Robert B. Parker's Blood Feud

by Mike Lupica

  Pete Colapietro had called the Taunton cops and told them to ignore lights inside if they were passing by, telling them there was a meeting taking place that might help him close the books on what he told them was some major shit.

  “I am taking it on trust,” he’d told me, “that this isn’t going to turn into Gunfight at the O.K. Corral.”

  “Okay,” I’d said.

  “Okay meaning it won’t,” Pete had said, “or that you’re hoping it won’t?”

  “Little of both.”

  “What I was afraid of.”

  Richie and I were in one of the two cars parked up Bay Street. Tony had brought Ty Bop and Junior with him. Albert had brought two of his own troopers. That was the deal.

  Tony had chuckled speaking to me from his car and said, “I know that old man tougher than a cheap steak. But he don’t know that even though the sides look even, they not.”

  “What do you know about cheap steaks?” I said.

  “You forget, Sunny Randall,” he said. “I wasn’t always slicker than shit.”

  He knew that he had about half an hour to conclude his business and then we were coming in. Albert Antonioni had once told me that if I wanted to take him on, I needed to bring an army. So I had brought a small one.

  At a quarter to ten o’clock, Richie and I walked through the front door of Jake’s at the same moment that Spike and Vinnie Morris came through the door from the kitchen, both with guns in their hands. Vinnie had a .44. Spike had a Smith & Wesson nine-millimeter that I was fairly certain was new.

  Junior and Ty Bop and Albert’s men looked at Spike and Vinnie. Tony Marcus and Albert looked at Richie and me.

  “Don’t,” Vinnie said to the other shooters in the room.

  “We need to talk,” I said to Tony and Albert, but Tony knew I really only wanted to talk to Albert.

  Tony spoke first.

  “You just made a whole lot of fucking trouble for yourself, girl,” Tony Marcus said, playing it as well as Denzel would have.

  “Well, yeah,” I said. “But let’s face it, that’s not the first time you’ve told me that.”

  “This wasn’t part of no deal,” Tony said.

  “You’re a businessman, Tony,” I said. “Did you think I was going to let Felix Burke cut you in on this gun deal and get nothing in return?”

  “Why isn’t Felix here?” Tony said.

  “Because I am,” Richie said.

  Albert looked across the booth at Tony.

  “You didn’t tell me she was in this,” he said.

  “All due respect, Albert,” Tony said. “Just ’cause we about to do business don’t mean I got to tell you all my business.”

  Richie and I stood in the middle of the room. Richie had said nothing. By instinct I looked over at where Ty Bop was standing near the counter. I knew that he knew how much of this was show. But I also knew that he had the jangled nerves and attention span of a hummingbird. So I was hopeful that he was still processing that in the moment Richie and Spike and Vinnie and his boss—and me—were all on the same team.

  “Deal’s off,” Albert said, and started to slide out of the booth.

  “Don’t,” Vinnie said again.

  “I know who you are,” Albert said.

  “So don’t,” Vinnie said.

  “What,” Albert Antonioni said to me, “you just gonna hold us here?”

  “I just think of this as an extension of the negotiations that I assume you and Tony have now concluded,” I said.

  “This ain’t your business,” Tony said, still acting, and still selling it like a champion.

  “Think of this as my commission,” I said. “As I understand it, you are getting a whole new territory for your prostitution business, a territory you say you have sought for some time. In return, Albert is about to make a killing, so to speak, on the biggest bulk shipment of illegal guns ever to make its way into New England. My ex-husband and I want nothing to do with any of that. But we do want a little somethin’ somethin’ in return.”

  I looked at Albert. “I’m curious about something,” I said. “If you wanted Desmond and Felix’s guns so badly, why didn’t you just take them, and not go after the Burke family this way?”

  There was something completely reptilian now in Albert’s eyes as he stared at me.

  “The first time I ever met you was during that thing with Brock Patton and his daughter, remember?” he said. “You and your husband and Desmond and me. I never told you, because it wasn’t shit you needed to know, it was between Desmond and me. But there was a price tag came with me leaving you alone. He never talked about it with anybody else. I never talked about it with anybody else. But the price tag was that Desmond would leave the gun business to me.”

  I looked at Richie. He shook his head, like it was news to him, too.

  “We had an understanding,” Albert said. “Now all this time later, he breaks it. I couldn’t let that stand.”

  “I get that,” I said. “But why wait this long?”

  The old man shrugged. “I figured that I’d let him do the work and then take what should’ve been mine all along.”

  “Street justice,” Tony said. “Gotta respect that.”

  “So what do you want from me?” Albert Antonioni said to me.

  “You need to tell us where we can find Desmond and Bobby Toms,” I said.

  “I got no fucking idea what you are talking about,” he said. He looked at Tony, as if for backup. “You got any idea what she’s talking about?”

  Tony made a helpless gesture with his hands.

  Albert turned back to me. “You better kill me,” he said. “Because if you don’t, you’re the one’s dead once I get out of here.”

  “I don’t think so,” I said.

  He started to say something. I held up a finger.

  “Here’s why,” I said. “Because Felix Burke believes you are up to your eyeballs in this. He believes you had at least prior knowledge of the harm having been done to his brothers and his family. It was his intent to come here tonight and kill you and your men. Richie convinced him otherwise. Felix has given us his word that if you help him get his brother back, you get his guns and your money. And you’re the one who doesn’t end up dead.”

  “Fuck you,” Albert said.

  “Beautifully put,” I said.

  “You think I’m still afraid of the Burkes?” he said. “Fuck them, too.”

  “Take the deal, Albert,” I said. “Take the guns, give us Desmond. Because I have the feeling that whatever happens now, Tony is going to get his girls, anyway.”

  Tony shrugged and smiled and said to Albert, “The heart wants what the heart wants.”

  I was trying to appear, and remain, calm, even though I was the opposite of that, even though I was once again in a room in the company of men, some as dangerous as men could be. Including, in this moment, Richie Burke.

  “I don’t know how much of this you have had a hand in, Albert,” I said. “But I refuse to believe that you don’t know where Bobby Toms has Desmond. I refuse to believe you didn’t set this whole thing in motion. So tell us where they are. There are other things I wish to know, but, again, this is not the time, which is now being wasted.”

  “Say you’re right,” Albert Antonioni said finally. “Say I do know. What makes you think I don’t call him and warn him the minute you walk out that door?”

  Spike said, “We’re just gonna hang out here while they do their thing, Albert.”

  “You think the two of you can just keep us here?” Tony said.

  Spike smiled.

  “Well, kind of,” he said.

  I knew they could, mostly because I knew Ty Bop and Junior weren’t going to try them. And I knew that two of the guys from Vinnie’s crew were now posted outside, one at the front door, one the back. />
  I looked at Albert.

  “He’s her son, isn’t he?” I said.

  He slowly nodded his head.

  “And Desmond’s?” I said.

  He nodded again, as if he had a nice, slow rhythm going for him with his nods.

  “Take the deal, Albert,” Tony said.

  “Where are they?” I said to Albert Antonioni.

  He looked around the room, at Spike and Vinnie, at Richie, at his own men, finally at me. It was as if he was working out a math problem.

  He nodded one last time.

  “The beach house,” he said.

  SIXTY-SIX

  NARRAGANSETT, Richie informed me on the ride there, was called Providence South. And was where Mob guys went to the beach.

  “How do you know that?” I said.

  “Desmond and Felix thought Cape Cod was too fancy for them when I was a boy,” he said. “We used to come down here. Their form of reverse snobbery.”

  Over time, Richie said, some sleazy developers tied to Antonioni had paid off enough politicians, some of whom had ended up in prison for taking kickbacks, and gotten enough permits to build big, vulgar beach homes on bluffs that had once belonged to a nature preserve.

  “The area to which we are headed,” Richie said, “is now called Black Point.”

  The very last house at Black Point, once belonging to the late Allie Antonioni, was set apart from the rest overlooking the bay, as if at land’s end. We parked about a half-mile away, having passed summer homes now shuttered, hardly any lights on either side of the road for as far as we could see. We walked from there. There was the chance that Bobby Toms, who had provided security for Albert Antonioni, had security for himself out here. But we had decided we just had to risk it, having run out of time.

  When we got close to the driveway that fed down to Antonioni’s house, we could see lights on the ground floor. There was a big, bright moon on this night, far too bright to suit me, so we could look down the shore to a crescent of sand jutting into Narragansett Bay, and some lights actually still lit from what Richie said was the Bonnet Shore Beach Club.

  Richie was wearing a black hoodie and black jeans. As was I. I had a Glock in my hand and a smaller Kel-Tec gun strapped into an ankle holster. Richie carried a Colt in his right hand.

  We stood at the foot of the driveway that led down to a house that looked as if it had once been a classic saltbox and then had simply grown into some sort of Mob McMansion.

  “Security cameras?” Richie said.

  “If there are, there are,” I said.

  “We’re going in,” he said.

  “We are,” I said. “There has to be a way to get to the back of the house from the beach. You don’t own a house like this without beach access.”

  “Say there is,” Richie said. “Say we get to the backyard. What happens if we trip something and all the lights go on?”

  “We improvise,” I said.

  There was a neighbor’s house closer to the Bonnet Shore Beach Club, maybe a quarter-mile from Antonioni’s, another that was completely dark. We made our way in that direction, through that front yard, down the bluffs to the narrow beach. Up ahead, lit by the moon, we could see a stairway leading down from Antonioni’s to the water.

  “We can’t use the steps,” I said. “Let’s climb up through the bluffs if we can.”

  So we did that. I stumbled a few times and went down into the sand. Not Richie. There had always been an amazing grace about him. He was one of those who could walk through a crowded room and somehow not make contact with anyone.

  We finally reached the top, and the small backyard where Antonioni said that Bobby Toms was holding Desmond Burke.

  “Now what?” Richie whispered.

  “Now we make our way to the front and see what we can see and hope the fucker’s alone and we’ve got him outnumbered,” I said.

  I could hear my breathing. And his. And the sound of the water below us, and what wind there was in the night. We made our way along the side of the house. No floodlights were lit. There were no other sounds as we tried to creep noiselessly along the house until we came to one of the side windows on the ground floor, draperies partially drawn.

  I took a deep breath and inched forward enough to see in.

  There, tied to a chair, face bruised and swollen, sat Desmond Burke.

  It was then that we heard the click of the hammer behind us and a voice I recognized say, “Either of you move, I shoot her first.”

  Joseph Marchetti then told us to drop our own weapons. We did.

  “Want to take my picture now?” he said.

  SIXTY-SEVEN

  BOBBY TOMS SAT us on a couch in front of the side window across from Desmond after Joseph Marchetti had walked us inside. The ankle gun was still well hidden by the black Chelsea boots I was wearing. Maybe Marchetti had been so swept away feeling me up that he stopped before he got down there. So at least I still had a weapon, if a small one, when the balloon went up.

  “Let them go,” Desmond Burke said through swollen lips. “It’s me you want.”

  “Shut up, old man,” Bobby Toms said, and asked Joseph Marchetti to go back outside in case Richie and I hadn’t come alone.

  Years after the photograph of him and his mother had been taken at the Grand Canyon, Bobby Toms’s resemblance to Richie wasn’t as vivid. But was still there. Maybe because he wore black as well tonight, black leather jacket, black T-shirt underneath.

  The gun in his hand was a Sig Sauer.

  In a low voice, barely above a whisper, Richie said, “If you’re going to kill us all, at least tell us what this is about before you do.”

  Bobby Toms nodded at Desmond. “Ask him,” he said. “We’ve had a good long talk about the old days.”

  Desmond looked at Richie and me. He seemed to be summoning all the strength he had just to keep his head up.

  “I keep telling him,” Desmond said through swollen lips. “I didn’t know she was pregnant. I never knew he even existed. I never saw her after she left Boston.”

  “After you raped her,” Bobby Toms said.

  “I did not rape her!” Desmond shouted at him. “How many times do I have to tell you that? I loved her!”

  “Liar!” Bobby Toms shouted back, and took two steps closer to him and gave Desmond a hard, open-palm slap to the side of his head, snapping it back.

  I sensed Richie leaning forward slightly on the couch and put a hand on his arm.

  Bobby Toms turned and put his gun on Richie and said, “Don’t even fucking think about it.”

  Then he was pacing back and forth in front of us.

  “I didn’t even know it was you until she died,” he said to Desmond. “She told me I belonged to him. Tomasi. She said he died right after I was born. Who the fuck knows where he went or how he died? But she was the one who was dying a little bit at a time, my whole life. Not just because of the Parkinson’s. Like she was dying of being sad. Doing volunteer work at the church the whole time I was growing up. Like she was the one paying for her sins.”

  “I would have tried to help her,” Desmond said.

  “Mr. Antonioni helped her!” Bobby Toms said, shouting again. “He was the one who loved her. He was the one who took care of her.”

  “Who told you that Desmond raped her?” I said, already knowing the answer.

  “Mr. Antonioni,” he said. “Told me that he raped her when she told him she planned to leave him for good.”

  He turned back to Desmond.

  “Now he’s going to admit it to me and in front of you,” Bobby Toms said. “Or he can watch me do the two of you before I do him.”

  “I didn’t rape her,” Desmond said, head hanging again. Bobby walked over and hit him harder than he had before.

  I needed time.

  I said to Bobby Toms, “Why
did you kill Peter?”

  Keep him talking.

  “Why not?” he said. “I called him and told him I knew who had shot him.”

  He pointed his gun at Richie.

  “Told him to meet me out there in Chestnut Hill,” he said. “Who shoots anybody in Chestnut Hill? I told him it was about Maria Cataldo. You know what he did? He laughed. And called her Desmond’s brasser.”

  Even I knew that was the Irish slang for whore.

  “So I shot him,” Bobby said. “And then I shot up the other old man’s house to let him know I could. And I shot the mook bodyguard to let him”—he nodded at Desmond—“know I could get as close to him as I fuckin’ well wanted.”

  He smiled, his eyes too big and too bright.

  “I even shot one of my own,” he said.

  There it was.

  “Dominic Carbone,” I said.

  “Thought I could buy myself a little more time,” he said. “Buy Mr. A. some time while we looked for those guns. Said he’d cut me in when it was over.” He looked at Desmond. “Now you two are gonna tell me where the guns are, because this old fuck won’t.”

  “Albert already knows where they are,” I said.

  Not technically true. But close enough. “We just made a deal with him tonight. The guns for Desmond.”

  If Bobby Toms was faking his surprise at that news, he was doing an excellent job of it. But I didn’t care whether we’d surprised him or not.

  Keep them talking, like Phil Randall said.

  Somehow it was as if Richie was thinking right along with me.

  “Why didn’t Albert tell you sooner?” Richie said. “About Desmond being your father?”

  “She made him promise,” Bobby said. “But then she was gone. So he told me. Told me that Desmond had never paid for what he did to her, and that maybe it was time. And maybe we could make him pay in all kinds of ways.”

  He shrugged and said, “So I made him pay a little bit at a time. Gotta tell you, this has been some fun shit.”