Killer Smile

by Lisa Scottoline

  A thick stack of white papers nestled inside, and she slid them out. They were five pieces of scrap paper, and on each were a series of drawings. The drawings were of a circle of some sort, with a tiny bump on the side. Each page had several different views of the circle, drawn with a crude pencil. There was no writing on it, not even in Italian. The circle drawing was repeated at least twenty times. Was that obsessive? Not really. When Mary doodled, she’d usually draw the same things over and over; her name, a pair of large eyes, or for some reason, a ballet slipper. But she wondered about it, with Amadeo. Was it an early sign of depression? And why did he keep it in his wallet?

  For no reason, she held the papers up to the lamp, so the light shone through. There was no watermark or secret inks. It told her nothing more, which was the problem with things you do for no reason. But they were drawings of Amadeo’s, Mary felt sure. It was the only tangible thing she had seen — apart from his X mark on the registration card — that had actually come from him. That he had touched.

  She found herself closing her hand around the paper, then opening it again. She thought of her mother in the kitchen, playing hand tricks with the steam. She couldn’t help but feel that she was closer to Amadeo, connected to him, and she admitted to herself that Judy had been right. It was as if she had a crush on Amadeo, not because he reminded her of George Clooney, but because he reminded her of Mike. She didn’t know if Mike had gotten justice and she didn’t know if Amadeo could either, but the confused tangle in her heart told her she had to try. She slid the papers back in the billfold, closed the wallet, and snapped it shut. Then she gathered the photos, set them neatly back in her briefcase, and switched off the light.

  Mary lay back in bed alone, as she had almost every night since Mike had died, except for one love affair that hadn’t worked out. She had changed apartments, hit thirty, and still didn’t own a house. She didn’t even have a cat anymore and had grown used to being on her own, kept company at night by Jay Leno, HBO, the Discovery Channel, Lifetime, or at last resort, Paid Programming. She had grown so accustomed to being on her own that it didn’t feel lonely anymore. It was just the state of things. Her friends would send her on blind dates, and she would go because it was easier than resisting, but being alone wasn’t so terrible. She was a single girl, and it felt like enough. Especially with cable.

  Her room was dark except for the orange rectangle glowing from the Westclox and a white slice of the moon, so bright it shone through an opening in the curtain. She tried to ignore it but couldn’t, so she climbed out of bed and trundled to the window. She pulled the curtain closed just as she saw a dark Escalade leave a parking space across the street and drive away.

  Mary blinked. Which one of her neighbors had an Escalade? None that she knew of. It looked like the same car she’d seen the other day, on Mercer Street. What was going on? She couldn’t decide if she was being paranoid.

  The dangerous ones, the truly murderous ones, lie in wait. And then, when the moment’s right, they strike.

  Mary tried to banish the voice, but couldn’t. She returned to bed and climbed under the comforter, her body stiff with a bad feeling.

  The bad feeling was fear.

  Seven

  First thing Monday morning, Mary stopped by Frank Cavuto’s law office to take him the FBI memo that she, Judy, and Saint Anthony had found. She sat across his desk in a slippery leather chair, waiting for him to finish reading it. Frank’s shave was so fresh she could smell the minty Gillette on his softening cheeks, and he wore a three-piece pinstriped suit, because lawyers still dressed up for work in South Philly. Down here, they were proud to wear ties. A tie meant you were a high school grad.

  “Interesting document, huh?” Mary asked, but Frank merely held up an index finger as his large, brown eyes darted across the page. His head was pitched slightly back to see through his black-rimmed reading glasses, and she wondered what was taking so long. The document was all of two paragraphs.

  She looked impatiently around the office, which was over-stuffed, downscale, and even dirty, like most of the solo practitioners in South Philly. They made good money doing wills, contracts, and the occasional slip-and-fall in the produce aisle, but you’d never know it from their offices. The walls were covered with thin wood paneling, a backdrop for diplomas from a Catholic university and law school, mounted in a precut frame from CVS. In the self-promotion department, there were certificates from the Knights of Columbus, the Masons, Kiwanis Club, and framed thank-yous from the Boys’ Club, PAL, and the ASPCA, this last telegraphing that Frank was a soft touch. Puppies don’t hire lawyers.

  Next to that hung group photos of the girls’ softball team he’d sponsored over the years, posed in red jerseys on the weathered bleachers of Palumbo Field. A nine-year-old Mary DiNunzio grinned from the third row of one of them, next to her old best friend, Marti Funnell, her face partially obscured by a dust-covered corn plant that struggled for air behind Frank’s desk. The desk itself was of dark veneer, cluttered with correspondence, manila files, and white curls of adding machine tape. There wasn’t a single law book in the office. In South Philly, you didn’t need books if you wore a tie.

  Frank set down the document and slid his glasses off, folding the eyepieces together with the faintest click. “Now, what did you say?”

  “The FBI monitored Amadeo in the internment camp. Surprising, huh?”

  “I guess so, sure.”

  “The memo says that Joe Giorno met with Amadeo to tell him about his wife’s death. Did Joe represent Amadeo?”

  “I think so.”

  Mary blinked. “You didn’t mention that when you hired me. You told me that you represented his son, Tony, but not that Joe represented Amadeo.”

  “I didn’t remember, or I didn’t think it mattered. My firm represents the family, going back. So what?” Frank shrugged, which got Mary thinking that although she had known him a long time, she didn’t know him that well.

  “How was Joe connected with your firm?”

  “Joe founded it. It was Giorno & Locaro, then it became Giorno & Cavuto.” Frank eased back in his chair, leaving his glasses and the memo on the desk. “Joe was the one who picked this building, bought it bargain-basement, which was key. The man was legend. He owned lotsa property down here, and he could see how important the office location would be, you know.”

  “Of course.” Mary did know. The law firm of Giorno & Cavuto owned the prominent corner of Broad & Columbus Streets, in a limestone Victorian that marked the start of the Italian neighborhood. Its turn-of-the-century turret looked like a lighthouse, especially to South Philadelphians who had never seen one. “How well did you know Joe?”

  “Not that well. I’m old, but not that old.” Frank smiled. He was about fifty-five, with a surplus of thick black hair, coarse as a boar bristle and not at all tamed by tap water. Crow’s feet appeared whenever he smiled, which was as frequently as a city councilman, and his eyes were ringed with dark, almost tubercular, circles. “Joe was a smart man, an okay lawyer. But cheap! Cheapest man on the planet.”

  “How so?”

  “I come in, I hadda redo all the plumbing and the electric. Fresh coat a paint, all three floors. New water heater, new toilets, the old ones use too much water. This place hadn’t been touched in years.” Frank gestured around the office, and his pinky ring glinted in the faint sunlight from a sooty window. Traffic was picking up on Broad Street, making noise and casting shadows on the pane. “What are you gonna do? People are people.”

  Mary couldn’t help but smile. Everyone in South Philly said things like this, which passed for content. She should have countered with, Ain’t it the truth, but said instead: “Well, when I found the memo, I started to wonder. Why would Joe go all the way to Montana to tell Amadeo about Theresa’s death? It’s a long way to travel, especially in wartime. It must have cost a lot, for a cheap guy.”

  “Joe would have charged the client, no doubt.” Frank paused. “I don’t know why he went, may
be just to be nice.”

  “He doesn’t sound that nice, in the memo.” Mary hadn’t been able to sleep last night, thinking about it and the Escalade. “I mean, to go and tell Amadeo, Your wife’s dead. Get over it.”

  “Maybe he went because he was Theresa’s executor, I don’t know.”

  “Was he? Did Theresa have a will?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Mary shook her head, puzzled. “It’s your firm, Frank. If she were a client, wouldn’t you know it? If your founder were her executor, wouldn’t you know?”

  “Depends. When did she die?”

  “In 1942, right after Amadeo was sent to the camp. Tony was at the front.”

  “This is 1942 we’re talking, Mare? Psh!” Frank waved his hand. “If there was a will, no way do I have that will anymore. I checked the will vault before, but we don’t keep the wills that old. There’s no point to it.”

  This would be the point, Mary wanted to say, but didn’t. She knew it cost money to archive legal files and solo practitioners like Frank didn’t have the resources of Rosato & Associates.

  “Just like Brandolini’s old business files, it’s all gone. I only joined the firm in 1985. To me, 1980 is archives. And 1943 is nowhere.” Frank shook his head, clucking. “When Joe left in 1981, he took his files with him. That’s how they did it, him and Locaro. Split the clients and the files, went their separate ways. That was in 1981. Joe musta had the files for Theresa and Amadeo, but who knows where they are now. She died of cancer, right?”

  “No, like it says in the memo, she fell down the stairs in her house. I guess she broke her neck.”

  “It’s a sin.” Frank was still clucking. “Poor Tony, that cancer’s no picnic either. That’s what got him. You knew that, right? At least he went quick.”

  Mary thought of her mother, then shooed it away. “Did you go to Tony’s funeral? Where was he buried?”

  “Of course I went.” Frank checked his watch, a heavy fake-gold Timex, but Mary knew it wasn’t even nine o’clock. He shook it back into place on his wrist and gave a little cough, hough-hough. “He’s at Our Lady of Angels.”

  Everybody in the neighborhood was buried there, but not Mike. Mike wasn’t there, by her choice. “Is Amadeo there?”

  “No. Theresa is. Not him.”

  Mary made a mental note. It meant that Amadeo was probably buried in Montana, like the other internee had been.

  “Come to think of it, I doubt they had a will. They didn’t have much money, that much I know.” Frank chuckled. “Amadeo used to pay Joe with crabs he caught down Wildwood. They ran all over the office, the way crabs do. You know.”

  “Okay, so we don’t know if they had a will and we don’t know why Joe went to Montana. You know what else I don’t get?”

  “What, Mare?”

  “I don’t get why Tony, when he needed a lawyer to do a will, would come to you and not Joe. Joe was the family lawyer, but when Tony needed a lawyer to trace his father’s property, he came to you.”

  “Joe was retired by then. Besides, I’m twice the lawyer that Joe was, believe me. But I won’t speak ill, may he rest.” Frank crossed himself.

  “Did Joe have any partners who might know where the file or a will could be?”

  “No. Joe went solo, then retired. We went over this before. Things change, Mare.”

  “So I hear.” Mary didn’t add, and it totally sucks. She kept thinking that lately all she did was chase missing files. “Will you double-check for a file? The house on Nutt Street, I don’t know if they owned or rented, and the bank accounts I can’t find, either personal or Amadeo’s business. There used to be a Girard Bank near them on Nutt, my father remembers it. That was the closest branch of any bank to their house, and probably where they banked.”

  “There you go.”

  “But Girard got bought by Mellon and that branch got closed, and nobody at Mellon could find records of Amadeo or Theresa Brandolini. It was before computer records, too. All ink and paper.”

  “I’m impressed, Mare. You’re doing your homework.”

  Mary sighed. Doing-your-homework was her middle name. She had to make up for her lack-of-forte.

  Frank checked his watch again. It was only two minutes later. “You say you didn’t find any of his business records at the Library of Congress?”

  “National Archives, and no.”

  Frank handed Mary the FBI memo. “Win some, lose some.”

  Not me, she wanted to say. Not this, anyway. She put the memo back into her briefcase, then retrieved Amadeo’s black wallet, which she’d put in a Baggie for safekeeping. She opened the billfold, slid out the thick packet of scrap drawings, and handed it to Frank. “Last question. Do you remember these drawings? They were in the wallet in the box of stuff you gave me from Tony, when you hired me.”

  “I don’t remember the stuff in the box.” Frank barely glanced at the drawings before he pushed them and the wallet back.

  “It was only last year. You gave it to me after Tony died.”

  “Mare, gimme a break here. I didn’t look in the box.” Frank leaned over the desk, hunching his shoulders at the seams, where the pinstripes matched. “You know the number of people who come in my office with a cigar box? A shoe box? A little wrinkly paper bag from Passyunk Avenue? You know the crap these people have, that they save for decades? You think I look at that?” Frank’s voice grew louder with exasperation, but Mary was used to being exasperating. It was the double-checking that put people over the top.

  “Do you know if the box was from before Amadeo went to the camp or after?”

  “I don’t know. Tony gave it to me. Said it was all his father’s things. That’s all I know. Sue me!”

  Mary looked at the drawings. The crude pencil lines. The circles. “I think Amadeo drew it and I think it meant something to him. What do you think?”

  “I think I have to get to work. Now.” Frank cleared his throat. “I gotta earn a buck.”

  “Just a minute more. Do you know what they’re drawings of?” Mary pointed to one view of the circle.

  “No.”

  “They look like something, don’t they?”

  “No, they don’t.”

  “How can you tell without your reading glasses?”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake.” Frank picked up his glasses, slipped them on, and thumbed through the drawings. Mary eyed him. Was he just antsy or was it something about the drawings? He seemed more testy than before she’d shown them.

  “You can see, he drew it several times. It looks like a circle, doesn’t it?”

  “No, it’s a doodle, so what? He’s drawing the same cockamamie thing over and over.” Frank’s glare challenged her over the rims of his glasses. “So this is it. The end of the line.”

  “Okay, I’ll let you get to work.” Mary picked up the drawings, folded them, and slipped them back in the wallet, then into the Baggie. “Thanks for your time.”

  “No, I meant the end of the line with Brandolini. It’s time to give it up, Mare.” Frank rose, pulling up his belt so that the change jingled in his pants. “You tried to get reparations for the estate, but you couldn’t. There’s no shame in it. You even went to Washington and all.”

  “I’m not giving up, Frank,” Mary said, surprised.

  “I’m sorry I sent you on a wild goose chase. The boats, the business. It’s time to end the case and cut your losses.”

  “It’s no loss. I’m enjoying it, and I’ll find something sooner or later. You know me, I never give up. Remember the game against Vecchia’s Auto? Seventh inning?”

  If Frank remembered, it didn’t show. “It’s my fault, I shouldn’t a started it. I wanted to fill Tony’s last wish. Justice for his father and all that, and you know how it is, with the neighborhood all worked up. I’ll tell ’em it’s over, tell ’em to call it a day. They have to let go of the past. You know?”

  But this time, Mary didn’t know. “You can’t really blame them. And the past is always present.�
� She’d never heard herself say something so deep. Was she getting smarter?

  “So we’ll hold a big party, all the circolo, to thank you for fighting the good fight.” Frank continued as if he hadn’t heard her, and a professional note sounded in his voice. “That retainer we gave you must be almost out by now, so I’m telling you to let it go.”

  “You’re firing me?” Mary felt her jaw drop, and Frank looked down at her. He was taller than she thought, so she stood up, briefcase in hand. He was still taller than she thought.

  “Not firing, just telling you to quit.”

  “I don’t want to quit.”

  “The circolo is my client and we can’t pay you anymore. The money Tony left for the suit is all gone.”

  “You haven’t been paying me. I’ve worked this case pro bono for a month now.”

  “That okay with Rosato?” Frank laughed uncomfortably, and Mary felt an ember of suspicion flare within her chest. Why would he want to fire a lawyer who was working for free? She put on her game face.

  “That’ll be my lookout. You’ll double-check about those files for me?”

  “Ain’t gonna happen, Mare.” Frank had already sat back down, but Mary wasn’t buying. If he was hiding something, he was even a worse actor than her father. Frank wanted her off the case, and something smelled fishier than Jersey crabs. Mary couldn’t believe it, not from Frank. He used to treat the softball team to cherry water ice from a stand on Wolf Street, scooped into pleated paper cups with a flat spoon. Evidently, that was then. She set her jaw, picked up her briefcase, purse, and a white box of pastry she’d got at Isgro’s, then managed a same-old-Mary smile.

  “Frank, you check on those files for me, or I’m telling my mother on you!”

  “You wouldn’t!” he said, with a dry laugh, and Mary left the office.