The Staked Goat - Jeremiah Healy (2 page)

I moved over to him and held my weapon against his
temple while I quickly and unfruitfully patted him down. He was
bleeding freely from both wounds.

"Where's Craigie?" I asked.

"What the fuck are you talkin' about?" he
said.

I shined my penlight into his face. He was thirtyish,
heavy features, curly black hair.

"The nightwatchman, where is he?"

"Man, get me to a fuckin' hospital!" he
yelled.

I put the ball of my right foot onto his wounded
shoulder and pressed about as much as you would to ease forward
twenty feet in bumper-to-bumper traffic. The lump on the floor
emitted a nerve-curdling scream and flopped left to right like a
gill-hooked sunnie.

"You tell me where the nightwatchman is or I'm
the only surgeon you'll ever see."

"Oh sweet shitting Jesus, man, he's in the back,
in the back!"

I took off for the back, scoffing up the torch's
weapon on the way. I got sixty or seventy feet when a wall of flame
whipped up in front of me. I jumped back, lost my balance, and went
down in a heap on my left elbow. It was bruised but not broken. By
the time I got up, the flames were three feet closer and
impenetrable.

"Craigie," I yelled, "Craigie, can you
hear me? Craigie?"

It was like asking after coal pitched into a furnace.
I walked back toward the torch, rubbing my left elbow.

"Christ, get me outta here. Get me out!" He
was yelling before he could have heard me coming.

"Mother of God, sweet Mary, get me out, get me
out!"

I grabbed him by the left arm and yanked him over to
face me. Although it was barely forty degrees outside, and not much
warmer inside when I had entered, the sweat from my tire-sided
forehead was pouring down my nose and into my eyes.

"Who, fire man," I asked the lump. "Who
paid the price for this one?"

"What's wrong with you, man? Get me outta this
place. Please God, fuckin' Jesus, get me out!"

"You're talkin' like a baked potato, fire man,"
I said softly. I looked behind me, then grabbed his hair and twisted
his head to assure him the same perspective. "That flame looks
twenty, maybe thirty feet closer than it was the first time I asked
the question.

You can't outrun it, fire man. Now who was it paid
your price?"

Lump's face was contorting. I've yet to meet a torch
who wasn't scared blind, and rightly so, of uncontrolled flames. "The
owner. The bastard owner Weeks. Harvey fuckin' Weeks! For God's sake,
man, get me out, get me out!"

I dragged him by the bad arm till the screaming,
actually one long scream, stopped. Then I slung him over my shoulder
and headed for the window. The Coopers must have heard me going down
their stairs, because the first lonely siren hit my ears just as I
shoved him through the window.

The lump's name turned out to be Joseph D'Amico. I
attended his bail hearing three days after the fire, Joseph himself
being under guard in a hospital room. His lawyer's name was Thomas
Smolina, a short, fiftyish man in a blue polyester suit that affected
a Glen plaid. The lawyer was trying to persuade Judge Harry J. Elam,
then chief justice of the Boston Municipal Court, that his "Joey"
should be released on $20,000 bail, cash equivalent. The "cash
equivalent" part meant that instead of a bail bondsman putting
up $20,000 for a nonrefundable premium of $2,000, the D'Amico family,
arrayed in the first row of the courtroom, could put up two thousand
cash themselves, thus saving the bailbond premium so long as Joey
showed up at the trial. Smolina argued that the D'Amico family, solid
citizens of Boston for thirty-nine years, provided the sort of stable
base that would ensure that his client would attend the trial.

Lawyer ticked off each family member, who stood up
and nodded to the judge as his or her name was mentioned. Smolina
reached Joey's brother, Marco, a man about my size and build in a
black turtleneck. Marco nodded and then, as he sat back down,
swiveled his head to glare at me. I smiled politely and thought that
Joey's lawyer should have screened Marco from the family portrait
presented to the judge.

Judge Elam thanked Smolina and turned to the
assistant district attorney. She stood and began speaking without
needing to identify herself. She pointed out the defendant's track
record of four missed trials, one for armed robbery, one for arson.
She mentioned Craigie's blackened and cottony body, escalating the
expected indictments to felony/murder. She also mentioned codefendant
Harvey Weeks' suicide attempt upon hearing the police come knocking
at his door.

She felt $250,000, no cash equivalent, was more
appropriate. In the front row, Mother D'Amico began to whimper, none
too softly. Marco put his arm around her shoulders and pulled her
close to him, none too gently.

Judge Elam asked Smolina if he had anything to add.
"He's not a bad boy, your honor. And he's from a good fami1y,"
said lawyer, gesturing with a sweep of his hand that reluctantly
included Marco.

Judge Elam set bail at $250,000, no cash equivalent.
I wanted to speak briefly with the assistant district attorney, who
had in front of her three or four more manila files to deal with that
morning. I stayed seated and debated waiting for her to finish. The
D'Amicos, lawyer in lead, came down the middle aisle. Father D'Amico
was consoling his wife, Marco hanging back a bit. As Marco pulled
even with my row, he paused and leaned over to me. He muttered, "If
I was you, I'd have somebody else start my car for me," and then
continued on.

I decided I would wait to speak with the assistant
district attorney.

She was about 5-foot-8, slim in a two-piece,
skirt-and-jacket, gray suit. She had long black hair pulled into a
bun. From where I sat in the courtroom, I could see her face only in
partial profile. She handled two more bail disputes and a short
probable-cause hearing before the luncheon recess. Everyone stood as
Judge Elam left the bench. As she reached my row, I fell in beside
her.

"My name's John Cuddy," I said, "and
I'd like to buy you lunch."

She looked up at me, then down at her watch.

"Nancy Meagher. I've got twenty-five minutes and
I brought a sandwich."

"Can I have half? Or both?"

We stopped and she smiled. "You're the PI who
shot D'Amico, right?"

"That's right."

"Shame about your second bullet."

"You've been reading about me."

"Yes. And wondering how much pressure you had to
apply to pal Joey to get him to admit Weeks hired him."

"It was within constitutionally permissible
limits."

She glanced down at her wrist. "I now have
twenty-four minutes but still a whole sandwich. Halfsies still O.K.?"

"You bet," I said.

We sat in her shared cubicle. Her office mate was
out.

"Don't superior court prosecutors usually cover
bail hearings in heavy cases?" I asked.

"Usually," she replied, neatly tamping a
bit of errant tuna into a gap in the corner of her mouth. "But
I've been here nine months, and I'm good." She smiled without
showing her teeth. An open, Irish maiden face, with widely set, soft
blue eyes and a straight slim nose. A smattering of freckles that
would reach epidemic proportions with summer's sun. As a girl, she
must have been cute. As a woman, she was damned attractive. I felt a
little glow.

"Good tuna," I said.

She wiped her mouth with a patterned paper napkin
from home and pitched it into a wastebasket.

"What's on your mind, Mr. Cuddy?"

I had no napkin so I used my handkerchief.

"D'Amico. More precisely, brother Marco.
Syndicate?"

She shook her head. "Peripherally, at most. He's
a numb-nuts, maybe some high school friends who are approaching
'management level,' but no established contacts. Why?"

"A couple helped me out indirectly in busting
Joey. I don't want Marco to pick up their scent to square things, and
I wanted to know his likely troop strength."

"What makes you think Marco would do something?"

I reviewed his general appearance and repeated his
comment to me in the courtroom.

"Hmmm. I'd say the Coopers could be in trouble."

I lurched forward in my seat. "I never gave
their name to the investigating officer. How did you know it?"

She rummaged through a tile and handed me a police
report. "Seems the Coopers gave their name to the fire
department when they called in the flames, and the fire captain
mentioned it to the cop who arrived on the scene."

I read Jesse and Emily's name, address, and telephone
number from the last paragraph of the report.

"Damn,” I said. "I assume the D'Amico
lawyer has a copy of this?"

"Got one the first night at the arresting
station, as soon as he identified himself as Joey's attorney. Per
office procedure."

"Maybe I should have a talk with Marco," I
said.

She cleared her throat. "Let me be official, Mr.
Cuddy. You go shaking down Marco, and it will weaken you as a witness
for the prosecution. I don't want Joey's case riding on old Weeks' 'I
hired him' testimony."

"And unofficially?" I asked.

She smiled, using her teeth this time. Nice, even
teeth. "Unofficially, mightn't you be giving Marco ideas he
hasn't stumbled on himself yet, since he seems to view you as enemy
number one-and-only right now?"

I considered it. "I'm not sure you're right, Ms.
Meagher. But yours is the better percentage right now." I stood
up. "Thanks for lunch."

She stayed seated. "You're from Southie
originally, right?"

South Boston is an old Irish/Italian neighborhood of
brick and wood three-deckers just past the South Station train
terminus. Beth and I both grew up there.

"That's right," I said.

"Me, too," she replied. "In fact, I
still live there. On Fourth Street, number 746." She smiled.
"Third floor."

I cleared my throat. "I still don't deal with
this gracefully," I said, "but I was married a long time
and then widowed. I'm still not . . . well . . . ready .... "

Nancy blinked a few times and stood up. "I think
that's the most graceful 'Thanks anyway' I've ever heard." She
gave my right arm a quick squeeze. "But keep me in mind, O.K.?"

"O.K." I squeezed back and left.
 
 

THREE
-•-

AS I SAT OUTSIDE TRIAL COURTROOM 924, MY MIND KEPT
skipping from the night of the fire to how much I was looking forward
to seeing Nancy Meagher again. We had not met since the bail hearing,
although she called me once a few weeks ago to review my version of
what happened. Over the telephone, her voice sounded softer than I
remembered, and she had advanced to the DA's Superior Court office.
She was assisting the head of the homicide division in prosecuting
Joey D'Amico, who so far had refused to cop a plea.

I had not seen Joey either, not since the night at
the warehouse. I did see Marco two days after the bail hearing,
through the lens of my Pentax K1000 as I sat in a rental car outside
the D'Amico house on Hanover Street. I brought the photos to the
Coopers with the insurance company's final check for their help. I
told Jesse and Emily over tea and cookies that they were to call me
if they ever saw Marco anywhere around them or their house. They
promised they would, but I called them several times in the
intervening months just to be sure. No Marco.

A long fingered freckled hand gave my arm a squeeze
as Nancy settled in beside me on the bench.

"What are you in for?" she asked with, I
swear, a twinkle in her eye.

"The vice squad caught me doing funny things
with turtles."

She laughed, a deep throaty laugh. "Lucky
turtles."

I shook my head and turned to business. "How
does it look?"

She glanced around to be sure no one she knew was
within earshot. "Frankly, it couldn't look better for us. We've
got your contact at the insurance company to lead off with the
surrounding circumstances, Weeks to describe the 'contract', you to
put Joey in the warehouse with his statements and Craigie alive
shortly before, and a lab man who took specimens off the butt of
Joey's gun that match Craigie's blood type and color hair."

I considered her summary. "Why no plea?"

Her turn to shake the head. "Makes no sense to
me.

Speaking professional to professional, Joey's lawyer
is a hack. Very little pretrial stuff, at which Joey could have
testified to try to suppress his statements to you under any number
of theories. With his record, Joey doesn't dare testify at trial
because we'd nail him to the cross with his prior convictions."

"'Maybe they figure the deal from your side
might be better if they push you to the verge of trial?"

"Maybe, but we're not going to be very generous
on this one."