Invasion of Privacy - Jeremiah Healy

by Jeremiah Healy

  Then I stopped back in the restaurant to find out where the local newspaper was located.

  * * *

  "Hi. Interested in a subscription?"

  "Afraid not. I'd like to take a look at some of your old editions."

  "How old?"

  "Nineteen-seventy-three."

  "Seventy-three?"

  The young man on the other side of the veneered counter said the year as though it belonged to ancient history, which for him it probably did. Maybe eighteen or nineteen, he had hair cropped short as a shorn lamb's, so that it looked like acrylic fuzz. With two steel rings through his left ear and one through his right eyebrow, I almost asked if he'd like an introduction to Kira Elmendorf back at Plymouth Willows.

  "Seventy-three," I repeated. "The issues from around graduation time."

  "For the university, you mean?"

  "Yes."

  "We're just a weekly, you know, but I think I can find them. So you want all of May, right?"

  "And June."

  He frowned. "June?"

  "Yeah."

  "The university graduates in May, man."

  "Back then it might have been later."

  "You mean going to school all the way into June?"

  "Times were tough."

  "Tough? Try terrifying, man."

  “Terrifying."

  "Totally. I mean, like, strapped to a desk until . . . ? Beyond my ability to comprehend, you know?"

  I was afraid I did.

  * * *

  The front page story from the June 19th edition was consistent with Gail Tasker's summary. Andrew Dees, born in Chicago twenty-two years before, went off the highway and rolled his car three times in a "one-vehicle accident," breaking his neck. Two of his fraternity brothers said he'd had a "a little too much suds at this party that's been 'happening' since graduation." The article concluded with, "According to university records, Mr. Dees has no immediate family surviving him."

  "Tragic, man."

  I looked up to the boy helping me. "At any age."

  "Huh?"

  "This guy getting killed, driving drunk."

  "Oh, that's not what I meant." He pointed to the paper's masthead. "I mean, like, the date."

  "The date?"

  "Yeah, man. It's just the way you told me. They had to stick with school all the way into June. Tragic, right?"

  "Totally," I said.

  * * *

  "Harborside Bank. Ms. Evorova's line."

  The very formal secretary. "Can I speak to her, please?"

  "And who may I say is calling?"

  “John Cuddy. She's expecting to hear from me."

  A couple of clicks, then, "John, you have some news for me, yes?"

  "I do. Are you alone?"

  A pause, then a lower tone. "Your news, it is . . . bad?"

  "I'm calling from Vermont, near the university. I tried to check Andrew Dees' college records here."

  Some weakness crept into her voice. "And?"

  "The campus police came for me because it turns out that the student whose authorization letter I supposedly had was dead."

  "What?"

  "Andrew Dees died in a car accident over twenty years ago."

  "No. There must be a mistake, yes?"

  "I don't think so. I went to the local newspaper, and I have a copy of the article on the accident. It's consistent with what the campus police told me, and anyway I don't see why they would have lied about it."

  Another pause.

  "Olga?"

  "I am trying to think, but I cannot."

  It hurt to hear her say the words. "Is Claude Loiselle there?"

  "I am not sure."

  "Maybe it'd be a good idea for you to speak with her. I can keep looking into this, but I'm afraid that what I've found suggests Mr. Dees is involved in something very wrong."

  No response.

  "Olga, are you still there?"

  "I think you must be right about—'Andrew,' can that even be his real name?"

  "I don't know. If you want, I can approach him directly, and maybe—"

  "No. No, please, do nothing further until I speak with you, yes?"

  "Okay."

  A very sad sigh. "Thank you so much."

  Somehow that was even harder to hear.

  After hanging up, I tried Nancy again, but got the same secretary with the same information about her being on trial, so I left the same message. I considered checking my answering service and telephone tape machine one more time, but figured if Primo was on them again, I'd be back in Boston sooner if I just started driving.

  * * *

  I pulled the Prelude into the night-darkened space on Fairfield Street behind the condo building. I was thinking about Nancy, about the reassuring message I hoped was waiting for me, and so I missed spotting the car until I heard the voice.

  "Cuddy!"

  I ducked, and my empty hand told me I wasn't carrying a weapon just a split second before I recognized the voice and face.

  "Primo."

  Zuppone had started to duck himself, still standing at the open, driver's side door of the Lincoln when he saw me reach behind my back. "Christ, the fuck were you gonna do, shoot me?"

  "Sorry. I was thinking about something else."

  "Something else, huh? Let me tell you about something else." Primo slammed his door. "What's the matter, you don't return your fucking phone calls no more?”

  It was the first time I'd seen Zuppone do anything but baby the Lincoln, and there was an edge to his voice I'd heard only once before. When I'd been in a lot of trouble with his employers. '

  "What's going on, Primo?"

  He came up the sidewalk toward me, taking the toothpick from his mouth and throwing it violently to the ground. "What's going on is I been calling you non-fucking-stop at your office, at the condo here, I even thought about leaving a message for your girlfriend the DA, asking her to pretty please get you the fuck in touch with me."

  We were almost nose-to-nose. "Don't ever call her,

  Primo."

  "I didn't."

  "Ever."

  Zuppone drew in a deep breath. "All right, all right. Let's both calm down a little, huh?"

  The "situation guy" was rattled, and I didn't like that at all. "Primo, what do we have to calm down from?"

  He let out the breath with a whooshing sound. "You and me got a problem."

  * * *

  "Where're we going?" I said.

  The Lincoln turned soundlessly onto Storrow Drive, the potholes and speedbumps we'd hit on Back Road barely noticeable through the land yacht's suspension system. Zuppone was thumping his right thumb against the cradled car phone, and I didn't like the fact that no New Age music was coming from the speakers.

  "Primo, where?"

  "Logan."

  "Why the airport?"

  Zuppone glanced over, then checked all his mirrors before focusing on the traffic ahead of him. "That picture you gave me. Of your guy, remember?"

  “I remember."

  A fresh toothpick moved from one corner of his mouth to the other. "Yeah, well, I said I thought something rang a bell somewheres, but I wasn't sure?"

  "Go on."

  "So I show his photo to some friends of ours, including this one friend, does some coordination work between us and Providence, us and the Outfit."

  "The Chicago organization?"

  "Yeah, that's what they call themselves in the Windy fucking City. And I even went out there with this coordinator once, kind of show the flag a couple, three years ago. But you told me your guy was South Shore or some fucking thing, right?"

  "That's right."

  "I mean, that's where the property company and all was from."

  "Yes."

  A reverse migration of the toothpick as Zuppone drove past the exit for Government Center. "Okay, so that's what I'm thinking when I show his picture to our friend the coordinator this morning. Only thing is, the friend takes one look at the photo and another at me, then sa
ys, 'Primo, keep an eye on this guy, understand? "

  "Keep an eye on him?"

  "Yeah, and the coordinator basically—the fuck would you call it, 'outranks' me like—so I gotta say, 'Hey-ey-ey, I'd be glad to, only I don't know where he is.' And this friend of ours says, 'Well, you better fucking hope you can find him again.' And I don't like the sound of that, so I don't say nothing else, and lo and fucking behold, the coordinator's on the phone, wants to call Milwaukee. "

  "I thought you said Chicago?"

  Zuppone shot me a look. "You wanna let me fucking finish'?"

  "Al1 right."

  "You let me finish, then you'll fucking know."

  "Sorry, Primo."

  He shook his head, spoke more deliberately. "This friend of ours gets on the horn, and he asks me what the fucking area code is for Milwaukee, like I'm Nynex or something, then all of a sudden it hits me."

  I said, "What hits you?"

  "Why your guy's picture rang that bell with me, why I thought I knew the fuck."

  "And?"

  We stopped for the traffic light at Leverett Circle. "It's from when I'm in the Midwest there with this coordinator, visiting the Outfit."

  "In Chicago."

  "Right, right. Only he wants to take a little side trip, over to Milwaukee, see this other friend—a gentleman named Mr. Ianella."

  I didn't like that Primo was telling me the name of a mobster from another organization.

  "This Mr. Ianella," said Zuppone, "he did us a favor one time, and we wanted to pay our respects, understand?"

  "I think so."

  "Okay. We drive to Milwaukee, and we meet Mr. Ianella at his house—big fucking place on this cliff overlooking the lake, only it looks like a fucking ocean to me, seagulls and everything. We're just sitting down to lunch with this gentleman when his bookkeeper comes in the room, carrying some papers that gotta be signed that day, otherwise the IRS is gonna have a coronary."

  The Lincoln started to climb the ramp for the Central Artery. "So?"

  "So the bookkeeper's your guy from the photo there."

  Swell. "You're sure, Primo?"

  "Yeah, I'm sure. Oh, he looked a little different back then. More gray in the hair, and I think his nose's been fixed or something, that's why I got thrown off when you showed me the picture. I mean, three years ago, and I'm not paying a lot of fucking attention to the bean counter in Milwaukee, you get me?"

  I just nodded.

  Zuppone glanced over. "Be helpful you kind of said something, I'm supposed to be keeping my eyes on the road and all."

  "Sorry, Primo.”

  Another head shake. "So, anyways, our friend the coordinator is on the phone to Milwaukee today, and he tells the Ianella family that we found DiRienzi for them."

  "DiRienzi is the bookkeeper?"

  "Yeah, Alfonso DiRienzi."

  Andrew Dees, keeping the same initials. When Zuppone didn't continue, I said, "What do you mean, we 'found' him?"

  A shorter glance. "That's the problem part."

  "Go on."

  "Seems this DiRienzi got a whiff of something coming down the pike from the IRS out in Milwaukee there. Something they could indict on and send him away for a long time to the wrong kind of cellblock, spend his nights choking on foot-long dicks, black in color."

  I had to hear the rest of it. "And so DiRienzi flips."

  "Like a fucking pancake. You remember what I was telling you last time, about Sammy the Bull down in New York there? Well, your guy the bookkeeper, he goes to the feds, cuts a deal like Gravano did, and rats out Mr. Ianella."

  "Testifies, you mean?"

  "Secret grand jury, evidence out the wazoo, trial's over so fast it'd make your fucking head spin. The gentleman we owe the favor to finds himself in federal stir a thousand miles from Milwaukee. And nobody in the family's very fucking happy about any of it."

  I tried to think things through. Olga Evorova's boyfriend picking a town in "No Man's Land," between the Boston and Providence mobs, an area where grads of Central Vermont who might have known the real "Andrew Dees" tend not to settle. Camera-shy, living in a nondescript suburban condo complex, running a low-profile and very local business. Never talking about his background with neighbors or even his almost-fiancée. Being willing to eat at most kinds of restaurants but not Italian, being willing to attend most kinds of musical events with Olga except her favorite, Italian opera—like Verdi's Rigoletto. Because of who he might run into?

  I said, "This DiRienzi's in the Witness Protection Program."

  "Yeah, that's my guess. I'm thinking the feds sent the bookkeeper east, as far from fucking Milwaukee as they could. They dye his hair, change his nose, and put him some place you happen to find him."

  "But what about the two guys who came to see me?"

  "Not ours, like I told you. This friend, the coordinator—who recognized DiRienzi from the photo?—he thinks they must be freelancers, maybe something to do with the property management people."

  I filed that as Zuppone took the exit for the Callahan Tunnel. "So why are we going to the airport?"

  Zuppone rolled the toothpick. "Usually, one of our people rats somebody out and goes underground, we catch up to him pretty quick. He doesn't know how to live without the old neighborhood, the family—his relatives, I mean. He's gotta stay in touch, telephone, postcard, that kind of shit. Sooner or later he fucks up, and somebody figures out where he is, and that's the ball game."

  "Primo, I'm—"

  "Or, the rat goes into the Witness Protection thing there, but he can't break his other habits, you know? The guy's got a thing for the ponies, he goes to the racetrack. Somebody spots him, thinks he looks familiar from somewhere, and after a while remembers where. Or maybe the guy likes cards, so he goes to a casino, though I gotta tell you, with all the Indians opening up on their reservations and the states having all these boat games, it's getting pretty fucking hard to cover them all with enough soldiers, you're gonna be sure to spot somebody, he shows up."

  "Primo."

  Another glance over as Zuppone merged into the traffic entering the tunnel. "What?"

  "I'm not setting this DiRienzi up for a hit."

  "That's something else we gotta talk about."

  "We just did."

  "I mean we gotta talk about it with some other people."

  "Primo, I'm also not going to Milwaukee."

  “You don't have to." Zuppone took a breath. "Milwaukee is coming to us."

  The traffic in front of the Lincoln made Primo stand on his brakes, and through the windshield I noticed again how being stopped in the tunnel could remind you of lying in a big, beige coffin, lid closed.

  * * *

  "So, you ever been there, Cuddy?"

  "Where?"

  "Where? Milwaukee where."

  "Not that comes to mind."

  We were waiting in the arrival lounge of the Northwest Airlines terminal, the only people around except for a weary gate agent. Before parking the car, Primo had asked me if I was really carrying, and I said no. Then he drew a Beretta semiautomatic from a shoulder holster and slid it under the driver's seat.

  In the terminal, Zuppone sweet-talked the security people into letting us meet our party at the gate, even though we didn't have any tickets ourselves. In the ten minutes we'd been sitting in the black-and-chrome chairs near a bank of telephones, he'd gotten up to check the video monitor three times.

  Now Primo stretched some, rocking his heels on the purplish carpet, trying to relax. "I was out there just the once I told you about, but it was enough."

  To help pass the time, I said, "How come?"

  "Well, first off, Mr. Ianella sends some of his associates to pick us up in Chicago, and we drive north through some of the worst fucking traffic I ever seen. You think the Southeast Expressway is bad? I'm talking eight, ten lanes across, jammed in the middle of the fucking day. Then maybe eighty, ninety miles later, you get up to Milwaukee itself. And the city's clean as a fucking whistle, only there's t
his smell."

  "Smell?"

  "Yeah. I can't understand it. The air looks clean—the streets, you could fucking eat off—but there's this smell. Guy told me later it was probably one of the breweries, the wind was right."

  "I've heard they like their beer."

  "You kidding? We're out to dinner with these people, they take us to the one Italian restaurant they say can really do the food justice, and it's just, like, mediocre. Mediocre at best. Then, instead of wine, they order beer with it. I mean, it was fucking disgusting, they're drinking beer with pasta. You give them a bottle of wine, I think they would've poured it on the fucking salad."

  I laughed. Zuppone did too, a little looser now.

  "And the hotel, Cuddy. I forget the name of the place, but you should have seen it. Usually when we're out of town, we stay with some of the people we're seeing, kind of a home away from home, you know? But this gentleman we're paying our respects to—Mr. Ianella, the one gets rattled out by your guy there?—he wants us to stay in the best place in the city. So we're at the check-in desk, and there's some convention or other going on. The clerk tries to tell one of our Milwaukee people—this gentleman's son, got a scar through his eyebrow and a look that'd scare Tyrannosaurus fucking rex——that there's no rooms available. So the son leans over the counter, and says something real quiet like, and you'd have thought the clerk grew fucking wings, he moved so fast for us. And I get this apartment, it's got a living room and a bathroom with a Jacuzzi the size of a fucking regular room. And the bed? Let's just say you would've thought you were in the Wilt Chamberlain Suite.

  "Anyways, I get settled in the room, figuring it might be nice to pick something up at the bar, show her the Jacuzzi, you know? And when I get down there, I see ten, fifteen broads standing around, all sipping wine and club sodas, and they're even pretty young. And I say, 'Great, they must be here for the convention'—not pros hustling, you understand, just like attending it. Then I notice the hotel has this computer bulletin board in the lobby right by the bar, and they've got what the convention events are, rolling over the screen. And guess what the convention turns out to be?"