Shallow Graves - Jeremiah Healy (10 page)

"
Primo, what's the license number on your car?"

"That ain't on there."

"I know. I want the plate of the car we're going
for a ride in."

He rattled it off, no more hesitation.

"I'm going to make some calls, Primo. Then I'll
decide whether we're taking a ride."

Zuppone and his coat made themselves more comfortable
in the chair.

I dialed the Boston police, making a point to ask for
"Homicide" and "Lieutenant Robert Murphy" instead
of Holt. Murphy wasn't in, so I left Harry Mullen's name and
telephone number at Empire, then Zuppone's name, address, and plate
number. Then I called my answering service and left the same
information with them.

When I hung up, Zuppone said, "You want to call
your friend, the assistant D.A,, we got time."

I spoke to the half-smile. "That's okay. She
needs you, she'll find you."

Zuppone said, "You carrying?"

"At least one."

He said, "Okay. Let's go."

I said, "What if I'd said no?"

"What, about carrying?"

"Yeah."

The leather squeaked its
last as he got up. "I wouldn't have believed you."

* * *

"This road's a fucking disgrace, ain't it?"

We were driving out of the city on the Southeast
Expressway, more typically known as the Distressway. Originally named
after Boston mayor "Honey Fitz" Fitzgerald, his famous
descendants should be ashamed of its current condition.

Zuppone continued. "I was one of the Kennedy
kids there, I'd kick in a coupla bucks from the trust fund, get these
potholes fixed."

The holes were more like craters, but Zuppone's
Lincoln Continental ate them up, just a slight "whump"
noise from the tires.

"We were in my Prelude, our heads'd be through
the moon roof by now."

Zuppone rolled the toothpick. "Never could see
them foreign jobs, myself. Uncle of mine had a Lincoln back in the
fifties, and I always promised myself one." He caressed the
wheel lovingly. "And the stereo system's dynamite. Watch."

Or listen. When we'd gotten in the car, his starting
the engine brought some soft, solo piano music. Now Zuppone pressed a
few buttons that made the sound bounce all over the cabin, front to
back and side to side.

I said, "That a radio station?"

"Uh-unh. Tape, but it's a homemade jobbie,
forty-five minutes a side, so you don't have to change it so often."

"Easy listening."

Zuppone glanced at me, to see if I were kidding.
"George Winston."

"Never heard of him."

"Guy records for Windham Hill, New Age stuff."

"Hot tubs and healing crystals?"

"
I gotta tell you, I don't know from nothing
about the philosophy side of the shit. I just know, I put in the
tape, and I feel good, you know?"

We rode for a while, Zuppone taking the Route 3 prong
instead of 128. The traffic petered out, but he kept the Lincoln at a
steady fifty-five, the tires barely slapping the junctions of the
asphalt in a way you felt rather than heard over the music. The
leather upholstery was the same color as Primo's coat and supple to
the point of buttery. But a cold softness, not the way I'd want my
last car ride to feel.

Zuppone picked up the telephone nestled between us
and hit a button. After no more than one ring, he said, "It's
Primo . . . Yeah . . . Ten minutes . . . Right."

He hung up, looked at me. "You were in Vietnam,
right?"

I said, "Right."

"One of the people you're going to meet, he was
there, too. Let him talk about it, he wants to, but don't like . . .
encourage him, okay?"

My turn to look at Zuppone. "Okay."

He noticed me looking and shrugged. "You made it
easy on me, coming along. I make it easy on you. One hand and the
other, you know?"

"Can you tell me where we're heading?"

The toothpick changed sides again. "You ain't
figured it out yet?"

I thought back to Sinead Fagan being emphatic about
not discussing "family" with Mau Tim Dani. "I figure
the super at an apartment building this morning called the owners,
and now I'm going to meet them."

Zuppone nodded. "You're
close."

* * *

We left Route 3 and started winding through suburban
intersections with three gas stations and a convenience store on the
corners. After a couple of turns, the retail areas gave way to narrow
streets with small homes, which in tum gave way to wide streets with
large homes. One of the wide streets matured into a boulevard, the
center strip less impressive than Commonwealth Avenue in Boston, but
with big shade trees far enough south and close enough to the ocean
to be showing the full leaf stage of spring.

Zuppone eased the Lincoln into a long driveway that
curved gracefully past high hedges toward a white Greek Revival
mansion, fluted pillars supporting the roof over the main entrance.
He parked behind a Mercedes and a Volvo, the piano music dying
abruptly as he turned off the engine, the air vibrating inside the
car.

Primo got out before I did, the door thunking solidly
against the frame as he closed it. He made sure I was still with him,
then walked up the flagstone path to the side entrance. He rang the
bell but pulled open the door without waiting for anyone to say or do
anything.

I followed him through and into a huge kitchen, the
pans all copper and polished. They hung from rings in their handles
over tiles the color of dried blood. The tiles covered the work areas
of the counters as well as the floor.

As Zuppone stepped behind me to close the door,
probably the tallest Vietnamese woman I'd ever seen stood up from a
stool. There was a cigarette burning in a crystal ashtray in front of
her, at least half a dozen smoked ones in the base of the tray.

The woman self-consciously touched her hair, swept up
in a bun with jewelry combs. Her cheekbones were high, her lipstick
light. She wore a bac dai, the traditional long, slitted dress of her
country, but the slit was conservative and the dress itself was
black, not a gay print. A mother in mourning.

She said, "My husband and the brother of my
husband are in the den."

As we went by her, I said, "I'm sorry for your
loss."

The woman dropped her gaze toward her feet. Her eyes
started to close, but the left lid went only halfway down as the
right closed completely. As she looked back up, I realized the left
eye was gone, the brown and white egg in its socket a beautifully
wrought piece of glass.

I felt a chill as Zuppone
led the way through the first floor of the house.

* * *

From across the den, they looked like twins standing
in front of adjoining mirrors at the fun house. One was stocky, with
coarse black hair in clots that didn't stay put. His jaw seemed about
one generation removed from cracking bones around a cooking fire. He
wore a shirt and tie, but the tie's knot was wrenched almost halfway
down his chest, and the sleeves were turned up twice, revealing
forearms thatched with black hair. As he drained a glass of what
looked like Scotch, he made you think of why Webster put the word
"guzzle" in the dictionary. The other guy was slim and five
inches taller, maybe six one. The tide on his hair was going out,
front to back. His features were more delicate, like the altar boy
who goes on to play guard for the CYO basketball team. I guessed the
suit to be in the seven-hundred range at Brooks Brothers, a Repp tie
still knotted tightly at the collar. There was no drink in his hand
or anywhere nearby.

As Zuppone and I got closer, I realized the stocky
one was about my age, the slim one a little younger despite the
hairline. The stocky one said, "This him, Primo?"

"Yes, Mr. Danucci."

I thought, Jesus Christ.

The stocky one put down his glass. "The name
registers with you, don't it."

My eyes went to the slim one. He seemed mildly amused
but not inclined to show it much.

The stocky one said, "Look at me, Cuddy."

I did. "I thought you'd be older."

The slim one said, "You're thinking of our
father."

I said, "Tommy Danucci was your father?"

The stocky one said, "Is our father."

Tommy Danucci. Tommy the Temper. One of the mob
bosses you heard about but never saw, directing things quietly from
the backroom instead of splashing across the front page. I remembered
whiffs of him coming up during the media coverage of the Angiulo
cases, but I thought he'd died in the mid-eighties.

The slim one said, "I think you're entitled to
an introduction, Mr. Cuddy. This is my brother, Joseph Danucci. My
name is Vincent Dani."

I said to Dani, "You were Mau Tim's — — "

"Tina! " thundered Danucci. "My
daughter's name was Tina! Use it."

Nobody said anything until Primo said, "Boss,
can I freshen that up for you?"

Danucci was breathing through his mouth. The sound
was like a hurricane blowing through a lantern. It wasn't hard to see
which gene he got from Tommy the Temper. "Yeah. Yeah, Primo.
Thanks."

"Chivas?"

"No. The Johnny Black tonight."

Zuppone crossed to the wet bar in a corner of the
room. The paneled walls were covered with framed prints of different
Boston athletes. Dom DiMaggio and Rico Petrocelli from the Red Sox,
Gino Cappelletti from the Patriots, Phil Esposito from the Bruins. It
took a minute to realize they all had Italian surnames. Danucci
accepted his drink and downed half of it. He ran the back of his hand
across his mouth, then ran his palm over his head, scattering the
clots of hair into a different pattern.

He said, "I'm not dealing real well with this
shit," and inhaled the rest of his drink.

This time Primo didn't offer to get another.

Around the empty glass, Danucci said, "I want to
talk with the guy alone a couple of minutes."

His brother said, "Joey?"

"I'll be okay, Vinnie. You guys try the TV or
something, huh?"

Vincent Dani looked at Primo, who looked at me. Then
Primo said, "Right, boss," and left the room, Dani taking
two short steps, then striding out behind him.

Joseph Danucci said to me, "Take a seat, Cuddy."

I tried one of several leather easy chairs across
from the leather couch. All the cowhide, including the tufting on the
bar and stools, was royal blue, held in place by brass tacks.

Danucci circled over to the bar, setting his glass on
it. "Get you something?"

It was a little early, but I said, "Beer, if you
have it."

He disappeared behind the bar. "What I don't
got, you don't need." His voice echoed a little as he spoke into
what sounded like a refrigerator.

Using a church key, Danucci opened the bottle of Sam
Adams the way a busy bartender would, the top arcing through the air
like a tossed coin.

He brought the bottle over to me. "Primo said
you were in the 'Nam."

Danucci pronounced it to rhyme with "Mom."
As he moved back to the bar, I thought about what Zuppone had told me
in the car.

I said, "One tour."

"When?"

"Late sixties."

Danucci poured himself more Scotch. "Where?"

"Mostly Saigon."

He started to raise his glass, then said, "Tet?"

"Yeah."

Danucci swigged two fingers of the Johnny Walker. "
'Who owns the night?' "

" 'The night belongs to the 101st Airborne.' "

He watched me. "You were a Screaming Eag1e?"

"No. Ran into them from time to time."

"What outfit you with?"

"Military Po1ice."

Danucci came around the bar. "Fucking
Mike-Papa?"

"That's right."

"Ever out in the boonies?"

"Once in a whi1e."

Danucci started pacing back and forth. "Yeah,
well I fucking lived in the boonies, man, seventy into seventy-one. I
never minded so much the assaults, even on a Huey going down into a
hot LZ. And on search-and-destroy, you got so you could see the booby
traps, especially old ones. At least you were doing something, going
after Charlie where he lived. What I couldn't take was standing down
on a firebase some fucking general named after a mission from World
War II, guarding some fucking artillery against Charlie probing us at
night."

My host kept pacing. "Sweating on top of some
fucking bunker because it was crawling with rats inside. Waiting. All
the time just waiting for Charlie to hit. You can hear a lot further
at night than you can see."

Danucci stopped in front of me. "Know what was
the worst part?"

Without thinking, I said, "The rain."