The Strangler (36 page)

Michael laid the hammerhead on the back of Gargano’s head.

Gargano shook it away and dragged himself a few inches.

Michael rested the hammer on Gargano’s head again.

Gargano began to snort in angry dumb protest.

Michael tamped twice, lightly, as if setting a nail in a board before driving it in.

Out front a cruiser and an unmarked car, a detective’s car, were double-parked.

A uniform cop stood guard at the front door, one of the bulls from the nearby stationhouse. He looked Michael up and down.

“This is my mother’s house,” Michael offered.

“Go on in.”

Michael was no stranger to police uniforms, of course. Monkey suits, Joe Senior had called them. Still, in the presence of this uniform Michael hesitated.

“You okay, sir?”

“Yeah.”

The cop opened the screen door for him.

And so it would go, Michael thought. There would be no reckoning for what had happened in that pit. No one would ever know. Because Michael was wearing a uniform too: clean khakis, a clean button-down shirt. (He had stopped at his apartment to wash up and change clothes.) To all appearances he was a grieving brother and a dutiful son. Not a murderer at all. What had he expected this cop to see?

Inside he found Margaret and Kat in the living room and he bent to kiss them. Kat’s eyes were red rimmed, her complexion splotchy. Little Joe sat stone-faced, absently turning a penknife in his hand. Michael bent to kiss him, too, though the teenager did not move to offer his cheek so Michael lightly kissed the crown of his head, with its brush of short soft hair.

“Where’s Ricky?” he asked quietly.

“In the kitchen,” Margaret said.

“Is he okay?”

“Why don’t you go ask him?”

Michael nodded. They didn’t know what he meant; that was his answer. Ricky had not been hurt. Even Ricky had no idea what had gone on in the pit. Michael alone knew everything. How close Michael had come, how close.

He drifted into the kitchen, where Ricky leaned against the counter, arms folded, speaking in murmurs with Tom Hart.

Hart, seeing Michael’s blank expression and apparently misperceiving the shock of a victim there, came across the room to lay a consoling hand on Michael’s shoulder.

Michael flinched at the contact. “Sorry, Tom. Hurt my shoulder the other day. Still a little sore, I guess.”

Ricky’s eyes narrowed.

Hart spluttered awhile about how sorry he was, he didn’t have all the right words, Joe was a heckuva guy, just a heckuva guy, and he didn’t deserve a goddamn thing like this, and of course it wouldn’t bring Joe back but they were going to find the guy who did this thing if it took the rest of Hart’s goddamn life.

Michael thanked him. There was a silent moment during which Michael wondered again whether the detective could sense something was wrong.

“I know it’s a terrible time,” Hart said tentatively. “I hate like hell to do this, you know. But you know how these things go, Mike. The first few hours,
you
know.”

Margaret drifted into the kitchen, then Kat. They knew what was coming, they’d been through it already. Margaret crossed one arm across her belly, and with the opposite hand she covered her mouth, as if she knew, as if she already knew, what Michael was going to say.

“You know how I feel about the lot of you,” Hart was saying. “You too, Mike. But I’m on the job, you know.”

“It’s okay, Tom. Ask what you got to ask.”

“Okay. Okay, then. You know the question, Mike: Is there anything you can tell me about what happened to your brother tonight?”

Michael felt a little grip in the muscles of his jaw.

“Anything at all?”

“No.”

“You’re sure, Michael? Sometimes the smallest thing—”

“No. Nothing.”

“What about the thing we talked about, Amy Ryan and—?”

“Alright then, Tom,” Margaret broke in, “you got your answer. You don’t need to give him the third degree.”

Hart hesitated. A policeman’s wife would not be surprised by the questions. He glanced back at Margaret then at Michael.

But Margaret insisted. “It’s been a hard enough night for everyone. Just let us alone now, Tom. This is a family time. I’m sure you’ve got a long night ahead o’ yuz, too.”

Hart held Michael’s eyes in his own for a long moment. Then: “Yeah. Okay, I’ll leave you folks alone. I’m sorry, you know, I’m real sorry for your loss. I guess you’ve had your share.”

“Thank you, Tom,” Margaret said. “You go on now and do your job.”

“We’ll keep a cop out front, Margaret, just in case. All night, if you want.”

“Go.”

From the kitchen door Margaret watched the Homicide detective let himself out. When the Daleys were safely alone, she went to the sink to wet a dishrag. She came to Michael’s side, draped the towel over her index finger, and wiped Michael’s neck below the right ear. Inspecting the towel, she frowned, then showed Michael a red-brown smear. “Is this what I think it is, Michael?”

He nodded.

“Who did this to you?”

“It’s not mine.”

Next morning.

The ground trembled under Michael’s feet. Vibrations entered the soles of his shoes and shivered his legs, his trousers, his testicles.

“Hey!” a construction worker shouted to make himself heard through the concussed air. “Hahd hats only!” He pointed at his yellow helmet then jiggled one upturned thumb:
Get lost.

Michael gave him a friendly little uncomprehending wave. Just a dumb-ass lawyer with his coat flipped over his shoulder, shirtsleeves rolled up past his elbows. Just some dumb-ass enjoying the spring morning and the sunshine and the spectacle of a pile driver.

That gorgeous pile driver! The clocklike regularity of its movements. The slow ascent of the dropweight, a little hitch, then the weight released to ride down a chute and crash into the I-beam. Each blow rammed the massive pile a few inches farther into the ground. Each clang rattled in Michael’s ears and sent those tuning-fork shivers up his legs. All night, he had worried the corpse would erupt out of the ground the moment the pile driver began its work. He had envisioned the construction stopped, the site teeming with cops. But here it was. Not a cop in sight, nothing out of place. Workers shuffled about, came and went—with no idea what they were really doing. Which was this: they were ramrodding the body of Vinnie “The Animal” Gargano down into the earth forever.

Michael fantasized the dead man under the bottom of the pile, speared, pinned to bedrock. The truth, no doubt, was not so picturesque. Boston does not sit on bedrock like New York; the subsoil in Boston is mostly muck. The body would roll with the soil’s turbulence or grind along the side of the I-beam. But those were technicalities, mere facts. Who cared? In Michael’s mind, the building would foot down square on Vinnie Gargano for a hundred years.

Yet for all that, on the morning after, Michael still did not feel much of anything about Gargano. Certainly not remorse. Gargano was dead—murdered, alright; call it what you want—but he wouldn’t be missed or even remembered. Someday, no doubt, Michael would forget, too. He would forget the jet of blood that splashed him like warm bathwater, he would forget the way the corpse rolled willingly headfirst into that deep hole. Someday, Michael would gaze up at Farley Sonnenshein’s completed white tower, silent as a pyramid, and it would not seem strange that a man lay underneath it. We are promiscuous forgetters.

At Margaret’s house, they would be waiting for him. Another family meeting, another wake and another funeral to plan. Well, let them wait a while more. Joe would have understood: You do not bury your dead until the battle is over.

Before leaving, Michael took a deep contented breath. When had daylight ever looked so clear, or the sun felt so fine as it reached through the morning chill to warm his forehead? When had this grubby old city ever looked so rare? The priests, of course, would inform the Daleys that Joe had gone on to a better place. But a morning like this, Michael thought, gave the lie to the sanctimony of priests. Lay out a priest on his deathbed, let him feel the danger approach, its wings beating close, and watch how he fights.

Charlie Capobianco glared. “You believe this guy? Are you threatening me?”

Michael shook his head.

“Hey, you speak American, you fuck? I asked you a question. Are you threatening me?”

“No. Sir.”

“You come in here, to my place of business, and give me some story about I got money in this thing, and I did this and that in the West End, and to top it all off I had your brother
and
your father killed—and you’re not threatening me?”

“No.”

“Then what in the fuck do you want?”

“I’m asking you to let us out. My brother Ricky and me, the both of us—just let us walk away. That’s all we want.”

They were in Capobianco’s shabby Thatcher Street office. Michael sat in a vinyl chair. Charlie Capobianco stood nearby, glowering, chin tipped up. Charlie’s brother Niccolo listened from a couch nearby. Consigliere Nick was keeping his distance, in both senses.

“What are you shakin’ for?” Charlie said.

“I’m not shakin’.”

“You are. I see you. You get all this from Gargano?”

“Yeah.”

“Why would he tell you anything?”

“He was hurt. Maybe he thought he was dying.”

“Why would he think that?”

“He was hurt pretty bad.”

“Who hurt him?”

“I couldn’t say.”

“Ah, fuck Gargano. He can take care of himself. But you can’t fuck
me,
hear me, Paddy? Your brother owes me money. He took those stones. He’s gonna pay me my fuckin’ money.”

“He says he didn’t take them.”

“He can say he’s a fuckin’ elephant—doesn’t mean it’s true.”

“He says he didn’t take them.”

Capobianco sat down next to Michael and leaned in close. His breath had an eggy stink. “Why would I do this for you, some Paddy off the street? I don’t know you.”

“You let us out, you keep your money. I’ll take the whole story to my grave.”

“I could make that happen sooner than you think.”

“I’ve made arrangements. A reporter has the story, someone I know, in case I go to my grave any too soon. If that story comes out, you’ll lose all your money one way or another. A grand jury’ll find it. It doesn’t matter how you invested it, how you kept your name off it. They’ll open up those trusts and find you. The pols’ll probably stop construction, too. Either way, the money’s lost. It’s more than me and Ricky are worth. All you got to do is just let us out. Sir. Just let us out.”

From behind Michael, Nick interjected, “Okay. You’re out.”

But Charlie Capobianco, the boss, was not quite finished. “What kind of guy are you, Paddy? You come in here and tell me I killed your brother, your father, but still you’re willing to make deals.”

“There’s someone else who’s more responsible than you.”