James Benn - A Mortal Terror

“Did he and Father Dare speak about this?”

“Yes. When he came for dinner, it seemed the padre was asking his opinion about soldiers they both knew. But I did not pay attention to names. American names are so strange to me, especially the names soldiers use.”

“What do you mean?”

“What is the word? Soprannome? ”

“Nicknames,” Kaz supplied.

“Yes, yes. It makes it so difficult to understand, especially with the Americans. One of the men they talked about, he had a French name, at least to my ears. And there was something about a ridiculous town he was from. They always laughed when they said it.”

“Louie Walla from Walla Walla?”

“Yes!” She slapped her hand on the table. “The dottore was worried about him. Why, I cannot say. I was too busy preparing la Genovese.”

“Were the other doctors at the dinner?”

“No, they were both working. I think Dottore Galante wished to dine alone with Il Prete.”

“ La Genovese? Is that the Neapolitan beef and onion ragout?” Kaz’s concentration on the case had apparently been broken.

“Yes, Barone. I will make it for you, if you can find some good meat. Not horse meat, although it will do in a pinch,” Signora Salvalaggio said, with a conspiratorial smile.

“Why do they call it la Genovese, if it comes from Naples?” I asked.

“A mystery,” she said, with a shrug.

A real mystery. Priests and doctors, suicide and murder, hidden pearls and Willie Peter grenades. Nothing made sense, nothing connected. I drank the last of the espresso, now gone cold, the harsh taste gritty and sour on my tongue. Kaz and the signora chatted on about cooking while all I could think of was who was going to be dealt the next card.

Then I recalled seeing women in Sicily, squatting at the side of the road, their knives slicing into the bodies of horses killed in the German retreat. The animals were still in harness, flies buzzing around their eyes, as the Sicilian women butchered them and carried slabs of flesh home, blood staining their shoulders. I watched Signora Salvalaggio, and wondered what she might be capable of. To what lengths would she go to recover her honor? Or the pearls?

“What should we do with the pearls?” Kaz asked as we drove to the palace to pick up Luca Amatori, our Carabinieri guide for our trip to Bar Raffaele in Acerra.

“I’m not sure,” I said. “I wish I knew if they were a dead end or a connection to the murders. There might be some percentage in letting it slip that we have them.”

“Meaning a fair chance that someone will try to kill us for them. I’d prefer a different plan, Billy.”

“Well, that wouldn’t have worked anyway. If word got out, CID would want us to turn in the pearls. They’d sit in a locked file somewhere until a colonel with a key decided to bring home a souvenir. No sense in letting that happen.”

“What would you do if this were Boston?”

I wanted to say, Whatever the patrol sergeant said to do. My experience as a detective was limited to the few weeks between my uncle calling in a few favors on the promotions board, and the attack on Pearl Harbor. Before that, I’d been a beat cop, working different parts of the city, and helping Dad out when he needed a few extra bluecoats at a crime scene. Dad was a homicide detective, and it was his plan to bring me up in the family business. It was a good plan, but the war had gotten in the way. Instead, I said, “It’s not the same. I doubt we’d ever find a dead queen’s pearls in Boston.”

“What about one of the old Boston families? The Brahmins, as you call them. You find jewelry from a theft that happened fifty years ago. The original owner is dead. The family is stupendously wealthy. No one is pursuing the case. What do you do?”

I took a corner harder than I needed to, sending Kaz rocking in his seat. Only fair, since he was putting me in a corner too.

“You forgot the old family retainer, living a life of shame.”

“What if there were one?”

“I know some cops who’d split it with her. Not many. A few would turn it in, a few would keep it for themselves.”

“What about the rest?”

“My dad always said you couldn’t trust a guy who was either too honest or too crooked.”

“I don’t understand,” Kaz said.

“I didn’t either, at first,” I said. It was hard to explain. “Okay, for example. There was a fire, a few years before the war, in Mattapan Square. Big two-family house, four-alarm blaze in the middle of the night. Everyone got out, and the firemen kept it from spreading to the neighbors, but the building was ruined, had to be torn down before it caved in on itself. So the next day, I’m there with a few other cops to keep the onlookers at a safe distance while the wrecking crew takes it down. There’s a fire truck too, in case anything’s smoldering under the debris.”

“Are there any Boston Brahmins in this story?” Kaz asked.

I responded with a hard stop at an intersection, but he’d braced himself for it. “Wait. There was an attic, used by the two families for storage. But it used to be an apartment, back before the turn of the century. No one remembered who’d lived there, or where they went. When they pulled the front of the house down, a wooden crossbeam came loose and hit the ground, rolled right into one of the workers. Broke his leg. So we push the crowd back to make room for him, and as we’re standing around while the firemen rig a stretcher, a cop named Augie Perkins notices a coffee can sticking out from the horsehair lathing on a section of interior wall. It was from the attic. Stuffed full of fives, tens, and twenties, all rolled up tight.”

“Why leave money inside a wall?”

“You’d be surprised what you find hidden in old houses. Lots of people don’t trust banks or their relatives, so they keep money hidden. Trouble is, they don’t tell anyone, and end up taking their secret to the grave.”

“Who owned the house?”

“I’ll get to that. The lid was off, and Augie sees that there’s a ton of dough in that can, and he thinks no one else sees it. So he eases over, kneels down to tie his shoe, pulls it free, and stuffs it under his jacket.”

“But you saw him, right?”

“No, a pal of mine did. Joe Leary, one of the firemen. He waits until the worker is loaded onto the ambulance, and the crowd breaks up. Then he clocks Augie good, opens his coat, and shows the rest of us what he’d taken.”

“And you arrested him?”

“No. Joe told us the building was owned by a rich guy named Frederick Perkins. Almost a Brahmin. Good enough for one of them to marry his daughter, and his money, anyway. We weren’t in a hurry to give him a tin can of cash he never knew about. So there’s ten of us, not counting the guy with the broken leg. Joe suggested we split it thirteen ways.”

“Why thirteen?”

“A share for each of the families that were burned out, one for the guy with the broken leg, and the ten of us. Even Augie, but we had to cut him in, just to keep him quiet.”

“It sounds like an admirable plan.”

“Except for Teddy Booker. Augie was the greedy one, and Teddy was the too-honest one. He threatened to turn us all in if we didn’t give the money to the owner of the property. Joe threatened to bash him one, too, but Teddy didn’t give in. He took the money, and reported both Augie and Joe for pilfering.”

“What happened?”

“No one would speak to Teddy after that. They called him By-the-Book Booker. He quit the force and moved to Chicago. Augie and Joe lost their jobs. Frederick Perkins got a can of cash, had a heart attack two weeks later and died.”

“And the moral of the story?” Kaz asked.