The Staked Goat - Jeremiah Healy (8 page)

"I know," I said. "I met one
downstairs, remember? But his friends won't back him on this sort of
thing. This isn't vendetta, Mr. D'Amico. We both know that. Joey set
fire to that warehouse and left the watchman to die. I shot Joey
because he shot at me. If Marco hurts someone because of that, nobody
will stand with him. Nobody will avenge him, and you'll have lost
both of your sons."

Mrs. D'Amico let out a confirming wail.

"Out!" snapped D'Amico. "You outta my
house!"

I got up and left the apartment. I closed the door
gently behind me and descended the staircase. As I stepped out into
the sunlight, I looked over at my emissary. He and the group stared
back at me. I nodded without smiling and walked back toward my car. I
was glad the D'Amicos' closed windows kept her crying from drifting
down to street level.
 
 

Seven
-•-

I DROVE BACK TOWARD MY APPARTMENT. I CIRCLED around
my block twice, then parked two blocks away and walked to a coffee
shop roughly diagonal to my building. I sat and nursed a hot cocoa
for half an hour in a bay window, watching. I didn't see anything
unusual, like someone parked in a car for an unreasonable period of
time.

I paid for my cocoa and crossed the street. I walked
quietly down the alley that turned behind my building, and peeked
around the corner. Nobody in sight. I walked behind my building and
hopped over the wooden fence separating our minimal patio area from
the alley tar. I used my key on the back door and pulled a
long-handled, wide-brushed push broom from the utility closet with
the broken lock. I went back outside and lifted the wood brush angle
to hook and pull down the last ladder flight of the fire escape. I
climbed it, carrying the broom.

I reached my floor and thought about using the handle
end of the broom to poke around my window sill from a safe distance.
Instead I crawled to my window and looked inside. I couldn't see
much, but I watched long enough to be fairly certain no one was
waiting for me. I took out my penlight and shined it through the
glass toward the front entrance. I couldn't see any wires or trips
attached to the door.

I didn't think Al's killer would really try anything
for two reasons. First, any attempt on my life, once the police knew
I was connected with Al, would put the lie to the cover-up he had
arranged. Second, he couldn't be sure that Al hadn't somehow
identified him to me, resulting in his being put under surveillance
by the police. While I believed that either or both of those reasons
relieved me of Al's killer, I didn't feel as comfortable about friend
Marco. Hence, my caution.

I flicked off the light and was halfway back down the
escape when the cruiser came into the alley and stopped. Both
uniforms, a man and a woman, came out of their respective doors and
drew and pointed their revolvers at me, bracing their gun hands with
their free hands.

"All right, leave the broom there and come down
real slow," said the woman, who had been driving.

"Is it all right if I just drop the broom over
the side?" I said. "It'll save us having to stand on each
others shoulders to pull the flight down to climb back up after it."

The male uniform muttered something to her.

Neither took their eyes off me.

She spoke. "Drop the broom. Then cut the shit.
Then come down."

I dropped, cut, and came.

They studied my investigator's identification and
compared it to the address information in my wallet several times
before grudgingly buying my explanation of Marco's dishonorable
intentions. It seemed that a woman sitting in her apartment across
the alley had spotted me climbing up the fire escape. As they got
back into their cruiser, I felt encouraged by neighborhood security
and embarrassed by personal ineptitude, with the edge to
embarrassment.

I walked around to the front of the building. I keyed
open the door and approached my apartment more conventionally.

Once inside I checked my telephone tape. There were
two hang-ups and two messages. The first message was:

"John, it's Nancy Meagher returning your call at
three-forty P.M. I'll be in my office tomorrow between eight-thirty
and nine-thirty."

The second message was a little redundant: "Hi,
John. How are you. Oh, you're fine. That's
nice."

I rewound and then levered out the message cassette.
I replaced it with a spare and put the tape into a heavy manila
envelope. I checked my watch. Four-thirty. I called Nancy's office.
She was gone for the day and so was her secretary. I looked for her
home phone number in the book, but if I remembered her address
correctly, she was unlisted. I penned a quick explanatory note and
slipped it in next to the tape. I addressed the envelope to Nancy at
the DA's office, stamped it, and left it on a table near the door for
mailing.

Then I called Lieutenant Murphy's office. I got
Daley, my companion at the morgue. He said Murphy was out of the
office, but that Murphy had told him to tell me that Traffic had
found Al's rental car on Myrtle Street on Beacon Hill and about five
blocks from where Al's body had been dumped. Elapsed mileage exceeded
by about fifty miles the business visits they could confirm Al
making. None of the business contacts knew where he was going that
evening. The final autopsy report confirmed death by smothering, no
further information. I thanked Daley and told him I would be in
Pittsburgh for a few days and would call in once in a while. I rang
off and walked into the front hall.

I went to the closet and pushed most of the garbage
aside. I pulled out the old Samsonite three-suiter, even though I
would have to pack only one outfit. A dark, somber one.

After I packed, I carried the suitcase to the door
and looked down at the envelope. I pocketed it and went downstairs.

I walked to the rental and returned it to the agency.
I carried my burdens to the Szechuan Chinese restaurant in the next
block. The decor was red leather with faintly illuminating Chinese
lanterns. There were few patrons. I was shown to a small booth by a
hostess in a cocktail dress, slit discreetly up the side. I ordered a
vodka and orange juice.

One screwdriver makes me thirsty for two. Two make me
hearty and gregarious. Three make me unnecessarily aware of little
things, like the exact shade of a woman's lipstick. Four make me
morose. I stopped at three and ate my dinner. I also decided not to
mail the tape envelope. I settled up and stepped out into a howling
wind. I hailed a cab, giving Nancy's address in Southie.

The taxi driver had country and western music on the
radio. The back seat was black vinyl with little tufts of white,
puffy stuffing poking through. I thought of Craigie's body after the
fire, then made my mind change the subject.

Her building in South Boston was a three-decker on a
clean street, sort of a wooden version of the D'Amicos' place. Like
the Italian North End, the Irish and Italian neighborhoods in Southie
had been stable, if stubborn, for generations. A Lithuanian section,
dating mostly from the end of World War II, straddled Broadway a
little farther west.

There were three buzzers arranged vertically on the
outside doorjamb. Each would signify a different door of the
three—story house. The bottom and middle name plates said "M.
Lynch" and "A. Lynch." The top one said "N.
Meagher." I pushed it. Strains from some detestable C&W song
reached me through the cabbie's half-open window, something like "I'm
breaking my back putting up a front for you."

I heard footsteps tripping down the stairs inside the
door, and a light flicked on over my head. No intercom and buzzer
systems in this part of town. The door opened on a chain, and I heard
her laugh.

"Well, well," she said, slipping the chain
and swinging open the door. "A pleasure call, I hope."

She was wearing a gray Red Sox T-shirt and white
tennis shorts. A bath towel, draped clumsily, covered her left hand
from the wrist down.

I said, "I'm sorry to bother you at home, but I
have a plane to catch, and I wanted to talk with you before I left."

She went up on tiptoes and saw the cabbie over my
shoulder. She shivered a bit. "Pay off your cab and come on up.
I'll freeze in this doorway, but I'd be glad to drive you to Logan
afterwards."

As I turned back toward the cab, I heard her say,
"It's okay, Drew." Someone moved on the second landing and
a door closed.

I settled with the driver and lugged my suitcase to
her stoop. She tapped ahead of me in sandals up the two flights to
her apartment.

Her door opened from the staircase into a big
kitchen, perhaps fifteen by fifteen. A screened-in but sealed-off
porch lay behind the kitchen. Once inside, I dropped my bag on the
floor, and we turned left into a corridor that led to the front of
the house. She had a cozy living room with a small bay window. There
were throw pillows on the floor, and brick-and-board bookcases along
both walls. Two low tables and some indirect lighting completed the
furnishings.

She laid the towel carefully on one of the tables and
asked me if I wanted a drink.

"Ice water?" I said, feeling the
dehydration of the Chinese food and the screwdrivers.

"I have stronger," she said.

"Thanks, just water."

She lowered WCOZ just a bit on the stereo under a
shelf of mystery paperbacks. "Let me take your coat," she
said.

I shrugged out of it, and she left with it for the
kitchen. Her bottom looked firm in the shorts, her legs straight and
slim beneath them.

She was back in a flash. "One ice water,"
she said, handing me a tall, expensive-looking glass. "Pull up a
pillow.”

She collapsed naturally into one near a table with a
tumbler of amber liquid on it. I sat down a little less gracefully.

She scooped up her tumbler and mock-toasted. "Welcome
to my parlor."

"Said the spider to the f1y," I finished.
She smiled and sipped.

"It's nice . . . comfortable," I said.
"Even with the security."

She tilted her head in question.

"Drew," I said. "On the landing, short
for Andrew, as in 'A. Lynch?"

She laughed. "Drew's a cop. He and his wife live
on the second floor. She's expecting, and he's just sort of
protective. His parents—this is their house—they live on the
first floor. Do you want to take your jacket off? The Lynches have to
keep the heat up because of her mother. She's pushing eighty and
needs to have it warm." She ran her nondrink hand down her
T-shirt, neck to navel. "That's why I lounge around like this,
even in February."

Her nipples were subtly more defined for a moment
under the shirt as her hand moved. She took another sip. I downed
half my ice water.

"Under the towel," I said, "revolver
or automatic?"

Broad smile but sad eyes. "I knew the assistant
DA who was shot in his car in Cambridge last year. He was a class
ahead of me at New England." She clenched and unclenched her
fist. "But, to answer your question, revolver."

I shook my head. "Revo1ver is a more reliable
weapon, but the hammer could get caught in the towel. You should
switch to an automatic or change camouflage?

This time she shook her head. "It's a five-shot
Bodyguard. With the shrouded hammer. Drew helped me pick it out."

I pictured a revolver with high, thin steel walls
enclosing the hammer and a small, scored steel button on top that
could be thumbed back but wouldn't get caught on clothing. Or towels.
I finished my ice water.

"Where are you off to?" she asked.

I gave her three sentences about Al.

"Boy," she said in a low voice after
condolences, "this is not how I was hoping our next meeting
would go."

"The next one after this won't," I said.

She wanted to smile but didn't. "Are you here
about your friend?"

"No, the Coopers." I summarized the phone
calls, both Marco's and mine, and my visit to the D'Arnicos. I dug
out and handed her the envelope containing the tape.

Nancy swirled her drink but didn't put the glass to
her lips. She laid the envelope carefully on the table next to her.
If she wore any make up, it didn't show.

"Joey comes up for sentencing in two weeks,"
she said. "Smolina may not be telling the parents, but I'm sure
Joey'll get life. I bet Marco knows it, too." She sipped now.
"Any chance of getting the Coopers out of town for a bit?"

"I don't think so. No family they mentioned. Or
friends. Or money to do it with either."

Nancy sighed. "A year ago, I might have told you
I'd see they were watched over. But not after Teresa Alou." She
clenched her fist again. "You remember the case?"

"Yes." Tough one to forget after the Globe
series. The DA had a squeeze on Alou, a young Hispanic who lived in
the South End and knew a lot about the drug trade from her brother.
The squeeze was her brother, who wouldn't talk and would go to a bad
prison if he didn't. Teresa talked for him. To save him. The brother
went to a good prison, a farm, a safe one. He lasted three days.
First they'd blinded him with some barbed-wire goggles. Then they
beat him to death. With rolled up newspapers. It would have taken a
long time.