Hardware (34 page)

“Is this about money, Mitch?” I asked. “Or is this about hate? Jealousy? You've known cash was leaking out of G and W for months. You hung the bugs hoping to catch Sam on tape, saying things so damning Papa would have backed you up, applauded your gumption.”

“Sam's a friggin' traitor; he travels to Washington every other day. Rats on us to some Senate subcommittee. Talks to Joey Fresh, visits the old creep in jail.”

“If he'd said one word about the Senate on tape, you'd have had him cold. He didn't. So you tried to work a scam that couldn't come back at you, so Papa'd never know that you'd had Sam killed. Lucky Zach blew himself up and died when he did. His type, he'd have bled you for years.”

Lauren said, “Wait—”

My voice rolled over hers. “I guess you wouldn't want to go to Papa, Mitch. With nothing but computer disks for evidence. I mean, he knows you're good with numbers, but how's he going to react, you figure? Sam's the baby boy. Papa loves Sammy. Papa always loved Sam. Wore out the knees on his pants praying when Sam was in Vietnam, right? Sure, the old man wishes Sam were in the business, but Papa's proud of Sam, proud that one of his sons is making it on his own. Maybe he's gonna decide Sam's more valuable than you, Mitch. What exactly is it do you do for the family? You the brains of the outfit?”

He slapped me across the face. I sucked in my breath. Lauren screamed.

The scream wasn't for me, wasn't for the welt raised when Mitch's heavy ring scratched my cheek. It was for the revolver that suddenly appeared in Harry's hand. Lauren must have thought he was going to fire at her. Then, when he strode across the living room, at me. I flinched, didn't turn away.

Harry with the tenor voice, Mitch's companion and accomplice, placed the barrel of the revolver in Mitch's right ear. It was a small gun, a .22. I thought I recognized it from the drawer on Hanover Street. Taurus. Nine-shot cylinder.

“Harry. What?” Mitch's voice cracked. He dropped my .38 to the floor with a clatter.

“From your father,” the man said in his high-pitched voice. “He told me, wait till you admitted it, in front of witnesses, that you tried to kill your brother.”

“Come on, Harry. Put the fucker down. Sam's fine. He's okay. Come on—”

Harry kept talking. “Your dad told me tell you this, Mitch, at the end. The last thing you're gonna hear: he said tell you he only had three sons.”

The .22 hardly made more than a pop, the sound of a champagne cork. Mitch slumped to the floor.

Up till then, I thought the rest of us had a chance. Now the game had changed. Harry had no incentive to leave live witnesses.

I yanked the .40 from my waistband, released the safety.

“Scatter!” I yelled, throwing myself to the ground. Roz chinned herself on the big goon's arm, bit, kicked, and dropped, rolled behind a chair, screaming at the top of her lungs. Lauren found the strength to propel herself into the dining room. Harry, staring sadly at the floor, like a guy who'd had to put down his favorite dog, didn't react quickly enough. I fired and kept firing to let them know this was not going to be some easy mop-up job.

A puff of hot air passed my left ear. It had a sobering effect.

Lying flat on the ground, arms propped on elbows, my left hand steadying the unfamiliar .40, I stopped fooling around, sighted and aimed. Harry went down.

I dived past him, rolled behind my desk, hitting the floor with elbows and knees, keeping the gun protected. Behind me, over my head, shots pounded the computer. The screen imploded with a boom, shattering into a hundred shards. The machinery sparked, hissing like a nest of snakes.

I heard sirens. Welcome, blessed sirens.

I stopped shooting. The remaining gunman staggered out the door.

“When they question you,” I yelled at Lauren, my voice too harsh, too loud. “Shut up. Just shut up. You're a friend who came to visit. You don't know anything except what you saw tonight and you're not clear on that. Nothing,
nothing
about Joey! Roz, you okay?”

Silence.

“Roz!”

“Fucker ripped some of my hair out,” she whimpered softly.

I breathed again.

“Run upstairs and tell Joey to keep it zipped.”

“Why? Shit. Yes.”

“Hurry back down.”

I refused to speak to a cop till Mooney came.

FORTY-FOUR

By the time we released him, Joey Frascatti was all too ready to leave his closet. After hours of police interrogation—separate, en masse, in Cambridge, in Boston—none of us smelled like a spring breeze, but Joey took the honors.

Blinking in bright light, he seemed most horrified by the destruction of the computer. Its smoldering ruins bothered him a lot more than the stinking closet or the taped outline on the dark floorboards where Mitch Gianelli had bled away his life. Joey didn't grieve over my smashed knickknacks and broken windows. The bullet holes that admitted gusts of icy wind didn't faze him.

He took the cash, stuffed in a knapsack and a pillowcase. He promised not to write.

“Fuck him,” Lauren said after he'd left. Then she sat on the sofa and began a serious crying jag. As I tacked plywood, I recalled my first view of “Frank's” tripledecker, with cardboard taped over the windows to shut out the light.

“Lauren could have been in love with Joey all these years,” Keith said later, in bed. “After things went sour between her and Sam, she could have fixated on Joey, imagined him as the unattainable Mr. Right.”

My head rested on his shoulder. His arm encircled me, fingertips massaging the nape of my neck. We were at his place. Crime-scene tape blocked the door to my house.

“I hope not,” I muttered. “A world-class jerk.”

“Turned out to be a world-class jerk. Must have been different once, to make two people care enough to give him a new life. Not many people get that, a brand-new life.”

“Fucked up twice,” I said.

“Which is probably what we'd all do, screw up over again.”

“You're full of cheer.”

“More than I can say for you.”

“I'm not looking forward to my next assignment,” I said.

“Oh,” Keith responded in his noncommittal way. I could see why patients would accept the gambit, reveal their secrets.

Not me, I thought. I don't need a shrink, thank you, just a warm body to help me through the night.

I have legit P.I. work. Leaving tomorrow, traveling to Traverse City, Michigan, to explain to a family how their son and brother died some twenty years ago. Quickly. In the dark. On a muddy path leading to a numbered hill. I'm leaving my new gun at home; airport security doesn't like them. I shouldn't need one for this case.

Mooney says it's a good time to leave town.

I've warned Lauren and Sam that I'm planning to tell the truth, the unvarnished truth as I've heard it. I wasn't there. If Floyd Markham's family wants to kick up a fuss, so be it. Sam sets great store by their Catholicism, says they probably accept and believe that their boy is in the arms of the Lord. If your martyred son resides in eternal paradise, it won't matter where his earthly remains are buried. Sam's counting on that.

I visited Joey Frascatti's tomb. I can describe the grassy slope, the dogwood trees, the vault, the Carrara marble angel that stands guard over their son. I hope the Markham clan won't ask me to.

If they want proof, if the Markhams need the certainty of closure, if they demand to exhume the remains buried as Joseph Frascatti Junior, that's up to them. It's their call.

Sam and Lauren are paying me well to take this trip, to face the mistake they made long ago. Sam even offered to buy me a new computer. I accepted. Nothing fancy. This time I'm planning to go legit, link up to a specialized network for private eyes, Investigators' Online Network or the PI SIG on CompuServe, whichever's cheapest.

If there's going to be an information superhighway out there, I'll be the one tooling along in a rusting pickup truck.

FORTY-FIVE

Two and a half weeks after Marvin's funeral, I picked up Gloria at Mass. General. She wanted to go for a ride in her van. Her doctors didn't object; they thought it might do her good. She wasn't eating. Not that the docs were against a judicious diet, but she wasn't eating, period. The skin on her upper arms was starting to hang loose. Her cheeks looked like withered apples.

I wasn't surprised when she asked to stop at Green & White.

I wheeled her close to the wreckage. The ramp leading to the back room's entry was melted and twisted into a tortured metal sculpture. Signs declared the building unsafe for habitation. The doors were boarded shut.

“Not much to see,” I hazarded.

“Miracle they saved the buildings on either side,” she muttered.

“The fire department did a hell of a job,” I said.

Gloria inhaled a deep breath of motor-exhaust-filled air. “I'm gonna rebuild,” she said.

I closed my eyes and swallowed hard. It was the first positive thing I'd heard her say since the disaster, unless you counted the
amens
at Marvin's funeral.…

She'd arrived and departed by ambulance. Flat on a gurney during the service, flanked by Leroy and Geoffrey. Of all the mourners in the New Faith Baptist Church, hers was the voice that rang in my dreams, chiming the
amens
in the calm, majestic note of a believer.

“We still own the medallions,” she said. “We have insurance.”

“Enough?” I asked.

Gloria wheeled her chair forward, taking particular care to avoid a rut in the pavement.

“Someone sent me a check,” she said. “It should cover costs. Take care of your fee.”

“Someone?”

“Anthony Gianelli, Senior, is the name on the dotted line.”

I didn't respond.

“So, what do you think?” she asked.

Most of the cinderblocks had crumbled or toppled; some were jet-black with ash-gray edges, like giant charcoal briquets.

“It's his way of apologizing,” I said. “Acknowledging his family's responsibility. He's not big on apologies.”

“Doesn't seem right,” Gloria said.

“What?”

“It feels—shit, I don't know—like he's paying me off for Marvin's death. Like there was anything money could do to replace my brother.”

“The check's an apology,” I said. “Only that.”

“Would you have trouble taking that kind of money, Carlotta? From that kind of man?”

“Gloria,” I said. “You never heard this.…”

“What?” she said, immediately keen, sensing gossip.

“Paolina's biological father has sent me over forty thousand dollars in the past six months.”

The wheelchair did a quick half-circle so she could face me. “That bastard, Roldan Gonzales?” she said.

“Alleged bastard,” I said. “I haven't sent it back. I haven't donated it to charity.”

“So, do you have a problem with where that money comes from?” Gloria asked, eyes wide and intent.

“It's money; it can send Paolina to college.”

“Yes, but—”

“Why encourage deadbeat dads?” I asked, kicking at a pebble-size chunk of blackened stucco. It skittered fifty feet, came to a rest under a chain link fence.

“Guess that means you don't object to me cashing Papa Gianelli's check.”

I said, “It means I'm not exactly the best person to ask.”

“I don't know about that,” she said pensively. “Least you've had experience.”

We surveyed the ruins. Someone had swept the broken glass into a heap.

“Will Sam still be your partner?” I asked.

Gloria said, “I'm not sure. Depends.”

I waited for her to continue. She seemed to have more to say.

“I may change the name of the company.”

I stared at chunks of grimy concrete. It was hard to imagine the outline of the garage doors.

“I was thinking, maybe, ‘Marvin's,'” she said.

“I like that,” I agreed. “Nice sound to it. I'll bring a bottle of champagne, christen the new garage when the time comes.”

“Bottle of Bass ale,” Gloria said. “More Marvin's style.”

“Fine,” I said.

“He had style,” Gloria said. “He kept the family together when most guys would have run as far and as fast as they could. Promoters begged him to go to Las Vegas, box the circuit, travel the country. He was that good. But then I had my accident, and he said no.”

“It's okay,” I said.

“It's just, I feel like he gave up his life for me. Twice. And that's too much.”

“Gloria,” I said. “It was his choice.”

“Right,” she said. “That's what your shrink says. His choice. I never could tell Marvin anything.”

“Remember that. He was stubborn as hell, and he loved you.”

“Guess I've seen enough,” she offered fifteen minutes later. I was glad. It was cold. Gloria didn't seem to feel it, but I did.

“Think Paolina's home?” she asked, once I'd managed the business with the hydraulic lift and strapped her wheelchair into the shotgun position. “We could visit.”

I said, “We could take her over to Herrell's for ice cream. Mocha with M&M moosh-ins.”

“Think they'd put whipped cream on that?” Gloria inquired wistfully.

I never thought I'd be glad to hear Gloria ask about whipped cream.

I said, “I think it's illegal unless you order hot fudge.”

“Hot fudge,” Gloria repeated, like it was a vaguely familiar phrase from a language she'd once spoken fluently.

“Paolina'd like that,” I said.

Gloria waited for a red light to stick in the dart. “She'd like it better if you and Sam got back together.”

A battered Pontiac Grand Prix sounded its horn, passed on my right in a lane clearly designated for parking only.

“‘You can't always get what you want,'” I quoted.