Shallow Graves - Jeremiah Healy

by Jeremiah Healy

  "Sinead's, but not Mau Tim's."

  "Correct."

  There was something wrong about that, but I couldn't quite touch it. "At your office, George, you said you went home the night Mau Tim died."

  "Also correct. After that ad party and some pub crawling, I came back here."

  "When did you arrive?"

  "Oh . . . ten? I wasn't paying much attention, and Quinn was watching video, not TV, when I got in, so I can't even peg it by what was on the screen."

  "Thorough."

  Yulin darkened. "What was that?"

  "I said thorough. Very thorough of you to think all that through in answering a simple question"

  "Yes, well, I tend to do a lot of time management, John, both for myself and my models. It's tough to leave some things at the office, you know?"

  "Speaking of leaving, I found something else out this afternoon."

  "I'm glad to hear it's been a productive day for you."

  "It seems a lot of people think Mau Tim was about to pull the ripcord, George."

  His face darkened again, and he reached for the whiskey bottle. "Ripcord?"

  "She was bailing out. Moving to New York and changing agencies."

  The neck of the bottle rattled against his tall glass. "You don't know that because it isn't true."

  An article of faith that Yulin couldn't recant. I stood up. "Give Quinn my regards."

  As I moved to the French doors, Yulin said, "John?"

  "Yes?"

  "We seem to have . . . We don't appear to be on the same wavelength today. My fault — the single malt, I'm afraid."

  "Don't worry about it, George"

  "No, seriously. If there is anything I can do to . . . facilitate this process, please let me know."

  I nodded without saying anything more and made my way out.

  -17-

  "JOHN, WHAT HAPPENED?"

  "I fell and banged my chin."

  Standing in her living room and still dressed from work, Nancy reached up a hand, turning my face just a little under the light. "Looks more like assault and battery with a shod foot."

  "You've got quite an eye, counselor."

  "After a while. What really happened?"

  "I'm not sure how much I should tell you."

  Nancy cocked her head, the hair still drawn back by a silver barrette.

  "I promise, Nance, I'm not doing anything over the line. It's just that it has to do with an open homicide."

  "The Suffolk one from Empire?"

  "Right."

  Nancy frowned, the corners of her mouth knitting crosslines all the way up to the hairline. Then she nodded. In acceptance rather than agreement. "I'm going to cook us dinner."

  "I was ready to take you out to eat."

  "I'll be in Dallas restaurants both tomorrow night and Saturday. I'd like a meal in my own home as a send-off."

  I took her chin in my hand. "You shouldn't try to live by bread alone, counselor."

  "I've heard that."

  "Another thing. I've been thinking about what you told me on your birthday."

  "The bank robbery? The jury convicted him this morning."

  "No, I meant what you showed me at the Ritz."

  "What I . . . ?"

  "About the sensitive spots. On the palm, the fingertips, the thumb."

  "Uh-huh."

  "I've come up with a few more."

  "Really."

  I moved my hand to the back of her open collar. "There's this one, stroking the little hairs at the nape of the neck."

  Nancy closed her eyes. "So far, so good."

  I moved my hand again. "Then there's the earlobe. Just a gentle, milking motion."

  "Would it be rude to moo?"

  I moved my hand a third time. "Then the lips. The back of the fingernail's best here."

  Nancy ran the tip of her tongue along my finger.

  "Unfortunately . . ." I cleared my throat. "Unfortunately, the other spots I thought of aren't yet . . . accessible."

  Nancy undid her barrette, the hair tumbling down. "Make them accessible."

  * * *

  Nancy's hand snaked from under the sheets, turning her alarm clock so she could see its face. "Damn. I should have put the cutlets on ahead of time."

  "Would have killed the mood."

  She snuggled back against me. "As one of the guys at the office is fond of saying, you couldn't have killed that mood with a stick."

  "Madam, such vulgarity."

  "Sorry." Nancy sighed. "I really miss him."

  "Renfield."

  "Who else?"

  "Did you check on him today?"

  "I called twice. He came through the operation fine, but when I asked if I could visit, they said he was still sleeping from the anesthesia and that it was best not to wake him."

  I thought back on my times in human hospitals, where they didn't seem to share the same compunction.

  Nancy said, ”You'll still be able to pick him up tomorrow?"

  "A promise is a promise."

  "They said any time after three-thirty and before six, but I really hate to think of my kitty being there any longer than he has to be."

  "I'll be scratching at their door by three-thirty-one."

  "Poor little guy. I had them hack off his nuts because he was spraying my furniture and his front toes because he was shredding it. Now what'll he think?"

  "I'rn pretty sure cats don't dwell much on motivation and consequence, Nance."

  She shifted a little off the arm before it fell asleep. "Did I tell you last night that it wasn't your fault? That he was born with this problem."

  "Among other things."

  "God, I was so drunk."

  "It takes getting used to."

  "Two other times I got like that, John. Once when my mom died, and once when I found out I passed the bar exam."

  "Not after the exam itself?"

  "N0. Oh, New England threw a party for all of us taking the Massachusetts bar. They're really good about that. The Alumni Association rents out Anthony's Pier Four, the covered patio. It's just a block from where the exam's administered, over at Commonwealth Pier."

  "You mean ‘The World Trade Center?' "

  "Please. It was a real lift, going into that last afternoon, three more hours to go after nine hours over the two days, talking with the other New England grads about it, watching the Harvard and BU kids turn green, knowing their schools don't do anything like that for them. But I didn't get drunk. Nobody I saw did. We just milled around and decompressed, talking to the professors and administrators who came by to kind of . . .I don't know, say good-bye till the fifth-year reunion, I guess."

  Nostalgia. The cat was still bothering her. "Nance?"

  "Yeah?"

  "Don't worry about Renfield. He's going to be fine."

  "John, do me another favor?"

  "What's that?"

  "Stay with him?"

  "Nance, I'm not going to leave him in a basket on the doorstep."

  "I mean, stay here with him till I get back."

  "When is that?"

  "My plane touches down on Sunday at twelve noon."

  "You want me here for two days?"

  "Please." A little kiss on my earlobe. "I'll take a taxi from the airport."

  "Nance, I can pick you up."

  "No. No, it's all reimbursed. I'll get a cab and relieve you as wet nurse if you'll just stay here with him till then."

  How hard could it be? "Okay."

  "Oh, John, thank you." Another kiss, same place.

  "I think a gentle milking motion works best there."

  "Like this?"

  "Just."

  After a minute, I said, "Nance?"

  "Ummm?"

  "What did you mean by 'wet nurse?' "

  "Just an expression."

  * * *

  Friday morning, I got a kiss good-bye as Nancy carried her garment bag out to the yellow Checker. The sun was burning brightly, cutting through the light fog we sometimes g
et when the water is colder than the air. Or when the air is colder than the water. Boston's not on the level of San Francisco, but we're getting there.

  I decided to walk to the graveyard, drifting over to Broadway first to stop at Mrs. Feeney's for a dozen carnations.

  What's it like today?

  I stood up, looking out at the harbor past the foot of her hillside. "Was foggy, Beth, but it's breaking up so I can see pretty clearly."

  You seem troubled, John. Is it still the cat?

  "Not really." In a way I couldn't with Nancy, I went through what had happened, Mau Tim Dani becoming Tina Danucci.

  So, after crippling a cat, you were sweet-talked by a mobster and beaten up by a male model.

  "One way to put it."

  Not exactly a week for "Dear Diary".

  "It gets worse, kid."

  How?

  "The timing. The downstairs neighbor hears the dead woman's shower going only fifteen or twenty minutes before the body's found. Unless everybody's covering for each other, the killer had only that much margin to get into her apartment and out again."

  Isn't that enough?

  "Yes, but it's awfully coincidental for a burglar, and awfully close timing for something planned in advance."

  What are you going to do now?

  "Go back where I started. Walk through the building, try to find some holes in what I've been told."

  Isn't it easier if there aren't any holes?

  "Easier?"

  If it wasn't planned, then maybe it was just a burglar. That way, the modeling agency gets its insurance money, and the gangsters might leave you alone and keep looking on their own, right?

  "Uh-huh."

  Well, wouldn 't that be easier? 'All around'.

  A pause.

  But making it easier doesn 't make it right.

  "Afraid not."

  Something caught my eye in the harbor. A pale hump rising above a swell, then three, then five, then . . . "I don't believe it."

  What?

  "I've never seen anything like this before"

  John, what?

  I was up to thirty-four. "Dolphins, I think. Dozens of them. Just breaking water."

  I described the show for her, watching as even more of the creatures romped and veered, in pairs and squadrons, like so many synchronized swimmers. Maybe chasing fish, maybe running from something themselves, maybe just deciding to see Boston Harbor before the next onslaught of tourists in June.

  "There must be over a hundred of them, Beth. I wouldn't have thought they could survive this far north."

  Maybe it'll be a week for "Dear Diary" after all.

  -18-

  I LEFT THE PRELUDE A BLOCK AWAY FROM NUMBER 10 FALMOUTH and walked to the alley behind it. I looked at the fire escape, trying to find a new perspective from my talks with Sinead Fagan, Oz Puriefoy, and Larry Shinkawa. The escape still switchbacked down the rear of the building, a landing outside Mau Tim's window on the top floor, another outside the window on the second floor, a third outside a window in Fagan's elevated first-floor apartment. The last flight retracted to Sinead's landing. It still would miss the green, ribbed trash cans in the bricked space that passed for a backyard, Cousin Ooch already having moved the cans back from the alley to the building's wall. Just like he said he did the Friday two weeks before, the morning of the day Mau Tim had been killed.

  I went to the rear door and knocked, noticing there was no keyhole on the exterior side. After a couple of seconds, I heard a bolt being thrown and the door creaked open, Cousin Ooch blinking out from behind it. Today he wore a bright blue cotton sweater with no shirt underneath and the same pair of droopy pants. The sweater made him look clownish, like a school principal in surfer trunks.

  He said, "The family called me about you."

  "Who in the family?"

  The scarred face flicked right, slipping the imaginary punch, the nose smiling twice. "What difference that make to you?"

  "None, I guess."

  His eyes adjusting to the light, Ooch said, "Hey, you been in a fight or what?"

  "One-rounder."

  "Yeah? Who with?"

  "What difference that make to you?"

  He thought about it. Flick, sniff/sniff. "Okay. Family said I'm supposed to take you around, show you what's what."

  "Can we start down here?"

  "Here? You mean, like outside here?"

  "No. The basement level."

  "That's just my place and the boiler room."

  "I'd still like to see them. Go through everything"

  Ooch thought some more, then turned. "C'mon."

  Inside was a dark hall leading to a short staircase. One bulb glowed faintly at the center of the hall, two more doors off it on either side of the bulb.

  Ooch pulled the back door closed behind me. There was an old dead bolt at eye level, and he used the edge of his hand to reseat the bolt into the doorjamb.

  I said, "This rear door."

  "Yeah?"

  "It doesn't lock without the dead bolt?"

  "Uh-unh."

  "No key for it from the outside?"

  "No key for it period. Just the bolt there."

  "You usually keep it locked?"

  "A course I do. Kinda question is that?"

  "It was locked that night?"

  "That . . . ?"

  "When Mau T — when Tina was killed?"

  "A course it was. I put the trash out Tuesdays and Fridays, in the AM. Otherwise, it's locked, it stays locked."

  "Thanks."

  We moved down the hall and under the light. Ooch reached for the knob on the right-hand door. "This here's the boiler-room."

  He opened the metal door. Judging from the odor that enveloped us, it was also where the tenants put their trash before Tuesdays and Fridays. There was an unlit bulb socketed in the ceiling and dim outlines on every wall. I found the switch and got a view of old but clean oil tank, oil burner, hot water heater, even an over-and-under washer/dryer.

  Flick, sniff/sniff. "I tell them not to put their garbage in here, smell gets into the laundry when they do, but nobody listens."

  I nodded and turned off the light.

  The other door off the hall was ajar. "This here's my place."

  Ooch led me into a small foyer, closet facing us and the acrid tang of liniment all around us. To the right was the living room, to the left and through a partially closed door was the corner of a bed. I stepped to the right.

  The daylight window on the Falmouth Street wall was just to the left of the little front door leading into the basement unit. The lintel was low, low enough that even Ooch at around five six would have to cringe to get under it. The window let in some sun, but not much, giving the posters on the other walls a shadowy look, like the boiler room before I'd turned on the switch.

  "Those are from my collection," said Ooch, pride filling his voice.

  It was pretty impressive, even if the posters weren't framed but just pinned at the corners with thumbtacks. The cardboard was yellowing on all of them, the wild-West-style tintype a little hard to read until you got used to the shape of the capital letters. Among the headliners were a few guys you'd know even without following the fight game. Rocky Marciano, Floyd Patterson, Benny Kid Paret. The ones on the undercard you'd have to be from the area or a real fan to recognize. I saw "Carmine 'Ooch' Danucci" on only two, near the bottom of both.

  "Every coupla months, I take a few down, put a few up. Like a museum does with their pictures there."

  I looked a little closer at the two with Ooch's name on them. They were yellower than the rest and didn't appear to be rotated by the curator. Ooch's collection focused just on boxing but not just on Italian-American boxers. I thought about the posters in Joseph Danucci's den and wondered if this style of decoration ran in the family. I could see brother Vincent with polo players and yachtsmen in his place.

  The rest of the furnishings weren't much. Couch, two mismatched chairs, low coffee table. Except for a new Zenith
TV, everything looked older than the hills. There was no dining table and only a bowling alley kitchen.

  I said, "Bedroom?"

  The broken nose cut through the air as he indicated the back of the apartment. Bedcover tousled between a tall, solid bureau and a wobbly nightstand. Open door to the bathroom, a couple of towels on hooks. Clothes hung or heaped, maybe depending on whether they were clean or dirty. Counting the air ducts, no more than five hundred square feet of living space in the whole apartment.

  Flick, sniff/sniff. "Okay?"

  I wasn't sure which question he was asking me. "Nice place. Quiet."

  "I like it quiet. Had enough noise in the ring there."

  We left the apartment, Ooch closing the door to his place and shaking the knob to be sure it was secure. As we climbed the stairs to the first floor, he jingled some keys in his pocket, pulling them out and concentrating on them as he put his shoulder into a café-style door at the top.

  "Where do you wanna go next?"

  Coming into the building's first-floor foyer with him, I noticed the inner door was still propped open, the area for mailboxes and a small table just before the inner surface of the outside door.

  I said, "Let's try the front door. Can you step outside, show me how the door opens?"

  Ooch looked at me as though I belonged in kindergarten, but went to the front door. Just a spring lock as he turned the handle and went outside. The door closed pretty quietly. A few seconds later, Ooch opened it with a key and came back inside. "Okay?"

  "Who has keys to the front door?"

  "The front door? The bum come up the fire escape."

  "Who has keys?"

  Ooch stopped, then began ticking off names on his fingers.

  "Sinead, she's got one. Tina had one. A course, the family does, too."

  "The family?"

  "Yeah."

  "Who in the family?"

  "Who? Everybody. They use the second floor sometimes."

  "The empty apartment."

  "Right. Well, it's got furniture and all."

  "You know whether any of Sinead's or Tina's boyfriends had a key to the front door?"

  Flick, sniff/sniff. "I don't know nothing about that. They did, they wasn't supposed to."

  I decided to play dumb. "How about the agents at Tina's modeling agency?"

  "I don't know nothing about that, neither."

  "Ever see one of them here?"

  "Don't know them to tell you."