Shallow Graves - Jeremiah Healy by Jeremiah Healy

over his head, scattering the
clots of hair into a different pattern.
    He said, "I'm not dealing real well with this
shit," and inhaled the rest of his drink.
    This time Primo didn't offer to get another.
    Around the empty glass, Danucci said, "I want to
talk with the guy alone a couple of minutes."
    His brother said, "Joey?"
    "I'll be okay, Vinnie. You guys try the TV or
something, huh?"
    Vincent Dani looked at Primo, who looked at me. Then
Primo said, "Right, boss," and left the room, Dani taking
two short steps, then striding out behind him.
    Joseph Danucci said to me, "Take a seat, Cuddy."
    I tried one of several leather easy chairs across
from the leather couch. All the cowhide, including the tufting on the
bar and stools, was royal blue, held in place by brass tacks.
    Danucci circled over to the bar, setting his glass on
it. "Get you something?"
    It was a little early, but I said, "Beer, if you
have it."
    He disappeared behind the bar. "What I don't
got, you don't need." His voice echoed a little as he spoke into
what sounded like a refrigerator.
    Using a church key, Danucci opened the bottle of Sam
Adams the way a busy bartender would, the top arcing through the air
like a tossed coin.
    He brought the bottle over to me. "Primo said
you were in the 'Nam."
    Danucci pronounced it to rhyme with "Mom."
As he moved back to the bar, I thought about what Zuppone had told me
in the car.
    I said, "One tour."
    "When?"
    "Late sixties."
    Danucci poured himself more Scotch. "Where?"
    "Mostly Saigon."
    He started to raise his glass, then said, "Tet?"
    "Yeah."
    Danucci swigged two fingers of the Johnny Walker. "
'Who owns the night?' "
    " 'The night belongs to the 101st Airborne.' "
    He watched me. "You were a Screaming Eag1e?"
    "No. Ran into them from time to time."
    "What outfit you with?"
    "Military Po1ice."
    Danucci came around the bar. "Fucking
Mike-Papa?"
    "That's right."
    "Ever out in the boonies?"
    "Once in a whi1e."
    Danucci started pacing back and forth. "Yeah,
well I fucking lived in the boonies, man, seventy into seventy-one. I
never minded so much the assaults, even on a Huey going down into a
hot LZ. And on search-and-destroy, you got so you could see the booby
traps, especially old ones. At least you were doing something, going
after Charlie where he lived. What I couldn't take was standing down
on a firebase some fucking general named after a mission from World
War II, guarding some fucking artillery against Charlie probing us at
night."
    My host kept pacing. "Sweating on top of some
fucking bunker because it was crawling with rats inside. Waiting. All
the time just waiting for Charlie to hit. You can hear a lot further
at night than you can see."
    Danucci stopped in front of me. "Know what was
the worst part?"
    Without thinking, I said, "The rain."
    This time Danucci stared at me. That cold, dead-eyed
stare Tom Berenger captured so well in Platoon. "Fucking A. That
rain starts, you couldn't hear nothing moving, nothing. It started to
rain, didn't matter I wasn't pulling guard duty, I couldn't sleep."
    The palm went through the hair again. "Like
now."
    I knew he wasn't referring to the weather.
    Danucci emptied his glass, then brought it down hard
on the bar. "Tina was my daughter, Cuddy. We had our problems,
she was always more her mother's daughter than her father's, but that
happens, right?"
    He didn't seem to need my answer.
    "Girl hits a certain age, she's got to rebel.
Okay, fine. She goes off on her own. Fuck, we did the same thing when
we were eighteen, right? Only I made sure she was safe, get me?
Primo, he checked out the modeling agency. No porno, no kinky shit.
She flopped at my brother's apartment a while, then into a family
building, my cousin Ooch there in the basement. Guy was a tiger in
the ring, Cuddy. One fight he had, undercard in the early sixties, he
takes enough punches the first two rounds to kill a horse, then
knocks the guy out middle of the third. Know what I do now?"
    I didn't like Danucci