The Shadow Box (15 page)

Fat Julie, however, was a clear improvement over Queer
Julie, which the kids his age called him before that. Not
that he was queer either. The thing was, a movie came
out,
Carousel,
starring Shirley Jones as Julie Jordan, and
there was a song in it entitled “You're a Queer One,
Julie Jordan.”

Julie Jordan . . . Julie Giordano. Kids pick up on things like that.

His father finally put him to work on the docks so that he could turn that fat back into muscle. He was also to
observe how longshoremen steal so that Rocco, his father,
could more profitably organize their efforts and also build
a loan-sharking operation for purposes of maintaining cash
flow between major cargo heists.

Julie did lose the weight. He also felt called upon to resolve the occasional challenge to his father's authority.
He did so with the aid of the stevedore's box hook that,
for a time, he carried everywhere in the hope that people
would get the message and start calling him Julie the
Hook.

Rocco, his father, thought this was dumb. Julie the Hook
was a very good name for an enforcer but a rotten name
for a loan shark. Loan sharks don't
make
people borrow
money from them and they're scary enough as it is. Why
would anyone want to borrow money from a
Julie the
Hook
when he could go a couple of blocks and get it from
some guy named Willie or Ernie, for example, both of
which are nice friendly names? “It's like,” said old
Rocco, ‘‘if they could get it from a bank, they wouldn't go to one named First Foreclosure Savings and Loan.”

The name never caught on in any case. While certainly dangerous if provoked, he was, on the whole, simply too
good-natured to sustain such a handle.

His brother, Johnny G., sat on the left. Johnny G. was
ten years younger, closer to Michael in age and build, and,
in fact, had been Michael's friend since high school.
Johnny G. favored dark Italian suits and subtle neckties.
He could have passed for an attorney. Between them was
a nervous, dark-skinned man in a soiled windbreaker who
kept his eyes on the table. For an instant, Doyle thought
they had brought the Pakistani with them. But this one
wasn't bald.

“Meet Mohammed Yahya,” said the younger Giordano,
rising to shake hands. “Born in Pakistan, runs a crane for
us down the docks, deals pills on the side.”

Fat Julie raised a finger as if to say,
That last part
will keep
.

“Past couple of days,” said the elder Giordano, “he's been our interpreter. We're all done with the other guy.”

Doyle grimaced. This statement, if it meant what he
thought it meant, had just made him an accessory to mur
der. “You're sure this table's clean?” he asked.

“Place gets swept twice a week.”

The lawyer was less than reassured. He looked up at
the ceiling, which was decorated with fish nets and colored
glass floats, any one of which could hide a surveillance
camera.
.

“Trust me,” Fat Julie said impatiently. “Except don't say nothing near the bar.”

Doyle glanced in that direction. There were two bartend
ers working it, one in his twenties, the other about fifty.
They wore red jackets.

“Don't gawk either.” Fat Julie rapped the table to get Doyle's attention. “Kid on the left? He's wearing a wire.”

Doyle sighed audibly. He brought his hand to that side
of his mouth.

“The one you're ‘done with,’ ” he said quietly, “what's
his name, again?”

“Mohammed Mizda. Half of Pakistan is named
Mohammed.”

“Tell me that Mohammed Mizda is still among us.”

Fat Julie understood. “You asked Hennessy for a sheet
on the guy. You don't want him all of a sudden floating
past Hennessy's window. Relax. He's on ice.”

That phrase covered many possibilities. Doyle chose not
to try to narrow them. He pulled up a chair and sat.

“We needed Yahya, here,” said Fat Julie, “because the other guy knows about six words of English. One of them
is heroin, by the way.”

“I'm listening.”

The younger Giordano produced a notebook. Fat Julie
made a face that showed mild displeasure. He did not approve of writing things down but Johnny G. had gone
on to college, graduated from Villanova with a degree in
business, and knew the value of taking good notes. Some
of them,
Doyle saw, were in English. These were neat and bold. Johnny's writing. The others were scrawled in
a different hand and in a language that Doyle presumed
to be Pakistani.

“It's called Urdu.” Fat Julie had followed his eyes.
“Johnny knew that from crossword puzzles.”

Fat Julie was proud of his educated brother.

Johnny G. cocked his head toward the notebook. “I'll
tell you . . .” He took a breath. “This has been one hell
of a learning experience.” His expression said that he was
only just beginning to believe some of it himself.
“Mizda—the guy we interviewed?—started off as a
smuggler.”

“You're gonna love this,” said Fat Julie.

“Guy's whole clan were smugglers. I mean, it's like a
caste thing. You could go back a thousand years and you
wouldn't find one who ever did anything else.”

Fat Julie made a series of circles with his finger. The
gesture said skip to fast-forward. Johnny G. made a face
but complied.

“What they'd do lately,” he said, “they'd bring this
chemical out of India on the backs of camels. They'd haul
drums of it over deserts, mountains—whatever they got
there—to drug factories in Pakistan, Afghanistan, even all
the way down to Myanmar.”

“That used to be Burma,” added Fat Julie helpfully.

“U
m
. . .” Doyle raised a hand. “Could we start at
the top? Mizda and the Jamaican attacked Michael. Was
that a hit or not?”

“Oh, yeah,” Johnny G. answered as if that had been
obvious.

“Who ordered it?”

“Guy named Parker. Runs that security service where
both those guys work. All Parker told them was that Mi
chael's a spy who could get them deported and they should make it look like a street crime. He said they had two, sometimes three teams out trying to catch Michael alone.
They started using teams because they blew two chances
already just sending one guy.”

“One blown chance was the subway incident?”

“And before that, the Korean's. That was them too.”

Doyle drew a deep breath. He let it out slowly. Until now, he'd been unwilling to believe that the convenience
store killing was anything more than a botched random
stickup.

“He volunteered all this? He mentioned Bronwyn's murder with no prompting from you?”

Johnny G. stared. “We know how to do this, Mr.
Doyle.”

“My apologies.”

“You ready to hear about the camels?”

Doyle was rubbing his eyes. He tossed a hand as if to
say that at this moment, he had scant interest in any sub
ject but the attempt to murder the last remaining Fallon.

“You want to hear it,” said the younger Giordano. “You really do.”

“Let's get some drinks first,” said Fat Julie.

Young Johnny Giordano had always been bright. His
father, now dead, would carry copies of his report cards
and read off his grades to anyone who would listen. If old Rocco were here now, thought Doyle, he would probably
read them aloud to that wired bartender just to get them
into the record. Fat Julie might do the same thing.

A big difference, however, is that old Rocco Giordano
would then break the man's head. At one time Fat Julie
might have done so as well but that was before Johnny
G. came of age. Through Johnny G., he became more
circumspect. A bug, once discovered, is better left in place.
They should look for ways to use it. There is no better
way to drop a dime on a rival or to discredit a bothersome
judge than to be overheard talking about them.

Doyle had seen all the report cards. He had even at
tended Johnny G.'s graduation and had noted some of the
more enlightened business practices that he had subse
quently brought to the family business. Loan-sharking, for
example, was now computerized. During the course of this
luncheon, however, the lawyer would develop a whole
new appreciation of the younger Giordano. He showed a
mind that was both inquisitive and patient. Far more pa
tient than his brother would have been. The interrogation
of Mohammed Mizda had been thorough.

The camel story was this. Mizda, along with most of
the men of his clan, would deliver drums of a chemical
called acetic anhydride to the drug factories over the border.
Acetic anhydride is essential to the production of heroin.
The camels would come back loaded down with high-
grade heroin, automatic weapons, gold and silver. Most of the Golden Triangle dealers were now moving their heroin
in this fashion, which is to say through India, because of
increased pressure from local and Western drug enforce
ment agencies.

Johnny G. thumbed forward through several pages of
notes. He found what he was looking for.