Then I called Lieutenant Murphy's office. I got Daley, my companion at the morgue. He said Murphy was out of the office, but that Murphy had told him to tell me that Traffic had found Al's rental car on Myrtle Street on Beacon Hill and about five blocks from where Al's body had been dumped. Elapsed mileage exceeded by about fifty miles the business visits they could confirm Al making. None of the business contacts knew where he was going that evening. The final autopsy report confirmed death by smothering, no further information. I thanked Daley and told him I would be in Pittsburgh for a few days and would call in once in a while. I rang off and walked into the front hall.
I went to the closet and pushed most of the garbage aside. I pulled out the old Samsonite three-suiter, even though I would have to pack only one outfit. A dark, somber one.
After I packed, I carried the suitcase to the door and looked down at the envelope. I pocketed it and went downstairs.
I walked to the rental and returned it to the agency. I carried my burdens to the Szechuan Chinese restaurant in the next block. The decor was red leather with faintly illuminating Chinese lanterns. There were few patrons. I was shown to a small booth by a hostess in a cocktail dress, slit discreetly up the side. I ordered a vodka and orange juice.
One screwdriver makes me thirsty for two. Two make me hearty and gregarious. Three make me unnecessarily aware of little things, like the exact shade of a woman's lipstick. Four make me morose. I stopped at three and ate my dinner. I also decided not to mail the tape envelope. I settled up and stepped out into a howling wind. I hailed a cab, giving Nancy's address in Southie.
The taxi driver had country and western music on the radio. The back seat was black vinyl with little tufts of white, puffy stuffing poking through. I thought of Craigie's body after the fire, then made my mind change the subject.
Her building in South Boston was a three-decker on a clean street, sort of a wooden version of the D'Amicos' place. Like the Italian North End, the Irish and Italian neighborhoods in Southie had been stable, if stubborn, for generations. A Lithuanian section, dating mostly from the end of World War II, straddled Broadway a little farther west.
There were three buzzers arranged vertically on the outside doorjamb. Each would signify a different door of the three—story house. The bottom and middle name plates said "M. Lynch" and "A. Lynch." The top one said "N. Meagher." I pushed it. Strains from some detestable C&W song reached me through the cabbie's half-open window, something like "I'm breaking my back putting up a front for you."
I heard footsteps tripping down the stairs inside the door, and a light flicked on over my head. No intercom and buzzer systems in this part of town. The door opened on a chain, and I heard her laugh.
"Well, well," she said, slipping the chain and swinging open the door. "A pleasure call, I hope."
She was wearing a gray Red Sox T-shirt and white tennis shorts. A bath towel, draped clumsily, covered her left hand from the wrist down.
I said, "I'm sorry to bother you at home, but I have a plane to catch, and I wanted to talk with you before I left."
She went up on tiptoes and saw the cabbie over my shoulder. She shivered a bit. "Pay off your cab and come on up. I'll freeze in this doorway, but I'd be glad to drive you to Logan afterwards."
As I turned back toward the cab, I heard her say, "It's okay, Drew." Someone moved on the second landing and a door closed.
I settled with the driver and lugged my suitcase to her stoop. She tapped ahead of me in sandals up the two flights to her apartment.
Her door opened from the staircase into a big kitchen, perhaps fifteen by fifteen. A screened-in but sealed-off porch lay behind the kitchen. Once inside, I dropped my bag on the floor, and we turned left into a corridor that led to the front of the house. She had a cozy living room with a small bay window. There were throw pillows on the floor, and brick-and-board bookcases along both walls. Two low tables and some indirect lighting completed the furnishings.
She laid the towel carefully on one of the tables and asked me if I wanted a drink.
"Ice water?" I said, feeling the dehydration of the Chinese food and the screwdrivers.
"I have stronger," she said.
"Thanks, just water."
She lowered WCOZ just a bit on the stereo under a shelf of mystery paperbacks. "Let me take your coat," she said.
I shrugged out of it, and she left with it for the kitchen. Her bottom looked firm in the shorts, her legs straight and slim beneath them.
She was back in a flash. "One ice water," she said, handing me a tall, expensive-looking glass. "Pull up a pillow.”
She collapsed naturally into one near a table with a tumbler of amber liquid on it. I sat down a little less gracefully.
She scooped up her tumbler and mock-toasted. "Welcome to my parlor."
"Said the spider to the f1y," I finished. She smiled and sipped.
"It's nice . . . comfortable," I said. "Even with the security."
She tilted her head in question.
"Drew," I said. "On the landing, short for Andrew, as in 'A. Lynch?"
She laughed. "Drew's a cop. He and his wife live on the second floor. She's expecting, and he's just sort of protective. His parents—this is their house—they live on the first floor. Do you want to take your jacket off? The Lynches have to keep the heat up because of her mother. She's pushing eighty and needs to have it warm." She ran her nondrink hand down her T-shirt, neck to navel. "That's why I lounge around like this, even in February."
Her nipples were subtly more defined for a moment under the shirt as her hand moved. She took another sip. I downed half my ice water.
"Under the towel," I said, "revolver or automatic?"
Broad smile but sad eyes. "I knew the assistant DA who was shot in his car in Cambridge last year. He was a class ahead of me at New England." She clenched and unclenched her fist. "But, to answer your question, revolver."
I shook my head. "Revo1ver is a more reliable weapon, but the hammer could get caught in the towel. You should switch to an automatic or change camouflage?
This time she shook her head. "It's a five-shot Bodyguard. With the shrouded hammer. Drew helped me pick it out."
I pictured a revolver with high, thin steel walls enclosing the hammer and a small, scored steel button on top that could be thumbed back but wouldn't get caught on clothing. Or towels. I finished my ice water.
"Where are you off to?" she asked.
I gave her three sentences about Al.
"Boy," she said in a low voice after condolences, "this is not how I was hoping our next meeting would go."
"The next one after this won't," I said.
She wanted to smile but didn't. "Are you here about your friend?"
"No, the Coopers." I summarized the phone calls, both Marco's and mine, and my visit to the D'Arnicos. I dug out and handed her the envelope containing the tape.
Nancy swirled her drink but didn't put the glass to her lips. She laid the envelope carefully on the table next to her. If she wore any make up, it didn't show.
"Joey comes up for sentencing in two weeks," she said. "Smolina may not be telling the parents, but I'm sure Joey'll get life. I bet Marco knows it, too." She sipped now. "Any chance of getting the Coopers out of town for a bit?"
"I don't think so. No family they mentioned. Or friends. Or money to do it with either."
Nancy sighed. "A year ago, I might have told you I'd see they were watched over. But not after Teresa Alou." She clenched her fist again. "You remember the case?"
"Yes." Tough one to forget after the Globe series. The DA had a squeeze on Alou, a young Hispanic who lived in the South End and knew a lot about the drug trade from her brother. The squeeze was her brother, who wouldn't talk and would go to a bad prison if he didn't. Teresa talked for him. To save him. The brother went to a good prison, a farm, a safe one. He lasted three days. First they'd blinded him with some barbed-wire goggles. Then they beat him to death. With rolled up newspapers. It would hav
e taken a long time.
The DA put Teresa under witness protection in a hotel. Just before the permanent relocation funding was approved by the appropriate bureaucracy, somebody slipped down a rope and into the hotel room. The somebody bashed the female operative and did Teresa. By the time the guys outside in the hall realized the inside operative should have answered their knock, the somebody was gone. Along with Teresa's eyes, ears, and tongue. He left the rest. Alive, sort of.
"Sixteen," Nancy said, bringing me back. "She was sixteen." She shivered for the second time since I'd come in. Nancy looked up at me. "The Coopers weren't really part of our case, but I'll ask McClean. And Drew, too. But I can't promise."
"I know." I checked my watch. "I better call a cab."
She shook her head vigorously and hopped up. "No way. It'd take forever, and I said I'd drive you. I'll be out in a minute."
She disappeared for more like two and a half minutes. She reappeared in an L. L. Bean parka like one I owned, and jeans and eskimo boots. She handed me her business card, home phone written on the back. She walked over to the towel and slipped the gun out from under it and into the parka's left side pocket.
"The pocket in my parka's too shallow for that," I remarked as she tossed me my coat.
"Mine was too," she said. "Mrs. Lynch slit the interior and resewed it deeper."
I picked up my bag and we clomped downstairs and into the cold clear night.
When we arrived at Logan Airport, Nancy gave me a quick kiss. I said thanks and entered the terminal just as a cop was waving for her to move along. I checked my bag at the passenger ticket counter and asked directions to the cargo area.
It took a little explaining, but I used George's name, and the Delta cargo employee expressed his sympathies and escorted me to the loading platform. His first name was Dario. He was middle-aged and compact. He also looked strong as a bull.
As we approached the platform, there was a young guy uncertainly maneuvering a forklift and pallet toward a canvas-wrapped, coffin-sized container.
"Pat, yo—Pat," said Dario.
The forklift operator stopped and turned around. "Pat, let me take that one for the gentleman here."
Pat gratefully hopped off, and Dario replaced him. He coaxed and sidled the lift perfectly. Even without the canvas as a buffer, I doubt the casket would have been marred.
Dario carefully, even solemnly, drove the lift across to a weighing machine. After weighing, he completed a multicarbon form and tore off one copy. He gave me the tearsheet.
"I don't think you'll need this in Pittsburgh, but, just in case."
"Thanks, thanks a lot," I said, folding and pocketing the sheet. "What happens now?"
"We put the coffin into a covered, locked cargo cart and get it on the plane before the other baggage."
I glanced down at my watch.
"Not to worry," said Dario. "It'll make the flight. My personal guarantee."
I thanked him, and we shook hands. I went back out and up to the gate for boarding.
There was no one in the aisle or middle seat in my row on the right side of the plane. The stewardess leaned over and asked me if I wanted a drink. After having had dinner, I thought a fourth screwdriver wouldn't depress me. I was wrong. I began thinking of happy things I'd be doing the next day, like calling J. T. and watching Martha try to sit shivah.
We arrived in Pittsburgh at 8:45. I decided to pick up my suitcase later and asked directions to the cargo area. When I got there, a guy in a green worker uniform was standing over Al's canvas-draped coffin on a heavy-duty conveyor belt. In front of the coffin was a three-foot square box stenciled "U.S. Steel." Behind it was a wildly shaped package that looked home-wrapped. I walked up to the man in uniform. He was fortyish with brown hair and a dead cigar in his mouth. He was just pulling off a pair of work gloves.
"Help ya?" he said through the cigar.
"I hope so. I'm with the coffin. I want to see it safely on the hearse."
The man shook his head as he removed the second glove and stuffed them in a back pocket. He pulled out the cigar. "You know which home?"
"You mean funeral home?"
"Yeah."
"Cribbs and Son."
He smiled and replaced the cigar. "You're lucky. Jake Cribbs is the only guy who'll come out, day or night. Matter of pride to 'im."
I breathed a sigh of relief. "Do you have his number?"
"I can call him for ya. No charge." He dropped his smile and nodded toward Al. "Family?"
I shook my head. "Friend. From the army."
He put the dead cigar in his shirt pocket and wiped his hand. He extended it to shake. "Good a' you to see him through." We shook and exchanged names. His was Stasky.
"I was navy. Just before Vietnam. You there?"
"Yes."
"Him too?"
"Uh-huh."
Stasky pointed to a chair and table with a coffee urn and some mugs in a corner.
"Make yourself comfortable and have some. I'll call Cribbs."
I abstained from the coffee. Stasky returned shortly. "Old man Cribbs'll be here in twenny minutes. He'll give you a lift into town if you need it."
"Thanks, but someone's meeting me."
He left me at the table while he tended to the freight.
Half an hour later, Stasky helped me and Cribbs, a wiry older man in a black stadium coat and commissar's hat, to maneuver the coffin on the folding high stretcher into the back of the hearse. The air was dry and cold. Stasky said near zero.
Cribbs said that Mr. Palmer had taken care of scheduling arrangements at the home. I thanked him, and he said he'd see me tomorrow. I watched him enter the driver's side and pull away.
I tromped back into the terminal, my exhaled breath remaining a visible cloud about a heartbeat longer than in comparatively balmy Boston. I followed signs for the passenger area and the baggage carrousels. The stores along the corridor were the usual collection of coffee shops, shoeshine parlors, silly little bars, and Steeler memorabilia stands. Only the bars were open, the rest locked with chromed gratings in front of them.
I got to the baggage area. My three-suiter wasn't on the nearly empty and stationary carrousel. I looked around the room. A short, chunky man with a toupee stood up from one of the plastic seats. My suitcase was on the chair next to him. He waved to me, and I walked over to him. He didn't match Larry's description of either of them.
"Mr. Cuddy?" he asked.
I recognized his voice and extended my hand. "John, please, remember? You're Dale Palmer?"
He smiled confirmation and shook.
"When I didn't see you," he said, "I thought I'd better grab your bag."
"Thanks. I was with . . . the undertaker."
The smile dropped. "Ah, yes. Well, my car is just out front and to the right." He turned.
I hefted my suitcase and followed him.
EIGHT
-•-
“IF YOU DIDN'T KNOW HER, YOU'D THINK SHE WAS DOING pretty well." We'd driven about five miles in his small Pontiac from the airport toward downtown. So far, we had determined my accommodations for the night, me insisting on a motel, him insisting that Larry and he already had made up their guestroom, me not wanting to put them out, him assuring me that it would make logistics easier tomorrow and Saturday. I relented. We had finally gotten around to Martha.
"I've never met her."
"I know. That is, she told us. After the . . . ah, call."
I rubbed my eyes with my right hand. "I'm truly sorry about that."
"Listen. It wasn't your fault." His right hand started to leave the gearshift knob and come toward me. He stopped it abruptly and brought it back to the steering wheel instead.
"I appreciate your concern," I said. "And all you've done for Martha."
He swallowed once, hard. "Martha was our friend. I mean from before they were married. We persuaded them to move into the neighborhood." He paused. "Al was a good friend, too."
I let out a long breath. I was to
o tired. And depressed. I shut up the rest of the trip.
As we drew toward the city, Dale began speaking again. He. gave a sort of nervous, pointing geographic orientation of the U of Pittsburgh, Camegie-Mellon, downtown, Three Rivers Stadium and half a dozen residential neighborhoods whose names meant nothing to me. Dale identified the bookstore where Larry worked. Dale taught piano at home.
We pulled into an older, seedier neighborhood of party-wall townhouses, some with two stories, some with three. Most were old brick, few had bay or bow-front windows. One block had ten beautiful, restored houses, another ten burned-out shells. Dale explained this area was called Mexican War, each of the streets named after an event or personage in the 1840s conflict. He slowed and parked in front of a picture-perfect two-story and cut his engine.
"Home at last," he said with false cheer. "This is our place. Carol is directly across the street"—gesturing and twisting—"Martha's the ash-toned one, two doors down from her." He dropped the merriment. "How do you want to handle this?"
I glanced at my watch. Ten-twenty-five. "Too late to see Martha?" I asked.
"Oh, no," he said. "I'm sure she'll still be up. That's part of the problem."
"Maybe if I could drop my suitcase at your place and then we could go over?"
"Perfect," he said. We left the car and climbed his three steps. He let me in and sensed the Cook's Tour of the house could wait. He showed me to my room and signaled toward the bathroom. I popped my suitcase and hung up my suit for the next day. Then we both sucked in a little courage and walked over to Martha's house.
The three concrete steps leading up to Martha's door were chipped and cracked. The heavy door and jamb were painted, but the overhead light betrayed it as gray primer futilely waiting for a top coat. There was no doorbell and only a residual outline and a screw hole where the brass knocker might have been. Dale drew one ungloved hand from his pocket and tapped lightly with two knuckles. The air was painfully cold. Dale tapped again, harder.
The Staked Goat - Jeremiah Healy Page 6