I sipped my scotch. Millicent sipped hers. The room was quiet, except for the television murmuring in front of the bed at the other end of the loft.
“Millicent,” I said finally. “There’s more to this than that. Your mother is an affluent suburban housewife married to a very successful man. How in the hell would she come to know people like Terry Nee?”
Millicent stared at my counter some more.
“And why would she send such a person looking for you?”
Stare.
“Does this have something to do with why you ran away?”
Shrug.
I reached over and took hold of her chin with my right hand and turned her face toward me.
“Goddamn it,” I said. “I just shot a man to protect you.”
“And yourself,” she mumbled.
“And Rosie,” I said. “And I’m in this because of you. And I want to know what exactly the fuck is going on.”
Tears welled suddenly. She tried to shake her head. I held on to her chin.
“What?” I said.
The tears were running down her face now.
“What?”
Her breath was coming in little gasps.
“What?”
“I . . . I saw . . . I saw something,” she gasped.
CHAPTER 24
I got up from the counter and took my scotch with me and walked to the front window. I looked down through it at the police cruiser parked out front. It was comforting. I kept looking down at it.
“What did you see, Millicent?” I said.
Behind me was silence. I stared down at the cruiser. The silence continued. I waited. Finally she spoke.
“My mother told a man to kill somebody.”
I closed my eyes. Jesus Christ. What should I say to her? I stared out the window. There was no comfort for this in the police cruiser. I had to do something. Finally, I turned back. She was sitting now, swiveled toward me on the barstool, still looking down. But now she was looking at Rosie. And her shoulders were heaving. I walked back and put my scotch down on the counter and put both my arms around her. She was stiff but she didn’t struggle.
“We seem to be crying by turn,” I said. “Now being your turn.”
She didn’t answer. She was crying spasmodically.
“This is awful,” I said. “And it’s probably going to get awfuller. But we’re in it and we’re in it together and we’re going to have to get out of it together. And the only way is to talk, you and me, until we know what to do.”
She cried. I held.
“Take your time,” I said. “Tell me in any way you want to. No hurry. When you get calmed down. I have to know what the problem is before I can solve it.”
As I held on to her I could feel her fighting for control. Rosie squeezed between our feet wanting to get in on the hug. I rubbed her belly with my toe. Millicent took in some deep breaths and then she started talking. The sound was muffled because she kept her face half pressed against my shoulder.
She told me that Betty Patton had a suite of her own on the first floor, bedroom, study, private bath, and shower off of it. Millicent was never allowed in there. She was never to use the private bathroom. She was too messy. The bathroom was for guests. Millicent of course took every opportunity to sneak into the off-limits suite and snoop about. It was how she had found the sexual pictures of her mother. And, of course, she used the bathroom as often as possible while she was in there. On the day in question, she was in the off-limits bathroom, and just coming out when the door to the study opened. Millicent ducked back and stepped into the clear glass shower stall to hide. She could hear her mother talking to a man whose voice she didn’t recognize. It was a deep voice and he spoke with sort of a low rolling purr that sounded like some kind of big machine in good working order. There was strain in her mother’s voice. She’d never heard her mother’s voice sound like that.
“I don’t care what tingles your gonads,” the man purred. “But when it spills over into our business, I care.”
“It won’t spill over,” Mother said.
“It already has,” he said.
“We can prevent it from spilling anymore.”
“You got a suggestion?”
“You have resources,” Mother said.
“What kind of resources are we talking?”
“He’ll have to be killed,” Mother said. “We are too close to what we want to let this stop us.”
“Brock know anything about this guy?”
“Brock doesn’t know anything about anything,” Mother said. “Except shooting skeet and making money.”
“Okay,” the man said, his soft voice filling the room with energy, “we’ll clip him.”
“Quickly,” mother said. “Before he damages the project.”
“Sure,” the man said. “May I use your bathroom?”
“Of course.”
The man walked into the bathroom. Millicent was pressed against the back wall of the shower, looking at him through the glass shower door. He looked back at her. Without a word, still looking at her he reached back and closed the bathroom door, and then he turned and raised the toilet seat and used the toilet and flushed and closed the toilet seat carefully. He was a medium-tall man with a thick body and very thick hands. His hair was silvery and short and brushed back. He wore a dark suit with a white shirt and a maroon silk tie. Gold cufflinks flashed beneath the sleeves of his jacket. He wore an important-looking diamond ring on the little finger of his left hand. He bent over the sink and washed his hands thoroughly and dried them on the towel that hung on the hook beside the shower. He stared at her some more while he did this, and then, without a word, he turned and walked out of the bathroom.
“One other thing,” he said to Mother. “You can spread your legs for anybody you want. We don’t care. You can fuck as weird as you want. We don’t care. Long as it’s private. You understand?”
“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.”
CHAPTER 25
Spike had a town house with guest space on the second floor, in the South End on Warren Ave.
“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.”
“I never met anyone gay before.”
“You did,” Spike said, “you just didn’t know it.”
Millicent looked uneasy. I didn’t know if it was because she was leaving me, or because she was going with a homosexual man.
“Come on, Mill,” Spike said. “You’ve fallen upon good times here. Make the most of it. The best thing Sunny can do with a pot is put it away.”
“Go ahead,” I said. “Maybe he’ll give you a cooking lesson.”
Millicent looked doubtfully at Spike but she went with him. Rosie, hearing talk of food, plomped down from the window seat and followed them. I went and sat on the bed and called Richie.
CHAPTER 26
I was in District 6 Station House, Area C, on Broadway, talking with Brian Kelly at his desk in the detectives’ room. It was a state-of-the-art squad room, which is to say overcrowded, cluttered, and painted an ugly color. In the midst of it Brian was neat and crisp, cleanshaven and smelling of good cologne.
“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 w
eigh 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?”
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