Shallow Graves

pretty well. “There’s an obituary I’d like to see, if I could.“
    “Obit?“ Mo’s brow furrowed. “John, the hell you got yourself into here?“
    “Between us?“
    “You mean off the record?“
    “I mean between us, Mo.“
    A glacial sigh. “Okay. My word on it.“
    I told him about what happened with Mau Tim Dani when I was out of town.
    Mo fumed. “Well, I’ll tell you, John, I wasn’t the fuck out of town and I don’t remember anything about it. Hold on a second.“ He picked up his phone, pushed a button, and hit three numbers. Then he cursed, pushed another button, and hit three more. He rasped at whoever answered, and whoever answered read him something. Mo asked whether there were any accompanying pieces, and he cursed some more, then hung up without saying thank you.
    “Well, John. It seems your Mau Tim Dani died on a Friday night, and being only murder number forty-seven in a year that ought to break the record set last year, which should surprise nobody, there was a story without a victim’s name in the Saturday paper. A follow-up with ‘Dani’ but not ‘Danucci’ got pushed to page sixteen of Sunday’s, and then nothing but ‘Dani’ in the obit. Nobody else ran this, print or broadcast?“
    “I don’t know.“
    Mo sucked on the resumed-dead stogie. “It’s possible Tommy still has enough juice to get people to sit on something like this, John. I wouldn’t have bet on it, this day and age, but it’s just barely possible. So I have some advice, you can take it from a man needs a hearing aid in his head.“
    “Say it, Mo.“
    “Tread softly, John. Muffle the drums and tread very, very softly through the jungle.“

    “What are you doing back here?“
    “Nice to see you, too, Lieutenant.“
    “Cuddy, what?“
    “I was driving home and a parking space opened up across the street. I figured it might be an omen.“
    Robert Murphy reached for a sheaf of phone messages on the corner of his desk and started riffling through them. Finding the one he was looking for, he held it up to t the light from the window behind him. “Says here, ‘John Cuddy called. He is going for a ride with Primo Zuppone.’ “
    “He likes you to pronounce it ‘Zoo- po -ny.’ “
    “You take a ride with a wiseguy, you’re lucky the M.E. didn’t have to pronounce you.“
    “How did you know he was connected?“
    “His name’s cropped up over the years.“
    “In what kinds of cases?“
    “Various gentlemen we’ve pulled out of the harbor.“ Lovely. “I thought maybe you looked him up special.“ Murphy made the phone message waffle in the air. “Account of this?“
    “Made me feel safer, thinking you were watching out for me.“
    “Cuddy, the fuck you into?“
    “I can’t tell you.“
    He put down the slip of paper. “Why not?“
    “The other name there.“
    Murphy looked back at the phone message. “Harry Mullen?“
    “Right.“
    “Who’s Mullen?“
    “He’s with the insurance company I used to work for.“
    A memory worked its way across Murphy’s forehead and jumped for its life. “Not Holt’s case.“
    “That’s why I can’t tell you.“
    Murphy closed his eyes. “Get out.“
    “If Holt screws up, I want you to haunt him for me.“
    “Cuddy, you screw up with the Danucci family, you’ll be able to haunt him yourself. Now—“
    I got out.

- 14 -

    Oscar Puriefoy’s address on Boylston was past Mass Ave, almost to the Fenway. Inside the glass entrance door, a mailbox on the wall had its lock staved in and his name over it. I climbed four flights of stairs past a palm reader, a discount travel agency, a total health consultant, and a CPA before I reached Puriefoy’s studio door. I knocked, and a deep bass voice said, “Yeah?“
    Inside the room, a teddy-bear black man was on his knees, bending over a set of toy railroad cars on a black velvet blanket. The cars were made from blocks and dowls of wood, all enameled in primary colors. The man consulted what looked like a polaroid photo, then used the thumb on his large hand to nudge the caboose a quarter of an inch.
    There were bright umbrella lights over the cars and a camera on a tripod, but from there any comparison to the studio where I’d met Sinead Fagan was unflattering. Puriefoy’s place was maybe four hundred square feet, with only a door to a half bath and no windows. Exposed pipes wended through the original stamped tin ceiling, which itself looked fifty years the worse for wear. The wallpaper