'I just wish you'd told me is all,' he said. 'And you're not doing any banging and digging until the lab boys case this place.'
And they did. While we watched from the doorway, they took photographs of everything, and one guy made a sketch showing measurements, the window and door, and the location of the old desk that was in there. The team dusted the place for prints, collected fibers and dust from the floor, placed some cigarette butts in vials, and carefully collected the tools (a hammer and cold chisel) left by our mysterious friend. Then they left. Joe, Mary, Sam, and I stared at the wall. Then Joe examined the floor closely and drew our attention to large scrape marks on the floor. They led to the heavy old desk. His eyes went back to the wall, which was ruined along its upper edge where it joined the ceiling. There was about a two-foot line along the top where the plaster and lath had been removed from the timbers a long time ago, perhaps in the expectation of installing plumbing pipes or heating ducts. But it had never happened. That meant there were deep troughs between the studs that ran all the way down the wall toward the floor. The big gash in the wall was as high up as a basketball net.'
'What they did was,' said Joe, 'they dragged that desk from the middle of the room over to the wall here, then dragged it back. Yeah, they dropped something down behind the facing all right.'
I watched the dog jump up again, forelegs on the wall, nose pointed straight up, whining. I took hammer and chisel and poked through the wall just above the floor, right below him. Nothing but space. I tried farther up and ran into horizontal cross bracing between studs. So I tried right above the bracing, and before half a minute was up I was seeing glimpses, through the plaster dust and crumpled, splintered lathboard, of gray canvas. When the hole was big enough I pulled at the cloth and then was holding the pouch in my hand. On it, in dark-blue letters, were the words LOWELL SUN.
'Well, gotdamn!' said Sam.
The dog took it in his steam-shovel mouth and sank to his belly, holding it between his paws with his chin resting on it. He whined and thumped his tail on the old dirty floor. Popeye seemed to know Johnny wouldn't be back.
I returned to the hole and kept pecking away, hacking and tearing off slabs of plaster the way a pileated woodpecker works on an old dead tree. My mouthpiece was in there. I just knew it. And I'd save Tom and me a week's work if I could get it out. In fact, I was in such a sweat to retrieve my dental work that I didn't notice Joe. I heard him mumbling something but I couldn't-'
'Why?' he shouted. I turned to face him. Joe had Sam get the paperboy's pouch for him, since he didn't want to lose an arm. He turned it inside out. Examined the seams, the carrying strap. 'Why?' he repeated. 'They got the pouch, took the packet inside, then ditched the pouch behind the wall just the way they ditched the gas masks.. . and for the same reason. But what happens? They come back for it. Why?'
'Because they failed to get what they were after,' I said. 'They got the packet of documents from the public library all right.'
'What makes you so sure?' said Mary.
'Because here's the envelope,' I answered, gingerly pulling out as crumpled manila bundle that was slightly torn. Clearly visible on it was not only the Santuccios' address but the receiving stamp of the Boston Public Library.
'Well done, Doc. Well done. You shoulda been a cop.'
I continued to punch, pry, smash, and chip at the wall. My reasons, and reasoning, were simple: there were two things in Johnny's pouch when he was murdered, the Sacco-Vanzetti documents in the packet and my anterior bridge in a small cardboard box. One they wanted, one they didn't. They'd taken the pouch to this location to examine it. Therefore, they'd disposed of the dental work the same way they'd hidden the pouch. In the old wall.
Only it wasn't working out that way. When I'd demolished the rest of the wall, with Joe's help and encouragement, it yielded nothing except what we'd already found. I'd helped Joe a bit but struck out on my personal quest. I led them back down and outside, trudging across the old buckled asphalt and cinder. The tools clanked and clinked under my arm. I was down. Joe was up; his star would rise at headquarters. I would have to spend a lot of time and trouble redoing the piece. Damn it all.
We asked Sam to dinner. He thanked us but declined, saying he had a lot of extra work to do at home. As we dropped him off I got out and walked with him over to the door, where he switched off the electronic alarm.
'I want to thank you, Sam, for all you've done.'
'Hmmmph! Should be me who's thankin' you, Doc. We almost got that guy today. Next time, I promise you: I won't miss.'
'Call it a hunch, Sam, but if I were you I'd take that cash out of your safe for a week or so.'
'Huh? Why?'
I shrugged my shoulders and repeated that it was just a hunch.
Sam went in and reappeared with a shopping bag full of bills. He asked us to drive him to Somerville. We did. Following his directions, we soon found ourselves winding our way through tiny labyrinthine alleyways that were lined with small businesses dealing with the automotive aftermarket. Muffler shops, radiator repair, engine rebuilding, front ends, rear ends, bumpers, windshields, tires, shocks- the Cambridge-Somerville line was to cars what Boston's South End was to leather and shoes. We passed a radiator joint and I smelled noxious fumes of zinc galvanizing and acid baths. We stopped at Nissenbaum's Auto Parts on Columbia, right down the street from the Nike running-shoe factory.
I went inside with Sam; Maurice Nissenbaum put the cash in his big safe, gave Sam a signed slip, and we returned to Dependable where we finally parted. Sam left on that rumbly, popping old Honda with Popeye, goggles and all, right behind him. It seemed as if we could hear him three blocks out of sight. At home I poured large dollops of Laphroaig into brandy snifters and added some room-temperature soda water. We sat outside on the flagged terrace and looked at the two pink dogwood trees that were in full bloom. Joe and I stuck our noses down into the bowl-like glasses and inhaled the warm malty smell of the whisky. Mary sipped on Amaretto liqueur.
My lawn was bright green and wide. In one cozy corner of it was a cluster of paper-birch trees, and in the midst of this copse was a rough wooden table with benches. Moe and I like to sit there and play chess on a crisp fall day. Moe brings his old samovar and we make Russian caravan tea and play and push our little chess clocks down and he beats me. And we pretend we're Tolstoi and Chekhov. We wear warm sweaters in the afternoon and play balalaika music on a tiny cassette player. The birches are gold and white, and it's very Russian.
Mary has part of the side yard bounded by a walk-through arbor. The side of the house there is set with some Florentine tiles and a bronze wall fountain. There are Lombardy poplars around the other two sides, and two gas lamps. It's a romantic Latin courtyard, and only about twenty feet square. My favorite spot is still under construction, and borders on the small garage-sized guest cabin far back on the lawn. It is enclosed by birches and wild evergreens and wide bamboo stakes. Inside this tiny court are boulders, a pond, a curved concrete footbridge, a small torii, and two dozen dwarf bonsai in old pots or pots made by Mary, or set into rock crevices, or lining the miniature waterfall. Then in the middle, surrounded by all this miniaturized countryside, is a tiny teak teahouse with ungawa and rice screens. By the time I'm a hundred I may finish it. It's only forty feet square, but inside it one has the feeling of great space, privacy, and timelessness. Not a lot of talking in there. No laughing or loud noise. Cats but not dogs. You go there alone, or with someone you really care about, and sit quietly. Little bronze temple bells chime in the wind, and the squat bronze lantern by the miniature lake glows, and you can sometimes see the dull golden flash of the bug-eyed goldfish who live in the lake. I wanted to be there right now. I wanted to be drinking hot Keemun, not Scotch, and meditate on the past few days. I wanted the dust and events to settle, find their place, and begin to make sense.
'Charlie! Charlie! My God, how many times do we have to ask you?'
'Hmmm?'
'What's it going to be tonight, rack of lamb or bouillabaisse?'
'Oh, whatever.' I got up and paced the flagstones. I looked up at our house. It looked big. I felt insulated and spoiled. Then I thought of what I'd read about Sacco and Vanzetti. Sacco and his family lived in a tiny cottage in Stoughton. He worked eighty-hour weeks and kept a big garden. He gave his spare vegetables to the 'needy' families in the area. Vanzetti was a boarder in North Plymouth who, if the testimony of his neighbors in that town could be believed, made pennies at a time, yet gave the kids in the neighborhood dimes. Not only was their testimony as to his good character and generosity not believed by the jury (because the neighbors, too, were Italians and therefore in league with him), but his giving away of dimes was taken as evidence that he had stolen
