Brothers and Bones (33 page)

“So was that it then?” I asked. “Is that all you were supposed to do? Make me think I wasn’t being followed? That I was paranoid?”

Fielding hesitated. Bonz cleared his throat and Fielding quickly said, “No, that’s not all. I was also supposed to ask you questions about your brother every session. I was supposed to see if anything had changed for you concerning him, any sudden rekindling of interest in finding out what happened to him. If you’d learned anything new about his disappearance.”

“And you’d report back to them?”

“I was supposed to. I never did because I never got from you what I thought they wanted.”

“But you would have reported it back to them if you had,” I said.

“I suppose so,” my psychiatrist said.

I shook my head in disgust. “I see. So how long have you been working for the mob?”

“I don’t work for the mob.”

“Funny. It sounds to me like that’s exactly what you’ve been doing for twelve years.”

Fielding sighed. “I haven’t been, well…I suppose you’re right.”

“And you didn’t think about your duty to your patient? Your integrity means nothing to you?”

“I thought about my health. That of my wife. My two kids. They mean everything to me. More than my integrity, even.”

“They threatened you and your family?”

“Of course.”

“And how much did they pay you?”

“Nothing.” If I’d insulted him, he didn’t show it. He paused, then said, “I even tried to quit. I was going to retire from the profession. I had plenty of money from my books. I didn’t need to see patients. But they wouldn’t let me quit. I had to keep practicing, and keep deceiving you, and keep probing for information about Jake. They said they’d know if I didn’t do as they said.” His head dropped.

“Probably bugged his office,” Bonz said.

Fielding’s head snapped up. “You’re saying there are listening devices in my office?” He looked stricken. “I guess I feared as much, but tried to deny it to myself. Oh, my God. What about patient confidentiality?”

“Little late to start worrying about ethics,” I said. I recapped for my own benefit. “They listened in on our sessions so they’d know you were being a good boy, convincing me that the people who were following me were in my head, listening to the answers I gave to your questions about Jake.” And, of course, they listened to hear if I mentioned anything about Bonz or a tape my brother had, one that I might now have had. “And you played along.”

“I’m ashamed of myself. I’m very sorry, Charlie.”

I was ashamed of him too. “Then help me, Dr. Fielding. Tell me everything you know.”

I saw a faint trace of pain in his eyes. “I have. I don’t know anything else.”

“Carmen Siracuse tells you to convince me I’m crazy, to poke around inside my head for information about Jake, and you don’t wonder why?”

“Of course I wondered, but how could I ask?” He sighed and said, “Charlie, please believe me when I say that I don’t have the slightest idea what Siracuse wanted from you. Really.” I said nothing, so he said, “Please let me say again that I’m really very sorry. I hated to do what I did to you. I hated to let you continue to believe that you were suffering from paranoia. It went against my ethical code, against everything I was, or thought I was. But I really believed I had to do it. My choices were to reinforce a belief you already had or to see a loved one hurt, possibly killed. You’d have done the same thing,” he said a little desperately.

I almost felt sorry for him. Almost. But one thing prevented me. “If you’re so sorry about all this, Dr. Fielding, why did you tell them about our conversation last night?”

He looked confused. “Our conversation?”

“You remember. I paged you to ask about the effects of torture on memory. It was just last night. It must ring a bell.”

“Of course I remember. But I didn’t tell anyone about that conversation.”

“Bullshit. The only other person who knew about Bonz was Jessica, and she said she didn’t tell anyone. Between the two of you, she’s the one who hasn’t proven to be a complete fraud. So my money’s on you.”

“It wasn’t me,” he insisted. “Frankly, I didn’t even know what your call meant. It was strange to me, and I wondered a little if it had anything to do with what the Mafia wanted from you, but I didn’t tell them about it.”

“Bullshit.”

“I didn’t. I swear.”

I frowned. Bonz spoke up. “Where were you when Charlie called you?”

“I was at home,” Fielding said.

Bonz looked at me. “If he’s telling the truth, then they bugged his phones, too, probably office and home. Or maybe they even bugged his house itself. Either one. Maybe both, who knows?”

Fielding looked horrified. “You’re saying that not only did they plant listening devices in my office, but they put them on my phones, too. Maybe even inside my
home
?”

“Unless you’re lying,” Bonz said, “and you really did tell them about the call.”

“I didn’t.”

Bonz turned to me. “Randy Deacon said they never got the chance to bug your cell phone, and I don’t think he had much incentive to lie at that point. So if the doc here isn’t lying, then they listened in on the call. That means they bugged his phones or his house or both.”

“Dear God,” Fielding said.

The implications started to sink in for me. They’d worked frighteningly fast. I called Fielding around eight last night. Two hours later Angel picked a fight with me and an hour after that I found him in my apartment. Grossi killed him minutes later. They must have already had the false physical evidence they planted in my apartment ready and waiting for the moment they’d need it. Might have set that up years ago. Jesus. I wondered if they had someone listening in, live, to every one of the phone conversations I’d had in my apartment all these years, as well as all of Fielding’s. Then I realized they probably hadn’t needed to. They probably made tapes and transcribed them to go over later, like Randy Deacon had done. But lately I’d been acting strangely and Angel, for one—Angel, who was secretly working for Siracuse until they made him a sacrificial lamb—had noticed my unusual behavior the last couple of days and reported it to the mob, who began to pay even closer attention to me again. And to my shrink. It’s even possible that Randy Deacon or his team had seen and reported something that didn’t mean much to them but that alerted the mob that I warranted closer scrutiny for a while. Whatever the answer, it seemed obvious that the phone call I made to Fielding had set into motion everything that happened since the charity event. Which, to my relief, meant that my faith in Jessica had been justified, that she had not, in fact, betrayed my trust.

My relief was short-lived, however, when I remembered that Fielding apparently knew absolutely nothing that could get us any closer to finding Jake’s tape or learning what was on it. I shrugged mentally. It had been a long shot, but one I’d felt compelled to pursue.

Fielding cleared his throat. “Well, um, just let me say again that I’m sorry, Charlie.”

I looked at the good doctor and said, “And let me say, fuck you.”

“Charlie,” he almost pleaded. “I had no choice.”

“Maybe not, but fuck you anyway.”

I turned and walked away and Bonz followed, leaving Fielding behind in the alley. I shook my head in frustration. Maybe he had no choice, but he screwed with my head, let me think I was crazy for thirteen years. Fuck him. I was furious at Fielding, of course, but I think I realized not so deep down that the root of my anger might have been just as much the hopelessness of my situation as it was the unethical psychiatric care I’d received but hadn’t actually needed. Other than learning that my psychiatrist had known all along that I wasn’t paranoid but had spent a dozen years reinforcing my erroneous belief, I’d learned nothing useful. I was not an inch closer to finding that tape or figuring out what was on it. Time was rolling away from me, downhill, on greased rails.

As we headed back to our Firebird, Bonz said, “Well?”

“Well what?” I snapped at him.

“We’re not making much progress.”

“No, we’re not.”

“So, you finally ready to try my plan?”

“The finding-then-beating-up-of-mob-guys-who-might-or-might-not-know-what’s-on-the-tape plan?”

“Yeah, that one. Ready to give it a go?”

It wasn’t much of a plan, I didn’t think. But I hadn’t gotten anywhere with Jake’s clue. And I hadn’t learned anything from Fielding. Maybe it was time to switch to our second line of investigation—figuring out what was on that tape—and, unfortunately, I couldn’t think of a good way to do that. So, I figured, it was time for the gazelles to hunt the lions.

THIRTY-FIVE

As we headed north on Congress Street with one eye open for cops who might recognize our stolen wheels, I said, “So you’re just going to go around breaking people’s legs?”

“Only if I have to. Usually, I don’t. I seem to make people nervous.”

This didn’t surprise me.

“To whom do you intend to put the screws?” I asked.

He shrugged. “That’s where you come in.”

I looked at him.

“Somebody’s gotta know what Uncle Carmen’s afraid of. There’s somebody he trusted, maybe sought help from. Whoever that person is, we ask him. I’ve been out of the loop for thirteen years, Charlie. I’m not sure who the major players are anymore.”

I finished for him. “And I’ve been tracking the major organized crime figures in this city for five years so I should know who’s close to Siracuse, whom he might have confided in.”

Bonz nodded. Actually, that part made sense. It was the other part, the possible leg-breaking part, I was having trouble with.

“So the plan is what?” I said. “I tell you who Siracuse’s likely confidant would be, we find him, and you threaten him?”

“That’s about it.”

“Somehow you get past his guards, which he must have, and march right up to the big shot himself and convince him to talk?”

Bonz nodded. “I can get to him. And trust me, he’ll talk. I don’t have the slightest doubt about that. He will definitely talk.” He looked at me. “But I might have to hurt some people. Maybe badly.”

I was a federal prosecutor. I couldn’t knowingly condone assault or, possibly, murder. I wrestled with the idea of crossing this moral and ethical line. Seconds later, the idea pinned me flat. Screw them. They were Mafia men, murderers, drug pushers, pimps, opportunistic scum who traded on the misery and misfortune of others, dirtbags who scoffed at the law, at society’s rules, pieces of shit who thought they could do whatever they wanted because they carried guns and weren’t afraid to use them.

“Just try not to actually kill anyone,” I said.

He looked at me for a moment, then said, “Okay.” He was lying, of course. I let him.

“It’s easy,” I said. “Only one person it could be, if anyone.”

The only person alive to whom Siracuse might have told his secret would have been Big Frank D’Amico. He and Siracuse grew up together, spent their teenage days together doing all the things truly rotten juvenile delinquents do, were suspected later of numerous beatings of respected business owners in Boston’s predominantly Italian North End, crimes they purportedly committed together, and were the prime suspects in at least one technically unsolved homicide committed when the two were in their midtwenties. They became made men in the mob within a month of each other. As Siracuse clawed and killed his way to the top of the Italian mob family in Boston, Big Frank was right behind and beside him, his loyal supporter. Tonto to Siracuse’s Lone Ranger. Well, more like Frank James to his brother, Jesse. I told Bonz about D’Amico. He already knew about him, of course.

“Yeah, I figured if Big Frank was still alive, I’d need to talk to him. But he’s the only one?”

“If Siracuse trusted anyone with a big, incriminating secret, he’s the only one. Trust me on that.”

“Know where he lives?”

I closed my eyes and thought for a moment. “I do, yeah. He’s up in Nahant. But he’s got a great alarm system and his place is heavily guarded. It would be suicide, I think. Plus, if we want to move fast, he’s probably not home now anyway. More likely he’s at one of Siracuse’s fronts or back rooms, working.”

“You know where those are?”

I searched my memory. “A lot of them. Too many. He could be in Charlestown or Cambridge, Dorchester or Somerville. He’s got dozens of places.”

“We need to narrow the search then.”

“Again,” I said, “how?”

Bonz regarded me thoughtfully for a moment, then said, “Can you use that photographic memory of yours to remember any names and addresses of lower-level guys, guys who might be able to tell us where D’Amico would be tonight?”

I closed my eyes again and let my nearly eidetic memory go to work, flipping through files I’d seen at the office over the years. Words floated across my mind, black against a white background—names, addresses, photos of faces clipped to files.

“Head into the North End,” I said, then realized that we were almost there already. Bonz had figured we’d end up there.

“Who are we going to see?” he asked.

“Sal Barrone. Collects protection payments, drug and prostitution profits, other payments for Siracuse. Barrone’s boys bring the money to him, and Sal takes it all to Big Frank D’Amico every night.”

Bonz thought for a moment. “I think I might remember Barrone. Sweet Sal, they call him, right? Big, stupid-looking guy. Square head, big nose.”

“Sounds like half the guys who work for Siracuse.”

“I know Sal. Think you can find him?”

I closed my eyes again, then opened them and said, “Restaurant on Prince Street in the North End. Barrone owns it. Has an office in the back. That’s where his guys bring him the day’s take, which he puts together for D’Amico. Barrone’s probably there.”

“Okay,” Bonz said, “so we slip into the office in back, I put the muscle to Sweet Sal, find out where he’s supposed to meet D’Amico. Then we go there and I ask D’Amico what Siracuse is afraid of on that tape.”

“Sounds simple enough,” I said, without any attempt to hide my sarcasm.

“Well, I got my gun. Plus, you got your Swiss Army knife.”