Family Honor

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.”