"Didn't you see him after the last job?"
"Naw. On Fridays we had a deal. If no more jobs came in over the wire after three, I split. Johnny would stop in after his last job with the log sheet… usually. That is, if the last job was pretty nearby. Otherwise he'd take the sheet home with him in the pouch and I wouldn't see him till Monday at seven-thirty. That's when we'd meet here every day, for coffee and to talk. About the only time we had to visit, except lunchtime, if he was nearby enough to stop in."
"Did he leave his pouch here, Sam?" asked Joe.
"No. He took the pouch home with him every night."
"Did he ever carry stuff home with him too?"
"Sometimes, if he couldn't make the connection. It was rare though. Generally, most of our business was right here in Boston and Cambridge. 'Course too, being black, we do some stuff for bidnesses in Roxbury and Dorchester. Fact, we do most everywhere around here but Charlestown and Southie."
This comment needed no elaboration to either of us; we knew what the racial climate was like in both of these Irish enclaves. In fact, it wasn't much better in the Italian neighborhoods of the North End and East Boston, either.
"I show you the log sheet he left here Friday after I was gone," said Bowman. He opened the notebook and Joe copied out the deliveries that had been entered: 8:30 Futurelife Laboratories- Cambridge
9:23 Fogg Museum (Fabrianni)- Cambridge- Boston
10:08 Harvard University Press- Cambridge
1 1:00 Boston Public Library- Boston- North End*
2:45 National Distilling- Cambridge
3:41 Ramco Metal Fastener- Cambridge- Somerville
4:10 Investment Alloy Labs – Cambridge – Concord*
We studied this sheet awhile and asked Sam if he had any hunches regarding it.
"No. They're all routine things. Some of those companies, they want us to carry cash- not large amounts- to some of their truckers. Dunno. Maybe they not sposa be on the payroll. Hell, we don't ask questions, we just deliver. Don't truck for the Mob, though. We won't be bagmen. No sirree."
"Sam, what do these asterisks mean?" I asked.
"They mean the job wasn't completed. The pickup's been made but not the delivery. Hey wait a minute, Doc, this one here's you: Investment Alloy Labs. That's gold work, right?"
"Yes. And I was interested whether or not Johnny picked up the piece, and apparently he did. That means it was in his pouch when they got him, and lost."
"You're not suggesting that as a motive are you?" asked Joe.
"No. Certainly Dependable carried much more valuable stuff than that, like the museum piece."
"I just thought you were thinking that because there are very few places where Johnny could have been nailed successfully. Here and his home are about the only places I can think of. Couldn't do it on the street without a lot of gunplay and noise. Since it happened at his home, and with a bomb that must have taken at least several hours to construct, I'm inclined to think it was strictly a revenge killing and had nothing to do with the stuff he was carrying."
What Joe had said made a lot of sense.
"But then why'd they take the pouch?"
"Throw us off. just like the missing fingers on the corpse in the chimney."
"They must've wanted him dead awfully bad, Joe. Sam, if you think of anything that might point somewhere, I'm sure you'll let Joe know."
Joe paced the small office nervously. Occasionally he glanced at the big green safe, five feet high, that stood against the wall so that it was visible through the front door and the windows. I saw two spotlights above it, angled so they would illuminate it fully at night. He dialed a number and talked to somebody at the lab at Ten-Ten Comm. Ave.
"Did you get any more latents? Well, there are some more places we might want you to check out… Huh, for supper? Gee Frank, that's nice of you. I don't know, uh, where I'm eating tonight exactly…"
He glanced over at me, covered the receiver. Subtlety at its best. I groaned inwardly and glared at him, saying nothing.
"Uh… wanta know where I'm eating tonight… uh… what's Mary, uh… you know-"
"Marinated flank steak, sauteed mushroom caps, fresh asparagus," I said with a weary sigh. An almost orgasmic shudder passed through Joe's big frame and he snapped his cop voice back into the phone. ·
"No Frank, I won? be able to. Something's come up out in Concord."
We sat facing Sam, who had placed his big wide palms down on his neat desk.
"I'm gonna be looking for whoever did this, Joe. And when I find him I'm gonna kill him. Or them. Don't care how many."
"Sam, I know how you feel. But it's unwise for you to- "
"- don't matter about wise. My partner's dead. My bidness I gonna shut down maybe. Got nothin' left now 'cept Popeye."
At the mention of his name the big dog jerked his head up.
"RRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!" he said.
"Hush up, Popeye. Cool yourself," said Sam. He closed the logbook, then stopped quickly, lowering his head and squeezing the bridge of his nose.
"Gonna miss him, Joe…"
"Yeah. We all will. A better guy never lived. Listen: why don't you put on some coffee?"
While Sam occupied his mind with the coffeepot, Joe asked him over his shoulder, "What's this Futurelife Laboratories? Some kind of pharmaceutical company?"
"Naw. They a little far-out company. You know, one of them places that takes little cells and bends 'em around, make a different kinda animal out of it-"
"Oh, you mean recombinant DNA? Gee, I didn't know you were involved with that stuff," I said.
"Yeah. They give us these steel buckets full of little-bitty growin' things, you know. Got big strong tops on 'em with bolts all around to hold it down tight, so nothin' leak out. Like a pressure cooker. All we do is tote 'em from one lab to another seven blocks away. Piece of cake."
"And you've had no trouble or anything with that account?" Joe asked. "Nothing strange lately?"
"Nope. Been four years now. No fracas."
"Okay. How about this Harvard University Press?"
"Man-u-script," intoned Sam. "We do a lot of manuscript deliveries for publishers 'cause they need 'em right away. Seems publishers always runnin' late. These books all the same; can't read 'em. Big thick suckers on stuff nobody ever heard of. Nothing unusual there either."
"All right. Now what's this pickup for the library?"
"Some guy in the North End, I think he was a lawyer, died a few months back and left his papers to the public library. It was just a bunch of papers. For some reason Johnny couldn't get ahold of whoever it was he was sposa give 'em to. So he still had 'em with him, just like your fancy gold dental work, Doc."
"And there was nothing of value there?"
"Naw, just papers."
"Okay," resumed Joe. "Moving right along, we come to the afternoon jobs. National Distilling and Ramco Metal I'm assuming are other routine deliveries like Futurelife?"
"Yep. Routine cash deliveries, same as every other Friday for the past four and a half years."
"How much did Johnny have with him?"
"Less than four grand. Here, I'll check."
Sam went over to the large green safe with the double doors and twirled the big black dial. In less than a minute he had the thick doors swung open and was reading off a lined sheet of notebook paper taped to the inside right door.
"Three thousand four hundred sixty dollars, even."
"And it was all delivered?" asked Joe.
Sam shrugged and stared into the safe.
"If it wasn't, we'd a heard I think." He continued to stare into the safe, which was divided into many small compartments and stuffed with papers. He began to rummage about in one of the upper compartments, reaching his arm deep inside.
"And when Johnny called you at ten twenty-seven-after he'd completed the first three jobs-he said everything was normal? Fine?"