Somehow he managed to survive the investigations from the eighties when the FBI, with the help of the Irish mob, smashed most of the other Italian families in town. My father claimed it was because Uncle Sal had transferred most of his holdings into legitimate businesses that he wasn’t rotting in some federal pen. I wasn’t as confident as my old man, but either way, I was happy Uncle Sal had managed to stay out of Club Fed. Through various corporations, he owned an import/export business, apartment buildings, an equipment rental company, a couple of bars near the Boston Garden and some strip joints in Peabody and Revere.
The job title he used on his tax returns was “plumbing salesmen,” but it was debatable if he could tell the difference between a plunger and a ball flap. Outside of his known businesses, he was allegedly involved in such illicit endeavors as ticket scalping, numbers rackets and stolen goods. This might be a shocker, but I never had a problem with it.
With a master’s degree in Criminal Justice, I understood that crime was inevitable. Nature abhors a vacuum, and if Uncle Sal and his organization were gone, something would rise to fill the void–something potentially far more violent and inherently evil than his crew had ever been.
Yes, Uncle Sal was a mobster, but he lived by a code that most in his trade had forgotten. No one got hurt unless they were involved in the business, unlike the street gangs who randomly shot whoever happened to be in their way. He was the last of a breed, a living stereotype. I couldn’t watch The Godfather and not think of him. Some might accuse me of having a naïve view of organized crime, but I had no misconceptions. My uncle was a dangerous man if you got on his bad side. He was no Kingpin of Crime, but you didn’t want to cross him either.
There was another side of him that few outside of his community bothered to talk about. Uncle Sal put a lot of money back into his neighborhood by building parks, sending kids to private schools and helping people when they were down on their luck. He was also a huge benefactor of the Catholic Church and on a first name basis with the local Cardinal. It all seemed to balance out in the great ledger of life.
As a kid, I spent a lot of good times with him. Uncle Sal got great tickets to the Sox, Bruins, Patriots and Celtics games. That was most assuredly where my love of Boston sports came from. He had no sons of his own but two daughters, Gabriella and Danielle, who were a few years younger than me. By proxy, my cousin Tony, Marc and I became his “sons.”
Like most Italian men of his generation, Uncle Sal loved the women and always had a few “goumadas” on the side. Aunt Carla has most likely known all along, and I was under the impression that it was acceptable to her generation. Today’s women would kick your ass to the curb and take at least half of everything, but the old school wives simply closed their eyes and pretended it wasn’t happening.
It was Uncle Sal who set me up with my “first piece of ass” as he called it. I was sixteen, and he told my parents he was taking me out to dinner for my birthday. We went to a motel suite in Saugus where he had a couple of girls from one of his clubs waiting. They were the cream of the crop, and I got my pick. It sounds terrible, but there are a lot worse ways to lose your virginity.
I can still picture her vividly in my mind, a tall busty brunette named Kara. She was only a few years older than me, but those years made a huge difference. Uncle Sal instructed me to treat her with respect and made sure I knew to use a condom. The last thing he wanted was to have to explain to my mother how her son had contracted syphilis.
While most friends I had talked to about their first time later admitted it was generally a horrible experience, mine was anything but. Kara was a really fun girl, and we hit it off so well that I saw her again a number of times on my own. I was extremely nervous, but she made me laugh and put me at ease.
A student at BU, she was putting herself through school working as a dancer. Every now and then I wondered what ever happened to her. I could probably track her down but that seemed a bit creepy. She most likely married some guy from college and lived in the suburbs with two point three kids and a dog. Me showing up at her doorstep like a panting dog in heat might not go over so well.
As a close family member, Uncle Sal had offered me jobs a number of times. I did some errands for him in college but never anything that would get me in trouble. He often said when I got out of the service that he had a career waiting for me downtown. I kind of knew what the job would entail, though, and it wasn’t for me. We remained in contact throughout the years, and I saw him whenever I was home on leave. Like clockwork, there was always the offer.
“I could use a guy like you, Ronan,” he always said. “I can trust you because you’re blood.”
My cousin Tony said Uncle Sal wanted to groom me to take his place. I could never be a Mob chieftain though. I was too nice a guy, and the hours were just too long. It wasn’t a job; it was a lifestyle much like the military, and I had no desire to go back to that grind. Once I found out who killed Karen, I planned to go back to my permanent life of sleeping in late and full days of nothing on my calendar.
“Your mother also told me about your girlfriend’s passing,” he said. “I’m sorry to hear it. I assume you’re looking into things.”
“I wasn’t initially planning on it, but I am now. That’s how I got this.” I pointed to my eye.
“You think your girl was murdered?”
“Yes, I do.”
“By the guys that jumped you?”
“I don’t think so. They seemed like the straightforward shooter types. Using a lethal cocktail of drugs doesn’t seem their speed.”
“There were drugs involved?”
“The autopsy found enough drugs in her system to kill a bull elephant, but I don’t think she used. The worst part of it all, Uncle Sal, is I had just left her before it happened, and my instincts told me not to let her go. I just dismissed them, and I know better than that.”
That was the first time I’d admitted the guilt out loud. I felt the mixture of rage and pain welling up inside, and I struggled to hold it back. I wasn’t responsible for her death, but that didn’t help ease my conscience.
“Sounds like an execution set up to look like an OD. Whoever did it doesn’t want any questions lingering.”
Hearing that from the voice of experience confirmed my belief.
“They botched it badly though. She drowned before the drugs had a chance to kill her which means she was injected right before she went into the water.”
“Lots of idiot amateurs out there. Don’t do anything stupid, kid. I’ve got big plans for you and don’t want to see anything happen to ruin that.”
“You know me better than that.”
“Yeah, I do. That’s the problem. You’re like a fucking hunting dog on the trail when you set your mind to it. I’ll check around and see what I can find out. Someone in my circles may know something. One of my friendly rivals runs most of the operations up here in Lowell. He might have something for us.”
“I’d appreciate that.”
“Next time those guys will probably clip you, so don’t fuck around. If you need any firepower, your cousin can set you up with some heavy duty shit.”
“I’m good. I’ve got enough to start a small civil war.”
He stood, shook my hand, gave me a kiss on the cheek as per Italian custom and made his way towards the door.
“Tony is also at your disposal if need be.”
I nodded. Tony was ruthless and an all-around fun guy to be around.
“Don’t hesitate to call us if you are in need, Ronan,” Uncle Sal said before he stepped back into his car. “We are always here for you.”
If things continued the way they were headed, I figured I’d be calling he and Tony sooner rather than later.
Over the next few days, I talked to Karen’s friends that I could track down without her address book and banged on doors near where the car was found–all of it a tremendous waste of time. That covered the easiest ground. I was starting to feel like my old self which mea
nt it was time to start stepping on toes.
Karen’s family had her funeral on a cold, rainy, unremarkable New England day. I wore a black, two-piece suit with a dark tie, white shirt and long Brooks Brothers raincoat. Underneath my jacket the butt of my .45 poked into my sore ribs. Though there was no sun, I wore dark glasses to conceal my black eye. It was looking better, but I preferred to avoid questions.
It had been a while since I‘d worn a gun, and I had to keep adjusting it. There was a time when a day didn’t go by that I wasn’t armed. Leaving the house without a weapon was like not carrying a wallet; it was inconceivable. When I left the service, a gun became a headache that I didn’t need every time I stepped outdoors, and I broke the habit.
This was a new life I was starting, and I had made the conscious decision not to be a cop anymore. Leaving the gun home was the first step. Karen’s death and getting beat up had shoved me right back toward my old ways. Because I no longer had federal credentials once I moved back to Lowell, my brother informed me I’d need to get a gun permit if I planned to keep my collection. The firearms laws in Massachusetts are pretty draconian, and in my educated opinion, violate the Second Amendment. Nothing much I could do about that though.
The permit procedure is set up so the chief of police in the individual towns and cities determine who gets a permit and who doesn’t. Since I was staying with my parents and they lived in my brother’s town, it was simply a formality. If I had lived in any other town, I might have been forced to take a gun safety course, even though I had more time in range bathrooms than most instructors had with firearms. When I bought the house in Lowell, my brother arranged to transfer my permit and shortly after I upgraded so I could carry concealed. I debated whether I needed it or not at the time and thankfully I made the right decision.
The .45 is a big handgun and not easy to conceal, but I was pissed off. I could have carried a smaller 9mm, but that wasn’t going to make a large enough hole in the bastard who killed Karen. God forbid any of the lefties ever heard me say that out loud or they would have revoked my permit forever.
I stood alone in the back of the procession. A priest said a few words about Karen’s life, and they sang “Amazing Grace.” I recognized a few of the people attending, including her mother and younger sister Sara. They held each other for strength and shared a box of tissues.
Since she had been a veteran, Karen’s casket was draped in the Stars and Stripes and a military color guard from nearby Hanscom Air Force Base in Bedford did a twenty-one-gun salute. I’d been to many military burials in the past ten years; I suspected with the war dragging on in the Middle East, this may not be my last.
As they lowered her into the ground, I clenched my fists as the guilt struck again. Near the front, I spotted Cassie, her head hung low. I’d been trying to find her the past few days. She had been calling in sick to work at Max’s, and her car hadn’t been at her apartment since the night of Karen’s death.
After the service was over, a line formed to offer condolences to the family. I had met Karen’s mother a couple of times and found her to be a warm and attractive lady with a good sense of humor. She’d had Karen at a pretty young age and was only about ten years older than I was. Karen seemed to get a kick out of it when her mom flirted with me, and I didn’t mind the attention at all.
Sara was a few inches shorter than Karen and a freshman at UMass Lowell. Other than their height and hairstyle, the sisters had looked very much alike. Their father died tragically when the girls were young, leaving Mrs. Pommer to raise them on her own and by all accounts she had done a phenomenal job. I waited until everyone had gone through the line to express my condolences.
“I’m sorry about your daughter. She meant a lot to me, and I wish I could have done something to prevent this.” That wasn’t what I really wanted to say, but it was the guilt thing again.
“Oh, Ronan.” She hugged me and held on tight.
Sara looked at me, the tears again welling in her eyes. “I didn’t think you were here.”
“How could I not be?”
“Karen loved you, you know,” Mrs. Pommer said. “She told me that after the last time you were over the house. She was just afraid to tell you since you hadn’t been together all that long and she didn’t want to scare you away.” She reached up and took off my glasses, gasping at my eye. “What happened?”
I didn’t want to tell her what was going on just yet, so I lied. I found myself doing a lot of that lately.
“I had too much to drink and walked into a door.”
She put her hands on her hips and looked at me. Normally I was a much better liar. It came with the territory. My mother used the same look when I lied to her as a child and she busted me.
“Ronan, you expect me to believe that?”
“I didn’t want to upset you but I’m trying to find out who killed your daughter. I’ve already done some digging, and apparently someone doesn’t appreciate it.”
“You think someone murdered my Karen?” Mrs. Pommer asked.
“I find it hard to believe that she just somehow fell into the river and drowned in the middle of the night” I replied.
“I’m having a hard time making sense of it too,” she said.
“Someone beat you up?” Sara interjected.
I just nodded.
“You poor thing,” Mrs. Pommer said. She reached over and touched my jacket, feeling the .45 through it. “You’re carrying a gun?”
“Yes.”
“I thought I felt it when I hugged you,” she said. “Is that necessary?”
“Unfortunately it is.”
“Are we in any danger?” Sara asked.
“No, I don’t think so. Listen, once things settle down, I’d like to come over and talk,” I said. “There are some things I need to know that might help me out with this.”
“I’d like that,” Mrs. Pommer said. “I can make dinner.”
The last time I’d been to her house, she’d made a delicious pot roast and we’d finished a bottle of wine. She looked me in the eyes and started to cry again. I put my glasses back on and I held her. Sara stared at us, looking very much lost and alone. I reached out and brought her into our little circle. They cried their eyes out on my broad shoulders for the next five minutes and I’d be a liar if I said I didn’t shed a tear or two as well.
I tried to catch up to Cassie as she left the funeral, but she quickly got into her car and sped off. She looked right at me but didn’t even acknowledge that I was there. I tried not to take it personally; some people handle grief differently, though I wondered if there might have been something else I was missing. I had a strange gut feeling but it was very hard to believe that Cassie might have been involved somehow in Karen’s death.
“How you holding up, Ronan?”
I turned to find Max, dressed in a long black leather coat. It probably fit him before he gained that last fifty pounds. If they could, the buttons would have screamed.
“I’m okay. Everyone must be pretty freaked out down at the club, huh?”
“Yeah, no one was in the mood to work. Pretty incredible to know that one minute someone is here, the next they’re gone.”
I was shocked he wasn’t bitching about losing money.
“Max, do you know if Karen was working anywhere else?”
“She might have been. She only worked part-time at my place. I guess she was a student the rest of the time.”
“I’m looking into her death.”
He stared at me oddly. To Max, I was simply a guitar player in a pedestrian bar band.
“You’re not a cop.”
I wanted to reveal my secret identity, but I wasn’t in the mood for questions.
“No, but I can do things they can’t.”
“Like what?”
“Did you forget what I did in the military?”
“We’ve never really discussed it.”
“Right. I’ll fill you in sometime. Do you want to help me?”
&nbs
p; He shrugged. I was waiting for the “what’s in it for me,” but to my surprise it never came. Two shocks in thirty seconds, I might have to reevaluate the little Ugnaught.
“Sure. Anything, Ronan.”
“Good. I want you ask around the club, maybe talk to Cassie and some of the other girls. See if they have any ideas who might have wanted Karen dead.”
“I thought it was an accident,” he replied.
“I’m not buying it,” I said. “Look, are you going to help me out or not?”
“Sure. Why can’t you talk to them, though?”
“You know them better than I do. I’m going to come by eventually, but until then; can you do that for me?”
“I’ll do what I can.”
“Keep it between us, too. I don’t want everyone to know what I’m doing.”
“I just hope you’re a better detective than a guitar player.”
That was just great, another ball buster. I enjoyed razzing people as much as the next guy, but there’s time and place and this wasn’t it. I watched him waddle off, and I was immediately reminded of Danny Devito as the Penguin in Batman Returns. It wasn’t the long black coat either.
My next move was trying to come up with a number that might match the one on the card; pretty damn hard to do when you don’t actually know the number. I called every modeling agency within a hundred miles and asked about Karen. None claimed to have ever heard of her.
My ribs were feeling better, so I put on my karate gi and worked out for close to an hour. I’d set up a makeshift dojo in my garage with a heavy bag. Eventually I planned to put down a wood floor to make it more like the Japanese dojos I’d studied in overseas. There was really no good reason why it hadn’t been done yet. One day I’d face up to the fact that I was a major procrastinator. Another character flaw exposed.
It hurt like hell to throw kicks and punches, but I sucked it up. I was tired of feeling vulnerable. The last thirty minutes was spent working on kata, the rhythmic arrangement of moves that looked like a dance. While many American martial artists put little value in it, its secret is in the repetition of moves. If one knew what each move signified, they could be adapted to actual combat. After twenty-years of studying, I’d become extremely proficient at the kata but as with any art, endeavored to improve.
Lloyd Corricelli - Ronan Marino 01 - Two Redheads & a Dead Blonde Page 9