Invasion of Privacy

slicked over the ears, duck’s-ass style. His complexion hadn’t changed, either, ravaged by the pits and scars of teenage acne. The brown eyes glittered happily above his half- smile, a trademark toothpick stuck in the corner of his mouth.
    “Primo, it’s been a while.”
    “Get in, get in.” He leaned over, opening the passenger’s side door. “We’ll drive around, listen to some music.” I slid onto the front seat gingerly, the buttery leather creating almost no friction against my suit pants. I noticed Zuppone checking his rearview and sideview mirrors, and then me. A leather coat the same color as the upholstery was folded carefully on the back seat, an audio cassette partway into a dashboard slot next to the radio.
    Primo pushed the cassette the rest of the way into the player. “Tim Story. Solo piano mostly. You ever hear him?”
    “I don’t think so. I have some Liz Story tapes. They related?”
    A tick-tocking of his head, left to right and back again, as we moved into traffic. “Beats me. I just listen to the shit, I don’t study it.”
    I’d first met Zuppone working a case that involved the Danucci crime family from Boston’s North End. Primo had been the “situation guy” assigned by them to “coordinate” with me. A mobster who loved New Age music.
    The cassette began to play, a mournful piano accompanied by something acoustical.
    I said, “That Wim Mertens album you gave me still sounds great.”
    He rolled the toothpick from one corner of his mouth to the other. “Glad to hear it. That was Close Cover, am I right?”
    “I think so. It was a bootlegged tape, so there isn’t a lot of information on the cassette holder.”
    “Yeah, yeah. It’s a homemade jobbie, that was Close Cover all right. They love him in Europe —he’s Dutch or some fucking thing—but it’s tough to get the guy’s stuff over here. I’ll dupe one of the other albums for you.”
    “Thanks.”
    Zuppone nodded. “How do you like old Timmie so far?”
    “Reminds me of old Wimmie.”
    Prirno glanced over. “That’s pretty fucking good, Cuddy, just off the top of your head and all.”
    My turn to nod. “Hope you’ll understand if I don’t ask after the family.”
    “Tell you the truth, they probably wouldn’t be so hurt about that. You’re not exactly on the Christmas list from the last thing, you know?”
    A killing I was part of had been cleaned up by a friendly funeral home and covered up by a doctor beholden to the Danuccis.
    “So, how have you been, Primo?”
    “Pretty good. All things considered, anyways. Just got back from A.C.”
    “ Atlantic City ?”
    “Yeah.” The toothpick rolled to the other corner. “I go down there a couple, three times a year. This friend of ours comps me to the charter flight and hotel. You oughta see their idea of a fucking honeymoon suite, it’d look great in a Madonna movie. Best part, though, I met this guy named Enrico, used to be a POW in World War II.”
    “Prisoner of war?”
    “Yeah, but one of ours.”
    “I don’t get you.”
    “I’m standing around the casino, taking a break, and I overhear this little old guy talking in Italian to a little old lady, looks like she’s gotta be his wife. So I say something to the guy, and it turns out this Enrico served his home country in the Italian army and was one of our prisoners, way out in the desert, Arizona someplace.”
    “And he came back after the war?”
    “And got made a citizen some fucking way, don’t ask me how. Anyways, Enrico starts telling me what it was like to be a POW, and it was fascinating. I mean, he remembers being in the middle of Indiana , and then they get told by this MP—that’s what you used to be, right?”
    “I was Military Police, but a lot later on the time line.”
    “Right, right. Vietnam , I remember. But this little old guy, he’s telling me about the MP captain who’s moving them by some kind of convoy—like fifty trucks, ten Italian soldiers to a truck, all lying down on the floor of the thing, with guards and a canvas stretched over slats above them. Like a fucking olive-drab covered wagon, get it? And the MPs, I guess they bought these prisoners box lunches along the way when they stopped for gas or whatever.”
    “Anyone try to escape?”
    “No. Enrico said the captain told them through an interpreter that if anybody lifted his head, the guards would shoot it off. Then, after they drive around the clock, they get to this camp in the desert,