Shallow Graves

by Jeremiah Healy

  “No.”

  “How about going to New York?”

  The stop. “Everybody talks about going to New York. It don’t mean nothing.”

  Chris said, “Sinead, how about it?”

  “Awright, awright.” Her sunglasses slipped as she looked down at me. “That’s all I can tell you.”

  “Sinead, you seem to have been her best friend. Is there anything else she talked about with you? Boyfriends, family, anything?”

  Fagan righted the glasses. Very evenly, she said, “We didn’t talk about family, awright?”

  Sinead trotted off to rejoin the others at the beach.

  Eight

  I TREATED MYSELF TO lunch at the Harvard Bookstore Cafe, a place where you can think about eating while browsing or think about browsing while eating. A friend of mine named Moncef designed the menu there. He and his wife Donna used to own L’Espalier, the best restaurant in the city. A few years ago, they pulled up stakes and moved to Virginia, to raise their family in a calmer environment. Moncef still comes up to Boston once in a while, and he was there that day. We shot the breeze for half an hour over a plate of perfectly stir-fried turkey and vegetables.

  To walk off lunch, I crossed the Public Garden and the Common to my office on Tremont. I’m in an old building, and my door on the third floor has a pebbled-glass top with “John Francis Cuddy, Confidential Investigations” stenciled on it. Behind the door is a desk, a desk chair, and two client chairs. Two windows overlook the Park Street Subway Station, and my license hangs from a wall I painted myself to save a few bucks on the monthly rent. The rest of the office could be carted off in the front basket of a bicycle.

  I was upstairs for five minutes and in my desk chair four when there was a knock on the door. “It’s open.”

  A guy came in wearing a knee-length leather coat over a navy blue suit. In his mid-forties, he was five seven and pushing two hundred pounds. A comb had recently slicked his black hair to the sides in a Teen Angel look. The face was pudgy, the complexion reminding me of an all-weather radial. A toothpick stuck out from one corner of his mouth, the corner curling in a half-smile.

  He said, “How ya doin’,” as a statement rather than a question and then settled into one of my client’s chairs, the leather coat squeaking against the wood.

  I said, “You want to take your coat off?”

  “We ain’t gonna be staying that long.”

  “So maybe I should put my coat on.”

  “You don’t want to catch cold on the way to the car.”

  “Where are we heading, we aren’t going to be here that long?”

  “Some friends of mine, they want to have a little talk with you.”

  “And if I don’t exactly feel like going with you?”

  A shrug so small the coat gave just one tiny squeak. “I leave, come back with two associates, and then we go see my friends.”

  “And if two more aren’t enough?”

  The only part of his expression that changed was the toothpick. It rolled to the other corner of his mouth. “Then I come back with four more. Sooner or later, you have that talk with my friends.”

  “I step on some toes somewhere?”

  “I don’t know. I’m just transportation.”

  If he were just “transportation,” he’d be leaning against a car downstairs, and somebody else would be talking with me. I thought over what I’d been doing the last couple of weeks and came up with only one possibility.

  I said, “Where are we going?”

  “You find out when we get there.”

  I shook my head very slowly. That brought a good smile.

  “Hey-ey-ey,” he said, dragging out the syllable. “Look, we was gonna clip you, we wouldn’t send somebody you don’t know, would we?”

  “You would if you don’t have anybody I know.”

  “You raise a good point.” He sat back into the chair, folding his hands over his stomach, lifting his shoulders once and letting them sag into the chair, a symphony of squeaks from the coat.

  When I didn’t say anything, he waited thirty seconds or so, then said, “You come now, we beat the afternoon rush.”

  “These days, there’s always traffic.”

  He rolled the toothpick back to where it started, then used the thumb and forefinger of his left hand to pull back the lapels of his coat and jacket. Letting me see he wasn’t reaching for anything lethal. He pulled out a long wallet from the inside pocket of the jacket, extracted a plastic card, and sent it across the desk to me.

  “My license. A picture of me and everything.”

  I looked at the driver’s license. It seemed legitimate. Social Security number, date of birth. The photo was recent, the expiration date four birthdays away. The address was in the North End, Boston’s Italian-American section.

  I read off, “Zuppone, Primo T.”

  “Yeah, only you gotta pronounce it ‘Zoo-po-ny.’ ”

  “Primo, how many of these do you have?”

  The small shrug again. “Six, seven. But that there’s the real one.”

  I couldn’t help but grin at him. “People underestimate you a lot, Primo?”

  That got the half-smile. “Just once, usually.”

  “Primo, what’s the license number on your car?”

  “That ain’t on there.”

  “I know. I want the plate of the car we’re going for a ride in.”

  He rattled it off, no more hesitation.

  “I’m going to make some calls, Primo. Then I’ll decide whether we’re taking a ride.”

  Zuppone and his coat made themselves more comfortable in the chair.

  I dialed the Boston police, making a point to ask for “Homicide” and “Lieutenant Robert Murphy” instead of Holt. Murphy wasn’t in, so I left Harry Mullen’s name and telephone number at Empire, then Zuppone’s name, address, and plate number. Then I called my answering service and left the same information with them.

  When I hung up, Zuppone said, “You want to call your friend, the assistant D.A., we got time.”

  I spoke to the half-smile. “That’s okay. She needs you, she’ll find you.”

  Zuppone said, “You carrying?”

  “At least one.”

  He said, “Okay. Let’s go.”

  I said, “What if I’d said no?”

  “What, about carrying?”

  “Yeah.”

  The leather squeaked its last as he got up. “I wouldn’t have believed you.”

  “This road’s a fucking disgrace, ain’t it?”

  We were driving out of the city on the Southeast Expressway, more typically known as the Distressway. Originally named after Boston mayor “Honey Fitz” Fitzgerald, his famous descendants should be ashamed of its current condition.

  Zuppone continued. “I was one of the Kennedy kids there, I’d kick in a coupla bucks from the trust fund, get these potholes fixed.”

  The holes were more like craters, but Zuppone’s Lincoln Continental ate them up, just a slight “whump” noise from the tires.

  “We were in my Prelude, our heads’d be through the moon roof by now.”

  Zuppone rolled the toothpick. “Never could see them foreign jobs, myself. Uncle of mine had a Lincoln back in the fifties, and I always promised myself one.” He caressed the wheel lovingly. “And the stereo system’s dynamite. Watch.”

  Or listen. When we’d gotten in the car, his starting the engine brought some soft, solo piano music. Now Zuppone pressed a few buttons that made the sound bounce all over the cabin, front to back and side to side.

  I said, “That a radio station?”

  “Uh-unh. Tape, but it’s a homemade jobbie, forty-five minutes a side, so you don’t have to change it so often.”

  “Easy listening.”

  Zuppone glanced at me, to see if I were kidding. “George Winston.”

  “Never heard of him.”

  “Guy records for Windham Hill, New Age stuff.”

  “Hot tubs and healing crystals
?”

  “I gotta tell you, I don’t know from nothing about the philosophy side of the shit. I just know, I put in the tape, and I feel good, you know?”

  We rode for a while, Zuppone taking the Route 3 prong instead of 128. The traffic petered out, but he kept the Lincoln at a steady fifty-five, the tires barely slapping the junctions of the asphalt in a way you felt rather than heard over the music. The leather upholstery was the same color as Primo’s coat and supple to the point of buttery. But a cold softness, not the way I’d want my last car ride to feel.

  Zuppone picked up the telephone nestled between us and hit a button. After no more than one ring, he said, “It’s Primo … Yeah … Ten minutes … Right.”

  He hung up, looked at me. “You were in Vietnam, right?”

  I said, “Right.”

  “One of the people you’re going to meet, he was there, too. Let him talk about it, he wants to, but don’t like … encourage him, okay?”

  My turn to look at Zuppone. “Okay.”

  He noticed me looking and shrugged. “You made it easy on me, coming along. I make it easy on you. One hand and the other, you know?”

  “Can you tell me where we’re heading?”

  The toothpick changed sides again. “You ain’t figured it out yet?”

  I thought back to Sinead Fagan being emphatic about not discussing “family” with Mau Tim Dani. “I figure the super at an apartment building this morning called the owners, and now I’m going to meet them.”

  Zuppone nodded. “You’re close.”

  We left Route 3 and started winding through suburban intersections with three gas stations and a convenience store on the corners. After a couple of turns, the retail areas gave way to narrow streets with small homes, which in turn gave way to wide streets with large homes. One of the wide streets matured into a boulevard, the center strip less impressive than Commonwealth Avenue in Boston, but with big shade trees far enough south and close enough to the ocean to be showing the full leaf stage of spring.

  Zuppone eased the Lincoln into a long driveway that curved gracefully past high hedges toward a white Greek Revival mansion, fluted pillars supporting the roof over the main entrance. He parked behind a Mercedes and a Volvo, the piano music dying abruptly as he turned off the engine, the air vibrating inside the car.

  Primo got out before I did, the door thunking solidly against the frame as he closed it. He made sure I was still with him, then walked up the flagstone path to the side entrance. He rang the bell but pulled open the door without waiting for anyone to say or do anything.

  I followed him through and into a huge kitchen, the pans all copper and polished. They hung from rings in their handles over tiles the color of dried blood. The tiles covered the work areas of the counters as well as the floor.

  As Zuppone stepped behind me to close the door, probably the tallest Vietnamese woman I’d ever seen stood up from a stool. There was a cigarette burning in a crystal ashtray in front of her, at least half a dozen smoked ones in the base of the tray.

  The woman self-consciously touched her hair, swept up in a bun with jewelry combs. Her cheekbones were high, her lipstick light. She wore a bao dai, the traditional long, slitted dress of her country, but the slit was conservative and the dress itself was black, not a gay print. A mother in mourning.

  She said, “My husband and the brother of my husband are in the den.”

  As we went by her, I said, “I’m sorry for your loss.”

  The woman dropped her gaze toward her feet. Her eyes started to close, but the left lid went only halfway down as the right closed completely. As she looked back up, I realized the left eye was gone, the brown and white egg in its socket a beautifully wrought piece of glass.

  I felt a chill as Zuppone led the way through the first floor of the house.

  From across the den, they looked like twins standing in front of adjoining mirrors at the fun house. One was stocky, with coarse black hair in clots that didn’t stay put. His jaw seemed about one generation removed from cracking bones around a cooking fire. He wore a shirt and tie, but the tie’s knot was wrenched almost halfway down his chest, and the sleeves were turned up twice, revealing forearms thatched with black hair. As he drained a glass of what looked like Scotch, he made you think of why Webster put the word “guzzle” in the dictionary.

  The other guy was slim and five inches taller, maybe six one. The tide on his hair was going out, front to back. His features were more delicate, like the altar boy who goes on to play guard for the CYO basketball team. I guessed the suit to be in the seven-hundred range at Brooks Brothers, a Repp tie still knotted tightly at the collar. There was no drink in his hand or anywhere nearby.

  As Zuppone and I got closer, I realized the stocky one was about my age, the slim one a little younger despite the hairline.

  The stocky one said, “This him, Primo?”

  “Yes, Mr. Danucci.”

  I thought, Jesus Christ.

  The stocky one put down his glass. “The name registers with you, don’t it.”

  My eyes went to the slim one. He seemed mildly amused but not inclined to show it much.

  The stocky one said, “Look at me, Cuddy.”

  I did. “I thought you’d be older.”

  The slim one said, “You’re thinking of our father.”

  I said, “Tommy Danucci was your father?”

  The stocky one said, “Is our father.”

  Tommy Danucci. Tommy the Temper. One of the mob bosses you heard about but never saw, directing things quietly from the backroom instead of splashing across the front page. I remembered whiffs of him coming up during the media coverage of the Angiulo cases, but I thought he’d died in the mid-eighties.

  The slim one said, “I think you’re entitled to an introduction, Mr. Cuddy. This is my brother, Joseph Danucci. My name is Vincent Dani.”

  I said to Dani, “You were Mau Tim’s—”

  “Tina!” thundered Danucci. “My daughter’s name was Tina! Use it.”

  Nobody said anything until Primo said, “Boss, can I freshen that up for you?”

  Danucci was breathing through his mouth. The sound was like a hurricane blowing through a lantern. It wasn’t hard to see which gene he got from Tommy the Temper. “Yeah. Yeah, Primo. Thanks.”

  “Chivas?”

  “No. The Johnny Black tonight.”

  Zuppone crossed to the wet bar in a corner of the room. The paneled walls were covered with framed prints of different Boston athletes. Dom DiMaggio and Rico Petrocelli from the Red Sox, Gino Cappelletti from the Patriots, Phil Esposito from the Bruins. It took a minute to realize they all had Italian surnames.

  Danucci accepted his drink and downed half of it. He ran the back of his hand across his mouth, then ran his palm over his head, scattering the clots of hair into a different pattern.

  He said, “I’m not dealing real well with this shit,” and inhaled the rest of his drink.

  This time Primo didn’t offer to get another.

  Around the empty glass, Danucci said, “I want to talk with the guy alone a couple of minutes.”

  His brother said, “Joey?”

  “I’ll be okay, Vinnie. You guys try the TV or something, huh?”

  Vincent Dani looked at Primo, who looked at me. Then Primo said, “Right, boss,” and left the room, Dani taking two short steps, then striding out behind him.

  Joseph Danucci said to me, “Take a seat, Cuddy.”

  I tried one of several leather easy chairs across from the leather couch. All the cowhide, including the tufting on the bar and stools, was royal blue, held in place by brass tacks.

  Danucci circled over to the bar, setting his glass on it. “Get you something?”

  It was a little early, but I said, “Beer, if you have it.”

  He disappeared behind the bar. “What I don’t got, you don’t need.” His voice echoed a little as he spoke into what sounded like a refrigerator.

  Using a church key, Danucci opened the
bottle of Sam Adams the way a busy bartender would, the top arcing through the air like a tossed coin.

  He brought the bottle over to me. “Primo said you were in the ’Nam.”

  Danucci pronounced it to rhyme with “Mom.” As he moved back to the bar, I thought about what Zuppone had told me in the car.

  I said, “One tour.”

  “When?”

  “Late sixties.”

  Danucci poured himself more Scotch. “Where?”

  “Mostly Saigon.”

  He started to raise his glass, then said, “Tet?”

  “Yeah.”

  Danucci swigged two fingers of the Johnny Walker. “ ‘Who owns the night?’ ”

  “ ‘The night belongs to the 101st Airborne.’ ”

  He watched me. “You were a Screaming Eagle?”

  “No. Ran into them from time to time.”

  “What outfit you with?”

  “Military Police.”

  Danucci came around the bar. “Fucking Mike-Papa?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Ever out in the boonies?”

  “Once in a while.”

  Danucci started pacing back and forth. “Yeah, well I fucking lived in the boonies, man, seventy into seventy-one. I never minded so much the assaults, even on a Huey going down into a hot LZ. And on search-and-destroy, you got so you could see the booby traps, especially old ones. At least you were doing something, going after Charlie where he lived. What I couldn’t take was standing down on a firebase some fucking general named after a mission from World War II, guarding some fucking artillery against Charlie probing us at night.”

  My host kept pacing. “Sweating on top of some fucking bunker because it was crawling with rats inside. Waiting. All the time just waiting for Charlie to hit. You can hear a lot further at night than you can see.”

  Danucci stopped in front of me. “Know what was the worst part?”

  Without thinking, I said, “The rain.”

  This time Danucci stared at me. That cold, dead-eyed stare Tom Berenger captured so well in Platoon. “Fucking A. That rain starts, you couldn’t hear nothing moving, nothing. It started to rain, didn’t matter I wasn’t pulling guard duty, I couldn’t sleep.”

  The palm went through the hair again. “Like now.”