Shallow Graves

anything else she talked about with you? Boyfriends, family, anything?“
    Fagan righted the glasses. Very evenly, she said, “We didn’t talk about family, awright?“
    Sinead trotted off to rejoin the others at the beach.

- 8 -

    I treated myself to lunch at the Harvard Bookstore Cafe, a place where you can think about eating while browsing or think about browsing while eating. A friend of mine named Moncef designed the menu there. He and his wife Donna used to own L’Espalier, the best restaurant in the city. A few years ago, they pulled up stakes and moved to Virginia , to raise their family in a calmer environment. Moncef still comes up to Boston once in a while, and he was there that day. We shot the breeze for half an hour over a plate of perfectly stir-fried turkey and vegetables.
    To walk off lunch, I crossed the Public Garden and the Common to my office on Tremont. I’m in an old building, and my door on the third floor has a pebbled-glass top with “John Francis Cuddy, Confidential Investigations“ stenciled on it. Behind the door is a desk, a desk chair, and two-client chairs. Two windows overlook the Park Street Subway Station, and my license hangs from a wall I painted myself to save a few bucks on the monthly rent. The rest of the office could be carted off in the front basket of a bicycle.
    I was upstairs for five minutes and in my desk chair four when there was a knock on the door. “It’s open.“
    A guy came in wearing a knee-length leather coat over a navy blue suit. In his mid-forties, he was five seven and pushing two hundred pounds. A comb had recently slicked his black hair to the sides in a Teen Angel look. The face was pudgy, the complexion reminding me of an all-weather radial. A toothpick stuck out from one corner of his mouth, the corner curling in a half-smile.
    He said, “How ya doin’,“ as a statement rather than a question and then settled into one of my client’s chairs, the leather coat squeaking against the wood.
    I said, “You want to take your coat off?“
    “We ain’t gonna be staying that long.“
    “So maybe I should put my coat on.“
    “You don’t want to catch cold on the way to the car.“
    “Where are we heading, we aren’t going to be here that long?“
    “Some friends of mine, they want to have a little talk with you.“
    “And if I don’t exactly feel like going with you?“
    A shrug so small the coat gave just one tiny squeak. “I leave, come back with two associates, and then we go see my friends.“
    “And if two more aren’t enough?“
    The only part of his expression that changed was the toothpick. It rolled to the other corner of his mouth. “Then I come back with four more. Sooner or later, you have that talk with my friends.“
    “I step on some toes somewhere?“
    “I don’t know. I’m just transportation.“
    If he were just “transportation,“ he’d be leaning against a car downstairs, and somebody else would be talking with me. I thought over what I’d been doing the last couple of weeks and came up with only one possibility.
    I said, “Where are we going?“
    “You find out when we get there.“
    I shook my head very slowly. That brought a good smile.
    “Hey-ey-ey,“ he said, dragging out the syllable. “Look, we was gonna clip you, we wouldn’t send somebody you don’t know, would we?“
    “You would if you don’t have anybody I know.“
    “You raise a good point.“ He sat back into the chair, folding his hands over his stomach, lifting his shoulders once and letting them sag into the chair, a symphony of squeaks from the coat.
    When I didn’t say anything, he waited thirty seconds or so, then said, “You come now, we beat the afternoon rush.“
    “These days, there’s always traffic.“
    He rolled the toothpick back to where it started, then used the thumb and forefinger of his left hand to pull back the lapels of his coat and jacket. Letting me see he wasn’t reaching for anything lethal. He pulled out a long wallet from the inside pocket of the jacket, extracted a plastic card, and sent it across the desk to me.
    “My license. A picture of me and everything.“
    I looked at the driver’s license. It seemed legitimate. Social Security number, date of birth. The photo was recent, the expiration date four birthdays away. The address was in the North End, Boston ’s Italian-American section.
    I read off, “Zuppone, Primo T.“
    “Yeah, only you gotta pronounce it ‘Zoo-po-ny.’ “
    “Primo, how