“What is a factor?”
The toothpick rolled from port to starboard. “What do you mean, Cuddy?”
“Before you picked me up this afternoon, you checked me out pretty thoroughly. In the week since Mau Tim died, you’ve been doing the same thing with the people in her life, right?”
A sleepy smile. “Coupla guys said you was pretty smart.”
“What did you find out?”
Zuppone thought for a minute. “I didn’t do nothing like you’re gonna do. Go talk to everybody, I mean. I checked a few things here, a few things there. Spread the word.”
“About the necklace.”
“Yeah. Somebody tries to fence it, we get a call.”
“But no calls yet.”
“Right.”
“Kind of a long time for a junkie to sit on a piece of jewelry.”
“Kind of.”
I stretched my neck against the headrest. “Somebody told me tonight you’re a situation guy.”
“Somebody was right.”
“What does a situation guy do?”
“What it sounds like. I go in, look around, let people know what’s what.”
“You checked out the modeling agency before Mau Tim went to work there.”
“Yeah, but lemme give you a tip, Cuddy.”
“Sure.”
“You’re around the family, her name wasn’t ‘Mau Tim.’ It was ‘Tina,’ right?”
“Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it.”
Zuppone put on his turn signal and pulled out into the fast lane to go around a garbage truck. As soon as we were by it, he used the signal again and tiptoed back into the middle lane, reducing his speed.
“You’re a careful guy, Primo.”
“Pays to be.”
“About the modeling agency?”
“Yeah?”
“What was your read of the situation?”
Another migration of the toothpick. “Year ago they were clean. Otherwise, the family don’t let Tina work for them, I don’t care what she wants to do.”
“How could the family stop her?”
“Simple. I pay a visit to the agency, and they all of a sudden decide to call her and say, ‘Sorry. Turns out, we don’t need you after all.’ ”
“What did you think of the people there?”
“I didn’t talk to them direct-like.”
“What did you find out about them?”
“The first name—Lind-something?”
“Lindqvist.”
“Yeah, that’s how somebody told me she says it. How do you spell that?”
I went through it.
“That’s not the usual thing, right? I mean, usually you put the ‘u’ after the ‘q,’ right?”
“Usually in English. I don’t know much about Swedish.”
“Swedish, huh? She don’t look good enough to be what I’d call Swedish.”
“I thought you didn’t talk to them.”
The half-smile. “I sat in my car outside there a coupla days. Watching the door, making sure it looked legit. Kinda surprised me how tall and plain the model broads were. Out of their war paint, I mean.”
“What about Lindqvist?”
“I got the impression she was the pants, with the guy—Yulin?”
“Right.”
“With the guy Yulin kind of a second banana.”
“That’s how I read it, too.” I stopped. “If it turns out one of them killed Tina, where does that leave you?”
“Fucked, if I should of seen it.” Zuppone pushed a button on his armrest that lowered his window. He spit the toothpick into the night air. “Kind of the pot calling the kettle black, ain’t it?”
“What is?”
“What you’re thinking. Guy like me calling Yulin a ‘second banana.’ ”
“I hadn’t thought about it.”
“Yeah, well, I am a second banana, Cuddy. I’m a guy used to not do so good in school there. You know why?”
“No.”
“I got dyslexia. You know, I see ‘24’ like it’s ‘42’ or ‘art’ like it’s ‘rat.’ ”
“Makes the studying tough.”
“Yeah. Only Sister Angelica back in the third grade there didn’t call it dyslexia.”
“What did she call it?”
“Being stupid. But, turns out, I’m not so stupid once I’m out of the books. Real world, I do okay because I ain’t got no ambitions.”
“Run that by me again?”
“Ambitions. Like to be something I ain’t. I’m good at situations, sizing things up, sizing people up. I’m not looking to run anything. Last thing you want to be in this business is the guy somebody in charge of an operation sees when he looks over his shoulder, get me?”
“I think so. It doesn’t bother you, the organization you size things up for?”
Zuppone looked my way sharply this time, having to swerve just a bit to get back in lane. He eased five miles per hour off the speedometer. “You’re a college man, right?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Holy Cross, a guy said.”
“That’s right.”
“Then you go in the Army, make—what, captain?”
“Eventually.”
“Guy like you, a corporation welcomes you with open arms. You got a resume reads like a guy they want to hire.”
“I see your point.”
“Good. ‘Cause this is the only corporation that thinks my resume is just fine. It ends after seventh grade, they don’t think that’s funny. I can’t spell for shit, they don’t think that’s stupid. I go into a thing, I scope it out, I get back to them with what’s what. That’s what they care about.”
“How about their views on capital punishment?”
“Whacking a guy out, you mean.”
“That’s right.”
“We don’t whack nobody without a good reason for it. These new gangs, the Jamaicans—or the fucking Dominicans?—they’re animals. They do a drive-by, waste a fucking street corner full of fucking people, get the one they want. I never heard a one of our contracts wasn’t specific, I never heard a hitter did anybody more’n he was told to. I tell you something else, too. You ever see an execution?”
“A hit?”
“No, I mean a government one. Like gas or the chair.”
“No.”
“Well, let me tell you. One of our associates, he got himself in a fight down in the Land of Grits. Shivved some redneck was trying to wrap a tire iron around his head, but that’s not how the witnesses saw it. Anyway, the jury decides to puff him, then it takes nine years, nine fucking years for the courts to decide, does he go or not. Finally, they decide he goes, and somebody’s got to travel down there, kind of get him through it, you know?”
“I think so.”
“Well, it turns out I’m it, so I fly down there and rent a car and drive through some of the worst places I ever seen. Shit, the shacks with real tarpaper, outhouses, makes the worst block in Roxbury there look like Beacon fucking Hill. Anyways, I get to the prison early, I pay my respects to our guy. He’s in this room, it’s maybe eight by ten, with a stainless steel sink and John below it and one fucking bunk. The thing that got me is the colors, though. The bars are powder blue, powder fucking blue like some broad’s bedroom, and the bulls are the same way, looking like maybe they got bleached out of the Navy or something. And our guy, he’s in this orange jump suit, only he’s sweating so bad, he’s gotta change his jump suit twice in the hour I’m with him.
“He gets to me, Cuddy. He asks, can I stay for the show? He says it’d mean a lot to him, knowing there was somebody there he knew. So I tell him, sure I’ll stay for it. Christ, like the guy’s last request, you know? Then the bulls tell me, I got to go to the viewing room so our guy can get prepped. I say okay, and they put me in this place, looks like something outta a fifties horror movie. Like I’m in living color but seeing all this in just black and white? Well, I sit down on a folding chair, maybe ten other people around
me, and they’re all making small talk about the weather and the crops and some high school fucking football team ain’t won a game yet and I’m the only one in the room can say a sentence in like less than five minutes.
“Then through the glass we see the bulls come in, and everybody sits down. The bulls work the door with this wheel on it, like in a submarine, but it’s not my guy’s time yet, they’re just testing the fucking gas chamber. And get this, right? We’re in the Old South, so what do they use to test it with? They use this little black rabbit, black as a jigaboo. It’s in a cage like a milk crate, and they put it in the chair. Then they clear out and drop the pill or whatever, and there’s a little cloud, like somebody’s grabbing a smoke under the seat. And this rabbit starts twitching, then hops hard around the crate, so hard you figure he’s breaking bones, fracturing his fucking skull banging it into the top of the cage.
“Well, I’ll tell you something, Cuddy. I had to get out of there. I had to get out. I’m a made fucking member of our organization, and I couldn’t take what one of our governments does to a guy. You want to croak somebody for what they did? Fine. They know going in they fuck up, you’re going to croak them, fine. They do something real fucking bad, like plank your sister, then you torture them a little. Maybe cut off their fucking wang and stick it in their fucking mouth, that’s fine too. Everybody understands why it happened. But for chrissake, don’t keep a guy on ice for nine fucking years and feed him and play with his fucking mind over it. Do him, then move the fuck on.”
The music ended. Zuppone took a breath, then said, “Let’s try a little Wim Mertens, lighten things up.”
He popped in a new tape. This was mostly piano, but not entirely, and was the best I’d heard in the car. Solid but varied, eerie but thoughtful.
I said, “I like that.”
“You serious?”
“I’m serious.”
“It’s yours.”
“Primo, don’t—”
“No. Really. I got a dozen of them. They ain’t so easy to find, this way you’ll have it.”
“Thank you.”
We were within sight of the Pru and the Hancock, the lights from the smaller buildings downtown giving a halo to the horizon. “Primo, did you know Tina that well?”
A shrug. “I seen her from time to time. She was younger, I’d give her rides here and there.”
“Talk to her much?”
“Naw. It was just like, ‘Uncle Primo, please take me to the mall, please?’ Like that.”
“Uncle Primo?”
“Yeah.” The half-smile. “I’m not really family, but her mother, she’s a real stickler for respect to elders. So Tina’d call me ‘Uncle Primo’ instead of ‘Mr. Zuppone,’ you know?”
“What do you know about her life since?”
The smile winked out. “Just what I told you. She was a daughter and a model and now she’s dead.”
“Anything about boyfriends, enemies?”
“No. She was outta the house down there and into the South End for—what, like a year?”
“I think so.”
“Girl that age, Cuddy, a year’s like a fucking century to you and me.”
I waited a minute, trying to figure a back way to asking where Zuppone was when Mau Tim was killed. “How did you hear she was dead?”
“I was out, running around for this gentleman I know. Got the word her mother’d called with the news.”
“Who was the gentleman?”
Just the half-smile. “No big secret, Cuddy. I was grocery shopping.”
“On a Friday night?”
“I go to the Star over by Fenway Park. The college kids, they got partying on their minds. So long as the Sox are playing on the road, it ain’t too crowded.”
Fenway Park was less than a mile from the apartment building on Falmouth Street. “You drive all the way across town from the North End to go food shopping?”
Zuppone caressed the steering wheel, the way he had on the drive south. “They got good parking, nice wide spaces. I buy the big items, the heavy stuff there, then shop the specialty stores back in the neighborhood.”
Speaking of neighborhoods, we were approaching the Chinatown exit.
I said, “This time of night, probably Kneeland would be the fastest way back to my place.”
Zuppone went by the turnoff and down into the tunnel without slowing. “We ain’t finished with your visiting yet.”
The lights inside the tunnel shimmered briefly across the hood and windshield. Then we were out and heading up on the Central Artery toward the Boston Garden/North End exit. Zuppone picked up the telephone, hit the number “one,” and waited. Then, “It’s Primo … Yes, Mister—… Less than that … Right.”
I moved my tongue around in my mouth. There wasn’t much doubt who we were seeing next. “Should I be getting worried, Primo?”
The turn and half-smile. “Hey-ey-ey, enjoy the music, huh?”
Twelve
WE INCHED DOWN A North End street no broader than the alleys in other parts of the city. Cars were parked up and onto the sidewalk but didn’t sport any orange tickets beneath their windshield wipers. Zuppone pulled the Lincoln past a driveway that was barely a curb cut, then used the power steering to back into it. I figured I’d wait for him to get out first.
Primo turned off the ignition and shifted sidesaddle in his seat. He nodded toward a nondescript doorway with a small aluminum awning. The door led into one of the buildings off the driveway. “I think it’s just gonna be you and me and this other gentleman upstairs, but he’s got like a rule of the house.”
“Which is?”
“Guests, they got to check their guns at the door.”
I looked at him.
“Hey-ey-ey, Cuddy, we’re gonna clip you, we let you take it inside, then we hit you over the fucking head, take it away from you.”
“I don’t like the number of times you’ve told me how I don’t have to worry about getting killed just yet.”
“You have my personal word, you got nothing to worry about up there. The gentleman wants you out, it ain’t gonna be in his living room, right?”
I took the Smith & Wesson Chief’s Special from the holster over my right buttock, swinging out the cylinder and unloading it. I put the bullets in my right jacket pocket and extended the weapon to Zuppone, cylinder still out.
He looked hurt. “What, you think we’d whack you with your own piece?”
“It’s been tried before.”
Primo took my weapon, closed the cylinder back into the frame gently, the way you’re supposed to, and slid the revolver into the pocket of his leather coat.
I let him lead me from the car to the doorway, sounds of a radio station coming down from a third-story window in another building. On the outside sills and fire escape landings, large terra-cotta flowerpots squatted, new blossoms on the plants. The air was full of that warm, heavy smell of Italian cooking, the spices you knew by scent if not by name. I wondered if any were the ones that Claudette Danucci had learned to use.
Zuppone didn’t have to use a key on the metal fire door. Inside the doorway, the building took on a different character. Another dingy brick four-story from the outside, the interior staircase led up a half flight of stairs to a majestic door, mahogany from where I stood. The runner on the staircase was a Persian that looked brand new and a thousand years old, all at the same time.
Primo led the way up the steps, knocking on the wooden door in a staccato sequence I thought might be code. This time he waited to enter. Within ten seconds, I heard the sound of a bolt and chain from the other side.
The man opening the door was somewhere between seventy and eighty. Five ten, he seemed thin but wiry beneath the block-patch sweater, creased wool slacks, and spit-shined loafers. The hair was white, a pronounced widow’s peak, but just a bit long over the ears and combed back. He was clean-shaven, the skin still pretty taut except at the throat, where it dangled a little against the cords of his neck. His eyes were gra
y but unclouded, like two baby spots positioned to highlight the long, hooked nose. The eyes of an old man who still didn’t really expect to die in bed.
Our host said, “Mr. Detective. Thomas Danucci. You’re welcome in my home.”
There was still an edge of accent on some of the words. Danucci gave no indication he intended to shake hands with me or Zuppone. We walked into a minimalist foyer, where Primo took my trenchcoat and hung it and his leather coat in a closet. Then we followed Danucci into a maximalist living room.
Pedestal furniture that looked like it could support an elephant. Persian and Indian rugs that dwarfed the staircase runner. Oil paintings of Madonna and Child, the Gift of the Magi, and other biblical scenes in museum mountings with tiny lamps that reminded me of the old man’s eyes. Molding around the intersection of wall and ceiling mimicked a bouquet of roses, a motif repeated every linear foot.
Danucci motioned in a master of ceremonies way at the dining room, endowed with pieces from the same massive period and illuminated by an icicle chandelier. There were more religious paintings around the walls, punctuated with a low cabinet against one wall and a tall china cabinet against another. The tall cabinet had glass panes and interior shelving that supported ornate serving platters and a large rosewood case. I counted chairs for ten but settings for only two, the head of the table and the chair to its left. The plates were pewter or silver, with similar chalices where you’d expect wineglasses.
Danucci said, “Primo tells me my family, they kept you from your dinner. How’s about you join me in mine, eh?”
“Thank you.”
The old man said, “Primo.”
Zuppone pulled out the side chair for me. I sat in it, the cushion soft, the wood carving digging into the back of my knees. Then Zuppone pulled out the head chair, with its armrests and higher back, the head of a raging lion at the top above the back cushion. Danucci sat in it, lowering himself carefully with his palms on the chiseled claws that made up the ends of the chair’s arms. He hunched forward as Zuppone pushed the chair and him in toward the table.
Shallow Graves Page 10