Deadly Diamonds (3 page)

I turned to his father. “Out of overwhelming curiosity, why did you call me?”

His father took me by the arm and walked me ten steps away from his son. “Word gets around. You and your partner, Devlin, handled a case for the son of Don Dominic Santangelo. I hear they go back. This thing needs to be brokered.”

I just shook my head at the inappropriateness of me in all of this.

“Listen, Mr. Knight. I think you're more savvy than you let on. There are, shall we say, territorial disputes between them and us.”

“You mean the Italian Mafia and the Irish whatever-the-hell you call yourselves.”

He caught the disdain and stifled a small eruption of what could be an Irish temper.

“The disputes I mention are mostly under the control of cooler heads, but at the moment—” He moved his hand in a way that said “dicey.” “This matter needs an intermediary with influence, but not aligned with either side. You and your partner come to mind.”

“How fortunate for us. And when the damned bullets start flying, guess who's in the middle? Hear this. Mrs. Knight's little boy, Michael, is not that mentally challenged. Hasta la vista.”

I thought it, and have frequently wished that I'd said it. Instead, I provided a logical solution.

“Look, Mr. O'Byrne, to hell with the brokering and all the complications. Let's go with the KISS principle. From what your son said,
they probably don't have any idea who took the car. Simple solution. Have someone drive it and park it a few blocks from Patrini's Restaurant. Make an anonymous call to Patrini's and tell the maître d' where the car is. The odds are he'll know who owns it. He gets the car back in one piece, and life goes on. For everyone.”

I started to turn and walk. He caught my arm.

“And yet, Mr. Knight, do you suppose I need you to belabor the obvious?”

“I wondered the same. And yet, as you say, here I am.”

He nodded. “There's a minor complication.”

He crooked his come-over-here finger and walked to the back of the car. It was a simple move, but it neutralized every soothing effect of the evening-long's seriatim sips of the Famous Grouse scotch. He waited until I was standing directly in front of the Cadillac's trunk and hit the release button. The light from the trunk was perfectly adequate to illuminate every feature of the very dead body of a man curled into the same fetal position in which he began life.

I've seen dead bodies. You can't be even partially Irish without chalking up more wakes than weddings, but this one had unique features. The knife in the back was the origin of a seepage of blood that surrounded the body like a backdrop. The noose around his neck underscored the labeling of the deceased as a traitor. The final touch was the wad of ten dollar bills stuffed into his mouth like the dressing in a turkey. Without an exact count, I'd have bet that there were thirty bills—the thirty pieces of silver paid to Judas to betray our Lord. A bit heavy on symbolism, but the point was made.

My mind was spinning. O'Byrne was right. This was a complication. The thugs in the North End were unlikely to let this go as boys-will-be-boys. The Cadillac could clearly be traced to the owner, and the state of its current occupant could mean a life sentence for the killer if the boy who took the car went to the police. And, frankly, if I thought along their lines, I'd be inclined to play it safe and assume that he might.

All things considered, Mr. O'Byrne was right. It looked like the start of an “interesting” day.

CHAPTER THREE

“Did you touch the body?”

That was aimed at both O'Byrnes. The elder, being more vocal, shot out a quick, “Of course not.” The son just fell in line with a head shake.

That was a test. One of them failed it, but which one? There was a small gap between the line of congealed blood and the body in the trunk. Someone had moved the body after it had been in the trunk for some time. I was inclined to believe the father's word. He seemed to have enough sense of his own power to handle any situation without resorting to lies. The son, on the other hand—

I walked over to the stoop where young Kevin was back sitting with a hangdog, woe-is-me look on his downcast face. I sat down beside him. I put my arm around his shoulder and smiled a compassionate smile. That was for the benefit of the father, still peering into the trunk, but keeping an eye on me as well.

“Rough night, eh, Kevin?”

He looked into my understanding face and nodded.

“Any idea whose car this is?”

The head shook.

“How about the guy in the trunk? Any idea who he is?”

Another shake.

“What were you and your friends doing in the North End?”

“Pizza.”

Aha! I had a conversationalist on my hands at last.

“You kids go over there much?”

Another shake, followed by “Never.”

“Uh-huh. I'll need the names and addresses of the other boys with you.”

He looked stunned by this unexpected request. I kept smiling.

“Just to get this in context, Kevin, do you have the foggiest idea of how much trouble you're in?”

A blank, juvenile look appeared to go with the turned-backward baseball cap. “I didn't do anything. I just borrowed the car. They'll get it back.”

I edged closer and kept smiling. “See, here's the thing. No, they won't. That baggage in the trunk is what's called a dead body. It has to be turned over to the police—car and all. The boys in the North End will never see the car or the body again. I figure that'll be like a cherry bomb in a wasps' nest.”

He looked like the sudden victim of shock and awe. He was looking at me, but I noticed he kept a sideways view of his father.

“Get a good grip, Kevin, because I'm going to tell you why I think you're in ten times as much trouble as you seem to let on.”

I noticed that he shifted into a calm alertness that shucked off the appearance of little-boy panic. I kept the beneficent smile and locked eyes with him.

“You see, I think your father is just what he appears to be with no pretenses. But I think you're a lying, sleazy piece of crap. Keep looking at me. I don't think you want your father in on this.”

His eyes narrowed to slits. A coolness set in that had me convinced that I was looking at someone ten years older in savvy than the clueless kid in the turned backward cap.

“Figure this, Kevin. Unless you've got mind rot, the son of the Irish South Boston mob boss doesn't just cruise into enemy territory for pizza. There are pizza shops in South Boston.”

He started to get up. I put pressure on the arm I had around his shoulder.

“Sit there. Second, you'd have to be brain dead not to know that a top-of-the-line Cadillac in front of Patrini's belongs to someone you don't want to mess with on a juvenile dare. Third, if it happened
the way you said it did, why in hell would you open the trunk rather than just ditching the car on the first dark street? And given all of that, just how sappy do you think I'd have to be to buy your little juvenile prank story?”

About then, I caught sight of Mr. O'Byrne coming within hearing. I figured the fewer the complications, the sooner I could kiss this whole unpleasant episode adios. I stood up to include the father in our little chat.

“Here's where we're at, gentlemen. Like it or not, I'm in it. I've seen the murder victim and it has to be reported.”

“The hell it will, Knight!”

“The hell it won't! Think about it. This kid is your son. How do you know they don't know that in the North End? What happened to that guy in the trunk could be a mercy killing compared to what they'll do to your son if they get him.”

That produced silent thought.

“We need to do two things, Mr. O'Byrne. We need to get this car and body into the hands of the police, and we need to get your son someplace safe until I get a chance to try to make a deal with whoever owns the car. Isn't that what you called me for in the first place?”

He gave it some silent thought and sat down next to his son. Kevin looked over at him with a fully restored “I'm-sorry-I-was-a-bad-boy-Daddy” look. Mr. O'Byrne looked up at me.

“I'll take care of Kevin myself. I can take him to—”

“Whoa! Hold it there. I don't want to know. If I'm asked, and I will be, I want to say I don't know where he is without blinking.”

“Alright. What about the car?”

I was improvising on tired brain cells, but leaving it outside what was apparently the office of the Irish mob boss could invite a shooting war. On the other hand, I had to take a story to the police that involved a minimum of tampering with the evidence.

“Get one of your men to drive it. Do it now. Gloves on. Have him park it close to police headquarters facing Tremont Street in Roxbury. You can use the community college lot. Tell him to give me a
call at this number when it's there, and then tell him to get the hell out of Roxbury. I'll call it in to the police station before the car gets stolen again. Make sense?”

Apparently, no better plan occurred to him. “And you'll start making the contacts, right?”

“As soon as the sun comes up.”

He looked at his son who had nothing to contribute. He looked back at me.

“Do what you can, Knight. I'll pay the bill.”

I caught another knowing look from the slippery son behind the father's back. I thought to myself,
You sure will. And I'll bet my fee'll be the smallest part of it
.

Thank God, my senior and only partner, Lex Devlin, forty-year veteran of countless wars in the Boston criminal courts, was of that peculiar gene structure known as a morning person. I was waiting in my office in our suite at 77 Franklin Street at six thirty when I heard the ding of the elevator.

His surprise at having me walk him to his office at that hour was minor compared with the shock of what I was about to suggest. I started with the good news. “We have a new client.” And it went straight downhill from there.

“Michael, how the hell do you get us into these things?”

“I take it you know O'Byrne.”

He laughed one of those laughs that does not imply humor. “Oh, yeah. For more years than you've been alive. There's not much that can make me ashamed of being Irish, but your new acquaintance is at the top of the list.”

“In answer to your question about involvement, not my choice.”

I filled in the details, including the fact that I got a call around four a.m. from a thuggish sounding South Boston voice that said the car was “you-know-where.” The reporting situation was now in my court. It required delicacy, and there was no one awake at the hour of four a.m. with whom I could be delicate. I therefore took the least complicated course of simply making an anonymous call from a pay
phone to Boston Police Headquarters and telling a Sergeant Wisnowski where he could find a hot Cadillac with an interesting passenger. He undoubtedly knew the neighborhood well enough to get someone on it while it still had enough unstripped parts to identify it as a Cadillac.

Mr. D. was half reclined in a desk chair that strained under his square-built, six-foot bulk, fingers locked over his chin, eyes closed—in other words, the position in which he had listened to enough of my bizarre tales over the three years of our association to strain the heart of a lesser man. Fortunately, there was affection in his quiet, almost fatalistic response. “Michael, I repeat myself. How the hell do you get us into these things?”

I assumed that he was referring to the fact that we were now, so to speak, the fragile pin in a grenade that could ignite the most incendiary mob war since the era of Whitey Bulger.

“It's a gift. More to the point, how do we put out the fire? Since the next play seems to be ours, may I make a suggestion?”

“I'm all ears.”

It was nine thirty when we pulled up to the curb outside of the Sacred Heart Church in the heart of what was still an Irish blue-collar section of Charlestown. I wondered if my stomach grumblings were the result of memories of a previous adventure that began in the hushed, candlelit shadows inside that monumental stone sanctuary or anticipation of the meeting that Mr. D. had called into being that morning at my suggestion.

Monsignor Matt Ryan was at the side entrance holding the door. As before, he and Mr. D. greeted each other with the warm embrace of unrelated brothers whose ties began in their early teens. The greetings were jovial, but the air hung heavy with the seriousness of the business at hand.

“He's in my office, Lex. Come in, Michael. We seem to meet under the strangest circumstances.”

I couldn't debate that one. Monsignor Ryan led us in silence through the empty body of the church behind the altar to his office.
A much smaller man of roughly the same age as Mr. Devlin and the monsignor rose from his seat with a smile and two open arms that received Mr. D. in an embrace that also bespoke decades of brother-like ties. In spite of the hour, Monsignor Ryan brought three glasses of red wine to sanctify the rekindling of the brotherhood, and one for the young interloper who had called them together.