Killer Smile (32 page)

“Really?” The one thing about Philly that Mary hadn’t known. It was a whole new world down here. She kept looking at the fishing rods. “Why do you have so many rods? You switch ’em around when you fish?”

“No, there’s rod holders. The rods go in there when we drop anchor.” Jackmann pointed to the chrome cups ringing the boat as he brought Mary the fishing rod, which was heavy as hell, with a cork handle and a very wiggly top. She took it, feeling vaguely like those guys who spin plates. Jackmann said, “Gio used to sell sandwiches, drinks, cigarettes, sodas. He charged too much for the smokes, which he boosted anyway.”

Gio
. “Did you know anyone named Amadeo Brandolini, from when you worked on the docks? He was older than you or Gio, by about twenty years.”

Jackmann thought a minute, going back and sliding out the next rod. “No. Italian?”

“Yes, an immigrant. He didn’t speak much English. He had a wife and son.”

“Don’t know him.” Jackmann handed Mary the second rod, and she took it, discouraged.

Damn!
It was a dry hole. Jackmann didn’t know Amadeo. She set the rod down on the dock with the other one. “You sure? Did you fish in those days? In the late thirties, early forties?”

“Yep. Always did. Born on the water.”

“Amadeo Brandolini was a fisherman, too.”

“You’re a lawyer, right?”

“I didn’t know it showed.”

Jackmann laughed thickly as he handed her the third rod, and Mary set it down, distracted. She couldn’t just give up. It was her last lead.

“But Amadeo started a small fishing business. I don’t know where exactly he fished, since it’s all built up now, but I think it was right off the port.”

“There were plenty of places to fish, then. Still are.”

“Right on the Delaware?”

“Then, sure. Myself, I always fished in the bay, downriver.” Jackmann retrieved the fourth rod, brought it to the back of the boat, and handed it to Mary. “The river takes you to the C & D canal, then down to the Chesapeake. But in the bay, you can get weakies, tons a weakies, now that they’re back.”

“Weakies?”

“Weakfish, like a sea trout. No pin bones, my wife grills them.” Jackmann nodded. “I used to know a contractor, his father bought a house on the weakies he sold. There’s stripers in the rips, too. It’s the current from the ocean, and plenty of guys fish in the rocks, for tog.”

Stripers? Rips? Tog? Okay, whatever.
Mary set the rod down. “But what about the port? Could you fish off the port? Did people do that, before the war?”

“Sure. Then, you could fish right off the port. Lots of Italians from South Philly did that right off of Washington Avenue. I didn’t know any of those guys. I was a college boy.”

“But Saracone knew Amadeo. I’m thinking they knew each other from fishing together, or the lunch truck.”

Jackmann snorted. “Had to be the truck. Gio didn’t fish.”

Mary blinked. “I saw a stuffed fish on the wall, in his den. It was big.”

“Then he bought it.”

Mary felt sure, now. Jackmann had the ring of authority. “Gio owned boats, though. Fishing boats.”

“Sure. Boats weren’t about fishing, for a guy like him. Boats were about showing off. The kinda boats he had anyway. Gio loved boats. He collected boats. Sold ’em used, kept buyin’ more, until the end when he got sick.” Jackmann closed the lid of the box, with a heavy
slam
. “His last boat was a Bertram 60. A sixty-footer. Staterooms, master bedroom, unbelievable. Beautiful yacht. The
Bella Melania.”

“You went out with him on the boat?”

“Sure.”

“You fished, he watched?”

“I fished, he drank my Bud.”

Mary was trying to piece it together. “You think Saracone and Amadeo could have met because of the lunch truck?”

“Who’s Amadeo?”

“Brandolini.”

“Possible.” Jackmann paused on the deck, resting a hand on his back and stretching it back and forth. “Gio went all along the river with the truck, and he spoke English and Italian. He was the friendly type, always with a big smile. So it’s possible he got to know your friend, Brandolini, that way.”

Mary considered it. It would explain a lot. How they knew each other even though Saracone didn’t fish. She was trying not to be completely discouraged, but she didn’t know much more than when she came. Jackmann stepped down, knelt on the deck, and opened a small hatch in the middle of the boat as Mary watched him, hating life. Then she blinked. The hatch was round and thick, about eight inches in diameter. Where had she seen that before? All of a sudden, she realized.

Amadeo’s drawings. The circles on the papers in his wallet.
Mary couldn’t believe her eyes. She had forgotten about them. She pointed at the hatch. “What is that?”

“What’s what?”

“That hatch!”
It was Amadeo’s drawing, come to life! Or at least, to plastic!
Mary jumped into the boat, which rocked in response, and scrambled to kneel down on the deck over the hatch. Just like on the drawings, there was even a small steel catch on the side. Mary pressed it in and out. “Is this a hatch? What does it do?”

“It’s a type of hatch. It’s an inspection port. The fuel gauge is underneath.”

“And the spring?” Mary pushed the catch in and out, and it sprang back each time. “This is a lock. It’s automatic, this mechanism.”

“Yeah. Keeps it watertight. Now I gotta go, hon.”

“One minute.” Mary closed the lid of the hatch and read the outside. Embossed on the top in plastic were two letters: GO. GO?
Go?

“That’s Gio’s hatch.”

“
What?”
Mary raised her eyes slowly, as it dawned on her. “
Gio’s
hatch?”

“He named it after himself. Get it? GO.”

“What do you mean by ‘Gio’s hatch’?”

“Gio invented it, the lucky bastard. Got a patent on it.” Jackmann bent over and closed the hatch. “There’s no patent anymore, it’s just the brand name, GO. But it’s the top of the line in that type of hatch.”

“Saracone
invented
it?” Mary repeated in disbelief.

“Yeh. It’s used on fishing boats, then got picked up for commercial boats of all kinds. It was the first to have the automatic closer. It was such an innovation, Gio was able to sell licenses on the patent and get a grant back on each one, giving him the royalties and the credit on the ap. Helluva businessman, Gio was.” Jackmann clucked. “I don’t think he worked a day in his life after that thing got patented, way back in —”

“1942?”

“Right.”

“He
patented
it.” Mary came fully up to speed, flashing on the laundry line in Amadeo’s backyard. It was practical, useful, ingenious. An
invention
. Amadeo was the mechanical one and he was the fisherman, too. He had three fishing boats when Saracone was driving a lunch truck. In one blinding moment, it all fell into place. Amadeo had invented this hatch, and Saracone had strangled him for it, under a lonely tree in Montana, in the midst of a world war.

“Yeah.” Jackmann shook his head. “I never woulda thought Gio was the mechanical type, but there you have it. Probably made fifty mil off that thing.”

“
Fifty million dollars?
”

“Easy, and Justin told me at the funeral that now that his father’s gone, he’s gonna sell the whole shebang to Reinhardt.”

“What do you mean?”

“Reinhardt’s the second biggest hatch maker. The competition. Justin told me he’s selling the trademark, the rights, and all. Next week. They’ll put the GO hatch out under the Reinhardt trademark, for a boatload of dough. It’s one big payday for the kid.”

Not if I can help it
. Finally, Mary had figured out why Saracone had committed murder.

Now all she had to figure out was what to do about it.

And go do it.

Right now.

Mary was back in her semi-repaired war room at Rosato & Associates, where it had all started, typing furiously online. She had practically run here from the marina and hit the office on fire. She still couldn’t believe it. She had figured it out. She had Saracone. She would bring him to justice. She would set it right. For Amadeo. It was after hours, and the office was empty. The glass window behind her was black and opaque, and the conference room reeked of stale coffee. Mary had already called in reinforcements, but for now the only sound was the clacking of her keyboard.

The website of the United States Patent and Trademark Office came onto her laptop screen, and she clicked to Search Patents, where she was stumped. The search for issued patents by keyword went back only to 1976. The GO hatch would have been patented in 1942 or thereabouts.
Damn
. Mary had learned enough about patents in law school to know that they were frequently altered and improved, in some cases to extend their life past the permissible term of seventeen years. She moved the mouse and in the box, typed: “Saracone” in “all fields” AND “hatch” in “all fields.” Onto the screen popped:

Bingo!
The screen showed twenty-four listings, which set forth the patent number, the title, and a short description of the patent. She skimmed the first four, but none of them seemed to have anything to do with hatches. Still it looked like Saracone had been busy, if it was the same Saracone. Mary clicked the first listing and started reading. It was a patent issued to Giovanni Saracone just last year, for a larger hatch than the one on the boat deck, and one that had the same configuration as the one on the boat deck. And according to the site, the GO hatch was used on bunkers in disaster areas.

She clicked the next patent, also issued to Giovanni Saracone, the year before. It was a patent for the same hatch, now issued to keep light out of certain industrial applications, such as commercial darkrooms. She read on, clicking each one, and in time discovered the myriad applications of the original patent: pressure relief hatches, vehicle sunroofs, telescopic winch drives, whatever that was, and underground shelters. She thought a minute. Saracone didn’t manufacture any of these things — or indeed anything at all — which meant that he had to have sold licenses for all of these doohickeys to others to manufacture.

Mary could barely wrap her mind around it. There had to be hundreds of licenses, each requiring the license holder to pay money to the Saracones for the use of the invention. It was the key she had been looking for. No wonder they were rich as sin. Licenses for these applications — in addition to the marine applications from the earlier patent — would bring in millions and millions of dollars. First to Giovanni Saracone, then to Justin.

For doing absolutely nothing.

Then she made another connection. Saracone hadn’t filed the original patent application on his own; he couldn’t have. Mary was willing to bet that it had been prepared and filed by Joe Giorno. They had been in it together, from the beginning. That was why Giorno made Amadeo the gift of the house on Nutt Street and later went to Missoula to tell him about his wife’s death. Giorno and Saracone were pretending to be his friends, cultivating him for the invention. They were smiling, all the while they buried a knife in his back. Then Amadeo’s son Tony had died, both ordering and funding the lawsuit by his will. Frank Cavuto must have taken over for Giorno, and when Mary started to expand her investigation into Amadeo’s death and close in on the truth, Frank must have panicked, and they’d killed him.

The scope of the scheme took Mary’s breath away. No wonder that Giovanni, stricken with guilt, had sat up on his very deathbed at seeing her, an avenging angel. He had carried that terrible secret his whole life — murdered his friend for his inventiveness, for his creativity, and stolen it to further his own ends. And Justin had to know that his father hadn’t invented a deck hatch, or anything else over the years. What had Justin said, before he hit her?

Mind your own business.

Mary clicked to the oldest patent on the screen, in 1976. At the end, it contained a reference to the original patent and its patent number. She clicked the blue link and held her breath. A patent, with a series number in the two millions, appeared on the screen:

UNITED STATES PATENT OFFICE, it read in the center, and underneath, the title of the patent was
Hatch Frame and Hatch Cover,
next to the name of the inventor:
Giovanni Saracone.

Mary felt her breath catch. She had been right. Saracone had killed Amadeo for his invention, then patented it. She had it in front of her and she still couldn’t believe it. She felt tears come, with anger and with relief. She had been right, which was amazing, because she was never right about anything.

Her gaze fell on the first line under the title:

Application: July
27
,
1942
.

Mary blinked. Why did that sound familiar? Then she knew. She searched through the file on the conference table and found the accordion of the documents and notes she’d brought from Missoula. She pulled out the death certificate and double-checked the line:

Date of Death: July 17, 1942.

My God.
Saracone had killed Amadeo and only ten days later had told Giorno to file the application for the patent in his name. A patent application was so technical, it would take months to draft, and they probably had to engage a patent lawyer, at least as a consultant. Saracone and Giorno had to have been planning this for a long time, maybe years. Then World War II and the internment intervened, which Saracone exploited to his advantage. He used the camp as the perfect opportunity to get away with murder.

Mary’s eyes blurred with bitterness, then she refocused on the first lines of the patent description:
“My invention, which in general, relates to the closures has been devised as a deck hatch….”

His
invention? She read the rest with a growing fury. Saracone had stolen the invention, every word, and claimed it for himself. She read to the end and clicked onto the exhibits, which were two technical drawings. They were Amadeo’s circles, with the funny closing on the side. Now she knew it was a special type of closing, so original and practical that it was patentable. And Saracone had exploited the patent and its many applications, from shelters to telescopes. It was ingenious, and evil. And at the bottom right of the second page of the drawings, Mary’s supposition about the lawyering was confirmed by the signature: