Twelve

A splash of pale winter sun snuck past my window shade and hit me in the face. I covered up with a pillow, tried to go back to sleep, failed. It was winter; if the sun was high enough to hit me, it had to be nine o’clock. Closed my eyes, saw Maria getting in that car, Sal handcuffed, bloody little bootprints. Last night flooded back.

We had called the Boston police and they had shown up within minutes. We waited in the kitchen, staying out of the crime scene while they strung yellow tape and took pictures.

Lieutenant Lee showed up, crumpled and cold, his hat hair plastered across his forehead. He peeked into the room. Said, “Good Lord.”

Bobby said, “Yup.”

Lee turned to Bobby, pointing back at the room. “That’s Joey Pupo.”

“Indeed.”

Lee’s eyes traced the bloody boot tracks. “Whose footprints are these?”

I said, “Maria Rizzo’s.”

“Did you find her?”

Bobby said, “No.”

“The killer took her?”

I said, “Yes,” as Bobby shrugged. “You don’t think the killer took her?” I asked Bobby.

“For all I know, Maria killed the guy. Got a gun somehow, shot him, ran out.”

“That makes no sense. You were at the end of the court. You would have seen her.”

“Probably. Like I said, I was arguing with the Boston cops.”

“What was the argument?” Lee asked.

“Long story.”

“Just tell me what happened.”

We told him, and finished at two in the morning.

I climbed out of bed wearing only my boxers. Thought better of it when my feet hit the cold floor, threw on sweatpants, a sweatshirt, and wool socks. I missed the warm mornings of summer.

A new Bialetti coffeemaker waited on the stovetop. It was my Christmas present from Sal, a single-cup brother to Sophia’s family-sized coffeemaker. Its little box had sat under the Christmas tree waiting for me to arrive. When I had walked into the door, Maria ran to the tree and grabbed the box.

“Open it, Tucker, open it!” she’d squealed.

“She’s excited because she thought of the present,” said Sophia.

“They weren’t going to get you a present,” said Maria. “But I remembered.”

“You got a big mouth for a little girl,” said Sal.

“Thank you for reminding us, honey,” said Sophia.

“You guys didn’t need to get me something,” I said.

“Of course they did,” said Maria. “You’re family. We always buy presents for family.”

I had started to disassemble the wrapping paper, being careful not to tear it. Sal lost patience with the process. “Just open the fucking thing.”

I opened the fucking thing and discovered the coffeemaker.

“This is so cool!” I said, and hugged Maria. “Thank you, guys.”

Sal said, “Make sure you don’t put too much coffee into it. Everyone thinks it’s an espresso maker, and they pack the coffee into it.”

“It’s not an espresso maker?” I asked.

“No.”

“The box says it makes espresso,” I said.

“Don’t believe everything you read. Listen to me,” Sal had said.

I filled the Bialetti with water and coffee, did not pack it, and set it on the stove. Considered my breakfast options. I needed something hot. The cold had slipped into my chest and my back. I don’t know what it is about winter, but the thermostat can read 70 and still you freeze. Click and Clack slept inside their shells.

“Tough day to be cold-blooded, eh, guys?”

I boiled some water, broke out a single pack of oatmeal and stirred it as the little Bialetti began to gurgle, let it finish gurgling just as Sal had shown me, and poured a cup of dark black coffee. The coffee and oatmeal steamed on the breakfast nook. I sat, propped my tablet in front of me, tapped the Boston Globe icon, and let its headline drag me right back into yesterday.

GANGLAND MASSACRE

I grimaced at the coffee’s bitterness. Read about Sophia’s murder, Joey’s murder, Sal’s arrest. The article implied that Sal had killed them both, along with Marco Esposito, in a wild triangle of terror—this despite the fact that Sal was in jail when Joey was murdered.

The end of the article, in a typical case of the newspaper almost getting it right, mentioned that Maria Rizzo was missing after sledding with “her uncle, Al Tucker.”

Al? Seriously? Also, I wasn’t Maria’s uncle, I was her cousin.

I tweeted:

If a newspaper gets the news wrong is it still a newspaper? #questions

The article went on to say that Maria was thought to be with family. Who thought that? I didn’t think that, and I was family. I swiped back to the article’s byline: Jerry Rittenhauser. Why didn’t he call me? He could at least have gotten my name right.

I closed the article, opened Gmail. I had long ago given up the notion of personal privacy and had willfully joined the Google infoverse. Google knew where I was, what I got for email, and, because I used Google’s phone service, all my voicemail went to my Gmail account. Voice messages from Jerry Rittenhauser filled the inbox. He had tried to call me, but my phone had been destroyed.

The heating system ticked as I ate my oatmeal, drank my bitter coffee, and reread the article, reread the notion of me being “Uncle Al.” This was ridiculous. I moved to my office, fired up the Gmail application that turned my computer into a speakerphone and called Jerry.

“Rittenhauser,” he answered.

“This is Tucker. You called me—let’s see—five times last night.”

“Thanks for get—”

“And still you got the story wrong.”

“Well, you know, we do our—”

“Do you want to get it right?”

“What are you going to do? Defend Sal?”

“First I’ll tell you my real name.”

“Okay. It’s not Tucker?”

“It’s not Al. That’s the tip of the vast iceberg of your wrongness.”

“Meet me for lunch.”

We made plans and exchanged phone numbers, which reminded me of the reason that I hadn’t gotten any of Rittenhauser’s calls.

I needed a new phone.