by Ann Hood
“Lucky bastard!” the caller said.
“Yeah.”
“So can we talk now?”
“What was your name again?”
“Mulligan.”
“Liam Mulligan?”
“Uh-huh. But my friends just call me Mulligan.”
Val knew the name. He’d seen the byline on the organized crime stories he’d read in the Dispatch’s archives. “What can I do for you, Mr. Mulligan?”
“My editor wants an update on some old art museum robbery in Boston. I don’t know a damned thing about art, professor, so I was hoping you could help me out.”
The reporter asked about Val’s background, his research, and his work with the Association for Research into Crimes Against Art, establishing his credentials, before turning to the matter at hand.
“So what can you tell me about the unsolved heist at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum?”
“All I know about that is what I’ve read in the newspapers, Mr. Mulligan.”
“I understand, but a lot of conflicting stuff has been written about it, so it would be a big help if you could summarize the facts for me.”
Val did so.
“And that’s all you know?”
“It is.”
“Well, you’ve been a big help. Thanks a lot, really. But listen, not that this has anything to do with my story, but I’ve written a lot of stuff about the mob over the years, and I can’t help but wondering. Are you related to Rudy Sciarra?”
Val explained the relationship, but he had a feeling the reporter already knew the facts.
“Must be cool to have such a notorious relative,” Mulligan said.
“Actually, it’s not.”
“Oh. Okay. Just one last question, then. A law-enforcement source tells me you have been questioned in connection with the Gardner case and that the FBI executed a search warrant on your home and office. Can you confirm that for me?”
Aw shit. “I have no comment.”
“What is your involvement in the case, professor? Do you know who stole the art? Do you know where it is?”
“Have a pleasant evening, Mr. Mulligan,” Val said, and clicked off.
Later, as he watched the Sox postgame show, he wondered, Was Mulligan really that good, or was the leak an attempt by the FBI to ratchet up the pressure?
* * *
First thing next morning, Val strolled down to Broadway, bought a black coffee and a cinnamon-raisin bagel at the Seven Stars Bakery, and fetched a copy of the Dispatch from a sidewalk vending box. Back at his apartment, he sat on the couch, drank his coffee, and skimmed the story on the Sox game before turning to the front page.
In the lower-left corner, below the fold, a two-column headline read: Brown Prof Questioned in Boston Museum Heist.
The story under Mulligan’s byline said the FBI had identified Val as “an associate of the Patriarca crime family,” a relative of a notorious mob hit man, and “a person of interest” in the Gardner Museum robbery.
If the idea was to ratchet up the pressure, it was working.
Val snatched the remote from the end table and flipped to the Fox News affiliate to see if the morning show was carrying the story. Instead, it was running a live feed from in front of the Victorian condominium building on Slocum Street. The first thing Val saw was a tall guy in an FBI hat carrying a clear plastic evidence bag out the front door. Val couldn’t be sure, but it looked like the ku was inside. Three minutes later, Agents Burns and Hanrahan led Domenic Carrozza out. The mobster was wearing a terry-cloth bathrobe and bedroom slippers, and his hands were cuffed behind him.
Jesus! How did they know? Then it came to him: they’d found the research about Carrozza on his computer.
Val’s ranger training kicked in: if you find yourself in an untenable position, remove yourself as rapidly as possible. He sprang up, threw some clothes into a gym bag, and bolted. It wasn’t the FBI that worried him now.
He took the stairs three at a time, burst through the front door, and spotted the black Lincoln at the curb, Marco standing by its open rear door with a semi-automatic in his right hand.
“Get in.”
Val dropped the gym bag, shrugged, and shuffled toward the car. When he got within reach, he lashed out with both hands, grabbing the pistol by its slide with his left and cracking Marco’s forearm with his right. The maneuver was supposed to end with the gun in Val’s left hand, but he was out of practice. The semi-automatic fell and discharged a round as it clattered on the pavement. Val clutched the back of Marco’s neck and cracked his head against the roof of the car.
But the Lincoln’s front doors were opening now. Two more suits climbed out.
* * *
Agent Hanrahan sat behind his desk in the federal building on Dorrance Street, an unlit cigar clamped between his jaws. Burns and Twisdale, the Gardner security chief, sat in leather chairs on the other side of the desk. They all looked glum.
“Carrozza still isn’t talking,” Hanrahan said. “Claims he bought the ku at a flea market and doesn’t know anything about any stinking museum robbery.”
“He expects us to believe that?” Twisdale asked.
“Of course not,” Hanrahan explained, “but it’s his story and he’s sticking to it.”
“We still got him for possession of stolen goods,” Burns said.
“Like I give a shit,” Twisdale said. “The rest of the art is still missing. What are you two fuck-ups doing about that?”
The agents didn’t say anything.
“What about Sciarra?” Twisdale asked. “Think he might break if you question him again?”
“Maybe,” Burns said, “but the asshole’s in the wind.”
“What? How did you let that happen?”
“Two days ago, when the Dispatch story broke, we rolled up to his Federal Hill apartment at six a.m.,” Hanrahan explained, “but Sciarra wasn’t home. A neighbor told us he liked to walk down to Broadway for coffee and the paper first thing every morning, so we drove over there. We checked three or four coffee places along the street, then headed back to Sciarra’s. The same neighbor said he’d come back but that a couple of bruisers forced him into a black car and took off.”
“Did he get the plate?” Twisdale asked.
“No.”
“Christ! Why in hell did I bring you clowns into this? Should have gone with my first instinct and handled it myself.”
The cell on Hanrahan’s desk played the theme from Dragnet. He answered it, listened for a minute, said, “We’ll be there in ten,” and clicked off. “Well, gentlemen, Sciarra’s not in the wind anymore.”
* * *
By the time Tisdale and the agents arrived at the construction site behind Rhode Island Hospital, Providence detectives had already cordoned it off with yellow police tape. They ducked under it and looked down at the footing for the basement of a planned suite of doctors’ offices.
“A security guard who works for the contractor called it in,” a Providence detective told them. “Half an hour later and the body would have been buried under eight feet of wet concrete.”
“Medical examiner on the way?” Burns asked.
“Like we need him to tell us the cause of death,” the detective said. “I can count the bullet holes from here.”
Tisdale held his head in his hands.
Hanrahan gave him a brotherly clap on the shoulder. “Look on the bright side,” the agent said. “There’s one less mob scumbag running loose on the streets.”
ARMORY PARK
BY TAYLOR M. POLITES
Armory District
The squawks of the chickens jerked Cal awake. Red and blue lights flashed off the flat white ceiling. Laura slept, her face toward the wall, Elmo curled at her feet. Cal peered through the narrow blinds. Across the lane, police officers milled around an old Caprice Classic, a decommissioned police cruiser painted a flat black that accentuated scar-like bolt holes where the top lights and flood lamp had been. Parked in a line behind it, th
eir lights sparking like strobes, were two actual police cruisers, Providence PD. There seemed to be others down toward Willow Street. The dead-end lane could not fit more.
Cal moved to the living room for a better view. The chickens squawked and clucked, bobbing and turning in their little enclosure behind hexagonal wire. He could see them from the side window, all six safe but unsettled. Two EMTs rolled a white-sheeted gurney to the black car. There was a man inside. Not moving. The chickens cackled. The police radios cackled back.
His hands tingled like they were asleep. He had been expecting something like this since Laura had insisted they move to the neighborhood. She would never admit she had made a mistake, but how much evidence did you need?
* * *
In the morning, Cal told Laura that they had dodged a bullet. What an edgy neighborhood! He could not resist getting in a dig. Laura’s eyes turned flat and unresponsive. She had been moody the night before, doubtless judging him for another blunder. Maybe he got the capital of Bullshitistan wrong. She had raved about how the apartments were bigger and cheaper in the Armory. How edgy it was. Well, here was its edge. His dad had suggested they install a gun turret in the living room window.
Cal caught their landlady outside while Laura was in the shower. She gave him the details she had gathered from the police scanner. Hispanic male, twenty-five years of age, five foot eight, 160 pounds. The same age as Cal. Slumped over in the passenger side of the vehicle with a bullet in his head. The car had been left running, which prompted the call to the police, although Mrs. Caracelli made clear that she had not called.
Cal thought she had to be eighty. She was skeletally thin with wiry gray hair and wore a black velour tracksuit with sky-blue piping. She kept a cigarette behind her left ear. From the first showing, she had seemed to favor him. He was handsome, and old women in particular warmed to him quickly. Cal’s weak salary as a bank teller hadn’t bothered her. She had said, You have to start somewhere. Yeah, he had replied, I’ve got my share of shit to eat. They were both native Rhode Islanders. He had grown up in an East Bay town with colonial charm and a working-class core. The old lady had been okay with Laura’s family kicking in half the rent too, since she was in a grad program at Brown. Italian Early Modern, Laura had said, what they used to call the Renaissance. The old woman had chuckled and looked at her bust of Dante. Laura was from Westchester, but Mrs. Caracelli said New York City with a frown of disapproval. She had even let them keep chickens, another fancy of Laura’s. Mrs. Caracelli said it reminded her of her childhood, spent a few blocks south. Cal had been skeptical about the chickens, but Laura went for fads. Like home fermentation and composting. He did like to go outside for warm eggs to scramble, although there was something twisted about it. He enjoyed their game of Farmer Brown. A little American Gothic in the city, Laura said.
Laura came down the two wooden steps to the street, her hair wet from the shower, wearing tight jeans, which he liked, and a tight purple V-neck, which he also liked. When he had met Laura just over a year ago during happy hour at McFadden’s, his first thought had been that she was just the type of girl he liked to watch get off. The uptight ones were always the best. She proved him right. Before the big move, they were practically porn stars. He knew just where to touch her. Something electric had been working between them. The excitement of the commitment maybe. Another layer of distance removed. He had never felt that electricity before.
“What have you heard?” she asked, coming close to him.
Mrs. Caracelli nodded good morning, smiling brightly, and watched as Cal explained. He stood where the car had been, towed away an hour before. Exhaust hung thick in the air as if the tailpipe still coughed out fumes, filling the lane of tightly packed wood-frame buildings.
“How did we not hear a gunshot?” Laura asked.
Mrs. Caracelli interjected, sitting on the creaky steps to the second floor smoking her cigarette: “They didn’t kill him here. They just dumped him. Classic job. I guess they didn’t want the car either.”
Laura, wide-eyed, turned back to Cal. The look expressed horror either at the violence or at Mrs. Caracelli’s indifference. He almost laughed, although none of it was funny. Laura stepped closer to him and whispered, exaggerating the words with her mouth, “We can’t live here.” She looked back at the old woman and smiled.
“Mrs. Caracelli,” Cal called to her, “has this happened before?”
The old woman gave a skull-faced smile and took a drag on her cigarette. She let the smoke pour from her mouth like a dragon. “You should have been here thirty years ago. Needles all in the park. Hookers. Drug dealers right on the street. Jesus.” She took another pull from her cigarette. She reminded Cal of his grandmother.
Laura’s eyes grew wider. Her long, thin face had become longer and thinner.
Cal whispered, “We just moved in. We have a lease.” Laura didn’t seem to care about that, but when you grew up with everything given to you, it never occurred to you that somebody had to pick up the tab.
“Who cares?” she whispered back fiercely. She stood where the car had been, along the picket fence that bordered Liz Westerberg’s flower garden. Laura shook her head, short little shakes, as if her processor had hit a snag that caused her to reboot again and again.
“You’re the one who wanted to move here,” he insisted, still whispering.
Laura shook her head again. Her mouth was open. Total shutdown. She walked quickly and directly into their apartment without looking at him or the old woman. When he went inside, he found her crying on the couch.
* * *
Cal took Elmo to the dog run that evening while Laura went to class. She had calmed down after her crying jag and brushed off his feeble efforts to comfort her. He had joked too much, not taken it seriously. He would make it up to her, find a way to explain the dead man. Just twenty-five.
The late afternoon was mild. The park was a short walk down streets lined with trees and Victorians with fancy shingles. Laura liked all that. Sure, what’s not to like? Other than the occasional crack house a few blocks west. The park was nice too, with double rows of sycamores. The yellow-brick castle of the Armory loomed over it all, gilded pink and gold in the late-afternoon sun. Their neighbors all knew each other. A plus in Laura’s opinion. But how could they not know each other? They were packed in like rats. He’d take the suburbs any day, and a nice, wide yard. Tall fences too.
His friends had warned him that he was marrying Laura by moving in with her. But he and Laura had talked about that. She had agreed: they were serious, committed, but not married. Why not move in together? They weren’t rushing into anything, just taking a step. No biggie. It had resolved a common need. Her studio was cramped, and she was fussy about him leaving his things there. His roommates were unreformed frat boys who she could not tolerate. Tell them to grow up, she had said. She and Cal would live like adults. They were getting to that age. He had had plenty of girlfriends, but not like Laura. She was ambitious. She had goals. Get a PhD in art. Travel. Teach. Become an expert.
They had turned the apartment into their home, combined their furniture. His futon had been put out in favor of her couch, but his recliner was there and his big TV and video games. The second bedroom she took as her office, but he could play video games in the living room whenever he wanted as long as he wore headphones. They had settled in. Established routines. The neighborhood was pretty quiet aside from an occasional car window being smashed or the break-in of a first-floor apartment.
They lived on the first floor but were careful with the lights and dead bolts. The last thing they wanted was to put bars on the windows. They felt safe enough. No one had so much as bothered the chickens. One day the birds had escaped. Laura insisted it had been Cal’s negligence. Fortunately, Liz Westerberg had seen them. She was collecting borage flowers to candy when a chicken walked by. She told Cal and Laura that she had strutted and flapped her wings at the birds to gently encourage them to return to their roost. He and Laura ha
d laughed imagining small, mannish Liz dancing the Funky Chicken. Cal had told Laura to drop the blame game since nothing bad had happened.
The dog owners stood by the double-gated entrance. He recognized most of them. He did not know their names, but he knew their dogs.
“What happened?” asked the Chinese woman with the bulldog named Roy.
“That’s where you live, isn’t it?” The lean, heavily stubbled hipster with the chocolate lab, Keno.
Cal shrugged as if he was a seasoned West Ender. “What are you gonna do?” he replied. His father used to say that. A rhetorical device. A way to end a discussion. There was of course no answer.
He asked about crime in the neighborhood. The black guy with the pit bulls Sophie and Chuck said it was minimal, just kids usually. Another man pulled him aside and told him never to walk in the park at night. Someone mentioned the prior summer when a fourteen-year-old had taken potshots with a Glock on Messer Street. “Just be aware, that’s all.”
“But this dead man,” Cal asked, “what is that about?”
People shrugged.
A thin old man with wild white hair wearing a soiled khaki windbreaker waved his hand as if to speak. He called to his wheezing golden retriever, Goliath, and attached the dog’s leash, then said, “The Cambodian drug gangs.” He walked away without another word, holding up his right fist, index finger in the air. Others in the park rolled their eyes.
* * *
Laura was tense when she got home. She didn’t like walking by the park or down their lane after dark. Cal poured her a glass of wine, but she refused it.
“I feel sick. I don’t want any wine. What are you cooking? It smells awful.” She put a hand on her stomach and looked like she was going to throw up.
“Are you okay?” he asked. “I thought you liked this. Chicken and eggplant.”
She shook her head.
He changed the subject: “I’ve been asking people about the murder, but no one seems to know anything. I think it was a drug thing.”
Laura narrowed her eyes, her eyebrows pinched together. “Drugs?”