Shallow Graves - Jeremiah Healy (29 page)

Nancy dropped her garment bag to the kitchen floor as
Renfield labored to his feet, doing one flop-over that I thought
seemed faked for her benefit. She ignored me, rushing over to him and
cooing and cuddling the little critter until I thought the thread
from his sutures would burst.

"Nance?"

Over the shoulder she said, "Yes?"

"The vet said to be careful around the
stitches."

"
Poor little guy. If I'd had any idea he'd look
this bad, John, I'd never have gone to the convention."

"He's going to be fine."

Nancy left her cat long enough to come give me a hug,
then wrinkle her nose. "You were right about your shirt."

"It's only on its third day."

"Go."

"I thought you said I wouldn't need any
clothes?"

"Don't worry about whether they match."

"How about if I pick up some Chinese or Thai?"

"Great. You have beer at the condo?"

"Yes."

"Better bring some. I think I'm out."

I said, "You're running a little low on wine,
too."

"Small reward for a man who went so far above
and beyond."

"They're probably making up songs about me to
chant around campfires."

Nancy's eyes suddenly glistened. "John, please
just go for a while, then come back."

I got serious. "Sure."

"I need some time alone with Renfield, and I
know I'm going to cry and I don't want you here again for that."

"Okay. I'll be back around . . . ?"

"Five?"

"Five it is."

Another hug, this one longer despite the condition of
my shirt. "Thank you, John. I mean it."

"I know."

The young black officer in front of the blue police
barricade was smiling, but only barely. He'd just gotten through with
a woman who seemed determined to get detour directions to North
Carolina when I pulled up Berkeley Street to the intersection of
Newbury and asked him what the trouble was. He hitched a thumb toward
the river and said, "Walk for Hunger. Can't cross Commonwealth
for an hour or so."

Behind the barrier I could see a throng of people
moving toward downtown on the Commonwealth Avenue mall. I nodded to
the cop and turned left onto Newbury, lucking out with a metered
space about halfway between Exeter and Fairfield. I left the Prelude
and took Fairfield to Commonwealth, waiting for a lull in the parade
to continue over toward Beacon.

Young men and women in yellow T-shirts and orange
safety vests clapped for the marchers and acted as crossing guards
against occasional cars on the street. Literally hundreds of people
were going by in a steady stream. All ages and colors, many wearing
white painters' hats. Lots of mothers and dads with little kids, most
of them in shorts and athletic shoes but some wearing sweatshirts or
sweaters against the early May air. They ate apples and pears pulled
from small knapsacks, otherwise holding hands.

Most of the marchers had yellow decals, big and
round, with WALK FOR HUNGER and the date on them. Others had small
buttons with the same legend and background. 'Blaster radios and
balloons, wheelchairs and strollers. Some folks were wilting, others
almost goose-stepping with energy.

I went up to one of the crossing guards. She had
sandy hair parted in the center and tied into a ponytail and looked
so collegiate it hurt. I asked her how far the marchers had come.

"
Twenty miles, most of them."

"You're kidding?"

"Uh-unh. Almost forty thousand people this year,
and we hope to raise four million dollars for the homeless and the
hungry, most of it going to Project Bread."

I thought about the last homeless person I'd known, a
guy who had trained me for the marathon. I took out my wallet and
handed her a twenty.

She looked at it and said, "What's that?"

"A donation."

"But I'm not like, authorized or anything."

"I'm not worried about where it'll end up. Take
it."

She did. "Well, thanks. Have a nice day, huh?"

I should have remembered
that the last person to say that to me was one Lieutenant Holt of
Boston Homicide.

* * *

"Cuddy!"

I was about to put my key in the lock of the front
door of the condo building when I heard the voice over the opening of
a car door. Turning around, I saw Primo Zuppone standing at the curb,
the driver's side of his Lincoln still open, one of his hands resting
on top of the window frame. The leather coat lay on the leather seat
behind him.

Zuppone said, "Where the fuck you been?"

I went back to the lock. "Nursing a sick
friend."

His footsteps came across the sidewalk and up the
stoop as I pushed on the door. He put his hand on my arm. I looked
down at the hand, then up to his face, the pockmarks seeming a little
inflamed.

"Cuddy, you gotta understand something."

"First take your hand off my arm."

Zuppone sent out a little breath, but let go of my
arm. With an effort.

"Cuddy, you're supposed to coordinate with me."

"Not the way I remember it. You're supposed to
help me, if I need help."

"Hey-ey-ey," the loose tone back, "don't
you think I gotta know what you're doing, I'm supposed to help you?"

"Primo, look. I've been gone a couple of days —
"

"You're telling me?"

" — and I need a shower and a change of
clothes. Then we can talk."

Primo checked his watch, then looked to his car.
Thinking of the phone in it, I guessed.

"Okay. Say, what, half an hour?"

"Half an hour should do it. Why?"

"
Somebody wants to
talk to you."

* * *

The Lincoln slalomed its way up Beacon, the cars
double-parked on either side of the street, before taking a right
onto the bridge across the Charles River to Cambridge and MIT. There
was a solo guitar coming over the audio system. Around his toothpick
Zuppone said, "Michael Hedges."

"Somebody named Michael Hedges wants to see me?"

"No, no. Michael Hedges is the guy on this tape.
Soothing, ain't it?"

It was. Until I remembered that soothing music like
this was probably the last cultural experience of several people
unfortunate enough to cross Tommy Danucci.

I shook it off. "By the way, I enjoyed that
Mertens cassette you gave me."

"Yeah? Great. He's the best." Zuppone
glanced in his mirrors.

"So, where you been all this time?"

"Like I told you, doing some nursing."

"At the D.A.'s over in Southie?"

Primo could have seen my car parked in front of her
house, but first he'd have to know where Nancy lived, and she had an
unlisted telephone number.

I said evenly, "I hope I don't have to tell you
to stay away from there."

Both hands came innocently off the wheel. "Hey-ey-ey,
I never been near the place. Just called a coupla times, see if maybe
I got you."

The phone calls yesterday. Meaning pretty good
contacts within New England Telephone.

"Primo, can you get me the phone records on
Tina's local calls?"

"What, from her apartment there, you mean?"

"Yes. For the week she was killed."

"I don't know. Documents, they're tougher to get
than just numbers."

"Can you try?"

Zuppone ticktocked his head. "Sure. Sure, I can
try."

"
Thanks."

He gave me another look. "You're still worrying
about your girlfriend. Don't. No way we'd go near a D.A., Cuddy.
They're off limits, you know? The government, it don't hit us like
some fucking Spic death squad, and we don't hit them or their
families, don't even go around there. The Jamaicans, now, or the
Dominicans, I can't speak for those fucking maniacs. They're liable
to do anything to anybody. But us, you got no worries. One of us
clipped a D.A. or a cop on purpose — I don't mean an accident, like
thinking some undercover guy's one of ours, dropping a dime on us —
but one of us clipped a government guy knowing he was government?
Shit, the family'd hand the member over to the cops themselves, no
questions asked."

"You wouldn't be afraid of the guy singing to
get a better plea?"

Zuppone gave me a different look. "Cuddy, we
hand the guy over, he's gonna be dead first."

Of course. Which reminded me. "Where are we
going, Primo?"

"Danucci, he wants to see you."

"Which one?"

"Which one." Zuppone turned onto Memorial
Drive, heading east back toward Boston. "The Mr. Danucci, which
one."

"What about?"

Zuppone debated something, finally deciding to talk
about it. "The fuck is all this shit about keys?"

"
To the second floor in Mau — Tina's
building?"

"All the keys, any keys. What the fuck do we
care about keys, the girl was choked out by some B & E
crackhead?"

"How did you know about the keys, Primo?"

"Way I know about everything. People call me,
talk to me. Like you oughta be talking to me now. What the fuck
difference do keys make here?"

A side of Zuppone he hadn't shown before. Edgy,
finding it harder to slip into the loose mode and stay there.
 
"
Primo, if a burglar didn't do it,
somebody else did. And probably that somebody had to use a key some
way."

"Let's hear why a burglar didn't do it."

"The first-floor tenant, Sinead Fagan, was in
the kitchen just before Tina was killed. Fagan heard water running
through the pipes there from Tina's shower."

"So what?"

"A burglar has to go up the fire escape to get
in as well as down it to get out."

Zuppone nodded a few times, then turned the car onto
the Longfellow Bridge back across the river. "And this Sinead,
she'd see somebody going up the fire escape next to her window."

I tried not to hesitate. "You can picture it?"

"Sure I can picture it. The fire escape runs
right past her kitchen there."

"Okay. Either Fagan or her boyfriend — "

"
This the colored guy?"

"I understand you've met."

The toothpick rotated clockwise. "You could say
that, yeah."

"So either Fagan or Puriefoy can spot somebody
going up the escape. They could hear that first flight come down,
too, because it makes a hell of a racket and the kitchen window was
open. That leaves us with how the killer got into the building"

Zuppone looked down at his dashboard. "What
about the back door to the building?"

"
Can't be opened from the outside, and Ooch said
he always kept it bolted from the inside."

Primo checked his mirrors. "So, maybe the guy
got buzzed in the front door."

"Not by Fagan. And probably not by Tina either,
she just stepped out of the shower."

"
She's expecting her new boyfriend, though,
right?"

This time I did hesitate. "You've been getting a
lot of phone calls."

"Like I said, people talk to me. So somebody
rings Tina's bell, she thinks it's the Jap, she buzzes him in."

"Only you can hear both the bell and the buzzer
inside Fagan's apartment"

"From Tina's, two floors up there?"

"Yes. And Fagan and Puriefoy never heard bell or
buzzer till Larry Shinkawa arrived, and they let him in."

Zuppone passed up a street that would have taken us
more directly to Tommy Danucci's house in the North End. "What
you're saying is, somebody had to have a key to get in the front door
of the building"

"I think so."

"And a key to get into Tina's apartment?"

"Not necessarily."

"
The fuck does that mean?"

"
She — Tina — could have let whoever it was
in her door, once she was out of the shower."

"What, she hears a knock at the door and just
opens up?"

"She knew she was late to the party downstairs
and figures it's just one of them coming up to find out what's taking
her so long."

Zuppone rolled the pick again. "Possible."

"Also, anybody who has a key to the building
door is probably somebody she'd recognize anyway."

The pick stopped. "She wasn't supposed to give
out none of those keys to anybody."

"And I don't know that she did."

Zuppone hit the brakes, the Lincoln slewing into a
loading zone. He slammed the gearshift into park, not bothering with
the parking brake. Tearing the toothpick out of his mouth and
breaking it between two fingers, he turned to me violently.