Family Honor - Robert B Parker (14 page)

"Of course. It was a mistake. We can correct it. It
won't happen again. "

"We will correct it, " the man said.

Millicent heard the two of them walk across the room
and open the door to the hall. The door closed. The room was silent. She
stood in the shower stall in the bathroom, stiff with terror. Nothing moved
in the room. She ,forced herself to step rigidly out of the shower stall
and look around the corner of the bathroom door. The study was empty. She
ran to the door, feeling as if' her legs wouldn't work right, and opened
it a crack and peeked into the hall. No one was there. She stepped into
the hall and walked to the French doors at the end of the hall that led
to the back lawn. No one stopped her. She opened the French doors and closed
them soundlessly behind her and began to run.

"Why didn't he say anything to my mother," Millicent said.
"My guess is he decided he'd have to get rid of you, too, and didn't want
your mother to know."

"Get rid of?"

"Kill," I said.

"Oh my God," Millicent said.

"It's okay," I said. "I won't let him."

"How are you going to stop him, you should have seen him,
what he looked like, what he sounded like, you're a girl like me, for crissake,
what are you going to do?"

"What have I done so far," I said.

She thought about that.

"It would be nice," I said. "If I weighed two hundred
pounds and used to be a boxer. But I'm not, so we find other ways. I can
shoot. I can think. I am very quick. The dangerous stuff almost always
boils down to people with guns, and guns make size and strength irrelevant.
With guns it only matters how tough you are, and I'm as tough as anybody
they're likely to send."

She thought about that, too. She wanted to believe it,
because it would make her feel safer. In principle I believed it. It was
the theory under which I worked. Though I knew privately that it was a
more comfortable theory when Richie was around.

"You know this man's name?" I said.

"No. You think he sent those men today?"

"Yes."

"What are we going to do?"

"We'll move tomorrow. We're all right tonight with the
cops outside."

"Where we going to go?"

"Someplace safe," I said. "Do you know what deal your
mother was talking about with the man?"

"No."

"Do you know who they were talking about killing?"

"Some guy who must have been bopping my mom."

"But you don't know who?"

 "No."

"Sounds like somebody planning to go public with details,
I said.

"Yes."

"Embarrassing, maybe," I said, "but would she have him
killed for that? I mean there's a lot of that going around."

Millicent shrugged and drank some scotch. She made a face,
every time, as if she were taking medicine. But it didn't cause her to
stop.

"In those sex pictures you found. Was the man recognizable?"

"I think so. I didn't like looking at them."

"I don't blame you," I said. "Do you have any of those
pictures?"

"No, when I ran I didn't have anything but what I was
wearing."

"Are there any in your room?"

"No. My mother used to search my room all the time. I
never dared have anything there."

"You don't know any of the men your mother has been with?"

"No."

We communed with our scotch for a moment.

"She searched your room?" I said.

"Yes. To make sure I didn't have drugs, or condoms or
cigarettes, stuff like that. She said it was her responsibility to know."
I nodded.

"If she gave you enough time, I imagine you'd have fulfilled
her expectations," I said.

"What's that mean?" I shrugged.

"Just a little pop psych," I said. "Pay no attention."
 

"I thought you lived in the South End," Millicent said
to me when we were surveying the two rooms and a bath that Spike was offering.

"I live in South Boston," I said. "This is the South End.
Two different places."

There was a bay window in my bedroom with a window seat.
Rosie immediately commandeered it so that she could look down at Warren
Avenue and bark at anything that moved.

"You're sure nobody saw us come here?" Millicent said.

I noticed that she hovered near the inner walls of the
room, staying away from the windows. Her bedroom was across the hall from
mine, but she stayed with me. Since the shooting she had not let me out
of her sight.

"I'm not an amateur," I said. "No one followed us."

Spike came up the stairs with my suitcase and a duffel
bag. "What the hell is in here?" Spike said.
"Hand grenades?"

"My face is in the suitcase," I said. "Duffel bag goes
next door." Spike dropped the suitcase.

"Come on, Millicent," he said. "I'll show you your room."
Millicent hesitated and then followed him across the hall. She looked back
as she left the room.

"I'm right here," I said. "Door open."

Spike came back in a moment without her.

"You know what you're getting into," I said.

"Sure," Spike said. "You're going to the mattresses."

"I hope not. I hope we are hiding successfully."

Spike was wearing jeans and a tee shirt with a plaid flannel
shirt open over the tee shirt. When he sat on the bed I could see that
he had an Army-issue Colt.45 stuck in his belt. I took some clothes out
of the suitcase and put them in the top drawer of the bureau.

"Kid's scared," Spike said.

"Of course she is, there are people after her. She saw
me kill one of them."

"Better than seeing you not kill him."

"True. I have to tell Richie where I am," I said.

"Sure," Spike said.

"I've got to be able to leave her here and go and find
out who her mother was going to have killed, and who the people are who
are trying to get her."

"Be the same people, wouldn't it," Spike said.

"That's my assumption," I said. "We can't leave Millicent
alone."

"I know."

"I hate to ask, but I don't know who else. I can't ask
Julie. It's too dangerous and she's got children of her own."

"I'll sit her," Spike said. "But I have to work now and
then, though not very hard. Maybe you can get Richie to take a turn."

"I don't. . ."

"You don't want to ask him for anything," Spike said,
"I know. But you don't have that luxury."

"I've already asked him a couple of times," I said.

Millicent came out of her room and across the hall and
stood inside the doorway and didn't say anything. Rosie began to gargle
and yap and growl and bark and jump straight up and down on all four feet
in the bay window. Millicent seemed to press herself into the wall by the
door. Spike and I both looked out the window. There was a Yorkshire terrier
being walked.

"Rat on a rope," Spike said.

"What?" Millicent said.

"Just a dog," I said. "Rosie barks at all children, and
most dogs. You might as well get used to it."

"You want some lunch?" Spike said.

"Like what?" Millicent said.

"Like chicken piccata, or a lobster club sandwich?"

"What?"

"Come down with me," Spike said. "You can order what you
want."

"You can cook stuff like that?"

"I'm gay, of course I can cook stuff like that."

"I didn't know you were gay."

"Yes, makes me immune to your seductive ways."
 

"Everybody agrees it's a clear case of self-defense. Nobody
wants to bring charges," Brian said.

"And one of them shoved my dog with his foot."

"He got what he deserved," Brian said. "You clean that
shotgun?"

"Yes."

"You don't clean them, you know, the barrel pits."

"I know."

"Ten-gauge?" he said.

"You weigh 115," I said, "you like firepower."

Brian's teeth were even and very white, and his eyes were
very blue. His hands were strong-looking. He had on a white shirt with
a buttoned-down collar and a black knit tie and a Harris tweed jacket.
He nodded.

"You weigh 115. I'm surprised the recoil didn't put you
on your ass."

"I'm very grounded," I said. Brian smiled.

"Terry Nee was mostly a part of Bucko Meehan's crew,"
Brian said.

"What's Bucko's line?" I said.

"Truck hijacking, some dope dealing, extortion."

"Tell me about the extortion."

"Mostly small business owners taverns, sub shops, liquor
stores. Pay off or we'll bust up your store, or your customers, or you.
Terry Nee was the bust-up specialist."

"Not a major player," I said.

"Bucko? Hell no. Worked the fringes."

"Did Terry ever freelance?"

"Sure. In Boston organized crime is an oxymoron. There
are affiliations, but they're loose ones, usually ethnic. The micks hang
with micks, the guineas with guineas. But everybody freelances."

"So it didn't have to be Bucko Meehan that sent Terry
Nee and Mike whatsis to my house."

"No."

"What's Mike say?"

"He says he doesn't know anything. Terry asked him to
go along and hold a gun. He says they were supposed to take some girl out
of there. Says he didn't even know your name."

"You believe him?" I said.

"I can't turn him. We got him on attempted murder. I tell
him if he'll give us who sent him he can get a lot lighter charge."

"And he stays with his story," I said.

"Un huh."

"Which means either it's true, or whoever sent them is
too scary to turn on."

"Yep."

"You have any theories?"

"I'm inclined to think he's telling us everything he knows.
He's looking at serious time. I think he'd rat out Al Capone if it got
him a deal."

"You talked with Bucko Meehan yet?"

"Not yet, want to go with me?"

I looked at my watch. Ten-thirty. I had to be home by
four, when Spike went to work.

"Sure," I said.

We talked with Bucko Meehan at the far end of the counter
in a Dunkin' Donut shop across from Assembly Square in Somerville.

"Boston cremes," Bucko said. "The best."

I looked at the chocolate-covered things Bucko had in
front of him and decided on a plain donut and a coffee. Brian just had
coffee.

"You're missing out," Bucko said.

"I'm used to it," Brian said. "Bucko Meehan, Sunny Randall."

"How ya doin'?" Bucko said.

"Fine."

Bucko was a fat muscleman. Hard fat, my father used to
call it. He was obviously strong, but his neck disappeared into several
chins. He was wearing a Patriots jacket over a gray sweatshirt. The sweatshirt
gapped at the waist and his belly spilled out through the gap. The donut
shop was empty, except for us and a couple of people at the take-out counter.
A middle-aged Hispanic woman was taking their order.

"Whaddya need from me today, Brian?"

"Couple guys that hang with you got in some trouble,"
Brian said.

"Who's 'at?"

"Terry Nee and Mike Leary."

Bucko shrugged. The shrug didn't say he knew them. It
didn't say he didn't. People who'd spent a lifetime talking to cops learned,
if they weren't stupid, to find out what the cop knew before they admitted
anything.

"What kinda trouble," he said.

"Attempted murder."

"Don't know nothing about it," Bucko said.

He broke one of his donuts in two. It had a creamy filling.
He took a bite, and wiped his mouth with a napkin.

"I thought Terry was part of your crew," Brian said.

"I got no crew."

"You know Terry?" I said.

"See him around," Bucko said.

"How about Mike Leary?"

"Don't know him," Bucko said.