Brothers and Bones (13 page)

As I told her all this, she sat shaking her head slightly from side to side. I knew how she felt about what she referred to as my obsession with Jake’s disappearance. I knew she’d be disappointed. That’s why I was so surprised when she said, “You have to find him again, Charlie. You have to get him to tell you what he knows.”

The shock must have shown on my face because she added, “My, God, Charlie, I only wanted you to let all this go because it seemed that you’d never find out what happened to Jake. If there’s any chance the answer is actually out there, you have to find it.
That’s
the way to put your brother to rest. That’s the only way you’ll be able to let him go. An answer, one way or the other, is what you need. I really hope you can find it. And I hope you’re a little more careful from now on looking for it.”

I took her hand and squeezed it. I hadn’t realized how important Jessica’s support would be to me. And it felt so good to finally talk about this with someone.

“I’ll find him, Jess,” I said in a confident voice. “I have to.” I stood up.

“You’re going to look for him right now?”

“Well, actually,” I said, “I’m going to the men’s room. I’ll start looking for him again tomorrow.”

She shook her head, smiling. “I’ll see you back inside.”

FOURTEEN

Back in the ballroom, the evening was in full swing—literally, as the musicians were performing a nice blend of jazz-swing. People were dancing, mingling, drinking, talking, laughing. Jessica twirled through two songs with her proud, beaming father. Michael Kidder threw sweat and elbows as he spun his wife awkwardly around the floor. Jess and I danced to a few songs and I tried to keep my mind off the distractions that had pestered me all night. I wondered if Carmen Siracuse was going to dance with any of his thick-necked toadies.

Looking back, I can’t remember exactly when I started drinking. About an hour and a half after Lippincott’s remarks, I definitely wasn’t drunk, but I’d had one drink too many. Sometimes that’s all it takes to make you do something stupid.

Carmen Siracuse had a cell phone against his ear and a mouthful of chocolate cake when I walked toward his table. His dark eyes twinkled with a touch of amusement when he noticed my approach. I saw that his hair, though still mostly black, had let some gray bleed in around the temples since the last time I’d spoken with him. And while he’d been quite a bit overweight before, he’d gotten himself a good fifty pounds closer to a massive coronary since then. As I neared the big man, his goons eased up onto their feet. A wave of Siracuse’s chubby, pinkie-ringed hand and they all sat back down like obedient, steroid-pumped rottweilers. The big man raised a fat finger, thick as a roll of quarters, signaling me that he’d only be a minute. I waited. I felt like an idiot just standing there. The goons watched me coldly. Finally, Siracuse said into the phone, “Great, thanks for the info,” and snapped the phone shut. He looked up at me.

“Do I know you?” he asked, smiling pleasantly. Chocolate cake was stuck to several of his teeth. I’d forgotten his unusual voice. The story was, he’d bitten off a good-sized piece of his tongue during an alley fight as a teenager. It left him sounding like someone who’d just been given a root canal by a dentist who used far too much Novocain. But he wasn’t too difficult to understand. What
was
a little hard to understand was how, with a mild speech impediment that left him sounding a little like a stroke victim, he could inject the level of menace and authority into his voice necessary to instill respect, fear, awe, and whatever else underlings and enemies must feel so that he could effectively run a criminal empire—especially when he had a habit of smiling as much as he did. Of course, his legendary ruthlessness might have had a lot to do with it.

“I’m surprised you don’t remember me,” I said. The son of a bitch remembered me. I had no doubt. “How often does someone accuse you of murder right to your face?”

“You’d be surprised,” he said. He laughed and his cronies laughed along with him until their boss choked a little on his cake and they all stopped laughing. Siracuse cleared his throat and said, “Remind me.”

“Jake Beckham.”

“I need more.” He waited, smiling that goddamned smile of his. The piece of shit.

“An investigative journalist with the
Boston
Beacon
. You had him killed thirteen years ago, Mr. Siracuse.”

“Call me Uncle Carmen,” he said with his friendly grin.

“No.”

Finally, the smile dropped from his fat face. For a moment I saw the face of Carmen Siracuse that anyone with a shred of sanity didn’t ever want to see. A moment later, that face was replaced by another one, a tired, pained expression, one I’m sure he practiced. “I resent your accusation, Mr. …Beckham, is it? I’m an upstanding citizen. A respected businessman in the Boston community. I’m a patron of the goddamned arts. Spent two thousand bucks tonight on four pieces of undersized, overcooked prime rib.”

“Yeah, you’re a fucking saint,” I said. As I noted, I’d been drinking.

Siracuse’s eyes went cold. His trademark smile had yet to return. His guard dogs tensed. “What the hell happened to your face?” he asked.

“I smashed it in while shaving. Maybe this will jog your memory. I was an Assistant DA. I confronted you in one of your restaurants in the North End. Told you I’d put you away for murder one day.”

Siracuse just smiled at me pleasantly. “Beckham, huh? Didn’t I see you on TV the other day, running out of court? Yeah, you’re prosecuting some organized crime case, right? You say you talked to me years ago?” He turned to the goon seated at his left, a guy with a thin mustache and a fat, dark mole beside his nose, and said, “That the night that little shit of a waiter splashed marinara sauce on my shirt cuff?”

The Mole Man replied, “Yeah, I think so.”

Siracuse laughed. “Whatever happened to that kid?”

“We got him fired.”

“Is that all?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

Siracuse thought for a moment and nodded, concluding, I guess, that splashing a little pasta sauce on the boss’s shirt cuff wasn’t sufficient cause for getting whacked.

“Come to think of it,” he said, “maybe I do remember you from that night. I also remember telling you that you were full of shit. I never killed anybody.” He crammed a giant bite of cake into his mouth and said, “As you said, I’m a fucking saint.” He grinned broadly.

I felt a tug on my sleeve and figured Jessica had found me and was trying, far too late, to stop me from doing something colossally stupid. But when I turned I found Norm Balzer, one of the AUSAs I’d shared a table with, at my elbow. He said to me, very quietly, “Mr. Lippincott strongly suggests that you go back to the table.”

I looked over Balzer’s shoulder and saw Lippincott standing at my table. He looked extraordinarily displeased. Jessica stood beside him, looking equally unhappy and more than a little concerned. Just behind Lippincott I could see the face of Michael Kidder, who stood several inches taller than Lippincott. Kidder merely looked fascinated.

I said to Balzer, “Tell Mr. Lippincott that I’ll be back over there very shortly.”

Balzer stood uncertainly for a moment, looked back at Lippincott, then at me again, then walked back toward our table. I returned my attention to Siracuse.

“That’s right,” he said, snapping his fat fingers, “you’re a big-time federal prosecutor now.”

“I am. On the Organized Crime Strike Force Unit.”

I was hoping his knowing that someone with a personal vendetta against him, someone on the Strike Force Unit—the unit whose sole mission was to prosecute organized-crime figures—would make him a little nervous. I smiled a smile of my own, one intended to send a message, a challenge, to make Siracuse sweat a little. He didn’t appear to sweat, though. He did laugh fairly heartily, almost choking again on the last bite of his cake. As soon as he swallowed it all, he pulled a second plate of cake toward him. He stabbed into it with his fork.

“New sheriff in town, I guess, is that it? That why you came over? To tell me that?”

“Not really. I just wanted you to know that I still believe you’re responsible for my brother’s disappearance.”

“Disappearance?” Siracuse said through a wet paste of chocolate cake. “I thought you said he was murdered. You mean he just disappeared? Hell, for all you know he’s sipping margaritas with the senoritas down in Mexico,” he added, laughing. He pronounced it
Me-hee-ko
.

“You had him killed, Mr. Siracuse, and I’m going to put you away for it.”

Siracuse feigned surprise. “That’s dangerously close to slander, Counselor,” he said. “You want to be careful.” He smiled again. A piece of cake dropped from his bottom lip.

“Thanks for the warning.”

Siracuse bit another mouthful of cake off his fork. He spoke with his face full again, as was apparently a disgusting habit of his. Then again, which of his underlings had the balls to tell him it was impolite? “Not a warning, Mr. Beckham. I wouldn’t presume to send a warning to an Assistant U.S. Attorney. Just some friendly advice.”

He stared at me. I stared back.

“Anything else?” he finally asked pleasantly.

I kept staring at him. He kept staring back. Was there anything else? In truth, I wasn’t sure. I should have left then. In fact, I should have walked away long ago. Hell, I never should have gone over there. But I couldn’t move. Too many sleepless nights. Too long wondering where my brother was. Too many years of aching uncertainty. Also, there was that damn one drink too many that I had had. I wasn’t thinking clearly. I’d been all tough guy when I walked over. That guy vanished as I stood there. When I spoke next, the steely resolve had fled my voice and I hated the voice I was left with.

“Mr. Siracuse, I just want to know what happened to him. I just want to
know
.”

He smiled again, apologetically this time. “You’re asking the wrong guy.”

“I just want to know, that’s all. You tell me and I won’t come after you for it. I just need to know.”

He looked up at me and something changed in his face. I doubt he’d respected me in the slightest before, but that lack of respect hadn’t been as plainly evident as it was at that moment. Then he grinned.

“What? You’re telling me you and your boss over there will stop harassing me? Stop trying to besmirch my good name? Stop planting illegal bugs, all that shit? Not that I’ve done anything wrong, mind you, or that I know a fucking thing about your brother, but you’re saying you’d leave me alone if I told you what you wanted to hear? Good or bad?”

“We never—” I let the sentence die and took a breath. “No, I’m not saying we’ll stop coming after you. You’re the head of an organized crime family and we’re going to take you down for that.” That was why I’d been willing at that moment to let the matter of Jake’s murder drop in exchange for finally knowing, actually
knowing
, what happened to him. I knew we’d eventually convict Siracuse on a host of other charges. I really, really would have liked to put him away for Jake’s murder, but all that truly mattered in the end, I figured, was that my brother’s killer spent the rest of his days behind bars. It didn’t really matter what specific crimes put him there. I just had to
know
. I continued, “Look, I’m just saying that I’ll let the matter of my brother’s murder drop and—”

He cut me off. “Disappearance.”

I took a breath. “You have my word.” I heard a hint of desperation in my voice and loathed myself for it.

“But you plan to indict me for other alleged federal crimes?”

I was silent.

“Racketeering, of course,” he said. “Murder, probably. Conspiracy to commit murder. Illegal gambling, prostitution, dealing narcotics. Crimes like that?”

“Probably.”

“So, with the threat of charges like that clouding my future, charges which, if I was convicted, would put me in prison until I die, you think I’ll sleep better at night because some pesky little pissant of a federal prosecutor tells me he won’t bother charging me with a thirteen-year-old murder where there’s not even a fucking body?” He was smiling from ear to ear now. “Mr. Beckham, forgive me, but I have to laugh.” And he did. He let loose a single, forced guffaw—a bark, really. “Counselor, I don’t know a fucking thing about your fucking brother. And if I did, I’d tell you to go fuck yourself anyway. Got it? Now, will that be all? Can I return to enjoying the festivities which I paid handsomely to partake of?” He’d never stopped smiling at me. It was disturbing that he could say the things he said yet appear so affable at the same time.

The goon with the mole began to rise to his feet. I felt a hand on my elbow. I turned to see Andrew Lippincott at my side.

He said, “Charlie, shouldn’t you return to your table?”

I swallowed hard. Damn that drink that put me over the top, that convinced me to listen to the whispers in my head, the ones telling me that talking to Siracuse wouldn’t be a staggeringly rotten idea.

If Siracuse had been smiling before, suddenly he was beaming. “Mr. Lippincott! The U.S. Attorney himself. At my table. I am truly honored. Nice speech, by the way. I was riveted. If I was the criminal type and was into stealing art, I’d certainly find a new line of work knowing that you’re on the job.”

Lippincott’s grip on my elbow tightened. I turned to see a frightening look on his face. Lippincott, who never looked rattled, who never displayed an emotion he didn’t want others to see, who showed only the face he wanted to show, was gritting his teeth. Someone who didn’t know him might not have even noticed it. But I could see an inner battle raging, several emotions fighting for supremacy. I could tell…Andrew Lippincott felt pure hatred for Carmen Siracuse. The tension at that moment was as thick as hot tar.

Siracuse’s smile faded as he turned to the Mole Man and said, “Geez, you pay a guy a compliment, the least he could do is thank you.” He turned back to Lippincott. “Your employee here was just telling me he’s going to put me in jail. What do you think? That going to happen?”

Lippincott nearly cut off the flow of blood to my lower arm entirely before he finally released his grip on my elbow. He took a breath and something changed. A palpable tension I’d felt building had dissipated. The sounds of the event—talking, laughing, music—sounds which I realized only then had seemed to die away, now returned. Lippincott once again wore the mask he chose to wear.