“Chief Inspector,” a uniformed policeman at Ambrose’s elbow said, “could you come with me, please? Captain Mariucci is asking for you. He’s inside the Ferris wheel car with the victim.”
“Victim?” Congreve said, his heart skipping a beat. After all this, he couldn’t believe they’d now lost their sole remaining eyewitness.
“Yes, sir. It’s urgent. Follow me, sir,” the young cop said, and Ambrose did as he asked. When they finally got to the other side of the midway, Ambrose saw that one of the EMS vehicles was now backed up to the wooden ramp leading up to the Ferris wheel entrance. The back doors were flung open, the engine was running, and the rooftop lights were flashing. It didn’t look good.
Congreve found Captain Mariucci and the two EMS responders from the ambulance inside the car. The two medical technicians were frantically administering assistance to a human skeleton lying on the metal floor between two opposing bench seats. He looked to be breathing, just barely, and the technician was standing by with oxygen. The stark features of Joey Bones’s drawn face were writ with pain. His skin was white as marble and coated in a thin sheen of greasy sweat.
“What happened?” Congreve asked Mariucci. The captain was down on his knees beside the man, bending over him, cradling his head in one hand, and Ambrose joined him there, kneeling on the floor.
“It’s bad, Ambrose. He broke his back. Lungs filling up with fluid. Maybe a coronary. They can’t move him.”
“What happened?”
“I guess he fell when it started down, landed the wrong way on the edge of the seat. Or maybe he was on his feet when a gust of wind hit the car.”
“Is he able to talk?” Ambrose asked.
“Barely. These guys are saying he probably won’t make it back to King’s County Hospital. They’re just getting ready to blast him with morphine. If you want to talk to him, this is probably it.”
Congreve nodded and bent closer to the old man’s ear.
“Joe? How are you doing? My name is Ambrose Congreve. I’m a friend of Captain Mariucci’s.”
“Moochie—he’s the one who sent me away to college, y’know,” Joe Bones said with a tight grin. His voice was raw and barely audible.
“Joe,” Ambrose said softly, “I want to talk to you about Paris. Do you understand?”
“Off the record?”
“Off the record.”
Joe took a few shallow breaths. “Yeah. Tell me about Benny, first,” Joe whispered. “Did they get to Benny, too?”
“Naw, Benny’s fine, Joey,” Mariucci said. “He’ll be by to see you tomorrow in the hospital. Bring you some pretty flowers.”
“Good,” Joe rasped. “That’s good. They didn’t get him, huh? Rat bastards.”
“Joe, this is important,” Ambrose said. “You could possibly save a lot of lives, certainly a lot of trouble, if you can help me.”
“Hey, listen, you’re talking to Joey Bones, right? The man. Go ahead.”
“Joey, you were in France thirty-five years ago. Paris. What were you doing there?”
“A beef with the Union Corse. That was the Mob in France, see. They was trying to move in on us over here. We—wanted to hit one of their own—on their turf…”
“Where, Joe,” Congreve said. “Where in Paris?”
“Napoleon’s Tomb. Yeah.”
Congreve looked up at Mariucci and the two men nodded. “You were there?”
“Yeah. Me and Benny both…but, you gotta know something, Mr.—uh—”
“Inspector Congreve.”
“Congreve? Funny name. I ain’t no button man, Inspector. I was just a soldier. A lowly shylock. I never clipped nobody.”
“I’m sure.”
“But that night was supposed to be the hit. Benny’s crew had the contract to pop this guy. The Corse was getting big on the East Coast, and we wanted to send ’em a message. At the last minute, Benny took me along for the ride, said maybe I could make my bones, you know? I was just a middle-aged punk kid, a cugine. A fuckin’ nobody…”
Congreve tipped some water from a cup into the man’s mouth.
“Who was the hit, Joe?” Mariucci asked. He was scribbling furiously in his notebook.
“Guy name of Bonaparte. Emile, I think. A Corse button man who’d pissed off somebody. Some Commie Brigade, whatever the fuck it was. Weird, we found out later he’d fucked up a job or something. Some internal shit over there, but the Commies wanted him burned, too. The really weird thing was his own k-kid—his kid was in on it…”
“Who was that? What was this kid’s name?”
“The big French guy. You know. On the news. The guy that’s trying to whack me and Benny, that’s who. Luca Bonaparte. The bigshot pol over there. That French fuck knows what really happened, see. And now he don’t want me and Benny talking about it, I guess. We’re like inconvenient.”
“How’d you find out somebody was trying to whack you, Joey?” Mariucci said.
“People called me. My goombah Vinnie at the deli. Said some foreign broad was asking around about me. Chinese. Japanese. I dunno. Vinnie said it sounded like she was coming to break my balls and feed ’em to me one piece at a time. And then, Lavon—”
“Excuse me, Captain,” one of the EMS men said. “We have to give this man some oxygen. He really shouldn’t be talking like this.”
“Can you give us one minute?” Mariucci said, looking plaintively at the technician.
“Yeah, sure, Captain,” he said. “I understand.”
“Joe, how are you holding up? Okay?” Congreve asked the dying man.
“Yeah, sure. I ain’t going anywhere. Tough as nails. I fooled that little Chinese bastard on the tower, didn’t I? Sonafabitch thought he could fuck with me. Is he dead?”
“He’s dead, all right,” Mariucci said. “Believe me.”
“Good.”
“What happened at the tomb, Joe?” Ambrose said. “Tell me about that night in Paris.”
“Like I say, the guy’s kid was in on it. Whoever ordered the hit from their side, the Corse, they wanted the kid there. So, we played along, you know. What the hell. Crazy frogs.”
“What next, Joe?”
“We had the guy, the hit, up against a rail or something. Right over the friggin’ tomb of Napoleon. Benny gave me the piece and told me to do it. You know, make my bones. But—but then—”
“Then, what? What happened, Joe?” Ambrose said, staring into the man’s eyes.
“I don’t feel so good,” Joe said, his eyelids fluttering. “Feels like something’s wrong with my, uh—”
“Okay, Captain, I think that’s it,” the EMS guy said. “We need to administer—”
“Gimme a second, here. Please.” Mariucci said, holding up his hand with the forefinger extended. “This is very important. One second.”
“Joe,” Ambrose said, “Did you kill Emile Bonaparte in Paris that night?”
“Naw. I didn’t kill him. I couldn’t do it, see? God as my witness. We was in a cathedral, f’crissakes. A house of God. I couldn’t kill nobody in a cathedral. I’m a Catholic, Inspector. I couldn’t kill nobody. I ain’t proud of it, but I never did.”
“Who did kill Emile Bonaparte, Joe?” Congreve said. “Tell me, please. Did Benny do it?”
Joey Bones closed his eyes and for a terrible second, Congreve thought they’d lost him.
“The kid,” he whispered.
“The victim’s son?”
“Yeah.”
“Keep talking, Joey,” Mariucci said, “You can do it.”
“The kid did it,” Joe whispered through parched lips. “See, when he saw my hand shaking, that I wasn’t gonna shoot, this kid Luca grabbed the piece right out of my hand and shot his old man right in the heart. Never seen anything like it. His own father!”
“Luca Bonaparte murdered his own father,” Mariucci said, looking Joe Bones in the eye. “In Paris, in 1970.”