Shallow Graves - Jeremiah Healy (36 page)

Zuppone still waited for the sign from Danucci. It
came in the form of his dead father's abrupt nod as he sat back down.

Primo lowered the case to the desktop carefully. He
opened it, then took out the two revolvers.

Joseph Danucci said, "What the fuck? I haven't
seen those . .

Some distant memory worked at him. Worked over him.
Vincent Dani looked at me. "What happened?"

"Your father asked me to come to him first if I
found out who killed Tina. I did, and he treated me to a game of
Guts."

Tonelessly, Joseph Danucci said, "Guts."

Vincent said, "Why would Pop play Guts with
you?"

"Because he knew I'd figured out that he'd
killed Tina."

Zuppone sucked in half the air in the room and
charged for Joseph Danucci just as Danucci showed his teeth and came
out of his chair at me. Primo cushioned the collision with his chest,
then waltzed Danucci back to the chair, saying "Hey-ey-ey, Boss.
Boss, easy, huh? Easy."

Danucci flailed past him, only to be confronted by
his wife, who had stood and crossed to them. Claudette Danucci
clouted her husband across the cheek as hard as I've ever seen a man
hit by a woman. Zuppone, sure of the advantage and being as gentle as
possible, dragged him back, finally letting him go ten feet from me.
Danucci rubbed his cheek, staring at his wife.

Claudette Danucci said, "We listen to this man."
She turned to me. "What you tell us?"

"
Look in the case again."

Claudette went to the desk, the top of the case still
up. She first looked in, then haltingly put her hand in, picking up
the necklace like it was a sleeping snake. Her good eye squinted at
it, the glass one lolling for the first time in its socket as the
eyelid worked on its own.

She said, "How? How can this be?"

"Your father-in-law had the necklace. All the
time."

"You're a fucking dead liar, Cuddy."

I looked at Joseph Danucci. "What do you think,
I found the necklace on somebody else and took it to your father's
house? Then planted it on him to cover myself for shooting Tommy
Danucci? When he knew I wasn't carrying, when the gun he gave me had
six live rounds in it and his a couple of blanks?"

The son plowed his hair with crabbed fingers.
"Primo?"

Zuppone nodded. "I believe him on that, Boss."

Danucci's hand left his hair and began to rake at the
back of his neck.

Vincent Dani said, "Why would my father kill his
granddaughter?"

I looked at the lawyer. "Because she was going
to expose him."

Joseph Danucci's head came up. "Expose him? For
what?"

I got ready in case Primo wasn't. "When your
father was recuperating from his heart attack, here in this house, he
mistook your daughter for his wife and went to bed with her."

Zuppone was too jolted to move quickly enough. Joseph
Danucci was on me before I got all the way up. Spluttering and
gasping, he landed a wild left before I was able to get him into a
clinch. I held on until I felt Primo clamp on his biceps and pull him
off me and back to the other chair.

Danucci's voice was cracking as his legs kicked out
for me.

"Cocksucker! You fucking, lying, cocksucking
bastard. We're gonna keep you alive for days for that! You're gonna
crawl to us, beg us to kill you."

Vincent Dani, in a very low voice, said, "It's
true."

Everything stopped, everyone in the room turned to
him. In a monotone directed at the carpet, Dani said, "Six years
ago, a little after Pop went back home to his house, Tina came to me.
At my office. She said . . . she said a friend of hers at school had
a problem with . . . an uncle. She said this uncle had done some
things to her friend, and was there anything a lawyer could do about
it? I told her . . . I told her not likely. That if it had stopped,
it would just be more trouble for her friend than it would be worth."
Dani looked up at all of us. "It was good advice. That sort of
matter rapidly becomes a can of worms once — "

But Claudette's hand, the one with the necklace in
it, was already following through, cutting the words off his lips and
a layer of skin off his cheek. "You know these things! You know
my daughter tell you these things and you keep silent?"

Dani touched his cheek, gawking at the blood on his
fingers. "Claudette — "

She stomped to her husband. "Look at me."

He didn't.

She shook the necklace in front of his face. "Look
at me."

Danucci, mouth open, breathing badly, raised his
head.

"My husband, this man live." She pointed to
me. "This man tell us who kill our child. Your father still
live, I kill him for my daughter. You kill this man, and I kill you."

Danucci grunted something.

"
You kill this man, I kill you, my husband. I
kill you with your food or I kill you in your sleep. But I kill you."

Claudette Danucci wheeled and stood in front of me,
the lid of the glass eye quivering at half-mast. "Thank you."

She moved, at first quickly, then at a normal gait,
out the door and toward the kitchen.

Vincent Dani had found a handkerchief and was holding
it to his cheek. His brother was slowly getting his lungs used to
regular volumes again. Zuppone stood just behind Danucci's chair, the
hands on the back of the seat but close enough to the shoulders to
push him back down.

The voice from the chair sounded like a man with
strep throat.

"Primo?"

"Yes, Boss?"

"The fuck do we do here?"

The situation man said, "First we call Bootsy
back at your father's house, get him to do the clean-up. Then we call
Doctor T, get him to do the death certificate, saying he was the
attending physician and your father's heart gave out. Then we get
Richie and Paul over at the funeral home there, do their thing
quick."

Danucci looked at me as though I were dirty dishes
the morning after a party. "What about him?"

Zuppone said, "He dates a D.A., Boss. We clip
him, we got more trouble, maybe all this about . . . Tina comes out.
We let him live, he don't got no reason to tell nobody. Right,
Cuddy?"

"All the insurance company needs is me saying
the people at the modeling agency didn't have anything to do with it.
I can tell the company that without getting into any of what we
talked about tonight."

Danucci said, "Primo, you see to that?"

"Sure, Boss."

Danucci came back to me.
He gave his father's abrupt nod, his voice steadier. "Get the
fuck out of my sight."

* * *

Zuppone was walking me toward the kitchen when I
heard it. A sound somewhere between nails being driven and glass
being broken.

We entered the kitchen. Claudette Danucci was crying,
trying to center what was left of the iolite necklace on one of the
tiles in her countertop. She glanced at us with the good eye, then
used a forearm to mop sweat and tears from her face as she raised a
heavy skillet in that hand and smashed down again on the gems in the
necklace, tiny shards skittering across the tiles, some of which were
broken from earlier blows.

We left her like that,
hammering to dust the necklace that was the color of her dead
daughter's eyes.

* * *

In the driveway outside the kitchen door, Zuppone
told the two soldiers that Joseph Danucci just got word that his
father had died of a heart attack. The soldiers, both of whom had
seen me with the old man's riddled body, exchanged looks and nodded
and said they were sorry to hear it. Primo told them to stay with the
Danuccis in case they needed anything that night. As we drove toward
Boston, he put a tape into the slot on the dashboard and settled in
to piano and violin.

I waited ten miles before saying, "Thanks for
backing me in there."

Zuppone kept his eyes on the road. A minute later he
said, "I wasn't backing you. I was looking out for them."

That was it. Just the music and the tires slapping
the junctions in the pavement as we dodged potholes on the way toward
the bright lights.

When we got off the Expressway, Primo drove up
Kneeland to where it becomes Stuart, then down Charles to Beacon. He
stopped the Lincoln at the corner of Arlington, five blocks from my
condominium building.

"Okay you get out here?"

I looked around but didn't see anything or anybody
except a couple walking some kind of hairless terrier down the ramp
from the river. The dog looked like a rat on a rope.

"I think I can find my way."

Zuppone spit his toothpick out the window and reached
for a new one. "I'm gonna be busy next couple of days, taking
care of things."

"Probably a good idea nobody sees us together
anyway, given tonight."

Primo seemed to savor the fresh piece of wood in his
mouth.

"You gonna need any help with the insurance
thing there?"

"I maybe have an idea on that. Can I call you
about it?"

"Make it from a pay phone, huh?"

"I will."

Zuppone said, "It was a good thing you didn't
punch back after Joey landed that left."

"He had a right to be upset. Besides, I didn't
Want to press my luck."

"Luck." The half-laugh. "Cuddy, after
what I seen tonight, when it comes to luck, you must shit shamrocks."
 
 

-30-

THREE DAYS LATER, A TAXI WAS TAKING US FROM NEW
YORK'S PENN Station uptown. Our cabbie sat on those woven beads that
are supposed to allow circulated air to keep you cooler in summer and
wanner in winter. Cooler would be good, the temperature being in the
high seventies.

Around 45th Street, Primo Zuppone leaned forward.
Through the Plexiglas he said to the driver, "Go a little
farther north, okay? Drop us at Rockefeller Plaza."

"Whatever you say, mon."

We got out there, the flags of the nations slacking
high above our heads as canned music wafted up from below.

Zuppone said to me, "Come on. Take a look at
this."

About a hundred people stood around in the heat
looking down toward the ice surface. A young woman in leotards and a
short skirt, graceful as a ballerina, was doing a figure skating
drill. The woman was magic, and she knew it.

Zuppone said, "One time I'm down here, I
remember seeing this. Incredible, ain't it, this time of year?"

"We had the ice in Boston, kids'd be playing
pick-up hockey on it."

Primo started to walk east toward Fifth Avenue.
"Cuddy, you got to look for the art in life."

We passed a mime in a black scuba wet suit. He wore a
Greek mask and was doing his routine to a boombox blaring the theme
from The Exorcist.

I said, "Art is everywhere?

We turned south onto Fifth catercorner from St.
Patrick's Cathedral, the two spires striving heavenward above three
massive entrances. On the steps, tourists clicked their cameras,
construction workers sunned themselves, and the homeless shook large
soda cups containing salted change.

Zuppone and I did a couple of blocks on Fifth. Past a
slim Hispanic woman giving some Japanese schoolgirls directions. Past
a Korean grocer helping an elderly couple pick out two nectarines.
Past a brawny black man driving a delivery van with a pink stuffed
animal tied to the grille.

I found the address I wanted just where I remembered
it, between forty-eighth and forty-seventh, in the jewelry district.
On the first floors of the surrounding buildings, bunkers with
porthole windows displayed all sorts of set gems against felt
backgrounds. Despite the heat, grave men in black frock coats and
matching hats moved quickly along the sidewalk, heavy sample cases
clutched tightly in their hands. Behind them, graver men wore
ill-fitting sports jackets, bulges over hips or under arms. The men
in black were Orthodox diamond merchants with ringlets of sideburns
and shaved necks, the others their bodyguards with short hair and no
necks.

Primo said, "I get tired of what I'm doing,
looks like plenty of work down here."

We entered the lobby, the directory telling us Empire
still had the whole building. Winningham, Bradley K., was listed on
fourteen.

The elevator opened onto a carefully cultivated
reception area. Beautiful potted plants, probably professionally
maintained, canopied over a beveled desk. The woman behind it held
herself like a pre-Hippie Barnard graduate. She asked if she could
help us.

"Brad Winningham, please. I know it's his first
day back, but he said he wanted to see us as soon as possible."

Barnard let me finish. "Will Mr. Winningham know
what this is regarding?"

"Just tell him John Cuddy is here with an
associate."

She looked at Primo, who smiled senilely.