Invasion of Privacy - Jeremiah Healy (33 page)

Junior glared, the mottling spreading upward and
breaking like a wave over his features. "Primo, this dickhead
knows he's gonna die here he don't tell us what we want, and you say,
'He don't lie, Mr. Ianella?' What's the matter, all those pimples
spoil your brain too?"

The rage ran visibly through Zuppone. "Mr.
Ianella—"

"Shut the fuck up, pizza-face."

Cocozzo said, "Boss . . ."

"You too, Coco, for chrissake. Give me his
piece."

"His piece?"

"His gun, the one you took off him. I mined my
loafers in this fucking pigsty, I don't want to wreck the suit too,
playing butcher boy with those fucking knives."

Cocozzo reached into a jacket pocket, sending the
revolver to the younger man in an easy, underhand toss. When Junior
caught it, he moved toward my bench, hefting the gun rather than
pointing it. Cocozzo shifted with him, so as to have a clear field of
fire toward me.

Ianella said, "Coco thinks you're lying, I think
you're lying, no matter what this fucking stooge here believes."

Primo made a noise, deep inside.

Junior turned to him. "You got something to say,
pizza-face?"

Cocozzo said again, "Boss . . ."

"Shut up! Answer me, pizza-face, you got
something to say?"

"Mr. Ian—"

The quick cuff to the chin, rocking Zuppone a little
this time. "When I ask you that question, and you know I don't
want to fucking hear nothing from you, you just shake your head, you
understand? You keep your mouth closed and you just shake your
fucking head, you got it?"

Primo's whole body was shaking as he just nodded this
time, once and decisively.

Now Junior turned back to me, glowering down. "Your
story don't add up, Cuddy, and I think you're running some kind of
game on us. But even if you ain't, even if you're just stone fucking
stupid and DiRienzi outsmarted you, the fact is, you lost him, and
you don't have a single fucking clue where he went. And that makes me
very fucking mad."

Speed-talking, Zuppone said, "Mr. Ianella,
DiRienzi ran before Cuddy here even met you, so—"

This time not a cuff, but a backhanded clout that
knocked Primo sideways. "Shut the fuck up, you fucking
pimple-freak, or you'1l get the first slug! And you, Cuddy, you make
me fucking sick. My father's rotting away in a cell because some
Judas fuck set him up and sent him up, and then you lose the piece a
shit who should have paid for it. Which means you get to pay for it.
One part of you at a time."

Junior cocked the revolver and pointed it at my
crotch, a step too far away for me to lunge for it. I was still going
to try when Cocozzo made the only mistake I'd seen him commit.

He stepped toward his boss, blocking his line of
sight on Primo.

Zuppone drew the Beretta from its shoulder holster
and shot Rick Ianella twice. Junior lurched against his bodyguard as
the balding man was trying to elevate his own gun hand. Then Primo
emptied the rest of the Beretta's clip into Cocozzo, who fired his
weapon three times, reflexively but harmlessly, into the ceiling.
Dust from above began waiting slowly downward as the two Milwaukee
mobsters, clutching each other like clumsy dancers, fell to the
floor.

I looked at Zuppone, the Beretta jacked open and
empty, the trembling of his right hand scattering the smoke curling
up from the chamber.

"Primo—"

"No! No." His
voice was raspy. "Don't say a fucking word till I tell you."
Then he seemed to notice how the gun was moving in his hand and
lowered it. Something short and harsh in Italian was followed by,
"The fuck did I do here?"

* * *

We were coming over the Charlestown Bridge into the
Boston Garden area of the North End when Zuppone stuck a fresh
toothpick in his mouth and said, "All right, talk."

"Thanks."

Zuppone glanced over to me, then at each of the
Lincoln's mirrors. "For letting you talk?"

"No, for saving my life."

A movement of his head that was more shudder than
simple shake. “Maybe only temporary, for both of us."

"How long can you leave the bodies there?"

"After I drop you, I make a couple, three calls
from a pay phone, handle it the same way as last time."

Which meant a no-questions-asked team from the
friendly funeral home. "And the death certificates?"

"Dr. T.—the guy helped us out before?—he'll
put down anything I want. Only thing is . . ."

"The people in Milwaukee will expect the bodies
back for burial, right?"

"Right. And our coordinator here—the one who
called them out there in the first fucking place—he's gotta be
satisfied that this didn't happen the way you and me know it did."

"Which means?"

"Which means that I gotta fucking account for a
clip full of bullets in two organization guys. And that means I gotta
give Milwaukee and our coordinator somebody who pulled the fucking
trigger."

"Some somebody."

"Yeah, but preferably not me."

Zuppone couldn't quite make the tone light enough. I
said, "DiRienzi is the only candidate who comes to mind."

"Even that's gonna be a tough sell, he was only
a paperwork guy, not muscle."

"And why weren't you around when he was shooting
your out-of-town guests, who ought to be checking in with their
people in Milwaukee soon."

Zuppone made a careful left turn. "I'm glad you
appreciate my situation."

"It gets worse. I wasn't going to hand DiRienzi
over to Junior, I'm not going to help you bundle him on a plane back
to the Midwest.”

"Even if you knew where DiRienzi is, right?"

"That's right.”

Another glance. "You really don't fucking know?"

"Primo, you just killed two guys proving it."

Zuppone brought the Lincoln slowly to the curb
outside a furniture store shuttered for the night. Always the careful
driver, he seemed to be concentrating even more on the little tasks,
something I remembered doing after having to take a life. Or lives.

He left the engine running. "Cuddy, I never done
anything like this before."

I looked at him.

Primo shook his head. "No, I don't mean whacking
somebody, for chrissake. Or even somebody in the organization, for
that matter. I mean doing a hit on my own, something that wasn't
authorized?

"Especially if it was somebody you were told to
protect."

"That's right. That's exactly right. Those guys
they were my responsibility. Ianella, he might have been the worst
prick I met in ten years, but him and Coco were my responsibility,
and I didn't . . . Aw, shit.”

He rubbed his right palm over his eyes, like he was
trying to wake up from a dream. A bad one. "What I'm saying
here, I never did anything I wasn't told to. I always been faithful
to my oath, the one I took when they made me a member. You read in
the papers about how the ceremony is all mumbo jumbo, like some kind
of witch-doctor shit. But it's real, Cuddy, the realest thing I ever
went through. I'm a made fucking member of our organization, and for
twenty-two fucking years I always stood up for it. And now I'm so
fucking bummed out, I can't even think straight."

"Primo?"

"Yeah?"

“
Just one question."

"What is it?"

"There any doubt in your mind that you did the
right thing today?"

Zuppone looked at me steadily, the eyes moist but not
filling with tears. "No. No fucking doubt whatsoever. You were
telling them the truth, and Ianella was going to kill you for it, and
Coco couldn't have stopped him."

"Well, then, you shouldn't feel bad about that."

"I won't, you can explain to me one thing."

"What's that?"

"How you going to get
us off the hook with my people and Milwaukee?"

* * *

Primo dropped me at my car in downtown, and I drove
toward the condo, nagged by what Cocozzo had said back in the
slaughterhouse. "Andrew Dees" really didn't have any reason
to run on Thursday night. He might have been madder than hell at Olga
Evorova for having me check into his background, but that didn't
explain his leaving the Witness Protection Program, with or without
her. Especially since DiRienzi knew the marshals' service would have
relocated him again if he had any real reason to fear that his
current identity had been compromised. It just didn't make sense.

I thought about what I'd been told by Norman
Elmendorf and the Stepanians, the argument from unit 42 they all
overheard, Steven Stepanian seeing "Dees" loading luggage
into the Porsche. If Stepanian was lying about what he saw, then he
and his wife could have been the couple dropping off Olga's car in
Elmer's lot at the airport. But why would the Stepanians want to
impersonate DiRienzi and Evorova? To help with some escape plan that
a neighbor they hardly knew didn't really need?

And if Steven Stepanian was telling the truth, then
did somebody else hijack DiRienzi and Evorova before they got to
Logan? Most of the other males I'd seen were probably "tall"
enough for Elmer's description of the driver. But none had any motive
I knew about, and besides, Boyce Hendrix was part of the cooperating
witness program, Norman Elmendorf wasn't very mobile, and Jamey
Robinette was attending a band concert with his mother on Thursday
night.

Things were making even less sense to me as I parked
the Prelude behind the brownstone. Upstairs, the window of my tape
machine was blinking a single message. I played it back. Nancy,
saying she'd waited until two-thirty before taking a cab home and
what the hell had happened to me? When I was connected to her number,
the outgoing announcement clicked on, but as I started my own message
after the beep, Nancy broke in. "John, where are you?"

"Home."

"What—"

"It's a long story, Nance."

A pause. "John, is something wrong?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean your voice. It doesn't sound right."

I cleared my throat. "How's this?"

"Uh-oh. Something bad happened, didn't it?"

"This mean I can't fool you even over the
telephone anymore?"

"It must. What's wrong?"

"How about if I drive to your place and we talk
there?"

"I don't have anything much for us to eat."

I suddenly noticed the scent of the slaughterhouse
coming off my clothes. "I'm not very hungry."

"There's still some of that chicken soup left
over from Friday night?"

"That'd be fine. See you in thirty minutes."

"Thirty? It shouldn't take you fifteen without
traffic."

I was already out of my
suit jacket. "I need to shower and change first."

* * *

Inside the kitchen, I could smell the soup simmering
in the crockpot. Renfield kept his distance, sensing something the
shower hadn't washed away. Nancy first looked up at me, then laid the
right side of her head against my chest, arms around my waist.

"You seem sound of wind and limb."

I said, "Just barely." `

Nancy tilted her head back, then broke the hug.
"Meaning, you're the one who could use some cuddling tonight."

"I came close this afternoon, Nance. Real
close."

Her eyes grew troubled, then she smiled without
showing her teeth. "The soup can wait. Let's bring some wine
into the living room, and you can tell me about it."

I said I thought that would be a very good start.
 

=21=

After I told Nancy as much as I could about what had
happened, we made our way to the bedroom. A few hours later, while
she dozed, I got up and went quietly into the kitchen for some water.
The phone rang, startling me, and I answered it instinctively.
"Hello?”

"Cuddy, that you?"

"Primo, what're you doing, calling me here?"

"Look, I been burning the fucking wires to your
condo there and getting squat. If your girlfriend answered, I
would've hung up."

"That doesn't—"

"Besides, I figured we still had kind of an
emergency on our hands, you know?"

No question there. "Okay. So tell me."

"Things suck, but I'm still alive." The
whooshing sound as he breathed. "After my guys took care of the
cleanup, I figured I oughta let this friend of ours—the
coordinator?—know that everything hit the fan."

"And?”

"And he's bullshit, what do you think, but he
believes what I told him because he wants to believe it."

"What did you tell him?"

"That Rick and Coco found a lead on their own
and left me a fucking message. When I picked it up, I went straight
to the slaughterhouse and found what I found."