Free On Off by Colleen McCullough

eat them.”
    “But it’s something different to do, sweetheart! You said yourself that digging out the tunnel was good exercise, and now it’s dug, what have I got to lose by trying? Exotic varieties for a few exclusive shops in New York City.”
    “It’ll cost a lot of money,” she said stubbornly.
    “Cathy, we’re not short of a dime! No kids of our own — for why do we need to worry about money? What are your nieces and my nephews going to do about this place, huh? Sell it, Cathy, sell it! So let’s get all the fun we can out of it first.”
    “Okay, okay, grow your mushrooms! Only don’t say I didn’t warn you!”
    He smiled, reached over to squeeze her roughened hand. “I promise I won’t gripe if it fails, but I just don’t think it is going to fail.”

Chapter 2
    Thursday, October 7th, 1965
    C armine’s day began in Commissioner John Silvestri’s office, where he sat in the middle of a semicircle around the desk. On his left were Captain Danny Marciano and Sergeant Abe Goldberg, on his right Dr. Patrick O’Donnell and Sergeant Corey Marshall.
    Not for the first time by any means, Carmine thanked his lucky stars for the two men senior to himself in the hierarchy.
    Dark and handsome, John Silvestri was a desk cop, had always been a desk cop, and confidently expected that when he retired in five years’ time, he would be able to say that he had never drawn his side arm in a fracas, let alone fired a rifle or a shotgun. Which was odd, since he had joined the U.S. Army in 1941 as a lieutenant and emerged in 1945 bedaubed with decorations, including the Congressional Medal of Honor. His most irritating habit concerned cigars, which he sucked rather than smoked, leaving slimy butts in his wake to impart an odor to the air Carmine fancied might resemble the odor given off by a spittoon in an 1890s Dodge City saloon.
    Fully aware that Danny Marciano hated the cigar butts most, Silvestri loved to push his ashtray under Marciano’s snub nose; north Italian blood had given Marciano a fair and freckled complexion and blue eyes, and sitting at a desk had given him a few extra pounds. A good second man who lacked the cunning patience to wind up the Commissioner.
    They left Carmine and his two fellow lieutenants to get on with the real police work, ignored political pressures from Town, Gown and Hartford, and could be relied upon to go to bat for their men. That Carmine was their favorite everybody knew; hardly any resentment stemmed from that fact because what it really meant was that Carmine inherited the ticklish cases requiring diplomacy or liaison with other law enforcement agencies. He was also the department’s top murder man.
    He had just finished his freshman year at Chubb when Pearl Harbor was attacked, so he postponed his education and enlisted. By sheer chance he was seconded to the military police, and once he got past guard duty and arresting drunken soldiers he found that he loved the work; there were as many violent or crafty crimes in the teeming wartime army as on the streets of any city. When the war and an occupation stint in Japan were over, he was a major, eligible to complete his degree at Chubb under an accelerated program. Then, a sheepskin in his hand that would have let him teach English literature or mathematics, he decided that he liked police work best. In 1949 he joined the Holloman Police. Silvestri, a deskbound lieutenant at the time, soon spotted his potential and put him in Detectives, where he was now the senior lieutenant. Holloman was not big enough to have a homicide squad or any of the subdivisions larger city police forces had, so Carmine might find himself working all kinds of crime. However, murder was his speciality and he had a formidable solve rate: just about a hundred percent — not all convicted, of course.
    He sat looking eager yet relaxed; this would be juicy.
    “You go first, Patsy,” said Silvestri, who disliked the Hug case already because it was certain