Darkness, Take My Hand (4 page)

By ten that
night, Angie and I were sitting in a small coffee shop on Prince Street, learning more than we ever wanted to know about prostates from Fat Freddy Constantine.

Freddy Constantine’s coffee shop on Prince Street was a narrow shop on a narrow street. Prince Street cuts across the North End from Commercial to Moon Street, and like most of the streets in that neighborhood, it’s barely wide enough to squeeze a bicycle through. The temperature had dropped into the mid-fifties by the time we arrived, but up and down Prince Street, men sat in front of shops and restaurants wearing only T-shirts or tank tops under open short-sleeves, leaning back in lawn chairs and smoking cigars or playing cards and laughing suddenly and violently as people do in neighborhoods they’re sure they own.

Freddie’s coffee shop was nothing but a dark room with two small tables out front and four inside on a white-and-black-tile floor. A ceiling fan rotated sluggishly and flipped the pages of a newspaper back and forth on the counter as Dean Martin warbled from somewhere behind a heavy black curtain drawn across the back doorway.

We were met at the front door by two young guys with dark hair and bodies by Bally and matching pink-champagne V-necks and gold chains.

I said, “Is there like a catalog all you guys shop from?”

One of them found this so witty that he patted me down extra hard, the heels of his hands chopping between my rib cage and hips like they expected to meet in the middle.
We’d left our guns in the car, so they took our wallets. We didn’t like it, they didn’t care, and soon they led us to a table across from Don Frederico Constantine himself.

Fat Freddy looked like a walrus without the mustache. He was immense and smoke gray and he wore several layers of dark clothing, so that his square chopping-block head on top of all that darkness looked like something that had erupted from the folds of the collar and spilled toward the shoulders. His almond eyes were warm and liquid, paternal, and he smiled a lot. Smiled at strangers on the street, at reporters as he came down courtroom steps, presumably at his victims before his men kneecapped them.

He said, “Please, sit down.”

Except for Freddy and ourselves, there was only one other person in the coffee shop. He sat about twenty feet back at a table beside a support beam, one hand on the table, legs crossed at the ankles. He wore light khakis and a white shirt and gray scarf under an amber canvas jacket with a leather collar. He didn’t quite look at us, but I couldn’t swear he was looking away either. His name was Pine, no first name that I ever heard, and he was a legend in his circles, the man who’d survived four different bosses, three family wars, and whose enemies had a habit of disappearing so completely people soon forgot they’d ever lived. Sitting at the table, he seemed a perfectly normal, almost bland guy: handsome, possibly, but not in any way that stuck in the memory; he was probably five eleven or six feet with dirty blond hair and green eyes and an average build.

Just being in the same room with him made my skull tingle.

Angie and I sat down and Fat Freddy said, “Prostates.”

“Excuse me?” Angie said.

“Prostates,” Freddy repeated. He poured coffee from a pewter pot into a cup, handed it to Angie. “Not something your gender has to worry about half as much as ours.” He nodded at me as he handed me my cup, then nudged the cream and sugar in our direction. “I’ll tell you,” he said, “I’ve reached the height of my profession, my daughter just got accepted to Harvard, and financially, I want for
little.” He shifted in his chair, grimaced enough so that his huge jowls rolled in toward the center of his face and completely obscured his lips for a moment. “But, I swear, I’d trade it all in tomorrow for a healthy prostate.” He sighed. “You?”

“What?” I said.

“Have a healthy prostate?”

“Last time I checked, Mr. Constantine.”

He leaned forward. “Count your blessings, my young friend. Count them twice. A man without a healthy prostate is…” He spread his hands on the table. “Well, he’s a man without secrets, a man without dignity. Those doctors, Jesus, they flop you down on your stomach and they go in there with their evil little tools and they poke and they prod, they tear and they—”

“Sounds terrible,” Angie said.

It slowed him down, thank God.

He nodded. “Terrible isn’t quite the word.” He looked at her suddenly as if he’d just noticed her. “And you, my dear, are far too exquisite to be subjected to such talk.” He kissed her hand and I tried not to roll my eyes. “I know your grandfather quite well, Angela. Quite well.”

Angie smiled. “He’s proud of the association, Mr. Constantine.”

“I’ll be sure to tell him I had the pleasure of meeting his lovely granddaughter.” He looked at me and his twinkling eyes faded a bit. “And you, Mr. Kenzie, you’re keeping a careful eye on this woman, making sure she keeps out of harm’s way?”

“This woman does a pretty good job of that herself, Mr. Constantine,” Angie said.

Fat Freddy’s eyes stayed on me, growing darker by the second, like he wasn’t too keen on what he saw. He said, “Our friends will join us in just a minute.”

As Freddy leaned back to pour himself another cup of coffee, I heard one of the bodyguards out front say, “Go right on in, Mr. Rouse,” and Angie’s eyes widened slightly as Jack Rouse and Kevin Hurlihy came through the door.

Jack Rouse controlled Southie, Charlestown, and every
thing between Savin Hill and the Neponset River in Dorchester. He was thin, hard, and his eyes matched the gunmetal of his close-cropped hair. He didn’t look particularly threatening, but he didn’t have to—he had Kevin for that.

I’ve known Kevin since we were six, and nothing that lives in his brain or his bloodstream has ever been stained by a humane impulse. He walked through the door, avoided looking at Pine or even acknowledging him, and I knew Pine was who Kevin aspired to be. But Pine was all stillness and economy, while Kevin was a walking exposed nerve, his pupils lit with a battery charge, the kind of guy who might shoot everyone in the place simply because the idea occurred to him. Pine was scary because killing was a job to him, no different than a thousand others. Kevin was scary because killing was the only job he wanted, and he’d do it for free.

The first thing he did after shaking Freddy’s hand was sit down beside me and put his cigarette out in my coffee cup. Then he ran a hand through his coarse, thick hair and stared at me.

Freddy said, “Jack, Kevin, you know Mr. Kenzie and Ms. Gennaro, don’t you?”

“Old friends, sure,” Jack said as he took the seat beside Angie. “Neighborhood kids like Kevin.” Rouse shrugged off an old blue Members’ Only jacket and hung it behind him on his chair. “Ain’t that the God’s truth, Kev?”

Kevin was too busy staring at me to comment.

Far Freddy said, “I like everything to be above board. Rogowski says you two are okay, and maybe you got a problem I can help you with—so be it. But you two come from Jack’s neighborhood, so I ask Jack if he’d like to sit in. You see what I’m saying?”

We nodded.

Kevin lit another cigarette, blew the smoke into my hair.

Freddy turned his palms up on the table. “We’re all agreed, then. So, tell me what you need, Mr. Kenzie.”

“We’ve been hired by a client,” I said, “who—”

“How’s your coffee, Jack?” Freddy said. “Enough cream?”

“It’s fine, Mr. Constantine. Very good.”

“Who,” I repeated, “is under the impression she annoyed one of Jack’s men.”

“Men?” Freddy said and raised his eyebrows, looked at Jack, then back at me. “We’re small businessmen, Mr. Kenzie. We have employees, but their loyalties stop with their paychecks.” He looked at Jack again. “Men?” he said and they both chuckled.

Angie sighed.

Kevin blew some more smoke into my hair.

I was tired, and the last vestiges of Bubba’s vodka were chewing at the base of my brain, so I really wasn’t in the mood to play cute with a bunch of cut-rate psychopaths who’d seen
The Godfather
too many times and thought they were respectable. But I reminded myself that Freddy, at least, was a very powerful psychopath who could be dining on my spleen tomorrow night if he wanted to.

“Mr. Constantine, one of Mr. Rouse’s…associates, then, has expressed anger at our client, made certain threats—”

“Threats?” Freddy said. “Threats?”

“Threats?” Jack said, smiled at Freddy.

“Threats,” Angie said. “Seems our client had the misfortune of speaking with your associate’s girlfriend, who claimed to know of her boyfriend’s criminal activities, including the—how can I put it?” She met Freddy’s eyes. “The waste management of some formerly animate tissue?”

It took him a minute to get it, but then his small eyes narrowed and he threw back his massive head and laughed, booming it up into the ceiling, sending it halfway down Prince Street. Jack looked confused. Kevin looked pissed off, but that’s the only way Kevin’s ever looked.

“Pine,” Freddy said. “You hear that?”

Pine made no indication he’d heard anything. He made no indication he was breathing. He sat there, immobile, simultaneously looking and not looking in our direction.

“’Waste management of formerly animate tissue,’” Freddy repeated, gasping. He looked at Jack, realized he
hadn’t gotten the joke yet. “Fuck, Jack, go out and pick up a brain, huh?”

Jack blinked and Kevin leaned forward on the table, and Pine’s head turned slightly to look at him, and Freddy acted like he hadn’t noticed any of it.

He wiped the corners of his mouth with a linen napkin, shook his head slowly at Angie. “Wait’ll I tell the guys at the club that one. I swear. You might have taken your father’s name, Angela, but you’re a Patriso. No question.”

Jack said, “Patriso?”

“Yeah,” Freddy said. “This is Mr. Patriso’s granddaughter. You didn’t know?”

Jack hadn’t known. It seemed to annoy him. He said, “Give me a cigarette, Kev.”

Kevin leaned across the table, lit the cigarette for him, his elbow about a quarter inch from my eye.

“Mr. Constantine,” Angie said, “our client doesn’t wish to make the list of what your associate considers disposable.”

Freddy held up a meaty hand. “We’re talking about what here exactly?”

“Our client believes she may have angered Mr. Hurlihy.”

“What?” Jack said.

“Explain,” Freddy said. “Quickly.”

Without using Diandra’s name, we did.

“So, what,” Freddy said, “some cooze Kevin’s bumping tells this psychiatrist some bullshit about—I got this?—a body or something, and Kevin gets a little hot and calls her and makes some noise.” He shook his head. “Kevin, you want to tell me about this?”

Kevin looked at Jack.

“Kevin,” Freddy said.

Kevin’s head turned.

“You got a girlfriend?”

Kevin’s voice sounded like ground glass running through a car engine. “No, Mr. Constantine.”

Freddy looked at Jack and they both laughed.

Kevin looked like he’d been caught buying pornography by a nun.

Freddy turned toward us. “You kidding me with this?” He laughed harder. “With all due respect to Kevin, he ain’t exactly a ladies’ man, if you understand me.”

Angie said, “Mr. Constantine, please see our position—this isn’t something we made up.”

He leaned in, patted her hand. “Angela, I’m not saying you did. But you’ve been duped. Some broad claims she was threatened by Kevin because of his
girlfriend
? Come now.”

“This,” Jack said, “is what I left a card game for? This shit?” He snorted and started to stand up.

“Sit down, Jack,” Freddy said.

Jack froze half in, half out of his chair.

Freddy looked at Kevin. “Sit, Jack.”

Jack sat.

Freddy smiled at us. “Have we cleared up your problem?”

I reached into the inside pocket of my jacket for the photo of Jason Warren, and Kevin’s hand dove into his jacket and Jack leaned back in his chair and Pine shifted slightly in his seat. Freddy’s eyes never left my hand. Very slowly, I withdrew the photo and placed it on the table.

“Our client received this in the mail the other day.”

One of the mustaches above Freddy’s eyes arched. “So?”

“So,” Angie said, “we’d thought it might be a message from Kevin letting our client know that he knew her weaknesses. Now, we assume it isn’t, but we’re confused.”

Jack nodded at Kevin and Kevin’s hand came out of his jacket.

If Freddy noticed, he gave no indication. He looked down at the photo of Jason Warren and sipped his coffee. “This kid, he your client’s son?”

“He’s not mine,” I said.

Freddy raised his huge head slowly, looked at me. “Someone know you, asshole?” Those once warm eyes of his seemed about as comforting as ice picks. “Don’t you ever talk to me like that. Understood?”

My mouth suddenly felt like I’d swallowed a wool sweater.

Kevin chuckled softly under his breath.

Freddy reached into the folds of his jacket, his eyes never leaving my face as he produced a leather-bound notepad. He opened it, leafed through a few pages, found the one he was looking for.

“Patrick Kenzie,” he read. “Age, thirty-three. Mother and father deceased. One sibling, Erin Margolis, aged thirty-six, lives in Seattle, Washington. Last year you grossed forty-eight thousand dollars as part of your partnership with Miss Gennaro here. Divorced seven years. Ex-wife currently resides in parts unknown.” He smiled at me. “But we’re working on it, believe me.” He turned a page, pursed his fat lips. “Last year, you shot a pimp in cold blood under an expressway overpass.” He winked, reached out and patted my hand. “Yes, Kenzie, we know about that. You kill someone again, here’s simple advice: Don’t leave a witness.” He looked back at the notebook. “Where were we? Oh, right. Favorite color is blue. Favorite beer is St. Pauli Girl, favorite food is Mexican.” He turned another page, glanced up at us. “How’m I doing so far?”

“Boy,” Angie said, “are we impressed.”

He turned toward her. “Angela Gennaro. Currently estranged from husband, Phillip Dimassi. Father deceased. Mother, Antonia, lives with second husband in Flagstaff, Arizona. Also involved in killing of pimp last year. Currently residing on Howes Street in a first-floor apartment with a weak deadbolt on the back door.” He closed the notebook, looked at us benignly. “Me and my friends can come up with information like this, why the fuck would we need to mail someone a photograph?”