Invasion of Privacy

reliable than the “not black” and “dark hair.” Elmer says the guy was driving, which doesn’t sound like something Olga would allow, and the man waves to Elmer, which doesn’t sound like something anybody on the run would do. Also, if DiRienzi and Evorova are taking off together, why leave the more conspicuous Porsche at the airport rather than the drab Toyota ?
    I looked through my windshield, maybe twenty cars ahead. It was a little brighter at the far end of the tunnel, but somehow that didn’t make anything clearer.

20

    S topped at a traffic light back downtown, I checked my watch. Only 1:00 p.m. Still an hour before picking up Nancy, and plenty of time to visit the office for any mail Olga Evorova might have sent me. From what Rick Ianella had said the first time I met him, he and Cocozzo were more likely to be camped outside the condo, where there was some parking, than outside the office, where there was none. Even so, rather than put the Prelude in the space next to the dumpster off Tremont, I left it three blocks away and walked the rest.
    At my building’s entrance, I looked around. The trolley ticket guy, with nobody at his booth across the street, was the only person paying any attention to me. Upstairs, I stood outside the pebbled-glass door for a full minute, hearing nothing. Using my key on the lock, I went inside, skimming the mail that had come through my slot. All but one envelope had a return address on it, and the exception proved to be from a former client whose daughter I’d tracked down a year before, the letter thanking me again, because the girl was still at home and now doing well in school.
    Facing the windows, I called my condo number, got Primo Zuppone’s voice twice on the tape machine, and hung up. Next was my answering service, with two more messages from him. Nothing else.
    I was returning the receiver to its cradle as my door opened. Coco Cocozzo came in first, wearing the same suit, a semiautomatic nearly lost in his right hand. Close behind was Rick Ianella, a different suit but the same expression on his face.
    Cocozzo said to me, “Up, and real slow.”
    I did what he wanted.
    “Assume the position against the wall.”
    I went over to it, legs spread apart, palms leaning into the plaster above Junior’s punched holes. Cocozzo planted the outside of his left shoe against the instep of my left foot and began to frisk me.
    I said, “This come kind of natural to you?”
    The balding man brought the barrel of the gun up hard between my thighs, but not as hard as he could have. I bit back what was in my throat.
    Cocozzo found the Smith & Wesson Chiefs Special on my right hip and pulled it free carefully. Finishing the search, he stepped back.
    Ianella said, “Turn around and look at me, dickhead.”
    I turned. “The trolley guy, right? You paid him to watch for me.”
    Cocozzo said, “We paid four shifts of them, just in case you decided to show up when we weren’t around.”
    The scar through Junior’s eyebrow was twitching like a rabbit’s nose. “ Coco and me, we been waiting since Friday for you to fucking call us, and that fucking Primo says you ain’t been answering your phones again. I been in touch with Milwaukee , telling them, ‘Let my father know, it’s gonna be any time now.’ Only you been letting us down, shit-for-brains. How come?”
    “I didn’t have anything to tell you, until now.”
    Ianella moved closer to me. “Until now?”
    “Yes. I found out some things, but I want Primo here when I tell you about them.”
    Junior contorted his features like a chimpanzee’s, nodding elaborately but not sincerely. I figured I knew what was coming.
    Ianella made the quick effort to cuff me on the chin, the way he had with Zuppone. I parried it, the edge of my left hand slashing into the fleshy part of his right forearm.
    Junior bent at the waist, his left hand clawing at the place I’d hit him, the mottling coming over his cheeks. “You little fuck, I’m gonna—”
    “Boss?”
    The younger man turned toward Cocozzo. “What?”
    “Probably be easier, we just call Primo on his car phone, get him over here.”
    A look of disbelief. “You don’t think I can handle this piece of shit?”
    Softly, patiently, Cocozzo said, “I know you can handle him, Boss. It’s just you might not want to handle him here, and Primo’s the one with the car and maybe a place we can take him.”
    Junior brought himself under control, then jerked his head