43
I
CALLED THE SMITHFIELD POLICE and talked with a cop named
Cataldo, with whom I had done some business years ago. He confirmed
that there was no public transportation.
"Cabs?" I
said.
"Not in
town."
"Doesn't anyone want
to leave?" I said.
"They drive,"
Cataldo said. "And good riddance."
"If you wanted to
get into Boston and you didn't have a car, how would you get
there?" I said.
"Why would I want to
go to Boston?"
"See a ball game?" I
said.
"That's why they
make TVs," Cataldo said.
"Because you are a
sophisticated urban guy?"
"Like
you?"
"Not that
sophisticated," I said. "How would you get here?"
"Borrow a car or get
somebody to drive me."
"Thank you," I said.
"If you never leave town, what do you do there?"
"Write parking
tickets, keep the kids from loitering on the common, play softball,
drink beer, bang the old lady."
"What else is
there," I said.
"This about the kid
got killed?" Cataldo said. "Dawn Lopata?"
"Yes," I said. "Know
her?"
"Sure," Cataldo
said. "Not a bad kid, really, just a fuckup. Always getting caught
for something, like smoking dope in the girls' room at school, or
cell-phoning nude pictures of herself that ended up on the
Internet, or skipping school, or driving after-hours on a learner's
permit. You know? Not evil, just fucked up."
"How about the
family," I said.
"Old man's a blow,"
Cataldo said. "Big house, nice car, and no cash. You know the
type?"
"Sure."
"Mother stays home
mostly; she used to call a lot, see if we knew where her daughter
was. Don't know much else about her."
"Older brother seems
fine," I said.
"Yeah, good grades,
played sports, went to Harvard," Cataldo said. "I don't know how he
escaped."
"No trouble with the
law," I said.
"Except for what I
told about Dawn, none of them."
"You know what they
got for cars?"
"Yeah, he just got a
new one, and was blowing off to me about it."
"What
kind?"
"Cadillac DTS,
maroon."
"The big
sedan?"
"Yeah, top of the
line," Cataldo said.
"Anything else you
know?"
"Lots," Cataldo
said. "But not about the Lopata family."
After I hung up, I
called Dawn's friend Christine. They had left Dawn after they
lunched with Jumbo. Neither Christine nor James owned a car, and
neither she nor James knew how Dawn traveled to Boston on the day
of her death.