Vineyard Shadows (5 page)

“Graham's the cop?”

“Yes. The words didn't make sense to me, but maybe they did to him. Maybe they steered the detectives in directions they wouldn't have gone otherwise. Graham was always glad to get them.”

“And then what happened?”

Rimini rubbed his hands right on schedule. “And then somebody saw Graham talking with me and Sonny heard about it. Maybe Sonny was already beginning to have doubts about whether he could trust me. He didn't get where he is by trusting very many people, for sure. Anyway, a guy met me after school and took me to Sonny. I told him Graham was a gambler I owed money to. He said he'd never heard of a gambler by that name. I told him I didn't know if it was his real name. He said he didn't like me talking with Graham and to break it off. I went home and told Carla. It was two weeks before school let out, so I couldn't leave without attracting a lot of attention to myself. I was a wreck. I'd heard what gangsters do to stool pigeons.”

I could imagine how he felt. He was between Scylla and Charybdis. “What did you do?”

“The next time Graham phoned I told him what had happened. He said to just be cool, but I didn't feel cool. Then I got the feeling somebody was watching me. Whenever I was out on the street, and sometimes when I was home. Somebody was out there in the shadows at night. I didn't know if I was imagining things or not. I finished the term, but I had to get away. Somewhere
not too far away, where nobody knew me, where I could calm down and figure out what to do, where I'd be safe . . .”

“Someplace like here, where Carla loved to be because it was a long way from Boston and all the things about my job that scared her.”

He met my stare. “Yes. She said to come here. She said you'd understand. She said she'd call you and talk with you and that it would be all right. She said I could trust you, and that you could help me. But she never called, did she?”

“No.”

“They did something bad to her, didn't they? Otherwise, she'd have called. Otherwise, she never would have told them where I was going. Jesus.” He stood up. “I've got to go back.”

It was a simple solution to my own problems. Rimini would be out of my hair and I wouldn't have to give another thought to Sonny Whelen. I should have said nothing. Instead, I said, “Wait a minute.”

He turned back to me.

“Let me make some phone calls first,” I said. “You're as safe here as anyplace else for the moment, because they've already looked here and learned the hard way it was the wrong house.”

“I'm not interested in being safe. I'm interested in Carla and the kids!” He started down the stairs. I went after him and caught him before he got to his car.

“Look,” I said. “You're not going to do anybody any good by barging back up to Jamaica Plain. If Whelen really is after you, you'll be walking right into his arms. Carla and the kids don't need a dead dad, they need a live one.”

“But she may be hurt! And what about the kids?!”

“A couple of phone calls will tell us what happened. . . . Maybe Carla just got scared into talking. Not every hood beats up women the way Pat Logan liked to do. Where do your folks live?”

“Brookline.”

“Fine. Carla's are in Milton. If Carla's not at home, she and the kids will probably be in one of those two places.”

“I don't like this.”

“You've made yourself a bed of nails. Now you've got to lie on it. You come in and sit down and I'll make the calls.”

He wasn't a fool, even though he had been acting like one for quite a while. He stared at the ground like a teenager caught shoplifting a stuffed toy for his girlfriend. Then he nodded. “Okay. But if she's hurt, I'm going up there!”

And do what? I wondered. “Come into the house,” I said. “We'll call your place first. What's the number?”

He told me and I dialed. The voice that answered was agitated but so familiar that my heart did a little turn.

“Carla, this is Jeff. How are you?”

I could hear her take a deep breath and let it out. “Jeff. I'm fine. How . . . how are you?”

“Are you alone? Can you talk?”

“Yes. I meant to phone you, Jeff. I . . .”

“Listen to me, Carla. It's important. First, Tom is fine. He's in a safe place.”

“Oh, thank God! If anything happened to him . . .”

“Never mind that, now. Some guys visited you and you told them Tom would be at my place. Did they hurt you or did they just scare you into telling them?”

“They didn't hurt me. I'm not brave, I guess. They know where my kids go to school. They told me about accidents that happen to people. Is Tom really all right?”

“Yes.”

“I'm sorry I told him to go down there, but it was the only place I could think of. He was scared! I was going to call you and tell you he was coming, but it was like those men could read my mind! They told me not to call anybody! That they'd know, if I did. That they'd be back. Is Tom there with you? Let me talk with him!”

“I'll have him call you later. It's better that you don't know where he is, because those guys may be back for the information.”

“I wouldn't tell them! Not again!”

Maybe; maybe not. “You can't tell what you don't know,” I said. “Right now all you need to know is that he's in a safe spot. I'll have him get in touch with you later, so the two of you can talk. How are your children?”

“They're fine. We're fine. They're getting ready to go play tennis. Is that safe? Should I let them go? God, Jeff, I feel like I did when you were on the police force. I'm scared all the time!” I could hear the fear in her voice. It was a familiar tone that I remembered well from the last years of our marriage.

She was not frightened without cause. “I don't think you need to be afraid,” I lied. “They're not going to hurt you or your children, and your husband is safe and sound. We'll figure a way out of this mess.”

“I wish he were home! I wish none of this had happened!”

I felt the same helpless wave of pity for her that I'd felt long, long ago, when she had wished that I was someone other than who I was, and did something other than what I did, when we had loved each other but couldn't live together anymore.

“He'll get home,” I said. “Meanwhile, you have to be tough. We'll work it out.”

“I'm not tough, Jeff. If I was tough I never would have left you.”

I remembered the scene in the Boston hospital. I was sitting on a bed, bandages on my belly where the bullet had entered and the surgeons had gone in to do repairs but had left the slug nestled against my spine because leaving it there was less dangerous than trying to dig it out. Carla was going out the door, her head bowed, her light brown hair neatly combed as always. She had just told me that she was divorcing me. She was crying. So was I.

“Women are always tougher than men,” I said. “I'll have your husband call you later.”

Before she could say anything else, I hung up the phone.

Rimini was looking at me. “Well?”

“She's fine. The kids are fine. Whelen's goons scared her, but they didn't hurt her.”

“You should have let me talk with her.” He reached for the phone.

I stopped his clean white hand with my rough tan one. “No. If you talk with her now, she'll know you're here. If she knows, Whelen can know. We'll wait. You can call her in an hour or two. She won't know where you are, and you won't tell her. Not if you want to stay safe.”

“Safe! What good does it do for me to be safe? I've got to get out of this mess!”

I almost felt sorry for him. He was stewing in his own juice.

“It took you time to get into it,” I said. “It may take some to get you out of it. While we work at it you park your gear in that spare room there.”

“I can't leave Carla and the kids alone!”

He irked me. “The best thing you can do for your wife and family is disappear for a while, till we work things out. You're an amateur in this sort of game. I know a little more about it, so let me see what I can do.”

“You're right.” He rubbed a hand over his hair. “I don't know what to do or how to do it. Do you really think you can do something?” Then a bitter note entered his voice. “And if you can, why should you?”

Why, indeed? Because of the Riminis, my wife was in the hospital and my daughter had been cut by a knifeman. The Riminis had brought me nothing but grief. But I had once loved Carla.

“Because I'm already involved,” I said. “Sonny Whelen thinks I know where you are. Worse yet, he's lost a couple of his men here at my house, and he won't be happy about that when he finds out. I have to get him out of my life.”

He nodded, but then gave me a nervous look. “You could do that by just handing me over to him. I couldn't complain if you did.”

I liked him a little better for saying that. “I don't usually hand people over to thugs.”

“Not even me?”

“Especially you.”

“Why?”

“Because I used to be married to your wife. I don't want to help make her a widow. You can stay here tonight while I think about a better place for you to hang out.”

He eyed me thoughtfully, then nodded. “I'll get my gear.” He went out.

I went into the bedroom and used that phone to call Quinn. Quinn is a reporter for
The Boston Globe.
I'd met him when I was a cop up there, and we'd hit it off. When I needed to know something about who was who and what was what in Massachusetts, I still called Quinn.

He answered on the first ring, which meant he was writing up a story. Otherwise, he was almost never at his desk.

“I'll trade you a story for some information,” I said.

“I usually come out on the short end of these deals with you,” said Quinn, “but I'll do it for your wife's sake. She's stuck with you when she really wants me.”

“As a matter of fact, the story is about Zee. It's too good not to get out pretty fast, so since I feel sorry for you for being such a dud as a reporter, I thought I'd try to save your career by offering it to you first.”

“Speak.”

I told him the tale as I'd heard it, omitting only Tom Rimini's name.

“Wow! That's good,” said Quinn happily. “I can see the headline now:
GANGLAND GUNMEN MEET THEIR MATCH; SMALL-TOWN HOUSEWIFE MOWS THEM DOWN.
Or something like that. I think I got everything but the name of the guy they were after.”

Sharp Quinn. “You didn't get it because I didn't give it to you.”

“Don't be coy. I can get it somewhere else. Some cop will tell me.”

True. “Off the record, then.”

“Okay. But if I get it someplace else, I'll feel free to use it.”

“Fair enough. They were after a guy named Tom Rimini. He's a schoolteacher with a gambling habit.” I told him Rimini's tale. When I was through, I added: “I want to keep him out of the story as much as possible, because I want to get him out from under Sonny Whelen's thumb if I can.”

I could almost see Quinn's ears perk up. “How come this interest in Mr. Rimini? You old buddies, or something? He save your life in Nam or some such thing, like in the movies?”

“Nothing like that. He's married to Carla.”

“Ah.” Then, “So?”

A good question. I gave him the only answer I'd come up with: “She lost one husband, me, and I don't want her to lose another one. She doesn't deserve that.”

There was a silence. Then he said, “Okay, I guess. I don't want to belabor the obvious, but aren't you married to Zee now? How long has it been since you've even seen Carla?”

“A lot of years.”

“You still think you owe her?” Quinn was a bachelor who had had a lot of women in his life. I wondered if he even remembered them all.

“I guess I just don't want to see her get hurt anymore.”

“Zee know about all this?”

“Not yet. She might tomorrow, if she gets home and finds Rimini still here in our spare room.”

“What? You're keeping him there at your place?”

“For the night, at least. Hey, maybe I can send him up to your place instead? Nobody would think of looking for him there.”

“Very funny. I have one bedroom and I don't share it with men. No, you keep him.”

“And you keep that detail out of your story. Now, here's what you can do for me in exchange for me spilling my guts to you.”

“What?”

“Two things: check on the cop named Graham. The one who turned Rimini. I want to know as much about him as you can dig up. Who he's working for, and all that.”

“Don't you trust Graham?”

“I don't trust him or not trust him. Before I do either, I want to know as much as I can about him.

“Second, I want you to find out where I can meet Sonny Whelen. I want to talk with him.”

“Oh, no, you don't,” said Quinn. “No, no, no. Sonny is going to be in a bad mood when he hears about what happened to his lads this morning.”

“He's not the only one in a bad mood,” I said. “Find out where he lives, where he likes to eat, and where he hangs out. When I was pounding the streets up in Bean Town, Sonny was out and about in Charlestown, like he owned the place.”