Danucci's mouth worked but at first nothing came out.
"Those were . . . Tina yelled those things at me. What do they mean?"
"In different languages, 'grandfather.' "
The old mobster looked down at the chalice. "Mother of God."
I gave him a minute. "The other reason I knew it was you was something that didn't make sense until I knew what those words meant."
Danucci looked at me squarely. "My Amatina's necklace."
"I couldn't figure why it didn't just get left at the scene. Or why it wasn't turning up somewhere, on the street or in a trash can."
The old man rose slowly. He turned away from me and shuffled toward the tall china cabinet. Opening the door, he brought his hands shoulder — high and lifted down the big rosewood box. Turning back, he carried it to the table like a butler with the family silver. He opened the lid, reaching in and coming out with the iolite necklace.
He held it in his hand like a rosary, slowly turning it so the light from the chandelier could sparkle off the violet stones. "I couldn't leave my Amatina's necklace behind. For some fucking cop to scoff up."
"That why you didn't set up somebody else for the fall?" Danucci spoke more to the necklace than to me. "I thought about it. Before you came into the picture, I thought about planting this on one of the people from the modeling thing who knew her. But then I'd lose my Amatina's necklace to the cops for a long time, maybe even the rest of my life. 'Evidence,' they'd say, just wanting to stick it to old Tommy the Temper as much as they could. I still haven't got back the pendant part there. Cocksuckers.
"Then I thought about suiciding somebody, like maybe the colored photographer or the Jap. I can get a couple friends of mine to arrange things with maybe a note. But I couldn't do that without my friends thinking, 'The fuck is Tommy having me set this one up for?' "
Danucci tore himself away from the necklace, giving me a look as empty as a shark to a bleeding fish. "When I realized that first night how smart you was, I even thought about having you hit, Mr. Detective." Back to the necklace. "Only I couldn't do that, either. My Joey, he never woulda thought it was an accident or some scumbag from another one of your cases. He's got a lotta heart, my Joey. He woulda known something was queer, that something got set up by somebody knew how, and he woulda never rested till he found out the straight skinny."
The ultimate irony. Tommy Danucci, the man who'd ordered a hundred deaths, not daring to order the hundred and first. A victim of his own resources.
The old gangster reluctantly laid the necklace on the linen tablecloth. "So, what's the deal, eh?"
"The deal was that if I found out who killed Tina, I'd come to you first."
Danucci watched me. "And you done that, so what's the new deal? What do you want from me?"
"Nothing."
"What's with nothing?"
"You asked me to come here first, I did. That's it."
"What are you talking about? You can't go to the cops, you wouldn't live three hours — — "
"I'm not going to the cops. I'm going to your daughter-in-law."
"My . . . ? Claudette?"
"Right."
"Why?"
"Because I promised her."
"What?"
"I promised her. If I found out who killed her daughter, I'd tell her."
Danucci seemed not to breathe. He watched me, canting his head twice, the spotlight eyes boring into me. "You're serious, Mr. Detective."
"I am."
"A matter of honor."
"I don't know."
Another moment, then the abrupt nod. He reached back into the rosewood box with both hands and drew out two long-barreled, chromed revolvers by the handles. Danucci kept one trained on me while he flipped the other in his hand, then lofted it down the table toward me, the linen slowing it as the gun bunched the cloth a foot from my right hand.
The old man said, "Let's you and me play a little game of Guts, eh?"
I tried not to look at the weapon, keeping my eyes on Danucci, figuring that would give me the last warning I'd get. "I don't think so."
"Why is that?"
"I'm a little unsure of the way mine might be loaded."
A disappointed scowl. "You're a man of honor, Mr. Detective. So am I. Don't matter what you think about what happened between my Tina and me. I wouldn't give you an unloaded piece."
"I also don't particularly want to be known to your family as the man who shot you."
"So, maybe that ain't gonna happen, eh? Maybe Lady Luck, she'll smile on me."
If I'd seen the game of Guts coming, maybe I would have thought it through, would have seen through it. Instead, when Tommy Danucci suddenly leveled at my chest, barked "One," and pulled the trigger, I reached for the gun in front of me. When he said "Two," and pulled it again, the snap/ching of the hammer on an empty chamber made me level the heavy old piece on him. When "Three" produced flash and bang from his muzzle and a thump at my lapel, I reflexively fired three times, the way I'd been taught in the Army. The chrome andiron jumped in my hand and roared in that room, far louder than the report from his Weapon.
The impact of my slugs lifted Danucci up and back, into and displacing the throne chair but not knocking it over. He drew in a huge breath, and I was to him as his lungs let it out. Behind me, feet thundered on the stairs toward the mahogany front door.
Tommy the Temper looked up at me and fingered the little burn mark on my lapel, the blood burbling through the holes in his shirt. "Before Primo gets in here . . . how's about you put a real bullet in my gun . . . so I don't look like such a jerk, eh?"
I didn't have anything smart to say back to him. Not that he could have heard it if I did.
-29-
THERE WAS NO NEW AGE MUSIC FLOATING THROUGH THE LINCOLN as we rode south on Route 3.
After he came through the mahogany door, Zuppone had kept a Beretta automatic pointed at me in Tommy Danucci's dining room as he made six or seven telephone calls in rapid succession. We waited about five minutes after the last one before three street soldiers in varying sizes and uniforms arrived. Primo spent a full minute kneeling before the body of Tommy Danucci in the throne chair. Then he checked both of the old chromed pistols. I could see three more live rounds drop from the gun Danucci had given me, one more blank from the one he'd fired.
Zuppone shook his head, as if to clear it, then made another telephone call, not seeming to care about me overhearing it. Finally, Primo left a soldier named Bootsy with Danucci's body in the dining room. One of the other two carried the rosewood case, with both pistols and the necklace, down the stairs to the car. The third soldier kept something in his coat pocket aimed at me, the only words spoken being "Give me a reason."
At the Lincoln, Zuppone got behind the wheel, turning with his Beretta on me as I was shoved into the back seat, passenger's side. Then the guy with the rosewood case got in the front passenger's side, putting the case between his shoes. I was told to lie on the floor of the backseat while my guard got into the backseat behind Primo and pressed the business end of his drawn weapon behind my left ear. I stayed there all the way to Joseph Danucci's house.
* * *
Zuppone left the two soldiers at the car in the driveway. He marched me in through the kitchen again, the rosewood case under one arm. Claudette Danucci was coming halfway down the hall to meet us as Primo pushed me past her and into the den.
Joseph Danucci sat in his desk chair like a heroin addict badly into the second day off the needle. Vincent Dani stood when I came into the room. Zuppone tried to close the door behind us, but Claudette managed to wedge her way into the room. Her husband got up, his voice a rasp going against the grain.
"Claudette, stay out of this."
"No."
"Goddammit, this is family business!"
"And I am family."
Claudette sat down on the edge of one of the leather chairs, folding her hands deliberately in her lap.
Joseph Danucci seethed, blinking in
a ragged cadence. Then he seemed to remember me.
"I get a telephone call from Primo, I don't believe what I hear."
"I heard his side of it. What he said was true."
Danucci sent the words out one at a time, dictating to a slow scribe. "You killed my father."
"I did."
The color shot upward through his face, every vein throbbing.
"And you got the gall to admit it? Before his sons?"
"I want you to hear it. All of it."
"Oh, we're gonna hear it, all right. And then we're gonna hear you make some other kinds of noises."
"I want you to hear it because I don't want to be looking over my shoulder the rest of my life."
"Won't be so long you should worry about it."
I said, "Can Primo open the case, show you what's in it?"
Danucci noticed the object under Zuppone's arm for the first time. "My mother's jewelry box?"
His attention on the box, Danucci seemed to lose a little of the rage.
Vincent Dani took advantage of the moment. "Primo, why don't you put the case on the desk and show us."
Zuppone still waited for the sign from Danucci. It came in the form of his dead father's abrupt nod as he sat back down.
Primo lowered the case to the desktop carefully. He opened it, then took out the two revolvers.
Joseph Danucci said, "What the fuck? I haven't seen those . .
Some distant memory worked at him. Worked over him. Vincent Dani looked at me. "What happened?"
"Your father asked me to come to him first if I found out who killed Tina. I did, and he treated me to a game of Guts."
Tonelessly, Joseph Danucci said, "Guts."
Vincent said, "Why would Pop play Guts with you?"
"Because he knew I'd figured out that he'd killed Tina."
Zuppone sucked in half the air in the room and charged for Joseph Danucci just as Danucci showed his teeth and came out of his chair at me. Primo cushioned the collision with his chest, then waltzed Danucci back to the chair, saying "Hey-ey-ey, Boss. Boss, easy, huh? Easy."
Danucci flailed past him, only to be confronted by his wife, who had stood and crossed to them. Claudette Danucci clouted her husband across the cheek as hard as I've ever seen a man hit by a woman. Zuppone, sure of the advantage and being as gentle as possible, dragged him back, finally letting him go ten feet from me. Danucci rubbed his cheek, staring at his wife.
Claudette Danucci said, "We listen to this man." She turned to me. "What you tell us?"
"Look in the case again."
Claudette went to the desk, the top of the case still up. She first looked in, then haltingly put her hand in, picking up the necklace like it was a sleeping snake. Her good eye squinted at it, the glass one lolling for the first time in its socket as the eyelid worked on its own.
She said, "How? How can this be?"
"Your father-in-law had the necklace. All the time."
"You're a fucking dead liar, Cuddy."
I looked at Joseph Danucci. "What do you think, I found the necklace on somebody else and took it to your father's house? Then planted it on him to cover myself for shooting Tommy Danucci? When he knew I wasn't carrying, when the gun he gave me had six live rounds in it and his a couple of blanks?"
The son plowed his hair with crabbed fingers. "Primo?"
Zuppone nodded. "I believe him on that, Boss."
Danucci's hand left his hair and began to rake at the back of his neck.
Vincent Dani said, "Why would my father kill his granddaughter?"
I looked at the lawyer. "Because she was going to expose him."
Joseph Danucci's head came up. "Expose him? For what?"
I got ready in case Primo wasn't. "When your father was recuperating from his heart attack, here in this house, he mistook your daughter for his wife and went to bed with her."
Zuppone was too jolted to move quickly enough. Joseph Danucci was on me before I got all the way up. Spluttering and gasping, he landed a wild left before I was able to get him into a clinch. I held on until I felt Primo clamp on his biceps and pull him off me and back to the other chair.
Danucci's voice was cracking as his legs kicked out for me.
"Cocksucker! You fucking, lying, cocksucking bastard. We're gonna keep you alive for days for that! You're gonna crawl to us, beg us to kill you."
Vincent Dani, in a very low voice, said, "It's true."
Everything stopped, everyone in the room turned to him. In a monotone directed at the carpet, Dani said, "Six years ago, a little after Pop went back home to his house, Tina came to me. At my office. She said . . . she said a friend of hers at school had a problem with . . . an uncle. She said this uncle had done some things to her friend, and was there anything a lawyer could do about it? I told her . . . I told her not likely. That if it had stopped, it would just be more trouble for her friend than it would be worth." Dani looked up at all of us. "It was good advice. That sort of matter rapidly becomes a can of worms once — "
But Claudette's hand, the one with the necklace in it, was already following through, cutting the words off his lips and a layer of skin off his cheek. "You know these things! You know my daughter tell you these things and you keep silent?"
Dani touched his cheek, gawking at the blood on his fingers. "Claudette — "
She stomped to her husband. "Look at me."
He didn't.
She shook the necklace in front of his face. "Look at me."
Danucci, mouth open, breathing badly, raised his head.
"My husband, this man live." She pointed to me. "This man tell us who kill our child. Your father still live, I kill him for my daughter. You kill this man, and I kill you."
Danucci grunted something.
"You kill this man, I kill you, my husband. I kill you with your food or I kill you in your sleep. But I kill you."
Claudette Danucci wheeled and stood in front of me, the lid of the glass eye quivering at half-mast. "Thank you."
She moved, at first quickly, then at a normal gait, out the door and toward the kitchen.
Vincent Dani had found a handkerchief and was holding it to his cheek. His brother was slowly getting his lungs used to regular volumes again. Zuppone stood just behind Danucci's chair, the hands on the back of the seat but close enough to the shoulders to push him back down.
The voice from the chair sounded like a man with strep throat.
"Primo?"
"Yes, Boss?"
"The fuck do we do here?"
The situation man said, "First we call Bootsy back at your father's house, get him to do the clean-up. Then we call Doctor T, get him to do the death certificate, saying he was the attending physician and your father's heart gave out. Then we get Richie and Paul over at the funeral home there, do their thing quick."
Danucci looked at me as though I were dirty dishes the morning after a party. "What about him?"
Zuppone said, "He dates a D.A., Boss. We clip him, we got more trouble, maybe all this about . . . Tina comes out. We let him live, he don't got no reason to tell nobody. Right, Cuddy?"
"All the insurance company needs is me saying the people at the modeling agency didn't have anything to do with it. I can tell the company that without getting into any of what we talked about tonight."
Danucci said, "Primo, you see to that?"
"Sure, Boss."
Danucci came back to me. He gave his father's abrupt nod, his voice steadier. "Get the fuck out of my sight."
* * *
Zuppone was walking me toward the kitchen when I heard it. A sound somewhere between nails being driven and glass being broken.
We entered the kitchen. Claudette Danucci was crying, trying to center what was left of the iolite necklace on one of the tiles in her countertop. She glanced at us with the good eye, then used a forearm to mop sweat and tears from her face as she raised a heavy skillet in that hand and smashed down again on the gems in the necklace, tiny shards skittering across the tiles
, some of which were broken from earlier blows.
We left her like that, hammering to dust the necklace that was the color of her dead daughter's eyes.
* * *
In the driveway outside the kitchen door, Zuppone told the two soldiers that Joseph Danucci just got word that his father had died of a heart attack. The soldiers, both of whom had seen me with the old man's riddled body, exchanged looks and nodded and said they were sorry to hear it. Primo told them to stay with the Danuccis in case they needed anything that night. As we drove toward Boston, he put a tape into the slot on the dashboard and settled in to piano and violin.
I waited ten miles before saying, "Thanks for backing me in there."
Zuppone kept his eyes on the road. A minute later he said, "I wasn't backing you. I was looking out for them."
That was it. Just the music and the tires slapping the junctions in the pavement as we dodged potholes on the way toward the bright lights.
When we got off the Expressway, Primo drove up Kneeland to where it becomes Stuart, then down Charles to Beacon. He stopped the Lincoln at the corner of Arlington, five blocks from my condominium building.
"Okay you get out here?"
I looked around but didn't see anything or anybody except a couple walking some kind of hairless terrier down the ramp from the river. The dog looked like a rat on a rope.
"I think I can find my way."
Zuppone spit his toothpick out the window and reached for a new one. "I'm gonna be busy next couple of days, taking care of things."
"Probably a good idea nobody sees us together anyway, given tonight."
Primo seemed to savor the fresh piece of wood in his mouth.
"You gonna need any help with the insurance thing there?"
"I maybe have an idea on that. Can I call you about it?"
"Make it from a pay phone, huh?"
Shallow Graves - Jeremiah Healy Page 24
