Shallow Graves - Jeremiah Healy

by Jeremiah Healy

  "A couple of months."

  "Yeah. That's why it can't have nothing to do with her being dead, see?"

  "Did Mau Tim ever say anything to you about it?"

  "No."

  "Nothing?"

  "No. Well, just that night."

  "That night?"

  "The night I told her about my step'."

  "What did she say?"

  "Something like . . . The fuck was it? Oh, yeah, Mau says, ‘That'd never work with far-far'."

  "What?"

  "Her eyes got all weird and she says something like, 'Too bad. That'd never work with far-far.' "

  I thought back to who had said something like that to me. Larry Shinkawa, as Mau Tim's play on the sixties expression "far out."

  "What did she mean, Sinead?"

  Fagan sniffled once. "Fuck am I supposed to know?"

  -27-

  ON THE DRIVE BACK TO THE CONDO I TRIED TO FIGURE OUT WHAT "far-far" could stand for. Maybe a pet name, like "Mau Tim" itself when the girl was growing up. I found the number Joseph Danucci had given me and dialed it.

  "Hello?" said Claudette Danucci's voice.

  "Mrs. Danucci, this is John Cuddy."

  "Oh. Oh, yes."

  "I have kind of a strange question to ask."

  "Please?"

  "Does the expression 'far-far' mean anything to you?"

  A pause. "It is America word?"

  "I'm not sure. I thought it might have been a nickname or a pet name your daughter used for something or someone."

  "Please, can you spell?"

  "I think it would be F-A-R — F-A-R."

  Another pause. "No. I do not remember her say this word."

  "Could it be Vietnamese?"

  "Vietnam word?"

  "Yes."

  "No. In Vietnam, we not have the 'F' letter. Only the 'Ph' letter, and 'phar-phar' mean nothing."

  "How about Italian?"

  "I do not know."

  "Is your husband there?"

  "No. But he not speak Italy words very much. I can call Primo?"

  "I have his home number. I'll try him."

  "No. Primo is in his car. He just leave here. I can call, ask him."

  "Okay. I'll call you back later if I need to."

  "Mr. Cuddy, you know who kill my daughter?"

  "No, Mrs. Danucci, I don't."

  She didn't say anything more, but it did take her a good five seconds to break the connection.

  I pushed the buttons for directory assistance, getting the general numbers of four local universities. At each, I asked for the Linguistics department. The first school didn't have one, the second didn't answer. The third wasn't much more help.

  "Linguistics." A female voice, snooty.

  "Hello, I wonder if you can help me?"

  "With whom do you wish to speak?"

  "Well, I'm not sure. I need to know if a word is from a foreign language and what it means."

  A glacial sigh. "Sir, I'm afraid we cannot be of help."

  "I thought Linguistics stood for the study of languages?

  "Then you are mistaken. We study language, singular and in the abstract, if you will. We are not some sort of universal translation table. Good day."

  I hung up before the dial tone came on and tried number four.

  "Linguistics Department, Roy speaking." A cheery voice. I told him the same thing I told number three.

  "Gee, I'm sorry but I don't think anybody here like knows all the languages. But there is someplace I can send you."

  "Where?"

  * * *

  The librarian at the reserve desk on the second floor curved her hand to the right. "The section closest to the copy machine, the shelves on both sides. In alphabetical order."

  I edged past a high school student in a football varsity jacket who looked like he was using both a copy machine and the Boston Public Library itself for the first time. I found the dictionaries and decided to start with Italian/English, carrying it to the nearest work table in the center of the room. I went through it slowly, trying every phonetic spelling I could think of for "far-far."

  Between pages, my mind drifted to Sinead Fagan's story about her stepfather. To "Tina Danucci" moving in with her Uncle Vincent for a while, changing not just her first name but her last as well. To her uncle's chosen surname, a perversion of what a bride might do. Then I thought about Mau Tim Dani and New York. Oz Puriefoy advising her to move there, Claudette Danucci afraid she'd decided to go, Larry Shinkawa sure of it. A young woman making a clean break with everything from Boston, personal as well as professional. Burning bridges with a passion.

  Then I focused on Vincent Dani himself. Making partner in his office tower, Mau Tim finding out about it and calling him from her apartment late in the afternoon of the day she died, when he was in a meeting. The lawyer maybe calling her back, listening to Mau Tim's version of what Sinead had done to her stepfather, seeing his partnership fly out the window.

  After five minutes, I'd exhausted the Italian dictionary and pushed it to the corner of the table.

  I got up, went back to the shelves, and started at the A's. I took down six or seven books and carried them back to my work space. Forty minutes more. Nothing.

  Over the next few hours, I lost count of how many trips I made, each time coming back with as many volumes as I could manage. Some of them were unintelligible, the language involved not using our alphabet. Those I took back to the shelves, becoming aware that I was getting some strange stares. I kept at it, though, thumbing through the pages, trying theme and variations on far-far. Zip.

  By suppertime, I was down to the S books and thinking about a different approach when I reached the Swedish/English entry. It didn't do much for my appetite, but there it was. The English translation of the Swedish phrase 'farfar." Unless it was a complete coincidence.

  I took the English word and went back through the dictionaries on my table. It was eerie, finding Mau Tim's pet word for Oz Puriefoy in the Dutch and another of her expressions with Larry Shinkawa in the Hawaiian. Even her "first boyfriend" in the Gaelic, striking my forehead with the heel of my harping hand on that one. So clear, once you had the English-version key.

  Then I felt cold. Claudette Danucci had said her daughter looked things up in the Vietnamese dictionary, and everyone had commented on the dead woman's curiosity about other cultures. Now knowing why that curiosity might have been an obsession, I pictured Mau Tim Dani in my chair at the library, using the English word to go through the books. Just as I was then.

  I sat there, the volumes piled up around me, forgetting to eat dinner.

  * * *

  Primo Zuppone was out of the Lincoln before I could get to the driver's side. The car was backed into the narrow driveway, and he was standing in front of the door with the aluminum awning as I walked toward it.

  "I gotta frisk you."

  Zuppone's voice didn't sound right. Strained, like he was imitating himself.

  I raised my arms even though I wasn't carrying. "He told you I was coming by?"

  Zuppone broke off the pat-down, his eyes getting wide. "He told you to frisk me, but not to come up with me, right?"

  Zuppone's eyes got wider, the toothpick doing a jitterbug as he finished with my ankles.

  I said, "Claudette reached you and when you didn't know the answer to her question, you asked him what 'far-far' meant"

  Zuppone spit out the toothpick and stepped back, letting me go in the door and up the stairs alone.

  -28-

  "SO, MR. DETECTIVE YOU'LL JOIN ME IN SOME WINE?

  "I don't think so."

  Torrrmy the Temper Danucci and I were alone in his magnificent dining room. Standing at the head of the table, he was dressed in brown slacks and a brown flannel shirt with a red and green tartan pattem. The model of a modestly retired man, trying very hard to adopt an attitude of normality toward the current guest.

  Danucci gestured over the decanter and two chalices to the other end of the table. I
sat down, elbows on the linen cloth. He sank slowly into his throne chair, twelve feet away. "So, you know."

  I nodded.

  "Tell me how, eh?"

  "The timing that night at the building on Falmouth. It was all wrong because it was so tight. Too tight unless it was planned by a professional."

  "Which I told you it wasn't."

  I nodded again. "If the killing wasn't planned by a professional, then it was a burglar gone panicked or a crime of passion."

  Danucci's blood started to rise past his throat. "And I couldn't get you to buy the B and E."

  "The fire escape problem. Larry Shinkawa doesn't hear the last flight grind and squeal. Instead, he both hears the clanging noise of somebody on it and feels it still vibrating when he gets to it. That means it wasn't some other fire escape, it was this one, and it also means the killer got only as far as the second-floor landing."

  "Where only the family had a key to get out of the apartment and down the inside stairs."

  "Unless the killer used and replaced Tina's spare key for the second-floor door."

  Danucci leaned forward, very carefully pouring himself some wine from the decanter. He swirled the chalice, inhaling before sipping from it. "How did you figure it was me?"

  "I didn't."

  "Eh?"

  "I thought it was your son."

  "My son was in Philly."

  "I meant Vincent."

  "Vincent." A dismissive wave from the hand that wasn't holding the chalice. "You shoulda known it wasn't Mr. Vincent Dani, Esquire. That first night with me here, you knew. You said it, remember?"

  "Brains and ambition, but no heart."

  "Right. No heart, no . . . passion." Danucci set the chalice down firmly. "I never told this to no one. Not my confessor, not Primo, not nobody."

  I tried to stay as still as I could.

  "I lost my Amatina. That Claudette and Tina, they nursed her as good as they could, as any million-dollar doctor could, but I lost her. Then I had the heart attack, and they nursed me, too. For a while there, I was weak and outta my head, then I got a little stronger but still not right, still a little outta my head. And one night, Tina, she comes into my room in her father's house. Comes in to check on me."

  Danucci looked up at one of his religious paintings, a hazy Madonna. "It musta been the light from outside, through the windows. The light playing tricks on me, but I coulda sworn . . . I could swear today it was my Amatina's eyes, looking down at me, asking if I was okay, if there was anything she could do. I . . . reached up for her, and took her into my bed, and . . . That was it. She didn't fight back or resist or nothing. Then she was gone. But she come back, two nights more. And by then I knew. Knew it wasn't my Amatina. But I couldn't . . . I couldn't . . ."

  The abrupt nod, scooping the chalice up again and this time drinking in a gulp.

  Danucci put the chalice down but didn't refill it. "She never said a thing, Tina. Nothing. Then I got better and got back here, and still nothing. She was always polite to me, the family get-togethers. Always a hug and a kiss. I figured she . . . forgave me. That she understood that what happened, it was out of weakness, not . .

  "You set her up in the apartment."

  The eyes blazed. "What're you saying, you fucking cocksucker? You saying I set my own blood up in that apartment to be a whore for me?"

  "No. I'm saying she decided to stay in the apartment house, and probably had to ask you to do it."

  "It was her mother."

  "Claudette?"

  "She was afraid for Tina, being in the city, living with the colored photographer. So I got Primo to scare him off, then gave Joey the idea Tina should have the place on Falmouth, where Ooch could look after her."

  "And Sinead Fagan?"

  "The Irish girl, Tina was friends with her. Wanted her to be in the building, too, less than market rent. I got lots of buildings, lots of properties. Didn't cost me much."

  I thought about it, Mau Tim getting her revenge indirectly, receiving from her grandfather without confronting him. "What set Tina off?"

  "You don't know?"

  "Her mother's phone call that Friday."

  "You do know. You cocksucker, you don't toy with Tornrny Danucci!"

  "I'm not toying. I'm guessing."

  The old man lowered himself a notch. "Yeah. Well, I pick up the phone when it rings, and it's Tina. And she says, 'Mom told me, you got picked to be president of the Order of the Cross.' And I'm thinking, this is great, this is terrific, my grand-daughter, she cares enough about me, she calls to congratulate me. So I say, 'Yeah, it's something I wanted since your grand-mother died.' And then she hits me with it. 'Well, I don't think any religious thing is gonna want you to be their president after I tell them you're a baby-raper.' "

  Danucci used the empty chalice as a prop. "I tell you, Mr. Detective, I hold the phone away from me, just like this. I hold it away account of I know it must be wrong, it's gotta be defective, I didn't hear anything like that come out of it. Then I pull it back and I say, 'Tina, Amatina, what're you saying?' And she says she's going to a party that night, she's gonna try it out on her friends before she tells her mother and father about it the next night at dinner. Tina says she wants to make real sure she's got it down right before she calls the Order and tells them."

  "You told me Tina talked about the party when she called you."

  "I figured, you're a detective, you can get the company records on her phone there. They'd show the call to me, I had to have an explanation for it."

  "But you didn't know the party was going to be in her building."

  "No. No, she didn't say that over the phone. So, I hang up, what am I supposed to do, eh? You tell me. I pace back and forth here, maybe two, three minutes. I can feel my heart, racing. Primo, he's out shopping for me, but I can't bring him into it, anyway. Can't let him know .... So I grab my keys to the place on Falmouth, I got them all on a ring. I go out, walk up to Hanover, find a cab. A colored, just dropping off a fare for one of the restaurants, he don't know me from a hole in the ground. I tell him to take me to the corner by the building. He's driving, I'm thinking, what can I say to her?

  "I get to the front door of the building, I let myself in with my key to it. I go past the apartment door on the first floor, and I hear this music. But it's not real loud or nothing, so I figure the Irish girl's just got it on for company. It don't never occur to me, she's having the party for Tina there."

  Danucci refilled the chalice from the decanter. "I get up the stairs to the third floor. The door — I can just hear the shower on, then turned off. I use the key, slip inside her apartment. I can hear her moving around in the bathroom, I don't figure she can hear me. I musta put the chain on like I do here, I don't remember. Five, ten minutes I'm standing there like a jerk before Tina's out of the bathroom. She's in her robe, six feet away from me, and she says, "What are you doing here? Get the fuck out!"

  The old man shook his head. "To me, she said that. I say to her, 'What do you mean, get out?' She says, 'It's my apartment. Get the fuck out.' I say, 'Your apartment? I own the whole building. This is my property! She says, 'You can have your property. I'm late for my party.' And I say, 'Tina, Amatina, we gotta talk here.' And she says, 'Uh-unh, too late to talk, far-far.' "

  Danucci looked over at me, both hands cupping the chalice. "That word, far-far, I never heard it before. Then I say, 'We gotta talk, Tina.' And she goes, 'I'm gonna do my talking to everybody who'll listen.' And I say, 'After all I done for you? After all I give you, this is what I get?' And she runs away from me into the bedroom. I start after her, but she's already back, throwing the necklace, my Amatina's necklace, at me. I go to catch it, she's bumping me, pushing me out to her living room and the door, saying, 'Take back your fucking necklace, I'm going to New York, out of your life, out of this whole life.' I say, 'New York? Tina, what're you talking about?' But she just says 'Take back your fucking necklace,' and then starts yelling a whole bunch a things at me, words I didn't understand.
All I know is, I see her face in front of me, all screwed up, and crazy and I...I. . ."

  His hands tightened around the chalice, the knuckles turning white. "I strangled her. Before I realized what I was doing, I choked the life out of my own blood."

  Very quietly, I said, "Is that when the pendant broke off the necklace?"

  A dismissive wave, then the abrupt nod. "I suppose. All I know is, I opened my hands and she just fell away from me. I could feel my heart, I had to sit, think about it. Try to decide what to do.

  "Then there's the Jap, knocking at the door, getting louder, sounding nervous. I hear him run back down the stairs, and I get up, figure, go to the bedroom, take some more jewelry, make it look like a B and E. But I just about get in there, I got some earrings and stuff in my hand, when I hear a whole crowd at the door, voices yelling and pounding on the door, and I got to get out. So I jam everything in my pockets and go through the window. I'm on the fire escape when I hear the door open and smack against the chain. I go down as fast as I can but I hear the chain give and somebody running. The second-floor window's open, so I get in there, try to catch my breath. And I can hear everybody, I don't know how many it is, running around upstairs, yelling. So I get to the door, find the little key on my ring, and slip myself into the hall. And it's quiet enough there, except for the voices upstairs through the open door. And I go down the stairs and out. I walk a couple, three blocks before my heart says I gotta take a cab. So I do, back to like Hanover and Richmond.

  "And then," Danucci seemed to deflate a little. "I walked back here."

  I waited for him to recover a bit.

  The old man pushed the chalice three inches away, but Primo wasn't there to take it. "So, you figured it was family, but it wasn't Mr. Vincent Dani, Esquire. How'd you know it was me?"

  "Two things other than the timing. One, the words Tina used with you she used with other people, always being careful to ask them first about their backgrounds, to be sure they wouldn't know what the words meant."

  "What they meant?"

  "It was her way of dealing with what happened, I think. One young guy who was interested in her told me he wasn't exotic enough for her. What he should have said was he wasn't old enough for her. That's what she did. She saw older men like George Yulin at the agency, Oz Puriefoy the photographer, and Larry Shinkawa the ad exec. Maybe she got the idea from Erica Lindqvist, talking about her family from Sweden. Tina used seanair with Yulin to describe her first boyfriend, qroot vader as a pet name for Puriefoy, tutu and far-far with Shinkawa?