by Ace Atkins
“And these are some pretty tough guys?”
“I have to say I was not impressed with Moon,” I said. “I’ll reserve judgment on Red Cahill. I heard he was pretty good with his fists and a gun.”
“And Gerry Broz?”
“I don’t think he’s involved in this,” I said. “This happened four years ago.”
“But they work for him now.”
“Yep.”
“And he doesn’t like you.”
“Unbelievable, isn’t it?”
“Absolutely.”
“Aren’t you going to tell me that I’m the toughest man alive and I do what I do because I’m a man among men?”
Susan rolled her eyes and took a sip of wine. “I don’t think there are any esteem issues with you,” she said. “Mushrooms and black olives?”
“Of course.”
“So what’s next?” she asked.
“We eat.”
“And then?”
“We drink.”
“And then?”
“And then I try to figure out why someone killed Julie Sullivan,” I said. “I don’t like any of the reasons I’ve been given. And I don’t like Mickey Green for it anymore. Moon and those men who tried to scare Mattie made sure of that.”
I lifted my glass to her. The ice rattled.
“You can’t be sure, though. Maybe Moon just doesn’t like other tough guys asking about him.”
“Those guys ran a fourteen-year-old girl off the road.”
“Mattie works like you,” Susan said. “She annoys people until they trip up.”
I nodded.
“And she’s as tough as old boots.”
“It’s an act,” Susan said.
“I’m not so sure.”
“It’s an act,” Susan said. “Her toughness is like a callus on your hand.”
“Calluses protect you.”
“As they should.”
“But not healthy for the psyche of a teenage girl?”
Susan shook her head. “She will seem much older and much younger to you at the same time.”
“I caught her playing princess with her sisters the other day,” I said. “It embarrassed her. But I think she was really enjoying it.”
“She’ll need more than revenge,” Susan said. “She’ll need a good shrink.”
“Don’t we all?”
“Maybe not Pearl.”
“I thought finding her mother’s killer would make it all better.”
“I’d love to tell you that it won’t,” she said. “But since it seems to be her compulsion, it would help some. It will get more complicated after that. She has to realize this is only part of her life story. From what you’ve told me, it’s all she thinks about.”
“What’s my compulsion?”
“Maybe lost kids.”
I nodded and took a deep breath. “She is completely unlike Paul, but somehow she makes me think of him. He had walled himself in complete apathy. Mattie has anything but apathy. She has the personality of a freight train.”
“But both showed potential. Both abandoned by their parents. And both ignored by adults.”
I finished the bourbon. The ice made empty rocky sounds in the bottom of the glass. I really had missed the bourbon.
“They’re both extremes,” Susan said. “You had to push Paul to engage, and you have to get Mattie to slow down.”
“Maybe I understand Mattie more,” I said. “She’s reckless. I used to be reckless.”
“And in other ways.”
“Growing up without a mother,” I said.
“You had your father and uncles,” she said. “They taught you everything about being self-sufficient. She has nothing, so she’s making up the rules as she goes along.”
I nodded. The nodding made me grimace.
“Are you sore?” Susan asked.
“Of course not.”
Susan smiled. She unwrapped the dress, placing a delicate hand on a hip. “Prove it.”
And I did.
15
If I was going to go up against an entire Southie crew, I figured I should keep in fighting shape. The morning was cold and gray, spitting sleet and rain, when I dressed in my sweats, watch cap, and running shoes. I walked over the footbridge to the Charles River, jogging all the way to the Boston University campus and back. The river was still frozen but not frozen enough that anyone dared to walk across. You could see the hardened clumps breaking up, open pockets of actual river that could swallow a man. I thought of spring concerts at the Shell, dogs frolicking in the Common, and women in summer dresses.
At my apartment, I showered and carefully shaved. I chose a black turtleneck; crisp, dark Levi’s; and my peacoat to conceal my .38. I decided on a knitted Sox cap to complete the look. Business casual.
Feeling like a fine example of the American male, I drove south to Roxbury.
Mike’s City Diner was on Washington Street, a couple miles from Boston Police headquarters. Although new, it boasted a retro look. There was an open stainless-steel kitchen fronting a long counter. The surrounding tables were covered in black-and-white gingham oilcloths. The waitresses wore little name tags.
“You Spenser?” asked a short black man.
“Most people say I resemble George Clooney.”
“Quirk told me you looked like an old fighter.”
“Quirk is jealous of my rugged good looks,” I said.
“Alden Reid,” he said.
Reid was neatly dressed in a silky black shirt and expensive-looking leather blazer. He had a thin trimmed mustache and close-cropped hair that showed a bit of gray at the temples. He had quick eyes, like most detectives I knew, and took in the room with discretion.
We shook hands and found a table looking out on Washington. There wasn’t much to see on Washington besides an old brick apartment building and recently restored storefronts. A mailman toting a heavy canvas satchel passed the window. He wore a big fur hat.
A waitress brought menus and coffee.
“You been with the drug unit long?”
“Eight years.”
“Like it?”
“Lots of job security,” Reid said. “Shit isn’t going away.”
“Here’s to crime.” I raised my mug.
“And retirement,” he said. “I have a time-share and a boat in Clearwater Beach.”
“You won’t miss shoveling snow?” I said. “My uncles said it built character.”
“I won’t miss shoveling shit,” he said. He studied the menu and put it down just as quickly. He then studied my face, with subtle attention on the purplish mouse under my eye.
“Would you believe a champagne cork?” I asked.
“Nope.”
“Had a run-in with a guy named Moon Murphy last night,” I said. “Heard of him?”
“Sure,” Reid said. He grinned. “You must be good. He usually breaks some bones.”
“And his partner?”
“Red Cahill?” he said. “If you know the name, you know his rep.”
“Hold that thought,” I said. “Let’s not talk hoodlums on an empty stomach.”
I ordered the hash and eggs. Rye toast on the side. Reid ordered the Mike’s special, hand-carved ham and two over-easy eggs with toast.
“How’d you get to be a private cop?” Reid asked.
“I don’t play well with others.”
“Martin Quirk is first-class,” Reid said. “He said to help you out in any way. He must like you. And Marty Quirk likes no one.”
“What can I say?” I shrugged. “I make him laugh.”
“Red Cahill,” he said. Reid shook his head, deep in thought. “Small-time punk gone big-time. Lucked out now that heroin is back in style.”
“Bell-bottoms and wide ties are next,” I said.
“Heroin’s rough, man,” Reid said. “Junkies love that slow suicide. That’s what it’s all about. It’s no fun if it don’t kill you.”
“Big business?”
“On C
hristmas Eve, we arrested two of Red’s boys with six pounds of the shit.”
I gave a low whistle.
“Street value of three million.”
“Great Caesar’s ghost,” I said.
The waitress stopped and refilled our cups. She wore the classic waitress uniform, complete with a white apron and saddle shoes. Her hair was the color of cotton candy.
“What do you know about Cahill and Murphy working with Gerry Broz?” I asked.
“What I know and can prove are two different things.”
“Story of my life.”
“Last year, we had a hell of a case on Red,” Reid said. “We got warrants to wiretap a garage where these guys hung out. It was a foreign-car place, fixed Porsches and Beemers, shit like that. This place was over on Old Colony, and for maybe four months, we saw these guys heading in and out of there like it was a beehive.”
“What happened?”
“When we got the warrant, the activity stopped,” he said. “You know Gerry Broz’s old man?”
“We have a history.”
“That garage was owned by him.”
“He’s been gone longer than that. Ten years.”
“Yeah,” Reid said. He nodded. “Him taking off is a whole other story. We figure he’s got friends in the DA’s office or with the Feds. They were coming for him when he decided to take an extended vacation.”
“Joe Broz has to be dead by now,” I said. “I think he bunked with Al Capone in Alcatraz.”
“His name still commands some respect,” Reid said. “Even after all this time.”
I nodded. The waitress arrived and slid warm plates in front of us. Hash and eggs on a cold morning was a national treasure. I took a bite of eggs, followed by a bite of rye toast. I drank coffee. Reid followed my lead.
“So Joe Broz really used to own this town?” Reid asked.
“Broz was the man.”
“You go up against him?”
“Yep,” I said.
“And?”
“In the end, we formed a mutual respect.”
“And his son?”
“Gerry isn’t cut from the same cloth,” I said. “First time I met him, he was videotaping himself having sex with old ladies and blackmailing them.”
“Class.”
“With a capital K.”
Reid drank some coffee. He cut into some ham and added a bite of egg to his fork. “He’s shaking things up.”
“So I’ve heard.”
“For a while, there was an understanding between the Albanians on the North Shore and the Italians on the North End. They kind of split Broz’s old turf downtown and in Southie. And now the kid has come back wanting to reclaim his birthright or something.”
“Gerry has always had something to prove.”
“Maybe the old man is back and telling him what to do.”
I stopped eating. I put my fork on the side of my plate. This was something I had not considered.
“So why’d you get into it with Moon Murphy last night?”
“There was a young woman in Southie who was killed four years ago,” I said. “Her daughter was just a kid then but has just IDed Red and Moon as being in her mother’s company shortly before she died.”
“Addict?”
“Sure.”
“Maybe she was just getting a fix.”
“Maybe.”
“How’d she die?”
“She was raped, stabbed, and run down with a car.”
“Sounds like a message killing written in neon.”
I nodded.
“But why?”
I shook my head.
Reid finished his breakfast. He reached for his cell phone and checked messages. He pulled out his chair and reached for his wallet.
I shook my head and laid down some cash.
“Watch your ass, Spenser,” he said. “These aren’t nice people.”
“People keep telling me that.”
“You got a plan?”
“Win them over with my dynamite personality?”
“You have a backup plan?” he asked.
“Working on it.”
16
I knocked on seven different doors in the Mary Ellen McCormack Projects before I found the second-floor apartment of Genevive Zacconi. Zacconi was a hard thirtyish woman with bleached hair chopped up in a spiky bob. She was short and fat and wearing an XXL T-shirt that read MEAN GREEN DRINKING MACHINE. When I started to question her, she told me to hold on for a moment. She leaned back into her apartment and yelled for her kid to “please shut the fuck up.”
When she turned back to me, she crossed her arms over her large breasts and frowned. “Yeah?”
“Did you win that shirt?” I asked.
“Whaddya mean?” she said, looking down to recall what she’d put on.
“I thought maybe it was a competition,” I said. “Like you slam a half-dozen boilermakers and you get a shirt. You know, like a trophy?”
“Fuck, I don’t know,” she said. “It was clean. What the hell do you want?”
“Our book club is reading Dr. Spock this month,” I said. “Would you like to join us?”
“Come on.”
“Would it be too corny if I said I was a private eye?”
She looked at me with tired eyes and tried to slam the door. I smiled, wedged my foot in the threshold, and handed her my card. I knew my charisma would chip away at her hardened shell. She looked at the card and tapped the edge against an eyetooth. “Most people who knock on my door are trying to sell me something I don’t need or religious nuts.”
“The Lord works in thuggish ways.”
“So whaddya want?”
“Did you know Julie Sullivan?”
“No.”
“Woman was killed four years ago?”
“I know who she was,” Genevive Zucconi said. “She lived downstairs. Her kids still do. With her crazy, drunk mother. But we weren’t friends or nothin’. She was like ten years younger.”
“Do you mind if I come inside?”
“Yeah,” she said. “I got shit all over the place, and I think my kid just crapped his pants.”
“How nice for you.”
“Did you just stop by to be funny, or did you want somethin’?”
I showed her the photograph of Julie Sullivan and the slick-haired man grabbing her breast.
“Know him?”
Even if she’d said no, the smile gave Genevive Zucconi away. She nodded and then shook her head. “Yeah,” she said. “Yeah, sure. That’s Touchie Kiley.”
“Touchie?”
“Yeah.”
“Where can I find Touchie?”
“Touchie’s a riot.” She laughed just thinking about him.
“Unwarranted groping is hilarious,” I said.
“I don’t know where he lives,” she said. “He’s just kind of always around. Did you check Four Green Fields? The pub?”
“Unfortunately, I’m persona non grata there.”
“What’s that mean?”
“It means they don’t find me a riot.”
“Try the deli on D Street,” she said. “He used to work there. Touchie Kiley. Jesus H. I hadn’t thought about him for a while. Tell him hello. What a fucking goofball.”
“As much as I’d love to relive the glory days,” I said, trying to dissuade more hilarity, “I could use some help. You remember anything about Julie Sullivan that might be of use? Anything around the time she was killed?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Like I said, I was ten years older. She was playing with dolls and shit when I was in high school.”
“You know she became an addict?”
“Sure,” she said. “Everybody knew she was hooked. Her arms were all bruised up like a piece of old fruit. She was screwing every guy in the projects.”
“Ever talk to her about it?”
“Do I look like a fucking counselor?” she said. “I’m real sorry about Jules, you know, God bless, but I got m
y own problems.”
The child inside her apartment began to whine and cry out for his mother. Another kid joined in, screaming in tandem, yelling for the first kid to be quiet. Genevive held up her index finger to me again, turned, and yelled, “Shut up.”
“Just one more minute,” I said.
Genevive slammed the door in my face. Undeterred, I tucked the photo back into my peacoat and continued asking around. I followed sidewalks coated in snow and ice. Big bags of trash that sat waiting for pickup blocked paths. A notice had been taped to a lamppost looking for anyone needing rides to Walpole or Plymouth prisons. A carpool was only twenty bucks. I wondered if that’s how Mattie had taken her visits with Mickey Green.
The project buildings stretched out like spokes from the common area, two and three stories of old red brick. Every unit the same. In a lone corner window, someone had pasted up colored drawings of Disney characters. Another had unicorns. It wasn’t even one o’clock but felt like the end of the day. They sky was dark. Slush and icy puddles ran up to my ankles.
More doors slammed in my face. I found out a lot of Hispanics had moved into Mary Ellen McCormack in the last few years. A lot of Vietnamese, too. Most did not speak English.
An hour later, I met an old woman who spoke in a soft Irish lilt, telling me how lovely it had all once been. “Until they forced the blacks on us,” she said.
“How unfortunate,” I said.
“They brought drugs and crime,” she said. She’d come to the door in a flowered housecoat and pushing a walker. Her eyes were faded blue with cataracts.
I did not point out that Southie’s crime rate was worse before the schools were integrated. I asked her about the Sullivan family.
She clucked and shook her head. She clutched her rosary on her withered old neck. “Have you spoken to the poor girl’s mother?”
“No,” I said. “But I’ll try again with some coffee and smelling salts.”
17
I figured Grandma Sullivan must be waiting for Mattie and the twins to come home from school. I bet she was making lemonade and baking sugar cookies. She may have taken up sewing or crochet to pass the time. Perhaps she would even invite me to dinner. Pot roast with new potatoes. A homemade apple pie for desert. Perry Como on the hi-fi.