The Haunting Ballad (28 page)

“If you mean being gay…”

“You know that's not what I'm referring to.” My partner reached over and tapped the note. “
This
is what we're interested in.”

Mazzo ran a hand through the bomb-induced streak in his hair. “Okay … Okay … Yeah, it's from me. To Lorraine.”

“It was found in an envelope with no address,” I said. “Which suggested it was hand-delivered. We're wondering why.”

“I'd tried stopping by Lorraine's a couple times earlier that week,” Mazzo said, “but she was never home. I couldn't reach her by phone, either. That Saturday I typed this up to slip under her door, in case she wasn't there again when I stopped by—which, as it turned, she wasn't. So I left the note.”

“Your rendezvous was for ten
P.M.
?” Mr. O'Nelligan asked.

“That's right.”

My partner smoothed his beard. “How was Miss Cobble to know you intended to arrive at ten in the evening, and not in the morning? Your note didn't indicate which you meant.”

“Lorraine would know I wouldn't be up and about before noon. I'm a night owl. Everyone knows that about me.”

I didn't debate him on that. “Okay, but why'd you type the note? So you couldn't be identified?”

“I type everything, man. Even grocery lists. It's a mania with me.”

“But why use initials? Why not ‘Mazzo' or ‘Tony'?”

“It's just how I've always signed my letters. What's next, are you going to ask how many licks I used to seal the envelope?”

“Sure, make jokes,” I said. “You're a regular Jackie Gleason, aren't you?”

Mazzo chose not to answer.

“All right,” I continued, “assuming everything you just said is true—”

“Which it is.”

“
Assuming
it's true, what's the reason you were so anxious to talk to her in private?”

“It was something, well, of a sensitive nature, dig?”

“No, I do not dig,” I said. “I do not dig at all. Your note says you wanted to meet Lorraine on the evening she died. The evening she died … That's pretty interesting.”

Mazzo's eyes narrowed. “Sure, that's how it turned out, but there's no way I could've known that's what it would be. Her last day, I mean.”

“No?” I fixed him with a stare. “We're wondering if, in fact, you didn't have something to do with it being her last day.”

Mazzo shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “That's what I was afraid you might think. When I found out that Lorraine was dead, I figured it was best not to have my name mixed up in things. I mean, her death was a suicide, so what good would it do to have anyone know I'd been at Lorraine's that night?”

“Then that was your place of rendezvous?” Mr. O'Nelligan asked. “Lorraine's rooftop?”

“No, her apartment. Anyway, all of a sudden you guys show up in town, poking around and suggesting that Lorraine's death was murder. It made me nervous.”

“So what did you do to calm your nerves?” I asked. “Try to gun me down in the street, maybe?”

Mazzo leapt to his feet, and his chair crashed backward to the floor. Instinctively, I threw an arm across Audrey.

He glared down at me. “Nobody comes into my place and accuses me like that!”

Mr. O'Nelligan spoke slowly and calmly. “Perhaps my associate expressed himself too stridently just now. Please take your seat, sir.”

As usual, my friend's genteel brogue proved persuasive. After exercising his glower for another few seconds, Mazzo righted the chair and reseated himself.

He exhaled loudly. “Look, Plunkett, you're crazy if you think I'm out to kill anybody. I had enough of that in the war. It's Bad-news-ville that you and Byron got shot, but I had a lot of pals who stopped a slug back in the Pacific. The world's a dangerous place.”

Reluctant to compare myself to the dead of Guadalcanal, I simply said, “Tell us why you needed to see Lorraine that night.”

Mazzo looked away; he seemed to be weighing his options.

Mr. O'Nelligan nudged him toward honesty. “It will be best for all concerned if you address that query.”

“All right, but there's no reason for this to become common knowledge. You're professionals, right? You don't need to go blabbing this around the Village.” Mazzo looked over at Audrey. “And that means you, too, babe—whatever
you're
doing here.”

Audrey cocked her head toward me. “I'm Plunkett's bodyguard.”

I groaned under my breath.

Mazzo, equally unamused, sighed and folded his hands on the table. “Lorraine had threatened to reveal something about me from a few years ago. Back when Joe McCarthy was dragging people over the coals looking for Reds.”

“Yes, you've shared that episode,” Mr. O'Nelligan said. “How you stood up to your interrogators.”

Tony Mazzo stared at his hands. “Well, maybe it wasn't exactly like that.”

“You didn't face down some government witch hunters?” I asked.

“I
faced
them. I wouldn't really call it facing down.”

“So that stuff about giving those guys the names of Shakespeare characters…”

“That was true up to a point. Yeah, I was cocky to begin with, but those bastards wore me down. They called me a ‘lavender lad' and said they'd turn my life into a nightmare. Back then I was still hiding who I truly was, not like now. In the end, I gave them what they wanted. I gave up my friends.”

Mr. O'Nelligan furrowed his brow. “It seems odd that you should then go on to promote the fact that you'd been interrogated. Why not simply remain silent about it?”

“Somehow word had gotten around the Village that I'd been hauled in by those guys. I couldn't deny that, so I made up the version where I told them to go to hell. That made me sort of a hero around here. I guess the more I told the lie, the more it seemed to me like that's what really happened. The Village is full of myths and delusions.”

“Another thing intrigues me,” my partner said. “You went so far as to call your establishment the Café Mercutio…”

“One of the friends I gave up—the one I'd first told them was named Mercutio—just couldn't take it when the federal guys went for him. He was a lavender lad, too, a sweet, noble kid. He, well…” A look of pain crossed Mazzo's face. “He ended up taking his own life. To honor his memory, I named this place after him in a roundabout way. Of course, nobody knows that but me—and now all of you.”

Audrey was the first to respond. “It's like an act of penance in a way, yes?”

Mazzo looked at her gratefully. “That's it. Yes, penance…”

I needed to move us forward. “So Lorraine Cobble somehow got hold of this information.”

“Yeah, though I'm not sure how,” Mazzo said. “One day last month, she told me she knew the true story and might someday get the urge to share it around town.”

“So we're talking blackmail?” I asked.

“Sort of like blackmail on layaway. She was just dangling the thing over me, hinting that she might want something from me someday in order to stay quiet. Once she'd put that out, I felt like I was living under the Sword of Damocles. I started trying to contact Lorraine to resolve things, to get her to promise to keep her mouth shut. Like I've said, that's what eventually led me to leaving this note.”

“Bring us back to that night,” Mr. O'Nelligan said. “Did you follow up on the note and arrive at Miss Cobble's apartment at ten
P.M
.?”

“I did.”

“Then what?”

“I knocked, but there was no answer,” Mazzo recounted. “I knew there was a possibility that Lorraine might blow me off and not be home. After knocking for a while, I tried the door, and it opened. I thought it was odd that she'd left it unlocked if she wasn't there, so I went inside. I was wondering if maybe she was sleeping.”

“Did you close the door behind you when you entered?” my partner asked.

“I left it opened a crack. Anyhow, her apartment was empty, so I sort of lingered there, thinking maybe she'd just run out for a second and would be coming back to meet me. At one point, I heard voices in the hallway and thought it might be her. I stood next to the door and listened but realized it wasn't.”

“Voices?” Mr. O'Nelligan leaned forward. “Who did they belong to?”

“One I'm pretty sure was the hundred-year-old guy who lives down the hall.”

“One hundred and five,” my partner amended.

“Right. The other voice I couldn't make out.”

“Could it have been a young guy with a Puerto Rican accent?” I asked.

“An accent sounds right,” Mazzo said tentatively. “Anyway, by the time I left, there was no one in the hallway.”

I followed up on that. “What time would you say this was?”

“I got there around ten and left maybe a half hour later.”

“Without having seen Lorraine,” Mr. O'Nelligan clarified.

“Yeah, without having seen her. Ever again, actually.”

“Which is to your benefit, right?” I pointed out. “Since you no longer have to worry about her giving you away. You must feel like a real lucky cat.”

“That's one way of looking at it,” Mazzo said edgily.

I matched his tone. “There are a lot of ways of looking at everything you've just told us. A lot of strange, funny, suspicious ways.”

“The Mercutio's closed right now,” Mazzo snapped. “No coffee, no music, no poetry. You posed your questions, and I answered them. It's time you all vacated.”

He stood and gave his plush mustache a final twirl, looking very much like the villain from an old melodrama.

“Thanks for the hospitality,” I said, rising.

“Go to hell, my friend.” Mazzo somehow managed to sound well-mannered and menacing in the same breath. Like a graceful acrobat cavorting with growling lions.

 

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

 

Back outside, I thanked our uniformed guardian, slipping him a couple of bucks for his trouble. The cop's scowl made me think he might arrest me for bribery, until I realized that his displeasure wasn't with the act but with the amount. I reluctantly forked over a fiver, which seemed to satisfy him. As the pride of the force sauntered off, Mr. O'Nelligan and I began reviewing our encounter with Mazzo.

“If the man's to be believed, this focuses our aim considerably,” my partner said.

“Who says he
should
be believed. Mazzo seemed to have a fast, handy answer to every question.”

“Is that not what we were seeking?”

“
Too
handy for my taste.”

“When one decides to unleash the truth, it oft comes swiftly.”

“Sure, maybe everything he said about the Red-hunters and Lorraine's threats is true, and about him sneaking into her apartment. To me, the logical conclusion of all that is Mazzo somehow coaxing Lorraine to the roof, heaving her off, and eventually gunning down the PI who's on his trail.”

“I feel the need to point out that until recently, you weren't even willing to admit that there
was
a trail that required pursuing.”

I indicated my bullet-kissed temple. “Well, that's changed.”

“And you're convinced Anthony Mazzo was your attacker?”

“Let's just say I'm not convinced otherwise. If I'd felt we had an ironclad case against him, I would have thrown him to our cop pal.”

Audrey joined in. “Mazzo seemed sincere to me. After all, he didn't have to share that he'd been at Lorraine's that night.”

“Oh, yes he did,” I said. “Remember, I'd already connected him to the note.”

My fiancée's eyes widened playfully. “Golly, Lee,
you
connected him to the note? I guess I missed that part of the deductive process.”

“I mean
you
did,” I muttered.

“What's that? Louder, please.”

Our Irishman intruded. “Let us, for the moment, assume that Mazzo's account is truthful. One part of it struck me as quite significant. For the first time, we have confirmation of Cornelius Boyle's claim that he spoke to Hector Escobar in the hallway. Again, we are brought back to the grocery boy and his refusal to admit his presence there that night.”

“Which, of course, doesn't even matter if Mazzo is our culprit,” I said.

“True, but if Mazzo is blameless here, then Hector's denial may have great import indeed. I suggest that I follow through on yesterday's task and pay the boy a visit.”

“Okay, maybe it'll prove worthwhile,” I admitted. “I'm coming with you, though. I don't want to divide our forces right now. Don't forget, as far as we know, whoever shot down Spires and nicked me is still out there, whether it's Mazzo or some other gunman.”

“So we presume,” Mr. O'Nelligan said. “Although the gendarmerie is now in pursuit of him.”

“Yeah, well, pursuit isn't the same as capture. I'm not sure how effective Smack's cronies will be. Anyway, we'll drive over to the grocery.” I turned to Audrey. “But not you.”

“That's where you're wrong,” she said matter-of-factly. “There's no way you're shaking me loose.”

I stood my ground. “Did you not just hear me say there's a mean person with a pistol running about?”

“And did you not just hear me say I'm sticking with you? If you try to march off on me, Lee, I'll just follow behind, determined and devoted.”

“Like a cocker spaniel?”

Audrey gave me the evil eye. “No, dearest. I was thinking more like a guardian angel. You are such a chowderhead sometimes.”

I turned to Mr. O'Nelligan. “Talk to her, will you?”

My partner smiled. “I fear that no eloquence on my part would suffice to avert our young lady's obstinacy.”