Shallow Graves - Jeremiah Healy (35 page)

Danucci looked over at me, both hands cupping the
chalice. "That word, far-far, I never heard it before. Then I
say, 'We gotta talk, Tina.' And she goes, 'I'm gonna do my talking to
everybody who'll listen.' And I say, 'After all I done for you? After
all I give you, this is what I get?' And she runs away from me into
the bedroom. I start after her, but she's already back, throwing the
necklace, my Amatina's necklace, at me. I go to catch it, she's
bumping me, pushing me out to her living room and the door, saying,
'Take back your fucking necklace, I'm going to New York, out of your
life, out of this whole life.' I say, 'New York? Tina, what're you
talking about?' But she just says 'Take back your fucking necklace,'
and then starts yelling a whole bunch a things at me, words I didn't
understand. All I know is, I see her face in front of me, all screwed
up, and crazy and I...I. . ."

His hands tightened around the chalice, the knuckles
turning white. "I strangled her. Before I realized what I was
doing, I choked the life out of my own blood."

Very quietly, I said, "Is that when the pendant
broke off the necklace?"

A dismissive wave, then the abrupt nod. "I
suppose. All I know is, I opened my hands and she just fell away from
me. I could feel my heart, I had to sit, think about it. Try to
decide what to do.
 
"Then
there's the Jap, knocking at the door, getting louder, sounding
nervous. I hear him run back down the stairs, and I get up, figure,
go to the bedroom, take some more jewelry, make it look like a B and
E. But I just about get in there, I got some earrings and stuff in my
hand, when I hear a whole crowd at the door, voices yelling and
pounding on the door, and I got to get out. So I jam everything in my
pockets and go through the window. I'm on the fire escape when I hear
the door open and smack against the chain. I go down as fast as I can
but I hear the chain give and somebody running. The second-floor
window's open, so I get in there, try to catch my breath. And I can
hear everybody, I don't know how many it is, running around upstairs,
yelling. So I get to the door, find the little key on my ring, and
slip myself into the hall. And it's quiet enough there, except for
the voices upstairs through the open door. And I go down the stairs
and out. I walk a couple, three blocks before my heart says I gotta
take a cab. So I do, back to like Hanover and Richmond.

"And then," Danucci seemed to deflate a
little. "I walked back here."

I waited for him to recover a bit.

The old man pushed the chalice three inches away, but
Primo wasn't there to take it. "So, you figured it was family,
but it wasn't Mr. Vincent Dani, Esquire. How'd you know it was me?"

"Two things other than the timing. One, the
words Tina used with you she used with other people, always being
careful to ask them first about their backgrounds, to be sure they
wouldn't know what the words meant."

"What they meant?"

"It was her way of dealing with what happened, I
think. One young guy who was interested in her told me he wasn't
exotic enough for her. What he should have said was he wasn't old
enough for her. That's what she did. She saw older men like George
Yulin at the agency, Oz Puriefoy the photographer, and Larry Shinkawa
the ad exec. Maybe she got the idea from Erica Lindqvist, talking
about her family from Sweden. Tina used seanair with Yulin to
describe her first boyfriend, qroot vader as a pet name for Puriefoy,
tutu and far-far with Shinkawa?

Danucci's mouth worked but at first nothing came out.

"Those were . . . Tina yelled those things at
me. What do they mean?"

"In different languages, 'grandfather.' "

The old mobster looked down at the chalice. "Mother
of God."

I gave him a minute. "The other reason I knew it
was you was something that didn't make sense until I knew what those
words meant."

Danucci looked at me squarely. "My Amatina's
necklace."

"I couldn't figure why it didn't just get left
at the scene. Or why it wasn't turning up somewhere, on the street or
in a trash can."

The old man rose slowly. He turned away from me and
shuffled toward the tall china cabinet. Opening the door, he brought
his hands shoulder — high and lifted down the big rosewood box.
Turning back, he carried it to the table like a butler with the
family silver. He opened the lid, reaching in and coming out with the
iolite necklace.

He held it in his hand like a rosary, slowly turning
it so the light from the chandelier could sparkle off the violet
stones. "I couldn't leave my Amatina's necklace behind. For some
fucking cop to scoff up."

"That why you didn't set up somebody else for
the fall?" Danucci spoke more to the necklace than to me. "I
thought about it. Before you came into the picture, I thought about
planting this on one of the people from the modeling thing who knew
her. But then I'd lose my Amatina's necklace to the cops for a long
time, maybe even the rest of my life. 'Evidence,' they'd say, just
wanting to stick it to old Tommy the Temper as much as they could. I
still haven't got back the pendant part there. Cocksuckers.

"Then I thought about suiciding somebody, like
maybe the colored photographer or the Jap. I can get a couple friends
of mine to arrange things with maybe a note. But I couldn't do that
without my friends thinking, 'The fuck is Tommy having me set this
one up for?' "

Danucci tore himself away from the necklace, giving
me a look as empty as a shark to a bleeding fish. "When I
realized that first night how smart you was, I even thought about
having you hit, Mr. Detective." Back to the necklace. "Only
I couldn't do that, either. My Joey, he never woulda thought it was
an accident or some scumbag from another one of your cases. He's got
a lotta heart, my Joey. He woulda known something was queer, that
something got set up by somebody knew how, and he woulda never rested
till he found out the straight skinny."

The ultimate irony. Tommy Danucci, the man who'd
ordered a hundred deaths, not daring to order the hundred and first.
A victim of his own resources.

The old gangster reluctantly laid the necklace on the
linen tablecloth. "So, what's the deal, eh?"

"The deal was that if I found out who killed
Tina, I'd come to you first."

Danucci watched me. "And you done that, so
what's the new deal? What do you want from me?"

"Nothing."

"What's with nothing?"

"You asked me to come here first, I did. That's
it."

"What are you talking about? You can't go to the
cops, you wouldn't live three hours — — "

"
I'm not going to the cops. I'm going to your
daughter-in-law."

"My . . . ? Claudette?"

"Right."

"Why?"

"Because I promised her."

"What?"

"I promised her. If I found out who killed her
daughter, I'd tell her."

Danucci seemed not to breathe. He watched me, canting
his head twice, the spotlight eyes boring into me. "You're
serious, Mr. Detective."

"I am."

"A matter of honor."

"I don't know."

Another moment, then the abrupt nod. He reached back
into the rosewood box with both hands and drew out two long-barreled,
chromed revolvers by the handles. Danucci kept one trained on me
while he flipped the other in his hand, then lofted it down the table
toward me, the linen slowing it as the gun bunched the cloth a foot
from my right hand.

The old man said, "Let's you and me play a
little game of Guts, eh?"

I tried not to look at the weapon, keeping my eyes on
Danucci, figuring that would give me the last warning I'd get. "I
don't think so."

"Why is that?"

"I'm a little unsure of the way mine might be
loaded."

A disappointed scowl. "You're a man of honor,
Mr. Detective. So am I. Don't matter what you think about what
happened between my Tina and me. I wouldn't give you an unloaded
piece."

"I also don't particularly want to be known to
your family as the man who shot you."

"So, maybe that ain't gonna happen, eh? Maybe
Lady Luck, she'll smile on me."

If I'd seen the game of Guts coming, maybe I would
have thought it through, would have seen through it. Instead, when
Tommy Danucci suddenly leveled at my chest, barked "One,"
and pulled the trigger, I reached for the gun in front of me. When he
said "Two," and pulled it again, the snap/ching of the
hammer on an empty chamber made me level the heavy old piece on him.
When "Three" produced flash and bang from his muzzle and a
thump at my lapel, I reflexively fired three times, the way I'd been
taught in the Army. The chrome andiron jumped in my hand and roared
in that room, far louder than the report from his Weapon.

The impact of my slugs lifted Danucci up and back,
into and displacing the throne chair but not knocking it over. He
drew in a huge breath, and I was to him as his lungs let it out.
Behind me, feet thundered on the stairs toward the mahogany front
door.

Tommy the Temper looked up at me and fingered the
little burn mark on my lapel, the blood burbling through the holes in
his shirt. "Before Primo gets in here . . . how's about you put
a real bullet in my gun . . . so I don't look like such a jerk, eh?"

I didn't have anything smart to say back to him. Not
that he could have heard it if I did.
 
 

-29-

THERE WAS NO NEW AGE MUSIC FLOATING THROUGH THE
LINCOLN as we rode south on Route 3.

After he came through the mahogany door, Zuppone had
kept a Beretta automatic pointed at me in Tommy Danucci's dining room
as he made six or seven telephone calls in rapid succession. We
waited about five minutes after the last one before three street
soldiers in varying sizes and uniforms arrived. Primo spent a full
minute kneeling before the body of Tommy Danucci in the throne chair.
Then he checked both of the old chromed pistols. I could see three
more live rounds drop from the gun Danucci had given me, one more
blank from the one he'd fired.

Zuppone shook his head, as if to clear it, then made
another telephone call, not seeming to care about me overhearing it.
Finally, Primo left a soldier named Bootsy with Danucci's body in the
dining room. One of the other two carried the rosewood case, with
both pistols and the necklace, down the stairs to the car. The third
soldier kept something in his coat pocket aimed at me, the only words
spoken being "Give me a reason."

At the Lincoln, Zuppone
got behind the wheel, turning with his Beretta on me as I was shoved
into the back seat, passenger's side. Then the guy with the rosewood
case got in the front passenger's side, putting the case between his
shoes. I was told to lie on the floor of the backseat while my guard
got into the backseat behind Primo and pressed the business end of
his drawn weapon behind my left ear. I stayed there all the way to
Joseph Danucci's house.

* * *

Zuppone left the two soldiers at the car in the
driveway. He marched me in through the kitchen again, the rosewood
case under one arm. Claudette Danucci was coming halfway down the
hall to meet us as Primo pushed me past her and into the den.

Joseph Danucci sat in his desk chair like a heroin
addict badly into the second day off the needle. Vincent Dani stood
when I came into the room. Zuppone tried to close the door behind us,
but Claudette managed to wedge her way into the room. Her husband got
up, his voice a rasp going against the grain.

"Claudette, stay out of this."

"No."

"Goddammit, this is family business!"

"And I am family."

Claudette sat down on the edge of one of the leather
chairs, folding her hands deliberately in her lap.

Joseph Danucci seethed, blinking in a ragged cadence.
Then he seemed to remember me.

"I get a telephone call from Primo, I don't
believe what I hear."

"I heard his side of it. What he said was true."

Danucci sent the words out one at a time, dictating
to a slow scribe. "You killed my father."

"I did."

The color shot upward through his face, every vein
throbbing.

"And you got the gall to admit it? Before his
sons?"

"I want you to hear it. All of it."

"Oh, we're gonna hear it, all right. And then
we're gonna hear you make some other kinds of noises."

"I want you to hear it because I don't want to
be looking over my shoulder the rest of my life."

"Won't be so long you should worry about it."

I said, "Can Primo open the case, show you
what's in it?"

Danucci noticed the object under Zuppone's arm for
the first time. "My mother's jewelry box?"

His attention on the box, Danucci seemed to lose a
little of the rage.

Vincent Dani took advantage of the moment. "Primo,
why don't you put the case on the desk and show us."