No Colder Place (28 page)

“Christ. I barely knew the bastard.” He shook his head, stared back over the darkening water. “He come to me all the time, Louie this, Louie that, but I got no use for him. Not real bright, you follow me?”

“What if he’d been real bright?”

“Maybe then I coulda used him. But he had no future, what I used to do, or what I do now.”

“Those things are different?”

He turned his face to mine, then back to the harbor. “None of your damn business, but I don’t care who knows. I’m getting out of the game. Strictly legit Louie, from now on. Import, export, investments, shit like that. Got tired,” he added by way of explanation, though I hadn’t asked. “Legit, I got even less use for a guy like him.” He gave a short, low laugh; it made his huge sides shift, like the movement of earth. “Guess he had no future anyway, huh? She don’t really think I killed him?”

“Yes, she does.”

He was quiet for a minute. “Guess I better talk to her.”

“I wouldn’t do that.”

“No?” He turned his head sharply. I felt, more than saw, two men at the edges of my vision snap to attention. “So just what the hell would you do?” Falco asked.

I ignored the two men, said evenly, “Pelligrini was stealing things off the construction site he worked at.”

Falco raised his eyebrows. He turned back to the water. The electric anger that had pulsed from him a moment ago faded as though a dial had been turned; but I didn’t get the feeling it had shut off entirely.

“No shit,” he said. “Maybe the kid had more going on than I gave him credit for. What kind of things?”

“All kinds, I think. I have him fencing a frontloader.”

“A frontloader? Jesus Christ. That’s good.”

“He wasn’t working alone.”

“So?”

“Who was he working with?”

“What the hell you asking me for?”

“Because I thought it might be you.”

“Me? Why the hell would it be me?”

I took a breath. “Because you have something going on at that site, Falco. If it’s not the kid’s scam, what is it?”

“Me?” Falco’s face darkened, like the sky behind him. I felt the electric current increase again. “Who says I got anything going on there?”

The two men watching us began to move.

“Chuck DeMattis,” I said.

Falco stared. “Fucking Chuckie,” he said slowly. “That what this is, you’re working with Chuckie?”

“Just trying to find out what happened to the kid, Falco.”

“You said you were a friend of the family, Smith.” His voice was soft, like the sound of the distant ocean. “You shouldn’t have said that if it wasn’t true.” Falco kept his eyes on me another few moments. Then he nodded. “Now all this makes sense. Musta been Chuckie put it in the Pelligrini lady’s head I did her boy.”

“I don’t know whether he told her that. But I know he thinks it, too.”

The two men circled toward us, slowly, casually.

“Fucking Chuckie,” Falco repeated, shaking his head. “Squirrel dies in Central Park, Chuckie thinks it was me.”

“What do you have going on up on that site, Falco?”

By now the two men who were on the move had reached us. One, tall and mournful, with a turquoise stud in his ear, maneuvered his way onto the rail at my right. The other, shorter, but with the wide shoulders of a bodybuilder, came to a stop behind me, crowding close.

“What makes it your business what I got going anywhere?” Falco asked.

“Someone killed that kid, Falco. Chuck thinks it was you, because of whatever you have going up there. If he’s wrong, show me.”

“Screw you,” Falco shrugged. “This what you got me here for, accuse me of killing the kid? I thought you was looking for help.”

“I am.”

Falco regarded me evenly. Over his shoulder I could make out the wide mouth of the Staten Island ferry slip and the aging buildings around it, growing closer. “I didn’t have no reason to kill that kid,” he said. “But I got nothing to prove to you, or to fucking Chuckie. You and Chuckie better keep out of my way, Smith. I don’t want you jamming me up.”

“Not my intention. But someone killed that kid.”

“And I don’t give a shit who! That clear enough for you? So help me, if you get me messed up in this—” He broke off, gave me a long, flat look. “That’s the point, ain’t it?” he said. “Ah, shit, Louie, you’re slowing down. Chuckie
wants
me messed up in this, this Pelligrini thing, don’t he? Fucking Chuckie, he knows everything about me, every damn time I scratch my ass. He knows I’m getting out of the business, and it burns him, don’t it? So he’s gonna get me. He won’t stop till they stick it to me over this, if he has to build the frame himself. Am I right?”

“No.”

“Yes. Fucking Chuckie.” His eyes caught the eyes of each of the other two men in turn, the bodybuilder and the sad man with the turquoise stud. The guy with the stud put a gentle hand on my arm.

“How well did you know Joe Romeo?” I said to Falco.

The bodybuilder stepped forward, a hopeful glint in his eye. The soft hand on my arm closed its grip, still gentle.

“Another loser,” Falco answered. “Maybe he was working with the kid.”

“Another dead man on that site,” I said. “Don’t you think someone besides Chuck is going to put this together soon?”

“Jesus.” Falco took a step toward me. So did the bodybuilder, smiling now. “What the hell is that, a threat?” Falco asked in wonderment.

“No,” I said. “But it might be useful to you if I could lay this whole thing to rest.”

“What whole thing?” Falco said. “The kid, and that loser Romeo, and whatever, it’s got nothing to do with me. You bring me into it, Smith, I’m telling you, it’s really gonna piss me off.”

“You’re already part of it.”

“No, and I don’t want to be.” He looked at me thoughtfully. “You want to be useful to me? Okay. What would be useful to me is you take a message to Chuckie, that he better leave me the hell alone. You feel like doing that?”

“I’d want something in return, before I tell Chuck anything from you.”

“Tell? Who said anything about tell? You’re just gonna take a message.” He nodded at the bodybuilder and the tall, sad man. “Bring him along, fellas. We’re gonna put this message in a way so Chuckie gets it.”

The sad man’s grip on my arm became an iron band. Something in his other hand pushed softly but unmistakably against my ribs. The bodybuilder, doing his best to keep a grin of gleeful anticipation from his face, pressed close on my other side. The sad man’s voice came softly in my ear.

“The gun has a silencer,” he said sorrowfully. He sounded like a man apologizing for bad weather, something he couldn’t do anything about but which he knew would inconvenience me. “I got a bullet in it would shred your liver. If I had to shoot you now and you went down, me and Mr. Falco and Shrimp here, we’d be gone before anyone noticed. Believe me, you’re better off coming with us.”

I didn’t believe him. I glanced around, saw the ferry slip yawning to receive us, saw the white water of our wake spreading and relaxing as it receded. I heard the screech of the gulls, diving and calling. In my ribs, the hard nose of the gun pressed a little closer.

Then I heard a shout, my name.

“Bill Smith! Hey! Bill!”

I turned, and the men with me turned too. In fact, the shout was so loud that half the deck turned. Lydia stood about twenty feet away, wildly waving her baseball cap, Coke can in her other hand. As I watched, a wave of Coke slopped up and out, splashing a couple of unvigilant and unappreciative tourists. “Stay there!” she called—as if I had a choice—and started plowing her way through the crowd. She spilled more Coke, and must have stepped on toes, too; she left a path of scowls and evil-eyed stares in her wake. Stumbling over a man trying to rise from a bench, probably to get out of her way, she reached us, still in sunglasses, a wide smile plastered all over her face. “My God, it’s you, isn’t it?”

“Mishika?” I asked. “Mishika Yamamoto?”

“What a hoot!” she exclaimed, throwing her arms wide, losing the rest of her Coke. By now half the travelers on deck were glaring and muttering in our direction. A man in a Coke-stained white suit yelled something at her. She ignored them all.

“I haven’t seen you since Max’s martini party!” she beamed. “How are you? ’Scuse me.” She smiled winningly around her, rose on tiptoe and kissed my cheek. “How’ve you been?” she chattered on, resettling her baseball cap. “Have you seen Max lately? I don’t see him much in the summer, he goes out of town, to this place he has. Have you been up there? Me neither. Hey, come over here. This’ll just take a minute,” she said to the three men who stood near me, momentarily dumbfounded, as the rumble of the ferry’s engine changed and the slip approached. “He’ll be right back,” she assured them. “But you have to meet my family.” She tugged at my left arm; the iron grip on my right became uncertain, loosened as I moved toward her, under the scowling, watchful eyes of dozens of other passengers. “Right over here. They came from Japan, like just last night. I’m showing them around. We went to the Empire State Building today, and Chinatown. Boy, do they have some weird people there! Be back in a minute,” she promised Falco and the others, smiling at them once more, and hurried me down the deck, blundering through the still-glaring crowd toward the cheerfully indulgent Japanese parents herding their well-dressed, excited children down the exit ramp and off the boat.

“Do you know,” Lydia said, “I don’t think I’ve actually been in Staten Island in
years
. I mean, gotten off the ferry.”

She buttered a half-moon of toasted english muffin, looked with interest out the diner window. Nothing was happening out there except a denim-dressed biker holding his Harley steady while a girl in a thin pink top climbed on behind.

We’d hoped for a cab at the ferry terminal as we issued down the ramp, keeping tight to the center of the crowd of commuters and the few stray tourists who had crossed the water with the idea of Staten Island as an actual destination. The tourists, including Lydia’s once and future Japanese relatives, stood looking befuddled in the gaping terminal, took a few tentative steps onto the streets outside, and spun around to take the next boat back to Manhattan. The commuters, meanwhile, snapped up the few waiting cabs. That meant we couldn’t get one, but it meant the same for Louie Falco and his pals. So Lydia and I jumped on the nearest bus and sat in the back, peering out the window until we were pretty sure we weren’t being followed. We got off at the Island Diner—an electric-blue neon palm tree blinking on the sign—and sat, now waiting to be picked up by the cab company we’d called.

“Go ahead,” I said, as she bit into her dripping english muffin. “Gloat.”

“Oh, no,” she answered. She put the english muffin down, sipped delicately at her Lemon Mist tea. “It was such a lovely night for a boat ride. I just want to thank you for the opportunity to come along.”

“Maybe they only wanted to talk some more,” I said. “Maybe Falco just wasn’t sure how to phrase the message for Chuck, and he wanted to think about it.”

“Mm-hmm,” she said. “Maybe they wanted to beat your brains out.”

I drank some coffee that had been on the burner much too long. “Maybe it would have served me right,” I said.

She answered thoughtfully, “It might even have helped.”

I wanted a cigarette, but the diner’s attitude on that was clear, so I drank some coffee instead. “I thought you didn’t like Coke,” I pointed out.

“I wasn’t planning on drinking it, just spilling it, so what’s the difference?”

“I just wanted to make sure you know I keep track of things like that.”

“You’d better.”

“I do,” I said. “And thanks.”

“For saving your life? Oh, you’re welcome. Anytime.”

“And,” I said, “for not listening when I said not to come.”

“Ah,” she said, “that. You know, maybe I shouldn’t ever listen to you. It might save us both a lot of trouble.”

“I’m never right?”

“Occasionally,” she admitted. “Often enough that, when you get these really demented ideas, I wonder about you.”

“Demented how?”

“Oh, like you think Louie Falco killed Lenny Pelligrini so you’re going to just ask him about it. ‘Oh, sure, Smith, yeah, I did that.’ Honestly, what did you expect him to say?”

“I expected him to tell me he hadn’t done it.”

“Well, and there you go.”

“But that’s because I don’t think he did.”

She looked at me over her teacup, then put the teacup down. “You don’t?”

“No.” The waitress came along with more hot water for Lydia and a refill on the foul coffee for me. “Look,” I said. “Falco knew the Pelligrini kid back in the neighborhood. He’d have known where to find him outside the jobsite. If he wanted to kill him, why kill him there? Why bury him there?”

She tilted her head in thought. The blue neon from the palm tree outside the window glinted in her hair. “To make some kind of point of him, some example when he was found?”

“But he wasn’t supposed to be found. All the digging in that pit was supposed to be over.”

“Well, then, it was a good place to hide him.”

“But an inconvenient place to come kill him, if you don’t work there. And you’d have to be sure he’d be there late, or get there early, or something, so you have time to bury the body when no one’s around.”

“Hmmm.” She sliced the other half of her english muffin into two more perfect half-moons, munched on one. “You think it has to be someone connected to that site who killed him.”

“That’s the only way it makes sense.”

“But Mr. DeMattis said Falco
is
connected up there.”

“But we don’t know to what. And Falco’s a pro at this. If he wanted a body found, he’d put it somewhere it’d be sure to be found. If he wanted it not found, it wouldn’t be found.”

“So why did you even start with him?” she asked, frowning at me.

“
Because
I didn’t think he did it. Because I thought he might point me toward who did.”

“Why would he?”

“To get me out of his face? To get himself a little more elbow room for whatever it is he’s got going up there?” I shrugged. “To do a widow a favor?”

Lydia’s look suggested what I could do with that last one.