The Staked Goat - Jeremiah Healy (7 page)

I drove down the Coopers' short street and then back
up it. I parallel-parked a few doors from their house and watched for
fifteen minutes. Still no Marco. I left and locked the car and
knocked on the Coopers' back door. They let me in, Jesse
self-consciously cradling the shotgun in his good hand. Emily had
been crying.

"Did the telephone ring since I spoke with you?"
Emily said. "Twice," sobbed and turned away. Jesse looked
at me helplessly.

"Come on," I said moving toward their
telephone.

They sat in front of me on their couch as I began to
dial.

First, I called a friend at New England Telephone's
business office and set the wheels in motion for a changed, unlisted
number. Jesse looked at Emily, who managed a small smile.

Second, I called the guy at the insurance company
that I was working for when I nailed Marco's brother. I gave him a
five-minute lecture on the good citizenship of the Coopers and how
much money their cooperation had helped his company to save on the
claim. I asked him to approve a private security guard for the
Coopers. He said he doubted his boss would go for it but he'd try. He
said he would call me at home with the answer.

I checked the white pages. There were fifteen
D'Amicos in the book, but there was only one on Hanover Street, in
the North End. I called the number and got a heavily accented, older
voice. I said, "Sorry, wrong number," and hung up.

I looked up at Jesse and Emily. They seemed much
brighter. I sighed and told them a close friend from the army had
died here in Boston and that I had to go to Pittsburgh.

Jesse nodded gravely, thinking, I expect, of his own
outfit from World War II. Emily squeezed his good hand tighter.

I told them to call me again if anything more
happened. They said they would and thanked me again for all I had
done for them.

All I had done for them.

I got in my car and
started toward the North End via the Central Artery. I felt anger
toward the elder D'Amicos for no good reason. I decided to cool off a
little first with a different kind of visit.

* * *

In February you can't see any sailboats from her
hillside. Her first year there, we had an early spring. Then, a few
brave souls, probably amateurs, were out by the last week of March.

"This year, I'd bet April 10th at the earliest,
Beth."

Before she'd gotten the cancer, or at least before we
knew she had it, we would visit Boston's Museum of Fine Arts once
every few months. I always preferred paintings, Beth sculpture.
Whenever we entered a room of sculpture, she would stand for fifteen
minutes in front of one piece, say a smallish Greek statue, while I
would wander around the room.

Whenever I got back to her, she would be ready to go
on to the next room. She always said she preferred studying one piece
of work in detail. I never had the patience to stare at one piece of
stone for that kind of time.

Until I lost her.

For months after Beth was buried, I would look only
at her ground, not the headstone. Now I would I notice the slightest
additional scratch on her marker. A relative of hers, an old man,
advised me at the wake to shy away from polished marble. He said
that, despite its hardness, it always showed nicks and after ten
months would look like it had been in the graveyard for ten years.

He may have been right. I tried to believe the marks
around her name and years were natural aging, caused by cold and rain
or windblown branches. More likely, they were the product of
carelessly swung rakes or tossed beer bottles. But, she gently
reminded me, I wasn't keeping to the point.

"You're right, kid. A1, A1 Sachs, is dead. I
identified the body this morning. Someone tortured and mutilated him,
Beth. The police are treating it as a gay murder, but I don't think
so. He called me Tuesday morning and planned a dinner with me. He
sounded nervous. No, more than nervous, scared." I thought about
that. In Vietnam we'd both been scared often enough, but I could
never remember Al sounding scared. That was the edge in his voice
that I noticed but didn't recognize yesterday.

"In addition to sounding scared, somebody
searched his room. A pro. He left nothing out of order that anyone
would especially notice." I left out the part about the guy who
might have checked my pink message slip.

"I don't have the slightest idea why it
happened, kid. He was living and working out of Pittsburgh for a
steel company, and this was the first time he'd been in Boston for
years."

She told me it wasn't my fault. Agreeing with her
helped only a little. "Anyway, I'm going to be taking him home
to Pittsburgh. Our flight is tonight at six-fifty. So I won't be
coming by for a while."

The wind rose up, blowing a little sleet in front of
it. I turned up my collar and hunkered down on my haunches. I touched
her grave with the fingers of my right hand.

"Give A1 my best," I said.

Hanover Street is the main drag of the North End.
Tourists and people from other parts of the Boston area cruise it,
futilely searching for a parking place near the dozens of Italian
restaurants which lie along or just off it. Most of the buildings
have a commercial first floor, often a bakery or butcher shop. The
remaining floors are apartments. In good weather, the women, young,
middle-aged, and old, lean out of windows with their elbows on the
sills.

On street level, the men, also of all ages,
congregate in knots of three to five on the sidewalk. Some sit in
folding lawn chairs, most talk in staccato Italian. Few pay much
attention to non-neighborhood people walking by. A lot of Bostonians
maintain that the North End is the safest neighborhood in the city.
Seven-sixty-seven Hanover had a small insurance agency on the ground
floor. I walked to the doorway next to it and pressed the D'Amicos'
bell. The door was painted dark gray, with six stained-glass inserts.
I waited two minutes and pressed again. Still no answer. The sleet
had blown over, and the sun was out. It was nearly forty degrees, and
I felt a little warm in my overcoat.

One of four men talking in front of the bakery next
door broke off and walked toward me. He was short and stubby, wearing
a heavy blue knit sweater over black dress slacks. He appeared to be
about my age, and he neither frowned nor smiled.

"Who you lookin' for?" he asked me.

"The D'Amicos," I said.

"Which ones?" he replied. —

"Mr. and Mrs. Joey and Marco's parents."

"The D'Amicos," he said. "They had a
lotta heartache this week. Maybe they don't wanna see nobody just
now, y'know."

"I know, and I can understand it. That's why I
want to see them."

He squinted. "You ain't a cop, are ya?"

"No," I said. "If I were a cop, I
would have ignored you and kept pressing their button."

He rubbed his nose. Then he leaned in front of me and
gave their button three quick taps. He looked me square in the eye.
"My parents and the D'Amicos come over together. The parents are
good people. I went to school with Marco. I don't know which of the
sons give 'em more trouble, Marco or Joey. Just don't add to it."

"I'm here to prevent trouble for them."

My emissary broke eye contact as the downstairs door
opened. Mr. D'Amico poked his red-eyed head outside. He recognized me
and snarled something in Italian to my companion that contained
Joey's name. My companion stiffened and started, "Mr. D'Amico
says you're—"

"I'm not here about Joey," I interrupted
sharply.

"I'm here about Marco, and I need to talk with
Mr. and Mrs. D'Amico." I lowered my voice. "Please tell him
it's important."

Mr. D'Amico spoke. "He don't need to tell me no
thing. I understand English. If you about Marco, we will talk.
Upstairs."

Mr. D'Amico turned and I stopped the spring-held door
as he started up the narrow staircase.

As I stepped across the threshold, my emissary caught
my arm. Not hard or threatening, just a firm grip.

"When you come out, nobody up there better be
cryin'."

I looked over his shoulder at the knot of men he'd
left. They were all staring at us. I looked down as steadily as I
could at my emissary, who bobbed his head once and released my arm. I
followed D'Amico up the stairway, the closing door darkening the
passage.

Their living room was clean, dry, and awfully warm
with all the windows closed. The sofa and chairs were overstuffed,
with elaborate crocheted doilies on the arms and backs. Religious
scenes dotted the walls, and I could make out photos of younger
Marcos and Joeys in triptych brass frames standing on the end tables.

D'Amico sat stiffiy on the couch. I was in a
flower-print chair across from him. He wore an old, narrow-collar
white shirt and brown sharkskin pants. I could neither see nor hear
Mrs. D'Amico.

"I have no desire to add to your grief, Mr.
D'Amico," I began, "but I would like to speak with your
wife as well."

D'Amico swallowed twice. He barely unclenched his
teeth. "She too upset from the . . . from the trial. You tell me
what you want."

I frowned and spread out my hands. "Look, Mr.
D'Amico, like I said downstairs, I'm here about Marco, not Joey, but
in order for me to do any good here, you have to accept something
about Joey. You have to—"

"I don't need to accept no thing," D'Amico
cut in tremulously.

"Yes, sir, yes, you do. You have to accept that
you've lost Joey. You have to accept that if you want to save Marco."

"Save Marco?" said a little, tired voice
from a corridor we'd passed. "What save Marco?"

D'Amico got up with a pained look on his face and
walked toward his wife, who stood small and trembling with her hand
clutching a black bathrobe at her breast. Her hair, more gray than
black, was askew, and the hem of a white nightgown or slip hung out
under the robe. Her face looked sunburned. In February.

D'Amico spoke soothingly in Italian but his wife was
having none of it, wagging her head and stomping into the room and
toward me.

"What save Marco?" she demanded. "What."

Then a flash of recognition. "You. You the one.
Joey! Oh, Madre di Dio!" She clenched the fist that wasn't,
holding the robe together and struck herself hard on the chest
repeatedly until her husband restrained her.

"Mrs. D'Amico . . ."

She shrieked and shook her head violently. She began
to wail. "Why you here? Why you don't leave us alone? Why, why?"

"To try to save Marco for you, Mrs. D'Amico,"
I said softly. "To try to save your other son."

She was trembling but stopped crying. She glared at
me, her nostrils flaring. She gave her husband a short command in
Italian. He protested, and she switched to English. "Sit, sit!"

He gave me a murderous look and released her arm.
They took the sofa.

"What you mean, save Marco?"

I decided not to repeat my Joey preamble. "Mrs.
D'Amico, have you seen Marco since yesterday afternoon?"

She bit her lip. "What you mean, save Marco?"

I thought of the Little Prince, who once he asked a
question, would keep asking it until it was answered. I decided to
play too.

"Mrs. D'Amico, have you seen him?"

She bit her lip again and moved her head no. I looked
up at her husband, who glared, but showed no as well. ·

"I have reason to believe Marco is bothering the
older couple whose house I used to watch the warehouse."

"The colored and the white woman?" she
asked.

“
Yes.”

"What you mean, bother?" she said.

"Phone calls."

"Look," said Mr. D'Amico, "Marco, he
don't live here no more. He don't make no phone calls from here."

“
It doesn't matter where he's calling from," I
explained. "If he threatens them, he gets in trouble with the
police."

"Marco don't make those calls," said Mrs.
D'Amico.

"I think he did. He called me, too. It was his
voice, Mrs. D'Arnico."

"No," she said, then louder, "no!"

"Why you telling us this things," said Mr.
D'Amico warily.

"I was hoping you could talk to him, persuade
him to stop before he gets in trouble for it."

D'Amico looked helpless. His wife sunk her face into
her free hand, and then went to her pocket, tugging out some crumpled
Kleenex to stem the next wave of tears.

"He don't listen no more," said the
husband. "He almost as old as you. He don't listen."

Mrs. D'Amico was crying again, choking off sobs in
her throat.

"The Coopers, the other couple, are a lot like
you. Only they don't have neighbors to look after them, like you do.
You can guess why that is. Cooper, the husband, was a marine. He can
take care of Marco if he has to. So can I.”

"Marco got friends," he said aggressively.
"Lotsa friends."