Shallow Graves

can picture it?“
    “Sure I can picture it. The fire escape runs right past her kitchen there.“
    “Okay. Either Fagan or her boyfriend—“
    “This the colored guy?“
    “I understand you’ve met.“
    The toothpick rotated clockwise. “You could say that, yeah.“
    “So either Fagan or Puriefoy can spot somebody going up the escape. They could hear that first flight come down, too, because it makes a hell of a racket and the kitchen window was open. That leaves us with how the killer got into the building.“
    Zuppone looked down at his dashboard. “What about the back door to the building?“
    “Can’t be opened from the outside, and Ooch said he always kept it bolted from the inside.“
    Primo checked his mirrors. “So, maybe the guy got buzzed in the front door.“
    “Not by Fagan. And probably not by Tina either, she just stepped out of the shower.“
    “She’s expecting her new boyfriend, though, right?“
    This time I did hesitate. “You’ve been getting a lot of phone calls.“
    “Like I said, people talk to me. So somebody rings Tina’s bell, she thinks it’s the Jap, she buzzes him in.“
    “Only you can hear both the bell and the buzzer inside Fagan’s apartment.“
    “From Tina’s, two floors up there?“
    “Yes. And Fagan and Puriefoy never heard bell or buzzer till Larry Shinkawa arrived, and they let him in.“
    Zuppone passed up a street that would have taken us more directly to Tommy Danucci’s house in the North End. “What you’re saying is, somebody had to have a key to get in the front door of the building.“
    “I think so.“
    “And a key to get into Tina’s apartment?“
    “Not necessarily.“
    “The fuck does that mean?“
    “She—Tina—could have let whoever it was in her door, once she was out of the shower.“
    “What, she hears a knock at the door and just opens up?“
    “She knew she was late to the party downstairs and figures it’s just one of them coming up to find out what’s taking her so long.“
    Zuppone rolled the pick again. “Possible.“
    “Also, anybody who has a key to the building door is probably somebody she’d recognize anyway.“
    The pick stopped. “She wasn’t supposed to give out none of those keys to anybody.“
    “And I don’t know that she did.“
    Zuppone hit the brakes, the Lincoln slewing into a loading zone. He slammed the gearshift into park, not bothering with the parking brake. Tearing the toothpick out of his mouth and breaking it between two fingers, he turned to me violently. “The fuck are you saying here? That ain’t some fucking safe house.“
    “What do you mean by ‘safe house’?“
    “Aw, one of the... this friend of ours, he likes the spy novels. The way I go for the New Age music, okay? He decides we need some new places to stash a guy... To keep a guy or some stuff on ice for a while. In the spy books, they call those things ‘safe houses.’ But fucking Mother, Cuddy, only the family used that second-floor apartment. Nobody’s gonna put a safe house under his own blood.“
    “I wouldn’t think so.“
    “What I mean is, they don’t give the keys to the building to anybody. Tina didn’t give one out, and that Sinead broad didn’t give one out, then only the family has any.“
    I didn’t bring up the front door key Sinead left with the agency. Instead, I braced myself before saying, “You have keys to that building, Primo?“
    All the blood drained from his cheeks, and he breathed heavily. “I’m gonna... I’m gonna make like I didn’t hear that, okay? Because I don’t wanna have to take you to Mr. Danucci without your face on.“
    “I think it’s—“
    “What you’re saying here is one of the family whacked Tina? You got rocks in your fucking head?“
    “You want to hear it or not?“
    Zuppone breathed three more times, reining himself in, the hand shaking as he turned off the music. “I wanna hear it. Real slow, no big words.“
    “There are a lot of possibilities, but one keeps coming around. The killer uses a key on the front door, goes up, and gets let in by Tina or uses a key on her door, too.“
    Zuppone seemed about to say something, then shook his head.
    “He kills her, hears Shinkawa at the apartment door, and then Shinkawa going back downstairs and coming back up with the others. The killer tries to go down the fire escape, only I don’t think he gets far enough before they break through the door.“
    “What do you mean, far enough?“
    “Shinkawa hears