“Excuse me?”
An hour later, the Daley brothers waited together on Symphony Road, across the street from number fifty. In the dim New England light-like a bulb burning out-the three of them appeared to smolder in hues of dull gray. Michael stood front and center, arms folded, watching patiently. Joe hulked behind, at Michael’s shoulder. Some part of Joe was always in motion: a hand explored a pocket, his head cricked this way or that, his foot pawed the sidewalk. Ricky had retreated to a stoop to smoke a butt. He alone seemed to realize the process would take a while.
A black-and-white cruiser and an unmarked car were double-parked in front of number fifty.
At length, Tom Hart came out of the building. He wore a crumpled fedora on his bald head. He made his way around the unmarked car to the driver’s door, which brought him within a dozen feet of the brothers. He caught Michael’s eye and shook his head with a little frown. Nothing. They had found nothing.
51
At McGrail’s, in a corner booth, his back against the wall and one foot up on the bench, Ricky smoked a butt and watched the door. Between drags his hand, with the cigarette angled outward like a dislocated sixth finger, sought out the ashtray and rotated it on the table. Ricky liked bars in mid-afternoon, when they were empty or nearly so. The bready smell of stale beer. The damp stink of twice-breathed air. It was three o’clock. Shafts of weak sunlight angled from high transom windows, flecked with dust motes that densified and textured the light, and created the illusion that the shafts were things you could touch. The light reminded him of empty churches. It had the captured quality of church light, of daylight diffused through stained glass, a perpetual late-afternoon of empty pews and cool stone walls.
Stan Gedaminski came in and stood by the door, turning a scally cap in his hands, sniffing the air. Apparently he did not like what he saw. The bartender was missing. Three barflies slumped on nonadjacent stools. One of these men, sensing a policeman in the environment, sloped off hastily to the bathroom.
Ricky waved with his cigarette hand, and Gedaminski slid onto the bench opposite him.
“You want something to drink, Stan?”
“I’m working.”
Ricky shrugged.
“Jesus, Rick. What are you doin’ here, a grown man, on a weekday? It’s the middle of the afternoon, for Christ’s sake. Like a bum.”
“When should I come?”
“After work.”
“I got the day off.”
“Then go do something useful. It’s not right.”
Ricky doodled with his cigarette ash in the ashtray, shaping it into a cone. He smiled wryly. Something about Stan Gedaminski he liked. “What’s on your mind, Stan, besides my bad habits?”
“I thought you might want to make a statement about that Copley thing. The diamonds.”
“I told you, I don’t know nuthin’ about nuthin’.”
“You may want to think about that. I got a witness from the hotel, a lady in the room across the hall. She puts you coming out of that room around the time of the robbery.”
“She’s got it wrong. Whoever she is.”
“She says you helped unlock her door for her. Remembers you clear as day.”
Ricky made a face: So what do you want me to do?
“I could arrest you now. I’ve got P.C.”
“So do it.”
“Just, if I was you, I wouldn’t leave home without my toothbrush from now on, just in case. Now’s I got a witness, I figured you’d be smart enough to tell me what the hell you were doing in that hotel if you weren’t there to steal.”
“Is that what you figured? Or did you figure you still don’t have enough?”
No response.
“Something you should know, Stan: I’ve got an alibi. I was right here. Bartender’ll vouch for me. Anyway, you don’t have the stones. The grand jury’s gonna want to know: If I took all those diamonds, where are they? Where’s the evidence-where’s the money, where’re the stones? I don’t have it, Stan. You know why? Because I didn’t do it.”
“We’re still running down the fences.”
“Can I tell you something, Stan, off the record?”
“Depends what it is. I’ll decide what’s off the record.”
“There’s a rumor going around, those stones belonged to Charlie Capobianco. The jeweler was a protected guy. Now Capobianco’s got his stalkers out looking for who did it.”
“I heard that.”
“All I’m sayin’ is, if you’re gonna charge somebody, Stan, just make sure you get the right guy. And don’t run around saying you think this guy or that guy did the job, alright? ’Cause there’s not gonna be a trial. Whoever you charge, he’ll go into Charles Street and he won’t come out, and you know it.” Charles Street Jail was where defendants were held pretrial. “Vinnie Gargano’ll reach him there same as on the street. He’s got more guys in that place than you do.”
Gedaminski nodded.
“If you want to arrest me, fine. You got a job to do. There’s no hard feelings. But if you can’t make the case, Stan- Stan -if you can’t make the case, you keep my name out of it. Don’t just nod, Stan, say it. Tell me I have your word. This is serious. This is my life we’re talking about here. Tell me I have your word.”
“Alright. You have my word.”
“Okay. That’s good enough for me.”
“You know, I got a call a few days ago about a B-and-E on Symphony Road.”
“Yeah?”
“Some guy picked the lock, walked in the front door, then for some reason he broke the back window from the outside. Just like the Copley job. Nice, clean job on the lock, too. Good burglar.”
“ Pfft, people. Can’t be too careful these days.”
“Funny, those two jobs looking so much alike, isn’t it? Guy like you wouldn’t fall into a pattern like that, though, would ya? Too smart. The great Rick Daley.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Stan. I don’t know why any burglar’d be working in that neighborhood anyway. Nothing worth taking. Sounds like an amateur. Some junkie.”
Gedaminski snorted. “Hey, what do I give a shit? ’Tween you and me, if that Lindstrom character had something to do with your girlfriend there, then fuck ’m. You three can do whatever the hell you want. This Copley thing, though, I’m not gonna stop. I’m gonna check every fence, every jeweler, I’m gonna dig up your front yard if I have to. If I find those stones, even one of ’em-if I find those stones, there’ll be no free pass on that one, Capobianco or no Capobianco. I like you, Rick. But I don’t like you that much.”
52
“Can I help you with those?”
Margaret Daley hefted a brown paper bag from the trunk of her car, a corner of the bag bunched in her fist. But at the sound of the voice she relaxed the bag back down onto the floor of the trunk and turned. The young man on the sidewalk had an amiable appearance, a full-moon face, his cheeks pinked by the cool spring air, a tousle of dirty-blond hair. She guessed he was thirty, maybe a little older. He wore a white oxford shirt and khakis, all very wrinkled-the Brooks Brothers uniform of Michael’s Harvard pals. Is that what he was, a Harvard rich boy? There was
