St. Albans Fire (20 page)

Gino well knew that his older neighbor kept an eye on the street. It was one reason he’d never had Peggy over when the wife was out of town. “Yeah. A week.”

“Right.” There was a telling pause as Frank finally decided to stop circling the reason for his call. “You have anyone over today?”

Gino stopped watching the screen before him, suddenly alert. “What’s up, Frankie?”

“It’s not like it’s any of my business, but I just wondered. A couple of guys were waiting for you.”

“How, ‘waiting’?”

Frank chuckled. “Oh, you know the routine. One of ’em naps; the other one keeps his eyes open. Then they switch.”

“What’d they look like?”

“One older, one younger. Couldn’t see all that good, since they stayed in the car, but they kept moving so as not to be too obvious. The younger one looked like he had somethin’ funny goin’ on with his left arm. Can’t be sure about that, though.”

“Cops?”

“That was the weird part,” Frank admitted. “If they were, they were using the dumbest cover I ever saw. I mean, they did look like cops, but the plates were from outta state.”

“You see where from?” Gino was by now sitting forward in his chair, his feet off the ottoman, the TV program abandoned.

“Oh, yeah.” Frank laughed. “That was the other thing. Vermont. They even have cops up there?”

Gino hadn’t given that question much thought until now. “I guess they do. Thanks, Frankie. I owe you one.”

“Nothin’ to it. Happy to help.”

· · ·

Gino wasn’t quite so sanguine that there was nothing to it. Staring sightlessly at the den’s far wall, he was thinking that if the news of that kid dying in the barn fire was the first shoe dropping, then this little tidbit had to be the second.

And it was a lot closer to home.

· · ·

“Is that him?” Willy asked, craning to see through the car’s back window.

Lil Farber was sitting in the passenger seat, with access to the outside rearview mirror. She quickly checked the mug shot in her hand. “Santo Massi, John Samuel Gregory’s old playmate, looking a little the worse for wear—as advertised.”

Joe was watching in his own mirror as the man they were discussing, once the swaggering, leather-clad teenage hood of Frederick Gregory’s memories, lurched out of a bar in North Newark and stumbled over to a parking meter where he caught his balance. His pallor was luminescent under the streetlamps, and he was skeleton-thin, but the resemblance between man and photo was unmistakable.

They’d been waiting for him for just under five hours, sitting in the car sharing nary a word, each so inured by years of past stakeouts as to barely notice the dullness any longer, their inbred impatience replaced by something like tranquility.

Most of the day just past had been spent in research and debate at Lil’s office, as they’d struggled to map and make reasonable the relational tangles of this case. In the end, connections had been made, however tenuous in places, between Gino Famolare, his mentor the late Vinnie Stazio, and the now incarcerated Antonio “Tony Hands” Lamano; between Lamano and Dante Lagasso—once the bane of Frederick Gregory’s checkbook—who both worked for the Facci family, and John Samuel Gregory; and finally between Lagasso and Santo Massi, who had been used in the old days by Lagasso for odd jobs, until Massi’s recreational habits with drugs and alcohol made him too unreliable.

But unreliable to the bad guys was hoped to be good news to the investigators, since, among this cast of potential interviewees, there were precious few available to try cracking. Stazio was dead, and Gino, his wife, daughter, and girlfriend couldn’t yet be approached, Lamano was ancient and in a far-off prison, and Lagasso was still active enough to not even acknowledge their existence without legal counsel, much less engage in conversation.

And conversation was what they were after—which made Massi the only possibly rusty link in the criminal chain opposing them. He was broke, he was strung out, he’d been all but cashiered by his pals, but he was still marginally on the inside. Most of all, he was John Gregory’s former co-juvenile delinquent, and—they were hoping—the man John had called for the name of a good arsonist.

To Lil, the best approach was to avoid the very routine she’d outlined in her office: calling the man’s lawyer for a meaningless chat with both of them “downtown.” Instead, she’d urged merely grabbing him off the street and putting the fear of God into him. They had nothing on him, after all, and it was clear from his recent history that they probably never would—several times, already, he’d been taken to area ERs as an overdose and just barely brought back. Santo Massi was drifting into human transparency, on the edge of vanishing altogether. A conversation with the likes of such a creature, she’d reasoned, didn’t need to follow protocol.

Besides, she’d said to counter Joe’s protests, assuming Massi did give them something, no prosecutor in his right mind would ever want him later as a witness. Better to just treat him as an anonymous source and not clog up the process with the living dead.

Joe had argued Massi was so shaky that they could sweat him in Lil’s office and easily get what they wanted. But Willy, unsurprisingly, had sided with Lil. Massi was their only shot, and given how ancient loyalties were often the last to die, they’d doubtless need every advantage they could get to make this one chance succeed. Finally, he’d added, all they were talking about was a conversation. Santo Massi himself was of no interest to them. They just needed to be set on the right track.

Warily, with few other options, Joe had conceded, feeling in the pit of his stomach that this was fundamentally wrong.

His head seemingly cleared enough for him to proceed, Massi tentatively released the parking meter and stood independently for a few moments on the sidewalk, looking dazed and indecisive. Finally, he took a step in their direction, then two, established a vague momentum, and set off on some goal he only possibly recalled.

It wasn’t to be. As he drew abreast of their car, Willy and Lil stepped out, boxing him in.

“Santo?” Willy asked him.

Massi blinked carefully several times, studying the unfamiliar face, his eyes inevitably wandering to the emaciated arm.

He raised his eyebrows. “Whoa—bummer.”

“You Santo?”

Massi scowled theatrically. “Yeah… I mean, what’s it to ya?”

“I want to make sure I give money to the right guy.”

“Money?” The man’s tired, beaten face creased into a smile. “Sure. I’m Santo.”

“Good. Get in the car.” Willy moved aside, as if ushering a woman through a restaurant entrance.

The smile vanished. Both the gesture and the invitation had too many poor connotations.

“You got money for me, I’m ready for it.”

But Willy shook his head good-naturedly. “Do I look like I got money? I gotta take you to him. A buddy from the old days.”

Santo still demurred. “Who?”

“John Gregory. You remember him?”

The man’s pleasure was clear. “Johnny—again? Wow. Good timing. Sure, I remember.” He stooped down to peer into the darkened car. “He in there?”

Before Willy could answer, Massi straightened abruptly, his face watchful. “That’s not Johnny.”

Lil saw her opportunity. From being there merely to impede his retreat, she now stepped forward and placed her hand gently on Massi’s shoulder, making him jump.

“That’s Joe,” she said softly as he spun in her direction, falling against the car.

She looped her arm around his waist to steady him, her face close to his. “Wow. Easy, there.”

“You’re pretty,” he said simply.

“Thank you.” She smiled. “Would you like me to ride in the back with you?”

Willy played along, backing away so that the rear door yawned open invitingly. Lil slid her hand up Massi’s back, lightly massaging his neck.

“Come on, Santo. I’m starting to get cold in this night air.”

Whatever reserves he was clutching slipped away. “Sorry.”

She steered him into the car, sliding in after him, as Willy slammed the door and got in the front. Unbeknownst to Massi, the door beside him had been disabled, just in case he should want to leave.

“Hey,” Joe said brightly from behind the wheel. “How’re you doin’?”

“Good,” Massi answered cautiously, the claustrophobic reality of being among so many strangers growing again. “Joe, right?”

“You got it.” Joe reached across the seat back and awkwardly extended a hand in greeting. “Glad to meet you.”

The movie in his head now totally off track, Massi shook hands distractedly. “Sure.”

Joe put the car into gear and pulled away from the curb, turning left at the first intersection to head west, as instructed earlier.

“You sure you know Johnny?”

“Yeah,” Lil said comfortingly. “He said to tell you that Vermont was ripe for the picking. That you’re nuts to stick it out here.”

That familiar reference seemed to lessen his anxiety a notch. He smiled broadly. “Nah. He can have it. I’m a city guy. I need the action.”

The three of them were quietly pleased by what they were hearing. John Gregory hadn’t been in Vermont very long, and yet not only had Massi not been surprised to hear of him in that context, but they’d all heard how he said “again” when Johnny’s name had first been mentioned. They seemed to be on the right track.

“Yeah,” Lil followed up. “I know what you mean. I’m kinda that way, too.”

Santo attempted a seductive leer. “I bet. What’d you say your name was?”

“Lil.”

He nodded. “Pretty. Did I say you were pretty, too?”

“You did that, yeah.”

“Is that where we’re going?”

Lil was momentarily nonplussed. “Where?”

“Vermont.”

She and Joe laughed. “That’s a long trip, Santo,” she said. “No—Johnny’s back in town for a visit. To check on you, among other things.”

“Oh—right.” Massi sighed, not unhappily, and rested his head against the seat cushion, sliding down a bit to get comfortable.

“Tired?” Lil asked him.

“A little. How much money are we talking about?”

“I don’t know, but Johnny said he owed you a lot for all the good times you had together.”

Massi smiled and closed his eyes. “Good times.”

“With more to come,” Lil intoned soothingly. She touched Joe on the shoulder and indicated in the mirror for him to take a right onto Bloomfield.

Santo Massi lapsed into sleep, mercifully for Lil, who could only go so far with such small talk. Also, they had a way to go yet, and she’d been slightly nervous about how to keep him adequately entertained during the trip.

They were headed to what her task force squad, and in fact most of the prosecutor’s office, had once called home: the abandoned campus of the Essex County psychiatric hospital, a huge and sprawling ghost town of old brick buildings scattered across hundreds of acres of currently prime, rolling, and ready-to-be-developed real estate.

Fifteen minutes along, she tapped Joe’s shoulder again and murmured, “Take the next driveway to the right.”

It was enough to stir Massi from his slumber. He sat up and blinked groggily out the windows, just as Joe drove them through the campus entrance, immediately losing the commotion of a crowded and bustling Bloomfield Avenue to the contrasting darkness and isolation of the empty hospital grounds.

“Where are we?”

Lil patted his arm. “You never been here? It’s a little bit of country we got right in the city. It’s cool.”

On that level, she was correct. At its peak, the century-old complex was a completely self-contained community, shut off from its environs, with a separate power plant, golf course, swimming pool, fire department, and a layout suggesting a sylvan retreat far from the troubles of the surrounding world. Closed for over a decade, the center hovered between decay and a faintly chilling sense that all its ghosts might still be lingering. This impression was only enhanced by the surrounding blackness, offset but feebly by the moonlight shifting through the trees and the sweep of Joe’s headlights across the peeling, gap-windowed faces of a parade of gloomy buildings.

Understandably, it was enough to fully revive Massi’s earlier suspicions.

“I don’t like this. What is this?”

Willy gave up his earlier soft touch. He turned in his seat, purposefully placed his left arm on the edge of the seat so its ghoulish, sticklike profile was in full relief, and said, “A place for a quiet conversation, far from anyone and anywhere.”

His eyes now wide, Massi looked from one of them to the other. “What do you want? I haven’t done anything. Where’s Johnny?”

“Up ahead,” Lil instructed Joe. “Next one on the left.”

Joe had already driven by some of the larger institutional buildings and was now amid a semicircle of ochre-colored brick homes, set even farther back among the trees. According to Lil, these were the former staff residences where the county had housed the various task force squads in the years immediately following the hospital’s closure. Like some cast-aside movie set, these houses were still endowed with lawns and shrubs and even visiting deer who would emerge from the woods by the dim light of dusk.

But it was also ghostly quiet and empty and looking the worse for wear, and offered to someone with Massi’s darkening imagination only the promise of grim tidings and pain.

He began to twist in his seat. “Who are you guys? What do you want from me?”

“Would you believe we’re cops?” Lil asked, displaying her badge.

If her hopes had been that this would increase his paranoia, it worked.

“No, I would not,” Massi exclaimed, now convinced he’d been kidnapped for the proverbial ride of gangster lore. As the car slid to a stop, he grabbed the door handle and yanked on it several times, his entire body heaving with the effort.

“Let me out. I don’t
know
anything.”

“We think you do, little man,” Willy argued.

Massi’s eyes welled up. Despite what he’d just been told, his panic was now in control.

“Don’t kill me. Please. I mean, maybe I do know something. I just don’t know what you want. But I wanna help. I really do.”

Lil reached out suddenly and grabbed his flailing wrist, bending it over painfully and freezing him in place. He arched his back and began stuttering, “Ow, ow, ow.”