The Penny Ferry - Rick Boyer (35 page)

But around the first corner we stopped dead, looking
right down the muzzle of DeLucca's automatic. His meaty chest and
shoulders were heaving as he panted. He'd"gone around the other
way and cut us off. We heard Vince coming up behind us. I grabbed
Mary tight and shut my eyes, waiting.

I felt a rap on the head and opened my eyes. I was
half-stunned. I looked up and saw Vince grab the chain that held us
together. DeLucca, panting loudly, was behind us, pushing the gun
muzzle into our backs.

"You blew it, shithead," he growled. "Now
you're gonna have to go down the cellar."

Again I felt tingling around my head and mouth. The
ground shook under my feet. I was afraid to look at Mary.

"Let her go. Have Vince take her to the motel."

"Too late," he said, smacking the back of
my head with the barrel. I felt a warm trickle down the left side of
my neck from the previous blow. We were back around to the terrace
again. The kitchen doorway was only twenty feet away. Once they had
us through that door we'd never get out again. I decided to shout for
help at the top of my lungs before all hope was gone, and had just
taken the biggest lungful of air I could manage when I heard a
gigantic roar. Instantaneously I felt a stinging on my right cheek,
and the arm tugging the handcuffs went slack.

Next to us, Vince was falling. His head had come
apart into a big red wet cloud. And part of that cloud was stuck all
over my face, stinging it.

DeLucca had his pistol up. He was pointing it at a
huge dark shape that was flying at his head. The thing hit him with a
deep rumbling snarl and threw him to the ground. Popeye had him by
the upper arm, right near the shoulder. He had his big steam-shovel
mouth wrapped around DeLucca's upper torso and was shaking it,
tearing it. DeLucca couldn't hold the gun; nobody could have. Then
the dog was off him and waiting by in a crouch. DeLucca sat up for a
second, then lunged for the pistol and I brought it up. But before he
could fire the roar came again and he was flung backward, spinning
around like a top. He lay on his stomach and didn't move. There was
motion in the yew trees, and Sam Bowman came walking toward us, the
big silver revolver held up in his hand. He came up and looked down
at Carmen DeLucca, who was now moaning and flipping his left arm on
the grass like a seal pup. The big soft-nosed slug had left his back
just below the left shoulder blade. A lot of his back was gone. I
peered down at him and could see a shiny pink balloon sliding around
in the gore beneath his splintered ribs. It was his lung.

Sam shoved his big piece back into its shoulder
holster and zipped up his Windbreaker. He was no longer wearing the
jumpsuit. He reached down and laid his large coffee-colored hand on
Mary's cheek.

"
How ya doin'?" he asked. And she began to
bawl.

I was certain DeLucca was dying. I thought he knew it
too. Sam went through the pockets of the former Vince and retrieved
the keys to the cuffs; he had us free in a wink. I crawled over to
DeLucca and looked at his face. The lizard eyes fluttered, then
opened. Carmen DeLucca stared at the blades of grass inches from his
eyes and the terrace wall behind them. The big wound in his back
began to bubble and sputter.

"
Carmen. It's Doc Adams. Remember?"

A nod.

"
You don't have very long. Tell me what the
negatives showed. Hear me, Carmen? What did the pictures show?"

A faint shake of the head.

"
You don't know?"

Headshake.

"
Who hired you to get them? It wasn't Paul
Tescione, was it?"

Headshake.

"Then who was it, Carmen? Who?"

I heard a thin rasp of expelled air. I bent over and
put my ear close to his mouth. He said a name in a barely audible
voice. Then there was a long sigh. When I next looked at the cruel
black eyes they were open and staring. I watched them and the face
for a minute. There was no motion, no change, nothing. Carmen DeLucca
was dead. But not before he had told me who it was who'd hired him to
snatch the Sacco-Vanzetti papers. I looked up from the corpses and
turned my head around. Mary and Sam were sitting quietly on the
terrace chairs while Popeye sat looking up at Mary and whining. I had
been alone with DeLucca when death overtook him. Nobody had overheard
him tell me the name. That was awkward.

It was especially awkward because it was no ordinary
name. I knew if I mentioned that name nobody, not even Mary, would
ever believe me. Ever.
 

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

With the tension and the adrenalin rush worn off,
Mary and I collapsed in fatigue. After I took her to the hospital to
be treated is for several small gashes on her breasts— the sad
result of Marty's warped idea of "getting fresh" with a
woman— I took her home in time to meet Joe out in back. He stared
and stared at DeLucca's body. He thanked Sam over and over again. He
was one glad cop.

"Except I'm kicking myself in the ass for
leaving so suddenly last night. I should've thought of the
possibility he'd sneak out here. Anybody with the balls and cunning
to slip back into Lynn and grease Johnny Rizzo would try anything.
But it seems to us that it was that psycho kid who did all the wet
work. He sure loved to hurt people."

"Well I'm not going to miss him one bit. He may
have been ill, but I don't feel sorry for what happened to him. I'd
hate to think what he would have done to Mary if he'd had the chance.
As it happens, she's probably not even going to have any marks when
she heals up. Jeez, I bet Moe has a field day when I describe Marty
to him."

Joe's men had found Marty wedged up behind my
workbench with a hole behind his ear. Then they carted the three of
them off in a meat wagon. Good riddance. Joe said he guessed the
whole thing was as good as wrapped up.

"
Not quite," I said, leading him into the
study and closing the door behind us. I sat him down and told him the
name of the person who had hired Carmen DeLucca.

"What? Where did you get that load of shit?"

"From DeLucca himself. His dying words. You're
the only one I've told. I didn't think you'd believe me."

Joe walked over to the window and looked at the
dogwood— petals that littered the lawn. He had his hands thrust
deep into his pants pockets, and he rocked back and forth on his
heels.

"That's a big name, Doc. Not as big as the
Kennedys or Saltonstalls, but big. The only thing I can't figure out,
assuming he was even involved, is why he'd want the papers."

"Could you question him?"

He spun around. "Are you kidding? Based on
something you overheard? No way."

"Isn't there a rule about deathbed confessions?"

"Yes. A dying declaration is admissible evidence
since it is assumed to be, as the deceased's last words, the truth.
But dying declarations almost always concern something the dying man
himself did or didn't do, or else the identity of the man's
assailant."

"So it means nothing?"

"Oh no. It means a lot. A hell of a lot. I just
don't know what yet."

The door burst open and Brian Hannon entered, shaking
his right fist like a crapshooter. The fist emitted a metallic
rattle.

"Thanks for knocking, Brian," said Joe.

"You're entirely welcome . . . lieutenant."

He held his fist up under our noses and opened it.
Resting on his wide palm were four ammo rounds as big as lipsticks.
They were Sam's forty-Five-caliber long-Colt cartridges.

"Seen these?" asked Brian. Joe picked one
of them up and looked at the nose. He saw the snowflake cuts hacked
across the lead.

"Well hush my mouth," said Joe.

"Great, Brindelli. just great. Know what it
looks like to have dumdums used in my jurisdiction? You just wait:
the city council's gonna be on my case like cheddar on Ritz."

"You gotta admit they do a job," said Joe.

"
Don't you be a wise-ass. You been hanging
around him too long," said Brian, jerking his thumb at me. He
bent over and pointed to the top of his head, which had been shaved
and bandaged. "See this? Seven stitches on account of your
friend the doctor. Now what do I do about Sam?"

"Nothing. If it weren't for him my
brother-in-law and sister would be dead."

"That's what I mean. Take 'em. Lose 'em
someplace. Though God knows the medical examiner's going to ask a lot
of questions. jeez, you see those slobs? Look like they were hit by
mortars."

Joe slipped the rounds into his coat pocket and
turned to me.

"How'd he do it, Doc? How'd Sam get back here
for the ambush?"

"After he took the call and got the money from
the safe, he took a couple of minutes to study a road map. Seeing
that the drop was on 2A, he thought there was a chance something was
happening here. It was a lucky guess. He knew he couldn't tail us
without being noticed. He got a friend of his to drive the Regal to
the Mobil station near 128 and Route 2. He followed with the dog and
the cycle. They met at the gas station, where Sam took the Regal to
make the drop. He wore a hat and a jumpsuit so he could change his
appearance fast. He went up 128 to 2A, which is less than a mile, and
into the lot. After the drop he hustled back to the station, doffed
the clothes, and sped along Route 2 into Concord and over here by the
back way. With the bike he could cut right across the orchard, which
he did. That's what Vince heard. It wasn't shooting, it was Sam's old
Honda backfiring. Hell, he and the dog were staked out in position
behind the far wall even before we got back."

Brian looked at me. "I
think you owe him dinner," he said. "And Joe, don't forget
to ditch those rounds."

* * *

Next day, as I fitted the shiny prongs of my
Hu-Friedy forceps over the crown and shank of a deeply impacted third
molar, the idea came to me. I was struck by how the metal of the
instrument obscured the tooth completely. The metal surrounded the
object, hiding it. The metal surrounded the object . . . hiding it .
. .

"Eureka!" I whispered.

"What?" asked Susan Petri, who stood,
white-smocked and plastic-aproned, to my immediate right. "Did
you ask for a beaker?"

"
No. I said Eureka. That means 'I found it.' "

"I know. Found what?"

"
The place where the negatives are hidden. I
think I've found it."

She stared at me. I couldn't see her lower face since
it was hidden by her surgical mask. The eyebrows went up; the
forehead wrinkled in a frown. "Swell, Doctor Adams."

She dipped her siphon tube into the patient's open
mouth to draw off the blood that was fast collecting there.
Fortunately the patient was asleep, having been given a shot of
sodium pentothal. Mrs. Habersham couldn't hear us. I withdrew the
bent and buried tooth, which I had twisted up with the cowhorn
forceps.

There was a deep, sucking, squishing noise as the
molar came out, then we sutured and packed the wound, injected Mrs.
Habersham with a hefty slug of penicillin, and watched her carefully
while she came to. You must be really careful with a general
anesthetic so that your patient doesn't choke or drown. This is
especially true if you've worked in the mouth. She woke up without a
hitch and we sent her on her way. On foot.

At the earliest opportunity I returned home to the
darkroom (which I was painstakingly rebuilding) and got an eight-inch
strip of 35mm film. I headed out to the Concord Rod and Gun Club and
the outdoor range. I heard those big Magnums blasting off long before
I reached it. Then another sound: the thump of iron silhouettes being
hit by slugs and slamming against the ground. Silhouette shooting,
imported from Europe in the sixties, is all the rage now at gun
clubs. It consists of shooting at thick metal plates cut out in the
shape of animal profiles, at long range, using big-bore Magnum
handguns. No rifles. It's a silly sport, I guess. But then so is
chasing a little white ball around on grass and whacking at it until
it falls into a cup.

I was out at the silhouette range because I needed a
big-bore revolver to experiment with. I found Chuck Norgaard at one
of the stations, poised at the line with a revolver held out in front
of him with both hands. There was a blast I felt in my chest, and the
gun and his arms went up. He stepped back and flipped out the
cylinder, pushed the ejection rod, and dumped out the spent shells.

"
Hiya Doc. What brings you here?"

"
I want to borrow that thing when you're
finished."

He nodded, and I saw him drop six more silver rockets
into the cylinder. I was sick of looking at big handguns.

"Got any idea what those things do when they hit
people instead of steel plate?" I asked.

"
I can imagine."

"No you can't," I said, and waited for him
over at the bench. I should have brought earmuffs.

Half an hour later I left the club, went home, and
got hold of Joe.

"What do you mean, not there?"