Shallow Graves - Jeremiah Healy (16 page)

"Well, you were young. I was — this was six
years ago, I was coming up against seventy. The Office — that's
what we call it,  you know?"

I wasn't sure how much of this I wanted to hear.
"It?"

Danucci attacked his food. "Come on, Mr.
Detective, don't disappoint, eh? The organization. Here in Boston, we
call it the Office. In Chicago, they called it the Outfit. Till
everybody got bit with the RICO shit. You know what that means?"

"
I know it stands for 'Racketeer' something or
other."

"Well, let me tell you, so you'll know. It
stands for 'Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations.' That's
what they called it down in Washington. Sound like a good name for a
law to you?"

"Kind of cumbersome."

"Yeah, cumbersome. So they decide they're gonna
shorten it, call it by the letters, the initials. Fucking
coincidence, guess what they spell?"

Danucci looked at me like he expected an answer.

I said, "RICO."

"That's right. RICO. Like the name of that guy
Edward G. played in the Bogey movie. The one in the hurricane."

"Key Largo. "

"Yeah, Key Largo. Only you get the idea, maybe
they thought of using 'RICO' first, then come up with the words to
fit later. RICO, it's got that nice 'wop' sound to it. Give the boys
at the station a good laugh, they pull in a friend of ours, they get
to say to him, 'You're under arrest for RICO, Rico.' Fucking
assholes."

Danucci finished his course, then took some wine.
Primo cleared the bowls and disappeared into the kitchen.

"So, like I said, I got religion again after my
Amatina got sick, and I started getting back to the church. Not since
I'm eleven I go to Mass, but I start now every day, every fucking
morning. My heart attack, that took me out of the loop. The rest of
the Office — my friends, they understood, no problem, but I
couldn't do nothing from that bed. Just as well, tell you the truth.
Wasn't much after that, story broke that the Feebs, they had the
Angiulos bugged over on Prince Street, they got them all, big falls."

Danucci leaned into the table but more in my
direction. "I tell you something else, so you'll know. Almost
sixty years in the business, sixty fucking years, I never once got
arrested. I'm not talking convicted, I mean not even arrested. You
know why? I copied this man, I fucking idolized him, Mr. Detective.
You ever heard the name, Filippo Buccola?"

"No."

"
You should read more. Buccola was a man, you
saw him in the street, you woulda said, 'there goes a doctor,' or
'there goes a lawyer.' Guy wore little wire glasses and a bow tie.
And he was a gentleman. He was the capo before Ray Senior down in
Rhody. And he knew when to get out. He moved back to Sicily, he lived
to be a hundred and one, Mr. Detective. He let me in on a secret.
There are three things you gotta have, be a success in this business.
You gotta have heart, you gotta have brains, and you gotta have
ambition."

Primo brought in another course, this one veal in a
wine sauce. Halfway through, I'd eaten more calories than I usually
throw down in a week.

Danucci rested his fork. "You know, in the old
days, you had a problem with some people, you could talk to them, eh?
You couldn't settle it, sometimes you had them play a little."

"Guts."

I said "Guts?" before I thought to keep my
mouth shut.

"Yeah. Some of the old guys, they had these
chrome revolvers, custom-made by gunsmiths back in Italy. A lot of
guys had a pair of them, used to keep them in a box." Danucci
gestured at the glass cabinet behind him. "Like my Amatina's
jewelry box up on the shelf there. A couple of your boys had a
problem and they come to you with it, couldn't talk it out, you took
these revolvers. You put one bullet in each cylinder, then you put a
spin on the fucking thing and closed it."

"Like Russian roulette?"

"Yeah, yeah. Like that. Then you gave one gun to
each guy, they're standing maybe ten, twelve feet apart, and they
point their pieces at each other. And the only other guy involved
would be you, doing the calling. When you called out 'One,' they each
got to pull the trigger once. Nobody's gun went off, you let them
think a little, then said, 'Two.' Nobody got shot, you let them think
a little more. I tell you, Mr. Detective, a lot of problems got
settled, before they let you get to three."

I said, "Any chance one of your people could be
involved in Tina's death?"

Emphatic shake of the head. "No way. No fucking
way. Family's off limits. We're siciliani, not like the fucking
Camorra back in Napoli, wasting little kids on street comers. The
colored do that over the drugs here, not us. Besides, I got a son in
the business. Somebody wants to send me a message, they go after
him."

"How about somebody who's after your son?"

"Same thing. They'd come after me, they got
balls for brains. Anyway, I can see you don't understand. They want
to send a message, they don't break in like some fucking sneak thief.
They send a clear fucking message, they want to send one."

"Could the necklace be a message?"

The blood rose right past the jaw and cheeks, the
vein at the temple pounding as he worked on his food and swallowed
hard.

"That necklace was my gift to my Amatina. Her
gift to me was her eyes and her love, Mr. Detective. My gift to her
was that necklace. One of a kind item, stones had to come from
Madagascar, down by Africa there. With the gold and the craftsmanship
went into it, that necklace cost more to make than this fucking house
cost to build. But after my Amatina died, I gave it to Tina, for
nursing my wife and me. To show her she was really part of the
family, mixed fucking blood, she was still my blood. The necklace
shows up on the street, we go back up the line, snatch the guy and
spend some time with him."

"Maybe the guy who has it knows it's too hot to
peddle."

"Guy breaks into houses, especially one of my
houses, he's a junkie, a fucking crackhead got shit for brains. He
don't know enough not to hit a connected property, he don't know
enough to check out a piece of merchandise before he fences it."

"It's been over a week. Kind of a long time for
somebody to sit on it."

Danucci gave me a long look. "Sometimes you got
to be patient, Mr. Detective" The old man glanced at Zuppone,
who left us without a word to go into the kitchen.

Danucci squared around, his fingers playing with the
goblet in front of him. "You remember what I told you before,
about what you got to have to make it in this business?"

"Brains, heart, and ambition."

"You met my son Joey tonight. What do you think
of him?"

I didn't like this. "What do you mean?"

The spotlight look came into the old man's eyes. "You
know what I mean."

I took a sip of wine. "Heart and ambition to
spare. Enough brains to do fine, moneywise."

"Moneywise. Let me tell you something, Mr.
Detective.

There's only two ways to make money in this world.
One, you steal it from somebody. Two, you inherit it from somebody
who already stole it from somebody else."

Danucci's brow went toward the kitchen door. "So,
how about Primo?"

I put down the goblet. "Brains and heart, but no
ambition"

Danucci closed his eyes and smiled a little. "Primo,
Primo. He's got what it takes, but he don't want it. I can't
understand that, Mr. Detective. He don't want nothing past the
leather coat and the Lincoln car and that elevator shit he puts on
the radio."

The eyes suddenly opened again, the spots stronger
than before. "And what about Mr. Vincent Dani, Esquire?"

"Brains and ambition, but no heart."

The eyes reached laser level. "You know what
burns me about the fucking lawyers with their fucking RICO laws,
looking down their noses at guys like me? What I offer, Mr.
De-tective, is protection. Protection so's a guy can turn a profit.
You tell me, what do lawyers offer? I'll tell you. They offer
protection, same as me. I keep somebody from getting ripped off by a
coupla guys with guns in their hands and nothing between the ears.
The lawyers, they keep somebody from getting ripped off by guys with
pens in their hands and plenty between the ears. We both take our
cuts off the top, the lawyers and me, and we ain't so different you'd
notice it."

Except for the body count. I said, "Mr. Danucci
— "

"Mr. Vincent Dani, Esquire. He never told you
that, did he?"

"What he told me, Mr. Danucci, was that you two
were like oil and water. I imagine he was telling me that while Primo
was on the car phone, giving you his read of me as a situation."

Danucci weighed things. He took a slug of wine, then
replaced the chalice with delicacy on the tablecloth. "You
learned a lot of things in a little time, Mr. Detective. You want to
go through the apartment house over on Falmouth?"

"Eventually. I think I'd rather talk to
everybody else first, then go through it with their stories in mind."

Danucci looked up at me with sad, tired eyes. "You
got brains, Mr. Detective. My son Joey, he don't got real brains, but
he's got real heart, maybe too much heart. He's the kind, he might do
something rash. Joey's got too long a life ahead of him for that. You
find the guy did this, you come to me first, eh?"

Tommy the Temper Danucci gave his abrupt nod, like I
would do what he wanted whether I promised him or not.
 

-13-

WHEN PRIMO ZUPPONE DROPPED ME OFF AT THE CONDO, HE
REMEMBERED to give me both my gun and the Wim Mertens tape. I put the
cassette into a pocket of my raincoat.

Upstairs, there were two messages on my telephone
machine. The same two were on my office answering service when I
checked in with it. The first was from Harry Mullen, asking me to
call him about the Dani case. I decided to handle that instead with a
face-to-face, the next morning at his office. The other message was
from Nancy, asking me to call her at home.

"Hello?"

"Nance, it's John."

"Oh, John." A gap, as though I'd woken her
up. "Can you come over?"

"Now?"

"Please."

"Sure. Anything the — "

"When you get here."

"Twenty rninutes."

There was something in her voice, something I didn't
recognize right away. Then I remembered her note between the salt and
pepper that morning. She was taking Renfield to the vet's, and I was
supposed to have called her. Shit.

I made the drive shaving five minutes off the twenty.

Nancy met me at the downstairs door to her building.
She was wearing an old New England School of Law sweatshirt, jeans,
and no makeup. Unless you counted the red nose.

Nancy Meagher, Assistant District Attorney for the
County of Suffolk, Commonwealth of Massachusetts, was stiff as a
fish. She said, "Don't say anything. Just c'mon up."

I followed her, bracing myself at each step to break
her fall if she went over backwards. As we passed the Lynches'
landing, Drew and I exchanged nods. On the third floor, Nancy had to
grope through the pockets of her jeans before finding the key to her
place.

The kitchen table was cleared except for a single
short tumbler and a half-empty liter of Stolichnaya. I suppose you
could have said the bottle was half-full, but things didn't look that
optimistic.

"Nance — "

Her right hand rose in a stop sign, then flapped down
to her side. She crossed to the sink, steadying herself with her left
palm on the porcelain while reaching up to the cabinet for another
glass. After two tries, she managed to snag one. Nancy crossed back,
put the new tumbler on the table, and poured three fingers of rough
justice into each glass before handing me the new one. "I don't
want to be the only in-need but . . . in-e-briate in this
conversation."

I accepted the glass, thinking that was the tone I
hadn't recognized in her voice over the phone. I'd seen her drinking
before, but never drunk.

She downed half her booze, took a breath, and downed
the rest.

I just nipped at mine, covering the tumbler with my
hand to mask how much was left. "What do you say we go into the
living room and talk about it?"

Nancy tumed, taking the bottle by the neck and
caroming past me toward the front of the apartment. At the couch, she
yanked two cushions onto the floor, plunking herself into one of
them. I took the other.

She started to pour herself another drink, stopped,
and set the bottle and glass heavily on the rug. "I'm gonna be
real sick, right?"

"
If that bottle started the evening intact."

A nod. "When?"

"
You eat anything?"

A shake.

"Then pretty soon and pretty bad."

"Before that happens . . .” She suppressed a
belch. . . “I have something to say. Renfield's gonna be okay. It's
gonna take a while, but he's gonna be okay."