Hardware (29 page)

“The Mob sees itself as patriotic,” I said.

“Invade Cuba for you any day,” she responded wryly. “I don't think they had a plan for what happened. It worked out of … serendipity, out of where they found themselves, and the chaos that marked the end of the war, the Vietnamization of the war, the withdrawal, their assignments. My job. I was an army nurse. Mobile unit. In a war zone, but not a fighting job. Support for our men in uniform.”

“In a position to alter records?” I asked.

“Joey was a grunt. Sam had been temporarily assigned as company clerk. Typing skills. He wanted to get back to the front line, pound ground again, and he did before the end.”

“Unit?” I asked.

“One ninety-sixth Light Infantry. Provisionals. One of the last brigades to leave.”

I'd run that through my computerized lie detector. “Go on,” I said.

“Joey had troubles. And he got into more. Troubles at home, with his family.” Lauren rocked her chair so it rested on its two back legs. She drank coffee.

“Yeah?” I said. “So?”

“He got into drugs in Vietnam. I mean, we all did drugs, if you call marijuana ‘drugs.' But Joey … When he wasn't toking, he was snorting. I think he was shooting up too. Anyway—what with his family screaming that they were going to pull strings with their congressman and drag him back home, and him messed up on dope and owing money in the black market—at some point, Joey decided to die. For real. Maybe it seemed like the easiest way out. Sam and I, it got so we just wanted to save him if we could. I once promised Sam that if Joey was injured, I'd make sure the injury got bad enough to send him home. I was a nurse. I can't imagine myself saying that today, but it was different then. Joey kept volunteering for more and more dangerous assignments. Volunteer Joe, G.I. Joe, the man who couldn't get killed, was starting to self-destruct.

“Friends were scarce,” she said. “I don't condone what we did, but friends were scarce.”

“What exactly did you do?” I'd drunk half my coffee without tasting it. I could feel caffeine thrumming through my bloodstream.

Lauren stirred her coffee, stared into its milky depths as if she were watching a blurred film of her past. “Joey crawled into camp one night, into my tent. Camouflage gear covered with blood and mud. Mud and blood. The hills were numbered then. No names. No Porkchop Hill. No Little Round Top. Just numbered hills a grunt was expected to give up his life for. And they knew by now that each hill was nothing more than a bargaining chip. Land that would be given back after they'd bled and died for it. The sky was so blue … every day there would be boys who'd never see the sky again, never see a white bird fly across a blue sky.…”

She shook her head and sighed, deliberately firmed her voice, went on. “Joey kept charging up the hills. Nothing could stop him. He was prime Section Eight material by then, absolutely psycho, but I couldn't get anyone to agree. He was doing heroin, black market, you name it. When I saw him that night, that morning, I thought he was a ghost. He was clutching his dog tags, holding them so tight I had to pry them out of his hands. It was only then that I realized they weren't his.”

“Whose were they?”

She looked up at me then, a clear-eyed, steady gaze. “I don't believe—Sam doesn't believe—that Joey killed him. The dead boy wasn't popular, but he was just another ground pounder, not an officer, and fragging wasn't common in units near our position. And there was enemy action that night, on point. Where Joey was, always near the front of the column, waiting to die. Instead another kid got blown apart. The dog tags landed at Joey's feet. Like a gift, Joey said. Like a gift from Mary, Mother of God, he said. He had his own tags over his head and on the ground before he consciously thought about it, he said.”

The “Frank” I'd met was a good talker, too, I thought. I didn't say it. I didn't want to break her concentration. She stirred her cold coffee with a spoon and the sound blended with the clack of computer keys from the living room.

She sighed. “So my friend Joey Frascatti was killed in hostile action. KHA. And then Sam and I made arrangements for him, for our buddy Joey, who had a different name now—Floyd Markham, the name on the dog tags, the name of a boy from Traverse City who was beyond help. It was easier for ‘Floyd Markham' to disappear. MIA.” She frowned. “We should have made him KHA, but that would have been trickier. We'd have needed a body. It would have been more merciful to the boy's family though. MIA, all these years …”

“Hard,” I said.

“Sam and Joey bought and backdated a life insurance policy in the dead boy's name. And that's why Sam's been spending so much time in Washington lately. We've been trying to track what's left of the boy's family, through unofficial channels, to make sure they absolutely know their boy is dead, to eliminate any hope or fear. Fear that he deserted, that he was somehow abandoned, that he was tortured or kept alive. You imagine things when you don't know, when you never get to see a coffin and bury a body.”

“Joey didn't keep the boy's name?”

She replaced her coffee mug on the table. “Joey was never going to come back to the States. That was part of the plan, the deal. No USA. No Italy. No place where somebody might see him and say ‘Hey, that's Joey Fresh's kid.' There was no harm in it. The other boy, Floyd Markham, was blown to blazes. The Frascattis got to hold their big funeral. The Markhams didn't. Now that I'm older, I appreciate the ritual of committing a body to the earth. I was young. I never thought about it then. I don't believe any of us ever thought about it.…”

“Why did Joey come back?”

Her voice sank to a whisper. “He got in touch with Sam via e-mail. From Australia, then New Zealand. It was a shock. Sam and I had … woven a fantasy around Joey, the boy who got to start over again, the boy who'd promised to get clean and stay clean, if only we'd give him the chance. We'd all sworn secrecy; but more than that, we'd all sworn aid. If one of us was in need or in trouble, the others would try to help.”

She stopped talking, looked at me. I might have been wrong but I thought she was searching for my approval.

“Three Musketeers is just a candy bar to me,” I said. I kept thinking about Floyd Markham's mom and dad, his sisters or brothers, waiting, waiting, waiting. Wearing those copper bracelets, keeping the flame alive.

Her eyes hardened. “Sam came to me when ‘Frank' called from California, earlier this year.”

“And what did ‘Frank' want?”

“To come home. He made it sound simple. Just to come home. He missed the people he used to hate. He'd never made a new life for himself, although he'd earned a fortune in the electronics industry. Sam and I had fixed it for him to die, and now he wanted us to fix it so he could come back from the dead.”

“Could you?”

“If he hadn't been so pig-headed, possibly. But he wanted to come home as himself! As Joseph Frascatti, Jr. How could he? Joseph Frascatti, Jr., was dead. What could he say? He woke up in some field in Indochina twenty years later, no idea what happened?”

“You sound angry.”

“I am angry. Sam and I'd turned somersaults to give Joey what he wanted, a new chance. We'd envied him, especially Sam. Fighting the same battle over and over with his father, Sam could say ‘Well, Joey's out there, free.'”

“Why did Joey come to Boston?”

“I don't know. Sam and I were concentrating on learning as much as we could about the Markham family.”

“If they were all dead, Joey's reappearance would be easier.”

“If they heard a peep about Joey's ‘resurrection,' we were fried. It would have been a case of ‘Who's buried in Joey's tomb?' We'd written the family a letter, one of those ‘he-was-a-hero' things, saying how Floyd had gone missing trying to prevent Frascatti's death. We'd turned them both into heroes.”

“The kind of letter you keep,” I commented.

“The kind of letter you remember,” she said. “We tried to convince Joey to go away, to accept an alias. He said he couldn't. He had to be a bona fide relative to visit his father in prison.”

Sam. The visits to Providence
.

“Did Sam tell Joey Senior that his kid was coming home?”

“No,” Lauren said. “Sam sounded him out, that's all. Joey wanted to break the good news in person. He wanted to see his father. Said he was scared his father would die, and they'd never have a chance to straighten out all the things between them.”

I set my coffee on the table. The bottom was wet; it would leave a round stain.

“So what do you think?” I asked. “Did Joey try to kill Sam?”

“No. Absolutely not.”

“Why not? Sounds to me like he was jealous of Sam. I think you used the word
psycho
, said he was on drugs. How's this for a scenario? When he got what he wanted, and it didn't make him a different person, he bided his time, earned some cash, and now he's turning on the people he blames. It was e-mail that lured Sam to Green and White. I'd watch my step if I were you.”

“I do watch my step,” she said. “Joey's very upset about Sam.”

“Where is he?”

“I can reach him.”

“He's in Boston?”

“Why should he run?” Lauren said. “He would never hurt Sam.”

I have a kitchen extension. I don't use it much, but it keeps me from burning dinner on the rare occasions when I cook and the phone rings. I picked it up and dialed a number I know well.

Mooney didn't answer. I thought about trying to raise Oglesby. Dialed another number and persisted till I had Leroy on the phone.

“How's Gloria?”

He sounded uncertain. “Okay. Quiet. Not like her. Okay, I guess.”

“You?”

“I dunno.”

“Leroy, I need a favor and there's nobody else I can ask.”

“I'm not leaving the hospital.”

“I'm not asking you to.”

“What are you askin'?”

“Go stand outside Sam's room till I can get there or till I can get somebody there.”

“Just stand?”

“Make like a guard.”

“Sam's got plenty of guards, believe me,” Leroy said.

“Yeah, but I don't think they're watching for the right guy.”

“Carlotta, you know I'd do 'most anything for you, but that's one family I don't wanna mess with.”

“I'll be there as soon as I can. You might save Sam's life. He's your sister's friend. He's her partner.”

“Okay,” Leroy said reluctantly. “Make it fast.”

I gave a brief physical rundown on “Frank” as I'd last seen him. No reason for Leroy to hassle the candy stripers.

“You're wrong about Joey,” Lauren Heffernan said as I hung up.

“Did he handle explosives when he was in Vietnam?”

“Carlotta!” Roz shouted from the other room. “I don't care what you're doing in there, you need to see this.”

“You mind waiting?” I asked Lauren.

“I'll make more coffee,” she said.

“You want to help,” I said. “Here's the phone. Get Joey here. Whatever the hell he's calling himself today.”

THIRTY-SEVEN

I stormed into the living room and halted at the desk. Roz, probably chilly in her gauzy evening attire, had pulled one of her more modest T-shirts over her head. It was chrome yellow and announced:
BEER
—
IT ISN
'
T JUST FOR BREAKFAST ANYMORE
.

She wore last night's fake nails, spiky and black. No wonder the keyboard clacked so loudly.

“What?” I asked.

“Crabby today,” she observed.

“Very,” I agreed, tight-lipped. “Make this fast.”

She sailed a folded sheet of printout paper airplane-like across the room. “You were right,” she said. “Yesterday I was looking for the wrong stuff. Checking if Sam was planning to sell Green and White. No indication of that. So there goes my next question. Who's he gonna sell to? He isn't selling. Ergo, shit.”

“I didn't realize you spoke Latin.”

“Huh?”

“Roz, what in hell did you find?”

“Sit down, stop pacing, okay?”

“Talk!”

“It's about money,” she said.

“Money,” I repeated. A fascinating subject.

“Sam's records are clear as the driven snow.”

“Pure,” I said. “Pure as the driven snow.”

“Whatever. Receipts. Deposits. Salaries. Plant. Upkeep. Taxes. Insurance. Nothing the IRS wouldn't applaud. Green and White's not making anybody rich, but it's keeping its head above water. Not much in the way of expenses. Low rent. Gloria works cheap because she's got a place there, no rent.

“Sam's own stuff, his personal cash, is in several accounts, three different banks, which is smart because he can take advantage of FDIC. Green and White keeps all its accounts at Bank of Commerce and Industry. Loyalty, maybe. They loaned Sam money when he started out.”

I stared at my watch. “Fascinating, Roz. Fascinating.”

“Sam doesn't update his files often enough. The bank statement you lifted—Bank of Commerce and Industry—was still sealed. It made such interesting reading, I figured I ought to find out more. Courtesy of ‘Frank,' I accessed the bank, and since I've got all Sam's account numbers and shit, I brought him up to date.”

“He'll appreciate it.”

“Dammit, Carlotta. Look. The past few months, money's been going in and money's been going out like you wouldn't believe. I'm surprised a bank officer hasn't questioned Sam about the activity on Green and White's accounts. I would have, knowing how they've behaved in the past. Suddenly it's like a whole new thing.”

“Where's the money coming from? Can you find out?”

“Most of it's wire transfers, which gives me locations of the banks. I made a list.”