Shallow Graves - Jeremiah Healy

by Jeremiah Healy

  Danucci swung his head around the room. "You're wondering, even with all the paintings, the icons, you're wondering how come they let a guy like me in period, am I right?"

  "That's what I was wondering."

  Danucci softened the look a little. "You're okay, Mr. Detective. You get asked a question, you answer it." The rhythm of his speech changed. "When my Amatina got sick, I started to get the religion again. It happen to you, with your wife?"

  I started to say no, then Zuppone came back in with our bowls. After he served us, I said, "Not so much."

  "Well, you were young. I was — this was six years ago, I was coming up against seventy. The Office — that's what we call it, you know?"

  I wasn't sure how much of this I wanted to hear. "It?"

  Danucci attacked his food. "Come on, Mr. Detective, don't disappoint, eh? The organization. Here in Boston, we call it the Office. In Chicago, they called it the Outfit. Till everybody got bit with the RICO shit. You know what that means?"

  "I know it stands for 'Racketeer' something or other."

  "Well, let me tell you, so you'll know. It stands for 'Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations.' That's what they called it down in Washington. Sound like a good name for a law to you?"

  "Kind of cumbersome."

  "Yeah, cumbersome. So they decide they're gonna shorten it, call it by the letters, the initials. Fucking coincidence, guess what they spell?"

  Danucci looked at me like he expected an answer.

  I said, "RICO."

  "That's right. RICO. Like the name of that guy Edward G. played in the Bogey movie. The one in the hurricane."

  "Key Largo. "

  "Yeah, Key Largo. Only you get the idea, maybe they thought of using 'RICO' first, then come up with the words to fit later. RICO, it's got that nice 'wop' sound to it. Give the boys at the station a good laugh, they pull in a friend of ours, they get to say to him, 'You're under arrest for RICO, Rico.' Fucking assholes."

  Danucci finished his course, then took some wine. Primo cleared the bowls and disappeared into the kitchen.

  "So, like I said, I got religion again after my Amatina got sick, and I started getting back to the church. Not since I'm eleven I go to Mass, but I start now every day, every fucking morning. My heart attack, that took me out of the loop. The rest of the Office — my friends, they understood, no problem, but I couldn't do nothing from that bed. Just as well, tell you the truth. Wasn't much after that, story broke that the Feebs, they had the Angiulos bugged over on Prince Street, they got them all, big falls."

  Danucci leaned into the table but more in my direction. "I tell you something else, so you'll know. Almost sixty years in the business, sixty fucking years, I never once got arrested. I'm not talking convicted, I mean not even arrested. You know why? I copied this man, I fucking idolized him, Mr. Detective. You ever heard the name, Filippo Buccola?"

  "No."

  "You should read more. Buccola was a man, you saw him in the street, you woulda said, 'there goes a doctor,' or 'there goes a lawyer.' Guy wore little wire glasses and a bow tie. And he was a gentleman. He was the capo before Ray Senior down in Rhody. And he knew when to get out. He moved back to Sicily, he lived to be a hundred and one, Mr. Detective. He let me in on a secret. There are three things you gotta have, be a success in this business. You gotta have heart, you gotta have brains, and you gotta have ambition."

  Primo brought in another course, this one veal in a wine sauce. Halfway through, I'd eaten more calories than I usually throw down in a week.

  Danucci rested his fork. "You know, in the old days, you had a problem with some people, you could talk to them, eh? You couldn't settle it, sometimes you had them play a little."

  "Guts."

  I said "Guts?" before I thought to keep my mouth shut.

  "Yeah. Some of the old guys, they had these chrome revolvers, custom-made by gunsmiths back in Italy. A lot of guys had a pair of them, used to keep them in a box." Danucci gestured at the glass cabinet behind him. "Like my Amatina's jewelry box up on the shelf there. A couple of your boys had a problem and they come to you with it, couldn't talk it out, you took these revolvers. You put one bullet in each cylinder, then you put a spin on the fucking thing and closed it."

  "Like Russian roulette?"

  "Yeah, yeah. Like that. Then you gave one gun to each guy, they're standing maybe ten, twelve feet apart, and they point their pieces at each other. And the only other guy involved would be you, doing the calling. When you called out 'One,' they each got to pull the trigger once. Nobody's gun went off, you let them think a little, then said, 'Two.' Nobody got shot, you let them think a little more. I tell you, Mr. Detective, a lot of problems got settled, before they let you get to three."

  I said, "Any chance one of your people could be involved in Tina's death?"

  Emphatic shake of the head. "No way. No fucking way. Family's off limits. We're siciliani, not like the fucking Camorra back in Napoli, wasting little kids on street comers. The colored do that over the drugs here, not us. Besides, I got a son in the business. Somebody wants to send me a message, they go after him."

  "How about somebody who's after your son?"

  "Same thing. They'd come after me, they got balls for brains. Anyway, I can see you don't understand. They want to send a message, they don't break in like some fucking sneak thief. They send a clear fucking message, they want to send one."

  "Could the necklace be a message?"

  The blood rose right past the jaw and cheeks, the vein at the temple pounding as he worked on his food and swallowed hard.

  "That necklace was my gift to my Amatina. Her gift to me was her eyes and her love, Mr. Detective. My gift to her was that necklace. One of a kind item, stones had to come from Madagascar, down by Africa there. With the gold and the craftsmanship went into it, that necklace cost more to make than this fucking house cost to build. But after my Amatina died, I gave it to Tina, for nursing my wife and me. To show her she was really part of the family, mixed fucking blood, she was still my blood. The necklace shows up on the street, we go back up the line, snatch the guy and spend some time with him."

  "Maybe the guy who has it knows it's too hot to peddle."

  "Guy breaks into houses, especially one of my houses, he's a junkie, a fucking crackhead got shit for brains. He don't know enough not to hit a connected property, he don't know enough to check out a piece of merchandise before he fences it."

  "It's been over a week. Kind of a long time for somebody to sit on it."

  Danucci gave me a long look. "Sometimes you got to be patient, Mr. Detective" The old man glanced at Zuppone, who left us without a word to go into the kitchen.

  Danucci squared around, his fingers playing with the goblet in front of him. "You remember what I told you before, about what you got to have to make it in this business?"

  "Brains, heart, and ambition."

  "You met my son Joey tonight. What do you think of him?"

  I didn't like this. "What do you mean?"

  The spotlight look came into the old man's eyes. "You know what I mean."

  I took a sip of wine. "Heart and ambition to spare. Enough brains to do fine, moneywise."

  "Moneywise. Let me tell you something, Mr. Detective.

  There's only two ways to make money in this world. One, you steal it from somebody. Two, you inherit it from somebody who already stole it from somebody else."

  Danucci's brow went toward the kitchen door. "So, how about Primo?"

  I put down the goblet. "Brains and heart, but no ambition"

  Danucci closed his eyes and smiled a little. "Primo, Primo. He's got what it takes, but he don't want it. I can't understand that, Mr. Detective. He don't want nothing past the leather coat and the Lincoln car and that elevator shit he puts on the radio."

  The eyes suddenly opened again, the spots stronger than before. "And what about Mr. Vincent Dani, Esquire?"

  "Brains and ambition, but no heart."

  The eyes re
ached laser level. "You know what burns me about the fucking lawyers with their fucking RICO laws, looking down their noses at guys like me? What I offer, Mr. De-tective, is protection. Protection so's a guy can turn a profit. You tell me, what do lawyers offer? I'll tell you. They offer protection, same as me. I keep somebody from getting ripped off by a coupla guys with guns in their hands and nothing between the ears. The lawyers, they keep somebody from getting ripped off by guys with pens in their hands and plenty between the ears. We both take our cuts off the top, the lawyers and me, and we ain't so different you'd notice it."

  Except for the body count. I said, "Mr. Danucci — "

  "Mr. Vincent Dani, Esquire. He never told you that, did he?"

  "What he told me, Mr. Danucci, was that you two were like oil and water. I imagine he was telling me that while Primo was on the car phone, giving you his read of me as a situation."

  Danucci weighed things. He took a slug of wine, then replaced the chalice with delicacy on the tablecloth. "You learned a lot of things in a little time, Mr. Detective. You want to go through the apartment house over on Falmouth?"

  "Eventually. I think I'd rather talk to everybody else first, then go through it with their stories in mind."

  Danucci looked up at me with sad, tired eyes. "You got brains, Mr. Detective. My son Joey, he don't got real brains, but he's got real heart, maybe too much heart. He's the kind, he might do something rash. Joey's got too long a life ahead of him for that. You find the guy did this, you come to me first, eh?"

  Tommy the Temper Danucci gave his abrupt nod, like I would do what he wanted whether I promised him or not.

  -13-

  WHEN PRIMO ZUPPONE DROPPED ME OFF AT THE CONDO, HE REMEMBERED to give me both my gun and the Wim Mertens tape. I put the cassette into a pocket of my raincoat.

  Upstairs, there were two messages on my telephone machine. The same two were on my office answering service when I checked in with it. The first was from Harry Mullen, asking me to call him about the Dani case. I decided to handle that instead with a face-to-face, the next morning at his office. The other message was from Nancy, asking me to call her at home.

  "Hello?"

  "Nance, it's John."

  "Oh, John." A gap, as though I'd woken her up. "Can you come over?"

  "Now?"

  "Please."

  "Sure. Anything the — "

  "When you get here."

  "Twenty rninutes."

  There was something in her voice, something I didn't recognize right away. Then I remembered her note between the salt and pepper that morning. She was taking Renfield to the vet's, and I was supposed to have called her. Shit.

  I made the drive shaving five minutes off the twenty.

  Nancy met me at the downstairs door to her building. She was wearing an old New England School of Law sweatshirt, jeans, and no makeup. Unless you counted the red nose.

  Nancy Meagher, Assistant District Attorney for the County of Suffolk, Commonwealth of Massachusetts, was stiff as a fish. She said, "Don't say anything. Just c'mon up."

  I followed her, bracing myself at each step to break her fall if she went over backwards. As we passed the Lynches' landing, Drew and I exchanged nods. On the third floor, Nancy had to grope through the pockets of her jeans before finding the key to her place.

  The kitchen table was cleared except for a single short tumbler and a half-empty liter of Stolichnaya. I suppose you could have said the bottle was half-full, but things didn't look that optimistic.

  "Nance — "

  Her right hand rose in a stop sign, then flapped down to her side. She crossed to the sink, steadying herself with her left palm on the porcelain while reaching up to the cabinet for another glass. After two tries, she managed to snag one. Nancy crossed back, put the new tumbler on the table, and poured three fingers of rough justice into each glass before handing me the new one. "I don't want to be the only in-need but . . . in-e-briate in this conversation."

  I accepted the glass, thinking that was the tone I hadn't recognized in her voice over the phone. I'd seen her drinking before, but never drunk.

  She downed half her booze, took a breath, and downed the rest.

  I just nipped at mine, covering the tumbler with my hand to mask how much was left. "What do you say we go into the living room and talk about it?"

  Nancy tumed, taking the bottle by the neck and caroming past me toward the front of the apartment. At the couch, she yanked two cushions onto the floor, plunking herself into one of them. I took the other.

  She started to pour herself another drink, stopped, and set the bottle and glass heavily on the rug. "I'm gonna be real sick, right?"

  "If that bottle started the evening intact."

  A nod. "When?"

  "You eat anything?"

  A shake.

  "Then pretty soon and pretty bad."

  "Before that happens . . .” She suppressed a belch. . . “I have something to say. Renfield's gonna be okay. It's gonna take a while, but he's gonna be okay."

  "Nancy, I'm sorry — "

  The stop sign again. "Wasn't you. Wasn't your fault, I mean. And wasn't his hip, either. The vet said he has a congenial . . . congenital problem with his back legs. I can't remember the science name, but it's like his kneecaps aren't in the right place, so he has to have an operation to put them back. Where they should be. So it wasn't your fault. It would have happened sometime, when he jumped off a chair or down a step or . . ." She waved the last phrase away.

  "If Renfield's going to be okay, then why the bottle?"

  Nancy flapped both hands in her lap. "They called me at the office and told me he should have the operation or else be . . . put to sleep, and I guess I just realized how . . . fragile everything could be. When I'm with you, I'm fine. When you're not here, and Renfield is, I'm fine. But when I got home tonight, and he wasn't here, and no word back from you, I just realized how lonely it was to be alone."

  "Nance — "

  The stop sign came up halfway. "John, this isn't easy for me. I'm trying to tell you something, okay?"

  "Okay."

  "When I first started seeing you, I said to myself, 'Girl, this could be the one.' But then I realized that you have your life, and your job, and that's fine. That's fine, really, because I have my life and my job, too." Her right hand slashed through the air. "Even steven. But I just realized tonight that the main reason I got Renfield from the animal shelter in the first place is that . . ."

  Something chumed inside her, and I started hoping that this wasn't going to be a much longer speech.

  ". . . is that I needed company when we weren't together. Once I got used to having you around, I needed somebody around when you weren't."

  "Like Renfield."

  Nancy pointed at me. "Exactly."

  "When can you pick him up?"

  "That's the other thing. They have to keep him till Friday afternoon. 'Cause of the anestex . . . anesthesia. They have to keep an eye on him when he wakes up. But I have to leave for Dallas that morning for my talk, and I can't . . ."

  Her voice quavered, and I got up on my knees and hugged her. "I can pick him up, no sweat."

  She started to cry quietly. "But I can't even be — "

  "Nancy, don't worry, okay? I'll pick him up, and he'll be fine."

  She nodded into my shoulder, and I felt something else move inside her.

  "Nance, why don't we get you into the bathroom?"

  "Good . . . idea."

  We just made it.

  * * *

  Nancy got out of bed Thursday morning on the strength of a quart of ice water and three Excedrin. After I dropped her at the courthouse, I drove to the condo space and decided to run to clear my own head toward seeing Harry Mullen.

  It had been a few weeks since I'd done the Boston marathon, but most of the ill effects were gone. My right toenail, which had turned black, began growing out instead of falling off. My side, where I'd taken a bullet in the little pocket of fat above the hip
bone, healed over nicely, just a livid mark on the love handle.

  I still had the endurance the training had given me, but I expected that would evaporate over the next few months. In just a cotton turtleneck and shorts, I crossed Storrow Drive on the Fairfield Street pedestrian ramp, heading upriver on the macadam path. They were still repairing the Mass Ave Bridge, the orange cement trucks looking like ladybugs on a branch. It seemed as though they'd been repairing the bridge since I'd started high school.

  Nearing Boston University, I passed over the painted outlines of several bodies, limbs akimbo. I think the outlines were supposed to represent some people killed during a coup in Chile. The paint certainly wasn't the work of a crime scene techie. The police use removable tape or washable chalk so as not to terrify the tourists any longer than necessary.

  I made the turn for home at the Harvard Square bridge, thinking that it had been my first training run for the marathon and remembering how much trouble I'd had with it five months earlier. Then my mind shifted to confronting Harry Mullen over what he'd gotten me into, and I picked up my pace considerably on the way back.

  * * *

  He looked miserable even before he saw me in his doorway.

  "Jeez, John, nobody told me you were here."

  I gestured behind me. "There was nobody out here to ask. Where's the staff?"

  Mullen motioned me in. He pulled a cigarette pack from his shirt pocket, and I reflexively closed the door.

  Harry lit up without handing me a towel or setting up his electronic box. There was even an ashtray on his desk, five dead butts already in it. "You got my message on your tape there?"

  "I got it. Of course, the Danuccis delivered their message a little sooner."

  Mullen flinched, took a deep drag, and blew it out like a fire-eater.

  "I want to explain this, John."

  "I want to hear it."

  Harry waited for me to take the visitor's chair. No more comfortable than last time.

  He said, "First, I swear to you, I didn't know a thing about the Danucci side of it."