Family Honor

by Robert B. Parker

“Me, too,” I said. “And even better, I think I can make a sandwich.”

  “For crissake, Sunny, I can make a peanut butter sandwich.”

  “With jelly?”

  “Sure.”

  “Oh, yeah? Okay, smarty pants, go ahead. Show me.”

  After supper we took Rosie for a walk along Congress Street down toward the Fort Point Channel.

  “So can you cook anything?” Millicent said.

  “Some things.” I said. “Who knew pizza dough was going to be ugly?”

  “How come you’re not a good cook?”

  “Probably the same reason you’re not,” I said. “Nobody taught me.”

  “My mother’s a good cook,” Millicent said.

  “She teach you?”

  “No. She said I would mess up her kitchen.”

  “My mother’s kitchen was always a mess,” I said. “Her problem was she didn’t know how to cook either.”

  “I don’t see why a woman has to cook,” Millicent said.

  “Nobody has to cook,” I said. “Only if they want to.”

  Rosie had found a crushed earthworm on the edge of the sidewalk and was rolling purposefully on it.

  “What’s she doing?”

  “Rolling on a dead worm,” I said.

  “Gross,” Millicent said, “why don’t you make her stop?”

  “She seems to like it,” I said.

  “Why’s she doing it?”

  “I have no idea,” I said.

  Rosie stopped rolling and stood up and sniffed at the worm remains, and then looked proudly up at me and stepped out along the sidewalk.

  “How come you’re trying to learn to cook?” Millicent said.

  “I like to make things,” I said. “And I like to eat.”

  Millicent shrugged. Rosie charged ahead on her leash as if she had a place to go and was in a rush to get there. At Sleeper Street, downtown Boston loomed up solidly ahead of us. To the right was the Children’s Museum in the big wooden milk bottle, and the tea party ship replica bobbed on the water next to the Congress Street Bridge.

  “I suppose,” I said, “as I think of it, that I also probably think at some level or other that the more I can do for myself, the less dependent I will be on anyone else.”

  “I think it’s easier just to let somebody else do it,” Millicent said. “Then you don’t have to do anything.”

  “Which is why you’re here,” I said, “walking around South Boston with a detective you barely know.”

  Millicent was silent. Rosie was adamant, as she always was, about looking at the water under the bridge. We stopped on the beginning of it while she stared over the edge, her wedge-shaped head jammed through the bridge railing. The water was dirty. I looked up at Millicent. She was crying. Hallelujah! An emotion! I put my arm around her. She was thin and stiff.

  “On the other hand, you’ll know me really well in a while. And when you do you’ll absolutely love me.”

  She didn’t say anything. She stood rigidly with the tears running down her cheeks, then the rigidity went away, and she turned in against my shoulder and cried as hard as she could while I patted her and Rosie gazed intently down at the black water.

  CHAPTER 22

  Well into midmorning Millicent was still asleep. Rosie had hopped up on the bed and was sleeping next to her in the crook of her bent legs. I was still in my silk robe, at my easel, drinking some coffee and trying to get the right yellow onto the restaurant sign in my Chinatown painting, when the doorbell rang. I went and buzzed the speaker downstairs.

  “Package for Sunny Randall,” the voice said.

  “Who from?” I said.

  “I don’t know, lady, I just drive the truck.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Second floor.”

  I buzzed the downstairs door open and stood looking out the peephole in my door. In a moment the big old elevator eased to a stop and the doors, originally designed for freight, slid open. There were two men with a large cardboard box. They carried it as if it was empty. I opened the broom closet next to the door and took out a short double-barreled shotgun that my father had confiscated from a dope dealer and passed on to me. I cocked both barrels and as I walked back to the door, my bell rang. Rosie jumped down from the bed and hustled to the door in case it might be Richie. I looked through the peephole again. The box had been pushed aside and the two men stood waiting. I opened the door a foot and stepped away, keeping it between me and them. Rosie sniffed and wagged and milled around their feet as they shoved the door open and came in. The first man shoved her out of the way with his foot. The second guy came through right behind his buddy, his hand under his pea coat. I wasn’t dressed for company. I had the shotgun at my shoulder, and I could feel the butt of it through the thin silk of my robe.

  “Freeze,” I said.

  The guy with the pea coat said, “Shit,” and brought his hand out with a nine in it. I fired one barrel. It was a 10-gauge gun loaded with fours and it took him full in the chest at two feet. He went backwards into the hall and fell on his back. My ears were ringing. In the enclosed area the sound of the gunshot was painful. The second man threw his hands up as I turned the gun toward him.

  “No,” he said. “No, no, no.”

  “Flat on your goddamned face,” I said, “now. Hands behind your neck. Right-fucking-now.”

  The second man went down. I held the shotgun against the back of his head while I patted him down. I took a .357 Mag from his hip. Then I backed four steps to the kitchen counter, put the .357 down and dialed 911. I kept the shotgun level and aimed over the crook of my arm. The second man remained motionless, his hands clasped behind his head, his face on the floor. Beyond him in the entryway his partner lay silently on his back, with one leg twitching occasionally.

  “There’s been a shooting,” I said, and gave my name and address. “Second floor, there’s a man down.”

  I hung up and glanced over toward the bedroom end of the loft. Rosie had disappeared, I suspected under the bed. Millicent was out of sight, too, maybe sharing space with Rose.

  “Millicent,” I said. “It’s okay. The police are on the way.”

  No one spoke.

  “Is Rosie there with you?” I said.

  A voice said, “Yes.”

  “The cops will be here soon,” I said.

  I walked back to the second man, facedown on the floor.

  “You want to tell me what this is about?” I said.

  “Don’t know.”

  I prodded his right temple with the shotgun.

  “You kicked my dog,” I said. “I might shoot you for that.”

  “I just pushed her,” he said. “I didn’t want to step on her.”

  “Why are you here?”

  “I don’t know. Honest to God. I just come with Terry. He said we was going to pick up some girl.”

  “Why?”

  “Don’t know.”

  I prodded again.

  “Swear on my mother,” he said. “Terry just says it’ll be some easy dough. Just a couple broads.”

  “Terry the guy in the hall?” I said.

  “Yeah.”

  “What’s his last name?”

  “Nee.”

  “What’s your name.”

  “Mike.”

  Outside on Summer Street I could hear the first siren.

  “Can you give me a break,” Mike said.

  “Who sent you?” I said.

  “I don’t know. I just come along pick up a day’s pay from Terry.”

  “Did you rough up a pimp named Pharaoh Fox?” I said.

  “Don’t know his name, me and Terry slapped a black guy around a little. He was a pimp.”

  “Why?”

 
“Something about a girl.”

  “Do you know the girl’s name?”

  “No. Terry did.”

  The siren dwindled and went silent in front of my loft. Then another one.

  “You gonna gimme a break?”

  “No,” I said. “I’m not.”

  Mike didn’t say anything and in another minute the elevator door opened and two cops walked out, service pistols in hand, held against the leg, the barrel pointing at the ground. Behind them came two EMTs. I let the shotgun hang by my side. I was holding my robe together with my left hand. The older of the two cops put out his hand, and I gave him the gun. I was glad to give it up. Then I could hold my robe together with both hands. The younger cop stood over Mike and patted him down. One of the EMTs went down on the floor beside Terry Nee.

  “He’s cooked,” the EMT said.

  “There’s a gun on the counter,” I said. “I took it from Mike on the floor.”

  “Glock on the floor out there,” the younger cop said.

  “Leave everything for the detectives,” the older cop said. “You, on the floor, you stay right there.”

  The young cop left Mike and went and bent over and looked at the dead man.

  “Well, hello,” he said. “It’s Terry Nee.”

  “If it had to be somebody,” the older cop said, his eyes moving around the room as he spoke, “it might just as well be Terry Nee.”

  The young cop opened the big cardboard box and peered in.

  “Empty,” he said.

  Rosie crept out from under the bed waggling tentatively. I scooched down and put my arms out and she scuttled over, and I picked her up. Millicent stood up behind the bed and stayed there, her back against the wall. The older cop looked at Rosie who was lapping my neck as if it were her last chance.

  “Not an attack dog, I’d guess.”

  “Not unless you’re a liver snap,” I said.

  He looked at a scrap of paper.

  “Sonya Randall?”

  “Sunny,” I said.

  “Sunny Randall?”

  “Yes.”

  “You Phil Randall’s kid?”

  “Yes.”

  “I was in a cruiser once with Phil. You’re a lot better-looking.”

  “Yes,” I said,

  “You want to tell me what happened?”

  I could hear more sirens on Summer Street. And the sound of the elevator heading up. It was going to be a long day.

  CHAPTER 23

  It helped that I had been a cop. It helped that I was a licensed private investigator. It helped that I had a gun permit. It helped that Millicent confirmed my story, however monosyllabically. It helped that I was a woman defending a young girl against two known thugs. It helped that I was kind of cute. It probably helped a little that Rosie was cuter than is legally permissible in many states. And it helped a lot that I was Phil Randall’s daughter. We didn’t have to go downtown. We agreed that Millicent would be better off if she weren’t mentioned to the press. The lead detective on the case was a sergeant named Brian Kelly who had thick black hair and a cute butt and a wonderful smile.

  “We’ll need to talk again, Sunny,” he said about five in the afternoon as they were cleaning up the crime scene. “Is it okay if I call you Sunny?”

  “Absolutely, Sergeant,” I said.

  “And I’d appreciate you calling me Brian,” he said.

  We were sitting at my kitchen table with Rosie plomped on one of Brian’s feet, looking up at him with her tongue lolling out. Millicent was sitting up on my bed with her knees to her chin and her arms wrapped around them, staring at the television.

  “I’ll do what I can to shelter the kid. If there’s a trial she may have to testify, but I doubt that there’ll be a trial.”

  “You don’t plan to bring old Mike into court?”

  “The guy you didn’t shoot?” Brian looked at his notes. “Mike Leary. Don’t know him. But he hangs around with Terry Nee, we’ll find some use for him, and he’ll plea-bargain.”

  “Fine,” I said.

  “You don’t have any thoughts you’ve not shared with me, do you, about why they were here and what they were doing?”

  “You know what I know,” I said.

  “Maybe,” Brian said.

  “Would I lie to you?”

  Brian smiled at me. When he smiled his eyes widened a little and seemed to get brighter.

  “Of course you would, Sunny. We both know that.”

  “So young and yet so cynical,” I said.

  He stood and put his notebook away. I stood with him.

  “Lemme get back to the station,” Brian said, “and sort of fold this up and put it away for the night. I’ll call you in a couple days.”

  “Fine.”

  “You okay?”

  “Sure,” I said. “I’m fine.”

  “You ever kill somebody before?”

  “No.”

  “It’s sort of a heavy thing,” he said.

  “I know,” I said. “I’ll be fine.”

  “I’ll leave a cruiser out front for the night, just until we shake this down a little.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Okay. I’ll call you.”

  “Do,” I said.

  And he left. I followed him to the door and locked it after he left. Rosie went down the length of the loft and jumped up on the bed beside Millicent and lay down. I sat at my kitchen counter for a while. My ears were still ringing. When the mass of buckshot had hit him, Terry Nee’s shirt had disappeared in a mass of blood. I wondered if he felt it. He might have made a sound when he went backward. I wondered if he had been alive when his leg was twitching, or if it was just some weird reflex and Terry was already somewhere else. I’d have to clean the shotgun. If you fired them and didn’t clean them, the barrel got pitted. Terry was a guy who couldn’t believe a woman would shoot him, or couldn’t allow himself to back down to a woman. Whatever it was, it killed him.

  They would have taken the girl. He went for his gun. He’d have shot me. With a 10-gauge shotgun at two feet you can’t aim to wound. I had to kill him. The ringing wouldn’t go away. I shook my head a little and got up and went to the cabinet and got a green bottle of Glenfiddich and a short glass. I poured an inch of scotch and sipped it, and poured some more. I could feel my heart moving in my chest. I was aware of my breathing. It seemed shallow. I took another sip of scotch, and shivered slightly and got up and went to the refrigerator and added some ice. As I was putting the ice in, some of it slipped from my hand and scattered on the floor. When I bent to pick it up I dropped the glass. The glass broke. I couldn’t leave broken glass on the floor with Rosie in the house, so I went to the broom closet and got the dustpan and a broom and cleaned up the glass and ice, and put it in the trash compactor and closed the compactor and turned the switch. I walked over to the broom closet and put the broom away and hung the dustpan on the hook. It slipped off the hook and dropped to the floor. I bent to pick it up and felt all the strength go from me, and sat down on the floor and began to cry. I heard Rosie jump down from the bed and trot down the length of the loft. She came around the kitchen counter and began to lap my face. Maybe to comfort me. Maybe because she liked salt. Then Millicent appeared around the corner of the counter, barefooted, and stared at me. Her face was stark and colorless. Her eyes seemed nearly black in the oval of her face.

  “You all right?” she said.

  Rosie lapped industriously. I nodded.

  “How come you’re crying?” Millicent said.

  Her voice had the flat tinny sound fear makes.

  I shook my head. She stood. I sat. Then I put my hand up and took hers and squeezed it. Rosie lapped the other cheek. I could feel control starting to come back. I was beginning to breathe more s
lowly. I let go of Millicent’s hand and put Rosie off my lap and got to my feet. I got another glass and put some ice in it and poured some single malt into it.

  “Can I have some?” Millicent said.

  I got her a glass and handed it to her. She added ice and poured some scotch over it. We sat together at the counter. We both took a drink. Millicent frowned.

  “What is that stuff?”

  “Single malt scotch,” I said.

  “Its not like any scotch I ever had.”

  I nodded. We were quiet. Rosie lay on the rug sideways to us, looking at us obliquely.

  “It bother you, shooting that guy?” Millicent said.

  “Not at the time,” I said. “Now it does.”

  She shrugged and stared at the scotch for a bit and took another small sip.

  “What’d they want?” she said.

  I took in a deep breath and let it out slowly.

  “You,” I said.

  Her eyes got bigger.

  “My mother sent them,” she said.

  “I don’t know who sent them,” I said.

  “My mother.”

  The way she said “mother” was chilling. If I ever had children, and the clock was starting to tick on me, I prayed that they would never call me mother in that voice.

  “How would your mother know men like that?” I said.

  Millicent looked at my counter and didn’t answer. I waited. Millicent sipped some more of the scotch. She was five or six years below the minimum age. I was contributing to the delinquency of a minor. So what? Everybody else had.

  “How would she?” I said.

  “My mom knows a lot of men,” Millicent said, still staring down at the countertop.

  “And you think she would send them here with guns to get you?”

  “Sure.”

  “These same two men beat up Pharaoh Fox, looking for you.”

  Millicent shrugged.

  “You think your mother sent them to do that, too?”

  “Sure.”

  “The man I . . . the dead man was a known criminal. The police knew him. He was a strong-arm man, an enforcer.”

  Millicent took another swallow of scotch.

  “She knows guys like that,” Millicent said without lifting her stare from the countertop.