Family Honor - Robert B Parker (24 page)

God, was I in over my head. I took in some more air. Rosie
heard me and gave me a look. I smiled at her. It had been simpler when
she was all I had to worry about.

"Yes," I said. "You probably do. And I don't see why you
shouldn't. But you probably feel other things, too."

"Like what?"

"Loneliness, rejection, disappointment, fear."

"I don't feel anything," she said. "I'm fine."

"Sort of like when you were having sex with strangers
in the backseat of a car," I said.

"Hey, I did what I had to do."

"I know. And because you had to, you tended to close down
all your feelings so it wouldn't seem so awful. I'm not a shrink. I can't
deal with that part of you, all I'm saying is don't close down on this."

She shrugged.

"When this is over. .." I said.

"What?"

"This situation. When we've solved these problems and
don't have to hide out here with Spike, I'm going to ask you to see a good
psychiatrist."

"I already did that with Marguerite."

"No. I mean a real one that knows what he or she is doing."

"You don't think Marguerite knew what she was doing?"

"No," I said. "I don't."

"How do you know?"

"I talked with her. I believe she's a fraud."

"Oh, they're all frauds anyway, aren't they?"

"No. My friend Julie is a therapist."

"You want me to see her?"

"No. She'd be the first to tell you she wasn't right for
you. But she can find us someone."

"You think I'm crazy?"

"I think you've had more to handle than a kid can handle
alone. Hell, that anyone could handle alone. You need somebody to help
you with it."

"You're helping me."

"Yes, but unlike Marguerite, I know my limitations."

"I don't want anyone else."

"We don't have to deal with it now, but when this is over
you are going to need somebody else."

"Instead of you?"

Whoops. Of course she's scared. I should have foreseen
it.

"No, not instead, in addition to. I'm permanent."

Rosie got impatient on the floor by Millicent's feet,
and jumped up and put her forepaws in Millicent's lap and scanned the table
for food. Still looking at me, Millicent patted Rosie's head. I could see
the tears form in Millicent's eyes, then she put her head down against
Rosie's and put her arms around Rosie and stayed that way while she waited
for the tears to clear. I didn't say anything. Rosie didn't quite get the
deal. She was still glancing sidelong at the table, her tail wagging, submitting
graciously, but with no great pleasure, to the tears and the embrace.
 

"Here's what I think I know," I said.

"And think you can can prove?" Brian said.

"Don't be so picky," I said. "I know that Betty Patton
was having sex with the plumber, Kevin Humphries, who had been doing some
work for them."

"How come that never happens to cops," Brian said.

"It does."

"Oh, you and me?"

"Exactly," I said.

"I know Betty posed for very explicit pictures of her
relationship with Kevin, and I assume that he got hold of the pictures
and blackmailed her with them. She told Kragan, and Kragan killed Humphries."

"You've seen the pictures," Brian said.

"Un huh."

"And you have the kid's testimony on the conversation
she overheard between her mother and Kragan."

"Un huh."

"We know the guy she saw with her mother is Kragan."

"Pretty likely."

"Pretty likely? I can't wait to go in an tell some assistant
DA that it's 'pretty likely'. "

"So don't, wait until I get more."

Brian leaned forward and poured a little more wine into
each of our glasses.

"I know that Brock Patton is running for governor, and
that a big campaign contributor is Albert Antonioni from Rhode Island.
Do you know him?"

"I know Antonioni," Brian said.

"So I figure that if these pictures surfaced, the Patton
gubernatorial campaign would suffer a setback."

"Depends how the First Lady looks in the buff," Brian
said.

"Would you like to see the pictures?"

"You bet."

"Because they're evidence?"

"Sure."

"Men," I said.

Brian smiled.

"Antonioni is not backing somebody for governor of Massachusetts
because he's concerned with good government," Brian said.

"True."

"He's investing in something that will pay off in the
long term."

"It would be in anyone's interest to own the governor,"
I said. "Especially if you're trying to reestablish an Italian presence
among the wiseguys in Boston."

"Which somebody is," I said.

"Yeah. There's already been some skirmishing," Brian said.
"The micks and the dagos. OCU says the dagos are from Providence."

"Except for Cathal Kragan."

"He's not from Providence?"

"He lives in Swampscott, and Cathal Kragan is an Irish
name."

"Hire a guy knows the turf, I guess." Brian said.

"Whatever," I said. "There's a good motive in the connection
between Patton, Kragan, and Antonioni."

"You know they're connected."

"I have testimony that Kragan and Antonioni came to Patton's
house together," I said.

Brian was quiet for a time. We had our feet up on the
coffee table. And we both stared into the fire while he was being quiet.

"There's one crime here," he said after a while. "The
murder of Kevin Humphries. And you can't tie Kragan to it, or Antonioni."

"No," I said. "I can't. There is the matter of two men
coming to my house and trying to kill me."

"You can't tie Kragan to that either," Brian said. "Only
thing we had was testimony from Bucko Meehan, and he's dead."

"True."

"So you know a lot, but you can't prove much."

"Yet," I said.

"And the murder of the plumber isn't even in my district."

"Also true.

"We need to think about all of this," Brian said.

His arm was around me. I had pushed tightly in against
him, with my head on his chest.

"What should we do while we're thinking?" I said.

"Hell, Sunny, I don't know."

"Maybe we should have sex again," I said.

"Why didn't I think of that," he said, and put his hand
under the tail of the borrowed shirt. Our conversation was somewhat more
exclamatory for a while, and then we were quiet and after a while we were
still and I had his shirt back on, and the couch was back together, and
he was pouring us some more wine. In the fireplace, the fire settled in
on itself. I looked around the high-ceilinged nineteenth-century room.

"This is a very comfy house," I said.

"A remnant of my marriage," he said to me.

"Are there any others?" I said.

"Like kids? No. She took off with the man of her dreams
before we ever got to kids."

"Does it still bother you?" I said. He shook his head.

"The other guy thing bothered me for a while, but when
I got over that I realized I was lucky to be rid of her."

"Is she still with the other guy?" Brian laughed.

"She's gone through three more men of her dreams," he
said.

"Since then. I don't know how many of them she married."

"Has there been anyone since?" I said.

"For me?"

"Yes."

"One every Saturday night," Brian said. "None serious
before now."

"Now?"

"Yeah."

"I don't know how serious this one ought to be," I said.
"You're not available?"

"I'm divorced," I said. "I'm available for this. But I
don't know if I'm available for more than this."

"Why not?"

"I don't know if I'm really free of my ex-husband."

"I could help you get free," Brian said. "If he's giving
you trouble."

"No. Richie is very decent about things. I don't know
if I'm emotionally free of him. I don't even know if I want to be."

"So why'd you get divorced? His idea?"

"No. I left him."

"Because?"

"Do you know who my ex-husband is?"

"I know who his father is, and his uncles. That the reason?"

"One of them."

"He wouldn't give it up for you?"

"No."

"I would have."

"Would you?"

"Absolutely."

"Would you stop being a cop?"

"Yes."

"And be what?"

Brian started to speak and stopped and thought about it.
As he thought about it he began to nod slowly.

"That's the question, isn't it," he said finally.

"Richie was never able to answer it," I said. "I'm not
sure I gave him enough time."

"And be what," Brian said softly. "That your only issue?"

"No. I always felt as if I were being squeezed to death."

"That's never fun," Brian said. "My ploy would be probably
not to do that."

I smiled and put my head on his chest again.

"Yes. That would be the right ploy," I said.

We were quiet. Brian smelled of soap and cologne, and
a hint of new perspiration after a vigorous evening. The fire was quiet
in the narrow fireplace. I stared at it. All of a sudden I found myself
saying something that I hadn't known until I said it.

"If I can work it out so that I can be with Richie," I
murmured, "I will."

I felt Brian stiffen a little. But he didn't pull away.
I felt his hand pat my shoulder lightly.

"We'll see," he said as he patted. "We'll have to see."
 

Brian was no more. He hadn't said it, and I hadn't. But
I knew. He might be around for a time, if 1 changed my mind, but Brian's
interests would be directed elsewhere. Which was healthy of him. I remembered
the moment with Richie, too.

It was Julie's night out every Thursday. Michael took
the kids, and Julie and I and sometimes Spike, on the rare occasion when
our plans appealed to him, would go to an art exhibit or a book signing
or maybe a musical evening at the Longy School in Cambridge, stuff that
I found mostly boring, and Spike usually found insufferable, but stuff
which reassured Julie that she was still an intellectual who had not been
lobotomizzed by marriage and children. It was Spike's view that this grim
dedication to what he called intellectual boot camp would lobotomize us
all, but though less often than I, he went with her because, less intensely
than I, he loved Julie. This night, after a particularly grueling poetry
reading in the basement of a church in the Back Bay, the three of us went
to the Ritz bar and ordered martinis as an antidote to the stale cheese
and warm white wine we had desperately ingested at the church. The relief
we all felt was nearly tactile, though Julie wouldn't admit it, and we
didn't press the point because we were kind. But the martinis went down
really well, and the sum of it was that I came home to find Richie standing
in the driveway with the dog's leash in has hands. The dog was inside.
To this day I don't remember why he had it.

"Where have you been, " Richie said.