by Linda Barnes
“Errands around here? In this area?”
“What difference does it make?”
She didn’t like my line of questioning. Either she couldn’t remember what she’d told the cops or she was lying about the theft.
“Is there anything else?” she said.
I took out my copy of Roz’s drawing. I’d worked with her to soften the chin, widen the eyes, and I was pleased with the result. It looked like my client.
“Do you know this woman?”
There was a flicker in the brown eyes. “I don’t think so.”
“Are you sure?”
“She looks slightly familiar. But no, I don’t know her. Who is she?”
“It’s possible she might have been involved in the theft of your bag.”
“She’s so young.”
“Did she wait on you in a restaurant? Maybe a sales clerk? Or a patient?”
“Definitely not a patient. I’d recognize a patient.”
“Maybe you recognize this man?” I displayed the photo of my punk rocker.
“Good-looking,” she said. “That’s trouble right there.”
“You haven’t seen him either? Locally? At the hospital?”
“Sorry.”
“Does he look familiar? The way the woman does?”
“No. Her, now, she’s sort of average. I could have passed her on the street or in the grocery store, but him, I’d have noticed. And I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to ask you to leave now. My friends should be here any minute and I need a little time to set up.”
She glanced over her shoulder. In the dim hallway, I could just make out the square of a card table leaning against the wall.
“I’ll help,” I said.
“Oh, it’s no trouble.”
“Poker?” I said.
“Just a friendly game.”
“No gambling?”
“Nothing serious. Now, if there’s nothing else …”
“If you remember where you saw the girl, please call me.”
She hurried me out the door and I went without protest because I was busily recalling the contents of my Jessica’s bag, the mound of stuff she’d knocked to the ground when we first met, the bandanna and the Kleenex, the car keys. The deck of playing cards and the casino matches. Foxwoods matches. This Jessica Franklin played cards on her day off. She wore a charm bracelet hung with dice and cards. My Jessica had picked up the deck and shuffled it like a pro. Maybe the nurses’ aide had left her bag in the casino at Foxwoods. Maybe she didn’t want the police to know that; maybe gambling and drinking didn’t jibe with her idea of herself.
I zipped up my parka and pulled on my gloves. It was a possibility, but where did it lead? Suppose she had left her bag at Foxwoods. Suppose my Jessica had picked it up. They were—what?—two of how many hundreds of thousands who fled the strictures of puritan Massachusetts to gamble in Connecticut. It didn’t exactly narrow the field.
I made my way back to the Rent-a-Wreck, confident I’d find it since it wasn’t worth stealing. My cell buzzed as I opened the door and I played hunt-through-all-the-pockets till I found it.
“Hey,” Mooney said.
“Hey,” I replied warily.
“Look, your hit and run; the ME did the cut. Thought you might be interested to know it’s going in the books as a homicide.”
Either he’d tell me why or he wouldn’t. I froze with my hand on the car door.
“Whoever hit her wasn’t happy with once. Backed up and rolled over her again. Then again.”
“So you’re thinking he knew who she was?”
“He or she.”
“He,” I said. “Statistics.”
“Well, then, put it this way: I hope he knew her,” Mooney said slowly. “Because otherwise, we got some kinda nasty devil loose on the street.”
SEVENTEEN
The parking attendant shoved a cardboard stub in my hand and took off with the beater, tires screaming. I watched it fishtail around a corner. Whenever Sam pulls his Jaguar into a North End lot, the help hops to it and a parking space magically appears front and center. I didn’t think I’d ever seen him pay for the privilege, either. Maybe I should be trolling every parking lot in the North End, asking whether Sam had parked the Jag long-term. Someone could have driven him to the airport.
Maybe I would do just that, after I learned Jessica Franklin’s real name and rubbed the Macs’ noses in it.
In no other place does the Gianelli name carry greater weight than in Boston’s insular North End, but that day, that era, is swiftly drawing to a close. I glanced around at the few remaining construction barriers left over from the Big Dig. Attitudes and habits were changing. The generation of immigrants, with their old world alliances and values, was dying off. The new generation had both feet in America. The landscape had changed, too. From the 1950s to the 1990s, the North End, geographically cut off from the rest of the city, had retained a fortresslike separation. Now, with the old Central Artery buried underground, no physical barrier existed between the North End and downtown. The borders had been breached, the attractive real estate revealed to outsiders.
The ugly barrier had fallen and I found myself regretting it. There had been a solid reality to the old neighborhoods of Boston, to the ethnic divisions that made the North End what it was and Southie what it was; Charlestown and Dorchester, too. Soon, it would all be homogenized, a Disneyesque mainstreet community. Which, on the whole, was probably better than keeping to codes of silence, stoning school buses, spitting on outsiders, and defending organized crime.
I displayed both Roz’s drawing and the punk rocker’s photo to the maitre d’ at Mamma Vincenza’s. He didn’t recognize either, but he recognized me.
“Signore Gianelli, he doesn’t eat anymore? He doesn’t like our food? There’s a problem?”
“No problem,” I said, smiling in spite of myself at the public wringing of hands, the carefully tended white mustache, the exaggerated accent.
“I don’t know, the old families, they don’t come so often anymore, it’s always these new people. Trendy, trendy. They follow the restaurant critics, and that’s not so bad, but now we get all these people, they move to the city, have a good time, but they don’t eat. They want a doggie bag, to bring the food home. It’s everybody’s got to be so skinny, like a fashion model. They don’t order dessert. To come here and not eat the cannoli, what is that? You’ll live a little longer? Who cares? Who’d want to live so long?”
It was a set piece, an aria he’d sung to many others; maitre d’ was a position earned by style. You go to the North End to eat, you don’t want a young guy in shirtsleeves. You want an old-school maitre d’ in a suit, with the accent. This guy had put on his show so often, I wasn’t sure he knew where showmanship ended and reality began. I tried to urge him back on course.
“These people ate an early dinner Friday night.”
He peered at them blankly, placed a pair of reading glasses on his nose, and tried again. “They live in the neighborhood?”
“I don’t know.”
His tongue licked his lower lip. “Excuse me, please, but why do you ask?” What he meant was, Why should I tell you? Every once in a while I miss that old police credential, but this time I had a good response: The Gianelli pull, the mob grease.
“I’m sure Sam would appreciate it if you could help me out.”
The mob was more respected than the police.
“The eighteenth?” He retrieved a logbook from under the stand, thumbed through it. “Maybe they had a reservation?”
I shrugged.
He showed me the list. “For two?”
“Yes,” I said, although I didn’t know for sure.
“Only the Imperiolis for two. Them, I know.” He seemed happy. He hadn’t had to rat out any customers.
“I’d like to show the photo and the drawing to the staff.”
He sighed, weighing the inconvenience with the possible gain. The Gianellis were not to be crossed easily. �
��Come.”
I followed him through wide steel push-doors into a kitchen that smelled of sage and garlic. A man in a white close-fitting jacket chopped carrots into dice at a counter. Another stirred pots of simmering stock. A severe young woman at a desk clicked icons on a computer screen.
“Della,” the maitre d’ said, “the dinner servers are here yet?”
“Marcie’s here. Gregory, no. I’m working the shift, and Mikey, too.”
He turned to me. “I must go up front, but Della will help you. Please, don’t take too long. And tell Mr. Gianelli when you see him, that we miss him. He should come back. Anything on the menu, even from years ago, we’ll make special for him. He should call.”
I nodded my thanks, and tried not to think about Sam coming back. I wasn’t supposed to think about it. Whole half hours passed when I didn’t think about it. Maybe soon, whole hours would pass without the reality of his absence chiming like a clock.
“What?” Della said, still moving her mouse, a frown line etched deep in her forehead.
“I want to talk to anyone who might have served a couple at dinner last Friday.”
“Why?”
“Because your boss told you to help me out.”
“And that’s enough reason?” She glared at me, then shrugged her narrow shoulders. “Yeah, you’re right. It is.”
The cooks were listening in. I passed through clouds of fragrant steam, showed them the drawing and the photo, got no reaction.
“Let’s go out front. Maybe Greg will show the fuck up soon. I’m tired of doing his work, too.” The woman’s anger seemed to transfer itself easily from me to the hapless no-show Greg.
The front-of-the-house staff were busily draping linens over tabletops, shuffling silverware, goblets, and plates. One, standing around, glanced up guiltily and started moving at double time as soon as he saw Della.
“Listen up,” she said, with a mock bow in my direction. “You worked Friday dinner, form a line over here. The rest of you, keep plugging.”
There was a murmur but they obeyed. You’re a waiter, that’s what you do: move now, complain later.
“This lady has some pictures to show you. Let’s get her out of here quick so we can be ready to open.”
There were four waiters in line. Two quickly disavowed all knowledge. I thought they might be illegals.
The third said, “Yeah. I had them.” He was small and skinny, with earnest brown eyes.
“You’re sure?”
“Not all my tables have fights.”
“Lovers’ quarrel?”
“That I didn’t get. Maybe brother and sister, or business. No cuddle stuff, no handholding.”
“What were they arguing about?”
“I stand around and listen, Della kills me, okay?” He shot her a glance, kept his voice low.
“The photo looks like him?”
“Not him, so much, but her. Her, I remember. She came in late. She was upset, hardly ate.”
“Wait a minute. They didn’t come in together?”
“No. I thought he was a single. Then she was there, before I even got around to clearing the other setting, so that was cool.”
“Was the fight because she was late?”
“Like I said, I don’t know. Jeez, really, I don’t know, but maybe he was surprised to see her. Maybe he thought she’d canceled out and then she comes late, like a surprise?”
“What did she call him?”
“His name?”
I nodded.
He shook his head.
“Hers?”
“I’m getting a Jeannie, Janet, Julie, but I don’t know. It’s different names every night, you know?”
“Close your eyes.”
“Huh?”
“Think back. What did they order?”
“Pasta. The tortellini for her, the penne for the man. No wine. Tap water. Cheap date, if it was a date.”
“Who paid?”
“Cash. Ten percent tip, that’s it. And I’m thinking they split the bill, but I’m not sure on that.”
“You’re sure about the cash?”
He nodded.
Damn. I’d been planning to ask for the credit card receipt.
“Either of them a regular?”
“Never saw either one before. She hardly ate, I remember that. The plate was full when I took it away. But she didn’t complain.”
“And nothing about the conversation? The argument?”
“I think, maybe, once, when I brought more bread, they were talking about the weather, the night sky. Dark, shadows, something like that?”
“If the man comes in again, call me.” I handed him my card and a ten-dollar bill. “And the woman?” She won’t be in.
I thought it, but I didn’t say it. What good would it do?
EIGHTEEN
“Like I ever said I wanted to be a PI? My toes are nothing but blisters. I totally chose the wrong shoes.”
“I didn’t call about your feet, Roz.” Mamma Vincenza’s parking lot attendants had been a washout: They didn’t recall the Volvo; they didn’t know the whereabouts of the Gianelli Jag, and I was currently navigating a narrow North End street packed with pedestrians, delivery trucks, and through traffic.
“People, you ask ‘em stuff, they’re so fuckin’ rude. Like guys, they rate this woman right off, you know, is she a hottie? One to ten on the babe scale?”
“Tell me about the car,” I said.
“The car. Right. You know what the Registry’s like; they don’t do quick miracles, no wine into water.”
“Water into wine.”
“Whatever. Here’s the deal. I mean, you’d think it was a stolen car, like the cops said, but there’s a twist. I’ve got a contact says the plate was registered to a stolen car, all right, but a stolen Mercury, not a Volvo. So you got a switcheroo.”
A Mercury had been stolen; its plate had turned up on a Volvo.
“The Mercury get recovered?” I asked.
“No.”
I bit my lip. Could have been broken down for parts, sold out of state, burned, or driven off a pier. Possibly gotten rid of at the request of an owner who wanted to collect on the insurance.
The Volvo might have a brand-new plate by now.
“You want me to keep on it?” Roz said.
“If a standard check on the Merc’s owner doesn’t raise a red flag, give it up. Stay with the building. Any luck yet?”
“Zip, but it’s a monster place. I’m talking to anybody moves their lips. I’m waving the photo and the drawing, and I’m getting zip. Wanna help out?”
“I’ve got my own to-do list. Oh, one other thing, Roz. The guy was carrying a bag. That could jog somebody’s memory.”
“A grocery bag, a briefcase?”
“More like a big tote bag, maybe canvas, maybe leather.” I hadn’t seen it clearly.
“Like a salesman, with samples?”
“Could be. Bye.” I balanced a Styrofoam coffee cup in the rental’s rickety cup holder, checked my watch, and made my regular call to find out whether Paolina had expressed a desire for my company. If she had, I’d have needed to make a U-turn and a mad dash in the wrong direction—which I’d have done, no questions asked. But she hadn’t, so I was free to travel south to the Cape, a long trek and a gamble, but one that might pay off. On the small and insular Cape, people know their neighbors and notice strangers. The man who looked like the man in the photo might have friends or family there.
I took bumpy surface streets to the Dig tunnel, drove underneath downtown to the Southeast Expressway. Traffic was surprisingly light.
Most of the Cape had seen stunning changes in the past twenty years, new houses rising from the marshes, summer shacks torn down and replaced with mansions. Demand for services had increased, taxes had skyrocketed, housing prices had shot through the roof, and suddenly sons and daughters couldn’t afford to buy even the smallest house near the folks. It had taken years before the town councils caught on and called for
a halt to development before it became wholesale destruction.
Large-scale development never took root in Nausett, the small town just beyond Marstons Mills, the place I’d singled out as “Ken’s” most likely destination. If the man visited Nausett often, someone would know him. I could get his real name, find him, show him “Jessica’s” picture.
Until she had a real name, she’d stay where she was. She’d be Jane Doe with a number that depended on how many other unidentified women had turned up on the Boston streets this year. It didn’t affect the dead, being nameless; I knew that. But somewhere she had family. Somewhere somebody was worrying about her, searching for her. She was somebody’s daughter, somebody’s child. As pretty as Paolina, and now she was dead.
It was an easier drive in daylight, but the junker guzzled more gas than the cab had. Just past Marstons Mills, I pulled off the road at a small grocery and self-serve gas station combo. The store was bordered by a closed-for-the-season ice cream parlor and a vacant building with a FOR RENT sign. The wind whipped the scrubby pines across the street. Only stubborn plants took root here and survived.
A sign in the grimy window advised me to VOTE NO ON 6. A bell tinkled when I pushed open the door. The wind grabbed the door and slammed it into the wall.
The man didn’t look up at the sound of the bell, but the slam got his attention. He was as gray as the weathered shingles, as bent as the trees, but he pasted a game smile on his face and nodded to let me know he was there to help.
A cooler hummed at the back of the store. I rummaged through the bottles till I found a Pepsi. More caffeine. The candy bars near the front desk looked fresher than the prepackaged dusty snacks on the wire rack near the drinks. I grabbed a Milky Way.
“Healthy eating,” the grizzled man observed. “Good for you. I got nothing against junk. I like to see people enjoy what they eat. Plenty of time for rabbit nibbles when you’re old and can’t chew so good.” He had an unexpected voice, thin and reedy, but pleasantly soft.
“Quiet out this way,” I said.
“Mostly it is. Used to be, anyway. Back in the day, you were looking for quiet, you’d a picked the right spot. Up till the end of May, when all hell breaks loose.”
