Family Honor - Robert B Parker (7 page)

"Primitive," I said aloud, "with a strong representational
impulse."

I was learning, but it was slow. I still took courses,
and I was going to get my MFA because I hate to quit things before they're
finished. But I knew the MFA didn't have a lot to do with my work. I had
to learn myself how to do my work. Other painters could sometimes tell
me things not to do, but they didn't even know how, or exactly why, they
did what they did. I'd never met one who could tell me how to do what I
did. The rest of the classroom work was theory, and a review of criticism.
It was interesting. I liked knowing the sort of Kenneth Clark stuff about
how art both shapes and records the culture it comes from. But it didn't
help me to get Tyler Street complete. I had to figure that out myself.

Rosie was asleep on my bed with one paw over her nose.
She woke up suddenly and jumped down and went to the door. In a minute
the doorbell rang, and Rosie did a couple of spins and jumped up against
the door and barked, her tail wagging very fast. Normally that would mean
my father or Richie. I went to the door.

I was right. It was my father. Unfortunately it was also
my mother.

"Did we interrupt anything?" my mother said.

"No, I was painting, I need a break."

My father got down on the floor with Rosie and let her
lap his nose. Since my father was built like a short blacksmith it was
an interesting display.

"Oh God, Phil, be careful of your knee," my mother said.

My father had been shot fifteen years before, arresting
a man who'd murdered three women, and his left kneecap had been shattered.
An orthopedic surgeon had pieced it back together, and while he limped
slightly and it ached occasionally, it was as durable as the right knee.
I knew that. He knew that, and, I think, my mother knew that. But she always
warned him anyway.

My mother and I went to the kitchen and I put on coffee.
My mother had brought some raspberry turnovers. My mother almost always
brought something. My father got up and came into the kitchen and picked
up a turnover.

"Phil, wash your hands, for God's sake. How do you know
where that dog's tongue has been."

My father winked at me and bit into the turnover. I had
come to realize as I matured that one basis of their relationship was his
ability to ignore her. If she noticed it, she didn't seem to care.

"Well, don't be coming around trying to kiss me with dog
slobber all over your face," my mother said.

"I may have to, Em," my father said. "You're so goddamned
irresistible."

We had some coffee and turnovers at my kitchen table with
Rosie in continuous agitation for a bite. My father broke off a piece of
turnover and gave her some.

"Phil," my mother said, "you shouldn't feed her from the
table."

"Certainly not," my father said.

"How are your courses?" my mother said.

She liked to think of me as a graduate student. It made
her seem younger and it was more respectable than being a private detective.

"Fine," I said. "I only take one a semester, all the time
I have."

"Won't it take a long time to finish?"

"Yes."

"But doesn't it postpone when you can become a painter?"

"I think she is a painter," my father said.

"You know what I mean. I mean full-time."

"I may never do it full-time," I said. "I like the detective
stuff, too."

"Well, that's foolish," my mother said.

"Because it's not proper work for a woman?"

"No," my mother said, "because it's not proper work for
my daughter."

I nodded. My father was munching his turnover and giving
some to Rosie and looking at my incomplete painting of Chinatown at the
other end of the room. I wasn't sure he even heard my mother.

"I never had your choices," my mother said. I'd heard
it before. I could have recited it with her, had I cared to. "My generation
married and had children and stayed home and raised them."

But you, I recited in my head, you have a smorgasbord
to pick from.

". .. a smorgasbord to choose from," my mother said.

Damn, she varied it on me.

"You can be anything you want to be and why you would
throw that chance away and settle for this silly detective business ..."
Now she shakes her head.

She shook her head.

It's beyond me.

"It's beyond me."

"I like the detective business," I said. "My B.A. was
in social work, remember."

"And you're so pretty, too," my mother said.

"You hear from Richie?" my father said.

"I saw him three nights ago," I said. "We had dinner."

"How you doing?" my father said.

"How should she be doing," my mother said. "She's divorced
from him."

"You getting along?"

"Better than we did when we were married," I said. My
father smiled as if he understood that.

"The thing is," I said, "we are really connected, and
divorce or not, the tie between us is pretty strong."

"Divorce cuts that tie," my mother said. "Don't fall for
it. You don't need a husband, and if you decided you wanted one, why would
you want a hoodlum?"

"Richie's not a hoodlum," I said.

My mother looked at me the way you look at a slow child.
My father picked Rosie up in his lap and let her lap him some more.

"I like Richie," my father said, his face was screwed
tight against Rosie's kisses. "He's straight as far as I know. I don't
like his father so much, or his uncle, but they're stand-up guys."

"Whatever that means," my mother said.

"You working on something?" my father said.

"I'm working on a missing girl, a runaway, she's fifteen."

"Where's she from?"

"South Natick."

"You think she's in Boston?"

"That would be my guess," I said. "You don't run away
from South Natick to Medfield."

"Richie giving you a hand?"

"He put me in contact with someone who could help." My
father nodded.

"You figure she's hooking?" my father said.

"Probably," I said.

"Oh for God's sake," my mother said. "Must we talk about
runaways and whores?"

My mother hated it when my father and I talked business.
I knew she felt excluded and I knew she was jealous that he spoke to me
as an equal. Good.

"Well," my father said, "you need something, you'll call."

"Yes."

"We had an auction," my mother said, "raised nearly a
thousand dollars for the couples club last month." My father and I listened
quietly to the details.
 

"You called?" I said to Tony.

"Sit down, Sunny Randall," Tony said.

I sat beside Spike who patted my thigh.

"Got your girl for you," Tony Marcus said.

"You make me proud, Tony."

"She's hooking for Pharaoh Fox."

"You heard it here first," Spike said. I smiled at him.

"Pharaoh know about me?" I asked Tony.

"No."

"He prepared to give her up?"

"We didn't discuss it, Sunny."

Leaning against the wall, Ty-Bop seemed to be listening
to music that no one else could hear. He tapped and bounced next to junior
who was motionless.

"Will you speak to him about me?" I said.

"Thought I let you do that," Tony said, and smiled.

I nodded.

"That will be the hard way," I said.

"Might be," Tony said. "Pharaoh like his hookers."

"Like a father to them," I said. "Wouldn't it go easier
if you told him to give me the girl?"

"Sure would," Tony said and smiled at me.

I waited. Tony turned his attention to the huevos rancheros.

"But you won't," I said.

"Let you do that," he said again.

I looked at Spike.

"Tony's hard to figure," Spike said. "He'll help you locate
the kid because he wants to stay cool with the Burkes, and maybe because
he feels like helping you. Tony's a whimsical guy."

"So why stop short?" I said.

Tony continued with his eggs. Spike answered.

"Because it amuses him. He wants to see if you can handle
Pharaoh."

"And why does he want to know that?" I said.

Spike shrugged. " 'Cause he doesn't know it now."

"Is that right, Tony?" I said.

Tony smiled at me. "Sure," he said.

Ty-Bop boogied to the beat of his own drummer against
the exposed brick wall. A couple of waiters set the tables toward the front
of the restaurant. Junior watched them blankly.

"Anybody can handle anybody," I said. "It's only a matter
of how far you're willing to go."

"Might be the case," Tony said. He was finished eating.

"Can you tell me where I might find the girl?" Tony stood
up.

"Pharaoh turn her out different places," Marcus said.
"You a detective. You'll find her."

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

Tony grinned at me as if he genuinely liked me. "You go,
girl," he said.

Then he nodded at junior and Ty-Bop, and they followed
him out of the restaurant.

"What the hell was that all about," I said to Spike.

"What I said," Spike answered. "He's never met a female
detective. I think he wants to see if you can cut it."

"Just to amuse himself?"

"Maybe Tony's not a feminist," Spike said.

"More's the shame," I said.

"I could trail along with you," Spike said.

"I thought gay guys were supposed to be sissies," I said.

"Growing up gay is a toughening process," Spike said.

"You'd stand up to Pharaoh Fox for me?"

"Sure."

"Thank you, Spike. But I can do this myself."

"I'm sure you can," Spike said. "How far you willing to
go?"

I grinned at him. "All the way," I said.

"Heard that about you," Spike said.
 

Others included five other children, aged six or less,
bundled up because it was really too cold to have an outside party, but
Michael had wanted a pony. There were also a couple of mothers, who seemed
as hysterical as Julie, a bored pony, and a guy dressed up in a clown suit
who was leading the pony around.

We were on Julie's front lawn in the suburbs. There was
a card table set up with a yellow paper table covering taped onto it. The
wind kept tearing the flappy edges of it. There was maybe a third of a
chocolate birthday cake on the table, and a carton of halfmelted vanilla
ice cream. Several children, including Michael, were afraid of the pony.
Michael was also afraid of the clown.

"Who wants a ride?" Julie said.

The grim cheerfulness she was grinding out made her voice
reach registers I didn't know she had. Rosie was sitting in my lap. She
didn't like small children any more than I did, but she was more genuine
about it. A little girl in a pink dress came over and poked her in the
ribs. Rosie growled. The little girl went immediately to Julie.

"That dog wants to bite me," she said.

Julie smiled maniacally.

"Nice doggie," she said, "Rosie's a nice doggie."

"I wish to bite her also," I said to Julie. "Where's Michael
senior?"

"Off with the other two, this is just Mikey's day."

"And a dandy one," I said.

Julie did something with her lips that might have been
a smile, and shook her head quickly. The pony made a deposit on the lawn,
and Julie left me to attend to that.

A small boy who had apparently misunderstood the chocolate
cake, and given himself a facial with it, came over with the little girl
at whom Rosie had growled. The little girl hung back.