Family Honor

Chapter 54

“I know Georgie McPhail,” Richie said. “He used to do strong-arm collection for a loan shark named Murray Vee.”

“What kind of name is Vee?” I said.

“Short for a long funny name, I never knew what it was.”

We were sitting at Spike’s kitchen table. Richie and Millicent had just come back from the movies. Spike was cooking venison sausage with vinegar peppers on his big six-burner professional-looking stove. Rosie had located the sausages with her keen nose and was now immobilized on the floor under Spike’s feet, on point.

“Georgie isn’t that easy to take.”

“Like Grant took Richmond,” Spike said and shook the long-handled sauté pan briskly.

“Could you win a fight with him?” Millicent asked.

Richie smiled at her.

“Don’t know,” he said. “I never tried.”

“Richie could take Georgie McPhail,” Spike said from the stove. “He’s pretty tough for a straight guy.”

Richie grinned.

“Did the Kragan man say anything about me?” Millicent said.

“No,” I said. “I did most of the talking.”

“What did you talk about?”

“I offered him a chance to cooperate with us in our investigation,” I said.

“And Spike really beat up a guy?”

“He was protecting me,” I said.

“What did the Kragan man say?”

“He said he didn’t want to cooperate.”

“So you went through all that for nothing?” Millicent said.

“Well, maybe not for nothing,” I said. “It might get something to happen.”

“What?”

“I don’t know, but anything is better than nothing. Things happen, I can react to them. Nothing happens, I have nothing to do.”

“But what if the something that happens is bad?”

“I expect to deal with it,” I said. “It’s better than nothing happening.”

Millicent shook her head.

“My parents better be paying you a ton of money for this,” she said.

I didn’t say anything. Spike cut a small bite of sausage, checked to see if it was done, blew on it to cool it, and then scraped it off the fork and let it drop into Rosie’s quick jaws.

“They’re not paying her anything,” Spike said. “They fired her a long time ago.”

“Fired her?”

“Yeah. When she wouldn’t give you back to them.”

Millicent stared at Spike for a long time. But she didn’t say anything. Then she shifted her gaze to Rosie. She didn’t look at me.

“Can you get me to Albert Antonioni?” I said to Richie.

“Yes. But it’ll probably have to include my father and my uncle.”

“Okay,” I said. “As soon as you can.”

“It’ll include me, too,” Richie said.

“That’s good,” I said.

“I’d have backed you up with Kragan if you’d asked,” Richie said quietly.

“I know. I couldn’t ask.”

“But you could ask Spike.”

“Spike is not my ex-husband,” I said.

“But you can ask me to set you up with Antonioni.”

“I don’t fully understand it, Richie. I am feeling my way along — with this case, with you, with her — I wish I knew what I was doing, but I don’t. So I have to go by what feels right, and it didn’t feel right to ask you to back me up with Kragan.”

“But it feels okay to use my family’s influence to get you to Antonioni.”

“Actually,” I said, “it doesn’t. But I have nowhere else to go, and I need to do this, so...” I shrugged and turned my palms up.

Spike was discreetly busy with the sausage and peppers. But Millicent was young enough to feel no need for discretion. She was leaning forward, fascinated with the exchange.

“I’ll set it up,” Richie said.

Spike put the peppers onto a cold burner, and added two big handfuls of pasta to a large pot that was already boiling.

I said to Millicent, “Do you think your mother loves you?”

“What?”

I said it again.

“I don’t...”

Her shoulders stiffened and her body got that pained angular look I’d come to recognize.

“No. I don’t think so,” she said.

“If you found that she did, could you love her back?”

“I hate her,” Millicent said.

Her voice was flat, and she seemed once again the sullen little girl I had dragged away from a pimp.

“But if she changed,” I said. “And it was clear that she loved you and was different than she had been, could you love her?”

“You trying to get rid of me?”

“Millicent,” I said. “If I haven’t proved that I care about you by now, I’m not going to be able to prove it.”

“Then why are you asking?”

“Because I want to know. If you and your mother could be together and help each other to be happy, it would be a good thing.”

“But I don’t have to.”

“You can stay with me as long as you need to,” I said.

I felt a twinge of dismay in the bottom of my stomach. I did not want a teenaged daughter. I felt like I still was one.

“You’re nice to me,” Millicent said in a very small voice.

“Yes,” I said. “You deserve to be treated well. I am beginning to think that your mother might love you. That she might be capable of change. We won’t hurry that. But I just want you to keep an open mind. Remember no one will force you to do anything.”

Millicent nodded. Her posture eased a little. Spike placed a large basket of French bread on the table. Then he took the pot off the stove and poured the pasta into a colander in the sink and let it drain and dumped it onto a platter. He distributed the sausage and peppers over it and plonked the platter in the center of the table.

“Red wine?” he said.

“Be fools not to,” Richie said.

Spike began to unscrew a big jug of Cabernet. Rosie, tracking the sausage, trotted over and jumped up into Richie’s lap where she was eye level with her quarry.

“Richie,” I said, “I don’t think she should be at the table.”

“Don’t be so bossy,” Richie said.

“That’s right,” Spike said.

“You are kind of bossy,” Millicent said.

I looked around at the odd gathering. Then I broke off a small piece of French bread and gave it to Rosie.

“Oh, bite my clank,” I said.