Hardware (28 page)

“Do you remember the Gianelli family?”

“Them.”

“You do?”

“Like asking the Sisters in Brookline if they remember the Kennedys,” she said scornfully. “You won't stump me on that one.”

“The youngest boy.”

“Quite a bright child. Mischievous, like all of them. We used to call him ‘full of the devil,' but he was not the devil's child. It was a figure of speech. We shouldn't have used it, not here.”

The devil's not a legend, the devil's real
. I couldn't shake Smither's song out of my mind.

“You have a good memory,” I said.

“For some.”

“I'm interested in a friend of the youngest Gianelli boy, a close friend, his best friend.”

She closed her eyes. Nodded her head. Her nose seemed enormously long. “Boys come and go. The years get mixed up. Who played together …” She'd lost her command voice; it had turned into a whimper.

“Did you know a Sister Xavier Marie?”

“In the bosom of her Maker. A finer woman never lived.”

I unfolded Roz's sketch, the last forlorn hope. “This is the man I'm looking for.”

She studied the drawing for some time, holding it close to her face, adjusting the glasses on the bridge of her nose, finally removing them entirely.

“This is not the Gianelli boy,” she said.

“No.”

“It's very like him,” she said.

“Like who? You know him?”

“Like the father, not the child. But so many of the children came to look like the old man.”

“Who?” I repeated.

“If he was at school with the littlest Gianelli boy it would have been Joey Junior. Joseph Frascatti.”

“Frascatti,” I repeated.

“You can see how it might have been,” the sister said. “
F
and
G
. Alphabetical order. They would have been required to sit near each other, and though their fathers would have hated it, I'm sure, they were fast friends from the start. The little Gianelli boy, the little Frascatti boy. Yes. Yes.”

The two rival families.

“Is there anything in particular you remember about Joey Frascatti?”

“What sort of thing?”

“Was he good at math, good with numbers? Interested in theater?”

“What does it matter now?” Sister Claveria said fretfully. “He could have been a fine student, but he was full of rebellion. He had a brilliant mind, a defiant mind. He caused mischief.” The old woman stopped, seemingly lost in thought.

“What kind of mischief?” I prompted gently.

“I'll tell you the one thing in particular I remember about Joey Frascatti,” she said. “I remember his funeral.”

“His funeral.”

“I'm sorry if you didn't know,” the old nun said in her dry voice. “He was killed in that dreadful war.”

“The war.” I wanted to tell her she was mistaken. I wanted to stop parroting her words.

“Vietnam.” She drew in a shallow breath, coughed, held up a hand to stop me from coming closer, trying to help her sit more comfortably amid the pillows.

“So many lovely boys, gone,” she said. “Sometimes I think I've lived too long …” She searched for my name, settled for “my dear.” “Too long,” she repeated. “I pray each night that God will take this old soul.”

She seemed to be sleeping when I left. Her breathing was regular. I didn't close her door or extinguish her light.

THIRTY-FIVE

Good thing the North End is safe nights. I wouldn't have noticed a band of roving muggers till they'd reached in my waistband and stolen my gun. I drove home with the extraordinary care of the drunkard.

Joseph Frascatti.

Joey Fresh.

So this was progress. I knew who “Frank” was. I could find his last known address, his real Social Security number, his true credit history. Track him right up till the time he died.

When? Vietnam. Vietnam. I'd been in grade school throughout most of the turmoil, shielded by spelling bees and Friday-night pizza parties. My mother had railed against the Imperialist War. My mother had railed against everything. This was another capitalist plot, another excuse to march, march, march. I'd probably tagged along, doggedly apolitical. I remembered snatches of songs, chants. “And it's one, two, three, what are we fighting for?” And for Lyndon Johnson: “Waist-deep in the Big Muddy and the big fool says to push on.” I marched. I sang. I got to spend time with my mother. A little time.

Joey Fresh was Joseph Frascatti's street name. Joseph Frascatti, Sr. The only one I'd ever heard of. He'd been outmaneuvering organized-crime task forces since before I was born.

“Frank's” papa.

What now?

I could fly to Washington, meet the elusive woman of Sam's dreams. Run my fingers over the black granite memorial till they rested on the name of Joseph Frascatti, Jr.

I needed to talk to Sam. Sam, with a best friend in a rival Mafia camp. Had his father and brothers known about little Joey Fresh?

I blinked my eyes and yawned, forgot to signal a left turn. What I needed was sleep, a long dreamless solo interlude. A snack; I couldn't remember dinner or lunch.

Roz was out, but she'd scrawled a note. It was highlighted with arrows and stars and hung on the fridge so I'd have no chance to miss it.

I read as I swallowed orange juice. “Went through the G and W files. Seem okay. Please remove the you-know-what.”

The you-know-what being the cash in the tumbling mats. I glanced at the clock. Sure, plenty of time to sew it into homemade pillows with a little fancy embroidery on top so no one would suspect. Maybe I could piece together a patchwork quilt while I was at it.

I found cold cuts, sniffed them suspiciously, wedged them between slices of Swiss cheese. No bread.

I thought I'd try the computer. If Roz hadn't erased Sam's files, they must work with my machinery.

The message light blipped steadily. I punched the button, scrabbled for note paper. I ought to do it the other way around.

“Hello,” said a woman's voice, faintly familiar. “My name is Lauren Heffernan. I'm calling from the District of Columbia. Two oh two, five five five, oh three two three. Sam spoke to me from the hospital. I'll be arriving on the morning shuttle as soon as I can find an available seat. I'll take a cab to your house. If that's a problem, please call.”

I was dialing 202 before she finished, my mind spinning with questions. Coming here? Early? When did the first Washington shuttle arrive? Probably around eight, in time for the government suits to put in a full day's work.

Come on, Lauren. Answer your damn phone.

Five rings. Answering machine.

I hung up.

I slept badly. The alarm buzzed at 7:15. Up early, but I didn't think I'd make volleyball practice.

THIRTY-SIX

By the time a cab disgorged a woman, at 9:31
A
.
M
., I was wired. Three cups of coffee sloshed around the two blueberry muffins I'd downed for breakfast. I flung the door wide as Lauren Heffernan mounted the steps.

She's stocky
, I thought.
She's plain
. With her feet on the same level as mine, she was easily eight inches shorter. She extended a determined hand, flashed a warm and knowing grin. Her blue eyes, clear as a child's, were set in a nest of tiny wrinkles. Sam's age. Older. Comfortably in her forties, with no pretense at anything younger.

Not the siren I'd visualized from her come-hither voice.

“Ms. Heffernan,” I said.

“Call me Lauren, okay? We got stuck in a holding pattern over Logan,” she said. “I thought we'd never land. Carlotta. Good to meet you.”

Please, I begged silently, don't say you've heard so much about me.

“Coffee?” I asked.

“I'm already floating. Bathroom?”

“Through the kitchen. Let me take your coat.”

It was navy wool, serviceable, one button missing, neatly folded Kleenex in the pockets. She'd dumped her large handbag, more briefcase than purse, on a chair. If she'd taken it with her I'd have been curious. Since she left it in full view I was only mildly tempted to rifle it.

The toilet flushed. Water ran. She came back smiling.

“Have you talked to Sam?” she asked.

“They won't put my calls through. He hasn't called me.”

“He bribed somebody to get around hospital rules when he phoned me.”

Could have tried the same with me, I thought.

“He sounded exhausted, but he wanted me to arrange a few things that could only be done through Washington,” she said, as if she'd read my mind.

Have to work on the poker face. She was disarming, this woman. Through Washington, she'd said, not in Washington. Using
Washington
as a synonym for government.

“Who are you?” I asked.

She sucked in a breath. “Can we sit down?”

“No problem,” I said.

Just then Roz staggered down the steps, dressed in something gold and gaudy. Could have been a nightgown. God knows what time she got in last night. I hadn't heard her yowling. Must have taken her mate elsewhere.

“Carlotta,” she said, acknowledging my presence. Her eye makeup was smearier than usual, her lips almost black.

“Roz, this is Lauren. Lauren, okay with you if we talk in the kitchen?”

She didn't stare at Roz, which must have taken a major-league effort.

“If I can change my mind about the coffee,” she said cheerfully.

“Mind waiting for me there? I need to discuss something with my, uh, associate.”

I waited until Lauren was out of sight, lowered my voice.

“Okay,” I said to Roz. “I know you didn't find anything on the diskettes, but that's because you were looking for the wrong things.”

“You know the right ones?”

“I think so.”

She flexed her fingers like a pianist warming up for a Liszt concerto.

“First,” I said, “get me whatever you can on Lauren Heffernan. Eighty-one eighty-two Warren Street Northwest. Washington, D.C.”

She shot a glance toward the kitchen. “I see.”

“I doubt it. Let me have hard copy on Heffernan. Then bring up Sam's G and W files and compare them with the bank statement in the top drawer of the desk.”

“You have Sam's bank statement?”

“I lifted it from his place.”

“Tricky you.”

“Roz?”

“Yeah?”

“Why are you up so early?”

“I got home about half an hour ago,” she said. “I haven't been to sleep yet.”

When I entered the kitchen, Lauren seemed to be pacing the dimensions of the room. While she tucked herself into a cane-back chair and kicked off her low-heeled pumps, I put the kettle on to boil, and found two clean mugs in the drainer. I settled in across the wooden table and waited.

“Who am I?” Lauren Heffernan repeated. “That's what you asked, isn't it? You want to see my driver's license?”

“Not particularly.”

“In this context, I'm Sam's friend. We were together in Vietnam. I was in the army.”

There was an emphasis on “together.” They were “together” during the war. “Honey,” she'd called him. Maybe that was left over from the war as well.

“Joey too?” I asked.

She whistled a low note. “You know more than you're supposed to know.”

“Tell me something I don't know.”

“Like?”

“Start with how Joey died in Vietnam.”

She rested her elbows on the table and lowered her head into her hands. Her chestnut hair was cropped short; it showed streaks of gray. Her index fingers traced circles at her temples. She wore no jewelry, no rings.

Staring at the tabletop, she said, “Why he died makes a better story.”

“Why will do fine. By the way, is your name really Lauren Heffernan? The Veterans' Administration have records on you?”

“Laura McCarthy,” she said, giving me the candid-blue-eye treatment. “Women change their names all the time. Lauren's my given name, but it wasn't popular then, so I used Laura. I've been married twice. Didn't take either time.”

“Men don't change their names that often.”

“You'd be surprised.”

“Surprise me.”

“Coffee?” she asked.

“Almost ready.”

She stared at the kettle as if willing it to boil. It hissed like a steam engine.

Nothing to do but start talking. No distractions.

“Sam didn't have to go to Vietnam,” she said. “Neither did Joey. They were volunteers near the end, when the draft was a true lottery. Didn't wait for their numbers, just enlisted. They saw themselves as a team. That's what I thought at first. I didn't realize what was going on till later.”

“What do you mean, going on?”

A smile crinkled the fine lines around her eyes. “I'm not going to tell you Sam's gay.”

“Well, that would have been a surprise,” I admitted.

“He and Joey were eighteen-year-olds having an adventure, escaping. That's what they thought it was about. They didn't fit in back home, didn't want to become cogs in their fathers' machines. That's why they were such close allies, because they were both sons of big-time crooks. Neither one felt he'd ever be allowed to exist outside his father's shadow.”

She said, “I'm Irish, but not from any fancy neighborhood. My town, they called them gangs, not Mafia or anything. Just gangs.”

“The boys saw the army as a way out,” I prompted.

“Water's boiling,” she said with relief.

“Instant okay?”

“Milk and sugar.”

I fussed with mugs and silverware for two minutes. She didn't start talking again until she'd tasted her drink, spooned in extra sugar.

She said, “I don't know whose idea it was to die. To rig a death. I know they'd both talked about disappearing, going AWOL. Deserting would have been a way to thumb their noses at their families.”