Don of the Dead (5 page)

I forced my gaze away from the clock and my thoughts from Dan back to the not-so-dearly departed don. I wasn't about to correct him and tell him that I wasn't going home. At least not to stay. It wasn't any of his business and besides, I didn't think I needed to run my social calendar by a guy who'd been too busy being dead to worry about dating.

"I have been trying to get some work done," I said, my words cut in half because my teeth were gritted.

"I've been at this all afternoon. In case you haven't noticed, we're getting nowhere."

To emphasize my point, I slapped a hand against the stack of yellow and brittle newspapers closest to me. A little puff of dust and who-knows-what-else rose up and tickled my nose. Just in case I needed it, I plucked a tissue from the box I swiped from Ella's office while she and Jim still had their heads together after our meeting.

The tissue box was decorated with teddy bears dressed in picture hats and strings of pearls. As much as critters in clothing offended my fashion sensibilities, the tissues had come in handy plenty of times in the hours since I started researching Gus's life. And his death. I sneezed.

"There's nothing in any of these newspapers that's new." Considering that the news and the papers were thirty years old, it was an understatement. I touched the tissue to my nose and wondered how red it was and how bad I was going to look by the time I got toMangia Mania.

For the third time in as many minutes, I snapped open my compact and checked out the damage. Not bad considering. Nothing a touch of moisturizer and a dusting of powder wouldn't help. If I ran to the ladies' room now—

"How do you know?" Over the wall of newspapers, Gus pinned me with a look. "How do you know we won't find anything? You've barely scratched the surface."

At the moment, the surface in question was the copy of the
Cleveland Plain Dealer
on top of the pile. I snapped the compact shut, but rather than look at the grainy black-and-white photo that showed Gus flat on his face in the middle of the street, a darkliquidy pool all around him, I shuffled the newspaper to my left and glanced at the next one on the pile. This one was the
Cleveland Press
, and the picture on the front page was just about the same. Cops. Street. Gus. Blood.

Plenty of blood.

I guess I must have made a face.

"What?" Gus stood and cocked his head, the better to see what I was looking at. "That bothers you? All that blood?"

"I'm surprised it doesn't bother you. I can't believe you're not upset by the fact that you're—"

"Dead?"

I still wasn't ready to say the word out loud. I slid back in my chair. "Aren't you mad?"

"At whoever did that to me?" He pursed his lips, thinking. "I was," he finally said, tipping his head back and studying the mottled ceiling panels. "When I first sort of… you know… When I woke up and realized… well, I suppose I realized I was never really going to wake up."

"And that's when you knew you were… " It wasn't exactly a question but then, I wasn't exactly sure I wanted an answer.

Gus grunted. "I didn't think dead. Not right away. After all, in my family, we'd been raised to think that dead meant heaven. Or hell." He looked away. Just long enough for me to wonder if the thought bothered him.

Not that I was going to ask. It was one thing having a conversation with a dead guy. It was another
to
question his religious beliefs. Or to ask if he thought he deserved eternal fire and brimstone because of his life of crime.

"And once you realized you were de—" I caught myself before the word slipped all the way out. Gus didn't miss a trick. He grinned.

"Glad you're finally getting the picture,chicky ." He winked. "Now if we could just get back to business… " He glanced at the newspapers we hadn't looked through yet.

My gaze automatically traveled to the clock. Twelve minutes and counting.

"I'd love to." So I lied. I had to believe that Gus had told a lie or two himself in his lifetime. I figured it was payback. I checked the calendar hanging on the wall to my left. The following afternoon, the Sacred Heart of Jesus Ladies' Guild was coming for our angel tour. Which meant that the next morning, I'd have to dig the angel tour script from one of the piles on my desk and actually read it. In the time I'd been here at Garden View, I hadn't conducted the angel tour yet. I didn't know anything about angels.

And something told me that the Sacred Heart of Jesus Ladies' Guild did.

"I really don't have the time tonight," I told Gus. "And tomorrow isn't looking much better. Maybe next week or—"

"I am not a man who likes to be jerked around." Gus leaned across my desk, his eyes narrowed and fire burning in them. "Next week is too damned late. You're wasting my time, little girl. Get busy. Now."

Call me diplomatic. Or maybe I'm just a weenie. I didn't think it was smart to piss off a guy who, according to what I'd been reading in the newspapers, was a combination Tasmanian Devil and Hannibal Lecter .

I sighed and my shoulders slumped, and Gus knew he'd won this round.

"A couple minutes more," I told him, checking the clock one more time. "That's as long as I can stay.

And it's not like we're going to find anything new. There's nothing in any of these news reports that we haven't seen already. It's all the same story. You went to dinner at… " I should have remembered but I'll confess, after hours of rummaging through news that was older than me, it was hard to keep all the facts straight.

"Lucia'sTrattoria ." Gus supplied the information and a smile touched his lips. "Ah, Lucia's! Best veal parmigiana in the world! And the wine cellar… " He kissed the tips of his fingers. "Magnificent!"

"So you ate dinner and drank wine. Who were you with?" I thought I knew the answer to the question but I wanted to see if Gus's memory agreed with the newspaper reports. Besides, if I could get the few facts we knew for certain covered—quickly—maybe I'd have time to slap on a coat of lipstick, check my makeup, and get toMangia Mania before it was too late.

"Johnny the Rat. Benny No Shoes. Mike the Dumper. AndPauly ." Gus listed his dinner companions.

"That would bePaulyRamone . When he was a kid we called him PudgyPauly but thenPauly got bigger than everybody else and we couldn't get away with it no more. We knew him asPounder . JustPounder .

And when you saidPounder , everybody on the street, they knew who you were talking about."

I glanced down at the cheat sheet I'd started on a yellow legal pad, a list of the facts I'd been able to glean from the newspaper articles. Johnny, I supposed, was the John Vitale who was said to have been seen leaving the scene of the crime. Benny No Shoes must have been the BenMarzano who was wounded in the attack that killed Gus. Mike was MichaelCardorella . He was identified as one of the onlookers at the scene pictured on the front page.Pounder I didn't need to guess about. As Gus had pointed out, he was PaulRamone .

All present and accounted for.

"No one else was there?"

"You second-guessing me?"

I didn't like the tone of Gus's voice. Or the fact that he shot daggers at me across my desk. It was getting to be a habit but I couldn't help myself. I sighed. Right before I sneezed again. "I'm not second-guessing anyone, just trying to get the story straight. And wondering if the newspapers got it right.

Nobody else was there?"

"Sure. There were a lot of people there. Lucia's was a popular place."

"But there was nobody else there with you?"

Gus straightened his tie. "Nobody."

So much for that line of questioning. I felt my shoulders slump again and this time, the dust and eye-straining research had nothing to do with it. I had asked all the questions I could think to ask and, let's face it, I didn't have a clue what I was doing. The closest I'd ever come to any kind of criminal investigation was watching
Law & Order
reruns on cable. I wracked my brain, wondering what Detectives Lenny and Ed would do next.

Something clicked and I grinned, feeling pretty smart. "Who knew you were going to be there for dinner that night?"

Gus laughed. Not like it was funny. More like it was the dumbest thing he'd heard in a long time. "If you was paying attention, you'd know what everybody in town knew: I had dinner at Lucia's every Thursday night, kid. The wholefreakin ' world knew it."

Nothing like getting a hole a mile wide blown in your one-and-only theory to take the wind out of a girl. I propped my elbows on top of the stack of newspapers and cradled my head in my hands. "Which means anybody could have arranged the hit."

"Sure." He shrugged. Like it was no big deal that someone had planned and executed (pun intended) the hit that left GusScarpetti with no less than sixteen gunshot wounds. Of course, it only took one to kill a guy, but whether that one shot straight to his heart had come before or after the other fifteen, nobody could tell. At the time, the coroner hadn't even tried to guess. I suppose it didn't matter. Dead was dead.

And one look at the photographs of Gus lying facedown in the middle ofMayfield Road , his left leg cocked at a funny angle, his right arm thrown over his head…

Well, even I could tell he was dead.

" 'Unnamed police sources speculate the hit was the work of theLaGanza crime family and its boss, VictorLaGanza .'" The words stared up at me from the front page of the newspaper and I read them out loud, dangling the tidbit in front of Gus like it was a choice morsel of Lucia's vealparmigiana .

He didn't bite. "Victor the Mosquito didn't have the balls. You should excuse the expression. He didn't have the muscle, neither. Besides, no way it's as easy as that. That's the story the cops put out and they probably wanted to believe it. It wrapped everything up neat and clean, you know? They didn't have to get off their butts and do any work. But like you'd remember if you were listening when I told you before, if it was that easy, I wouldn't be here right now. My unfinished business would be finished and then I'd be finished.
Capisce
?"

"I
capisce
. But ifLaGanza didn't do it—"

"Pepper and Penelope. They're not really close, are they? I mean like if someone's name is John and they call the guy Johnny. Or if somebody isVittorio and his friends call him Vito. So how did they do it?

How did your family get from Penelope to Pepper?"

The change of subject left me momentarily disoriented. At the same time I wondered why Gus didn't want to talk about VictorLaGanza , I scrambled to regain my hold on reality. It didn't take me long to realize there was no use even trying. I was talking to a dead man. And I was concerned about reality?

"I couldn't say Penelope. Not when I was little. Then when I was a bit older… " Heat touched my cheeks and I instantly regretted it. I didn't like dredging up the past. And I didn't like admitting that I had faults. Even when they were faults that I'd mostly outgrown.

Stalling for time I didn't have, I checked the clock again and realized it was almost five. I scooped up Paris Nights in one hand and my purse in the other. When I was done, Gus was still staring at me. Still waiting for an explanation.

"I had a temper," I said, even now reluctant to admit that I was the preschooler who refused to sit and listen, the one who talked back to teachers, not because I was disrespectful but because when they pushed me past my limit, I just couldn't keep my mouth shut. "My parents said I was fiery. Like pepper."

He nodded. "It's the red hair. True every time, and not one of them… what do you call them?…

stereotypes. Redheads." He clicked his tongue. "I knew better than to ever trust a redhead."

"Thanks." I stood, the better to get to the door the moment the big hand hit the twelve. "But we weren't talking about me," I reminded Gus. "We were talking about your—" I couldn't bring myself to say
murder

. It was one thing to read about homicides in books or newspapers. It was another to watch the crime shows on TV. But standing there, face to face with someone who was actually a victim of the ultimate in violent acts…

Rather than think about it, I turned to head to the door. How Gus got there before I did, I don't know. I couldn't make a grab for the doorknob. Not without reaching right through him.

Something I was definitely not prepared to do.

He knew it, too. Gus grinned. "What do you say,chicky ? You could stay a while longer."

I wasn't about to be schmoozed. Not by a ghost with the chutzpah to block the door with his own body.

Or ectoplasm.

Or whatever it was.

I didn't have the time or the energy to even try to work through the thing. Instead, I propped my fists on my hips. "You could wait," I told Gus.

"I've been waiting thirty years."

"Then a couple more days won't matter."

"I'm damned tired of waiting."

"Then tell me about VictorLaGanza ."

Gus wasn't used to being outsmarted. Especially not by a woman. His top lip curled and for a minute, he just stood there and stared at me, waiting for me to back down.

Maybe he forgot that redheads had a reputation for being stubborn, too.

"Me and Victor… " Gus rubbed a hand across his jaw. The diamonds in his pinky ring glinted in the overhead fluorescent lights. "We went back a long way. We came up in the organization together. He stood up for me at my wedding. He was my son, Rudy's, godfather."

"Friends. But not all that friendly. Not if the police think he was the one who ordered the hit."

"The police were wrong."

"How do you know? I'm all for this gut-instinct stuff but if we're going to work through this, we need facts. How do you know, Gus? How do you really know thatLaGanza isn't the one who had you killed?"

Gus sniffed like he'd caught wind of a bad smell. "Shows what you know. No way Victor would have offed me. It would have been bad for business. You see, we were doing a deal."

"And he was the trustworthy sort."

"Yeah." With a twitch, Gus pulled back his shoulders. "There was a brand new state lottery back then and people being people, we knew that pretty soon, the suckers would be spending millions on it. We figured a way to get us a piece of the pie."