Shallow Graves

through his mouth. The sound was like a hurricane blowing through a lantern. It wasn’t hard to see which gene he got from Tommy the Temper. “Yeah. Yeah, Primo. Thanks.“
    “Chivas?“
    “No. The Johnny Black tonight.“
    Zuppone crossed to the wet bar in a corner of the room. The paneled walls were covered with framed prints of different Boston athletes. Dom DiMaggio and Rico Petrocelli from the Red Sox, Gino Cappelletti from the Patriots, Phil Esposito from the Bruins. It took a minute to realize they all had Italian surnames.
    Danucci accepted his drink and downed half of it. He ran the back of his hand across his mouth, then ran his palm over his head, scattering the clots of hair into a different pattern.
    He said, “I’m not dealing real well with this shit,“ and inhaled the rest of his drink.
    This time Primo didn’t offer to get another.
    Around the empty glass, Danucci said, “I want to talk with the guy alone a couple of minutes.“
    His brother said, “Joey?“
    “I’ll be okay, Vinnie. You guys try the TV or something, huh?“
    Vincent Dani looked at Primo, who looked at me. Then Primo said, “Right, boss,“ and left the room, Dani taking two short steps, then striding out behind him.
    Joseph Danucci said to me, “Take a seat, Cuddy.“
    I tried one of several leather easy chairs across from the leather couch. All the cowhide, including the tufting on the bar and stools, was royal blue, held in place by brass tacks.
    Danucci circled over to the bar, setting his glass on it. “Get you something?“
    It was a little early, but I said, “Beer, if you have it.“
    He disappeared behind the bar. “What I don’t got, you don’t need.“ His voice echoed a little as he spoke into what sounded like a refrigerator.
    Using a church key, Danucci opened the bottle of Sam Adams the way a busy bartender would, the top arcing through the air like a tossed coin.
    He brought the bottle over to me. “Primo said you were in the ‘ Nam .“
    Danucci pronounced it to rhyme with “Mom.“ As he moved back to the bar, I thought about what Zuppone had told me in the car.
    I said, “One tour.“
    “When?“
    “Late sixties.“
    Danucci poured himself more Scotch. “Where?“
    “Mostiy Saigon.“
    He started to raise his glass, then said, “Tet?“
    “Yeah.“
    Danucci swigged two fingers of the Johnny Walker. “ ’Who owns the night?’ “
    “ ‘The night belongs to the 101st Airborne.’ “
    He watched me. “You were a Screaming Eagle?“
    “No. Ran into them from time to time.“
    “What outfit you with?“
    “Military Police.“
    Danucci came around the bar. “Fucking Mike-Papa?“
    “That’s right.“
    “Ever out in the boonies?“
    “Once in a while.“
    Danucci started pacing back and forth. “Yeah, well I fucking lived in the boonies, man, seventy into seventy-one. I never minded so much the assaults, even on a Huey going down into a hot LZ. And on search-and-destroy, you got so you could see the booby traps, especially old ones. At least you were doing something, going after Charlie where he lived. What I couldn’t take was standing down on a firebase some fucking general named after a mission from World War II, guarding some fucking artillery against Charlie probing us at night.“
    My host kept pacing. “Sweating on top of some fucking bunker because it was crawling with rats inside. Waiting. All the time just waiting for Charlie to hit. You can hear a lot further at night than you can see.“
    Danucci stopped in front of me. “Know what was the worst part?“
    Without thinking, I said, “The rain.“
    This time Danucci stared at me. That cold, dead-eyed stare Tom Berenger captured so well in Platoon. “Fucking A. That rain starts, you couldn’t hear nothing moving, nothing. It started to rain, didn’t matter I wasn’t pulling guard duty, I couldn’t sleep.“
    The palm went through the hair again. “Like now.“
    I knew he wasn’t referring to the weather.
    Danucci emptied his glass, then brought it down hard on the bar. “Tina was my daughter, Cuddy. We had our problems, she was always more her mother’s daughter than her father’s, but that happens, right?“
    He didn’t seem to need my answer.
    “Girl hits a certain age, she’s got to rebel. Okay, fine. She goes off on her own. Fuck, we did the same thing when we were eighteen, right? Only I made sure she was safe, get me? Primo, he checked out the modeling agency. No pomo, no kinky shit. She flopped