDE trial courtroom 924, my mind kept skipping from the night of the fire to how much I was looking forward to seeing Nancy Meagher again. We had not met since the bail hearing, although she called me once a few weeks ago to review my version of what happened. Over the telephone, her voice sounded softer than I remembered, and she had advanced to the DA’s Superior Court office. She was assisting the head of the Homicide Division in prosecuting Joey D’Amico, who so far had refused to cop a plea.
I had not seen Joey either, not since the night at the warehouse. I did see Marco two days after the bail hearing, through the lens of my Pentax K1000 as I sat in a rental car outside the D’Amico house on Hanover Street. I brought the photos to the Coopers with the insurance company’s final check for their help. I told Jesse and Emily over tea and cookies that they were to call me if they ever saw Marco anywhere around them or their house. They promised they would, but I called them several times in the intervening months just to be sure. No Marco.
A long-fingered freckled hand gave my arm a squeeze as Nancy settled in beside me on the bench.
“What are you in for?” she asked with, I swear, a twinkle in her eye.
“The vice squad caught me doing funny things with turtles.”
She laughed, a deep throaty laugh. “Lucky turtles.”
I shook my head and turned to business. “How does it look?”
She glanced around to be sure no one she knew was within earshot. “Frankly, it couldn’t look better for us. We’ve got your contact at the insurance company to lead off with the surrounding circumstances, Weeks to describe the ‘contract,’ you to put Joey in the warehouse with his statements and Craigie alive shortly before, and a lab man who took specimens off the butt of Joey’s gun that match Craigie’s blood type and color hair.”
I considered her summary. “Why no plea?”
Her turn to shake the head. “Makes no sense to me. Speaking professional to professional, Joey’s lawyer is a hack. Very little pretrial stuff, at which Joey could have testified to try to suppress his statements to you under any number of theories. With his record, Joey doesn’t dare testify at trial because we’d nail him to the cross with his prior convictions.”
“Maybe they figure the deal from your side might be better if they push you to the verge of trial?”
“Maybe, but we’re not going to be very generous on this one.”
I became aware of people shuffling their feet a little distance away from us, and I turned to look at them. The Coopers. In their Sunday best and scared.
I whipped my head back to Nancy. “Did you call them?”
She turned the way I had. “No, who are … oh, the Coopers, huh?”
I nodded.
“Must have been D’Amico’s lawyer, though what help they’ll be …”
“I’m going to calm them down. See you inside.”
“You’ve got some time. You’re witness number three, right after Weeks.”
I went up to the Coopers and took Emily’s outstretched hand. She mustered a smile.
“Why are you here?”
Jesse produced a paper from his inside jacket pocket and unfolded it carefully. “We got this. Last night. It was late, so we didn’t want to call you.”
It was a subpoena. The signature of the issuing notary public was illegible, but it looked to be in proper form.
“A surly man in a porkpie hat brought it,” said Emily. “Along with this.” She held open an envelope with some currency in it.
“That’s your witness fee, Emily,” I said. “You can keep that.”
Jesse’s hands shook as he refolded the subpoena. “What do they want us for?”
“I don’t know,” I said as the court officer, uniformed and side-armed, boomed, “Trial session, trial session, court coming in.”
I guided the Coopers into the courtroom.
We
sat on the left-hand side of the middle aisle, halfway back. On our side of the courtroom was the prosecutor’s table, near the as-yet empty jury box. Nancy and a tall, fiftyish man with red-gray hair were conferring. The D’Amico family sat on the right-hand side of the aisle, several rows in front of us but still behind the defense table, at which Smolina sat scribbling on a legal pad. Friend of the Bride, Friend of the Groom.
A clerk of court was shuffling papers in front of the bench, and a stenographer was assembling her miniature transcriber to his right. A side door opened, and two court officers brought in a cuffed Joey D’Amico. He wore a dark blue suit, white shirt, and dark tie. He’d had a haircut but looked pale as a ghost after his six months in jail.
The officers led him to the defense table, unshackled him, and took up positions to his right and behind. At least his lawyer had had sense enough to move that his client not be seated in the dock. The dock is a square, isolated, and elevated box which some say gives jurors a pejorative impression of the dangerousness of the defendant whose fate they decide.
The judge was announced and entered from a different side door. I did not recognize him, but he was about sixty, white-haired, and judgelike. D’Amico’s case was called by the clerk. Nancy, her compatriot (who did not introduce himself), and Smolina approached the bench and exchanged preliminaries. The judge asked for witness lists. Nancy handed the prosecution’s to the clerk. Smolina, looking perplexed, excused himself and scurried back to his table. He began flipping nervously through his file. Joey looked back at Marco, whose head was down and shaking left to right. Smolina closed his file, apologized to the judge, and said that his only witnesses would be several members of the D’Amico family and “Jerry” and “Emma” Cooper. The judge lectured Smolina on the need for full names and addresses now so they could be read to the jury during selection. Smolina said of course, of course but …
At which point Marco stood up and said, “Judge, if it’ll help, I can give you everybody’s name and address.”
Blunt Darts Page 18