The Penny Ferry - Rick Boyer (5 page)

The chimney was huge but unattached to the boiler
room, which had been torn down when the plant was converted to
electric power. There was a large jagged hole in the chimney's base
where the flue had entered it. All around this opening lay piles of
broken bricks, the remnants of the old flue bridges, which had
collapsed. Some of these were yellowish-red; others were glossy
black, indicating they'd been on the inner flue wall.

A uniformed cop and a plainclothesman stood halfway
up the rubble mound inside the chimney, which was about twenty feet
across at its base. Their feet and pants were bright, their upper
bodies dim in the darkness of the interior, and their faces
invisible. We entered the old structure and began climbing the pile
of bricks, mortar, and junk. Joe knew the detective and stopped for a
second while O'Hearn and I went on up alone. On top of the heap was a
dead man lying on his back facing straight up, his glazed eyes
half-open. His mouth was drawn back as if he had died in pain. The
reason for this was obvious: a giant reddish-brown stain on his
shirtfront the size of an LP record.

"Stab wound," said the detective to Joe.
"Opened him up real good. No I.D. or wallet, but it's not
robbery."

The man was young and handsome and looked Italian.
His clothing was expensive and well cut. His hair appeared to be
styled, and he wore soft calfskin loafers with tassels. Dead or
alive, he was surely out of his element on a rubble heap in a ' mined
factory chimney in Lowell, Mass.

The four of us stood on the talus cone and stared at
the faded elegance at our feet. The scene was eerie, surrealistic.
Far above a shaft of dying sunlight plunged across the sooty
blackness of the chimney top like a theater spotlight. It struck the
curved wall up near the lip, and the white patch of light lay there
in a bent ellipse. From the darkness overhead came the faint
squeaking of swifts, their wing flutters and echoing power dives. Now
and then dark specks flitted across the shaft of light, twittering.
The rubble cone rose up inside the dark circular walls like a
grotesque Paleolithic altar. And the corpse on it a sacrifice, his
sightless eyes staring up at the circle of light a hundred feet
above. The scene could have been on the cover of a sci-fi paperback,
painted by Frank Frazetta.

Behind me I heard the clinking and clacking of broken
brick as Joe climbed up to join us. I wanted to leave.

"What makes you think it wasn't robbery?"
asked Joe.

"
'Cause they didn't take the gold watch. Take a
look, Joe— that's some clock the guy's wearing."

The watch was round, with a red onyx face and Roman
numerals. The body was gold, the band lizard. Around the gold face
was engraved, in bold classical letters, BULGARI-ROMA. Joe stood up
and looked at the corpse.

"
Yeah, I'd say it's not robbery, too. But I've
got a different reason. Look here."

He took the man's other wrist and drew the arm up,
exposing the hand.

It was missing two fingers.
 
 

CHAPTER FOUR

We stood staring at the corpse for quite a while, not
saying a word. He was the guy who'd iced Johnny, and we did not like
him. Finally O'Hearn broke the silence.

"Rich," he said.

"Yeah. Rich and Italian. I bet he didn't even
speak English," said Joe.

"How can you tell?" asked O'Hearn.

"He just looks it. No, wait. Maybe he was
educated in some snooty English prep school. Or maybe he spent a year
at Harvard. But he's rich, just like you said, Kev, and he's Italian.
He's as Italian as fetticcine al burro."

"Mmmmm," said O'Hearn. "As Italian as
linguine with clam sauce."

"Yeah. As Italian as rigatoni bolognese," I
added.

"Or chicken tetrazzini."

"Veal Marsala."

Then silence for a minute.

"I'm hungry," said O'Hearn.

"
Me too," I said.

We stumbled back down the rubble heap and headed for
O'Hearn's car. Joe stopped to talk to the detective, who was writing
in a pocket notebook. I sat in back; O'Hearn turned around and faced
me, resting his pale triple chin on the seat back.

"
Well Doc, nice quiet Saturday afternoon, eh?
Coupla stiffs up in Lowell, Mass. Any ideas? I thought it was a
straight Outfit hit until a few minutes ago. Now I'm not so sure."

"It looks like an Outfit hit, then a
double-cross from inside. Do you think they fought over the loot?"

"Naw," he said. "Johnny Robinson was
small time, money-wise. The Outfit would never squabble over loot
that small. Frankly, I don't think it's a question of loot at all. I
think Johnny did something they didn't like, like maybe blew the
whistle on them. It wasn't loot."

Joe got in and we drove over to the Robinson house.
Mary was still sacked out in the back of Joe's cruiser, so I got up
in front with Joe. Halfway home Mary sat up and said she was going to
be sick. I helped her from the car; she felt cold and clammy to the
touch. She staggered over to the side of the road and got rid of all
the peppermint schnapps. She groaned and retched, and tears streamed
down her face.

"Doesn't taste as good coming back up, does it,
hon?"

"Oh Charlie. Ohhh . . . Why do I ever drink?"
she wailed.

We got her back in and covered her with Joe's sport
coat. At home we woke her up and got her inside on the couch. Then
Joe threw a handful of coarse cornmeal on the butcher's block, spread
it deftly with a few broad sweeps of his big hand, threw the
pink-gray slabs of raw meat down, and began to pound them. He hit
them gently with a wooden mallet, not a steel one. Steel tears 'em up
too much, he says. The meat began to flatten and spread out. He
wanted them wafer-thin.

"Too bad about Johnny," he said with a slow
sigh.

"Yep. Death comes to all of us."

"Mmmmm. Makes you stop and drink."

"
Okay."

I had fetched two bottles of Chianti classico and we
tasted it. I cut slices of eggplant a quarter-inch thick, as per
Joe's instructions, then arranged them on a clean white towel. I put
another towel on top, then a thick steel cookie sheet, then a heavy
cast-iron skillet for weight.

"That'll squeeze them out," said Joe, "so
they won't be all watery and will soak up the olive oil."

We put olive oil in a pan with a crushed garlic clove
and some onion and let it work on medium heat. That is about my
favorite smell in the world. If you aren't hungry when you start, you
soon will be.

"Gee, I forgot to ask Kevin if he wanted to have
dinner too. It was only polite. Sorry."

"
Forget it. Kev went up to Wonderland to play
the puppies. Guy's got a real mania for the pups. Keep it just
between us, Doc, but he dropped almost six grand last year on the
pups."

"Six grand? Wow. He's feeding a habit."

"
I know. And don't ask me where he gets the
bread either. Okay, get out some flour, some eggs, and
vino
blanco
and two bowls. I'm going to make some
calls."

He reappeared twenty minutes later, clean shaven. He
said he'd called headquarters and the lab and asked them to keep him
posted at our house. He'd also called Johnny's partner, Sam Bowman,
who had agreed to meet us the next day at nine thirty at the
Dependable Messenger Service.

Joe returned to the veal and resumed the gentle but
steady thumping with the mallet. He could have been a Renaissance
Florentine stonecutter. From the side his sharp and sensitive
features stood out in profile. Like his sister, he had the straight
brow and nose seen on Roman statues. He had the high, wide cheekbones
so common in the people south of Naples. But unlike— Mary's face,
which terminated in a neat chin and clean jawline, Joe's face, at its
lower terminus, lacked definition. The fine features were hidden in
thick jowls and heavy neck. His body too was heavy, with a paunch
over the belt— which he wore lower and lower in front each year—
and big legs. He had a powerful upper torso, and could be mistaken
for a former boxer or street brawler, except for the eyes. His eyes
protruded slightly and his mouth pouted. This gave him a gentle,
cocker-spaniel face. His eyes were like those of Marcello
Mastroianni. They were hardly killer eyes.

Joe concentrated on his tasks. He took the pounded
scaloppine and drew them through unbleached flour, then tossed them
quickly back and forth from hand to hand. I refilled the glasses
while he beat up a couple of eggs and added a splash of white wine,
seasoning, and a little milk.

"I saw you eyeing that Bulgari watch on that
guy's wrist, Doc. I know your fetish for fine watches. You almost
gleeped it."

I nodded. I hate jewelry, but well-made watches are a
weakness. I glanced at the one currently gracing my wrist. It had a
big flat black face and band, a movable bezel, three separate dials
on the face with different functions, all luminous numbers, and a
bunch of buttons on the face rim. It looked great. It weighed as much
as a hand grenade and with luck— with a whole lot of luck and
twists of fate thrown in— I might even actually use it once every
decade or so. Joe was staring at me staring at it. He frowned.

"So tell me, what're all those buttons and dials
for?"

"Well," I explained, "it's kind of
complicated. They're all for different things. Now this dial here is
for high-speed aviation. Now suppose you're in a military aircraft,
say an F-4 Phantom. Okay. You pull out of a dive and go into a barrel
roll. There's an enemy tighter on your tail at seven o'clock, what
you do is—"

"I think you and I can skip that one, Doc. How
about this one, the one with the red-and-blue outlines?"

"Glad you asked. Now this is the elapsed-time
bezel. It's essential for scuba diving. Okay. Say you're down over
two hundred feet— that's when it's really essential— and you're
running low on air. This bezel here tells you when to start back,
allowing for decompression, and that's important. Now if you've got a
complication, like a shark after you—"

"Yeah yeah, Doc. You can use that in Walden
Pond. How about that last one?"

"
Oh, simple. Auto racing. Okay. You're
negotiating a turn at, say, Watkins Glen, and you're in the middle of
the pack and go into a four-wheel drift, why all you do is—"

"Can you check the eggplant, Doc? It should be
about ready to dip. There's no apparatus on that watch for checking
eggplant? Or timing eggs?"

"
Of course not. This is an expensive watch."

"Pardon me."

"You can make fun, but remember, I went scuba
diving, you know."

"Wasn't it in the YMCA pool?"

"You've gotta start somewhere. And also, I
thought about taking flying lessons at Hanscom. You never know. By
the way, how come you don't even wear a watch?"

"Don't need to. Always got somebody yelling at
me. To wake up I got my clock radio. Then before I even get to
headquarters I got the dispatcher on the box: 'Brindelli, it's eight
forty-five, where are you?' Later it's 'Lieutenant, hurry up! It's
after eleven.' And so on. I always got people telling me what time it
is; I don't need a watch. But that Bulgari, I bet it cost over a
grand. Maybe two. What do you think?"

"
Lots of bucks. And lots of class too. Look, I'm
no fashion plate and neither are you. But I do notice nice things.
The guy was dressed expensively and with taste. I would think your
average Outfit hoodlum would be a tad more flashy."

"I agree. Double-knit suit instead of wool and
silk. He'd wear lizard-skin shoes, or something else obnoxious . . ."

The phone rang. Joe went to answer it and I kept
talking. I followed him over to the wall phone and spoke loudly.
"There's two things here. On the one hand we assume it was a
local grudge and done by the Outfit. On the other hand—"

"
Hello," said Joe into the phone. He was
getting egg batter on the receiver.

"—
there's this Italian thread," I
continued, "if the guy in the chimney was really Italian. Maybe
one of the killers double-crossed the other . . ."

Joe hugged the phone closer and held up his hand for
silence. I saw his eyes widen a bit.

“
Really?" he said. "They just took the
prints and there's no way? Uh-huh . . . uh-huh . . . snipped off?
Like with wire cutters? Uh-huh . . ."

Well, I assumed the phone call was for him. I went in
and checked on Mary. I kissed her on the cheek. She murmured to me in
the manner of dying. men in movies.

"
. . . coffee . . ."

Of course. I'd forgotten Mary's all-purpose elixir.
If she ever gets seriously injured, I'll just have the attendants
hang a sterile bottle of coffee over her with an IV. The Krups
machine whirred and whined and seconds later I handed her a big mug,
and soon she appeared in the kitchen, her chipper self.

Joe hung up the phone, looked at it, wiped it off',
and looked me in the eye.

"Guess what? What is it you always say, Doc?
Funnier and funnier? No . . ."