Don of the Dead (14 page)

I wasn't about to launch into another debate of proper cemetery vocabulary. "Why would you have money in there, anyway?" I asked Gus.

He let go a sigh of impatience. "This here mausoleum was built long before I got clipped. I helped design it. And I watched it being built. Because I wanted to make sure it was done right. When it was finished…

well, let's put it this way. A man in my position, he never knows when he might need some cash. Fast.

When this here mausoleum was finished, I made sure I stashed some cash away. Just in case."

It sounded plausible. But even the promise of money wasn't going to get me inside. Not until I had some more answers. "Just in case of what? Like in case you needed to leave town?"

Gus pursed his lips, considering. "It's been known to happen."

"Or in case you needed to arrange a hit on someone?"

He snorted. "I told you, this was private money. Not business funds."

Another thought occurred to me and I looked at him hard, as if that might help me figure out if he was lying. "Money you got how? Robbing banks?"

"Your questions are out of line."

"Then answer them and I'll stop asking."

He scratched a finger behind his right ear. "The money is mine. Won fair and square. Poker."

"And you tucked it away here, where nobody could find it."

"Here. Other places. Like I said, a man never knows—"

"When he's going to have to skip out on his business associates and not leave a forwarding address."

"My murder proves as much, wouldn't you say?"

He had me there. Which didn't mean I walked up to the door of that mausoleum with a light heart. Gus pointed to one of the rocks tucked into the landscaping and I realized it was one of those phony, hide-a-keythingees . I retrieved the key and unlocked the door, and the second I touched the brass knob, ice filled my veins. I pulled the door open and stepped into the place where thirty years earlier, GusScarpetti had been laid to his not-so-eternal rest.

A deal was a deal.

From a booth in the corner by the window, I watched Dan up at the counter, ordering my double latte (skim milk, no whipped cream), and thought about the nine thousand dollars in cold, hard cash that I'd deposited in my checking account that morning.

Like it or not, I knew exactly what it meant.

Sure, the money from Gus's mausoleum would go a long way toward supplementing what I made at Garden View. Sure, I wouldn't have to worry about paying my rent. Not for a long time, anyway. Sure, I was grateful. More than grateful. I was relieved. Overjoyed. Flat out happy. For the first time in what felt like forever, I didn't have to wonder how I would stretch my paycheck to cover my bills. (That pair of Moschino Cheap & Chic pink polka dotslingbacks had my name on them, too.) But the money meant more than that. I knew it. More importantly, so did Gus.

The moment I took that fateful last step out of the real world and into the marble, brass, and glass extravaganza that was a fitting place for a guy nicknamed the Pope to call his home for all eternity, Gus had all the proof he needed that I was hooked. And the second I followed his directions, twitched back the Persian rug that covered the floor, and found the sliding panel and the pile of tens and twenties stashed under it, I knew I'd passed theol ' point of no return.

We had a deal, me and Gus.

I was now working for the mob.

Dan set my latte down in front of me, effectively drawing me out of my thoughts. The teddy bear smile he gave me didn't hurt, either. He slid into the seat across from mine. "So, what have you been up to?"

It was an innocent question. Dan wouldn't ask any other kind. Still, it made me uncomfortable enough to shift against the vinyl seat. I couldn't tell him what I'd really been up to so I didn't even try.

"Working mostly," I said instead, leaving out the part about how I was now employed by the most notorious bad guy this side of Al Capone.

"It must be fascinating to work at that cemetery."

I'd almost forgotten. "Oh, the cemetery! Fascinating isn't exactly the word for it. It's more like—"

"Interesting?"

No lie there, especially since I found myself officially in the private-investigation business.

"Speaking of interesting… " Dan took a sip of his coffee. House blend. No sugar. Black. "I have news. I got approval. For the study."

Suddenly, the invitation for coffee made a whole lot of sense.

"That's not why I wanted to see you tonight." Dan jumped in with the explanation so quickly, he must have been reading my mind. Or maybe he just noticed the flash of anger in my eyes. "I mean, I wanted to see you. Just to… you know… to see you." He blushed to the roots of his shaggy hair.

"But I wanted to tell you about the study, too," he added, his eyes glittering with excitement behind his wire-rimmed glasses. "It starts immediately and I'm authorized to recruit a dozen subjects. I can even pay. Well, a little, anyway. Enough to cover parking over at the hospital and dinner in the cafeteria on the nights we meet. I wanted to ask you—"

"To be one of your guinea pigs."

Dan's expectant smile faded. "It's all in the name of science."

Science.

I guess private investigation is something of a science, too. And it didn't take a peek at my college transcripts for me to remember that I'd never been very good at science. Which made me think that Dan might be good for something other than coffee and pissing me off.

I ripped open a little bag of sweetener, dumped it into my cup, and stirred. "How do you investigate?" I asked, "I mean, how do you know where to begin?"

He took my questions at face value. "I start with the basics," he said, and I checked it off on my mental clipboard. I'd started with the basics about Gus, too. Maybe I knew what I was doing after all. "And then I get into the nitty-gritty."

"Like?"

"Like details. You know, go one layer under the basics. Dig around. Then one layer under that. For instance, in this study… "

Dan had found a subject he knew more than a little something about, and he glommed onto it with gusto.

While he rhapsodized about monosynaptic reflex pathways andnonmyelinated neurons, I zoned out. It was the perfect opportunity to think about my investigation.

It would have helped, of course, if I had even an inkling about what to do next.

"… and then there's receptors." Poor Dan was talking and I wasn't listening. He raced right on, adorably oblivious. "In layman's terms, receptors encode information into electrochemical messages. Things like light and sound and touch. That's one of the things I'd like to focus on in my study. The relationship between my subjects' occipital lobes and how their electrochemical messages are transmitted by their sensory neurons. You don't have any siblings, do you? Because as an adjunct, I'd love to look at how any anomalies I might discover could be analogous to genetics and relationships within a family."

Family.

Even though Dan added another dozen ten-dollar words to the sentence, my receptors latched on to that one and wouldn't let go. I guess those electrochemical messages kicked in because a light-bulb went off over my head.

I was so grateful, I leaned over the table and kissed Dan on the cheek. That got his attention.

"What's that for?" he asked.

"For the quarter you're going to loan me." He continued to stare. I suppose he was waiting for an explanation. Or maybe he was wondering what sort of brain anomaly was making me act like a crazy person. I was too jazzed by the sudden insight to care. There was no use getting into it, the whole, ugly thing about how my cell-phone service was suspended because my carrier was a little touchy about bills being paid on time. Or at all. Thanks to Gus and my newfound fortune, I'd be back in the wireless age in a matter of days but until then, I needed a pay phone, a phone book, and a little bit of luck.

"Quarter," I reminded Dan, and when I snapped my fingers, he dutifully reached into his pocket, retrieved the coin, and handed it over. I was out of the booth and across the coffee shop in a flash. I staked out a place outside the restrooms and thumbed through the beat-up White Pages that hung from the wall next to the pay phone.

Honestly, I didn't really expect to find the phone number that I was looking for. But there it was, and my heart skipped a beat as I skimmed my finger across the name and held it there under the numbers so I wouldn't dial wrong. When I dropped Dan's quarter into the phone, my hands were shaking. I listened to it ring on the other end and held my breath.

He didn't answer his own phone. I didn't expect him to.

The man who did answer didn't bother to identify himself but he didn't blow me off, either. Another surprise. He listened while I went through my song and dance about how I was writing a book about Gus and how I needed all the primary-source information I could find.

I expected him to hang up on me. When he told me to hold on instead, I was so stunned, I could have been knocked over with aspritz of Eternity. After a wait that seemed like next to forever, I heard another phone receiver being lifted. A gravelly voice said, "So you're writing a book, huh? And I suppose you want to interview me. I'm a busy man. I don't have a lot of what do you call them… windows of opportunity."

I swallowed down the little voice of common sense that told me lying was wrong and that lying to the wrong people was dangerous. It didn't stop me from going through the writing-the-book story again. I ended it with a hopeful, "You'll see me, right?" My voice wavered over the question. My hand was so tight around the phone receiver that my knuckles were white. What I didn't expect was—

"Thursday? This Thursday?" No quavering in my voice this time. This was out-and-out I-can't-believe-this-is-happening. Thursday was the day I was supposed to have dinner with Quinn. And suddenly—

"Thursday." The single word rumbled from the other end of the phone like thunder. "Seven o'clock. It's a one-time offer. Take it or leave it."

I took it.

By the time I walked back to the booth, I didn't know if I should have been happy or scared to death. I did know that I owed Dan big time. For the quarter and for getting me started in what I hoped was the right direction. I knew two other things, too: it was hell having a conscience. And paybacks were a bitch.

I plunked down in the seat across from Dan. "I'll do it," I told him.

"Do—?"

"I'll be in your study."

At the same time I got the details and told him I'd show up at his lab the following week for our first session, I wondered how Dan would feel if he knew I'd only agreed to help him because I felt obligated.

I wondered how Quinn would take the news that I was canceling out on him and, more importantly, if he'd ever give me a second chance for dinner. Just like I wondered what the sexy cop would say if he knew I was standing him up to spend my Thursday night with Rudy the CootieScarpetti .

Whoever said that crime doesn't pay?

RudyScarpetti had an address in one of those out-in-the-country suburbs that made even the most social-climbing blue bloods green with envy. This wasn't the status-conscious, winter-home-in-Florida, Rolex-for- Christmas universe that, before Dad got greedy, I had always thought of as my comfortable little corner of the world. This was serious-money territory. The kind of place where residents never had to worry about status because they
were
status, the top of the upper crust that the rest of us could only dream about. When they weren't skiing in the Alps or tossing the dice inMonte Carlo , these folks spent their days thinking about which of their Rolls-Royces to take out for a drive.