Shotgun Lullaby (A Conway Sax Mystery) (6 page)

I forget how sad bars make me until I'm inside one.

We stood at the bar. I asked for a Diet Coke. Randall asked for ice water. We waved off the lunch menus the bartender extended. I asked for a pen. When he brought the drinks, I slid him a note on a cocktail napkin:
We are not cops. We need to talk with Charlie Pundo about Gus Biletnikov.

The bartender was good: his expression changed not at all as he read. We took our drinks to a table and listened to jazz.

Soon another man appeared. He was dressed like the bartender, but built more solidly. Had the shaved-head look but wore no soul patch. His ears, nose, and scalp belonged to a man who'd boxed. But not well.

He looked at me, nodded, jerked a thumb over his shoulder. Randall and I rose, but the man shook his head once and gestured for Randall to stay there.

I shrugged.

Randall shrugged, sat, sipped.

The man led me to a short hallway with doors for the restrooms, the kitchen, and something else.

The office.

The man knew what he was doing. He waited until I was hemmed in, with doors on all sides and limited movement available, then turned and held his arms out, shrugging some at the same time—pantomiming
Sorry, but I'm gonna search you and there's not a goddamn thing you can do about it.

I extended my own arms. He searched me.

Then he nodded me in and closed the door behind me. Never did say a word.

Staring at me from a cheapo rolling chair was the man who had to be Charlie Pundo.

I nodded to him and looked around.

It was the working office of a man who didn't give a rat's ass what anybody thought of him. Office-grade carpet, old schoolteacher's desk with a laptop, mix-and-match lamps, hospital-colored walls.

It was cold, too.

I turned to take in the wall behind me. It was floor-to-ceiling custom shelves, sized perfectly for records. Actual vinyl LPs.

“Best move I ever made,” Charlie Pundo said, waving an arm at the LPs. He rose, shook my hand, passed me a business card, sat again. “Forty years ago, all the experts and know-it-alls wanted me to put the music on reel-to-reel and throw out the records. Then it was cassettes. Then they wanted me, they
begged
me, to digitize everything and save the space, the hassle. I stuck to my guns. Now those records are worth I can't even tell you how much. I've had three Hollywood guys and the chairman of Blue Note Records write me a blank check. They told me fill in a number. Uh-uh. I guess they'll end up in a museum when I'm gone.”

I slipped his card in my wallet. “The records why it's cold in here?”

“Also why I keep the lights low.” He sighed so long and loud that I turned and really looked at him for the first time.

Give Gus credit: he'd said Charlie Pundo reminded him of a retired barber, and I saw what he meant. Nearly as tall as me, thirty pounds lighter, call it twenty years older. Mostly bald, salt-and-pepper ring of hair that could use a trim. Droopy mustache, also salt-and-pepper. Heavy brown eyes. He wore a perfectly tailored gray suit, pinstripes, white shirt, purple necktie. Looked about as menacing as the grandpa from a cookie commercial.

He gestured at me to sit. When I did, he sighed again. “You shouldn't have come here.”

“I didn't know what else to do.”

“You say you're not a cop, and as far as I can tell, that's true. Are you a private cop?”

“I'm a mechanic.”

He smiled, shook his head. “A mechanic. Go figure. Now why'd you come here asking about one”—he looked at the cocktail-napkin note—“Gus Biletnikov?”

I told him about the shooting at the halfway house, about Gus's claim that he got in trouble dealing for Pundo. When I finished, Charlie leaned back in his chair and looked at me over his reading glasses.

“You put me in an untenable position,” he said, unbuttoning his suit coat and clasping his hands behind his head. “You force me to make the I'm-a-legitimate-businessman speech, the can't-an-Italian-American-get-a-break speech. But I
am,
and I
can't
. I run the most important jazz club in New England. That's not according to me, that's according to
Downbeat
magazine. I showcase the American art form to folks who'd be line dancing in hillbilly bars otherwise.”

“So if Gus Biletnikov says he dealt drugs for you, he's lying.”

“Or delusional.”

“Then I guess I'm glad he didn't say that.”

Pundo frowned, looked a question at me.

“He said he dealt for your
son
. For Teddy.”

Charlie Pundo's jaw dropped half an inch. His teeth weren't so great for a rich man. He must be too old to care.

“Yeah, for old Fat Teddy he called him, no offense, just repeating what I heard. Guess they would've been at UMass around the same time, huh?”

He was so quiet, so moveless for so long that I decided to rise.

Pundo just sat there, staring at his wall of LPs, hands locked behind his head. Ignoring me, maybe making connections in his head.

“You put this whole block together,” I said. “The deli, the tailor. Even the church, I'm guessing.”

He didn't look at me. “Is there a question in there?”

“Why?”

“You've got to spend it on
some
thing.”

I stepped to the door, opened it, hesitated, turned. “I've got a son myself,” I said, not sure why I was telling this to Charlie Pundo. Not sure why I liked him. Why I felt for him. “They're not always easy.”

He said nothing.

“Sons, I mean.”

He said nothing.

I closed the door quietly.

 

CHAPTER SIX

“What now?” Randall said three minutes later. We sat in my truck kitty-corner across from the club, close enough but not too.

“We wait,” I said.

“What for?”

“For Teddy, the son. Charlie just about dropped dead when I mentioned him. Put that together with things you told me and you get a picture.”

“The father truly
has
backed out of
La Vida
Gangster,” Randall said. “Or is trying to.”

“But the son's trading on Daddy's rep, trying to be a hotshot drug dealer.”

“It's conjecture.”

“But it's good conjecture.”

“That it is.” Pause. “‘Just when I thought I was out…'”

An SUV slammed to a stop in front of the club. “That's got to be him,” I said, pointing. “He must've been nearby.”

“Agreed,” Randall said as the driver's door of the SUV opened. “No critique of my splendid Pacino?”

“Be glad. And hush.”

The guy we assumed was Teddy Pundo climbed from the SUV, a Mercedes Geländewagen you couldn't touch for less than a hundred and ten grand. It was black, of course, with twenty-four-inch chrome rims, of course. Then he steamed into the Hi Hat, looking neither left nor right.

He was gone so soon we didn't get much of a look at him. Impressions: long brown hair, greasy. Expensive high-top sneakers topped by jeans topped by a black leather car coat. Fat Teddy? You could see where he got the nickname. But he moved well beneath the weight. He wasn't sloppy fat; he was powerful fat.

“That it?” Randall said, keying the SUV's license number into his tablet. “Are we done here?”

“I guess we are,” I said, finger-drumming the steering wheel. “But we got a lot. We know the club, including the layout of the office. We're pretty sure Charlie Pundo really is trying to go legit, and that his numbnuts son is gumming up the plan.”

“But what did we learn about the likelihood of Clan Pundo shooting up the halfway house?”

I thought that through. “Charlie's a definite no. He's got his club, his records, his little make-believe block. An old-school shotgun party feels like the opposite of what he's into now.”

“I'll buy that. And Teddy?”

“I dunno. For a hard-case killer, he sure hustled over when Daddy called. Maybe he … hell, look at that.”

As I'd pulled from my parking space, the white-shirted guy who looked like an ex-boxer had stepped from the club. He was now wearing, but hadn't zipped, a black Windbreaker.

He stared at my truck.

He made eye contact with me and mouthed my license number twice.

He stepped to the driver's-side rear corner of Teddy's Geländewagen. There was nothing but thirty yards of empty street between us and him.

He set hands on hips, pushing the Windbreaker back a few inches.

He had a goddamn cannon tucked in his waistband.

“Jesus Christ,” Randall said. “Desert Eagle, maybe the .50-caliber model. I'm surprised his pants stay up.”

I drove away, right past the man.

He tracked us with his eyes. When we eased by, he wasn't more than ten feet from Randall's window.

“‘They pull me back in,'” Randall said a few seconds later.

“Shut up.”

We were quiet after that.

*   *   *

When he answered the door of the apartment I'd set him up in, Gus was surprised. He looked at his watch. Then I thought he looked over my shoulder. “Done for the day?”

“I've been to Marlborough and Springfield,” I said. “Need to talk with you.” I stepped in, told Gus to swap his pajama pants for jeans.

Then I told him about the day.

When I finished, he shook his head. “So you walked into a wise-guy bar and wrote a note asking to see the man in charge of cocaine sales?”

I shrugged.

He rubbed his temples. The move annoyed me—it was like
he
was a teacher and
I
was a student being a giant pain in his ass.

“You're fantastic to let me stay here,” he said. “And all the world knows you'll give any Barnburner the shirt off your back. Subtlety, however, is not your strong suit.”

“We're assuming somebody tried to kill you,” I said. “I am, anyway. If you're looking for
subtle
help, you're out of luck.”

“Damn straight.”

I wanted to shake the little bastard. Why the hell
was
I helping him? What the hell wasn't he telling me?

You know the answer to the first question.

I took my time. Breathed myself calm. “You named two possibilities,” I finally said. “Andrade and Teddy Pundo. I checked them both out. Andrade didn't do it, and I'm pretty sure Pundo didn't either.”

“Conway, he's a
drug dealer
. He's a
gangster
. His father was
bull
shitting you.”

“Nope. Charlie Pundo didn't know Teddy was dealing until I told him so, and he didn't know anything about Almost Home. And if Teddy was badass enough to be blowing people down with a shotgun, you can bet his dad'd know. So we're back where we were before: who else has something against you?”

“I'll say again that maybe whoever killed Brian Weller was trying to kill Brian Weller.”

“Nope. We read up on him. He was a damn choirboy, and you know it.”

Gus folded his arms. “Be that as it may, why is this your mission in life all of a sudden? Why am I your big fucking project?”

“The Barnburners asked me to keep an eye on you. I'm doing that.”

“Is that all? Really? How old did you say your son is?”

I said nothing.

“His name's Roy, I believe you said.”

Charlene says I'm transparent. I hate being transparent.

I wanted to tell Gus about Roy. I wanted to ask Gus about his father, to see what their relationship looked like from his vantage point.

I wanted to ask him if Roy would come back to me.

“You ever ride a dirt bike?” I said. “I know a great spot.”

*   *   *

He could ride, all right. I watched him clear a hill twenty-five yards ahead of me. He tabletopped his jump, laying the little 125cc Yamaha sideways in midair, then snapping it wheels down just in time to land.

We'd been riding the power lines near Route 495 for a good forty minutes. I was beat. I hadn't ridden for a couple of years, had forgotten how punishing it was.

I goosed the throttle, squirted alongside Gus, made a drinking gesture. He nodded, pulled over at the next power-line tower.

We killed the bikes and took off our helmets. First impression when you shut down: quiet, quiet, quiet.

I stepped off, stretched, pulled water bottles from a fender carrier, tossed one to Gus. On his face: big smile, goggle marks. “Killer idea,” he said. “These little one-twenty-fives are a hoot.”

“You ever race?”

“I wanted to, but my old man wouldn't let me. I did most of my riding in the backyard.”

“Must have been some yard. Over in Sherborn, you said? Nice town.”

Gus shrugged. “I used to whip around in the woods. I even hacked out my own little course.
Man,
did I want to race. But when I hacked too close to the neighbors' yards, they bitched to my dad. He gets scared shitless when anybody disapproves of anything, so he rolled over and made me quit riding. He used to say, ‘Do you want to read about it in the police log on Friday?' That was his worst fear, a police log write-up in the
Sherborn Sentinel
.”

From the north, the deep-noted engines of bigger bikes pounded our way. “High school years are tough for the son and the father both,” I said. “Things any better now?”

Gus said nothing.

Three guys on big green Kawasakis busted past. Friendly waves all around.

I said, “I used to ride here with my son Roy.”

“How old is he?”

“About your age. Tried college, but it didn't take. He's a good body man.” To our left, the Kawasakis jumped a hill and disappeared. “It's been a while. He doesn't ride with me anymore.”

“He's nuts. This place rocks.” Gus whipped his empty water bottle at me, grinned, straddled his bike. “Looks like you got the wrong kid and I got the wrong dad.” Lit up his Yamaha, tire-fired dirt at me as he took off.