“Joe Broz has to be dead by now,” I said. “I think he bunked with Al Capone in Alcatraz.”

“His name still commands some respect,” Reid said. “Even after all this time.”

I nodded. The waitress arrived and slid warm plates in front of us. Hash and eggs on a cold morning was a national treasure. I took a bite of eggs, followed by a bite of rye toast. I drank coffee. Reid followed my lead.

“So Joe Broz really used to own this town?” Reid asked.

“Broz was the man.”

“You go up against him?”

“Yep,” I said.

“And?”

“In the end, we formed a mutual respect.”

“And his son?”

“Gerry isn’t cut from the same cloth,” I said. “First time I met him, he was videotaping himself having sex with old ladies and blackmailing them.”

“Class.”

“With a capital K.”

Reid drank some coffee. He cut into some ham and added a bite of egg to his fork. “He’s shaking things up.”

“So I’ve heard.”

“For a while, there was an understanding between the Albanians on the North Shore and the Italians on the North End. They kind of split Broz’s old turf downtown and in Southie. And now the kid has come back wanting to reclaim his birthright or something.”

“Gerry has always had something to prove.”

“Maybe the old man is back and telling him what to do.”

I stopped eating. I put my fork on the side of my plate. This was something I had not considered.

“So why’d you get into it with Moon Murphy last night?”

“There was a young woman in Southie who was killed four years ago,” I said. “Her daughter was just a kid then but has just IDed Red and Moon as being in her mother’s company shortly before she died.”

“Addict?”

“Sure.”

“Maybe she was just getting a fix.”

“Maybe.”

“How’d she die?”

“She was raped, stabbed, and run down with a car.”

“Sounds like a message killing written in neon.”

I nodded.

“But why?”

I shook my head.

Reid finished his breakfast. He reached for his cell phone and checked messages. He pulled out his chair and reached for his wallet.

I shook my head and laid down some cash.

“Watch your ass, Spenser,” he said. “These aren’t nice people.”

“People keep telling me that.”

“You got a plan?”

“Win them over with my dynamite personality?”

“You have a backup plan?” he asked.

“Working on it.”

16

I knocked on seven different doors in the Mary Ellen McCormack Projects before I found the second-floor apartment of Genevive Zacconi. Zacconi was a hard thirtyish woman with bleached hair chopped up in a spiky bob. She was short and fat and wearing an XXL T-shirt that read MEAN GREEN DRINKING MACHINE. When I started to question her, she told me to hold on for a moment. She leaned back into her apartment and yelled for her kid to “please shut the fuck up.”

When she turned back to me, she crossed her arms over her large breasts and frowned. “Yeah?”

“Did you win that shirt?” I asked.

“Whaddya mean?” she said, looking down to recall what she’d put on.

“I thought maybe it was a competition,” I said. “Like you slam a half-dozen boilermakers and you get a shirt. You know, like a trophy?”

“Fuck, I don’t know,” she said. “It was clean. What the hell do you want?”

“Our book club is reading Dr. Spock this month,” I said. “Would you like to join us?”

“Come on.”

“Would it be too corny if I said I was a private eye?”

She looked at me with tired eyes and tried to slam the door. I smiled, wedged my foot in the threshold, and handed her my card. I knew my charisma would chip away at her hardened shell. She looked at the card and tapped the edge against an eyetooth. “Most people who knock on my door are trying to sell me something I don’t need or religious nuts.”

“The Lord works in thuggish ways.”

“So whaddya want?”

“Did you know Julie Sullivan?”

“No.”

“Woman was killed four years ago?”

“I know who she was,” Genevive Zucconi said. “She lived downstairs. Her kids still do. With her crazy, drunk mother. But we weren’t friends or nothin’. She was like ten years younger.”

“Do you mind if I come inside?”

“Yeah,” she said. “I got shit all over the place, and I think my kid just crapped his pants.”

“How nice for you.”

“Did you just stop by to be funny, or did you want somethin’?”

I showed her the photograph of Julie Sullivan and the slick-haired man grabbing her breast.

“Know him?”

Even if she’d said no, the smile gave Genevive Zucconi away. She nodded and then shook her head. “Yeah,” she said. “Yeah, sure. That’s Touchie Kiley.”

“Touchie?”

“Yeah.”

“Where can I find Touchie?”

“Touchie’s a riot.” She laughed just thinking about him.

“Unwarranted groping is hilarious,” I said.

“I don’t know where he lives,” she said. “He’s just kind of always around. Did you check Four Green Fields? The pub?”

“Unfortunately, I’m persona non grata there.”

“What’s that mean?”

“It means they don’t find me a riot.”

“Try the deli on D Street,” she said. “He used to work there. Touchie Kiley. Jesus H. I hadn’t thought about him for a while. Tell him hello. What a fucking goofball.”

“As much as I’d love to relive the glory days,” I said, trying to dissuade more hilarity, “I could use some help. You remember anything about Julie Sullivan that might be of use? Anything around the time she was killed?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Like I said, I was ten years older. She was playing with dolls and shit when I was in high school.”

“You know she became an addict?”

“Sure,” she said. “Everybody knew she was hooked. Her arms were all bruised up like a piece of old fruit. She was screwing every guy in the projects.”

“Ever talk to her about it?”

“Do I look like a fucking counselor?” she said. “I’m real sorry about Jules, you know, God bless, but I got my own problems.”

The child inside her apartment began to whine and cry out for his mother. Another kid joined in, screaming in tandem, yelling for the first kid to be quiet. Genevive held up her index finger to me again, turned, and yelled, “Shut up.”

“Just one more minute,” I said.

Genevive slammed the door in my face. Undeterred, I tucked the photo back into my peacoat and continued asking around. I followed sidewalks coated in snow and ice. Big bags of trash that sat waiting for pickup blocked paths. A notice had been taped to a lamppost looking for anyone needing rides to Walpole or Plymouth prisons. A carpool was only twenty bucks. I wondered if that’s how Mattie had taken her visits with Mickey Green.

The project buildings stretched out like spokes from the common area, two and three stories of old red brick. Every unit the same. In a lone corner window, someone had pasted up colored drawings of Disney characters. Another had unicorns. It wasn’t even one o’clock but felt like the end of the day. They sky was dark. Slush and icy puddles ran up to my ankles.

More doors slammed in my face. I found out a lot of Hispanics had moved into Mary Ellen McCormack in the last few years. A lot of Vietnamese, too. Most did not speak English.

An hour later, I met an old woman who spoke in a soft Irish lilt, telling me how lovely it had all once been. “Until they forced the blacks on us,” she said.

“How unfortunate,” I said.

“They brought drugs and crime,” she said. She’d come to the door in a flowered housecoat and pushing a walker. Her eyes were faded blue with cataracts.

I did not point out that Southie’s crime rate was worse before the schools were integrated. I asked her about the Sullivan family.

She clucked and shook her head. She clutched her rosary on her withered old neck. “Have you spoken to the poor girl’s mother?”