Robert B. Parker's Blood Feud

by Mike Lupica

  “On some basic, practical level, I know my father is right and Richie is right, and even the old gangsters are right, and I should let this go,” I said.

  “But you remain resistant to the notion of quitting,” she said.

  “It all started with Richie,” I said.

  “It often does,” she said.

  “Man of my dreams,” I said.

  “Is it still about him, or has it become more about you?” she said.

  She was completely still and self-contained, not taking notes in this moment. But as always, I still had the sense that she was in motion somehow and that I was trying to keep up with her. There were many times when I left this office feeling better than I had when I’d entered, but I often left feeling exhausted as well.

  “There is a part of me pushing back against powerful men telling me to do something I myself have not chosen to do,” I said.

  “The old men are powerful,” Susan said. “Your father has always held a position of power in your life. As has Richie.”

  “This isn’t a me-too moment,” I said. “But they have no right to impose their will on mine.”

  “Nor should they.”

  “You want to know the truth?” I said.

  There might have been another slight upturn to the corners of her mouth.

  She said, “My experience is that the truth serves everyone best in here.”

  “I get angry when they treat me like a little girl,” I said.

  “Angry or less empowered.”

  A statement of fact more than a question, as if she were answering for both of us.

  “Both,” I said.

  “But are you more empowered to solve the mystery,” she said, “or to prove a point that you will not be cowed or told to stand down, even by men who care about you?”

  “Both,” I said again.

  Her dark eyes were alive, alight, and completely focused on me.

  “May I say something that might sound less than politically correct?”

  “Of course.”

  “I can’t let some old goombah threaten me,” I said.

  She nodded.

  “And I always have hated being told what to do,” I said.

  “Only by the men in your life?”

  “Not just them. But yes.”

  “What about Richie?”

  “We’ve discussed this,” I said. “This is my chance to protect him.”

  “And in the past, you have always felt, especially when going to him for help, that he was protecting you.”

  “Yes.”

  “But you will allow your friend Spike to assist you, and even protect you if need be.”

  “Spike asks nothing in return.”

  “But Richie does?”

  “He wants me in return.”

  “Something you are unwilling to give.”

  “At least not in total.”

  “To go back to the beginning,” Susan Silverman said, “you were shattered when you thought you had lost him to another woman.”

  “I felt my own sense of loss defining me,” I said. “Even consuming me.”

  “And making you feel powerless.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Loss is a defining and consuming thing,” she said.

  “Oh, baby,” I said.

  Susan Silverman smiled fully now, eyes and face and teeth. A rare thing from her. It was as if one more light had suddenly been turned on in the room, or the sunlight outside her window.

  “Oh, ha!” she said.

  “‘Oh, ha’?” I said.

  “It’s a combination of ‘oh, ho’ and ‘aha,’ she said, still smiling.

  “Is that an expression you learned at Harvard?” I said.

  “Actually,” Susan Silverman said, “I got it from the man of my dreams.”

  FORTY-ONE

  I HAD THE FEELING that my car was being followed on the way back from Susan Silverman’s office.

  There was a black car making the turns that I made off Linnaean to Humboldt to Mass Ave. I wasn’t good on car makes but thought it might be a Taurus.

  The car stayed with me to 2A to Eliot Street to John F. Kennedy. It was gone when I got to North Harvard, and then to Cambridge, but it meant little if whoever was following me, if somebody was following me, knew where I lived.

  So instead of taking Soldiers Field Road and then Storrow Drive to my usual exit, I headed down Commonwealth Ave toward Chestnut Hill, before circling around to the entrance to the Mass Pike in West Newton. By then there was no black car behind me. I had called Spike and put him on speaker before I got on the Pike, and he told me to drive straight to his place if I thought the tail was still with me. I told him I would. He told me that even if I didn’t spot anybody, he was going to meet me at Melanie Joan’s, and bring food with him, and wasn’t going to take no for an answer.

  “Who says no to you?” I said.

  “Gary,” he said.

  “May I ask who Gary is?”

  “No you may not,” he said.

  By the time I had gotten off the Pike at the exit for Copley Square and the Prudential, I had lost the tail, if it had even been a tail in the first place.

  I took Rosie out when I got back, fed her, changed into jeans and a sweater, and opened a bottle of wine and thought about Maria Cataldo, and how little I still knew of her life. I did not know if she had ever married, I did not know if she had had children, I did not know where she had gone after her father had sent her away, or if she had simply left on her own. Tomorrow I would call Wayne Cosgrove, who liked to brag that he was better at finding out things than I was, and never had to point a gun at anybody to get information.

  But Maria Cataldo was dead, that was now part of the world of objective facts. So was Dominic Carbone. And Peter Burke. And poor Buster. Somebody had shot at Richie, and shot up Felix’s house, and beat me up. Somebody was coming for Desmond, that much remained clear. It could have been Dominic Carbone who did all the shooting, but it if had been, what grudge had he been settling?

  And if it wasn’t the late Dominic Carbone, then we were right back where we started, with a gun still pointed at the Burkes.

  And what did any of this, or all of this, have to do with guns suddenly going missing?

  I looked at Rosie at the other end of the couch and said, “Rosebud, maybe it’s not too late for med school.”

  She picked up her head, quickly ascertained that there was no food anywhere in the area, put her head back down, and was soon snoring. Some sidekick.

  The wine was in the ice bucket next to the dining room table, which I had set. I had already lighted the candles. Romantic dinner for two, just without the romance.

  Spike arrived a few minutes later with a big bag full of food: Caesar salads with extra anchovies, veal Milanese, which he assured me traveled extremely well, a side order of french fries. I told him I didn’t recall french fries being served with veal Milanese at Spike’s and he said, “Have you ever turned down my french fries?”

  I said I had not, nor would I ever.

  “Didn’t think so,” he said.

  When we were finished eating and on the couch drinking coffee laced with Jameson, Rosie between us, I said to Spike, “This thing really is a hairball.”

  Spike nodded. “Usually we’re able to think a couple moves ahead,” he said.

  “We’re able to think a couple moves ahead?” I said.

  “Yup,” he said. “Me and you, kid. A team. Like Nick and Nora.”

  It was just one more thing to love about Spike. He loved old Thin Man movies as much as I did. A lot of snappy patter and a couple pitchers of martinis before they finally figured out who was responsible for that stiff in the drawing room.

  “Let’s say that killing Carbone was just a head fake, which is wh
at Frank Belson called it,” I said. “Why, though? Whoever’s behind this wanted Desmond to know he was closing in on him. He wanted to tighten the noose. Why would he plant the gun on Carbone and do everything except hire a skywriter to make the cops and the rest of us think the thing is over?”

  I sipped coffee that tasted more like whiskey than coffee and was lip-smacking good.

  “Maybe,” Spike said, “it is you he is trying to throw off.”

  “Why me?”

  “Because this person, whomever he is, has clearly done his homework,” Spike said. “And if he has done his homework, he knows that you may be a bigger threat to him than Desmond or Felix or even the cops, whom he may have surmised aren’t kept up at night worrying about bad guys shooting each other up. You should be flattered, if you think about it. All those bad guys and he’s worried about a girl.”

  “I’m convinced a girl started this,” I said.

  “Say it’s Albert,” Spike said. “If he waited this long to get even with Desmond over Maria Cataldo, he’s got nothing but time now.”

  “Maybe not,” I said. “You hear that cough the other day? It sounded like your basic death rattle. And roll.”

  “You know what I’m saying,” Spike said. “The game of cat and mouse continues.”

  “Eek,” I said.

  “Wouldn’t Desmond have known if Albert had been one of Maria’s potential paramours?” Spike said. “And if he’d done more than lust after her from a distance?”

  “Paramours?” I said. “I think that expression was old when Nick and Nora were young.”

  He toasted me with his coffee cup.

  “Look at it this way,” Spike said. “If the shooter did pop Carbone as a way to throw everybody off, maybe you’ve got him on the run and you don’t even know it.”

  “Or maybe we’re giving this guy too much credit, and he’s out of control in a controlled sort of way, and capable of anything.”

  “Including making another run at you,” Spike said. “Which is why you thought you might have been followed out of Cambridge.”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “I could stay the night,” Spike said.

  “Nah,” I said. “Would make me feel like a girl.”

  “Can’t have that.”

  “Marry me,” I said.

  “Right,” he said. “Who needs sex?”

  I laughed and said, “We do!”

  “You decide when you’re going to tell Desmond all you know about Maria?”

  “No,” I said. “I’m holding back for now. But so is he. I just don’t know what, or how much.”

  Spike said he was going to walk home. He’d recently purchased a new condominium in an area on the other side of the Common that used to be called the Combat Zone but had now been gentrified in a pluperfect way over time.

  I put on a short leather jacket, grabbed Rosie’s leash off the table along with my .38, and told him I’d walk him as far as Charles Street. Spike leaned over and kissed me on the top of my head.

  “This was fun,” he said.

  “Best. Wingman. Ever,” I said.

  “You’ll figure this out,” he said.

  “You sure?”

  “Always have,” Spike said.

  “Blah, blah, blah,” I said.

  “Well,” Spike said, “there’s the old fighting spirit.”

  I opened the front door, letting Rosie lead the way. I had the handle of her leash and my keys in my right hand. But as I took my first step outside, I dropped the keys, which fell to the concrete with a clatter that only sounded so loud because the street was so quiet.

  “Shit,” I said.

  Everything happened at once then, me turning just slightly to look down at where the keys had fallen and Spike saying “I’ll get ’em” in the split-second before we heard the unmistakable crack of a gun firing from somewhere at close range in front of us and the bullet hitting the front door between us.

  FORTY-TWO

  SPIKE ROLLED OVER in front of both of us, his gun somehow already cleared.

  I held Rosie to me, as low to the ground as I could keep both of us, and could see a man running up River Street in the direction of the Meeting House.

  “Stay down,” Spike said. “I’m going after him.”

  “No,” I said.

  “Yes,” he said.

  I had my gun out of the side pocket of the leather jacket by now, and could see lights going on all around us.

  “Go back inside,” Spike said, “and call nine-one-one if somebody hasn’t already.”

  He looked like a sprinter coming out of a crouch now. All the times and all the miles we had run the Half Shell, I knew how fast he was, as big as he was, how quickly he could get himself up to full speed when he wanted to show off.

  But as he got near the corner of Charles and River, I saw the retreating figure suddenly stop and turn and get into a crouch himself and fire again.

  Spike went down.

  I heard a scream from up above me as I ran for him, and then another scream, and Rosie barking as she ran behind me, and a screech of tires somewhere up ahead. Then the street was quiet again until I could hear the first sirens in the distance.

  FORTY-THREE

  THEY TOOK SPIKE by ambulance to the Tufts Medical Center on Washington Street, not terribly far from where he now lived. It turned out to be a flesh wound. The ER doctor said he was lucky. Spike said, “Relative to what?”

  “Relative to about a foot closer to the center of your mass,” the doctor said.

  They had finished working on him. Frank Belson had arrived and was with us, having badged the nurse working the desk and saying, “Friend of the family.” The doctor had already informed Spike that there was no reason for him to stay the night, even though they’d already established they had a room for him if needed.

  The doctor said he was going to get Spike a sling.

  “What color?” Spike said.

  “Excuse me?”

  The doctor was tall, young-looking, spoke with a slight Spanish accent. His name tag said “Ramirez.”

  “I just want something that clashes with the fewest of my outfits,” Spike said.

  The doctor frowned, said, “I think we go with basic blue here,” and left.

  “Cute,” Spike said. “The doctor. Not the color.”

  “Really?” Belson said.

  “I actually thought he was kind of cute myself, Frank,” I said.

  “Talk to me,” he said.

  I told him everything that had happened from the time I opened the front door.

  “Shooter was waiting out there,” Belson said. “Hard to hang around on your street without somebody noticing.”

  “You have a pretty good view of my front door for a pretty good distance up River,” I said.

  “Maybe he was moving around, from corner to corner, and then was in the right place to take his shot when we came out,” I said.

  “Lucky,” Belson said.

  “Well, for him,” Spike said.

  Belson said, “We’ll send people over in the morning to canvass the neighborhood.”

  “If he was out there a long time,” I said, “he knew Spike was inside with me. If not, he was there to shoot just me. If there had been people on the street, he could have just walked toward the Public Garden, or past our little dog park toward the river.”

  “If you hadn’t dropped your keys . . .” Belson said.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “He’s back-shot everybody else so far,” he said. “This is different.”

  “Almost more arrogant,” I said.

  “And he’s willing to take a shot at him,” Belson said, nodding at Spike, “before he runs off.”

  “He tried to scare me off once,” I said.

  “Other than the Burke
s and me and the Scarlet Pimpernel here,” Belson said, “who knows that you’re still on this?”

  “Albert Antonioni,” I said.

  “Now somebody comes right to your front door,” Belson said.

  “And somehow nobody has yet taken a shot at Desmond Burke,” I said, “around whom this whole thing is supposed to revolve.”

  “Curiouser and fucking curiouser,” Frank Belson said.

  FORTY-FOUR

  BELSON SENT SPIKE home in a squad car. He drove me home himself. On the way he asked me for all the information I had previously withheld from him.

  “You know pretty much everything I know,” I said.

  “Bullshit,” he said.

  “Not sure I can even remember every single thing I’ve told you so far,” I said.

  “I can,” Belson said.

  I honestly couldn’t remember everything I’d told him. So I told him now about all the guns going missing all of a sudden. I told him about Desmond and Albert and about Maria Cataldo, and about her dying in Providence and living in Providence for some period of time before that. I told him about my theory that Albert might have been jealous of Desmond and Maria and waited a very long time to get even with him.

  “You’re telling me this all might have started because this Maria wouldn’t go to the prom with Antonioni back in the day?” Belson said. “And went with Desmond instead?”

  “It has to be more than that, if Albert is the one behind all this,” I said.

  “Which we are only surmising that he is.”

  “Correct.”

  “When did she go away?” Belson said.

  We were sitting in the car in front of the house by then.

  “Desmond believes it was April of 1980,” I said. “When she was in her early twenties.”

  “Where’d she go?”

  “Unclear,” I said. “All I know is that at the other end of her life she ends up in Providence.”

  “Near Albert,” Belson said. “Who buried her. Where was she living when she died?”