Shallow Graves - Jeremiah Healy (34 page)

"Hello, I wonder if you can help me?"

"With whom do you wish to speak?"

"Well, I'm not sure. I need to know if a word is
from a foreign language and what it means."

A glacial sigh. "Sir, I'm afraid we cannot be of
help."

"I thought Linguistics stood for the study of
languages?

"Then you are mistaken. We study language,
singular and in the abstract, if you will. We are not some sort of
universal translation table. Good day."

I hung up before the dial tone came on and tried
number four.

"
Linguistics Department, Roy speaking." A
cheery voice. I told him the same thing I told number three.

"Gee, I'm sorry but I don't think anybody here
like knows all the languages. But there is someplace I can send you."

"Where?"

* * *

The librarian at the reserve desk on the second floor
curved her hand to the right. "The section closest to the copy
machine, the shelves on both sides. In alphabetical order."

I edged past a high school student in a football
varsity jacket who looked like he was using both a copy machine and
the Boston Public Library itself for the first time. I found the
dictionaries and decided to start with Italian/English, carrying it
to the nearest work table in the center of the room. I went through
it slowly, trying every phonetic spelling I could think of for
"far-far."

Between pages, my mind drifted to Sinead Fagan's
story about her stepfather. To "Tina Danucci" moving in
with her Uncle Vincent for a while, changing not just her first name
but her last as well. To her uncle's chosen surname, a perversion of
what a bride might do. Then I thought about Mau Tim Dani and New
York. Oz Puriefoy advising her to move there, Claudette Danucci
afraid she'd decided to go, Larry Shinkawa sure of it. A young woman
making a clean break with everything from Boston, personal as well as
professional. Burning bridges with a passion.

Then I focused on Vincent Dani himself. Making
partner in his office tower, Mau Tim finding out about it and calling
him from her apartment late in the afternoon of the day she died,
when he was in a meeting. The lawyer maybe calling her back,
listening to Mau Tim's version of what Sinead had done to her
stepfather, seeing his partnership fly out the window.

After five minutes, I'd exhausted the Italian
dictionary and pushed it to the corner of the table.

I got up, went back to the shelves, and started at
the A's. I took down six or seven books and carried them back to my
work space. Forty minutes more. Nothing.

Over the next few hours, I lost count of how many
trips I made, each time coming back with as many volumes as I could
manage. Some of them were unintelligible, the language involved not
using our alphabet. Those I took back to the shelves, becoming aware
that I was getting some strange stares. I kept at it, though,
thumbing through the pages, trying theme and variations on far-far.
Zip.

By suppertime, I was down to the S books and thinking
about a different approach when I reached the Swedish/English entry.
It didn't do much for my appetite, but there it was. The English
translation of the Swedish phrase 'farfar." Unless it was a
complete coincidence.

I took the English word and went back through the
dictionaries on my table. It was eerie, finding Mau Tim's pet word
for Oz Puriefoy in the Dutch and another of her expressions with
Larry Shinkawa in the Hawaiian. Even her "first boyfriend"
in the Gaelic, striking my forehead with the heel of my harping hand
on that one. So clear, once you had the English-version key.

Then I felt cold. Claudette Danucci had said her
daughter looked things up in the Vietnamese dictionary, and everyone
had commented on the dead woman's curiosity about other cultures. Now
knowing why that curiosity might have been an obsession, I pictured
Mau Tim Dani in my chair at the library, using the English word to go
through the books. Just as I was then.

I sat there, the volumes
piled up around me, forgetting to eat dinner.

* * *

Primo Zuppone was out of the Lincoln before I could
get to the driver's side. The car was backed into the narrow
driveway, and he was standing in front of the door with the aluminum
awning as I walked toward it.

"I gotta frisk you."

Zuppone's voice didn't sound right. Strained, like he
was imitating himself.

I raised my arms even though I wasn't carrying. "He
told you I was coming by?"

Zuppone broke off the pat-down, his eyes getting
wide. "He told you to frisk me, but not to come up with me,
right?"

Zuppone's eyes got wider, the toothpick doing a
jitterbug as he finished with my ankles.

I said, "Claudette reached you and when you
didn't know the answer to her question, you asked him what 'far-far'
meant"

Zuppone spit out the toothpick and stepped back,
letting me go in the door and up the stairs alone.
 
 

-28-

"SO, MR. DETECTIVE YOU'LL JOIN ME IN SOME WINE?

"I don't think so."

Torrrmy the Temper Danucci and I were alone in his
magnificent dining room. Standing at the head of the table, he was
dressed in brown slacks and a brown flannel shirt with a red and
green tartan pattem. The model of a modestly retired man, trying very
hard to adopt an attitude of normality toward the current guest.

Danucci gestured over the decanter and two chalices
to the other end of the table. I sat down, elbows on the linen cloth.
He sank slowly into his throne chair, twelve feet away. "So, you
know."

I nodded.

"Tell me how, eh?"

"The timing that night at the building on
Falmouth. It was all wrong because it was so tight. Too tight unless
it was planned by a professional."

"
Which I told you it wasn't."

I nodded again. "If the killing wasn't planned
by a professional, then it was a burglar gone panicked or a crime of
passion."

Danucci's blood started to rise past his throat. "And
I couldn't get you to buy the B and E."

"The fire escape problem. Larry Shinkawa doesn't
hear the last flight grind and squeal. Instead, he both hears the
clanging noise of somebody on it and feels it still vibrating when he
gets to it. That means it wasn't some other fire escape, it was this
one, and it also means the killer got only as far as the second-floor
landing."

"Where only the family had a key to get out of
the apartment and down the inside stairs."

"Unless the killer used and replaced Tina's
spare key for the second-floor door."

Danucci leaned forward, very carefully pouring
himself some wine from the decanter. He swirled the chalice, inhaling
before sipping from it. "How did you figure it was me?"

"I didn't."

"Eh?"

"I thought it was your son."

"My son was in Philly."

"I meant Vincent."

"Vincent." A dismissive wave from the hand
that wasn't holding the chalice. "You shoulda known it wasn't
Mr. Vincent Dani, Esquire. That first night with me here, you knew.
You said it, remember?"

"Brains and ambition, but no heart."

"Right. No heart, no . . . passion."
Danucci set the chalice down firmly. "I never told this to no
one. Not my confessor, not Primo, not nobody."

I tried to stay as still as I could.

"I lost my Amatina. That Claudette and Tina,
they nursed her as good as they could, as any million-dollar doctor
could, but I lost her. Then I had the heart attack, and they nursed
me, too. For a while there, I was weak and outta my head, then I got
a little stronger but still not right, still a little outta my head.
And one night, Tina, she comes into my room in her father's house.
Comes in to check on me."

Danucci looked up at one of his religious paintings,
a hazy Madonna. "It musta been the light from outside, through
the windows. The light playing tricks on me, but I coulda sworn . . .
I could swear today it was my Amatina's eyes, looking down at me,
asking if I was okay, if there was anything she could do. I . . .
reached up for her, and took her into my bed, and . . . That was it.
She didn't fight back or resist or nothing. Then she was gone. But
she come back, two nights more. And by then I knew. Knew it wasn't my
Amatina. But I couldn't . . . I couldn't . . ."

The abrupt nod, scooping the chalice up again and
this time drinking in a gulp.

Danucci put the chalice down but didn't refill it.
"She never said a thing, Tina. Nothing. Then I got better and
got back here, and still nothing. She was always polite to me, the
family get-togethers. Always a hug and a kiss. I figured she . . .
forgave me. That she understood that what happened, it was out of
weakness, not . .

"You set her up in the apartment."

The eyes blazed. "What're you saying, you
fucking cocksucker? You saying I set my own blood up in that
apartment to be a whore for me?"

"No. I'm saying she decided to stay in the
apartment house, and probably had to ask you to do it."

"It was her mother."

"Claudette?"

"She was afraid for Tina, being in the city,
living with the colored photographer. So I got Primo to scare him
off, then gave Joey the idea Tina should have the place on Falmouth,
where Ooch could look after her."

"And Sinead Fagan?"

"The Irish girl, Tina was friends with her.
Wanted her to be in the building, too, less than market rent. I got
lots of buildings, lots of properties. Didn't cost me much."

I thought about it, Mau Tim getting her revenge
indirectly, receiving from her grandfather without confronting him.
"What set Tina off?"

"You don't know?"

"Her mother's phone call that Friday."

"You do know. You cocksucker, you don't toy with
Tornrny Danucci!"

"I'm not toying. I'm guessing."

The old man lowered himself a notch. "Yeah.
Well, I pick up the phone when it rings, and it's Tina. And she says,
'Mom told me, you got picked to be president of the Order of the
Cross.' And I'm thinking, this is great, this is terrific, my
grand-daughter, she cares enough about me, she calls to congratulate
me. So I say, 'Yeah, it's something I wanted since your grand-mother
died.' And then she hits me with it. 'Well, I don't think any
religious thing is gonna want you to be their president after I tell
them you're a baby-raper.' "

Danucci used the empty chalice as a prop. "I
tell you, Mr. Detective, I hold the phone away from me, just like
this. I hold it away account of I know it must be wrong, it's gotta
be defective, I didn't hear anything like that come out of it. Then I
pull it back and I say, 'Tina, Amatina, what're you saying?' And she
says she's going to a party that night, she's gonna try it out on her
friends before she tells her mother and father about it the next
night at dinner. Tina says she wants to make real sure she's got it
down right before she calls the Order and tells them."

"You told me Tina talked about the party when
she called you."

"I figured, you're a detective, you can get the
company records on her phone there. They'd show the call to me, I had
to have an explanation for it."

"
But you didn't know the party was going to be
in her building."

"No. No, she didn't say that over the phone. So,
I hang up, what am I supposed to do, eh? You tell me. I pace back and
forth here, maybe two, three minutes. I can feel my heart, racing.
Primo, he's out shopping for me, but I can't bring him into it,
anyway. Can't let him know .... So I grab my keys to the place on
Falmouth, I got them all on a ring. I go out, walk up to Hanover,
find a cab. A colored, just dropping off a fare for one of the
restaurants, he don't know me from a hole in the ground. I tell him
to take me to the corner by the building. He's driving, I'm thinking,
what can I say to her?

"I get to the front door of the building, I let
myself in with my key to it. I go past the apartment door on the
first floor, and I hear this music. But it's not real loud or
nothing, so I figure the Irish girl's just got it on for company. It
don't never occur to me, she's having the party for Tina there."

Danucci refilled the chalice from the decanter. "I
get up the stairs to the third floor. The door — I can just hear
the shower on, then turned off. I use the key, slip inside her
apartment. I can hear her moving around in the bathroom, I don't
figure she can hear me. I musta put the chain on like I do here, I
don't remember. Five, ten minutes I'm standing there like a jerk
before Tina's out of the bathroom. She's in her robe, six feet away
from me, and she says, "What are you doing here? Get the fuck
out!"

The old man shook his head. "To me, she said
that. I say to her, 'What do you mean, get out?' She says, 'It's my
apartment. Get the fuck out.' I say, 'Your apartment? I own the whole
building. This is my property! She says, 'You can have your property.
I'm late for my party.' And I say, 'Tina, Amatina, we gotta talk
here.' And she says, 'Uh-unh, too late to talk, far-far.' "