Shallow Graves - Jeremiah Healy (15 page)

He looked hurt. "What, you think we'd whack you
with your own piece?"

"It's been tried before."

Primo took my weapon, closed the cylinder back into
the frame gently, the way you're supposed to, and slid the revolver
into the pocket of his leather coat.

I let him lead me from the car to the doorway, sounds
of a radio station coming down from a third-story window in another
building. On the outside sills and fire escape landings, large
terra-cotta flowerpots squatted, new blossoms on the plants. The air
was full of that warm, heavy smell of Italian cooking, the spices you
knew by scent if not by name. I wondered if any were the ones that
Claudette Danucci had learned to use.

Zuppone didn't have to use a key on the metal fire
door.

Inside the doorway, the building took on a different
character. Another dingy brick four-story from the outside, the
interior staircase led up a half flight of stairs to a majestic door,
mahogany from where I stood. The runner on the staircase was a
Persian that looked brand new and a thousand years old, all at the
same time.

Primo led the way up the steps, knocking on the
wooden door in a staccato sequence I thought might be code. This time
he waited to enter. Within ten seconds, I heard the sound of a bolt
and chain from the other side.

The man opening the door was somewhere between
seventy and eighty. Five ten, he seemed thin but wiry beneath the
block-patch sweater, creased wool slacks, and spit-shined loafers.
The hair was white, a pronounced widow's peak, but just a bit long
over the ears and combed back. He was clean-shaven, the skin still
pretty taut except at the throat, where it dangled a little against
the cords of his neck. His eyes were gray but unclouded, like two
baby spots positioned to highlight the long, hooked nose. The eyes of
an old man who still didn't really expect to die in bed.

Our host said, "Mr. Detective. Thomas Danucci.
You're welcome in my home."

There was still an edge of accent on some of the
words. Danucci gave no indication he intended to shake hands with me
or Zuppone. We walked into a minimalist foyer, where Primo took my
trenchcoat and hung it and his leather coat in a closet. Then we
followed Danucci into a maximalist living room. Pedestal furniture
that looked like it could support an elephant. Persian and Indian
rugs that dwarfed the staircase runner. Oil paintings of Madonna and
Child, the Gift of the Magi, and other biblical scenes in museum
mountings with tiny lamps that reminded me of the old man's eyes.
Molding around the intersection of wall and ceiling mimicked a
bouquet of roses, a motif repeated every linear foot.

Danucci motioned in a master of ceremonies way at the
dining room, endowed with pieces from the same massive period and
illuminated by an icicle chandelier. There were more religious
paintings around the walls, punctuated with a low cabinet against one
wall and a tall china cabinet against another. The tall cabinet had
glass panes and interior shelving that supported ornate serving
platters and a large rosewood case. I counted chairs for ten but
settings for only two, the head of the table and the chair to its
left. The plates were pewter or silver, with similar chalices where
you'd expect wineglasses.

Danucci said, "Primo tells me my family, they
kept you from your dinner. How's about you join me in mine, eh?"

"Thank you."

The old man said, "Primo."

Zuppone pulled out the side chair for me. I sat in
it, the cushion soft, the wood carving digging into the back of my
knees. Then Zuppone pulled out the head chair, with its armrests and
higher back, the head of a raging lion at the top above the back
cushion. Danucci sat in it, lowering himself carefully with his palms
on the chiseled claws that made up the ends of the chair's arms. He
hunched forward as Zuppone pushed the chair and him in toward the
table.

Danucci pinged the chalice in front of him. "White
or red?"

"Whatever you recommend"

A pleased smile. "I like a man knows how to be a
good guest." He said, "Primo," then a string of
Italian.

Zuppone crossed to the low cabinet, taking a cut
crystal decanter from it. Lifting the crystal stopper gently, he
crossed back to me, pouring ruby-colored wine into my chalice, jewels
embedded in geometric patterns on both its bowl and stem. When Primo
finished with me, he did the same for Danucci. The old man raised his
chalice, closed his eyes, and intoned something that sounded more
like Latin from the Old Mass than Italian from the old country.

Danucci opened his eyes. "That was, 'With thanks
to God and to good health.' You get a little older, you go back to
the things from when you're a kid. Even start believing in them
again, eh?"

He gave a curt nod, and we drank together. The wine
was spectacular, a mix of a dozen flavors that tumbled around the
mouth before finishing with a dying fireworks glow at the back of the
tongue.

I said, "The best."

Danucci said, "It is."

This time he just looked at Zuppone, who nodded and
headed toward a door that turned out to be the kitchen.

"I gotta say, I'm lucky, Mr. Detective. I can
still enjoy the wine and the food. I just gotta drink and eat a
little early. Otherwise, I taste the spices a second time in my
sleep, you know?"

"Actually, I'm not a detective, Mr. Danucci."

He didn't say anything.

"Detectives are on police forces. I'm just a
private investigator."

The blood rose up his neck, stopping just as it
flushed his jaw but not his cheeks. Very quietly, Danucci said, "I'm
an old man, Mr. Detective. Indulge me, eh?"

I decided I would not much like Tommy the Temper to
get mad at me.

Zuppone came back in with a course of sausage and
pasta in small bowls, one for each of us.

Danucci said, "I cook for myself, now. My
Amatina was alive, I never thought about it. But I talked with her
friends, they told me some of her secrets in the kitchen. I tried
this and that, found a couple that reminded me of her."

I sampled the sausage first. Sweet, delicate. Then
the pasta. Like cotton candy melting in the mouth.

I said, "Your daughter-in-law told me she
learned a lot from your wife."

Danucci paused, his fork not quite lifted clear of
his bowl, then put it back down. He paused again, then drank the rest
of the wine in his chalice, Primo refilling without needing to be
prompted.

When Zuppone had set the decanter back on the
counter, Danucci said, "You and me, we don't know how to talk to
each other, do we?"

I stopped eating.

"
What I'm saying here, you don't want to say
nothing wrong, you don't want to offend me you don't have to, but you
just don't know what's what, am I right?"

"That's right."

"Can't blame you, Mr. Detective. I was in your
shoes, I wouldn't know what the fuck's going on, either. Enjoy your
dinner, the hospitality of my table. You don't got nothing to worry
about. You might be the only detective in the city got nothing to
worry about. Let me talk to you some, you don't even got to worry
about answering, eh?"

"All right."

Danucci did another curt nod, but more to himself
than a signal to Zuppone.

"Here's the way it is. Twenny years ago, my son
comes back from the war, he has this — what I thought at the time —
this pregnant squaw, only she's Oriental. He has this Oriental with
him, he says to us, ‘This is my wife! Just like that, no letter, no
phone call, just cold fucking conks us with it. My Amatina, she's a
saint, she says to him, 'Joey, your wife is my daughter,' like that.
I can't see it, I can't see the mixing of the blood, what it'd do to
J oey's prospects. In the business, I mean. Our business. "What
I'm doing here, Mr. Detective, I'm collecting the story — no, fuck,
that's not it. Primo?"

"Like 'collapsing the story,' Mr. Danucci?"

"Right, right. Like making a long story short.
Well, six, seven years ago, my Amatina gets sick, Mr. Detective, bad
sick, never-get-better sick." Danucci reached for the wine
glass. "Primo says you lost your wife young."

"Primo's right."

"I don't know what that must be like. Losing
your wife before you have the life that gives you memories. But I
know what it's like to lose her after the memories, after all the
things you done together, you thought you'd be talking about them
forever. So, anyway, my son, he comes back from the war with this
wife and then she has the baby, and you only got to take one look . .
.

Danucci's voice caught. I glanced at Zuppone, who
just watched the man, no expression. I looked back to Danucci and
waited him out.

"You only got to take one look at Tina, you see
the eyes. My Amatina's eyes. I don't know how it's possible, but
there they are. So I don't accept that too good. And the child grows
up in my son's house as my granddaughter, the best because my
Amatina, she's so in love with the grandchild, her only one, you see
what I'm saying here? Tina gets everything, but me, I'm siciliane,
eh? I can't accept her."

"Then my Amatina, she gets sick. And the
'Oriental', the one I thought was a 'pregnant squaw,' she takes my
wife into her home, because Claudette says, 'It is not right for the
mother of my husband to be in the hands of strangers.' This woman,
she  lost an eye because of fighting for my son in some fucking
chinktown over there, she lost an eye and she still acts like a
daughter to my Amatina. There were times, I gotta tell you, there
were times I could barely stand to be in the same room with my wife,
Mr. Detective. Times the look on her face, or the smell . . . But
Claudette, she was always there for her, and then Tina, too. Tina
loved her nana — my Amatina. Loved her like an Italian girl would.
They did everything they could, make her comfortable. Then, when my
wife . . . after the funeral, I'm walking back up the stairs down
there, where you just come up. If Primo here isn't with me, I'm dead,
because I have a heart attack, it feels like five fucking
linebackers, they're driving a battering ram through my chest. Primo,
he calls my doctor — we call him Doctor T, he's kind of on retainer
to us, but he's so famous now, he don't want everybody to know that.
Anyway, Primo gets me to the hospital, and Doctor T and the others,
they do their thing and I'm still alive, but I can't do nothing,
nothing for myself. And the 'Oriental,' she's just got my Amatina out
of her house, and she takes me in. Primo looks after things here, but
Claudette and Tina, every day they take care of me down at Joey's
house when I can't fucking lift my head or . . . clean myself up."

Danucci looked at me, the eyes blazing. "Then
she grows into a beautiful young lady, my Tina Amatina, and some
fucking louse, some fucking lowlife colored drug fucker kills her. My
son Joey, he's out of town, so her mother, she has to call me. And
ever since, it's like a blister on my heart. Every hour I think about
it, and it's like you rubbing that blister, it don't get better. The
best ones, Mr. Detective, we bury the best ones in shallow graves,
shallow fucking graves. So you go ahead. You ask your questions, and
I'll answer them."

The old man gave that curt nod again, then went back
to his fork.

Primo said, "Danucci, let me warm that up a
little for you?"
 
Danucci
started to shake his head, then pushed the bowl three inches toward
Zuppone, who scooped it up gracefully, did the same with mine, and
hustled into the kitchen.

I said, "Your granddaughter give you any idea
there was any problem in her life?"

"Problem? No. She kind of broke away from the
family, year, year and a half ago. Go out on her own, be a model or
some kinda shit. Just her age, every kid goes through that. But I'll
tell you something, she still remembered to call me. She needed
something, she didn't want to ask my son for, she asked me."

Danucci's hand doted on the stem of the goblet. "You
know, she talked to me the day she died?"

"You saw her?"

"No. Just on the telephone. She called me, told
me how happy she was about going to some party, about me and the
Order of the Cross and all."

His son had mentioned it. "You're some kind of
officer in it?"

Danucci looked at me sharply. "Not some kind of.
I'm gonna be the next president, you hear that? Thomas Danucci, Tommy
the Temper Danucci, he's gonna be number one in the most honored
Italian Catholic society there is for laymen."

Danucci swung his head around the room. "You're
wondering, even with all the paintings, the icons, you're wondering
how come they let a guy like me in period, am I right?"

"That's what I was wondering."

Danucci softened the look a little. "You're
okay, Mr. Detective. You get asked a question, you answer it."
The rhythm of his speech changed. "When my Amatina got sick, I
started to get the religion again. It happen to you, with your wife?"

I started to say no, then Zuppone came back in with
our bowls. After he served us, I said, "Not so much."