2 in the Hat (22 page)

Connie reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a piece of paper. “What I have here is a grand jury subpoena with your name on it, ma’am. It would require you to appear and bring whatever records I request.” Connie watched the look of concern deepen on her clear face. No makeup, just a hint of shine on her thin lips. Nobody liked going to court to testify. It was an inherent fear in people.

“I don’t think that’s—”

“Why don’t you let me look at the book today, here, on premises. If I find what I’m looking for, you’re all set. No need to testify. If, on the other hand, you feel uncomfortable with that, I can see you up the grand jury tomorrow at One Pemberton Square, downtown.”

“That won’t be necessary, Mr. Darget.” She handed him the book. “Let me find you someplace where you can look through this in private.”

“I may need to make some photocopies if I find anything useful.”

“Of course. Anything you need.”

Ten minutes later Connie was sitting in an empty teachers’ lounge going through the book. He didn’t want to miss anything.

There wasn’t much to miss. Zardino wasn’t the most popular guy. No pictures of him except for his yearbook portrait. Age had carved some measure of distinction into the puffy adolescent face. His features were more defined now, his eyes no longer downcast in teenage angst. The Richard Zardino Connie knew had made the best of his prison years, his face a map of his hard-earned successes. His eye, droopy in the old studio photo, now looked more like a trophy from a prison brawl.

But the text below his photo was what Connie had been looking for.

Connie heard the bell, followed by the sounds of kids shuffling from one class to the next, of shrill screams and laughter, the slamming of locker doors.

That quote. The other kids had things like
Life is what you make it
and
To be half the man my father is
. Zardino went for something from a classics class. At East Boston High? And that girl of his dreams. Was she real or imaginary?

A
lves waited outside the classroom in Austin Hall until her law
students had filtered out. Sonya Jordan stood at the front of the room packing her bag.

“Can I help you?” she asked without looking up.

“I’d like to talk with you about Mitch Beaulieu,” he said.

As she looked up, he saw a flash of recognition in her eyes. Then she went back to arranging her notebooks and textbook in her bag.

“I only need a few minutes of your time,” he persisted.

“I asked for a few minutes of
your
time three years ago. I tried to tell you about Mitch, to explain that he wasn’t capable of doing the things you believed he had done. I wanted to convince you that he was a good man, his only mistake was trusting whoever it was that set him up. You didn’t want to listen then. You, Detective Alves, treated me like some dumb bitch girlfriend in denial of her boyfriend’s criminal behavior.”

The anger in her voice stunned him into near silence. “I’m sorry,” was all he could manage.

“Sorry doesn’t cut it, Detective. You and your boss were so hell-bent on closing your case, putting it into the solved column, that you didn’t want to hear the truth. You had your man. All the better, a black man. Mitch Beaulieu was dead, and his suicide was as good as a confession. Now you come in here and think I’m going to speak with you?”

Sonya Jordan had the reputation as a fierce defender of her clients and as a brilliant but difficult lawyer. Alves had to get through to her. “I lost someone, too. One of the victims, Robyn Stokes. My wife Marcy and I grew up with her.”

Sonya Jordan looked away for a moment. “Marisela Alves is your wife?”

Alves nodded. “How do you know Marcy?”

“I represented Richard Zardino in his appeals. He and I make the rounds of the area colleges and law schools, letting students know about the injustices inherent in our criminal justice system. I speak with her classes at UMass Boston every semester. I didn’t know she was married to a cop.”

Alves smarted at the pejorative word.
Cop
. “Opposites attract.” Alves smiled.

Sonya Jordan didn’t. “What do you want from me?”

Alves knew what he had to say. And he knew that once he said the words out loud, they could never be taken back. No matter what the collateral damage. “I have to ask you to keep this conversation confidential, Ms. Jordan. At least for now. I think I might have been wrong about Mitch.”

I
t was not overly efficient, but it was the best Connie could manage
with his work schedule. A couple weeks ago, after he’d wrestled Zardino’s yearbook away from the prim little headmaster, he’d splurged and gone to Santarpio’s for pizza and a side of hot Italian sausage and peppers for lunch. While he was sitting there in one of the vintage 1950s booths in the dim shop that offered the best pizza in Boston, the idea struck. How close he was to Richard Zardino’s residence. He could easily park somewhere near the house and look for something. He wasn’t sure what, but he was pretty sure he’d know it when he saw it. Riding around with Greene and Ahearn and hanging around with Mooney and Alves had prepared him for the drag of a stakeout—not the take-a-bite-of-your-sandwich-and-there-comes-your-target-right-on-cue of television show stakeouts.

Since that day, any time Connie finished up early in court, he told his secretary that he had a meeting or that he was taking a long lunch. Minus the thirty-minutes-total drive time to Eastie and back, that gave him almost an hour and a half to watch Zardino’s house.

He used his early mornings and free evenings to sit behind the heavily tinted windows of the office ride. He was more than worried about his diet. Short on time, he was eating at every takeout place on the other side of the Mystic River—Spinelli’s, The Italian Kitchen, Katz’s Bagels in
Chelsea. But his healthy diet would have to take the hit. Mooney and Alves had spent the last couple weeks chasing down leads and getting nowhere.

It was early in the morning, over a plain bagel and a quart of skim milk, that he saw her. Small, dark-haired. She was coming out of the bungalow directly across from Zardino’s old colonial, turning to be sure the door behind her was locked. She adjusted the strap of her pocketbook and tossed her hair back over her shoulder. The early light touched her face. Small, heart-shaped. A potential dream girl.

By the time she reached the sidewalk, she had her keys in her hand. She opened the door of a pale gold Honda Civic. Connie jotted down the plate number, and glancing over his shoulder as he pulled out of his spot to follow her, he noted the street number next to the mailbox.

He almost lost her in Maverick Square and at the toll booths at the Sumner Tunnel, but fortunately she was a conservative driver. It was a tough merge onto Storrow Drive, but he kept focused on the gold Honda.

She pulled into a small, private lot on Newbury Street. Connie pulled over into a loading zone and watched as the young woman crossed the street. She used her keys and entered
Natalie’s
. Once he got out onto the street, he could see the shop window was filled with women’s clothing and accessories. He rapped on the glass door and waited.

He watched as the young woman stepped out from a rear office, waving her hands and pointing to the store hours stenciled on the door. She was wearing a sleeveless black dress cut just above the knee.

Connie held his badge up to the glass. “I need to speak with you,” he called in.

She stepped back into her office and emerged a moment later with a big sweater. Like a woman coming out of the ocean, wrapping herself in a towel to walk in front of a man, this young woman was modest, cautious. The black dress was for the benefit of the female shoppers, to show them how good they could look if they bought something from the shop. For talking to a strange man, the bulky sweater was good.

She came to the door but didn’t open it. “Can I see your ID again?” she said, holding her sweater closed protectively with one hand.

It was good to see that she was careful. He reached into his left breast pocket and showed her his badge again, then flipped it open to show his credentials.

“Why does the DA’s office want to speak with me, Mr…. Darget, is it?”

“If you would just let me in, ma’am, I won’t take more than a few minutes of your time. I just need to ask you a few questions.”

“I’m kind of busy right now.” She looked more frightened than irritated.

“If you’d like, we can talk up at the grand jury.” Connie removed a subpoena from the same breast pocket. “I was just trying to save you some trouble.”

She unlocked the door and let him in. He followed her into the back office and closed the door behind her.

W
hat the hell was
he
doing here, that prosecutor, Darget, showing up
at Natalie’s boutique before business hours?

Sleep watched as she came to the door. Under the ratty sweater, she was wearing her A-line shift, dark as night. One of his favorites. Darget had flashed his badge and she opened the door.

Darget was not on a shopping excursion. He didn’t wander into a shop on Newbury Street by coincidence. He was here on business. But it made no sense. How could Darget have found her? And, if he knew about her, what else did he know?

Sleep tried not to panic. If Darget knew about everything, he wouldn’t need to speak with her. So maybe he was on a fishing expedition. But how could he have known what pond to fish?

And he was by himself. He was a prosecutor, not a cop. He had to be conducting his own, unofficial investigation. Otherwise, he would have a detective with him. Sleep looked down at the newspaper folded on his lap. The smaller of the headlines read
PHANTOM GUN LINKED TO SIX GANG MURDERS.
He had read the article earlier. Sergeant Detective Ray Figgs was asking for the public’s help with the rash of shootings tied to one “community” gun—a .40 caliber that was apparently being passed around from one shooter to the next.

The main headline above the fold read
COPYCAT KILLER?
The authorities
were trying to provoke him, get him to say or to do something to prove he was the killer. Tickle his ego. Force him into a mistake. The article was accompanied by a photo of Wayne Mooney. The same detective who had been on the killer’s trail for ten years. The attempt to start a dialogue with the “Prom Night Killer” was amateurish. Transparent.

The only way Sleep would communicate with the police was with more bodies.

So if the police were pursuing this copycat angle to get the killer to talk, what the hell was Darget doing on Newbury Street talking to Natalie?

Conrad Darget, the ambitious prosecutor, was on his own.

And after Darget finished speaking with Natalie, he’d know too much.

T
he back room was tiny, little more than a walk-in closet. There had
to be another room, maybe in the basement, where they stocked their inventory. Natalie Fresco, as the young shop owner had introduced herself, sat behind a small metal desk with a computer monitor and little else on it. Connie took a seat across from her.

“How can I help you, Mr. Darget?”

“I’d like to speak with you about someone, one of your neighbors. Rich Zardino.”

“What about him?”

Despite the fancy setting on Newbury Street, her dark good looks and the sweater still wrapped tightly around her, Connie could sense a toughness in her, a streetwise sense. Somehow a kid from the neighborhood had managed to start a business on tony Newbury. “How long have you known him?”

“Since we were kids. We moved in across the street from his family the summer before Richie and I started high school.”

“How much do you know about him?”

“What do you mean? He’s a neighbor. People in the neighborhood say hi to each other. He’s a quiet guy. Lost both his parents. Lives alone in the family house.”

“Sounds like a normal guy.”

She studied his face. Assessing him. Their situation. “As normal as you could be, considering all he’s been through.”

“What’s not normal about him?”

She must have decided that what she knew wasn’t worth hiding from him. “When we were younger, he used to follow me everywhere.” She was quiet for a moment, maybe thinking about how she was talking to an authority. She quickly added, “He never did anything to hurt me, you know. He was just always…there.”

“When was this?”

“A long time ago. It didn’t start that way. When we first met we were pretty close friends. You might even say we went out with each other. But at that age, all that meant was we used to hang around and talk and hold hands. Then I told him that I just wanted to be friends. I told him that my parents didn’t like me dating him.”

“Was he okay with that?”