Shallow Graves - Jeremiah Healy

by Jeremiah Healy

  "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?"

  -12-

  WE INCHED DOWN A NORTH END STREET NO WIDER 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 8 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 gray 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 an
d 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.

  Danucci pinged the chalice in front of him. "White or red?"

  "Whatever you recommend"

  A pleased smile. "I like a man knows how to be a good guest." He said, "Primo," then a string of Italian.

  Zuppone crossed to the low cabinet, taking a cut crystal decanter from it. Lifting the crystal stopper gently, he crossed back to me, pouring ruby-colored wine into my chalice, jewels embedded in geometric patterns on both its bowl and stem. When Primo finished with me, he did the same for Danucci. The old man raised his chalice, closed his eyes, and intoned something that sounded more like Latin from the Old Mass than Italian from the old country.

  Danucci opened his eyes. "That was, 'With thanks to God and to good health.' You get a little older, you go back to the things from when you're a kid. Even start believing in them again, eh?"

  He gave a curt nod, and we drank together. The wine was spectacular, a mix of a dozen flavors that tumbled around the mouth before finishing with a dying fireworks glow at the back of the tongue.

  I said, "The best."

  Danucci said, "It is."

  This time he just looked at Zuppone, who nodded and headed toward a door that turned out to be the kitchen.

  "I gotta say, I'm lucky, Mr. Detective. I can still enjoy the wine and the food. I just gotta drink and eat a little early. Otherwise, I taste the spices a second time in my sleep, you know?"

  "Actually, I'm not a detective, Mr. Danucci."

  He didn't say anything.

  "Detectives are on police forces. I'm just a private investigator."

  The blood rose up his neck, stopping just as it flushed his jaw but not his cheeks. Very quietly, Danucci said, "I'm an old man, Mr. Detective. Indulge me, eh?"

  I decided I would not much like Tommy the Temper to get mad at me.

  Zuppone came back in with a course of sausage and pasta in small bowls, one for each of us.

  Danucci said, "I cook for myself, now. My Amatina was alive, I never thought about it. But I talked with her friends, they told me some of her secrets in the kitchen. I tried this and that, found a couple that reminded me of her."

  I sampled the sausage first. Sweet, delicate. Then the pasta. Like cotton candy melting in the mouth.

  I said, "Your daughter-in-law told me she learned a lot from your wife."

  Danucci paused, his fork not quite lifted clear of his bowl, then put it back down. He paused again, then drank the rest of the wine in his chalice, Primo refilling without needing to be prompted.

  When Zuppone had set the decanter back on the counter, Danucci said, "You and me, we don't know how to talk to each other, do we?"

  I stopped eating.

  "What I'm saying here, you don't want to say nothing wrong, you don't want to offend me you don't have to, but you just don't know what's what, am I right?"

  "That's right."

  "Can't blame you, Mr. Detective. I was in your shoes, I wouldn't know what the fuck's going on, either. Enjoy your dinner, the hospitality of my table. You don't got nothing to worry about. You might be the only detective in the city got nothing to worry about. Let me talk to you some, you don't even got to worry about answering, eh?"

  "All right."

  Danucci did another curt nod, but more to himself than a signal to Zuppone.

  "Here's the way it is. Twenny years ago, my son comes back from the war, he has this — what I thought at the time — this pregnant squaw, only she's Oriental. He has this Oriental with him, he says to us, ‘This is my wife! Just like that, no letter, no phone call, just cold fucking conks us with it. My Amatina, she's a saint, she says to him, 'Joey, your wife is my daughter,' like that. I can't see it, I can't see the mixing of the blood, what it'd do to J oey's prospects. In the business, I mean. Our business. "What I'm doing here, Mr. Detective, I'm collecting the story — no, fuck, that's not it. Primo?"

  "Like 'collapsing the story,' Mr. Danucci?"

  "Right, right. Like making a long story short. Well, six, seven years ago, my Amatina gets sick, Mr. Detective, bad sick, never-get-better sick." Danucci reached for the wine glass. "Primo says you lost your wife young."

  "Primo's right."

  "I don't know what that must be like. Losing your wife before you have the life that gives you memories. But I know what it's like to lose her after the memories, after all the things you done together, you thought you'd be talking about them forever. So, anyway, my son, he comes back from the war with this wife and then she has the baby, and you only got to take one look . . .

  Danucci's voice caught. I glanced at Zuppone, who just watched the man, no expression. I looked back to Danucci and waited him out.

  "You only got to take one look at Tina, you see the eyes. My Amatina's eyes. I don't know how it's possible, but there they are. So I don't accept that too good. And the child grows up in my son's house as my granddaughter, the best because my Amatina, she's so in love with the grandchild, her only one, you see what I'm saying here? Tina gets everything, but me, I'm siciliane, eh? I can't accept her."

  "Then my Amatina, she gets sick. And the 'Oriental', the one I thought was a 'pregnant squaw,' she takes my wife into her home, because Claudette says, 'It is not right for the mother of my husband to be in the hands of strangers.' This woman, she lost an eye because of fighting for my son in some fucking chinktown over there, she lost an eye and she still acts like a daughter to my Amatina. There were times, I gotta tell you, there were times I could barely stand to be in the same room with my wife, Mr. Detective. Times the look on her face, or the smell . . . But Claudette, she was always there for her, and then Tina, too. Tina loved her nana — my Amatina. Loved her like an Italian girl would. They did everything they could, make her comfortable. Then, when my wife . . . after the funeral, I'm walking back up the stairs down there, where you just come up. If Primo here isn't with me, I'm dead, because I have a heart attack, it feels like five fucking linebackers, they're driving a battering ram through my chest. Primo, he calls my doctor — we call him Doctor T, he's kind of on retainer to us, but he's so famous now, he don't want everybody to know that. Anyway, Primo gets me to the hospital, and Doctor T and the others, they do their thing and I'm still alive, but I can't do nothing, nothing for myself. And the 'Oriental,' she's just got my Amatina out of her house, and she takes me in. Primo looks after things here, but Claudette and Tina, every day they take care of me down at Joey's hous
e when I can't fucking lift my head or . . . clean myself up."

  Danucci looked at me, the eyes blazing. "Then she grows into a beautiful young lady, my Tina Amatina, and some fucking louse, some fucking lowlife colored drug fucker kills her. My son Joey, he's out of town, so her mother, she has to call me. And ever since, it's like a blister on my heart. Every hour I think about it, and it's like you rubbing that blister, it don't get better. The best ones, Mr. Detective, we bury the best ones in shallow graves, shallow fucking graves. So you go ahead. You ask your questions, and I'll answer them."

  The old man gave that curt nod again, then went back to his fork.

  Primo said, "Danucci, let me warm that up a little for you?"

  Danucci started to shake his head, then pushed the bowl three inches toward Zuppone, who scooped it up gracefully, did the same with mine, and hustled into the kitchen.

  I said, "Your granddaughter give you any idea there was any problem in her life?"

  "Problem? No. She kind of broke away from the family, year, year and a half ago. Go out on her own, be a model or some kinda shit. Just her age, every kid goes through that. But I'll tell you something, she still remembered to call me. She needed something, she didn't want to ask my son for, she asked me."

  Danucci's hand doted on the stem of the goblet. "You know, she talked to me the day she died?"

  "You saw her?"

  "No. Just on the telephone. She called me, told me how happy she was about going to some party, about me and the Order of the Cross and all."

  His son had mentioned it. "You're some kind of officer in it?"

  Danucci looked at me sharply. "Not some kind of. I'm gonna be the next president, you hear that? Thomas Danucci, Tommy the Temper Danucci, he's gonna be number one in the most honored Italian Catholic society there is for laymen."