The Helium Murder (12 page)

“Who—?”

Rocky interrupted again, and I was starting to resent my one-syllable allotment.

“Al was crazy about you,” he said. “Before he left the club that night, he gave me an errand to do.” Rocky reached into his pocket, causing an involuntary gasp to leave my throat. To my great relief, he pulled out an item too small to be a weapon, and handed it to me—a small red velvet box, discolored and worn with age. “I picked this up for him at that jeweler’s on Broadway.”

I opened the box and saw an enormous diamond ring, at least nine millimeters in diameter, and equally deep in its setting. On the inside diameter was the inscription “AG
GL.”

“I already had an engagement ring,” I said, as if I were rejecting a proposal from Rocky himself.

“That one was kind of cheap, you know. Al came into some money and wanted to get you a really good one. This one’s two carats,” he said as proudly as if he’d bought it. “He was going to give it to you Christmas Eve.”

“And you’ve kept it all these years?” I had the ring in one hand and the box in the other, feeling like I was at the controls of a time machine.

“Tell you the truth,” Rocky said, “I almost used it a couple of times, but I figured it would be
malocchio
, you know, a curse. I mean, it was supposed to go to you.”

“Thank you, Rocky,” I said, finally gesturing toward a seat.
Surely he wouldn’t give me a ring, then blow me away
, I thought.

Rocky refused my offer and was walking toward the door, his thirty-four-year-old errand brought to closure.
But I wasn’t quite finished with him. Although I wasn’t anxious to pursue the topic of Al Gravese, and I had no idea what to do with a large diamond ring, I did have some pressing questions about a present-day investigation.

“Do you know anything about Margaret Hurley’s murder?” I asked, certain that I’d lost all common sense.

Rocky didn’t blink an eye.

“Don’t go there,” he said, and headed for the door—where, for the second surprise of the evening, I saw Sgt. Matt Gennaro.

Where were you when I thought I needed you?
I almost said.

Rocky nodded to me and to Matt, put his hat on, and walked out into the hallway and down the stairs. I watched his exit and Matt’s appearance like a stage director who’d lost control of his cast.

Once I was able to focus my attention on Matt, I rushed to my own defense.

“I didn’t invite him,” I said. I had a vivid memory of the time last fall when Matt stormed around my apartment, angry at me, just because I’d been entertaining all the suspects in a murder investigation in my apartment.

“I know that,” he said, with a smile that comforted me. I let out a long sigh, the accumulation of more than twenty-four hours of pent-up anxiety, starting when I’d heard Rocky utter my name on the first evening of the wake.

“You knew he was up here?”

“I saw him put Buddy in a car, then reenter the building and go up the stairs.”

“I thought you weren’t here tonight. And why didn’t you stop him?”
And why don’t I just bang my fists on the table?
I thought, aware of my shrill voice.

“I’ve been here all evening,” he said, “outside in an unmarked, and walking around the property. I guess your sources aren’t that keen.” He had a delightful, teasing twinkle in his eyes, and I lifted my arms in embarrassed defeat. “Secondly,” he continued, “I wasn’t worried because I knew he knew—he saw the cruiser with the uniforms outside; he saw me follow him into the building and watch him climb the stairs, if you understand what I’m saying.”

I understood.

“You’re not a good liar, directly or indirectly,” Matt said. “I knew you’d started going through Al’s book, so I was keeping an eye out, but I thought I’d give you a few minutes with Busso.”

I was still holding the ring and the box, and saw Matt glance down at them.

“He came to give me my engagement ring,” I said, sounding like the college girl I was the first time I’d received a diamond.

Matt nodded as if he knew about the ring, but I suspected that he just couldn’t come up with an appropriate response.
Who could?
I asked myself.

We were still standing close to the door. Matt rubbed his hands together and blew on them. “Do you think I could have a cup of coffee?” he asked. “I’m freezing.”

Matt’s request woke me out of my semitrance, and it came to me that I’d been more hospitable to Rocky than to Matt. An image of Josephine came to my mind, and I rushed to the kitchen, putting the ring, now resting in its cushioned box, on the counter.

I gave Matt coffee and a plate of snacks since, by his admission, he’d eaten only “stakeout food” that evening.

I sat on my rocker, across from him, and gave him a full account of my conversation with Rocky.

“I learned a lot in a few minutes,” I said. “I came face-to-face with Al’s connections, you might say.”

“Are you all right with this, Gloria?”

“I am. It might take a while to process everything.”

“Give yourself time.” Matt was sitting on the edge of my couch, leaning forward, his face showing concern.

“I guess he was telling me that Al was set up to be killed, but the ones responsible are all dead, or almost all dead, and, anyway, I think I’m through with this.”

“So you’re not going to hit me up for a copy of the notebook?”

“No,” I said, probably taking him more seriously than he intended. “I still have some questions, of course, like what had Al done to deserve being killed, and is anyone else in that book besides Rocky alive today. But I’m definitely ready to file this away.”

As I rambled, I sipped my coffee and stared past Matt, at the tops of the snowy trees outside my window. A streetlight in front of the building cast a yellowish
glow over my white drapes, and I imagined I was looking at a very old photograph.

Matt drained his cup and stood to leave. I realized I’d lost track of his presence.

“I’m going to be on my way,” he said. “I’ll see you tomorrow afternoon.”

“Right,” I said, as if I’d been thinking of Vincent Cavallo and his helium report all along. “One o’clock.”

“And, best of all, I’ll see you Saturday evening,” he said.

“I’m really looking forward to that, too.”

I smiled, but Matt’s comment didn’t have half the effect it would have under different circumstances.

“Be good to yourself, Gloria,” Matt said, giving me a brief, one-armed hug as he walked past me out the door.

I went back to my rocker, with no inclination either to sleep or to do anything useful. I rubbed my ring finger as if to awaken more memories, or to put order into the ones I had. I drifted far away, back to 1962.

I’m with Al Gravese, at a flower show. I don’t especially like attending flower shows, but it’s one of Al’s passions, and I’m happy to be his date. I’m bored by the talks on the latest in mulch or crossbreeding tulips, and all the different breeds of orchids look alike to me, but I smile a lot and fix my hair and make sure my lipstick is even.

I’m fishing with Al Gravese. I hate being out on the water in a small boat, and I can’t stand the sight of
worms or the smell of dead fish, but I laugh and snap Al’s picture and say what fun it is.

I’m at a baseball game with Al Gravese and his buddies. I’d rather be at the museum or a concert, but I eat hot dogs and yell at the umpire, and cheer when the Red Sox score a run.

Al was crazy about the girl on his arm, I thought, but Al didn’t know me any more than I knew him.

I turned out the lights in the living room, and went in to sleep.

Chapter Fourteen

I
noticed more activity than usual for a weekday in front of St. Anthony’s Church as I left my building on Thursday morning, December 8, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. I recalled a time when I believed that an eternal pit of fire awaited those who missed mass on this day. I wondered if the parishioners filing into church in the 1990s believed that, and I also wondered exactly what I believed now.

On the way to my meeting with Peter and Patrick Gallagher I made a detour to a small coffee shop on Beach Street. It was a new café, with modern furniture and espresso machines, but its freshly painted walls were covered with old photographs of Revere Beach in its heyday. In spite of the frigid morning air outside and the Christmas music inside, I was brought back to hot, humid summer days as I walked around and studied the enlarged black-and-white snapshots—a pony
diving from a forty-foot platform into a tank of water on the Boulevard, shapely young women in modest black swimsuits lined up for a bathing beauty contest, a man shot from a cannon, flying one hundred feet into the sky.

At the table next to mine was a young mother and her daughter, wearing nearly identical pink quilted nylon jackets. As I sipped espresso through a thick layer of foam, I watched them out of the corner of my eye. They worked together on a page in a coloring book, giggling over a silly picture, their matching blond hair falling onto their work. I could smell the little girl’s hot chocolate and wished I could tell her how lucky she was.

As hard as I’d tried over the years, I could never remember a time when Josephine and I laughed together, or even colored together. I was sure that her own Depression-era youth held few joys, and I tried to forgive her for not recovering in time to give me a childhood. It’s never too late for a happy childhood, pop psychologists claimed, but I was too busy working on a happy adulthood.

The Revere High School building was brand new, as far as I was concerned, having been built long after I’d left for California. I met Peter in the main office, where I signed a clipboard at the reception desk. His mood was about as cool as his crisp white shirt, but he warmed up a bit when I gave him a steaming decaf mocha, a bag of biscotti, and an outline for six more guest appearances in his class.

We went to the faculty lounge, a surprisingly ample room with a couch along one wall and a kitchen area with a few tables and chairs. I wondered if Peter, a confirmed antitechnologist, ever used the minisized white microwave oven on the counter.

“I asked Gallagher to meet me here around eight-thirty,” Peter said, as he snapped off a piece of biscotti. “I thought it would be less awkward than dragging you down to his office.”

“That was really a good idea, Peter,” I said, meaning every word. I’d spent a good part of my time in the shower that morning wondering just how I would manage an interview with Gallagher, standing at the threshold of his office. A conversation seemed much more feasible if we were sitting around a table in the lounge, but I still didn’t know precisely what approach to take, except that I wished I’d brought him a mocha.

“How shall I introduce you?” Peter asked, causing me to feel like a criminal who carried multiple passports with different identities. I had a moment of longing for my years as a simple physicist wearing a white lab coat over whatever outfit was clean that day.

It took me a while to answer Peter’s question. Not knowing whether I should represent myself as a Galigani Mortuary staff person or a Revere Police Department consultant, I’d chosen clothing befitting either occupation—a black rayon suit with an ivory silk blouse and a long string of pearls. I wore a small round pin on my lapel, with the official logo of an undergraduate physics group I’d been adviser to. Its dull green background featured a miniature schematic
in gold, showing waves leaving a moving source, also known as the Doppler effect.

“Just introduce me as your friend, I think,” I told Peter, having decided that I might learn more in a casual interaction than in a formal capacity, not that I really had a formal capacity, I reminded myself.

Patrick Gallagher came into the lounge only seconds after I’d determined who I’d be for the morning. He presented a striking picture, with his wavy red hair, dark blue suit, and polished black oxfords. Only the redness around his eyes and his tired breathing gave away the emotional strain I imagined he was under. Otherwise, I had no trouble imagining him fitting well in the social circles of Washington and wondered what had driven him and Congresswoman Hurley apart.

Gallagher took Peter’s folder, hardly acknowledging his words of introduction. He seemed in a hurry to leave, so I made a frenzied attempt to engage him in conversation.

“I’m so sorry about the death of your friend, Margaret Hurley,” I said to him. “Are you going to attend the funeral this morning?”

“No, I can’t make it.”

I knew that Matt wouldn’t have scheduled an interview unless Gallagher had already decided to stay away from the services.

“I suppose it would very hard on you,” I said.

Gallagher looked at me with curiosity, finally making eye contact. A side glance gave me a view of Peter, who put his elbows on the table, hands at his forehead, as if he couldn’t bear to watch.

“Yes,” Gallagher said, half turning to leave the lounge.

“I happen to live in the apartment upstairs from Galigani’s Mortuary,” I said, “and I know how difficult this week has been for you.”

Gallagher shook his head, a pained expression on his face.

“And your concern in all this is?”