Shallow Graves

off. I use the key, slip inside her apartment. I can hear her moving around in the bathroom, I don’t figure she can hear me. I musta put the chain on like I do here, I don’t remember. Five, ten minutes I’m standing there like a jerk before Tina’s out of the bathroom. She’s in her robe, six feet away from me, and she says, “What are you doing here? Get the fuck out!“
    The old man shook his head. “To me, she said that. I say to her, ‘What do you mean, get out?’ She says, ‘It’s my apartment. Get the fuck out.’ I say, ‘Your apartment? I own the whole building. This is my property.’ She says, ‘You can have your property. I’m late for my party.’ And I say, ‘Tina, Amatina, we gotta talk here.’ And she says, ‘Uh-unh, too late to talk, far-far.’ “
    Danucci looked over at me, both hands cupping the chalice. “That word, far-far, I never heard it before. Then I say, ‘We gotta talk, Tina.’ And she goes, ‘I’m gonna do my talking to everybody who’ll listen.’ And I say, ‘After all I done for you? After all I give you, this is what I get?’ And she runs away from me into the bedroom. I start after her, but she’s already back, throwing the necklace, my Amatina’s necklace, at me. I go to catch it, she’s bumping me, pushing me out to her living room and the door, saying, ‘Take back your fucking necklace. I’m going to New York, out of your life, out of this whole life.’ I say, ‘New York? Tina, what’re you talking about?’ But she just says ‘Take back your fucking necklace,’ and then starts yelling a whole bunch a things at me, words I didn’t understand. All I know is, I see her face in front of me, all screwed up, and crazy and I... I...“
    His hands tightened around the chalice, the knuckles turning white. “I strangled her. Before I realized what I was doing, I choked the life out of my own blood.“
    Very quietly, I said, “Is that when the pendant broke off the necklace?“
    A dismissive wave, then the abrupt nod. “I suppose. All I know is, I opened my hands and she just fell away from me. I could feel my heart, I had to sit, think about it. Try to decide what to do.
    “Then there’s the Jap, knocking at the door, getting louder, sounding nervous. I hear him run back down the stairs, and I get up, figure, go to the bedroom, take some more jewelry, make it look like a B and E. But I just about get in there, I got some earrings and stuff in my hand, when I hear a whole crowd at the door, voices yelling and pounding on the door, and I got to get out. So I jam everything in my pockets and go through the window. I’m on the fire escape when I hear the door open and smack against the chain. I go down as fast as I can but I hear the chain give and somebody running. The second-floor window’s open, so I get in there, try to catch my breath. And I can hear everybody, I don’t know how many it is, running around upstairs, yelling. So I get to the door, find the little key on my ring, and slip myself into the hall. And it’s quiet enough there, except for the voices upstairs through the open door. And I go down the stairs and out. I walk a couple, three blocks before my heart says I gotta take a cab. So I do, back to like Hanover and Richmond.
    “And then,“ Danucci seemed to deflate a little. “I walked back here.“
    I waited for him to recover a bit.
    The old man pushed the chalice three inches away, but Primo wasn’t there to take it. “So, you figured it was family, but it wasn’t Mr. Vincent Dani, Esquire. How’d you know it was me?“
    “Two things other than the timing. One, the words Tina used with you she used with other people, always being careful to ask them first about their backgrounds, to be sure they wouldn’t know what the words meant.“
    “What they meant?“
    “It was her way of dealing with what happened, I think. One young guy who was interested in her told me he wasn’t exotic enough for her. What he should have said was he wasn’t old enough for her. That’s what she did. She saw older men like George Yulin at the agency, Oz Puriefoy the photographer, and Larry Shinkawa the ad exec. Maybe she got the idea from Erica Lindqvist, talking about her family from Sweden. Tina used seanair with Yulin to describe her first boyfriend, groot vader as a pet name for Puriefoy, tutu and far-far with Shinkawa.“
    Danucci’s mouth worked but at first nothing came out. “Those were... Tina yelled those things at me. What do