I replaced the print into the washing tray with the others. Nobody said anything. Sam went to the tray and picked up the wet print again. He held it up, and I looked over his shoulder at the face of the little dark man holding the picture. He was smiling. He was smiling because he was going on vacation to Italy to see members of his family whom he hadn't seen in years. But at the very instant the shutter was released, Alex Berardelli and Fred Parmenter lay dying on the roadside twelve miles away in South Braintree while the Morelli gang piled into the big touring car and sped away with the loot. And probably at the same instant Bart Vanzetti was sitting on an overturned dory on the beach at North Plymouth, thirty-five miles southeast, talking with Melvin Corl, the Yankee fisherman. They were probably talking politics, workers' rights, socialism, and all the other things that got Bart into trouble. And the events in Braintree would sweep along and engulf these two men who scarcely knew one another, would sweep them along as if they were in a riptide, so that within a month they would find themselves taken off a Brockton trolley car and arrested. And from the police station in Brockton they would follow an inexorable course that ended in the low, rambling, dusky hills of Charlestown, in the prison death house. Ironically, Sacco's ultimate destination lay just outside the photo, to the left.
And it broke my heart.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
"Thing is," said Joe as he lunged so hard into an egg roll that the cooking oil ran down his big chin, "thing is, we gotta make the thing stick." He commenced chewing, and his big soft eyes glazed over in ecstasy.
We sat around a big table in the Yangtze River Restaurant in Lexington. I had just inhaled a tureen of hot-sour soup, an egg roll, won-ton shrimp, and four pork dumplings with hot sesame oil. I had warned my mouth, esophagus, and all parts below that they were in for trouble, then thrown caution to the winds. Nothing beats a good thing like too much of it.
"How?" asked Mary, whose mouth was swollen with Szechuan spicy beef and fried rice.
Joe shook his head like a big bass fighting a hook. The headshake meant that he didn't know, couldn't talk, or both. We were thinking of an airtight way to nail Joseph Carlton Critchfield to the wall, even though he was ninety-two years old.
"His grandson's the active one now," said Brian. "Maybe he's the one we're really after. One thing: we're not going to get anything firm on him because of that letter. It's damning; it'll wreck his rep
… but it won't put him away."
"We got to get him for killin' Johnny," said Sam.
"I've got a nasty hunch," said Brian, "based on a lot of experience, that if we don't make it tight on the first pass, he'll slip through the net. He's got too many connections."
"You're dead right," Joe said, rolling up a pancake filled with mu shu pork: He fed the tube into his mouth; it disappeared like a branch into a tree shredder. "I suggest entrapment."
"Isn't that illegal?" I said.
"Yep. I suggest it anyway. Just for openers. All Critchfield now knows are two things. One: nobody's found the incriminating photographs. He therefore has good reason to suspect they'll never be found… at least in his lifetime. Two: the thugs- all three of them- who could testify against him are dead, and nobody's come knocking on his door. He thinks he's in the clear. He's finally breathing easy. He's ready."
"Count me in, Joe."
"Forget it, Sam. We count you out. You're up to your ass in alligators already. You've done your part and we all thank you, but now you've got to be cool. Nope, there's only one logical person to spring the trap."
"Who?" asked Mary.
Joe pivoted around in his chair and leveled a big fat finger at my chest.
"You."
"Oh no."
"Oh yes. You're the one, Doc."
"Now wait a minute, Joey," said Mary. "Wait just a goddamn mm-"
"I know, I know. But listen, the thugs are dead and the evidence is missing. But there's one guy around that if DeLucca did report in to old Critchfield- and we have every reason to think he did- could be a possible threat. And we all know who it is."
Everybody stared at me. I felt like Caesar crossing the forum on the ides of March.
"But I… but I…" I protested.
"Not to worry, Doc. Take it easy, Mare, Joe continued, scooping a pint of sweet-sour pork over a heap of steaming rice. "There's nothing to worry about."
He commenced shoveling in the food, and I felt a little better. I guess. But I had my doubts. After all, the last person he said that to was the late Johnny Rizzo. I felt the first of the gas pains shoot up my rib cage like a napalm rocket, and winced. Mary saw my expression and rubbed my shoulder. She attempted at weak smile.
"Nothing to worry about, Charlie," she said. I stared glumly at the table and asked for the garlic shrimp and snow peas.
"Here you go, pal," said Brian as he handed me the platter.
"You're gonna need it."
I peered down at the L-shaped brick-and-stone mansion at the foot of the hill. There was an iron fence all around it, and the tall, ornate gates were closed. In back of the house, enclosed by the L, was a pool, and off to one side a formal French garden. The roof was slate, and heavily gabled. It sure looked like a big house for one old man. But then he wasn't alone; he had his staff too…
A portly black man in a dark uniform came out the back door and walked along a curved gravel path to the garage. He had white hair and carried a leather case. He disappeared into the garage, which was a four-car structure with a sizable apartment over it. It matched the house. Seconds later one of the doors glided up and a Fleetwood brougham limo the size of a boxcar rolled silently out, swung around the house, and eased to a stop in front of the terrace steps. It was the same one I'd seen earlier at the younger Critchfield's fund-raiser on Beacon Hill. The man got out of the car, putting on his cap, then opened the rear door and stood at attention with his white-gloved hand on the door handle. He could have been hewn from stone. It was right out of a movie.
I felt a jabbing at my shoulder and handed the binoculars to my companion, who was also sprawled prone on the granite ledge above the estate on the outskirts of Andover. On the northern horizon we could see the forest of giant smokestacks in the city of Lawrence. They were still nowadays; no great white and black plumes of steam and smoke rose from them. They were like a forest of dead trees.
"Here comes somebody," said Liatis Roantis, adjusting the focus of the marine glasses. "Looks like the big shot himself."
Without the glasses the two figures descending the front steps of the mansion looked very small, but there was something familiar about the man who accompanied the old man into the limo. Was it his walk, his appearance? What? Before I had a chance to get a look through the glasses, the two men had entered the car and settled themselves in its vast interior. The black chauffeur shut the door and got back behind the wheel. The big car glided around the drive and through the gateswhich had swung open, apparently by remote control- and was gone.