Lloyd Corricelli - Ronan Marino 01 - Two Redheads & a Dead Blonde

by Lloyd Corricelli

  “Pull your head out of your ass, bro. I know he’s your hero but face facts. I have no reason to make this shit up.”

  He folded his arms and sat back in the chair indignantly. Morley leaned forward and pointed a long crooked finger at me.

  “You know what I think?” he asked.

  “No, but I suspect you’re about to tell us,” I fired back.

  “You made up the entire story about LaValle to throw us off your scent.”

  “You couldn’t pick up my scent, Morley if I gave you a handwritten itinerary,” I said. “Your shoddy police work forced me to get involved in this to begin with.”

  “Excuse me, but I think we’re getting off track,” Garcia interjected.

  “He’s right. Maybe LaValle was involved with Karen Pommer but it doesn’t mean he had something to do with Fontini’s death or hers,” Shea said.

  Marcotte and Smolinski re-entered.

  “Lieutenant, we have copies of your case files. We’ll be in touch,” Smolinski said.

  Marcotte added, “Don’t go too far, Mr. Marino. We might want to talk to you some more.”

  “I thought we were going to work on this together?” Shea asked.

  “We’ll be in touch,” the troopers said in unison as they exited.

  Shea’s face turned red and it looked like steam was about to pour out of his ears.

  “Son of a fucking bitch,” he barked.

  “They’re going to go at this on their own,” I said.

  “Stupid bastards won’t get far,” Shea fumed. “They don’t know this city like I do.”

  We all sat there looking at each other taking in this new development. Shea’s secretary entered and handed him a brown manila folder. He opened it and looked over the contents.

  “The paint transfer comes back with a high probability of coming from either a 2004 or 2005 Cadillac Eldorado.”

  “Dammit, that’s not their car,” I said. “Fontini’s guys drive a Dodge Charger. At least they were the day I saw them.”

  “So much for your theory, hotshot,” Morley laughed.

  I sat there bewildered. I had put a lot of hope that the transfer would come back to Red and Goatee’s car. I hated being so wrong. Shea stood and stretched his arms.

  “Garcia, go and get everything we have on this case,” he said. “I want the five of us to review it all again. Maybe there’s something we missed.”

  We spent the next few hours going over every statement, every report and every piece of information Shea had. We threw out random ideas, off the wall guesses, wild conspiracy theories and anything else that came to mind but were no closer than we’d been when we started. Morley sat in the corner, barely paying attention. If I had been Shea, there would have been a big bootprint on his ass.

  “Anything else, gentlemen?” Shea asked.

  “We could get pictures of all the Medford cops and have Ronan pick the guys out,” Garcia offered.

  “Good idea, but I doubt they’d cooperate,” Shea said. “Think about how we’d feel if another department tried to implicate our guys in a murder, especially of our own chief.”

  “Couldn’t we get the state police to force them to?” Marc asked.

  “Those two clowns aren’t going to do jack shit, Chief,” Shea explained. “Once they heard the name LaValle, they ran off scared.”

  “What about the feebs?” Garcia asked.

  I got a cold shiver up my spine and I saw Shea did as well.

  “You ever work with the bureau, Garcia?” I asked.

  “No.”

  “Pray you never have to,” Shea said. “You’ll do all the heavy lifting and they’ll swoop in, make the arrest and claim all the credit.”

  “You’d be lucky to even be mentioned in the final report,” I added.

  Morley stood. “I hate to be a party pooper, but I have to get going.”

  Shea shrugged. “Yeah, whatever,” he said.

  “Thanks for all your help, Robert,” I added.

  He didn’t reply and only glared at me over his shoulder as he left.

  “What a putz,” Marc said.

  We all nodded as one.

  We continued to work for another thirty minutes. I sorted through a folder that included The Sun’s headline about Karen’s death clipped out and taped to a piece of scrap paper. I stared at her face until it was almost burned into my retinas. I read through the article for what must have been the thousandth time until I could almost recite it by heart.

  It covered finding the body and her car, her employment at Max’s, her service in the Navy and that she was a senior at UMass Lowell. Then suddenly it hit me. If my life had been a cartoon, clouds would have formed overhead and God himself would have appeared and slapped me across the face.

  “Gary, did you or the coroner release the autopsy report to the press?” I asked.

  I’d followed everything in the paper pretty diligently but as beat up, tired and busy as I’d been maybe I’d missed an update.

  “No, we kept the autopsy report under wraps. The press is still pretty pissed off about it too,” he explained.

  “Why is that important?” Marc asked.

  “It might be nothing,” I said.

  “We’re getting used to nothing around here,” Shea replied.

  “Did you share the report with anyone outside the department?” I asked.

  Shea looked at Garcia and he shook his head no.

  “Other than the staties and you, not that I’m aware of.”

  “Ronan, what do you got?” Garcia asked.

  The possible link we were looking for had been right in my hands all along and I’d been too distracted to see it. It was like the curve ball I struggled to hit in my days as a college baseball player, only now I had just figured it out and planned to smack this pitch out of the park.

  I explained my epiphany and we formed a plan to draw the potential guilty parties out into the open. Shea reluctantly agreed with my strategy as long as Garcia was involved and could get credit for the pinch. I had no problem with that.

  Marc wanted to get involved too but I convinced him to stay out of it. If I was wrong, it might torpedo his political aspirations for good and become a huge embarrassment that would cause him a lot of unnecessary explanation to the town bosses. The big brother in me also wanted him kept out of harm’s way. In all likelihood this could again turn violent, which meant Tony was once again about to get called off the bench. Other than Shea and me, he was the only one who’d ever seen any heavy-duty gunplay. He wouldn’t hesitate to neutralize anyone threatening my life or his. That was an important attribute for what I had planned.

  It was close to eight when I finally left the station. Garcia and Shea were coming to meet at my house after I picked up some Chinese food to finalize our plans.

  I checked my home answering machine and found another voicemail from Diane. I dialed her number and she picked up on the fourth ring.

  “It’s Ronan. Sorry I didn’t get back to you sooner but I’ve been tied up.”

  “Did they ravage your body?”

  “No, I fought them off and saved my virtue.”

  “After the other night with me any virtue you had left is long gone.”

  “Very true.”

  “When can I see you again? I need some loving.”

  “You only want me for my body.”

  “And your money, don’t forget about that.”

  “Never could. How about dinner tomorrow night?”

  “Can you come over right now?”

  I was right around the corner and I could have popped in for a quickie, but Garcia and Shea wouldn’t appreciate me having dessert before dinner.

  “I wish I could, Diane, but I have to meet some detectives from LPD in ten minutes. They won’t appreciate me being late.”

  “Okay, I guess I’ll just have to fire up my vibrating friend again.”

  “Uh…I promise tomorrow night, you’ll have me all to yourself.”

  “You damn
well better or I might have to start auditioning fuck buddies.”

  If anything, she got right to the point. It was a refreshing change from the games that a lot of other woman played.

  I stopped and picked up an order from my favorite Chinese place, the Lo Kai over in Dracut. When I got home, Shea and Garcia were waiting out front. I unloaded a huge bag of food from my Jeep.

  “Christ, Ronan, you feeding an army?” Shea asked.

  “I heard Puerto Ricans loved Chinese food,” I said winking at Garcia. He just grinned and shook his head.

  We spent the next few hours plotting our strategy between mouthfuls of fried rice and lo mien. For the record, I learned Garcia could eat an Italian family out of house and home.

  ****

  I went to the gym the next morning and struggled to get in a full workout. My shoulder still hurt like hell so I avoided most exercises that used it; which I realized was most of them. Tony met me in the late afternoon and we went over to the Raven for a late lunch.

  “You’ve been holding out on me you little bastard,” he said when I introduced him to Jesse.

  As tough as she was, I imagined Tony would have had little trouble getting into her pants if he wanted to. The way she looked at him though said he might be the one in trouble.

  “Uncle Sal wants to know if you plan on retaining my services much longer.”

  “As long as the forces of evil are on my back, citizen, I’ll need your sword.”

  “You and your fucking comic books.”

  “Are there legs not getting broken?” I asked.

  “No wiseass, but I have been spending a lot of time with you and some people might try to take advantage of my absence,” he explained.

  “Duffy?”

  “Amongst others, yes.”

  “If everything goes right, we’ll be done tonight,” I said.

  “I’ll tell Uncle Sal it’s going to be a few more days. Things haven’t gone all that right since you started this shit.”

  “You’re such a ballbuster, Tony.”

  “No different than you.”

  As we ate, I told him about the porn film with Karen and Cassie. As predicted, he begged me to let him see it. He’d done so much for me that I probably would have if I hadn’t left it in Maine.

  “You gotta’ get that disc back,” he said.

  “Maybe Cassie doesn’t want you to see it.”

  “Maybe I’ll just see the real thing,” he shot back.

  “It’s your dick, pal.”

  We went back to my house after we ate and while Tony kicked back on my couch and watched television, I made a quick call to Diane’s cell phone from my back porch. When she answered, I could hear LaValle in the background giving a speech, something about family values. I wanted to laugh but held it back. I’d get the last laugh soon enough.

  “Hey, it’s me,” I said.

  “You’re not calling to cancel I hope?”

  “Oh hell no. My body wouldn’t let me.”

  “That’s good to know.”

  “I just want to give you a heads-up that I have to meet another informant tonight around ten so between dinner and your place, I’m going to have to make a quick detour.”

  “Really? Anything exciting?”

  “He claims he can blow the entire thing wide open.”

  “It doesn’t sound like it will be quick.”

  “No, we’re just meeting right around the corner from your place at Kerouac Park.”

  “You promise it won’t take long?”

  “Most definitely. Once I’m through I’ll come right back to your waiting arms.”

  “It’s not just my arms that will be waiting, honey.”

  When I came in from the porch, Tony was watching The Jerry Springer Show and laughing his ass off. The topic was something like “My mother slept with my sister’s ex-boyfriend’s cousin who’s an alien.” I took in about five seconds of it just as a fat girl was exposing herself to an audience who seemed to appreciate it.

  “I can’t believe you’re watching this shit,” I said.

  “You gotta’ see these sorry bastards.”

  “You know they’re all actors improvising from a script?”

  “Next you’ll tell me that wrestling is fake.”

  He was of course kidding. Tony was a huge fan of the squared circle and had at one time trained with the famed Killer Kowalski at his school in Malden. Some of the people he’d trained with had gone on to careers in the pros; but Tony didn’t make the cut. It was probably better that he didn’t because I just couldn’t picture him in a pair of tights calling himself “The Flying Meatball” or some other ridiculous stage name. His current profession suited him far better.

  Around six o’clock Garcia joined us. It was the first time I’d seen him not wearing a tie. He came dressed in sneakers and a faded blue sweatshirt. The faint outline of the name of some boxing gym was left on the sweatshirt after countless washings.

  Tony looked him over cautiously. After years in his business, he claimed to be able to smell a police officer miles away. He kidded that it was a bacon-like smell but it wasn’t an odor at all; he recognized the way a cop carries himself. Most have a certain swagger in their walk. It’s not being cocky and it’s not arrogance; it’s confidence. He said I still carried myself that way but hoped to eventually break me of it. I doubted he could.

  “Who’s the Rican?”

  “Tony, this is Detective Eddie Garcia. He’ll be working with us tonight,” I said.

  “Why do we need him?”

  “Garcia, this is my cousin, Tony.”

  “Nice to meet you.”

  He stuck out his hand to Tony who just stared at it. I gave him a dirty look and he shook.

  “You’ll have to excuse Tony, he’s uncomfortable around cops.”

  “Lots of people are, especially if they have reason to be,” Garcia said.

  He and Tony just stared at each other like two prizefighters sizing each other up. This might not have been such a good idea.

  “What is it you do, Tony?” Garcia asked.

  “He works in the family business,” I said.

  “Which is?”

  “Plumbing,” Tony said.

  “You don’t look like a plumber,” Garcia replied.

  “What the fucks a plumber look like, Pedro?”

  This was starting to get stupid and I had to put a stop to it.

  “Why don’t you two just hump each other’s leg to find who’s the dominant one?”

  “What the fuck does that mean?” Tony asked.

  “Yeah,” Garcia added.

  “It means I need the two of you to get along or we might all end up floating face down in the Merrimack tonight. Capiche?”

  They nodded like two little boys chastised for arguing over whose father was toughest.

  “I’m going upstairs to take a shower and change,” I said. “Make yourself at home, Garcia.”

  Twenty minutes later, I came back downstairs to find them laughing hysterically.

  “That stupid bastard kept running, his pants down to his ankles,” Tony said apparently finishing a humorous story.

  “I see you’ve kissed and made up,” I said.

  “Hey, Garcia here used to box Golden Gloves,” Tony said. “I think I made a shit load of money off his matches too. He was a hell of a welterweight. I was sure you were on your way to the pros.”

  “What happened?”

  “I got in a little trouble.”

  “Jail or the Corps,” I said.

  “Yeah, judge named Forester up in Lawrence saved my ass from the streets,” Garcia explained. “I owe him big. Tough old bastard that looked like Santa Claus.”

  It was funny how all things in the universe, at least my own little one, seemed intertwined. I had about thirty minutes before my dinner with Diane, so we ran through the plan one more time before I left.

  “Is everyone clear?” I asked.

  “How come he gets to play the snitch?” Ton
y asked.

  “Because if it’s the same guys that did Fontini, they may have already seen you,” I explained. “In fact, as cops they may very well know of you from your um…local activities.”

  They both nodded in agreement.

  “We’ll be in position by nine,” Garcia said.

  “Great. We also need to keep Tony’s participation under wraps,” I said. “At this point, I’d prefer that not even Shea knows he’s in on this.”

  “I don’t like keeping anything from him, Ronan but I’ll trust your judgment,” Garcia replied.

  “Thanks.”

  I grabbed my keys and headed for the door.

  “Hey Ronan,” Tony yelled. “You look damn sexy.”

  I was wearing black from head to toe with a shirt that buttoned at the neck. I even had my matching black holster hidden under my leather jacket. The two of them whistled and I shook my ass at them mockingly. Them working together to bust my balls made me feel a hell of a lot better about the night’s activities.

  ****

  I ran through every conceivable scenario we might encounter during the short drive to Diane’s. I’d chosen Kerouac Park because the granite pillars would provide good protection whether they attempted a drive-by shooting or came at us on foot. The only drawback was I’d be boxed in on one side by the river. I felt pretty confident though that between everyone involved, we’d covered every conceivable angle and that this would soon be over.

  I knocked on Diane’s door and she opened it, talking on her cordless phone.

  “No, I understand. Okay, he’s here I have to go,” she said and hung up.

  “Who was that?”

  “My mother.”

  I didn’t believe her but let it go. She was dressed in a tight knit off-white dress with a hemline well above the knees. I wasn’t sure if the woman owned any pants as I’d never seen her wearing a pair.

  “You look nice,” she said.

  “So do you. Are you ready to go?”

  “We can’t just yet.”

  “Why not?”

  She put her arms around me and shoved her tongue in my mouth.

  “Because I’m not wearing any panties,” she whispered in my ear.

  Just to make sure I understood, she stepped back and leaned against the wall. She pulled her dress up just enough to reveal the little thatch of red hair between her legs.

  “I’m not ready for dinner just yet,” she cooed. “How about a little appetizer?”