Family Honor

Chapter 56

I was in a big round booth at the back of a coffee shop opposite the green in Taunton with three Burkes and two Antonionis. I was the only female.

“I had heard that your son was divorced from this lady, Desmond,” Albert Antonioni said.

“What’s between them is not our business,” Richie’s father said. “Richie says she’s still family.”

He was thin Irish — hollow cheeks, deep-set eyes. He had the look of Irish martyrdom about him, like some pale priest willing to starve to death for Ireland’s freedom. His brother Felix, Richie’s uncle, had once been a heavyweight boxer, and he bore the marks of it. There were scars around his eyes. His nose was thick and flat. His neck was short and his upper body was thick and slightly round-shouldered, as if the weight of all that muscle had begun to tire him.

“We have no problem with you,” Antonioni said.

He had a white beard and a strong nose, and his dark eyes moved very quickly. His son Allie was beside him, bigger than his father and clean-shaven, but with the same nose, and the same quick eyes.

“You do, if you have a problem with Sunny,” Desmond said.

At the next table were men who had come with the Antonionis. That made four on their side, and four on ours, including me. I was flattered. I knew that these things were worked out as meticulously as the seating at the Paris peace conference, and I had been counted as a full person.

Before we’d come Richie had said to me, “Don’t get feminist on me in this one. These guys live in a male world. We’ll get what we want better if you are, ah, ladylike.”

“Can I say fuck now and then,” I had asked, “just to be one of the guys?”

Richie smiled.

“You will never be one of the guys,” he said. “The less you say, the better it’ll go.”

I knew he was right, and now, on scrupulously neutral territory — about halfway between Providence and Boston, a little closer to Providence, to show Antonioni some respect, but still in Massachusetts, to show the Burkes respect — I was sitting beside Richie, letting Desmond Burke do the talking. Richie was as quiet as I was.

“I don’t think we have a problem with Sunny that can’t be worked out,” Antonioni said. “We got some plans. We been careful making those plans, we don’t interfere with your plans.”

“I got no problem with your plans, Albert. There’s too many lone cowhands in Boston since Gerry went down. Fast Eddie got Chinatown, Tony got the niggers, we got ours. You come in and organize the rest, it’ll save me doing it. I don’t want to do it. I’m happy with what I got.”

“I appreciate that,” Antonioni said.

“But you can’t be fucking with any of us, excuse me, Sunny.”

I smiled modestly.

“Didn’t know we were, Desmond.”

“Now you do,” Felix said.

Felix had taken a couple too many punches in the neck. His voice sounded the way I’d always imagined a rhinoceros might sound clearing its throat. Antonioni smiled faintly.

“We ain’t afraid of you,” he said.

Neither Desmond nor Felix said anything.

“On the other hand we don’t need no fucking two-front war,” Antonioni said. “Begging your pardon, Sunny.”

I smiled modestly. No one else said anything.

“So whaddya need,” Antonioni said.

Desmond nodded at me.

“I need the Patton girl safe,” I said.

“She’s witness to a murder conspiracy,” Antonioni said.

“I need someone for the murder, too,” I said.

Antonioni sat back in his seat and looked at me.

“Who’d you have in mind,” Antonioni said.

“Kragan tried to kill the girl and me. I assume he did the plumber.”

Antonioni looked at his son. His son nodded.

“Cathal zipped him,” the son said.

“And Bucko Meehan.”

“He did that on his own,” Allie said.

“You want Cathal?” Antonioni said.

“Yes.”

“You know why Cathal zipped the plumber?” Antonioni said.

“Pictures,” I said.

Antonioni nodded slowly.

“You know our interest in that?”

“Governor,” I said.

Antonioni smiled again. It was an odd smile, nearly invisible. But it was real. It was the smile of a man who had once been able to laugh.

“I like a quiet woman,” he said.

He drank some coffee.

“Cold,” he said, and handed his cup to one of the men at the next table. The man got up and went for fresh coffee. “How you going to take Cathal down without messing up what I got in place with Patton?”

“Maybe I can’t,” I said.

Antonioni’s new coffee arrived. He sipped some and nodded once.

“Better,” he said.

He put the cup down and looked straight at me.

“We got a problem,” he said.

“We didn’t have a problem,” Desmond Burke said, “we wouldn’t be sitting here trying to solve it.”

Antonioni nodded. Everyone was quiet. Desmond looked at me.

“Whaddya want to do, Sunny?” he said.

“I want the girl safe,” I said.

Desmond looked at Antonioni.

“I can give you that,” Albert said. “But I can’t guarantee Kragan. Kid could bury him if she testified.”

“I can put Kragan in jail,” I said.

“But will he go quiet?” Albert said.

“You tell me,” I said. “What about omertà and all that.”

“Kragan’s Irish,” Allie said. “They don’t have no vow of silence.”

“Even if he was straight from Palermo,” Albert said, “things are different than they was. Omertà don’t look so good, you’re facing fucking three hundred years hard time.”

“Maybe I could leave Brock Patton alone,” I said.

Again everyone was quiet. Albert blew on his coffee a little, then sipped some. He looked at Allie. They looked at each other for a moment.

“Maybe we could straighten things out with Kragan,” Albert said.

“That would work,” I said.

On the ride home, alone together in my car, Richie said to me, “They’re going to kill him, you know.”

“Kragan?”

“Yep.”

“I sort of figured they would,” I said.

Richie was quiet. I could feel him looking at me as I drove.

“You’re a pretty tough cookie,” he said.

“Thank you for noticing.”