The Penny Ferry da-2

by Rick Boyer

  "Look," he said, and pointed past me with his cigarette, which he held in his bandaged hand.

  A red Buick Regal had pulled into the lot and stopped next to the Scout. A man in a gray jumpsuit was getting out. He carried a dark-green canvas bag. It was Sam. He approached the Scout without ever looking up or looking around. He opened the front door, leaned in, flipped the bag into the back seat, stood up, pushed down the door-lock plunger, closed the door, tested it to make sure it was locked, and got back into his car. I could see no sign of the big dog. My heart sank. He was following the instructions to the letter. I couldn't understand the jumpsuit, except that if he felt he was being watched, the jumpsuit would signify his occupation as a messenger. The Regal backed. up, swept around, and was gone.

  As per the plan we all waited for ten minutes without moving a muscle. Nothing happened. No battle wagons filled with fuzz roared into the lot. No choppers descended. It was quiet; the plan was working.

  DeLucca had me start the car while Marty sauntered down to the Scout. He unlocked the door and got in. We saw him reach back for the moneybag, and seconds later the headlights flashed once. That meant that there was really money in the bag, not paper. We cruised out of the lot with the Scout right behind us.

  DeLucca had me go along at a pretty good clip, then turn off 2A onto a small dirt side road for about thirty yards and stop. He took the keys and left me cuffed to the wheel while he went back to see Marty. The kid's face looked funny.

  They opened the bag and set it on the hood of the Scout. DeLucca examined the loot while he kept looking over his shoulder toward the highway. He pawed through the satchel, flipping through wads and stacks of bills. He seemed more than satisfied with the haul. If he were an ordinary guy, without a string of grisly murders and betrayals to account for, I might have reason to expect that this fortune I got for them would make him spare us. But more and more I realized he would not. He couldn't.

  He now had his hands on enough money to live for months without risking his neck or even showing himself. So the lead time for his escape had become that much more important. They crept down to the highway and watched it for a while to see if there was a tail. There wasn't. DeLucca got back in, handed me the keys, and told me to drive home. As I swung the car around I was hoping we wouldn't get there. Instead of getting the gang off our back, the sack of money was rushing the final act. I should never have called Sam, but now it was too late.

  We pulled up the drive and into the turnaround in back. Vince came out the back door and met us on the flagstone terrace. He was scared. He pointed down the slope at the orchard and woods beyond the low stone wall.

  "There was shooting there ten minutes ago," he said to DeLucca. "I heard a gun, firing fast."

  "Well?" DeLucca asked me. I shrugged.

  "A lot of kids hunt rabbits down there with four-tens," I said. "It's illegal, but they do it."

  "I don't hear nothing," DeLucca said. "Let's get inside."

  Vince followed us, but not before glancing back at the woods and apple trees.

  I heard Mary crying as soon as we entered the back door. They unlocked the cuff that held her to the radiator and she clung to me. The episode in the Lowell mill yard flashed back into my mind for an instant, and I couldn't believe that what was happening to us was related to that incident, with the stranger picking away at the old factory wall. I gripped her tightly and spoke to her. I told her we only had to wait it out and it would be over and everything would be back to normal. I was lying. I don't think she knew it. They cuffed. us together and had us sit on the couch while Vince got one of Mary's raincoats and some casual shoes. He found a scarf too, and a pair of dark glasses for her to wear. They got a medium-weight jacket for me, saying I'd have a long walk later that night.

  Maybe they weren't going to kill us after all, I thought. But I didn't really believe it.

  They counted out the money on the coffee table. DeLucca moved fast, looking at his watch. He had trouble with some of the bills owing to his bandaged hand, so he let Vince do it. Marty, the kid, was hopping up and down on the seat, grinning from ear to ear.

  "Stop it," said DeLucca.

  But the kid kept it up. His eyes were shiny, and I noticed a string of saliva snake down out of his mouth.

  "I said stop it."

  Marty stopped, and tried to wipe his mouth with the back of his hand, which didn't seem to be working right. He quieted, then rocked to and fro on the couch making sucking sounds. DeLucca and Vince looked at each other. Vince scowled, looking at the kid.

  "When it rains it pours, eh? Why now?"

  "It won't work," said DeLucca softly. The kid didn't hear him.

  The money was divided into two equal piles. DeLucca and Vince each took one.

  "Where's my- un?" said the kid, who was bouncing again. His teeth were clicking. He took out the four-inch sheath knife and tapped the blade into the table. His tongue was hanging out. He looked at Mary and managed a laugh. Then he looked sideways at the other two men and tried not to. He stood up and wobbled, then hummed.

  "Where's mine?"

  "Vince's got it, Marty. He'll give it to you when you get to the room. Now come on, Mrs. Adams, time to get your coat on."

  They unfastened her cuff, leaving it dangling from my left wrist. Mary put on her coat, shoes, scarf, and dark glasses. They had me put on the jacket and we started toward the back door. Then Marty started to bleat like a sheep. He took out the knife again and Vince grabbed it. DeLucca walked up to him and slapped him across the face. That seemed to straighten him up.

  "I promise I won-" he began. "I promise… I prom-ise."

  DeLucca hit him again. The kid bounced back against the kitchen wall. He was gurgling, and his face was slack. DeLucca looked at his watch. Vince had the door open. I heard the dogs barking outside. DeLucca told him to shut it and led the two of us back to the hallway, where he passed the chain from my handcuff through the banister railing and fastened Mary to the other end. I would have tried to whang him with one end of the handcuffs if Mary hadn't been there. As it was, Vince stayed three feet away with his pistol pointed right at me.

  "Get him down the basement," DeLucca said softly to Vince.

  Vince went over to the kid, who was leaning in the corner, and put his long arm over his shoulder, comforting him. He patted him on the back hard, just like old buddies. He led him over to DeLucca, who put his arm around him too. They helped him along. I heard the kid crying. We could just peek around the hall corner and see the three of them standing at the head of the basement stairs. Then Marty realized what was happening. He stared into that black hole and bawled, grabbing the edge of the door frame with hands that didn't work.

  "Come on, Marty. Be good. I just want you to sit down on the floor," said DeLucca softly, as one rebukes a child.

  They hauled at him but he wouldn't budge. He still had enough strength and control left to hang on and keep from going down that dark stairway.

  "We just want you to sit down on the floor and rest," DeLucca repeated softly, tugging at the kid's waist.

  "Puuuu-leeeeze!" wailed Marty, his feet pointed out and his knees bowed like a toddler's. His lower half was shaking violently now.

  "Mister Deeee-loooo… Deeeee-"

  Vince took his pistol and struck Marty's hands, which slid away from the door frame. The two men helped the kid down the stairs. We heard him blubbering and wailing. Then a door slammed shut and everything was quiet. I looked at Mary. Her teeth were clenched tight on her lip. There was a little blood. I kicked at the railings with my feet. and knees with all I had, and finally managed to break two of the oak uprights, which weren't very thick. I yanked them out of their sockets, leaving a wide hole under the banister.

  "Hurry, Charlie. Hurry!"

  I pulled Mary underneath the banister. We were still fastened together. I ran down to the front door and yanked. No go. I flipped the bolt; it still wouldn't open. It had been deadbolted. As we went back down the hall and into the kit
chen we heard a sound beneath us. A muffled explosion. Then fast feet on the stairway, coming up.

  I had the back door open now and we went through it. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Vince in the kitchen raising his arm. His hand held a pistol.

  We were running across the terrace when I saw a piece of the brick wall fly away. I jumped over the wall and yanked Mary after me. She was making little high sounds. Vince was raising the pistol again when I pulled Mary off to the right and began to circle the house. I knew we'd never make it across the open meadow to the woods.

  But around the first corner we stopped dead, looking right down the muzzle of DeLucca's automatic. His meaty chest and shoulders were heaving as he panted. He'd"gone around the other way and cut us off. We heard Vince coming up behind us. I grabbed Mary tight and shut my eyes, waiting.

  I felt a rap on the head and opened my eyes. I was half-stunned. I looked up and saw Vince grab the chain that held us together. DeLucca, panting loudly, was behind us, pushing the gun muzzle into our backs.

  "You blew it, shithead," he growled. "Now you're gonna have to go down the cellar."

  Again I felt tingling around my head and mouth. The ground shook under my feet. I was afraid to look at Mary.

  "Let her go. Have Vince take her to the motel."

  "Too late," he said, smacking the back of my head with the barrel. I felt a warm trickle down the left side of my neck from the previous blow. We were back around to the terrace again. The kitchen doorway was only twenty feet away. Once they had us through that door we'd never get out again. I decided to shout for help at the top of my lungs before all hope was gone, and had just taken the biggest lungful of air I could manage when I heard a gigantic roar. Instantaneously I felt a stinging on my right cheek, and the arm tugging the handcuffs went slack.

  Next to us, Vince was falling. His head had come apart into a big red wet cloud. And part of that cloud was stuck all over my face, stinging it.

  DeLucca had his pistol up. He was pointing it at a huge dark shape that was flying at his head. The thing hit him with a deep rumbling snarl and threw him to the ground. Popeye had him by the upper arm, right near the shoulder. He had his big steam-shovel mouth wrapped around DeLucca's upper torso and was shaking it, tearing it. DeLucca couldn't hold the gun; nobody could have. Then the dog was off him and waiting by in a crouch. DeLucca sat up for a second, then lunged for the pistol and I brought it up. But before he could fire the roar came again and he was flung backward, spinning around like a top. He lay on his stomach and didn't move. There was motion in the yew trees, and Sam Bowman came walking toward us, the big silver revolver held up in his hand. He came up and looked down at Carmen DeLucca, who was now moaning and flipping his left arm on the grass like a seal pup. The big soft-nosed slug had left his back just below the left shoulder blade. A lot of his back was gone. I peered down at him and could see a shiny pink balloon sliding around in the gore beneath his splintered ribs. It was his lung.

  Sam shoved his big piece back into its shoulder holster and zipped up his Windbreaker. He was no longer wearing the jumpsuit. He reached down and laid his large coffee-colored hand on Mary's cheek.

  "How ya doin'?" he asked. And she began to bawl.

  I was certain DeLucca was dying. I thought he knew it too. Sam went through the pockets of the former Vince and retrieved the keys to the cuffs; he had us free in a wink. I crawled over to DeLucca and looked at his face. The lizard eyes fluttered, then opened. Carmen DeLucca stared at the blades of grass inches from his eyes and the terrace wall behind them. The big wound in his back began to bubble and sputter.

  "Carmen. It's Doc Adams. Remember?"

  A nod.

  "You don't have very long. Tell me what the negatives showed. Hear me, Carmen? What did the pictures show?"

  A faint shake of the head.

  "You don't know?"

  Headshake.

  "Who hired you to get them? It wasn't Paul Tescione, was it?"

  Headshake.

  "Then who was it, Carmen? Who?"

  I heard a thin rasp of expelled air. I bent over and put my ear close to his mouth. He said a name in a barely audible voice. Then there was a long sigh. When I next looked at the cruel black eyes they were open and staring. I watched them and the face for a minute. There was no motion, no change, nothing. Carmen DeLucca was dead. But not before he had told me who it was who'd hired him to snatch the Sacco-Vanzetti papers. I looked up from the corpses and turned my head around. Mary and Sam were sitting quietly on the terrace chairs while Popeye sat looking up at Mary and whining. I had been alone with DeLucca when death overtook him. Nobody had overheard him tell me the name. That was awkward.

  It was especially awkward because it was no ordinary name. I knew if I mentioned that name nobody, not even Mary, would ever believe me. Ever.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  With the tension and the adrenalin rush worn off, Mary and I collapsed in fatigue. After I took her to the hospital to be treated is for several small gashes on her breasts- the sad result of Marty's warped idea of "getting fresh" with a woman- I took her home in time to meet Joe out in back. He stared and stared at DeLucca's body. He thanked Sam over and over again. He was one glad cop.

  "Except I'm kicking myself in the ass for leaving so suddenly last night. I should've thought of the possibility he'd sneak out here. Anybody with the balls and cunning to slip back into Lynn and grease Johnny Rizzo would try anything. But it seems to us that it was that psycho kid who did all the wet work. He sure loved to hurt people."

  "Well I'm not going to miss him one bit. He may have been ill, but I don't feel sorry for what happened to him. I'd hate to think what he would have done to Mary if he'd had the chance. As it happens, she's probably not even going to have any marks when she heals up. Jeez, I bet Moe has a field day when I describe Marty to him."

  Joe's men had found Marty wedged up behind my workbench with a hole behind his ear. Then they carted the three of them off in a meat wagon. Good riddance. Joe said he guessed the whole thing was as good as wrapped up.

  "Not quite," I said, leading him into the study and closing the door behind us. I sat him down and told him the name of the person who had hired Carmen DeLucca.

  "What? Where did you get that load of shit?"

  "From DeLucca himself. His dying words. You're the only one I've told. I didn't think you'd believe me."

  Joe walked over to the window and looked at the dogwood- petals that littered the lawn. He had his hands thrust deep into his pants pockets, and he rocked back and forth on his heels.

  "That's a big name, Doc. Not as big as the Kennedys or Saltonstalls, but big. The only thing I can't figure out, assuming he was even involved, is why he'd want the papers."

  "Could you question him?"

  He spun around. "Are you kidding? Based on something you overheard? No way."

  "Isn't there a rule about deathbed confessions?"

  "Yes. A dying declaration is admissible evidence since it is assumed to be, as the deceased's last words, the truth. But dying declarations almost always concern something the dying man himself did or didn't do, or else the identity of the man's assailant."

  "So it means nothing?"

  "Oh no. It means a lot. A hell of a lot. I just don't know what yet."

  The door burst open and Brian Hannon entered, shaking his right fist like a crapshooter. The fist emitted a metallic rattle.

  "Thanks for knocking, Brian," said Joe.

  "You're entirely welcome… lieutenant."

  He held his fist up under our noses and opened it. Resting on his wide palm were four ammo rounds as big as lipsticks. They were Sam's forty-Five-caliber long-Colt cartridges.

  "Seen these?" asked Brian. Joe picked one of them up and looked at the nose. He saw the snowflake cuts hacked across the lead.

  "Well hush my mouth," said Joe.

  "Great, Brindelli. just great. Know what it looks like to have dumdums used in my jurisdiction? You just wait: the city council
's gonna be on my case like cheddar on Ritz."

  "You gotta admit they do a job," said Joe.

  "Don't you be a wise-ass. You been hanging around him too long," said Brian, jerking his thumb at me. He bent over and pointed to the top of his head, which had been shaved and bandaged. "See this? Seven stitches on account of your friend the doctor. Now what do I do about Sam?"

  "Nothing. If it weren't for him my brother-in-law and sister would be dead."

  "That's what I mean. Take 'em. Lose 'em someplace. Though God knows the medical examiner's going to ask a lot of questions. jeez, you see those slobs? Look like they were hit by mortars."

  Joe slipped the rounds into his coat pocket and turned to me.

  "How'd he do it, Doc? How'd Sam get back here for the ambush?"

  "After he took the call and got the money from the safe, he took a couple of minutes to study a road map. Seeing that the drop was on 2A, he thought there was a chance something was happening here. It was a lucky guess. He knew he couldn't tail us without being noticed. He got a friend of his to drive the Regal to the Mobil station near 128 and Route 2. He followed with the dog and the cycle. They met at the gas station, where Sam took the Regal to make the drop. He wore a hat and a jumpsuit so he could change his appearance fast. He went up 128 to 2A, which is less than a mile, and into the lot. After the drop he hustled back to the station, doffed the clothes, and sped along Route 2 into Concord and over here by the back way. With the bike he could cut right across the orchard, which he did. That's what Vince heard. It wasn't shooting, it was Sam's old Honda backfiring. Hell, he and the dog were staked out in position behind the far wall even before we got back."

  Brian looked at me. "I think you owe him dinner," he said. "And Joe, don't forget to ditch those rounds."

  ***

  Next day, as I fitted the shiny prongs of my Hu-Friedy forceps over the crown and shank of a deeply impacted third molar, the idea came to me. I was struck by how the metal of the instrument obscured the tooth completely. The metal surrounded the object, hiding it. The metal surrounded the object… hiding it…