Sam shoved his big piece back into its shoulder holster and zipped up his Windbreaker. He was no longer wearing the jumpsuit. He reached down and laid his large coffee-colored hand on Mary's cheek.
"How ya doin'?" he asked. And she began to bawl.
I was certain DeLucca was dying. I thought he knew it too. Sam went through the pockets of the former Vince and retrieved the keys to the cuffs; he had us free in a wink. I crawled over to DeLucca and looked at his face. The lizard eyes fluttered, then opened. Carmen DeLucca stared at the blades of grass inches from his eyes and the terrace wall behind them. The big wound in his back began to bubble and sputter.
"Carmen. It's Doc Adams. Remember?"
A nod.
"You don't have very long. Tell me what the negatives showed. Hear me, Carmen? What did the pictures show?"
A faint shake of the head.
"You don't know?"
Headshake.
"Who hired you to get them? It wasn't Paul Tescione, was it?"
Headshake.
"Then who was it, Carmen? Who?"
I heard a thin rasp of expelled air. I bent over and put my ear close to his mouth. He said a name in a barely audible voice. Then there was a long sigh. When I next looked at the cruel black eyes they were open and staring. I watched them and the face for a minute. There was no motion, no change, nothing. Carmen DeLucca was dead. But not before he had told me who it was who'd hired him to snatch the Sacco-Vanzetti papers. I looked up from the corpses and turned my head around. Mary and Sam were sitting quietly on the terrace chairs while Popeye sat looking up at Mary and whining. I had been alone with DeLucca when death overtook him. Nobody had overheard him tell me the name. That was awkward.
It was especially awkward because it was no ordinary name. I knew if I mentioned that name nobody, not even Mary, would ever believe me. Ever.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
With the tension and the adrenalin rush worn off, Mary and I collapsed in fatigue. After I took her to the hospital to be treated is for several small gashes on her breasts- the sad result of Marty's warped idea of "getting fresh" with a woman- I took her home in time to meet Joe out in back. He stared and stared at DeLucca's body. He thanked Sam over and over again. He was one glad cop.
"Except I'm kicking myself in the ass for leaving so suddenly last night. I should've thought of the possibility he'd sneak out here. Anybody with the balls and cunning to slip back into Lynn and grease Johnny Rizzo would try anything. But it seems to us that it was that psycho kid who did all the wet work. He sure loved to hurt people."
"Well I'm not going to miss him one bit. He may have been ill, but I don't feel sorry for what happened to him. I'd hate to think what he would have done to Mary if he'd had the chance. As it happens, she's probably not even going to have any marks when she heals up. Jeez, I bet Moe has a field day when I describe Marty to him."
Joe's men had found Marty wedged up behind my workbench with a hole behind his ear. Then they carted the three of them off in a meat wagon. Good riddance. Joe said he guessed the whole thing was as good as wrapped up.
"Not quite," I said, leading him into the study and closing the door behind us. I sat him down and told him the name of the person who had hired Carmen DeLucca.
"What? Where did you get that load of shit?"
"From DeLucca himself. His dying words. You're the only one I've told. I didn't think you'd believe me."
Joe walked over to the window and looked at the dogwood- petals that littered the lawn. He had his hands thrust deep into his pants pockets, and he rocked back and forth on his heels.
"That's a big name, Doc. Not as big as the Kennedys or Saltonstalls, but big. The only thing I can't figure out, assuming he was even involved, is why he'd want the papers."
"Could you question him?"
He spun around. "Are you kidding? Based on something you overheard? No way."
"Isn't there a rule about deathbed confessions?"
"Yes. A dying declaration is admissible evidence since it is assumed to be, as the deceased's last words, the truth. But dying declarations almost always concern something the dying man himself did or didn't do, or else the identity of the man's assailant."
"So it means nothing?"
"Oh no. It means a lot. A hell of a lot. I just don't know what yet."
The door burst open and Brian Hannon entered, shaking his right fist like a crapshooter. The fist emitted a metallic rattle.
"Thanks for knocking, Brian," said Joe.
"You're entirely welcome… lieutenant."
He held his fist up under our noses and opened it. Resting on his wide palm were four ammo rounds as big as lipsticks. They were Sam's forty-Five-caliber long-Colt cartridges.
"Seen these?" asked Brian. Joe picked one of them up and looked at the nose. He saw the snowflake cuts hacked across the lead.
"Well hush my mouth," said Joe.
"Great, Brindelli. just great. Know what it looks like to have dumdums used in my jurisdiction? You just wait: the city council's gonna be on my case like cheddar on Ritz."
"You gotta admit they do a job," said Joe.
"Don't you be a wise-ass. You been hanging around him too long," said Brian, jerking his thumb at me. He bent over and pointed to the top of his head, which had been shaved and bandaged. "See this? Seven stitches on account of your friend the doctor. Now what do I do about Sam?"
"Nothing. If it weren't for him my brother-in-law and sister would be dead."
"That's what I mean. Take 'em. Lose 'em someplace. Though God knows the medical examiner's going to ask a lot of questions. jeez, you see those slobs? Look like they were hit by mortars."
Joe slipped the rounds into his coat pocket and turned to me.
"How'd he do it, Doc? How'd Sam get back here for the ambush?"
"After he took the call and got the money from the safe, he took a couple of minutes to study a road map. Seeing that the drop was on 2A, he thought there was a chance something was happening here. It was a lucky guess. He knew he couldn't tail us without being noticed. He got a friend of his to drive the Regal to the Mobil station near 128 and Route 2. He followed with the dog and the cycle. They met at the gas station, where Sam took the Regal to make the drop. He wore a hat and a jumpsuit so he could change his appearance fast. He went up 128 to 2A, which is less than a mile, and into the lot. After the drop he hustled back to the station, doffed the clothes, and sped along Route 2 into Concord and over here by the back way. With the bike he could cut right across the orchard, which he did. That's what Vince heard. It wasn't shooting, it was Sam's old Honda backfiring. Hell, he and the dog were staked out in position behind the far wall even before we got back."
Brian looked at me. "I think you owe him dinner," he said. "And Joe, don't forget to ditch those rounds."
Next day, as I fitted the shiny prongs of my Hu-Friedy forceps over the crown and shank of a deeply impacted third molar, the idea came to me. I was struck by how the metal of the instrument obscured the tooth completely. The metal surrounded the object, hiding it. The metal surrounded the object… hiding it…
"Eureka!" I whispered.
"What?" asked Susan Petri, who stood, white-smocked and plastic-aproned, to my immediate right. "Did you ask for a beaker?"
"No. I said Eureka. That means 'I found it.' "
"I know. Found what?"
"The place where the negatives are hidden. I think I've found it."