Текст книги "Robert B. Parker's Lullaby"

Автор книги: Ace Atkins

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Текущая страница: 5 (всего у книги 17 страниц)

15

If I was going to go up against an entire Southie crew, I figured I should keep in fighting shape. The morning was cold and gray, spitting sleet and rain, when I dressed in my sweats, watch cap, and running shoes. I walked over the footbridge to the Charles River, jogging all the way to the Boston University campus and back. The river was still frozen but not frozen enough that anyone dared to walk across. You could see the hardened clumps breaking up, open pockets of actual river that could swallow a man. I thought of spring concerts at the Shell, dogs frolicking in the Common, and women in summer dresses.

At my apartment, I showered and carefully shaved. I chose a black turtleneck; crisp, dark Levi’s; and my peacoat to conceal my .38. I decided on a knitted Sox cap to complete the look. Business casual.

Feeling like a fine example of the American male, I drove south to Roxbury.

Mike’s City Diner was on Washington Street, a couple miles from Boston Police headquarters. Although new, it boasted a retro look. There was an open stainless-steel kitchen fronting a long counter. The surrounding tables were covered in black-and-white gingham oilcloths. The waitresses wore little name tags.

“You Spenser?” asked a short black man.

“Most people say I resemble George Clooney.”

“Quirk told me you looked like an old fighter.”

“Quirk is jealous of my rugged good looks,” I said.

“Alden Reid,” he said.

Reid was neatly dressed in a silky black shirt and expensive-looking leather blazer. He had a thin trimmed mustache and close-cropped hair that showed a bit of gray at the temples. He had quick eyes, like most detectives I knew, and took in the room with discretion.

We shook hands and found a table looking out on Washington. There wasn’t much to see on Washington besides an old brick apartment building and recently restored storefronts. A mailman toting a heavy canvas satchel passed the window. He wore a big fur hat.

A waitress brought menus and coffee.

“You been with the drug unit long?”

“Eight years.”

“Like it?”

“Lots of job security,” Reid said. “Shit isn’t going away.”

“Here’s to crime.” I raised my mug.

“And retirement,” he said. “I have a time-share and a boat in Clearwater Beach.”

“You won’t miss shoveling snow?” I said. “My uncles said it built character.”

“I won’t miss shoveling shit,” he said. He studied the menu and put it down just as quickly. He then studied my face, with subtle attention on the purplish mouse under my eye.

“Would you believe a champagne cork?” I asked.

“Nope.”

“Had a run-in with a guy named Moon Murphy last night,” I said. “Heard of him?”

“Sure,” Reid said. He grinned. “You must be good. He usually breaks some bones.”

“And his partner?”

“Red Cahill?” he said. “If you know the name, you know his rep.”

“Hold that thought,” I said. “Let’s not talk hoodlums on an empty stomach.”

I ordered the hash and eggs. Rye toast on the side. Reid ordered the Mike’s special, hand-carved ham and two over-easy eggs with toast.

“How’d you get to be a private cop?” Reid asked.

“I don’t play well with others.”

“Martin Quirk is first-class,” Reid said. “He said to help you out in any way. He must like you. And Marty Quirk likes no one.”

“What can I say?” I shrugged. “I make him laugh.”

“Red Cahill,” he said. Reid shook his head, deep in thought. “Small-time punk gone big-time. Lucked out now that heroin is back in style.”

“Bell-bottoms and wide ties are next,” I said.

“Heroin’s rough, man,” Reid said. “Junkies love that slow suicide. That’s what it’s all about. It’s no fun if it don’t kill you.”

“Big business?”

“On Christmas Eve, we arrested two of Red’s boys with six pounds of the shit.”

I gave a low whistle.

“Street value of three million.”

“Great Caesar’s ghost,” I said.

The waitress stopped and refilled our cups. She wore the classic waitress uniform, complete with a white apron and saddle shoes. Her hair was the color of cotton candy.

“What do you know about Cahill and Murphy working with Gerry Broz?” I asked.

“What I know and can prove are two different things.”

“Story of my life.”

“Last year, we had a hell of a case on Red,” Reid said. “We got warrants to wiretap a garage where these guys hung out. It was a foreign-car place, fixed Porsches and Beemers, shit like that. This place was over on Old Colony, and for maybe four months, we saw these guys heading in and out of there like it was a beehive.”

“What happened?”

“When we got the warrant, the activity stopped,” he said. “You know Gerry Broz’s old man?”

“We have a history.”

“That garage was owned by him.”

“He’s been gone longer than that. Ten years.”

“Yeah,” Reid said. He nodded. “Him taking off is a whole other story. We figure he’s got friends in the DA’s office or with the Feds. They were coming for him when he decided to take an extended vacation.”

“Joe Broz has to be dead by now,” I said. “I think he bunked with Al Capone in Alcatraz.”

“His name still commands some respect,” Reid said. “Even after all this time.”

I nodded. The waitress arrived and slid warm plates in front of us. Hash and eggs on a cold morning was a national treasure. I took a bite of eggs, followed by a bite of rye toast. I drank coffee. Reid followed my lead.

“So Joe Broz really used to own this town?” Reid asked.

“Broz was the man.”

“You go up against him?”

“Yep,” I said.

“And?”

“In the end, we formed a mutual respect.”

“And his son?”

“Gerry isn’t cut from the same cloth,” I said. “First time I met him, he was videotaping himself having sex with old ladies and blackmailing them.”

“Class.”

“With a capital K.”

Reid drank some coffee. He cut into some ham and added a bite of egg to his fork. “He’s shaking things up.”

“So I’ve heard.”

“For a while, there was an understanding between the Albanians on the North Shore and the Italians on the North End. They kind of split Broz’s old turf downtown and in Southie. And now the kid has come back wanting to reclaim his birthright or something.”

“Gerry has always had something to prove.”

“Maybe the old man is back and telling him what to do.”

I stopped eating. I put my fork on the side of my plate. This was something I had not considered.

“So why’d you get into it with Moon Murphy last night?”

“There was a young woman in Southie who was killed four years ago,” I said. “Her daughter was just a kid then but has just IDed Red and Moon as being in her mother’s company shortly before she died.”

“Addict?”

“Sure.”

“Maybe she was just getting a fix.”

“Maybe.”

“How’d she die?”

“She was raped, stabbed, and run down with a car.”

“Sounds like a message killing written in neon.”

I nodded.

“But why?”

I shook my head.

Reid finished his breakfast. He reached for his cell phone and checked messages. He pulled out his chair and reached for his wallet.

I shook my head and laid down some cash.

“Watch your ass, Spenser,” he said. “These aren’t nice people.”

“People keep telling me that.”

“You got a plan?”

“Win them over with my dynamite personality?”

“You have a backup plan?” he asked.

“Working on it.”

16

I knocked on seven different doors in the Mary Ellen McCormack Projects before I found the second-floor apartment of Genevive Zacconi. Zacconi was a hard thirtyish woman with bleached hair chopped up in a spiky bob. She was short and fat and wearing an XXL T-shirt that read MEAN GREEN DRINKING MACHINE. When I started to question her, she told me to hold on for a moment. She leaned back into her apartment and yelled for her kid to “please shut the fuck up.”

When she turned back to me, she crossed her arms over her large breasts and frowned. “Yeah?”

“Did you win that shirt?” I asked.

“Whaddya mean?” she said, looking down to recall what she’d put on.

“I thought maybe it was a competition,” I said. “Like you slam a half-dozen boilermakers and you get a shirt. You know, like a trophy?”

“Fuck, I don’t know,” she said. “It was clean. What the hell do you want?”

“Our book club is reading Dr. Spock this month,” I said. “Would you like to join us?”

“Come on.”

“Would it be too corny if I said I was a private eye?”

She looked at me with tired eyes and tried to slam the door. I smiled, wedged my foot in the threshold, and handed her my card. I knew my charisma would chip away at her hardened shell. She looked at the card and tapped the edge against an eyetooth. “Most people who knock on my door are trying to sell me something I don’t need or religious nuts.”

“The Lord works in thuggish ways.”

“So whaddya want?”

“Did you know Julie Sullivan?”

“No.”

“Woman was killed four years ago?”

“I know who she was,” Genevive Zucconi said. “She lived downstairs. Her kids still do. With her crazy, drunk mother. But we weren’t friends or nothin’. She was like ten years younger.”

“Do you mind if I come inside?”

“Yeah,” she said. “I got shit all over the place, and I think my kid just crapped his pants.”

“How nice for you.”

“Did you just stop by to be funny, or did you want somethin’?”

I showed her the photograph of Julie Sullivan and the slick-haired man grabbing her breast.

“Know him?”

Even if she’d said no, the smile gave Genevive Zucconi away. She nodded and then shook her head. “Yeah,” she said. “Yeah, sure. That’s Touchie Kiley.”

“Touchie?”

“Yeah.”

“Where can I find Touchie?”

“Touchie’s a riot.” She laughed just thinking about him.

“Unwarranted groping is hilarious,” I said.

“I don’t know where he lives,” she said. “He’s just kind of always around. Did you check Four Green Fields? The pub?”

“Unfortunately, I’m persona non grata there.”

“What’s that mean?”

“It means they don’t find me a riot.”

“Try the deli on D Street,” she said. “He used to work there. Touchie Kiley. Jesus H. I hadn’t thought about him for a while. Tell him hello. What a fucking goofball.”

“As much as I’d love to relive the glory days,” I said, trying to dissuade more hilarity, “I could use some help. You remember anything about Julie Sullivan that might be of use? Anything around the time she was killed?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Like I said, I was ten years older. She was playing with dolls and shit when I was in high school.”

“You know she became an addict?”

“Sure,” she said. “Everybody knew she was hooked. Her arms were all bruised up like a piece of old fruit. She was screwing every guy in the projects.”

“Ever talk to her about it?”

“Do I look like a fucking counselor?” she said. “I’m real sorry about Jules, you know, God bless, but I got my own problems.”

The child inside her apartment began to whine and cry out for his mother. Another kid joined in, screaming in tandem, yelling for the first kid to be quiet. Genevive held up her index finger to me again, turned, and yelled, “Shut up.”

“Just one more minute,” I said.

Genevive slammed the door in my face. Undeterred, I tucked the photo back into my peacoat and continued asking around. I followed sidewalks coated in snow and ice. Big bags of trash that sat waiting for pickup blocked paths. A notice had been taped to a lamppost looking for anyone needing rides to Walpole or Plymouth prisons. A carpool was only twenty bucks. I wondered if that’s how Mattie had taken her visits with Mickey Green.

The project buildings stretched out like spokes from the common area, two and three stories of old red brick. Every unit the same. In a lone corner window, someone had pasted up colored drawings of Disney characters. Another had unicorns. It wasn’t even one o’clock but felt like the end of the day. They sky was dark. Slush and icy puddles ran up to my ankles.

More doors slammed in my face. I found out a lot of Hispanics had moved into Mary Ellen McCormack in the last few years. A lot of Vietnamese, too. Most did not speak English.

An hour later, I met an old woman who spoke in a soft Irish lilt, telling me how lovely it had all once been. “Until they forced the blacks on us,” she said.

“How unfortunate,” I said.

“They brought drugs and crime,” she said. She’d come to the door in a flowered housecoat and pushing a walker. Her eyes were faded blue with cataracts.

I did not point out that Southie’s crime rate was worse before the schools were integrated. I asked her about the Sullivan family.

She clucked and shook her head. She clutched her rosary on her withered old neck. “Have you spoken to the poor girl’s mother?”

“No,” I said. “But I’ll try again with some coffee and smelling salts.”

17

I figured Grandma Sullivan must be waiting for Mattie and the twins to come home from school. I bet she was making lemonade and baking sugar cookies. She may have taken up sewing or crochet to pass the time. Perhaps she would even invite me to dinner. Pot roast with new potatoes. A homemade apple pie for desert. Perry Como on the hi-fi.

I had to knock on the door for five minutes before she opened it.

Grandma had been sleeping one off. I was shocked. But I composed myself and gave another introduction, since she’d been comatose when we’d first met.

She didn’t answer me. She walked back in the apartment and sat down on a ratty plaid chair. Grandma Sullivan lit a cigarette and fanned away the smoke. She didn’t look quite as old and skinny today. She’d put on some makeup and wore a red camisole top that showed off some shapely freckled shoulders. Her nose was pert and her eyes a deep green. She was still in her forties, hard but not unattractive. Or maybe it was the dim light.

A little bit of light from the half-open curtains looked to be causing her some pain. I walked over, closed them, and sat down on a sofa. A television played a soap opera on mute. A man was in a hospital with a bandaged head. A woman appeared to be crying.

Grandma smoked some more. Strands of light bled from the curtains like thick fingers through the smoke. “You’re the detective.”

“I slay dragons, rescue maidens.”

“Mattie talks about you a lot.”

I nodded.

“She trusts you.”

I nodded again. “She’s a good kid.”

“Stubborn,” she said.

“What makes her so good.”

“Mother was the same way,” she said. “Couldn’t tell her shit. She knew it all.”

“People have said similar things about me,” I said. “Can you tell me a bit about your daughter?”

“She was wild with boys and drinking, but she straightened it all out for Mattie,” she said. “God bless that girl, she brought my Julie back for a while.”

“How long?”

“Few years.”

Grandma walked over to the wall and the framed high-school photo of Julie. She held it in both hands and handed it to me with great care. Dust motes spun in a sliver of sunlight. The room had an attic-like quality, smelling of moth balls and old clothes. Toys and stuffed animals cluttered a rug in the center of the room. She stood over me as I studied the photo of Julie. She absently fingered her black-ink tattoo of her daughter’s name.

“You know about the car wreck?” she asked.

I nodded.

“Mattie was four years old when Julie got hurt,” Grandma said. “That wreck changed everything. Some stupid bastard T-boned her car as she was headed to work. That’s how she got into pills, and from pills into coke. You go on from there.”

“What about the guy who hit her?”

“We won ten grand in a settlement,” Grandma said. “He was some jerk-off business guy from Revere. Never said he was sorry, hid behind his lawyer like a woman’s skirt. Julie lost her job.”

She tucked her unwashed hair behind her ears. Her complexion was blotchy. She stubbed out the cigarette and started a new one. I learned her name was Colleen.

“And I guess the money did not provide a wealth of stability?”

“Money went straight into her arm,” Colleen said. “I couldn’t stop her. Then she started stealing shit. She sold all my dead ma’s rings. She sold our TV. She’d moved in, and I had to kick her out. I kept Mattie. She didn’t care about Mattie anymore. She didn’t care about me until she got knocked up with the twins. That kept her clean for nearly a year. And then it was back to the stealing and lies.”

“Who were her friends before she died?”

“Don’t ever call those parasites friends. And don’t get Mattie’s hope up, either. How much is she paying you?”

“A dozen donuts.”

“You’re a funny one, aren’t you,” she said. She laughed as if I were being funny. “That how you got that eye?”

I placed my hands in my coat pockets. I shrugged. Grandma smiled at me in a hazy way. Maybe through the smoke and booze, the scar tissue around my eyes and busted nose wasn’t as prom-

inent.

“Ever see Julie with a guy named Red Cahill?” I asked.

She blew out some smoke and shook her head.

“Moon Murphy?”

She shook her head some more. She waved away the smoke.

“Touchie Kiley?”

She shook her head, not seeming to listen.

“You don’t think much of me, do you?” she asked.

I didn’t answer.

“You have kids?”

“Nope.”

“You don’t want to outlive a kid,” she said. “I’d trade places with Julie any day.”

I nodded.

“I’m doing the best I can,” she said. “Mattie’s strong. Stronger than me.”

She’d started to cry, heavy with the booze, singing very softly a very old song. “‘Oft, in dreams I wander to that cot again. I feel her arms a-hugging me. As when she held me then.’”

“You know that old song?” she asked. “I used to sing it to Julie. I was just a kid myself when she was born. Isn’t that some sentimental shit?”

“I heard Bing Crosby sing it in a movie once,” I said. “I liked it.”

She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “Hell, you want a drink?” she asked.

“It’s pretty early.”

“I didn’t ask you for the time.”

I shrugged. She walked into the small kitchen and reached into a cupboard over the stove. She pulled out some Old Forester and poured a generous shot into two jelly jars featuring Bugs Bunny and Tweety Bird. She handed me the glass as if it were made of crystal.

“Ah, the good stuff,” I said.

“Good enough for me.”

“You know Mickey Green?” I asked.

“Whaddya you think,” she said. “He’s the rotten son of a bitch who killed my Julie.”

“Did you know him before she was killed?”

“Yeah, I seen him around. Always acting like he was a good guy, doing little chores and crap to win favors.”

“Mattie believes he’s innocent.”

“Kids need something to believe in,” she said. She finished her drink in one gulp. “Like Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and all them saints. Me, I’m too old for that. So don’t break my little doll’s heart. Okay? Bad things happen in life. You swallow it and keep moving ahead.”

I nodded. We just sat there for a while.

“You aren’t half bad looking,” she said.

“It’s the other half that ruins it.”

“You look like you’ve been in some scraps.”

“Trouble is my business,” I said.

I downed the Old Forester. Mattie’s grandmother smiled at me for a while. It was a wavering, fuzzy smile. She leaned back in her chair, stretched, and let out a long, tired breath. An uncomfortable silence passed between us. I finished the booze, feeling it warm my stomach. I winked at her before I let myself out.

The wind in the common ground swirled in a bright, chilled vortex. Trash spun and danced, hitting brick walls and collapsing in a heap. I walked back to Kemp Street but could not find my car. If it had been a horse, I would have whistled.

I looked both ways. But my car had disappeared.

18

I saw two of them approach from Dorchester Avenue.

I walked in the opposite direction toward Monsignor O’Callaghan Way and north toward the T station. Two more met me halfway through the projects. I kept a bright, smiling clip. I could confront them, but I wanted to see what developed. I did not leer. I did not stick out my tongue. I did not wave around my .38. I walked with intent.

I nodded politely at an older Asian woman carrying groceries from her car. I waited on the sidewalk as a Hispanic boy played with a remote-control truck that jumped snow and trash. I turned up on a street called Logan, still within the brick maze of the Mary Ellen McCormack, and circled back toward Dorchester. I had not recognized any of the men. The first two looked like hard older guys, one with a beard, the other guy in an Army jacket. They looked like dopeheads, not toughs.

I stopped and glanced back. The third man was young and Hispanic. The man with him was white, with thinning black hair and a stubbled face. He wore a fake leather jacket advertising Marlboro cigarettes, the kind you win after collecting empty packs. Very stylish.

They all watched me. They nodded to one another, closing in.

I could stand and fight like Randolph Scott. But I did not figure a shootout near a playground was a good idea. I could turn back to them and give them the stink eye. The more I practiced, the more the stink eye worked. Practice made perfect. But I kept walking. I turned left on Devine.

The quartet followed. Perhaps they would assault me in song.

I reached for the .38 on my hip and slipped it into my peacoat pocket. I kept my hand there, walking. I began to whistle “Danny Boy.”

After a few minutes, I decided I sounded pretty good. The street was very quiet at midday. There was a hush that came in the old snow piles and ice. Long rows of cars sat humpbacked and buried in snow. Someone had used a pink pen to write a eulogy to a dead friend on a mailbox. I made it to Dorchester and turned north again. I was out of the projects and headed into a grouping of haggard storefronts and a brand-new Dunkin’ Donuts. The Dunkin’ Donuts shone like a beacon in the distance.

I passed an auto-repair school, a liquor shop, a travel agent. The Andrew Station stood at the corner of Dorchester Avenue and Dorchester Street. I walked inside and paid two bucks for a pass.

The quartet was inside the station. The two old guys were conversing. I bet they were conversing about me. I did not take it to be complimentary.

I slipped the pass into the turnstile and headed down the stairwell. The young Latin guy and balding man in the faux-leather Marlboro jacket followed.

I stood at the T platform with maybe twenty other people headed inbound to the city. It had been some time since I’d taken the T. I could take the T from my apartment to Fenway. But on really nice days I chose to walk down Commonwealth. I worked in a driving profession. It was hard to tail a person on the T.

The men stood back. They conversed some more. They looked like schoolgirls gossiping. The two older guys joined them.

A subway poster advertised a new exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts. A new exhibit called “Art of the Americas.” George Washington stood proud on horseback. Washington wouldn’t have retreated into a T station. George would’ve charged right for them.

I heard the rumble of the T. I glanced over at the two men. They did not try to approach me. They looked confused about what to do next. I wondered why Red or Moon hadn’t come for me themselves.

I looked back at Washington. He had wooden teeth and a big set of brass balls. But muskets and swords were not .45s and .38s and Glocks. Four against one. Shooting it out on a crowded platform.

I stepped onto the T. The men stood dead-footed in the station. The doors closed with a hiss. Through the dirty glass, I smiled and waved to the quartet. They did not smile back.

I took the Red Line to South Station and got off. I walked upstairs to the large terminal where you could catch a bus to Logan or a train to New York. My cell phone was in my lost car. I found a bank of pay phones, glad to see they still existed.

I called Henry Cimoli’s gym to find Hawk.