“I’ll meet you in the main office, where I usually do,” I said. “Eight-thirty. Can I bring you a coffee?”
“Decaf,” Peter said, and we hung up.
Just after nine, Rose and Frank came upstairs, looking as exhausted as I’d ever seen them. I actually detected wrinkles in Rose’s navy blue knit suit, and Frank’s eyes were half closed.
I insisted that they relax while I brought them drinks—wine for Rose and a beer for Frank. Since I never drank alcohol, my entire liquor collection consisted of what others, including the two of them, had brought into my apartment at one time or another. I made coffee for myself and sat across from them.
“You missed a big night,” Rose said. “I think the whole Democratic side of the aisle was there, and a few Republicans, too. And this is the first time we’ve had a Kennedy in our parlor—young Joseph—isn’t it, Frank?”
From Rose’s lips, it sounded as though royalty had come to tea in their home. Since coming back to Revere, I’d noticed that the Kennedys still held magic for natives of Massachusetts. After so many years on the West Coast, I’d forgotten the enduring charm of Camelot.
“I think so,” Frank said. “We thought Teddy might come for the bishop last year, but he apparently couldn’t.” Frank removed his jacket and placed it carefully around the curved dark wood of the chair at my desk, then sat back and closed his eyes.
“So, what’s new,” I asked Rose, folding my hands on my lap, “besides the congresspeople?”
“He wasn’t there, just his partner.”
“He? You mean Matt? That’s not all I want to know about.”
“It should be,” Rose said, but her smile softened the reproach. She sipped her wine and continued. “No scenes tonight. The brother and his muscle were there. Gallagher wasn’t. I’m sorry, I didn’t pick up a thing. It was so crowded every minute. Robert and the boys are still down there straightening up.”
I felt very guilty pumping my friend for information when she’d worked so hard and all I’d done was read my notes and manipulate Peter into doing me a favor.
“Thanks anyway,” I said, moving the bowl of cashews closer to her.
“So what about Saturday night?” Rose said, but without the spirit I expected. “The funeral’s tomorrow, so maybe we can go shopping on Friday and get you a new outfit.” She stifled a yawn as Frank slept beside her, snoring gently.
“Let’s talk about it tomorrow,” I said. “I’m not even sure you’re all right to drive home. You’re both exhausted and the streets are still icy.”
“Robert’s going to drive us. But I guess you’re right. We’d better go down and gather our things.”
I walked my friends to the door and let them out, disappointed on many counts—I had nothing new to think about, no company for the rest of the evening, and no fun conversation about Saturday’s plans.
As I cleared the glasses and napkins, I noticed that Frank had left his jacket on my chair. I was considering whether to race downstairs with it, when I heard a knock.
I picked up the jacket and opened the door.
Rocky Busso was standing on my threshold.
Chapter Thirteen
I felt my heart beating against my throat, and my knees went weak. I squinted, opened my mouth, and tilted my head to the side, as if I’d just seen an unexpected glitch in a curve on my oscilloscope.
“Dr. Lamerino,” Rocky said, bowing slightly from the waist. “Can I come in?”
He held his hat in his hands in front of him, giving him a meek and humble look. Either that, or he was hiding his gun, I thought. The moment was like a dream—in my mind I reacted quickly, slamming the door in his face before he could move a muscle, but my body was absolutely rigid, my arms stiff as meter sticks.
If Rocky sensed my fear, he gave no indication. He might have been a Boy Scout selling cookies, or whatever little male scouts did for a living.
I stepped aside, taking a few steps backward into my living room, under the spell of my own panic. Rocky entered my apartment and walked past me, as far as my couch. He’d switched his hat to one hand and I saw that there was no gun, at least none aimed at me. So far, he’d said only six words, but his presence was overwhelming. His enormous bulk, spread mostly in the horizontal direction, seemed to raise the temperature of my apartment, and his sharp-smelling cologne saturated my nostrils.
Rocky was standing between me and my window, and I couldn’t figure out how to get past him to where I could see if the cruiser was still parked on Tuttle Street. Another thing that worried me was that the Christmas disc had ended, leaving me very vulnerable.
With the speed of a Pentium processor, I raced through the pros and cons of my options. Number one, run out the door and down the steps—useless if he had a gun, or a backup team waiting on the landing. Number two, scream at the top of my lungs—futile if no one was in the building, and probably aggravating to Rocky. I didn’t want to aggravate Rocky. Number three, attack Rocky—and bounce back from the shiny buttons of his expensive-looking black wool coat.
During this lightning-speed calculation, my body had remained essentially immobile, and in the end, I did what I always do. I chose the intellectual approach.
“How do you know me?” I asked, as evenly as I could, finally articulating the question that had been in the back of my mind all day.
“You’re Al Gravese’s girlfriend,” Rocky said, answering the wrong question.
“Did you know Al?” I asked.
“I worked for Al. I was just a kid,” he said, smoothing down his ample head of black-and-gray hair.
In spite of his heavyweight physique, Rocky’s manner was so gentle that I almost offered to take his coat and invite him to sit down. “Did you like your job?” I might ask, over an espresso.
“What can I do for you?” was what I actually asked, as if I were in charge.
“We know you’re digging into Al’s accident. Don’t do that.”
“How ... ?”
“We knew you was back in town,” Rocky said, not disappointing me with his grammatical deviations. “We always thought you was too smart for Al.” At this, Rocky chuckled and bowed from the waist again. “And now you’re a doctor.”
I figured Rocky thought “doctor” meant I could fix broken bones, and I hoped he hadn’t come to recruit me. Although he’d given me no cause for alarm, I stayed in my no-risk, no-tricky-questions mode.
“I don’t think I’ve ever met you,” I said.
“We kept to ourselves,” he said. “I came to tell you there’s no way to track down thirty-four-year-old business. They’re almost all dead now. And all you need to know is Al did a little too much drinking that night and he went off the road.”
“Who—?”
Rocky interrupted again, and I was starting to resent my one-syllable allotment.
“Al was crazy about you,” he said. “Before he left the club that night, he gave me an errand to do.” Rocky reached into his pocket, causing an involuntary gasp to leave my throat. To my great relief, he pulled out an item too small to be a weapon, and handed it to me—a small red velvet box, discolored and worn with age. “I picked this up for him at that jeweler’s on Broadway.”
I opened the box and saw an enormous diamond ring, at least nine millimeters in diameter, and equally deep in its setting. On the inside diameter was the inscription “AG GL.”
“I already had an engagement ring,” I said, as if I were rejecting a proposal from Rocky himself.
“That one was kind of cheap, you know. Al came into some money and wanted to get you a really good one. This one’s two carats,” he said as proudly as if he’d bought it. “He was going to give it to you Christmas Eve.”
“And you’ve kept it all these years?” I had the ring in one hand and the box in the other, feeling like I was at the controls of a time machine.
“Tell you the truth,” Rocky said, “I almost used it a couple of times, but I figured it would be malocchio, you know, a curse. I mean, it w
as supposed to go to you.”
“Thank you, Rocky,” I said, finally gesturing toward a seat. Surely he wouldn’t give me a ring, then blow me away, I thought.
Rocky refused my offer and was walking toward the door, his thirty-four-year-old errand brought to closure. But I wasn’t quite finished with him. Although I wasn’t anxious to pursue the topic of Al Gravese, and I had no idea what to do with a large diamond ring, I did have some pressing questions about a present-day investigation.
“Do you know anything about Margaret Hurley’s murder?” I asked, certain that I’d lost all common sense.
Rocky didn’t blink an eye.
“Don’t go there,” he said, and headed for the door—where, for the second surprise of the evening, I saw Sgt. Matt Gennaro.
Where were you when I thought I needed you? I almost said.
Rocky nodded to me and to Matt, put his hat on, and walked out into the hallway and down the stairs. I watched his exit and Matt’s appearance like a stage director who’d lost control of his cast.
Once I was able to focus my attention on Matt, I rushed to my own defense.
“I didn’t invite him,” I said. I had a vivid memory of the time last fall when Matt stormed around my apartment, angry at me, just because I’d been entertaining all the suspects in a murder investigation in my apartment.
“I know that,” he said, with a smile that comforted me. I let out a long sigh, the accumulation of more than twenty-four hours of pent-up anxiety, starting when I’d heard Rocky utter my name on the first evening of the wake.
“You knew he was up here?”
“I saw him put Buddy in a car, then reenter the building and go up the stairs.”
“I thought you weren’t here tonight. And why didn’t you stop him?” And why don’t I just bang my fists on the table? I thought, aware of my shrill voice.
“I’ve been here all evening,” he said, “outside in an unmarked, and walking around the property. I guess your sources aren’t that keen.” He had a delightful, teasing twinkle in his eyes, and I lifted my arms in embarrassed defeat. “Secondly,” he continued, “I wasn’t worried because I knew he knew—he saw the cruiser with the uniforms outside; he saw me follow him into the building and watch him climb the stairs, if you understand what I’m saying.”
I understood.
“You’re not a good liar, directly or indirectly,” Matt said. “I knew you’d started going through Al’s book, so I was keeping an eye out, but I thought I’d give you a few minutes with Busso.”
I was still holding the ring and the box, and saw Matt glance down at them.
“He came to give me my engagement ring,” I said, sounding like the college girl I was the first time I’d received a diamond.
Matt nodded as if he knew about the ring, but I suspected that he just couldn’t come up with an appropriate response. Who could? I asked myself.
We were still standing close to the door. Matt rubbed his hands together and blew on them. “Do you think I could have a cup of coffee?” he asked. “I’m freezing.”
Matt’s request woke me out of my semitrance, and it came to me that I’d been more hospitable to Rocky than to Matt. An image of Josephine came to my mind, and I rushed to the kitchen, putting the ring, now resting in its cushioned box, on the counter.
I gave Matt coffee and a plate of snacks since, by his admission, he’d eaten only “stakeout food” that evening.
I sat on my rocker, across from him, and gave him a full account of my conversation with Rocky.
“I learned a lot in a few minutes,” I said. “I came face-to-face with Al’s connections, you might say.”
“Are you all right with this, Gloria?”
“I am. It might take a while to process everything.”
“Give yourself time.” Matt was sitting on the edge of my couch, leaning forward, his face showing concern.
“I guess he was telling me that Al was set up to be killed, but the ones responsible are all dead, or almost all dead, and, anyway, I think I’m through with this.”
“So you’re not going to hit me up for a copy of the notebook?”
“No,” I said, probably taking him more seriously than he intended. “I still have some questions, of course, like what had Al done to deserve being killed, and is anyone else in that book besides Rocky alive today. But I’m definitely ready to file this away.”
As I rambled, I sipped my coffee and stared past Matt, at the tops of the snowy trees outside my window. A streetlight in front of the building cast a yellowish glow over my white drapes, and I imagined I was looking at a very old photograph.
Matt drained his cup and stood to leave. I realized I’d lost track of his presence.
“I’m going to be on my way,” he said. “I’ll see you tomorrow afternoon.”
“Right,” I said, as if I’d been thinking of Vincent Cavallo and his helium report all along. “One o’clock.”
“And, best of all, I’ll see you Saturday evening,” he said.
“I’m really looking forward to that, too.”
I smiled, but Matt’s comment didn’t have half the effect it would have under different circumstances.
“Be good to yourself, Gloria,” Matt said, giving me a brief, one-armed hug as he walked past me out the door.
I went back to my rocker, with no inclination either to sleep or to do anything useful. I rubbed my ring finger as if to awaken more memories, or to put order into the ones I had. I drifted far away, back to 1962.
I’m with Al Gravese, at a flower show. I don’t especially like attending flower shows, but it’s one of Al’s passions, and I’m happy to be his date. I’m bored by the talks on the latest in mulch or crossbreeding tulips, and all the different breeds of orchids look alike to me, but I smile a lot and fix my hair and make sure my lipstick is even.
I’m fishing with Al Gravese. I hate being out on the water in a small boat, and I can’t stand the sight of worms or the smell of dead fish, but I laugh and snap Al’s picture and say what fun it is.
I’m at a baseball game with Al Gravese and his buddies. I’d rather be at the museum or a concert, but I eat hot dogs and yell at the umpire, and cheer when the Red Sox score a run.
Al was crazy about the girl on his arm, I thought, but Al didn’t know me any more than I knew him.
I turned out the lights in the living room, and went in to sleep.
Chapter Fourteen
I noticed more activity than usual for a weekday in front of St. Anthony’s Church as I left my building on Thursday morning, December 8, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. I recalled a time when I believed that an eternal pit of fire awaited those who missed mass on this day. I wondered if the parishioners filing into church in the 1990s believed that, and I also wondered exactly what I believed now.
On the way to my meeting with Peter and Patrick Gallagher I made a detour to a small coffee shop on Beach Street. It was a new café, with modern furniture and espresso machines, but its freshly painted walls were covered with old photographs of Revere Beach in its heyday. In spite of the frigid morning air outside and the Christmas music inside, I was brought back to hot, humid summer days as I walked around and studied the enlarged black-and-white snapshots—a pony diving from a forty-foot platform into a tank of water on the Boulevard, shapely young women in modest black swimsuits lined up for a bathing beauty contest, a man shot from a cannon, flying one hundred feet into the sky.
At the table next to mine was a young mother and her daughter, wearing nearly identical pink quilted nylon jackets. As I sipped espresso through a thick layer of foam, I watched them out of the corner of my eye. They worked together on a page in a coloring book, giggling over a silly picture, their matching blond hair falling onto their work. I could smell the little girl’s hot chocolate and wished I could tell her how lucky she was.
As hard as I’d tried over the years, I could never remember a time when Josephine and I laughed together, or even colored together. I was
sure that her own Depression-era youth held few joys, and I tried to forgive her for not recovering in time to give me a childhood. It’s never too late for a happy childhood, pop psychologists claimed, but I was too busy working on a happy adulthood.
The Revere High School building was brand new, as far as I was concerned, having been built long after I’d left for California. I met Peter in the main office, where I signed a clipboard at the reception desk. His mood was about as cool as his crisp white shirt, but he warmed up a bit when I gave him a steaming decaf mocha, a bag of biscotti, and an outline for six more guest appearances in his class.
We went to the faculty lounge, a surprisingly ample room with a couch along one wall and a kitchen area with a few tables and chairs. I wondered if Peter, a confirmed antitechnologist, ever used the minisized white microwave oven on the counter.
“I asked Gallagher to meet me here around eight-thirty,” Peter said, as he snapped off a piece of biscotti. “I thought it would be less awkward than dragging you down to his office.”
“That was really a good idea, Peter,” I said, meaning every word. I’d spent a good part of my time in the shower that morning wondering just how I would manage an interview with Gallagher, standing at the threshold of his office. A conversation seemed much more feasible if we were sitting around a table in the lounge, but I still didn’t know precisely what approach to take, except that I wished I’d brought him a mocha.
“How shall I introduce you?” Peter asked, causing me to feel like a criminal who carried multiple passports with different identities. I had a moment of longing for my years as a simple physicist wearing a white lab coat over whatever outfit was clean that day.
It took me a while to answer Peter’s question. Not knowing whether I should represent myself as a Galigani Mortuary staff person or a Revere Police Department consultant, I’d chosen clothing befitting either occupation—a black rayon suit with an ivory silk blouse and a long string of pearls. I wore a small round pin on my lapel, with the official logo of an undergraduate physics group I’d been adviser to. Its dull green background featured a miniature schematic in gold, showing waves leaving a moving source, also known as the Doppler effect.
The Helium Murder Page 9