Shallow Graves - Jeremiah Healy (24 page)

I decided to walk to the graveyard, drifting over to
Broadway first to stop at Mrs. Feeney's for a dozen carnations.

What's it like today?

I stood up, looking out at the harbor past the foot
of her hillside. "Was foggy, Beth, but it's breaking up so I can
see pretty clearly."

You seem troubled, John. Is it still the cat?

"Not really." In a way I couldn't with
Nancy, I went through what had happened, Mau Tim Dani becoming Tina
Danucci.

S
o, after crippling a cat, you
were sweet-talked by a mobster and beaten up by a male model.

"One way to put it."

Not exactly a week for "Dear Diary".

"It gets worse, kid."

How?

"The timing. The downstairs neighbor hears the
dead woman's shower going only fifteen or twenty minutes before the
body's found. Unless everybody's covering for each other, the killer
had only that much margin to get into her apartment and out again."

Isn't that enough?

"
Yes, but it's awfully coincidental for a
burglar, and awfully close timing for something planned in advance."

What are you going to do now?

"
Go back where I started. Walk through the
building, try to find some holes in what I've been told."

Isn't it easier if there aren't any holes?

"Easier?"

If it wasn't planned, then maybe it was just a
burglar. That way, the modeling agency gets its insurance money, and
the gangsters might leave you alone and keep looking on their own,
right?

"Uh-huh."

Well, wouldn 't that be easier? 'All around'.

A pause.

But making it easier doesn 't make it right.

"Afraid not."

Something caught my eye in the harbor. A pale hump
rising above a swell, then three, then five, then . . . "I don't
believe it."

What?

"I've never seen anything like this before"

John, what?

I was up to thirty-four. "Dolphins, I think.
Dozens of them. Just breaking water."

I described the show for her, watching as even more
of the creatures romped and veered, in pairs and squadrons, like so
many synchronized swimmers. Maybe chasing fish, maybe running from
something themselves, maybe just deciding to see Boston Harbor before
the next onslaught of tourists in June.

"There must be over a hundred of them, Beth. I
wouldn't have thought they could survive this far north."

Maybe it'll be a week for "Dear Diary"
after all.
 
 

-18-

I LEFT THE PRELUDE A BLOCK AWAY FROM NUMBER 10
FALMOUTH and walked to the alley behind it. I looked at the fire
escape, trying to find a new perspective from my talks with Sinead
Fagan, Oz Puriefoy, and Larry Shinkawa. The escape still switchbacked
down the rear of the building, a landing outside Mau Tim's window on
the top floor, another outside the window on the second floor, a
third outside a window in Fagan's elevated first-floor apartment. The
last flight retracted to Sinead's landing. It still would miss the
green, ribbed trash cans in the bricked space that passed for a
backyard, Cousin Ooch already having moved the cans back from the
alley to the building's wall. Just like he said he did the Friday two
weeks before, the morning of the day Mau Tim had been killed.

I went to the rear door and knocked, noticing there
was no keyhole on the exterior side. After a couple of seconds, I
heard a bolt being thrown and the door creaked open, Cousin Ooch
blinking out from behind it. Today he wore a bright blue cotton
sweater with no shirt underneath and the same pair of droopy pants.
The sweater made him look clownish, like a school principal in surfer
trunks.

He said, "The family called me about you."

"Who in the family?"

The scarred face flicked right, slipping the
imaginary punch, the nose smiling twice. "What difference that
make to you?"

"None, I guess."

His eyes adjusting to the light, Ooch said, "Hey,
you been in a fight or what?"

"One-rounder."

"Yeah? Who with?"

"What difference that make to you?"

He thought about it. Flick, sniff/sniff. "Okay.
Family said I'm supposed to take you around, show you what's what."

"Can we start down here?"

"Here? You mean, like outside here?"

"No. The basement level."

"That's just my place and the boiler room."

"I'd still like to see them. Go through
everything"

Ooch thought some more, then turned. "C'mon."

Inside was a dark hall leading to a short staircase.
One bulb glowed faintly at the center of the hall, two more doors off
it on either side of the bulb.

Ooch pulled the back door closed behind me. There was
an old dead bolt at eye level, and he used the edge of his hand to
reseat the bolt into the doorjamb.

I said, "This rear door."

"Yeah?"

"It doesn't lock without the dead bolt?"

"Uh-unh."

"No key for it from the outside?"

"No key for it period. Just the bolt there."

"You usually keep it locked?"

"
A course I do. Kinda question is that?"

"It was locked that night?"

"That . . . ?"

"When Mau T — when Tina was killed?"

"A course it was. I put the trash out Tuesdays
and Fridays, in the AM. Otherwise, it's locked, it stays locked."

"Thanks."

We moved down the hall and under the light. Ooch
reached for the knob on the right-hand door. "This here's the
boiler-room."

He opened the metal door. Judging from the odor that
enveloped us, it was also where the tenants put their trash before
Tuesdays and Fridays. There was an unlit bulb socketed in the ceiling
and dim outlines on every wall. I found the switch and got a view of
old but clean oil tank, oil burner, hot water heater, even an
over-and-under washer/dryer.

Flick, sniff/sniff. "I tell them not to put
their garbage in here, smell gets into the laundry when they do, but
nobody listens."

I nodded and turned off the light.

The other door off the hall was ajar. "This
here's my place."

Ooch led me into a small foyer, closet facing us and
the acrid tang of liniment all around us. To the right was the living
room, to the left and through a partially closed door was the corner
of a bed. I stepped to the right.

The daylight window on the Falmouth Street wall was
just to the left of the little front door leading into the basement
unit. The lintel was low, low enough that even Ooch at around five
six would have to cringe to get under it. The window let in some sun,
but not much, giving the posters on the other walls a shadowy look,
like the boiler room before I'd turned on the switch.

"Those are from my collection," said Ooch,
pride filling his voice.

It was pretty impressive, even if the posters weren't
framed but just pinned at the corners with thumbtacks. The cardboard
was yellowing on all of them, the wild-West-style tintype a little
hard to read until you got used to the shape of the capital letters.
Among the headliners were a few guys you'd know even without
following the fight game. Rocky Marciano, Floyd Patterson, Benny Kid
Paret. The ones on the undercard you'd have to be from the area or a
real fan to recognize. I saw "Carmine 'Ooch' Danucci" on
only two, near the bottom of both.

"Every coupla months, I take a few down, put a
few up. Like a museum does with their pictures there."

I looked a little closer at the two with Ooch's name
on them. They were yellower than the rest and didn't appear to be
rotated by the curator. Ooch's collection focused just on boxing but
not just on Italian-American boxers. I thought about the posters in
Joseph Danucci's den and wondered if this style of decoration ran in
the family. I could see brother Vincent with polo players and
yachtsmen in his place.

The rest of the furnishings weren't much. Couch, two
mismatched chairs, low coffee table. Except for a new Zenith TV,
everything looked older than the hills. There was no dining table and
only a bowling alley kitchen.

I said, "Bedroom?"

The broken nose cut through the air as he indicated
the back of the apartment. Bedcover tousled between a tall, solid
bureau and a wobbly nightstand. Open door to the bathroom, a couple
of towels on hooks. Clothes hung or heaped, maybe depending on
whether they were clean or dirty. Counting the air ducts, no more
than five hundred square feet of living space in the whole apartment.

Flick, sniff/sniff. "Okay?"

I wasn't sure which question he was asking me. "Nice
place. Quiet."

"I like it quiet. Had enough noise in the ring
there."

We left the apartment, Ooch closing the door to his
place and shaking the knob to be sure it was secure. As we climbed
the stairs to the first floor, he jingled some keys in his pocket,
pulling them out and concentrating on them as he put his shoulder
into a café-style door at the top.

"Where do you wanna go next?"

Coming into the building's first-floor foyer with
him, I noticed the inner door was still propped open, the area for
mailboxes and a small table just before the inner surface of the
outside door.

I said, "Let's try the front door. Can you step
outside, show me how the door opens?"

Ooch looked at me as though I belonged in
kindergarten, but went to the front door. Just a spring lock as he
turned the handle and went outside. The door closed pretty quietly. A
few seconds later, Ooch opened it with a key and came back inside.
"Okay?"

"
Who has keys to the front door?"

"The front door? The bum come up the fire
escape."

"Who has keys?"

Ooch stopped, then began ticking off names on his
fingers.

"Sinead, she's got one. Tina had one. A course,
the family does, too."

"The family?"

"Yeah."

"
Who in the family?"

"Who? Everybody. They use the second floor
sometimes."
 
"
The empty
apartment."

"Right. Well, it's got furniture and all."

"You know whether any of Sinead's or Tina's
boyfriends had a key to the front door?"

Flick, sniff/sniff. "I don't know nothing about
that. They did, they wasn't supposed to."

I decided to play dumb. "How about the agents at
Tina's modeling agency?"

"I don't know nothing about that, neither."

"Ever see one of them here?"

"Don't know them to tell you."

I looked at the only other door off the foyer, the
one I took to be Sinead Fagan's apartment. "Okay. Let's go
upstairs and work our way down."

I followed Ooch up a flight of coiling balustrade. On
the second floor was a door that looked identical to Sinead's. The
carpet runner wasn't new but it was of good quality and still
surprisingly plush.

The flight to the third floor was more enclosed, the
stair shaft narrowing as it ascended. We stopped at a door that
looked identical to both the other two.

Ooch said, "I'm gonna open this, but it's okay
with you, I feel a little funny about going in."

"I understand"

He put a key to the lock. "After they — the
cops — was finished with her, I had to go in and clean up some.
There was . . . this smell, you know?"

The human body pretty much lets go at death,
including the muscles that control the bowels. "How about you
just stand outside here, so I can call to you if I need something."

Flick, sniff/sniff. "You got it."

Ooch opened the door, and I crossed the threshold of
Mau Tim Dani's apartment.

It was bright and might have been airy if it hadn't
been shut up for a week. The layout seemed to be the same as Ooch's
place, but the dimensions were bigger with the absence of a boiler
room and major staircase. The apartment door opened more onto the
living room, with the futon sofa more centrally placed. There was a
tiled fireplace, probably gas originally, and bookshelves on either
side of it. One wall was sacrificed to a home entertainment center
with stereo receiver, CD player, science-fiction speakers and a
television/VCR hookup. A small gateleg table sat in sunshine by the
bowfront window, two straight-back chairs with it, and a choir of
plants on risers around it. The rug was a Dhurrie, hardwood floors
polyurethaned underneath.

Moving toward the back of the apartment, I passed a
wider kitchen and a squarer bath than Ooch had. The window with the
fire escape was in the bedroom. The furnishings there were all
ruffles and quilts, which surprised me until I remembered how close
Mau Tim had been to Grandmother Amatina. I checked the quality of
work on the fabrications. The slight imperfections of the lovingly
handmade.