Shotgun Lullaby (A Conway Sax Mystery) (34 page)

“No shotgun?”

“Both gone. Biletnikov was surprised as hell.”

“Find any cartridges?”

“Half a box. Bird shot, like what was used on the kid Gus.”

I began to speak. He held up a hand. “We're not stupid. We asked Biletnikov if he ever used heavier shot. One-aught, specifically.”

“And?”

“He said yeah, he probably had.”

“Probably.”

“Probably.”

I let a few seconds pass. Then I said, “Are you guys looking for Rinn?”

“Why should we?”

I was stunned. “Don't you like her for it now? At least enough to scoop her up and talk to her? Hell, how many people knew about those shotguns? Or where to find them?”

“Crump could've known. He was friendly with Rinn.”

“You can barely say that with a straight face. Come on, Crump had the frozen-up shotgun in his truck. An obvious bad plant.”

“A plant? Maybe. Obvious? No. You've got tunnel vision for Rinn.”

It was quiet as we rolled through downtown Framingham.

“What happened out there?” Lima said. “In Springfield?”

I said nothing.

“Reason I ask, I'm about to dump you in a room with a couple of assholes who're licking their chops.”

I said nothing. Thought things through, or tried to.

Lima said, “I told you a few things about Teddy Pundo. I know you remember.”

I waited.

“Every crime scene's a clusterfuck,” he said after a long pause. “Add a fire, now you got clusterfuck squared.”

Where was he headed with this?

“What I'm saying, a scene like that, it's hard as hell to know what happened to who when. Somebody might look at the scene and say, ‘A guy got beat to death in a nightclub, then the nightclub got torched.' They might make it sound like cold hard facts. A done deal.”

We swung into the barracks parking lot.

“But somebody
else,
” Lima said, “might say, ‘No, the guy crashed his car into the nightclub, climbed from the car, and stumbled around while he bled out.' The way lawyers and experts work, they could see it either way. Depending on how they wanted to see it.”

“Depending on who was signing their paycheck.”

He nodded and snapped his fingers so that he ended up pointing at me. “That's all I'm saying.”

 

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

Contrary to what I said before, sometimes the cops really
are
jerks once they've got their mitts on you.

Especially when they think you've been ripping around the state killing gangsters, torching buildings, and making them look like jackasses in the process.

First, I realized why Lima'd let me come here without cuffs and riding shotgun: he knew it would be the last decent treatment I'd get for a while. Two dicks who looked nearly like twins—six-three, steel-gray crew cuts, gray suits, greyhound builds—had dropped him to errand-boy status. His only job that night was to bring files and coffee to the hot-box room.

Lots of coffee, none of it for me. The greyhounds worked me over. They knew a fair amount about me, including the big-time resources Charlene could and would use to get me out of there, so they made sure I never saw a phone.

The greyhounds said they were the state police OCTF. Didn't say they were
with
the OCTF, said they
were
the OCTF. From their questions, I figured out it stood for Organized Crime Task Force.

I had well and truly stumbled into a jackpot.

I'd been in jackpots before.

I'd been in rooms with cops before.

I knew what to do.

I said nothing. And lots of it.

I said nothing for hours and hours.

I said so much nothing one greyhound wanted to hit me, and I'm pretty sure it wasn't part of any good-cop, bad-cop routine.

At one point, maybe four o'clock in the morning, Lima brought in a pair of steaming Styrofoam cups and, as usual, two packets of Splenda for one of the greyhounds. He set it all on the table next to an array of pics.

The pics: A pro headshot of Charlie Pundo. A long-lens shot of Teddy Pundo in his favorite jacket and shades. A similar shot of Boxer. (The greyhounds said his real name, but he'd always be Boxer to me.) A grainy security-cam shot of me running through the Springfield Civic Center.

Lima had called it just right. The greyhounds pummeled me with what they called facts. Facts about me, and Teddy, and witnesses, and car chases, and how Teddy had died.

They said they knew Boxer was the Almost Home trigger man. I noticed they didn't say how they knew that, but it didn't surprise me. They pummeled me with questions about Gus's murder, coming at me from a dozen angles the way cops do. The questions were engineered to get me to say Teddy was Gus's killer.
Might
have been.
Could
have been.
Had the opportunity
. Blah blah blah.

I said nothing. I'd figured out to my own satisfaction that Boxer killed Gus, too, erasing his Almost Home screwup. He'd stolen a pair of Donald Crump's little cowboy boots, managed to cram his feet into them, and thrown off the cops that way. When you'd seen Teddy in action the way I had, it was clear he didn't have the chops to cut down a man at point-blank range.

I said nothing. Let the greyhounds figure all this out if they could.

After a few hours, it hit me: the greyhounds wanted Fat Teddy as Gus's killer as a way to go at Charlie Pundo. They'd probably spent years building one of these RICO deals. Those cases are usually ninety-percent bullshit: tax evasion and parking tickets. The greyhounds had to be licking their chops at the thought of a Pundo,
any
Pundo, shooting a man.

If they ever saw that trapdoor in the Chicopee utility building, the one where Charlie dumped bodies the way most people toss beer cans, they would goddamn faint.

They wouldn't get any help from me.

They had just run through their facts and questions for the twentieth time when Lima, deadpan, set down their coffees and picked up the old cups and pretended not to listen.

I spoke for the first time since they'd brought me in. Looked at Greyhound Number Two and said, “Splenda?”

Lima was good. He held his deadpan.

*   *   *

The greyhounds had bragged about how long they could bury me here—they claimed seventy-two hours was doable—so you should have seen the looks on their faces when my lawyers, meaning Charlene's lawyers, rolled in at 9:01
A.M
.

How did the lawyers know I was there? Hell, how did
Charlene
know?

A quick text from Lima would have done the trick. But I never did find out for sure.

The greyhounds played it stubborn like a pair of six-year-olds, so it took a while, but that afternoon I walked out the front door into a stone-colored day. Randall idled in his Hyundai, reading something on his iPad.

“Take me to my truck,” I said.

“You're welcome,” he said, stowing the iPad. “Of
course
we were worried. Of
course
we got no sleep. But our world revolves around you, and besides, your gratitude makes it all worthwhile.”

“It's at the Biletnikov place.”

“I know. As is everything and everybody else.”

“What's that mean?”

“While you were manufacturing license plates, Rinn and Haley fetched Emma and returned home.”

“Rinn came back to Sherborn? To
Peter
?”

“That's home, all right. I came from there. Rinn invited me over to referee the big reunion.”

“Yikes.”

“And how.”

“The way I figured it,” I said, “Rinn would either run off with Charlie or say good-bye and good riddance to the kid. After everything that's happened.”

“You weren't the only one who saw it that way.”

“What changed her mind?”

He shrugged. “Motherhood is motherhood. Genes is genes.”

“But she was a
terrible
mother. The worst. You saw her.”

“Day to day, where the details are concerned, she was terrible. This I'll grant. Conceptually, though, she's a caring mother who loves Emma.”

“So is Rinn going to change diapers conceptually? Feed the kid at two in the morning conceptually?”

“That is her stated goal. Again, genes is genes.”

Money is money.

I kept the thought to myself—didn't want to rub Randall's nose in what a louse Rinn was.

But it made sense. Whatever bad-boy lust Rinn had felt for Charlie Pundo, it was likely out of her system. Peter was richer, tamer, and a lot closer to Boston. If you wanted to be cynical about it.

We were quiet awhile, easing along Sherborn's horse-farm roads.

“You had something with her,” I said. “A connection.”

“I won't argue that.”

“Tough girl to have a connection with, and a tough time to have it. Between the empty-suit husband and the gangster and the new baby and a murder in her backyard.”

He smiled some. “I won't argue that either.”

I said, “What are you going to do?”

“I'd like to say I'll sleep for fourteen hours. But I don't think it's in the cards, due to this.” He tapped the large Starbucks in the cup holder. “How about you?”

“Charlie Pundo wants to see me. He left three voice mails and a dozen texts while I was locked up.”

“Do you want to see
him
? Is it wise?”

Pause. “I owe him that much,” I finally said.

“Owe him you do. So does Sophie.”

“Yeah.”

“Has Charlie figured out you were behind his only son's demise?” Randall said.

“Yup. Had to happen eventually. I bet the cops told him, hoping to stir up some shit.”

He nodded.

“But when I asked before,” I said, “I wasn't talking about your plans for today. I meant”—I made a spreading circle with my hands, my arms—“what are you going to
do
?”

“We're here.”

We were.

I waited for Randall to answer my question.

He didn't.

“Whose car is blocking my truck?” I finally said.

“That's Brad's. You can get around him on the grass.”

“What's he doing here?”

Randall shrugged.

I looked at his face.

He looked straight ahead.

I started to say something.

But didn't. Climbed out instead.

*   *   *

Randall had been wrong: I couldn't get around Brad's car. I sighed, trotted to the guesthouse.

Nobody home.

Up the hill to the main house. Annoyed, hungry, headachy, wanting to hit the goddamn road for goddamn Springfield.

Heard voices, sharp but not yelling, as I approached.

The voices settled when I knuckle-rapped the door.

Rinn answered. Her cheeks looked hot, and she brushed hair from one eye.

“Here you are,” I said.

“Can I help you?” she said.

“Brad's blocking me.”

“Not to worry,” he said, and came into view.

Holding Emma.

Who didn't seem to mind.

But I did.

I didn't like the picture. Didn't like it at all. It was off.

I said, “Everything okay?”

“Hunky,” Brad said. “Dory, even. Let me clear the way.”

He passed the baby to Rinn and walked down to his car.

“Everything okay?” I kept my voice low this time, eye-locking her.

“Everything's fine,” she said.

I didn't want to leave her there. Everything was off, wrong, grainy.

“You sure?” I said, and nodded toward the car that Brad was pulling aside. “You cool with him?”

“Yes. You can leave.
Please
leave.” Rinn stood her ground.

She was in charge of her baby for the first time, I told myself. Nervous as hell, probably got a lousy sleep.

And the sooner I got done with Charlie Pundo, the sooner I could wash my hands of the whole lot of them.

That's what I told myself.

I left.

I shouldn't have.

*   *   *

Ninety minutes later, I climbed from my truck and stood on the sidewalk of Charlie Pundo's 1965 dreamworld.

Behind me was the little grocery, its fruit and vegetables fresh as ever. Above me: its green-and-white-striped awning. I took an apple, tucked a dollar in a little box, ate. Man was it good. Hadn't realized how hungry I was.

I looked up and down. Even the burned-out, blown-out Hi Hat didn't hurt Pundo's effect much. The debris had been policed up, the sidewalk in front of the club swept. You got the feeling they'd have the place rebuilt in six weeks, tops. Can-do, 1965 style.

Next to the club: Arturo's, the tailor. Then a parking lot.

For a church.

Charlie Pundo's church.

Catholic, of course.

It was where I would find him, of course.

I strolled. A beer and wine place (“We Sell No Hard Spirits”), a candy shop, an honest-to-God record shop.

This block ought to make me sad. It was pitiful.

It didn't make me sad.

I angled across the street, entered the red-brown brick church's side door.

Inside, between the heavy beams above and a gray day that couldn't fire up stained glass, the place was dark.

He was there. Of course.

The only one in the dark space. Last pew on the left, near the center aisle. Staring ahead at the altar, at the skinny Christ on a cross.

I approached Charlie. Didn't mean to walk soft, but I did. Church'll do that to you. Even when I stood eighteen inches from his side and just behind, he took no notice of me.

His suit, like so much around here, seemed straight out of 1965. Brown, nearly shimmery, with a white shirt and a skinny brown necktie.

“The sun hits it,” I said, “that stained glass must be something.”