Shallow Graves - Jeremiah Healy

by Jeremiah Healy

  "Twenty miles, most of them."

  "You're kidding?"

  "Uh-unh. Almost forty thousand people this year, and we hope to raise four million dollars for the homeless and the hungry, most of it going to Project Bread."

  I thought about the last homeless person I'd known, a guy who had trained me for the marathon. I took out my wallet and handed her a twenty.

  She looked at it and said, "What's that?"

  "A donation."

  "But I'm not like, authorized or anything."

  "I'm not worried about where it'll end up. Take it."

  She did. "Well, thanks. Have a nice day, huh?"

  I should have remembered that the last person to say that to me was one Lieutenant Holt of Boston Homicide.

  * * *

  "Cuddy!"

  I was about to put my key in the lock of the front door of the condo building when I heard the voice over the opening of a car door. Turning around, I saw Primo Zuppone standing at the curb, the driver's side of his Lincoln still open, one of his hands resting on top of the window frame. The leather coat lay on the leather seat behind him.

  Zuppone said, "Where the fuck you been?"

  I went back to the lock. "Nursing a sick friend."

  His footsteps came across the sidewalk and up the stoop as I pushed on the door. He put his hand on my arm. I looked down at the hand, then up to his face, the pockmarks seeming a little inflamed.

  "Cuddy, you gotta understand something."

  "First take your hand off my arm."

  Zuppone sent out a little breath, but let go of my arm. With an effort.

  "Cuddy, you're supposed to coordinate with me."

  "Not the way I remember it. You're supposed to help me, if I need help."

  "Hey-ey-ey," the loose tone back, "don't you think I gotta know what you're doing, I'm supposed to help you?"

  "Primo, look. I've been gone a couple of days — "

  "You're telling me?"

  " — and I need a shower and a change of clothes. Then we can talk."

  Primo checked his watch, then looked to his car. Thinking of the phone in it, I guessed.

  "Okay. Say, what, half an hour?"

  "Half an hour should do it. Why?"

  "Somebody wants to talk to you."

  * * *

  The Lincoln slalomed its way up Beacon, the cars double-parked on either side of the street, before taking a right onto the bridge across the Charles River to Cambridge and MIT. There was a solo guitar coming over the audio system. Around his toothpick Zuppone said, "Michael Hedges."

  "Somebody named Michael Hedges wants to see me?"

  "No, no. Michael Hedges is the guy on this tape. Soothing, ain't it?"

  It was. Until I remembered that soothing music like this was probably the last cultural experience of several people unfortunate enough to cross Tommy Danucci.

  I shook it off. "By the way, I enjoyed that Mertens cassette you gave me."

  "Yeah? Great. He's the best." Zuppone glanced in his mirrors.

  "So, where you been all this time?"

  "Like I told you, doing some nursing."

  "At the D.A.'s over in Southie?"

  Primo could have seen my car parked in front of her house, but first he'd have to know where Nancy lived, and she had an unlisted telephone number.

  I said evenly, "I hope I don't have to tell you to stay away from there."

  Both hands came innocently off the wheel. "Hey-ey-ey, I never been near the place. Just called a coupla times, see if maybe I got you."

  The phone calls yesterday. Meaning pretty good contacts within New England Telephone.

  "Primo, can you get me the phone records on Tina's local calls?"

  "What, from her apartment there, you mean?"

  "Yes. For the week she was killed."

  "I don't know. Documents, they're tougher to get than just numbers."

  "Can you try?"

  Zuppone ticktocked his head. "Sure. Sure, I can try."

  "Thanks."

  He gave me another look. "You're still worrying about your girlfriend. Don't. No way we'd go near a D.A., Cuddy. They're off limits, you know? The government, it don't hit us like some fucking Spic death squad, and we don't hit them or their families, don't even go around there. The Jamaicans, now, or the Dominicans, I can't speak for those fucking maniacs. They're liable to do anything to anybody. But us, you got no worries. One of us clipped a D.A. or a cop on purpose — I don't mean an accident, like thinking some undercover guy's one of ours, dropping a dime on us — but one of us clipped a government guy knowing he was government? Shit, the family'd hand the member over to the cops themselves, no questions asked."

  "You wouldn't be afraid of the guy singing to get a better plea?"

  Zuppone gave me a different look. "Cuddy, we hand the guy over, he's gonna be dead first."

  Of course. Which reminded me. "Where are we going, Primo?"

  "Danucci, he wants to see you."

  "Which one?"

  "Which one." Zuppone turned onto Memorial Drive, heading east back toward Boston. "The Mr. Danucci, which one."

  "What about?"

  Zuppone debated something, finally deciding to talk about it. "The fuck is all this shit about keys?"

  "To the second floor in Mau — Tina's building?"

  "All the keys, any keys. What the fuck do we care about keys, the girl was choked out by some B & E crackhead?"

  "How did you know about the keys, Primo?"

  "Way I know about everything. People call me, talk to me. Like you oughta be talking to me now. What the fuck difference do keys make here?"

  A side of Zuppone he hadn't shown before. Edgy, finding it harder to slip into the loose mode and stay there.

  "Primo, if a burglar didn't do it, somebody else did. And probably that somebody had to use a key some way."

  "Let's hear why a burglar didn't do it."

  "The first-floor tenant, Sinead Fagan, was in the kitchen just before Tina was killed. Fagan heard water running through the pipes there from Tina's shower."

  "So what?"

  "A burglar has to go up the fire escape to get in as well as down it to get out."

  Zuppone nodded a few times, then turned the car onto the Longfellow Bridge back across the river. "And this Sinead, she'd see somebody going up the fire escape next to her window."

  I tried not to hesitate. "You can picture it?"

  "Sure I can picture it. The fire escape runs right past her kitchen there."

  "Okay. Either Fagan or her boyfriend — "

  "This the colored guy?"

  "I understand you've met."

  The toothpick rotated clockwise. "You could say that, yeah."

  "So either Fagan or Puriefoy can spot somebody going up the escape. They could hear that first flight come down, too, because it makes a hell of a racket and the kitchen window was open. That leaves us with how the killer got into the building"

  Zuppone looked down at his dashboard. "What about the back door to the building?"

  "Can't be opened from the outside, and Ooch said he always kept it bolted from the inside."

  Primo checked his mirrors. "So, maybe the guy got buzzed in the front door."

  "Not by Fagan. And probably not by Tina either, she just stepped out of the shower."

  "She's expecting her new boyfriend, though, right?"

  This time I did hesitate. "You've been getting a lot of phone calls."

  "Like I said, people talk to me. So somebody rings Tina's bell, she thinks it's the Jap, she buzzes him in."

  "Only you can hear both the bell and the buzzer inside Fagan's apartment"

  "From Tina's, two floors up there?"

  "Yes. And Fagan and Puriefoy never heard bell or buzzer till Larry Shinkawa arrived, and they let him in."

  Zuppone passed up a street that would have taken us more directly to Tommy Danucci's house in the North End. "What you're saying is, somebody had to have a key to get in the front door of the buildi
ng"

  "I think so."

  "And a key to get into Tina's apartment?"

  "Not necessarily."

  "The fuck does that mean?"

  "She — Tina — could have let whoever it was in her door, once she was out of the shower."

  "What, she hears a knock at the door and just opens up?"

  "She knew she was late to the party downstairs and figures it's just one of them coming up to find out what's taking her so long."

  Zuppone rolled the pick again. "Possible."

  "Also, anybody who has a key to the building door is probably somebody she'd recognize anyway."

  The pick stopped. "She wasn't supposed to give out none of those keys to anybody."

  "And I don't know that she did."

  Zuppone hit the brakes, the Lincoln slewing into a loading zone. He slammed the gearshift into park, not bothering with the parking brake. Tearing the toothpick out of his mouth and breaking it between two fingers, he turned to me violently.

  "The fuck are you saying here? That ain't some fucking safe house."

  "What do you mean by 'safe house'?"

  "Aw, one of the . . . this friend of ours, he likes the spy novels. The way I go for the New Age music, okay? He decides we need some new places to stash a guy . . . To keep a guy or some stuff on ice for a while. In the spy books, they call those things 'safe houses.' But fucking Mother, Cuddy, only the family used that second-floor apartment. Nobody's gonna put a safe house under his own blood."

  "I wouldn't think so."

  "What I mean is, they don't give the keys to the building to anybody. Tina didn't give one out, and that Sinead broad didn't give one out, then only the family has any."

  I didn't bring up the front door key Sinead left with the agency. Instead, I braced myself before saying, "You have keys to that building, Primo?"

  All the blood drained from his cheeks, and he breathed heavily. "I'm gonna . . . I'm gonna make like I didn't hear that, okay? Because I don't wanna have to take you to Mr. Danucci without your face on."

  "I think it's — "

  "What you're saying here is one of the family whacked Tina? You got rocks in your fucking head'?"

  "You want to hear it or not?"

  Zuppone breathed three more times, reining himself in, the hand shaking as he turned off the music. "I wanna hear it. Real slow, no big words."

  "There are a lot of possibilities, but one keeps coming around. The killer uses a key on the front door, goes up, and gets let in by Tina or uses a key on her door, too."

  Zuppone seemed about to say something, then shook his head.

  "He kills her, hears Shinkawa at the apartment door, and then Shinkawa going back downstairs and coming back up with the others. The killer tries to go down the fire escape, only I don't think he gets far enough before they break through the door."

  "What do you mean, far enough?"

  "Shinkawa hears somebody on the escape and rushes to the window, but nobody's there below him."

  I waited for Zuppone to catch up to me. "The guy that did Tina used the escape there to go down, but he ain't there when the Jap looks out?"

  "Right."

  "So the guy goes in Sinead's window. You said it was open, right?"

  "No good. The sash weights aren't working. Nobody could lift the window high enough to slip in through it."

  "So . . . what, the guy drops ten, twelve feet to the ground?"

  "But then Shinkawa would have seen him or heard him running up the alley."

  Zuppone squirmed against the leather upholstery. "Then how does the guy get away?"

  "I think he went in the second-floor window."

  Zuppone smiled confidently. "Never happen. The guy couldn't get out the second-floor door without . . ."

  Zuppone chewed on it, shook his head, then kept shaking it. "Fucking Christ. That can't be it, Cuddy. That can't be how the guy got away."

  "I think it is. So either he had the keys he needed, Or he planned it pretty long and pretty cool and pretty tight on the timing?

  "What do you mean, he planned it?"

  -23-

  TOMMY DANUCCI ASKED ME ME SAME QUESTION AT THE SAME POINT in the story as Primo Zuppone. The difference was that Danucci and I were sitting in a tiny espresso shop just off Hanover Street in the North End. Although we were the only patrons, there were five tables in all, each a circular slab of gray marble resting on a base of black wrought iron. The chair seats were round and padded like bar stools with backs, but they also sat on wrought iron bases. The bases were so heavy I nearly sprained a wrist pulling mine back.

  Primo had to move Danucci's chair out and in for him, then went to the counter man who waited fervently to hear our order. Capuccino with whipped cream for Danucci, hot chocolate and no cream for me. After bringing our cups and saucers to the table, Zuppone took up some wall space, legs bent out a little.

  Danucci said, "So, Mr. Detective, what do you mean, he planned it?"

  "First, let's assume a burglar didn't kill Tina."

  "The fuck you talking about? He stole the necklace."

  "The necklace broke, somewhere in the living room, during the struggle. How do you explain that?"

  "Explain it? The fucking crackhead had it in his hands and my Tina tried to take it back."

  "Take it back from him?"

  "Sure, sure. My Tina, she loved that piece. It was what she had from her grandmother, what I gave her after my Amatina died. Tina woulda fought for her necklace, anybody tried to take it."

  I went through how unlikely that was, given where the pendant and body were found.

  Danucci sipped his capuccino. "So, maybe she was wearing it, eh?"

  "Wearing it?"

  "You're telling me, Tina was strangled with my Amatina's necklace against her throat. Either the crackhead had it in his hand, or she was wearing it."

  "Why would she be wearing it?"

  Danucci shrugged. "Maybe for the party."

  "I don't think so. She was just in her robe from the shower, and the party itself was supposed to be pretty casual, a little wine before people went out to celebrate."

  "Maybe she was trying it on. For the dinner the next night."

  "Maybe. But she was already late for the party downstairs, and she had all the next day to decide what to wear for dinner on Saturday."

  Danucci looked impatient. "All right, all right. She wasn't wearing it, then. So tell me, it's not a burglar, what's your theory?"

  "With Sinead in the kitchen near her open window, I don't think the killer came up the fire escape. He, or she, came through the front door of the building."

  "What's this 'he or she' shit?"

  "Okay. Assume it's a man, too. One possibility is that he has a key to the building, comes in, and gets up to the third floor, but has the presence of mind, and prior knowledge, to go to Tina's kitchen and take the pimpled key to the second-floor door that Tina kept in a drawer. He kills Tina, then goes out and down the fire escape, ducking into the second-floor window while Larry Shinkawa is running to the bedroom window and looking down on the fire escape. Then, using Tina's key from the drawer, the guy lets himself quietly out the second floor and down the interior stairs and out the front door of the building, replacing the key in the drawer some time later."

  Danucci wagged his head. "Too complicated."

  ."/'

  "Explain it to me."

  "Start with Shinkawa. He could have gotten into the building if he had a key to the front door, gone upstairs, and gotten Tina to open her apartment door. He kills her, then leaves the building and rings Sinead to be let back in. He suggests to Puriefoy and Fagan that they go up to Tina's apartment, then climbs the stairs alone to knock and yell at Tina's door before coming back down to get the others."

  "Simpler. What's wrong with that?"

  "The chain was on Tina's door. Whoever left her apartment after killing her couldn't go out her door and leave it still chained. And Sinead would have spotted him coming down the fire esca
pe."

  Danucci shook his head again, sipping the capuccino. I hadn't touched my hot chocolate.

  The old rnan said, "Same for the colored photographer?"

  "I think so. Puriefoy could have left Sinead's apartment to go out for wine, but instead he climbs the stairs, gets Tina to let him in, and kills her. Then he actually goes out for the wine and comes back all innocent. But with the chain on, he would have to go out the bedroom window and down the fire escape past Sinead in her kitchen. Since we know Tina was taking a shower with the water running through Sinead's pipes just a few minutes earlier, it's hard to imagine either Shinkawa or Puriefoy could have timed it just so. Besides, they wouldn't have had to try."

  "I don't get you."

  "Tina knew both of them well enough to buzz them into the building and let them into her apartment. Either one could have killed her any time he wanted without planning a split-second, Mission Impossible caper around the party."

  The blood started to rise through Danucci's face. "I'd take it as a favor, Mr. Detective, you didn't use old television shows to talk about my granddaughter's death."

  "Sorry."

  Danucci pushed his cup and saucer three inches to the side. Zuppone immediately came over and asked if he wanted another. The abrupt nod and Primo was off to the counterman. While he was gone, Danucci used a low, menacing tone to me. "So, you're saying it's family?"

  "Not necessarily. It could be anybody who didn't know about the party at Sinead's that night."

  "Why?"

  "Because somebody who didn't know about the party wouldn't be trying to time things so closely. If the guy had a front door key and knew about the second-floor key, he could have gone to the house that night and opened the building door by coincidence when Sinead's door was closed and neither Shinkawa nor Puriefoy were coming or going."

  Zuppone brought Danucci his capuccino and leaned back against the wall.

  I said, "The guy then goes up to Tina's apartment, has a key to her door or she lets him in, then he puts the chain on — "

  "Wait a minute. Why him with the chain?"

  "Somebody had to put the chain on, and Shinkawa said Tina never used it, broke a nail on it a couple of times."

  "Broke a nail?"

  "Fingernail."

  Danucci shook his head. "Okay, okay. The guy puts the chain on."

  "And then kills her. He hears Shinkawa at the door and probably freezes, then panics and realizes from the noise that the party is coming to him. So he runs to the kitchen, gets the key to the second floor, and goes out the fire escape and then into the second-floor window."