by Ray Daniel
A little warning would have been nice. A little heads-up from my friend Bobby. Maybe I don’t take Maria sledding on the day her dad was going to be arrested. Maybe I let her stay home and say her good-byes or something. I rolled this around, considered my responses to Bobby. They all sounded petulant and whiny, so I stuck with silence.
“You knew this day had to come,” Bobby said.
I pointed out the window. “Oh look, a beagle. You don’t see many of them in the city.”
“Sal is a crook.”
“Loyal dogs, beagles.”
“He murdered his best friend.”
I turned to Bobby. “Yeah? Who?”
“Marco Esposito.”
The murder of Marco Esposito had floated over and through Christmas dinner like a ghost. Sal was off kilter. Smiling and glad-handing the other Rizzos when directly engaged, but drifting into a dark place as soon as he was left alone.
“It’s a tragedy,” Sophia had said. “Sal loved Marco.”
“Any idea who killed him?” I’d asked.
The omerta kicked in and Sophia had said, “I’m going to bring Sal some Yule log.”
Then she sat in Sal’s lap, kissed him on the forehead, and fed him bits of chocolate cake. He hugged her close, resting his head on her bosom. I had turned away to give them privacy, and had engaged Ben on the relative strengths of the Red Sox and Yankees.
Bobby inched his way around a double-parked car. The rule of law was a faint memory when it came to parking in the North End. He said to the air, “You fuckers double-park even after a snowstorm?”
“Sal didn’t kill Marco,” I said.
“Oh, really?” Bobby asked. “How do you know?”
“Why would he kill his best friend?”
“Because that best friend was boffing his wife.”
“That’s a terrible thing to say about Sophia.”
“That’s what we heard.”
“Well, you shouldn’t repeat it. Where are you getting this shit?”
“We have our sources.”
“Your sources are wrong.”
“We’ll see.” Bobby had wormed his car past the blockage. Now a tourist stood in the middle of the street with his face in a map. Bobby blasted him with the horn. The guy jumped against a parked car.
As Bobby slid past, I rolled down the window and said, “Welcome to Boston, sir.” Cold blasted me as I rolled the window back up.
“Almost there,” Bobby said.
“Maria better be home.”
Bobby said, “She’ll be home.”
“And if she isn’t? How do I tell Sophia that I lost her?”
“She’ll be there.”
“How do you know?”
Bobby said nothing.
“Oh, I get it,” I said. “Your sources. Is this the same guy who told you Sal killed Marco?”
Bobby said nothing. I ran over the morning again. Sledding, Sal, Maria, police. Wished to hell that I hadn’t been on the Common this morning.
“You couldn’t have given me a little warning?” I said.
“No,” said Bobby. “I couldn’t give you a warning.”
“Afraid I’d tell Sal?”
“It’s just not done.”
“That’s bullshit.”
The car hit a pothole on Hanover Street, bouncing and splashing slush against a fire hydrant.
“What do you mean, bullshit?” asked Bobby.
“If it was such a secret, how did Sal know something was up? How did a guy in Sal’s crew know to come and grab Maria?”
“I didn’t know you were going to take Maria sledding.”
“If you knew, you would have told me?”
Silence.
I said, “That’s what I thought.”
Bobby pulled to a stop behind another double-parked car. I opened my door.
“Where are you going?” Bobby asked.
“It’s faster to walk.” I opened the back door, pulled out the sled. “She had better be there.”
“She’ll be there.”
I closed the door, climbed through slush to the Hanover Street sidewalk. Hanover cut through the North End’s D, running from the Greenway to the harbor. It was a street designed for horses but forced to accommodate cars. Brick buildings loomed above me on either side, hearkening back to a century ago, when Italian immigrants had raised goats in stairwells.
The looming worsened as I turned down Salutation Street. Calling it a street was a kindness; it was more of an alley. One skinny car could travel its length as long as nobody was standing on the curbstones that pretended to be sidewalks. Sal lived here in an unfathomably small condo. He and Sophia loved it, called it cozy. Getting anywhere during Christmas dinner had involved solving a Rubik’s Cube puzzle of chairs, legs, walls, and bodies. Crawling over someone’s lap to get to the bathroom created a sense of community you didn’t get in the dining room of a suburban Colonial. Maybe that’s what cozy meant.
The street telescoped away, drawing the door to Sal’s apartment with it. The conversation was going to go two ways, neither great. If Maria was there, then I’d be mad as hell at having her run off and leave me behind. If Maria wasn’t there, then—well, then I didn’t know what, exactly. How did you tell a mother that you lost her child?
I stopped in front of Sal’s door, rang the bell to his top-floor apartment, and realized that I’d probably be the first one to tell Sophia about Sal’s arrest. Aw, crap! How would I break that news? “The police took Sal. Were you boffing Marco?” Probably not the best tactic.
I rested my hand on the doorknob, waiting for the lock to buzz so I could push through.
No buzz.
Pressed the doorbell again. Perhaps Sophia was busy yelling at Maria for leaving me standing in the Common like an idiot. That would make me feel better.
No buzz.
I looked down Salutation Street. Despite the bright sun sinking in the west, the street was dark. How did people live in perpetual shadow? Rang the bell again, but didn’t expect a buzz.
Didn’t get one.
Of course there was no buzz. It was ridiculous for me to expect that I’d be the first to tell Sophia. The woman was connected. She probably got phone calls five minutes after the arrest. She was probably at the police station right now. I was standing here like a dope holding a sled. Might as well drop it off.
I buzzed the first floor and peered into the doorway. The first-floor apartment’s door opened. Mrs. Iacavelo peeked out. I waved and pointed at Maria’s sled. I knew Mrs. Iacavelo from last night’s Christmas dinner; she had climbed to the top floor to pay her respects to her landlord. Mrs. Iacavelo and I drank an espresso together and it had turned out that she knew my mother.
“Mrs. Iacavelo, could you open the door?” I called through the glass.
She looked at me and knitted her brow. Forgotten already.
“It’s me! Tucker. Angelina’s boy. We met at Christmas.”
Mrs. Iacavelo called back, “I can’t let you in. I’ll tell Sophia that you’re here.”
“She’s not answering her bell.”
“Then she’s not home.”
“Please, Mrs. Iacavelo. Just let me drop Maria’s sled by their door.”
“Leave it.” Mrs. Iacavelo turned to go.
I called through the door, trying to draw her back. “I don’t want it to get stolen. Sal would be pissed.”
At the mention of Sal’s name, the old woman stopped. She shook her head, turned back, and opened the door. “Well, if you’re just going to drop the sled, then that’s fine. But you come right back down.”
“Thank you. I’ll be right back,” I said.
The staircase spiraled up, steep and narrow, its wooden banisters polished smooth by a century of hands. Cooking smells wafted down the stairs. Someone in
the North End was always cooking something. I wound around the staircase, bonking the sled behind me. Sal lived in the North End in a penthouse apartment, just as I lived in the South End in a penthouse apartment. “Penthouse” meant that we both climbed lots of stairs to reach our front door, but we had access to sunlight.
The cooking smell got stronger as I spiraled past the second floor, and stronger still as I climbed. I turned the last corner. Light spilled into the hallway through Sophia’s open front door. The cooking smell condensed into something recognizable. Coffee. Burnt coffee.
The open door revealed Sal’s living room, still a mess from yesterday’s dinner. The Christmas tree held pride of place in the corner that was normally reserved for the television. The tree was off, its lights dully reflecting the sunlight in the windows. Coffee was definitely burning.
I called out, “Sophia?”
I inched my way around the extended dining room table, dropped the sled with the other gifts at the base of the tree. Was Sophia hiding?
“Sophia? It’s Tucker!”
Nothing.
The coffee smell emanated from the kitchen. An aluminum Bialetti coffeemaker stood on the gas stove over an open flame. Its lower reservoir had boiled dry long ago and would have glowed cherry red if it weren’t for the coffee roiling and sputtering in the top reservoir. I turned off the gas and put the Bialetti in the sink to cool.
The house had to be empty. Sophia would not have made a mistake like this. She must have gotten the phone call and gone to the police station. Perhaps the guy who dropped off Maria told her, and they left the door open and the coffee forgotten. Unlikely.
The two bedrooms were down the hall from the kitchen. Condos like this had crazy floor plans, the result of merging Honeymooners-
like two-room apartments into one big living space. Maria’s room faced the kitchen. I peeked inside. The room exhibited the post-dervish mess of a little girl rushing to go sledding while Sophia had called out, “Maria, get moving. Tucker is waiting.”
I turned from Maria’s doorway and peeked into the master bedroom, embarrassed at the thought of glimpsing something intimate. Sunlight poured through big windows at the foot of the bed. I stepped into the immaculate room. Immaculate but for a water glass on the floor, and a woman’s shoe tossed against the wall.
Took another step. Saw the bed. Sophia lay on the bed, staring at the ceiling, her hands clutching at something that had gouged her throat as it strangled her.
A clock ticked on Sal’s dresser. I stepped into the room, stood at the bed. Sophia’s eyes bulged. Red dots speckled her face, and her tongue rested against her lower lip. My breath shortened. Sophia’s fingers rested on Sal’s Virgin Mary tie. The murder weapon.
I looked around the room. Little was disturbed. A crocheted afghan had been kicked to the floor. Sophia’s other shoe rested on top of a dresser. Kicking? I reached down, drew Sophia’s eyes closed. They slid open again. Bile rose in my gut. I ran to the bathroom, hunched over the toilet, vomited, and dialed 911.
Four
Technicians and uniformed cops bustled about as they converted Sal’s home into a crime scene. Tape was strung, pictures were taken, and questions were asked—lots of questions, over and over again. The first cop, a uniformed guy, asked me what had happened. I told him that Sophia was dead and Maria was missing. The second cop, another uniformed guy, asked me what had happened. I told him Sophia was dead and Maria was missing.
The third cop didn’t wear a uniform. He wore a food-stained green parka with a fur-lined hood, a sweater that looked as if it had been knitted by a vengeful grandmother, and a fleece-lined plaid baseball cap with ear flaps. His name was Lieutenant Lee and we had history—annoying history.
Lee flipped back the parka hood and pulled off the baseball cap, letting his limp black hair splay itself across his forehead. He sat across the dining room table from me and asked, “What happened, Mr. Tucker?”
I said, “Sophia is dead and Maria is missing.”
Lee wrote in his book. “Do you have more details?”
“Sophia is dead, Maria is missing, and it’s getting dark.”
“Did you touch anything in here?”
“I moved the coffeemaker into the sink, tried to close Sophia’s eyes, and threw up in the toilet.”
“So those are the only places we’ll find your fingerprints?”
“I had Christmas dinner here last night.”
“Oh.”
“And I was here this morning to take Maria sledding.”
“So you knew the victim.”
“Of course I knew the victim, Lee. What do you think I do, wander the North End breaking into apartments and looking for bodies?”
“I’m just establishing facts.”
“The fact is that Maria is missing and her mother is dead. I can’t do anything about her mother being dead, but I sure as hell intend to do something about her being missing.”
“We’ll get to that.”
“You’ll get to that? When will you get to that?”
“Well, I won’t get to that. I will be solving this murder. But someone will get to that.”
“Well, who’s going to get to it?”
“The Boston Police Department. Now, did you have any arguments with Sophia Rizzo?”
“Arguments?”
“Disagreements.”
“What are you talking about? No. She was my cousin’s wife, she had me over to Christmas dinner. What would we fight about?”
“And you were alone with her here in the apartment?”
“No, Lee—Jesus Christ. I just—”
“There’s no need to swear.”
“I’m not swearing.”
“You just swore.”
“Oh, for God’s sake.”
“That’s a little better. Why don’t you start at the beginning?”
I told Lee about my morning, and about how Bobby Miller had said Maria would be here.
Lee listened to my story and said, “So you have an alibi for the murder.”
“Ahh—yeah. Yeah, I have an alibi, because a Boston cop stuck a gun in my nose. Can we get back to Maria?”
“Do you know anyone who would want to harm Sophia?”
“Who would want to harm Sophia?”
“I wasn’t here for Christmas dinner, you were.”
“Well, nobody at Christmas dinner wanted to harm Sophia. Look. Who gets my statement on the fact that Maria is missing?”
Lee sighed. Flipped a page in his book. “How long has she been missing?”
“Almost two hours.”
“Did she wander off?”
“No, she got in a car with one of Sal’s crew.”
“How did you know this man was one of Sal’s crew?”
“He wore a Bruins jacket.”
“A Bruins jacket in Boston? That doesn’t really narrow things down. But, assuming you’re right, Maria is with a friend of the family, of sorts. If this were my case, and it is not, I would start by talking to Pistol Salvucci.”
“Who’s he?”
“One of Sal’s captains. He is violent, unpredictable, and something of a sociopath. I’m sure he’d be helpful. Now can we get back to my questions?”
“Fine, what questions?”
“You are an IT person, correct?”
“I’m a computer scientist, a programmer.”
“A hacker?”
“A white-hat hacker, sometimes.”
“Did you ever do hacking work for Sal?”
“What? Why would—”
The door to Sal’s apartment opened and a guy walked in. Tall with a day’s growth on a thick, blue five o’clock shadow that reached nearly over his cheekbones. He saw Lee and flashed credentials.
“Lieutenant Lee, I’m Special Agent Frank Cantrell,” said the gu
y.
Lee said, “We are in the middle of an interview, Agent Cantrell.”
“I need Tucker.”
“I’m not done with him.”
“Yes, you are. Say good-bye.” Cantrell pointed at me and snapped his fingers in a “get up” motion.
I had had enough of Lee, so I stood.
Lee said, “Agent Cantrell, with respect, I just need a few minutes.”
“Get them another time.” Cantrell took me by the elbow and started to guide me to the door.
I shook him off and walked. We circled down the stairs and out into the cold street.
Five
It was only a quarter past five o’clock, but Boston’s winter sun keeps bankers’ hours and had set an hour ago. Salutation Street presented a long, dark valley of icy slop. I snapped my coat shut against the cold.
Cantrell asked, “Where’d you park?”
“I’ll take the T.”
“Good. We’re going in the same direction.” Cantrell headed up Salutation back to Hanover.
I watched him.
He turned. “Well, c’mon,” he said.
“We’re not going to your office?”
“Informal conversation. Just you and me.”
I fell in next to Cantrell, walking down the middle of the narrow street. “We don’t have time for this,” I said. “We need to find Maria.”
Cantrell said, “We’ll get to Maria.”
“Maria wasn’t at home. Bobby said she’d be home.”
“Bobby who?”
“Bobby Miller.”
“Why would Agent Miller talk to you about Maria?”
“Because I was responsible for her. I took her to the Common.”
“Yeah,” said Cantrell. “I find that part interesting.”
We hit Hanover, turned, and headed toward Haymarket, walking the reverse of Bobby’s drive.
“Do I need a lawyer?” I asked.
“A lawyer? Why? We’re just two guys talking, figuring out what happened.”
“What do you think happened?”
“I don’t think anything. I know that you took Maria out of her house just in time for her mother to be murdered.”
“That’s just a coincidence,” I said.
