Invasion of Privacy - Jeremiah Healy (25 page)

"What?"

Cocozzo sighed just a little, like he'd had to
explain a lot to the younger man over the years. "His hands,
Boss."

"His hands?"

"Yeah. We been here ten, fifteen minutes,
talking away. You seen his hands yet?"

"No." Junior watched me now too. "No,
I haven't, now that you mention it. Show us your hands,
shit-for-brains.”

"Uh-unh."

"And what if I stand up and come over and look
for myself?"

I said, "Then you'd maybe come between Coco
there and me, in which case he's going to draw whatever he's got
under his coat, and I'm going to have to shoot him."

"Shoot Coco?" said Junior.

"Yeah. I don't have to worry about you, Rick,
because you're having him do the carrying."

Ianella looked at Zuppone. "The fuck you letting
happen here?"

"Hey-ey-ey, Mr. Ianella—"

The younger man cuffed Primo, a heel of the hand to
the jaw. Junior was quick, but, in my opinion, not very smart for
doing it.

Zuppone struggled to control himself. "Mr.
Ianella, please—"

Another cuff.

"Mr.—"

And another.

I saw Primo's fist get ready to come up, and I think
Cocozzo saw it too, because the balding man said, "Boss,"
but not as a question or for permission to speak.

Ianella turned to him. "What?"

"I got a different idea. What say we have Primo
talk to this guy some more while you and me go out, buy a capuccino
or something, wait by the car?"

"You mean just walk the fuck out, after all the
shit this dickhead's been giving us?"

Again patiently. "Boss, we want to find
DiRienzi, but this ain't our turf. We'd be spending our time asking
for directions, spinning our wheels, am I right? We let Primo and
Cuddy here handle it for us, we're ahead of the game and back home
sooner, with that rat's head on a platter."

Ianella didn't like it, but I was getting the
impression that Cocozzo had been right in the past about a lot of
things, and somebody, maybe the patriarch, had made Junior recognize
it.

The scarred eyebrow seemed to resolve itself as the
younger man rose, unbuttoning his own suit jacket. I tensed, but all
Ianella did was pick up my chair and use it as a battering ram, legs
first, on the door side of Cocozzo's wall. Once, twice, and a third
time, the legs penetrating the fiberboard, sending dust into the air
and chips of paint to the floor. A series of three, like his cuffing
Primo, and a dozen jagged holes.

Junior dropped the chair so that it was standing on
its feet. Then he shrugged his shoulders to get the suit jacket to
drape correctly and buttoned up. "Next time, dickhead, it won't
be your wall."

Cocozzo waited until the younger man was into the
hall before backing up and through the door himself, closing it
behind them.

Zuppone had watched all this without a word. Waiting
a count of five after they left, he turned back to me.

"Thanks for returning
my calls, you stupid fuck."

* * *

"Look at it this way, Primo, things could be
worse."

"How?"

"We1l, instead of just the one section of
fiberboard there, I might have to replace—"

"I don't mean about your fucking wall, Cuddy."
Zuppone squared himself in the client's chair. "You got to
understand something. My organization owes their organization, only
it's more personal than that. We owe them for a favor they did us
when we fucking needed one bad. Now they think we can, like,
reciprocate, get me? And it sure looks like we can, and should, but
you're playing the turd in the soup."

"Primo, I told you before, I'm not setting up
this DiRienzi for those guys to kill."

"The fuck do you care, they whack him or not?
The fucking guy's a rat. What's he to you?"

"Nothing. But I'm not going to be the reason
they find him if I can help it. And besides, it's more complicated
now."

"Complicated how?"

"My client's missing."

"On the level?" said Zuppone.

"Yes."

"That wasn't just some bullshit con you were
running to stall us?"

"No. Ever since I told her that the boyfriend
wasn't checking out, nobody's heard from her, and several people
should have."

Primo looked down at the floor. "I guess I gotta
take your word on that."

"It's the truth."

"And that's the complication."

"If she and this DiRienzi are together
somewhere? Zuppone's head snapped back up. "What, you're worried
about us hitting the woman too?"

"Yes."

"I told you once, Cuddy, we don't go off on a
drive-by, spray some fucking street corner with an Uzi like these kid
gangs. We do a hit, it's specific."

"Primo, why do you suppose Junior there came on
this trip?"

" 'Junior.' That's all you need to call—"

"Cocozzo's the executioner type, Rick's here
without a gun, but when it comes to happen, I think I can picture the
son avenging his father. That way on visiting day, he can go out to
the prison, say to the old man, 'Hey, Poppa, I'm the one did the
Judas for you. Tell him, Coco! "

Zuppone just shrugged.

“
Primo, if somebody anonymous was tapped to pull
the trigger on DiRienzi, then I can see my client being okay. How's
she going to identify some guy from Vegas or St. Louis, brought in
for one specific contract? But Junior does the hit, and my client's
anywhere near DiRienzi at the time, Cocozzo has enough brains not to
leave a witness behind who can finger a member of the family."

Zuppone tsked his tongue off the roof of his mouth.

"Cuddy, I won't lie to you. Yeah, she'd be
cooked too. And I can understand why you're trying to protect her. No
shit, I do. But that's not the problem."

"It is from my end."

"No. No, you and me are the problem. I'm sitting
in a fucking frying pan, and Rick Ianella's turning up the heat. And
it's not even his fucking fault, really, on account of he's just
trying to do the right thing. You're the one gave me the bookkeeper's
picture, and now you're the one's got to come through somehow."

"After the way Junior treated you?"

Zuppone flicked his head, shaking something off.
"Don't bring that up, okay?"

"Primo—"

"Look, the guy's under a lot of pressure. His
father's in the fucking slam, and he sees us as the way to avenge the
gentleman, and instead you play Lone fucking Ranger with him. What's
the guy supposed to do?"

"Not knock you around in front of me."

“
Nobody knocks me around, Cuddy."

"You really believe this Ianella is worth
helping?"

"That's not my call. And it's not yours, either.
I told you this once already, I'm not gonna say it again. The
organization's been good to me. They took me in and they gave me a
chance and I grew into it. Maybe with you it was the Army. Or your
girlfriend there, her law school. I don't know, maybe for each person
it's something different. But I do know it's all the same too. You
got to be loyal to the thing that made you what you are, Cuddy. And
you got to remember that about me."

“
And vice-versa."

Zuppone blew out a breath. "All right, so where
does that leave us?"

"How long can you stall your guests?"

"My guests." Primo shook his head. "The
fuck, you saw them. How long you think it'll be before they decide
talking and wall-banging ain't working out too good?"

"What kind of control does Cocozzo really have
over Junior?"

"I wish you wouldn't call him that."

"Sorry."

"I mean, you get used to saying an insulting
nickname, it'll pop out some time, and then we'll see blood whether
we had to or not. I remember this one guy from the neighborhood, he
was big, huge even, but you took a leak next to him, you could tell
he had this little tiny dick. Not that you'd exactly be looking at
it, you know, but you'd just kind of notice it. And another guy kept
referring to this huge guy as—"

"Primo, you're right. How much control?"

"What? Coco over Jun—Jesus Christ, now you got
me doing it."

"I said I was sorry."

"Cuddy, if this ever—"

"Primo, how much control?"

The head tick-tocked. "About what you saw today,
if I was betting on it. Ianella's into the grand gesture. You know,
like putting the fear of God into that hotel clerk out in Milwaukee,
get me my suite there, or your chair thing here. Coco's more like me,
a 'situation guy.' He can handle his boss, but only up to a point,
account of Ianella's still the boss, and they both got to go back
home sometime."

Probably a fair assessment. "Okay. Do your best
to keep them occupied, and I'll call you as soon as I can."

"With what?"

"With what I can do."
 
"Cuddy, let me tell you something, you don't
already know it. I'm in the frying pan, like I said. These people,
they start believing they can't trust me, they're gonna put you in
the fire. They ain't gonna care you got friends on the cops, or your
girlfriend's a DA. And there ain't gonna be a fucking thing I can do
about it,"

Primo Zuppone stood and left me. I thought he was
pretty cool not to have asked whether I really had a gun in my lap.
 

=17=

After waiting five minutes, I tried Olga Evorova at
her condo. Just the tape machine. Then I called her at the bank. The
formal female secretary said Ms. Evorova was "in conference? I
asked for another extension. When I gave my name to the brusque male
voice, Craig said, "One moment," as though he'd been
instructed to put me right through.

"Claude Loiselle."

"This is John Cuddy. I asked for Olga first and
got the 'in conference' answer."

“
That's just the party line. Nobody's heard from
her."

Loiselle hesitated, then said, "I take it you
haven't learned anything either?"

"Not that helps us find Olga."

"Wel1, I feel small and weak just sitting here
while my friend may be in trouble."

“
Believe me, I know what you mean."

"Can't we file a missing-persons report or
something?"

"Olga hasn't been missing very long by police
standards. Also, there's no indication she didn't go off on her own."

"Oh, for God's sake! You have to believe Andrew
Dees has something to do with this."

"He probably does, Claude. But my client told me
not to horn in on him directly."

"An observation?"

Loiselle was using the command voice. I said, "Go
ahead."

"Maybe it's about time you stopped worrying
about your client's wishes and started worrying about your client's
welfare."

The phone went dead in my hand.

Setting the receiver back in its cradle, I thought
about what Claude Loiselle had just said. Then I thought about Primo
trying to stall the Milwaukee boys. Finally I thought about what
Robert Murphy had suggested.

Client's wishes, client's welfare. Maybe Loiselle was
right.

Calling the DA's office, I drew the secretary who
liked to tell me Nancy was still on trial. I left a message that I'd
see her in South Boston that night.

Then I locked up and went
down to the Prelude.

* * *

Driving south along Route 3, the moonroof was open to
the warm October air, the rose in its plastic wrapper now wedged
between the passenger-side seat and door. I left the highway several
exits short of Plymouth Mills, just to see if a Lincoln Continental
or other car followed me. None did.

Reaching Main Street in the town center, I cruised
slowly past the photocopy shop. No sign of the brown Toyota Corolla
I'd seen Dees using, and inside there was only Filomena, talking to a
customer.

Continuing on, I parked near The Tides. From the
pub's front door, the rear bar seemed nearly filled with
lateafternoon, TGIFing business people. As I moved up to it, two
fiftyish guys in sports jackets holding what looked like scotch/rocks
were lamenting the legislature's decision to ban happy hours as a way
of protecting lives on the roads. The ban had gone into effect three
years earlier.

Then one of them brought up baseball. "Hey, you
get to Camden Yards last summer before the strike?"

"No. The company had me in Wichita till a couple
of weeks ago."

"Man, you missed something. Baltimore really
done itself proud there."

"That's what I heard."

"And not just the ballpark, either. The food you
can get, Boog Powell's Barbecue, Tom Matte's Ribs—"