3. Anderson
3
ANDERSON
A s I pull up, it’s obvious the pizza shop had not planned on opening this early. Men cart giant sacks of flour through the place, and dishes clatter loudly over a soundtrack of Italian pop. It’s a standard pizza place with checkerboard floors and red accents throughout. The tables are small, and self-serve drinks come in those giant red plastic tumblers I’ve seen in every pizza parlor. Moss sits in the back, speaking to a short, old, white man in a stained apron.
The old man grins beneath a furry gray mustache when he sees me. He clasps my hand in his and shakes it with too much enthusiasm. “Mr. West’s boy, it is a pleasure to meet you! I am Sal!”
“Nice to meet you, Sal. I’m Anderson.”
“You want a pie? I make special for you.”
“I’m great, but thanks.”
“Okay, just a stromboli then, uh?”
I laugh. Talking to Sal is like talking to the Italian grandfather I never had. “Maybe just a soda.”
“Take anything you want. If it is mine, it is yours.” With that, he leaves us to our own devices, and I sit in the booth opposite Moss. “What the hell did my dad do to that guy? No one on our ride-alongs greeted us that friendly.”
Moss smirks. “Your father gave him the money to buy this place.”
That doesn’t sound right. “Gave? He gave him the money? Not a loan?”
“Sal used to be like me. He did what I do for your father. Now,” he gestures around us, “he retired.”
“He worked for my father?”
“A long time ago.”
I can’t picture that little man taking down anything more than a person’s pizza order. Quietly, I ask, “He ever kill?—"
“More than me.”
Well, shit. “I guess you never know what someone is capable of until they have to do it. How are your daughters, Moss?”
He grins broadly. The man is both terrifying and the proudest father I have ever known. “Marianna is glad you have recovered, but she misses you. She would like you to visit the house sometime.”
“I might be able to make that work.”
“Angela has a new girlfriend who wants to be a doctor.” He pauses and crosses himself for luck on that score. “And Caterina, I fear, will be pale her whole life.”
Odd thing for him to fear. “What makes you say that?”
“She is sixteen and just graduated early from the high school. She starts university in the summer semester to get a head start, where she will become astrophysicist.”
“Wow.”
“Da.” He sighs. “She will never see the sun again with all her studies.”
“Maybe through a telescope.”
He chuckles and scrubs his hand over his bald head. “How are you feeling? The recovery, I mean.”
“Tender today, but worth the pain. June and I were able to spend some … quality time together this weekend.”
He grins and claps my shoulder hard. “Good for you! Has been very long time, no?”
“Longer than I care to admit. After that secondary stitch tear, I had to wait way too long for my liking.”
“I am grateful to you, Anderson. Every day, I tell God, you take care of that man for me.”
I chuckle. “I don’t think that’s how prayer works, Moss.”
“Me and God, we have an understanding. I don’t get in his way, and he doesn’t get in mine. Sometimes, I mete out his justice. Such is life. I am sorry you still have pains.”
I shrug. “Like you said. Such is life. I’m lucky I can feel anything at all. The doctor said if the bullet had gone an inch in any direction, I could be dead or paralyzed. So, it could be worse.”
“It could be better, too.” His mood turns somber. “I like that you ask about the girls. But I do not believe this is why you called meeting, Anderson.”
My stomach sinks. “You’ve seen the news.”
He nods once. “It is not good.”
“Not according to the reports I’ve seen.”
Moss leans forward. Seems that even in this place, we have to be quiet. “I did what I have always done. Deflate the body, weigh it down, sink it far offshore.” He sighs. “I do not know why it did not work this time.”
My stomach churns at the description of what happened that night, but my brain sticks to one part of what he said. I whisper, “Deflate the body?”
“You did not see me do it? I am quick, but?—”
“I wasn’t paying much attention at that point. Mostly, I was trying not to freak out.”
“Ah. If you ever must do this on your own, there is a trick to it. Best to pierce both lungs and the intestines to prevent a gas build-up that makes the body rise in the water. Old boss of mine called it puncturing the pockets. Even weighed down, bodies float if you’re not careful. If animals eat away the weights, the body can rise to the surface. But I am always careful. I know I did it that night. I had to clean my knife when I came home. There is no reason this should have happened.”
“Good to know. Hopefully, I will never have to worry about that again.” My mouth went dry, and I thought I might get sick. “So, since you did that, what do you think happened?”
“I have a theory, but you turn green, so I do not know if you want to hear it.”
“Please. I just want answers.”
He shrugs. “Tiger sharks come up to Boston now, even in winter. Climate change makes water warmer, so they come here. They eat almost anything. They are large enough to swallow most of a man. So, they smell meat, they eat it. It does not settle for them, they vomit.” Another shrug.
“Fair play to you, you were right. I did not want to hear that.” My stomach twisted harder thinking about that. Now, my mental image of Neil’s bloated corpse included shark tooth marks.
“I did warn.”
The only question that matters at this point. “What do we do?”
“This I do not know. Stealing his body will only make things more suspicious?—"
“You think?”
“And his body is the only evidence of the incident that we know of. With luck, they will not be able to glean evidence from it. Too chewed up. Too worn. Without luck?—"
“We are fucked.”
He nods once. “Do you think anyone will be called in for questioning?”
“It is likely they will pull June in.”
“People see her with him, da?”
“Yeah. He was hanging out at the bar she worked at. They left together that night.”
He sighs through tight teeth like a hiss. “I feel we are without luck in this, Anderson.”
“What do we do without luck?”
“Pray.”
“I need to do something more proactive than prayer, Moss.”
He sits back and smiles. “We could always call your father?—"
“You knew my answer would be, ‘Fuck no, before you even opened your mouth.”
“Da, I did. But your father, for all his flaws, has valuable friends who may help.”
I run my fingers through my hair. It goes against every instinct I have to call on my father. The man helped to get me into this mess. I cannot count on him to get me out of it. If he deigned to do so, he would just use it as another blackmail tool, only this time, he’d have something over June, too. I could never let that happen to her. It is bad enough that he manipulates me.
“If worse comes to worse, and I mean the very worst possibility, I might call on him. Unless that happens, we need to handle things ourselves as best we can. Dead silence on the matter. You and I probably shouldn’t contact each other for a while, don’t you think?”
He shakes his head. “We have other reasons to contact each other, Anderson. If we end communication, that is suspicious. We carry on with our days as we usually do. No more, no less. They ask questions, we know June knew him, but you two reconciled. Anything else happen? We know nothing.”
Frustratingly, it is all we could do. “That is basically what June and I came up with. Glad to know we’re on the same page.”
He smiles and we say our farewells, and I should be comforted by the fact June and I came up with the same plan as a career criminal. Someone who knows what he’s doing in this kind of circumstance.
Except that he is the same man who botched this in the first place. Maybe he’s not the guy I should go to for advice on it.