Family Honor - Robert B Parker (29 page)

"Tony Marcus," I said. "My name's Sunny Randall."

I could tell that the bartender had seen the gun. But
all he said was, "Hold on."

He must have hit a button under the bar because all of
a sudden Junior appeared in the hallway with Ty-Bop jittering beside him.
Kragan came into the restaurant with two other men. All three had their
hands in their pockets. Tony Marcus slid past junior and stood beside me
at the bar.

"Sunny Randall," he said, and reached out and scratched
Rosie behind the ear.

Kragan glanced around the restaurant and then began to
walk toward me.

"He wants to kill me," I said to Tony.

"We don't want him doing none of that," Marcus said and
stepped in front of me. "Do we?"

"Step away from her," Kragan said.

Tony looked at Ty-Bop, and a gun appeared in Ty-Bop's
hand as if it had always been there.

"He show a piece," Tony jerked his head at Kragan, "kill
him."

From his post in the hallway junior produced a double-barreled
shotgun. The bartender showed a pump gun. Both shotguns were aimed at Kragan's
companions. Kragan looked at Ty-Bop. Ty-Bop looked back at him without
expression. He was suddenly motionless, as if the gun had stabilized him.
His small eyes had the depth and humanity of two bottle caps. It was as
if his life was in his gun. Kragan looked at him the way a huge crocodile
might suddenly confront a small, very poisonous viper. In Kragan's face
was the slowly dawning realization that this trivial boy could kill him.
Him! Cathal Kragan! The restaurant was dead silent. The diners all hunched
a little lower over their tables, trying to watch, trying not to get caught
watching, hoping that if the guns went off they wouldn't get hit.

"You motherfuckers have a reservation?" Tony said.

Nobody said anything. Kragan couldn't seem to take his
eyes off me. His desire to kill me seemed almost sensual.

"No?" Tony said, just as if Kragan had answered. "Then
get the fuck out of my restaurant." Nothing moved.

"I say three, and you ain't moving," Tony Marcus said
to Kragan.

"Then Ty-Bop going to shoot you in the head. One. .."

Kragan moved. Without a word he turned and walked out.
The two backup men went out after him. The room was quiet for a moment,
then someone began to clap and then somebody else clapped, and then everyone
in the restaurant began to applaud.

"Join us for supper, Sunny," Tony Marcus said. "Later
on I'll have somebody take you home."

"I couldn't eat," I said.

"How'bout this animal here, she like chitlins?"

"I don't think so," I said.

"Never liked them much either," Tony said.
 

"I had heard that your son was divorced from this lady,
Desmond." Albert Antonioni said.

"What's between them is not our business," Richie's father
said. "Richie says she's still family."

He was thin--Irish-hollow cheeks, deep-set eyes. He had
the look of Irish martyrdom about him, like some pale priest willing to
starve to death for Ireland's freedom. His brother Felix, Richie's uncle,
had once been a heavyweight boxer, and he bore the marks of it. There were
scars around his eyes. His nose was thick and flat. His neck was short
and his upper body was thick and slightly roundshouldered, as if the
weight of all that muscle had begun to tire him.

"We have no problem with you," Antonioni said.
 
He had a white beard and a strong nose, and his dark
eyes moved very quickly. His son Allie was beside him, bigger than his
father and clean-shaven, but with the same nose, and the same quick eyes.

"You do, if you have a problem with Sunny," Desmond said.

At the next table were men who had come with the Antonionis.
That made four on their side, and four on ours, including me. I was flattered.
I knew that these things were worked out as meticulously as the seating
at the Paris peace conference, and I had been counted as a full person.
Before we'd come Richie had said to me, "Don't get feminist on me in this
one. These guys live in a male world. We'll get what we want better if
you are, ah, ladylike."

"Can I say fuck now and then," I had asked, "just to be
one of the guys?"

Richie smiled.

"You will never be one of the guys," he said. "The less
you say, the better it'll go."

I knew he was right, and now, on scrupulously neutral
territory--about halfway between Providence and Boston, a little closer
to Providence, to show Antonioni some respect, but still in Massachusetts,
to show the Burkes respect--I was sitting beside Richie, letting Desmond
Burke do the talking. Richie was as quiet as I was.

"I don't think we have a problem with Sunny that can't
be worked out," Antonioni said. "We got some plans. We been careful making
those plans, we don't interfere with your plans."

"I got no problem with your plans, Albert. There's too
many lone cowhands in Boston since Gerry went down. Fast Eddie got Chinatown,
Tony got the niggers, we got ours. You come in and organize the rest, it'll
save me doing it. I don't want to do it. I'm happy with what I got."

"I appreciate that," Antonioni said.

"But you can't be fucking with any of us, excuse me, Sunny."
I smiled modestly.

"Didn't know we were, Desmond."

"Now you do," Felix said.

Felix had taken a couple too many punches in the neck.
His voice sounded the way I'd always imagined a rhinoceros might sound
clearing its throat. Antonioni smiled faintly.

"We ain't afraid of you," he said.

Neither Desmond nor Felix said anything.

"On the other hand we don't need no fucking two-front
war," Antonioni said. "Begging your pardon, Sunny." I smiled modestly.
No one else said anything. "So whaddya need," Antonioni said. Desmond nodded
at me.

"I need the Patton girl safe," I said.

"She's witness to a murder conspiracy," Antonioni said.

"I need someone for the murder, too," I said. Antonioni
sat back in his seat and looked at me.
"Who'd you have in mind," Antonioni said.

"Kragan tried to kill the girl and me. I assume he did
the plumber."

Antonioni looked at his son. His son nodded. "Cathal zipped
him," the son said.

"And Bucko Meehan."

"He did that on his own," Allie said.

"You want Cathal?" Antonioni said.

"Yes."

"You know why Cathal zipped the plumber?" Antonioni said.

"Pictures," I said.

Antonioni nodded slowly.

"You know our interest in that?"

"Governor," I said.

Antonioni smiled again. It was an odd smile, nearly invisible.
But it was real. It was the smile of a man who had once been able to laugh.

"I like a quiet woman," he said.

He drank some coffee.

"Cold," he said, and handed his cup to one of the men
at the next table. The man got up and went for fresh coffee. "How you going
to take Cathal down without messing up what I got in place with Patton?"

"Maybe I can't," I said.

Antonioni's new coffee arrived. He sipped some and nodded
once.

"Better," he said.

He put the cup down and looked straight at me. "We got
a problem," he said.

"We didn't have a problem," Desmond Burke said, "we wouldn't
be sitting here trying to solve it."

Antonioni nodded. Everyone was quiet. Desmond looked at
me.

"Whaddya want to do, Sunny?" he said.

"I want the girl safe," I said.

Desmond looked at Antonioni.
 
"I can give you that," Albert said. "But I can't guarantee
Kragan. Kid could bury him if she testified."

"I can put Kragan in jail," I said.

"But will he go quiet?" Albert said.

"You tell me," I said. "What about omerta and all that."

"Kragan's Irish," Allie said. "They don't have no vow
of silence."

"Even if he was straight from Palermo," Albert said, "things
are different than they was. Omerta don't look so good, you're facing fucking
three hundred years hard time."

"Maybe I could leave Brock Patton alone," I said.

Again everyone was quiet. Albert blew on his coffee a
little, then sipped some. He looked at Allie. They looked at each other
for a moment.

"Maybe we could straighten things out with Kragan," Albert
said.

"That would work," I said.

On the ride home, alone together in my car, Richie said
to me, "They're going to kill him, you know."

"Kragan?"

"Yep."

"I sort of figured they would," I said.

Richie was quiet. I could feel him looking at me as I
drove. "You're a pretty tough cookie," he said.

"Thank you for noticing."
 

"Tea?" I said. "Coffee?"

"I have no time for this," Brock Patton said to me. "I'm
not running some kind of ma and pa store. What the hell am I here for?"

I poured some more tea for Betty Patton and for me and
gestured with the teapot at Brock. He shook his head.

"For God's sake get on with it," he said. He was vibrantly
impatient with female silliness.
 
"I think I can keep most of this secret," I said.

"Excuse me?"

"The womanizing, the Asian girls." I said. "The gang bangs.
The picture taking, the voyeurism. Of course I don't have to keep it secret.
If you annoy me, I can get even by blabbing to everyone."

"You have no evidence."

"I have talked with your wife and she's prepared to go
public, if she needs to."

"That would be a very dangerous thing for anyone to do,"
Patton said.

"No, it won't be. I have talked with your owner, Albert
Antonioni. He will follow my lead."

"I don't believe you."

I shrugged.

"My wife won't speak a word," Patton said. I looked at
Betty Patton.

"Yes," she said. "I will."

"A wife can't testify against her husband."

"Depends," I said. "But in any case she can talk to the
press."

"She'd be publicly humiliated."

"I'm humiliated now," Betty Patton said. "By what I've
become. By what I've allowed you to turn me into."

"Oh, you didn't want to make it with every plumber and
delivery man that came to the door. You didn't want me to become governor
and maybe someday president, you weren't pushing me, pushing me, like Lady
Macbeth. Big bad old me made you do all that."

"I started out wanting you to love me," she said.

"That was a while ago," he said.
 
"Yes, it was," she said. "And then I wanted at least
to be able to love you. And then I wanted at least to get even, and then
I wanted to get what I thought you owed me, even if we had no marriage."

"And now what, you want to destroy me?"

"I want to save my daughter."

"Oh God, motherhood," Brock said. "Isn't it a little late
for motherly self-sacrifice?"

"If I can save her, maybe I can save myself," Betty said.
Brock looked at me.

"Women!" he said. "Do you have any thoughts on how to
clean up this mess?"

"I do," I said. "Thank you for asking."

I gave him my most charming smile. Some men sink to their
knees when I give my most ingratiating smile. Patton bore up under it manfully.

"You and Albert can stay in business," I said. "And Betty
will not say anything about you to anyone. Cathal Kragan takes the fall
for Kevin Humphries's murder."

"Who's Kevin Humphries?" Patton said.

"Plumber from Framingham." I said. "Was passing out pictures."

"And when Kragan, as you so thoughtfully put it, takes
the fall,"

Patton said. "What ensures his silence."

"I have Antonioni's assurance that Kragan will be quiet,"
I said. Patton looked at his wife. She didn't speak, but her head was up
and she looked at him steadily.