Don of the Dead

by Casey Daniels

  I sat up a little straighter.

  As though he was waking up from a deep sleep, he shook himself and forced his eyes back to mine. "What I mean, of course, is that if I set up a study and if you'd agree—"

  His gaze drifted back to my white cotton shirt, and a tingle of heat shot through me. It had been a long time since I experienced that kind of thrill. I liked it.

  But not the way he wrinkled his nose. "What did you say you did for a living?"

  It wasn't the question I expected, which was more in the ballpark of "your place or mine?"

  "I'm a tour guide," I said. "At the cemetery at the top of the hill."

  "It must be a pretty messy job."

  I dared a look down to where he was looking and the nice warmth he'd kindled inside me froze beneath an icy layer of social faux pas. There was a smudge of dirt across the front of my shirt that went from breast to breast and was a couple of inches wide. After a day of breathing it in and washing it off my hands, I'd recognize it anywhere. Dust. Old newspaper. Mold.

  I brushed at the smear. "Sorry. I spent part of the day in the cemetery archives. Doing research. I didn't realize—"

  I didn't realize that by brushing at the smudge, I would only make it worse.

  No doubt Dan would say my knee-jerk reaction was a result of years of behavioral programming. To me, it sounded more like my mother's voice echoing through my head, reminding me that cleanliness was next to godliness. And that right about now, I was about as far from the Maker as it was possible to get.

  I popped out of my chair, all set to head to the ladies' room in search of a wet paper towel.

  It wasn't until it was too late that I saw the couple walking by, headed to a nearby table. Luckily, I stopped just short of ramming right into a woman with bad hair and worse makeup. Then I lost my footing.

  First it was aberrant behavior. Then it was dirt. All I needed to make myself look like a complete fool in front of Dan was to end up flat on my face on the floor.

  Scrambling to regain my balance, I grabbed for the back of my chair, untangled my feet, and pivoted.

  I found myself nose to frame with the picture that hung over our table. I'd been too keyed up about meeting Dan to pay any attention to it when I sat down. But as my heartrate slowed and my eyes focused, I had a chance to give the photograph a long look.

  From the age of the cars parked along the street, I guessed that the picture was taken back in the sixties. It showed a dark-haired woman in a Jackie Kennedy dress and hat. She was posed outside a building that, in spite of time and various renovations, I recognized as Mangia Mania. She had an ear-to-ear grin on her face and she was pointing up at the sign above her head. A sign that said—

  "Lucia's?" The word squeaked out of me. Chalk it up to aberrant behavior. I knew I was talking to myself, but I couldn't help it. I looked over at the bar and the woman who was mixing my martini. "This says Lucia's," I said, raising my voice so she could hear me above the party noises. "This place didn't use to be—"

  "Lucia's Trattoria. Yeah." The woman finished with my drink and brought it over herself. She probably figured it was easier than yelling to me across the room. "That was a while ago, of course," she said, nodding toward the photograph. "The place has changed hands a couple of times since then. But my mother, she grew up in this neighborhood. I remember coming here for dinner as a kid. That's when it was Lucia's. Best spaghetti in town."

  "And one hell of a veal parmigiana," I said. I had it on good authority. I glanced over my shoulder to the party going on in the other room. "How long has your cook worked here?" I asked the bartender.

  She shrugged and looked at our waitress, who just happened to be passing by.

  The waitress shrugged back. "Like I said, forever."

  "Forever like thirty years?"

  "At least thirty years." It was the bartender who answered, clearly confused by the fact that I seemed to care. "Nick, he told me once that he started here right out of high school and he's got to be like sixty-five or so. You gonna try your drink?"

  It wasn't until she asked that I realized I'd already taken a couple of steps away from the table. I didn't stop to taste the drink. I didn't give Dan a chance to remind me that I was acting aberrantly. I didn't even listen to the voice of reason that told me in no uncertain terms that by doing what I knew I was doing, I might be blowing any chance I had with Dan.

  I excused myself with a not-so-untrue story about needing paper towels and the ladies' room.

  Then I headed for the party.

  It wasn't hard to find Nick.

  He was the guy wearing a spanking-new T-shirt that proclaimed Retired, It's What I Do in blue block letters.

  I sized up where he stood in the center of the large and noisy crowd, a collection of fellow workers, relatives, and customers who were familiar enough with the place and with its cook to get up from their tables and their plates of pasta, thump Nick on the back, and wish him well. I considered my options.

  When a waiter walked by carrying a tray filled with glasses and an open bottle of red wine, I saw my golden opportunity. While he shot the shit with one of the busboys, I grabbed a glass and the bottle. The waiter didn't object; he probably figured I had every right to be there. Before he realized he was wrong, I poured a glass and sidestepped through the crowd, closing in on my target.

  "Hey, Nick. Happy retirement!" I wedged myself between Nick and a woman in a red dress and offered him the wine along with my biggest, brightest smile.

  Nick was a short, skinny guy with a shock of white hair that was in stark contrast to his dark and bushy brows. I could tell from the slightly glazed smile on his face that he'd already downed a couple glasses of wine but, hey, who was I to criticize? The guy was celebrating! And he was obviously good at it. He eyed the glass I held out to him with real appreciation. But when his gaze slid from the wine to me, his brows dropped low and his face clouded with confusion.

  "Do I know you?"

  I was about to make up some story about how often I ate there and how much I adored his rigatoni when a smile like sunshine broke over his expression.

  When I realized he was staring at my chest, I knew I was in trouble.

  "I get it!" Nick gave me a wink and a nod. "The fellas arranged this, didn't they? Like they did for my fiftieth birthday. It's kind of early in the evening but come on… " He grabbed my arm and tugged me toward the kitchen. "We can do it fast and get back before anyone misses me."

  I stood my ground, my legs locked, my eyes wide. When Nick looked at me over his shoulder, I untangled his hand from around my arm and tried for a smile that was friendly. But not as friendly as Nick would have liked.

  "Your friends didn't send me to—" Just thinking about it made me queasy. "What I mean is… well… I heard you were retiring and I wondered… that is, I was just having a drink over in the bar with a friend and I thought this was a perfect opportunity to… " I dragged in a breath. "I wanted to ask you a couple questions."

  "Questions? Not—" The look Nick aimed at the kitchen door said it all.

  I hated to disappoint him but there was only so much I was willing to sacrifice. With any luck, a little anticipation would be enough to cheer him. "Maybe your friends have something planned for later," I told him. "I just wanted to talk to you. About Gus Scarpetti."

  I was still holding the glass of wine, and as it turned out, Nick was a good sport. When I saw him glance at the wine again, I handed it to him. That was enough to seal our deal. He tipped his head toward the swinging door that led into the kitchen.

  Once the door was closed behind us, he gave me a careful once-over. "Why?" he asked. "All these years later, why is somebody like you interested in Mr. Scarpetti?"

  I suppose I should have anticipated the question, but chalk one up for aberrant behavior. I was operating on instinct, not reason. Because I didn't have time to concoct a story, I settled for the truth.

  "I work at the cemetery," I said, pointing in roughly the direction of
Garden View. "I'm the one who gives the tours. We stop at Scarpetti's mausoleum and I thought if I knew more about him—"

  "You could tell better stories. Yeah, I get that."

  I breathed a little easier. "I know that Lucia's was his favorite restaurant and since you've been here so long… "

  Nick shrugged. "Ain't nothing I can tell you that hasn't been said before."

  "Maybe not, but it would mean so much to the people who come to the cemetery to hear about Gus from a—" I wrestled with my memory, struggling to recall the things Ella tried to drill into my head about research.

  "Primary source!" I said, prouder than I had any right to be. "It would mean a lot to get information from a primary source."

  Nick pursed his lips and stood a little straighter. "And that's me? That what you call it? Primary source?"

  "That's you, all right. And because you're a primary source, I'm thinking that maybe you can confirm some of the things I've only read. Gus… er… Mr. Scarpetti, did he really come here every Thursday night for dinner?"

  "Like clockwork."

  "And the night he—"

  It was hard to say died in connection to a guy I'd spent the afternoon with.

  I swallowed down the thought with a gulp. "The night he was shot, he was here?"

  "Yeah, with all his usual crowd."

  By now, I knew the names as if I had dinner with them every Thursday night. "John Vitale, Ben Marzano, Michael Cardorella, Paul Ramone." I rattled off the list. "The same people he was always with."

  "Hey, you done your homework!" Nick poked me on the arm. I guess it was supposed to be a compliment.

  "And… " I pinned Nick with a look.

  "And nothing." He looked away. "Except for the fact that Mr. Scarpetti ended up dead outside, nothing happened here that night that you could talk about to those people at the cemetery." Nick downed the rest of the glass of wine in one gulp. "End of story."

  Someone called out to Nick from the restaurant, and he moved toward the door.

  Maybe Nick was right and nothing out of the ordinary happened that night. Maybe he was Boy-Scout honest and as truthful as anyone could be about something that had happened so long before.

  That didn't explain why I had the sneaking suspicion that he wasn't telling me everything.

  If I was going to find out what that everything was, I knew I had to act fast. I was about to lose him and my only connection—aside from Gus himself—to the night of the murder.

  "I'm writing a book." Where the lie came from, I didn't know, but when Nick's eyes lit, I knew I was going to grab on and run with it. "Well, maybe I'm writing a book. If I can find out enough to make it interesting. If there's nothing else you can tell me about that night, I suppose I won't be able to acknowledge you as one of my sources. Too bad. I'll bet the people in Arizona would love it if you showed them your name in print."

  I let the words float between us like the smell of garlic that permeated Nick's clothing.

  It worked. I could tell when he glanced over his shoulder to make sure the door was still closed.

  "Anyone tell you about Carmella?" he asked.

  I had the distinct feeling I was supposed to know who he was talking about.

  "They've mentioned her, of course," I said, hoping that he wouldn't pin me down as to who the woman was and how she figured into the whole thing. "But no one ever told me—"

  "Nah. They wouldn't. And I wouldn't say nothin' now because I don't think it's something you should be talking about over at the cemetery. But if you're writing a book, that's a whole different thing."

  It wasn't like I had a lot of choice. I confirmed the lie and waited for more.

  "I never mentioned it to the cops when they came around," Nick said. "And I don't think anyone else who was here that night talked about it, either. We figured it wasn't important and besides, why dishonor Mr. Scarpetti's memory with something like that." Nick briefly rested a hand over the big blue w on his shirt, and his heart. "He was a fine man, Mr. Scarpetti."

  "He was a mobster."

  "He was a credit to this city. Built the neighborhood community center. And that playground behind the school. Always remembered me at Christmas time, too."

  "And Carmella was… "

  He looked at me as if I had a screw loose. "His wife, of course. Carmella Scarpetti. If you're writing a book—"

  "Oh, that Carmella!" I waved away the information as if it were incidental. "Of course I know about her. I thought you were talking about—"

  "Did you know she was here that night? And that she was rip-roarin' mad?"

  This was something Gus had neglected to mention, and it was that more than anything that told me it might be important.

  "Mad? At Gus?"

  Nick snorted. "Mad at Mr. Scarpetti. Mad at the world." He leaned in close and for a moment, I wondered if I needed to worry about Nick's fiftieth birthday and what had apparently happened in the kitchen that night. Lucky for me, Nick had other things on his mind. Like getting his name in the book I wasn't writing.

  "She was a drinker, you know. Tanked up most of the time and when she was, she was as nasty as they came."

  "And she was drinking that night?"

  "Hotter than a firecracker. Stumbled in here toward the end of the evening and started cursing a blue streak before the door was closed behind her. There she was, yellin' at Mr. Scarpetti so that everyone could hear. Disrespectin' a man of his stature." He shook his head, as disturbed by the whole thing as he had been when it happened. "She didn't mince no words, neither. She laid it on the line, told Mr. Scarpetti that he had a lot of nerve spending every night of the week out with his associates. She demanded, right then and there, that he come home with her, where he belonged."

  Somehow, the notion of Gus as henpecked didn't fit with his mob boss image. "That must really have pissed Gus off."

  Nick shrugged. "Mr. Scarpetti, he didn't show emotion like that, you know? He listened for maybe fifteen seconds, decided Carmella wasn't sayin' anything he hadn't already heard and didn't want to hear again, and let one of his boys take care of her. Last I saw, Pounder was escortin' her out the back door. Right there." He pointed toward the far wall, and the door just beyond the industrial stove. "And Carmella, even while she was being half pushed, half carried out, she was still cursin' like a sailor, sayin' that she wouldn't be treated this way. That Mr. Scarpetti was goin' get his."

  "And you never told the police about this?"

  Nick laughed. "If Carmella was the one who ended up dead that night, it might have been important. The way it was—"

  Again someone called Nick's name and this time, he wasn't about to miss out on any more of the fun. He pushed the kitchen door open and the sounds of the party washed over us.

  "If you have any more questions, they'll have my new address and phone number here at the restaurant. Give me a call sometime." He grinned. "It's been a pleasure talking to you, honey. Too bad you weren't what my friends sent over for the night."

  The door swished closed before I had a chance to even try to come up with a polite response.

  I don't know how long I stood there in the kitchen, thinking about everything Nick had told me. Long enough to picture the scene at Lucia's all those years before. Gus busy with his veal parmigiana and his criminal empire.

  While the Little Woman sat home and drank herself silly.

  One of the waiters bustled in and I shook myself back to the present and gave myself a mental high five. A couple little white lies and a too-close call with Nick's libido had resulted in me knowing more than I knew when I got there. I knew about Carmella and I knew she threatened Gus. It was a not-so-little detail he'd forgotten to mention.

  The night wasn't a total bust.

  I punched open the door and headed back into the restaurant. The first person I saw was Dan. He was standing in the doorway that led from the bar into the restaurant. He was wearing his blue wind-breaker and he had a beer in one hand and a sour-apple martini in the ot
her.

  I'd forgotten all about him.

  I swallowed down the guilt that mingled with the what-are-you-nuts-how-could-you-forget-such-a-hotty, waved, and headed over to him, an apology ready on my lips. It wasn't until the last second that I realized my story about the ladies' room was never going to hold water; I hadn't even tried to clean the smudge of dirt off my shirt.

  Maybe I was lucky. Or maybe Dan had had his fill of looking at my chest. He didn't notice the dirt was still there. Instead, as soon as I was within range, he handed me my drink along with a half-smile I'd seen before.

  I braced for the letdown and reminded myself to look on the bright side. At least this time, I hadn't ordered the invitations and bought the gown.

  Dan raised his voice to be heard over the noise. "I got a call. From one of my research assistants at the hospital. She's in a bind about some computations. It can't wait until morning. She needs the data for a paper she has to turn in to a professor tomorrow. I'm going to head back to the hospital to help her out."

  I managed an anemic smile that told him I understood. And I did. Honest. Dan was dumping me and I knew it really had nothing to do with his research assistant. I'd left him sitting in the bar all by himself for who-knows how long. I couldn't blame him for giving up.

  I set down my martini and followed Dan out the door.

  It was dark out and sometime while we were inside, it had started to drizzle. The neon signs from nearby restaurants, coffeehouses, and bars were reflected in the wet sidewalks. It was a film noir sort of way to end what we had of a relationship, and I was about to tell Dan exactly that when he tapped the manila folder that he had tucked inside his windbreaker.

  "I looked at the address in your file," he said. "I know you live close by. Your car is probably parked close by—"

  "I left it at home." I answered automatically, not sure where we were headed and afraid of saying the wrong thing.