Brian squinted at him, like a leopard on a limb.
'About the only thing they make in Ireland is Guinness… as if the Irish need any more of that- '
Brian slammed his palms down on the table and rose to his feet. O'Hearn slammed down his shot glass and rose to his feet.
'Shut up, Joe, or I'll paste you one,' said Mary.
'Everybody keep quiet, or I'll paste everybody,' I said.
'But you're just a doctor,' said O'Hearn.
'Kevin, you obviously haven't seen Doc Adams in the gym or on the pistol range,' said Joe.
Gee, he made me feel like Captain Marvel. I liked hearing that. Any guy who's almost fifty likes to hear that.
'I want to hear about burning safes,' I said.
'Aren't they steel? Then how can you burn them?' asked Mary, getting another cappucino.
'You use an oxyacetylene torch, Mary,' said Brian. 'It'll cut through anything. Burning is pretty slow, but it's dead quiet and safe. In the old days the only problem was lugging those big gas tanks to the box. How can you hike those big cylinders up to a roof and through a skylight? Can't. But recently they've come out with these little bottles, tanks you strap on your back just like scuba tanks. With hoses and gauges. Only instead of a mask on your face you're carrying the torch. You climb into the joint and walk up to the box and start burning it. Right around the lock face. She falls away when you cut through the facing. It's kind of like punching, only slower.. . but dead quiet.'
Sam Bowman spoke up. We'd almost forgotten him, he'd been so polite and quiet.
'Doc. What tipped you off was those guys come to look at my roof.'
'Yep. Seemed to me they came and inspected your place at a pretty convenient time. So I warned you. But it was only a really vague hunch. I wish I'd have caught on to this.'
I glared down at the crumpled brochure describing the highefficiency oil burner, which I was holding in my hand.
'Mary says she let the guy into the basement for a quick look at our furnace. She stayed upstairs. He was down there for maybe ten minutes.'
'Enough time. Plenty,' said Joe. 'He was a real pro. He cut through your alarm wires in two lower windows, and so skillfully you can't detect the cuts on casual inspection. He slipped the snib on one. He left the bogus literature and split, knowing he could come back at his convenience and get in. Which he did.'
'Only question now,' said O'Hearn, 'is how many of them are there? Twenty? Keee-riste, seems like there's an army of 'em.'
'Don't like it,' said Brian. 'But as far as Doc and Mary are concerned- as far as the town of Concord is concerned think the worst has passed. Don't think I can say the same for you, Sam.'
'The worst ain't passed for them, I tell you that,' Sam said.
The phone rang. It was for Joe. While he nodded and grunted into the instrument, Mary began making a pizza. She had delegated tasks to everyone: Sam sliced the pepperoni, Kevin opened the anchovies, Brian sliced mushrooms and green peppers, and I grated mozzarella. Joe grunted and nodded. Then we all froze. in our tracks.
'DeLucca!'
Stunned silence on the part of all the cops. Mary and I stared at each other dumfounded, as if someone had just told a joke and we didn't get the punch line.
'DeLucca!' echoed O'Hearn.
'DeLucca shmalooka,' said Brian contemptuously. 'Carmen DeLucca is dead.'
Joe held the phone, frozen. He was wearing the Thousand-Yard Stare, like a G.I. who's been in combat for two days, or a football coach who's just lost the title game in the last thirty seconds because of an interception runback. He replaced the phone without saying good-bye, returning it to its cradle carefully, as if it were filled with 'soup.' I didn't like the look on his face.
'Lab finally did a make- a twelve-point positive make- on the dog biscuit fingers we found at Johnny's,' he said.
'Not DeLucca's,' said Kevin.
'DeLucca's. Positively DeLucca's. Carmen Salvatore DeLucca, the East Coast buttonman and Wise Guy.'
'They found Carmen DeLucca in a lime pit,' said Brian. 'They found what was left of him in Elizabeth, New jersey, in a quarry lime pit. Don't tell me different?
'I tell you different. Fingers in the doggie's mouth belong to Carmen DeLucca. Twelve-point positive make. The bag of smelly jelly they dragged out of that lime pit was some other poor bastard.'
'You mind?' said his sister, who was rolling out dough for the crust.
O'Hearn glared at the other two cops.
'Bull-fucking-shit, Joe,' he yelled. 'I say bull-fucking-shi-'
He stopped, ashamed, as he realized Mary was there. She hadn't even turned her head.
'Uh- sorry, Mrs. Adams, I didn't, uh-'
' 'S okay, pal. I'll survive,' she said, never taking her eyes off the rolling pin. 'I've heard worse.'
'Worse? You've heard worse? Jee-sus Keee·riste!'
'Lemme get that name,' said Sam between clenched teeth.
'DeLucca killed Johnny. This guy Carmen DeLucca killed my partner.'
While all this was going on, Joe's expression had not changed. Still the zombie look, the Thousand-Yard Stare. He announced he was going outside for a little walk. We watched him go, staring after him as the door shut. Joe does not take walks. Joe does not like the New England countryside; he likes crowded bars and sports events. Something was wrong.
We finished our tasks as Mary trimmed the dough on the big pan and spread her homemade tomato sauce on it. We slid it into the hot oven, heaped with all the cheese and goodies, then looked out the kitchen windows at Joe, who was pacing back and forth through the grape arbor. His head was down and he was smoking furiously, lighting one cigarette off another. Kevin, who worked with him almost daily, was especially concerned. He told us he hadn't seen Joe so worked up since the Blue Hill Butcher case.
'If it is DeLucca, then that means several things,' he explained. 'First, it's a giant-sized headache in general for all of us, since he's as brutal and bloodthirsty as they come. It's like Dracula coming out of his coffin. Second, as regards this case, it means it's big. It involves the Mob, the Wise Guys… and that alone makes it big.'
'But Kevin, it was the Outfit that wanted DeLucca dead in the first place. Two of their henchmen swore to this. They talked, then walked,' said Brian.
'Yeah I know. And that's another thing too: it doesn't figure. But even if he's not working for the Wise Guys, then he's gotta be working against them, or something like that. Any way you lay it out, Brian, the Mob's got to be involved. jeez, DeLucca was into the Outfit like Folger's into coffee. But to even show his face around… I just don't get it-'
'You mean either he's off their shit list or else he's risking his neck,' said Brian.
'Exactly. And there appears to be quite a number of guys involved in this. How many to kill Johnny? The way we've got it figured, at least three: one to tag Johnny in town, the other two at Robinson's with the bomb. How many to pull these B and E's? At least two at Sam's for a burn job like that, plus the hole in the roof, right? Add to that one, maybe two guys here. Then there's Johnny's towed car. I figure two more. There are probably half-a- dozen men working the street side of this caper, which means two or three times that many upstairs. Now you see why he's upset.'
'Could be more than that. Don't forget the guy in the mill and our hot-rod friend on Route Three.'
Mary slid the hot pizza out and onto a rack. It smelled great.
'It's more than that,' she said. 'I know Joey better than all of you put together. It's something else he's not telling us.'
She watched her brother pacing and smoking outside, then went out to call him in. We saw him turn and shake his head.
'Not hungry?' said Kevin as he leaned on the countertop and stared out the window. 'Joe Brindelli not hungry?'
They came in and Joe sat and smoked in the corner while we ate. He had a Laphroaig on the rocks with a splash and fiddled with the television. He said nothing, and we left him alone. When we all finished he rose first and
