The Strangler (32 page)

She scanned up from his oxblood-red loafers to his khakis where, above the right knee, a red stain had blossomed.

She turned her head, painfully—the nylons—and saw in the darkness of her bedroom, underlighted from the hallway, Michael with his father’s gun. He was ghastly pale, white as marble, as he always was during a migraine attack. In the dim light, shoeless and crazy-haired and wearing his undershirt, he looked like a ghost of himself. Behind him the drawer where the gun was kept was still open, her lingerie spilling out. (It occurred to her that, in Joe Senior’s twenty-three and a half years on the force, it was the first time the gun had ever been fired outside the practice range.) Michael held the gun in one hand, but the weight of it seemed too much for him. It threatened to topple him forward.

Above her, Lindstrom encircled the stain with the fingers of both hands, as if he meant to choke it. But the blossom of red continued to deepen and evolve as he, and she, watched it.

Michael took two unsteady slide-steps toward the bedroom door.

Lindstrom looked from his wound to Michael to Margaret to the gun. He darted off.

Margaret and Michael heard him stomp down the stairs and out the door and away down the street.

Michael took one more slow-motion step in the direction of Margaret before his head rolled to one side and he seemed to glance upward and his body ribboned down to the floor.

Charging up the stairs with Joe, looking up at him from a few steps below with the foreshortened perspective that angle imposes, it occurred to Ricky what an awesome creature Joe really was, a centaur with massive haunches above oddly dainty ankles. He would hardly have been surprised if one of Joe’s sneakers slipped off to reveal a black hoof. Joe had come here to kill Lindstrom. Ricky had no doubt he meant to do it. He had his service pistol with him. If Lindstrom was lucky, Joe would use the gun. For his part, Ricky still was not sure, halfway up the stairs, whether he would help with the killing or prevent it.
If
he could prevent it, that is, once Joe got started.

Joe kicked in Lindstrom’s door with a single stomp by the door handle. He stood in the doorway panting.

The apartment was empty. All that remained was an old Westinghouse electric fan, unplugged, and a few loose papers on the floor. Kurt Lindstrom was gone.

He would never be seen in Boston again.

Walking on a warm night made Joe think of dying—not afraid, just aware that there could only be so many nights like this, strolling in shirtsleeves, in any one lifespan. So, when he felt a hand grab his upper arm, he was already in a waning mood, prepared, philosophically at least, for the possibility of some Very Bad Thing. And yet he was misled momentarily by the busyness of his surroundings—Boylston Street at Park Square, where a new Playboy Club was under construction—and by the intimacy of the touch—an insinuating wiggle of four fat fingers in the crevice of his armpit—so that when he turned, he was wearing a bemused smile. He was expecting to see a friend.

Instead he found himself face-to-face with one of Gargano’s apes. Joe knew this man. His name was like a birdcall, Chico Tirico. A typical street-soldier type, a slab-faced guinea wiseguy. Tirico was fitter than most of them, though. He had been a heavyweight boxer and stayed in shape. No incipient double chin, no bowling-ball belly dropping out of his shirt. (Gargano himself had been a fighter, too, once upon a time. It was not an unusual background among mob stalkers. The neighborhood boxing gyms were like stud farms. A Golden Gloves kid could always have a muscle job if he wanted it.)

“Hey, cop,” Tirico said.

Joe slapped the guy’s hand away indignantly. He did not like the way it looked, the suggestion that some mook could place him under arrest. He was still a cop, despite everything.

There were three other goons alongside. Alerted by Joe’s gesture, they drew closer.

“Take it easy,” Tirico cooed.

They drew back again, and Gargano came into view. He looked sallow and drugged. Word was that Gargano had been doing heroin for years now, and his habit was getting out of control. His face seemed out of focus; Joe glanced away from him to the grid of red bricks on a wall to be sure his vision was still sharp—that the blurring was indeed in Gargano’s face and not Joe’s eyes.

Gargano said, “Somebody wants to talk to you.”

“Who?”

“The big boss.”

“Wants to talk to me?”

“That’s right.”

“Bullshit.” Joe gestured with his eyes at the four apes. “Why all the muscle if alls we’re gonna do is talk?”

“It’s just talk, Joe. You have my word.”

“Where?”

“C.C.’s Lounge, right around the corner. You’ll be back in a minute, like nothing ever happened.”

Joe calculated. It was reckless of Gargano to approach him in such a public place, even after dark—a gangster grabbing a cop off a busy downtown street. Joe took it as another sign of his own diminishing life expectancy; Gargano would not risk burning a valuable source if he meant to keep him around much longer. Then again, in a heroin haze Gargano’s erratic behavior might not signal anything at all except his own unraveling. Vinnie The Animal was following a well-worn mob career path: He would go out in a blaze of glory someday, done in by the very wildness that had made him, like Paul Muni in
Scarface
. But if The Animal had intended to kill Joe, he would not have pulled a stunt like this one. In any case, Gargano had too much muscle on his side. Joe opted for a tactical retreat.

“Alright,” he said. “I’ll meet you there.”

“No. Come on, come with us in the car.”

“Pretty crowded car. What, am I gonna ride in the trunk?”

“For fuck’s sake, Joe, I already told you, it’s not like that. I swear.”

“Just the same. Nice night for a stroll.”

Gargano shook his head. People were so mistrustful. “Alright, you stroll, then.”

Chico Tirico gave him a shove. “Stroll, motherfucker.”

Joe let it go.

He walked three blocks through the Combat Zone to C.C.’s Lounge, on Tremont, as Gargano’s black-finned Caddy lurked alongside, tactlessly.

Reassembled there, the group marched through the bar. The early-evening drinkers all turned their heads in silence to watch them pass, the prisoner and his escort.

Down an ancient staircase to a basement office. Grimy, small, windowless. A few chairs, a desk.

Two men waited inside.

Gargano gestured for Joe to go inside, and he did.

The smaller of the two men stood facing him. He was slim and tall, thought not as tall as Joe. Mid-fifties, Italian, with dark thick hair going gray at the sides and in a patch above his forehead. He stood in a theatrically defiant way: arms folded, head tipped back, offering his chin and a Mussolini frown.

“You’re Daley?” the man said.

“Yeah.”

“You know who I am?”

“No.”

“I’m Carlo Capobianco. This is my brother Niccolo.”

Joe had heard of Charlie and Nicky Capobianco. Tonight they were Carlo and Niccolo. They were Italian and Joe was not. At the moment this fact seemed to be all that mattered.

“This is the last time you disrespect me. You hear me? Last fuckin’ time. Your whole fuckin’ family. Your brother the thief steals from me, now you make trouble for me, what am I supposed to do?” He glowered.

“Is this about money?”

“Is this about money?” Capobianco’s face tensed.

“’Cause I can get the money up. I swear.”

Capobianco came forward, suddenly and inexplicably pissed off. He stopped a few steps from Joe so that the disparity in their heights would not be so apparent, and he stood with his chest out and chin up like a gamecock. He spoke fast and loud: “Are you fuckin’ stupid? These Irish fuckin’ cops—what, do you got fuckin’ rocks in your head? Answer me, you got rocks in your head? Or
potatuhs
? Look at ’m: nine feet tall and nothing but
potatuhs
in his head. This is what we got, a whole police department full of these backward fuckin’ Paddys. How the fuck do you guys ever fuckin’ catch anyone? You walk around with your hand out and your head up your ass—what I want to know is, how the fuck do you ever catch anyone? Huh? Let me ask you something. How is it when the Italians already ruled the fuckin’ world, a thousand years ago or whatever, you fuckin’ Paddys were still running around in the woods like fuckin’ cavemen, digging in the dirt for something to eat?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know? You fuckin’ stupid?”

“No.”

“No? No? I hear you’re a fuckin’ idiot. I hear you’re about the stupidest Paddy cocksucker on the police force. And that’s saying something.”

It occurred to Joe that, all things being equal, he could break this greaseball guido midget in half with one hand. But all things were not equal.

Capobianco wiped a curl of spittle at the corner of his mouth. “This is the last time you disrespect me.”

“Charlie.” Nick smiled in a way calculated to soothe both men. He was older and cooler-headed than his brother. He wiggled his finger:
Let’s get on with it.

Charlie Capobianco said, “You been told to stay out of the West End?”

Joe was thrown. He was prepared to talk about money. Capobianco would threaten him about his spiraling debt, demand he pay it off or else, and Joe in turn would offer whatever empty promises came to mind. It was an exchange he and Gargano had rehearsed many times already. It was supposed to be about money, not the West End.

“You were told, stay out of there, let it alone.”

“Yeah.”

“Then you get moved out of Station One and they tell you again: Stay out of the West End. And still I got to hear about this dumb fuckin’ Paddy cop running around over there. You take my money? Like the rest of the pig cops in Station One, you take my fuckin’ money?”

“I guess so.”

“So how come when I ask you for something you don’t do it?”

“I don’t understand. You asked me for something?”

“Jesus, you are a dumb fuck. I told you to stay out of the West End. You stupid fuck.”

Joe’s thoughts snagged on the word
stupid
every time it was repeated. He had to force himself to hear the rest. He rotated his head so that one ear was aimed at Capobianco, to be sure he caught it all and could repeat the remainder of the sentence in his mind minus that word. What the hell was Capobianco ranting about?

“What,” Joe said simply, “do you care about the West End?”

“Never mind what I care. Your job isn’t to think. You’re not smart enough to think. Your job is to fuckin’ do what you’re told.” Charlie Capobianco wandered away from Joe, deeper into the small office. “Just do what you’re told or you’re gonna wind up like your thief brother.”

“What’s this got do with my brother? This has got nothing to do with my brother.”

“No. He’s got enough trouble.”

“He didn’t do nothin’.”

“No? Well, just the same, I wouldn’t stand too close to him. Be a shame to lose the both o’ yuz.”

“You stay the fuck away from my brother.”

“What?” Capobianco was livid again, the switch was thrown. “What did you say to me?”

But Joe was too far gone. Fuck Capobianco. Fuck this whole thing. “I said, stay the fuck away from my brother.” He saw Capobianco’s expression coil again, and knew he had fucked up. But it was too late.

Charlie Capobianco said to his brother, “Get this fuckin’ guy out of here. Get him out.” Then to Joe: “I’m through with you, cop. You understand me? Do you know who I am? You better learn your fuckin’ place. Learn your fuckin’ place. This is the last time you’ll disrespect me. You know what a contract is?”

“Yes.”

“Then don’t stand too close to your brother.”

Joe absorbed the warning slowly.

“And stay the fuck out of the West End. This is your last warning. You cost me enough money already. And to answer your other question: it’s always about money. Dumb fuck, what’d you think it was about?”