Rick Boyer: The Penny Ferry

"What?' What the hell is this, a Cagney flick? Joe, correct me if I'm wrong, but Lowell's not a murder town, is it?"

"Naw. It's a tank town but not a murder town. It's scruffy and rough, but not mean. Killing is pretty rare up here; that's why I think the Mob's in on this one."

"Factory we're goin to's an old textile mill," growled O'Hearn.

"Found this dude inna chimney."

"In a chimney? Look you guys, all I wanted to know was what happened to my dental work, and so far we haven't found out anything."

"And sad to say you probably won't now. If it's not back at Dependable's office, I can't imagine where in hell it is. The murderers might have just grabbed everything. Shit- now I'm going to have to phone Sam Bowman and tell him that his partner and friend john Robinson has been murdered. I tell ya, my job's a barrel of laughs sometimes."

"You think Johnny might have left the stuff he was carrying at his office?"

"A chance. We'll check it out tomorrow. Turn here, Kev."

We turned and saw a Lowell black-and-white parked over beyond the old factory gate, its blue lights winking. We drifted into the yard. It had all the earmarks of a hundred-year-old textile mill: huge chimney for the boilers, loading docks, sheds, long, low buildings with roofs of tar and corrugated metal, but mostly the mill itself, a huge building of dun brick with narrow, metal-frame windows, an old clock turret, and tiny street-level doorways. It had a wall around three sides. It was a brick penitentiary. It was dismal and deserted. It was a little frightening, perhaps made more so by the nature of our errand.

The chimney was huge but unattached to the boiler room, which had been torn down when the plant was converted to electric power. There was a large jagged hole in the chimney's base where the flue had entered it. All around this opening lay piles of broken bricks, the remnants of the old flue bridges, which had collapsed. Some of these were yellowish-red; others were glossy black, indicating they'd been on the inner flue wall.

A uniformed cop and a plainclothesman stood halfway up the rubble mound inside the chimney, which was about twenty feet across at its base. Their feet and pants were bright, their upper bodies dim in the darkness of the interior, and their faces invisible. We entered the old structure and began climbing the pile of bricks, mortar, and junk. Joe knew the detective and stopped for a second while O'Hearn and I went on up alone. On top of the heap was a dead man lying on his back facing straight up, his glazed eyes half-open. His mouth was drawn back as if he had died in pain. The reason for this was obvious: a giant reddish-brown stain on his shirtfront the size of an LP record.

"Stab wound," said the detective to Joe. "Opened him up real good. No I.D. or wallet, but it's not robbery."

The man was young and handsome and looked Italian. His clothing was expensive and well cut. His hair appeared to be styled, and he wore soft calfskin loafers with tassels. Dead or alive, he was surely out of his element on a rubble heap in a ' mined factory chimney in Lowell, Mass.

The four of us stood on the talus cone and stared at the faded elegance at our feet. The scene was eerie, surrealistic. Far above a shaft of dying sunlight plunged across the sooty blackness of the chimney top like a theater spotlight. It struck the curved wall up near the lip, and the white patch of light lay there in a bent ellipse. From the darkness overhead came the faint squeaking of swifts, their wing flutters and echoing power dives. Now and then dark specks flitted across the shaft of light, twittering. The rubble cone rose up inside the dark circular walls like a grotesque Paleolithic altar. And the corpse on it a sacrifice, his sightless eyes staring up at the circle of light a hundred feet above. The scene could have been on the cover of a sci-fi paperback, painted by Frank Frazetta.

Behind me I heard the clinking and clacking of broken brick as Joe climbed up to join us. I wanted to leave.

"What makes you think it wasn't robbery?" asked Joe.

" 'Cause they didn't take the gold watch. Take a look, Joe- that's some clock the guy's wearing."

The watch was round, with a red onyx face and Roman numerals. The body was gold, the band lizard. Around the gold face was engraved, in bold classical letters, BULGARI-ROMA. Joe stood up and looked at the corpse.

"Yeah, I'd say it's not robbery, too. But I've got a different reason. Look here."

He took the man's other wrist and drew the arm up, exposing the hand.

It was missing two fingers.

We stood staring at the corpse for quite a while, not saying a word. He was the guy who'd iced Johnny, and we did not like him. Finally O'Hearn broke the silence.

"Rich," he said.

"Yeah. Rich and Italian. I bet he didn't even speak English," said Joe.

"How can you tell?" asked O'Hearn.

"He just looks it. No, wait. Maybe he was educated in some snooty English prep school. Or maybe he spent a year at Harvard. But he's rich, just like you said, Kev, and he's Italian. He's as Italian as fetticcine al burro."

"Mmmmm," said O'Hearn. "As Italian as linguine with clam sauce."

"Yeah. As Italian as rigatoni bolognese," I added.

"Or chicken tetrazzini."

"Veal Marsala."

Then silence for a minute.

"I'm hungry," said O'Hearn.

"Me too," I said.

We stumbled back down the rubble heap and headed for O'Hearn's car. Joe stopped to talk to the detective, who was writing in a pocket notebook. I sat in back; O'Hearn turned around and faced me, resting his pale triple chin on the seat back.

"Well Doc, nice quiet Saturday afternoon, eh? Coupla stiffs up in Lowell, Mass. Any ideas? I thought it was a straight Outfit hit until a few minutes ago. Now I'm not so sure."

"It looks like an Outfit hit, then a double-cross from inside. Do you think they fought over the loot?"

"Naw," he said. "Johnny Robinson was small time, money-wise. The Outfit would never squabble over loot that small. Frankly, I don't think it's a question of loot at all. I think Johnny did something they didn't like, like maybe blew the whistle on them. It wasn't loot."

Joe got in and we drove over to the Robinson house. Mary was still sacked out in the back of Joe's cruiser, so I got up in front with Joe. Halfway home Mary sat up and said she was going to be sick. I helped her from the car; she felt cold and clammy to the touch. She staggered over to the side of the road and got rid of all the peppermint schnapps. She groaned and retched, and tears streamed down her face.

"Doesn't taste as good coming back up, does it, hon?"

"Oh Charlie. Ohhh… Why do I ever drink?" she wailed.

We got her back in and covered her with Joe's sport coat. At home we woke her up and got her inside on the couch. Then Joe threw a handful of coarse cornmeal on the butcher's block, spread it deftly with a few broad sweeps of his big hand, threw the pink-gray slabs of raw meat down, and began to pound them. He hit them gently with a wooden mallet, not a steel one. Steel tears 'em up too much, he says. The meat began to flatten and spread out. He wanted them wafer-thin.

"Too bad about Johnny," he said with a slow sigh.

"Yep. Death comes to all of us."

"Mmmmm. Makes you stop and drink."

"Okay."

I had fetched two bottles of Chianti classico and we tasted it. I cut slices of eggplant a quarter-inch thick, as per Joe's instructions, then arranged them on a clean white towel. I put another towel on top, then a thick steel cookie sheet, then a heavy cast-iron skillet for weight.

"That'll squeeze them out," said Joe, "so they won't be all watery and will soak up the olive oil."

We put olive oil in a pan with a crushed garlic clove and some onion and let it work on medium heat. That is about my favorite smell in the world. If you aren't hungry when you start, you soon will be.