Robert B. Parker’s Blood Feud

Sixteen

Spike and I had finished a morning run on the Esplanade.

We had crossed over Storrow on the Arthur Fiedler Footbridge, run all the way down to Mass Ave, then back. I had read somewhere that if you were particularly ambitious, or training for the marathon, you could make a seventeen-mile run for yourself on the Esplanade. Spike and I had opted for a considerably shorter distance today.

It was a beautiful morning, enhanced by the sights on the river, boats and crew teams and the familiar skyline of Cambridge on the other side of the Charles, so many of the simple pleasures that the city and its geography and its landmarks and people and culture and history had always brought me.

Now we were making our way back across the Fiedler bridge. I asked Spike if he needed to be anywhere. He reminded me that he was his own boss and a single gay man and could be wherever the hell he wanted to be on a morning like this.

“The only difference between us,” he said, “is that I will actually be making some money before this day has ended.”

“Thank you for pointing that out, dear,” I said. “But I’m willing to buy you coffee anyway.”

“I accept,” he said.

He was wearing a Foo Fighters T-shirt, baggy basketball shorts that hung to his knees, and some new Hoka running shoes that seemed to include most of the colors of the rainbow.

When we walked into Peet’s Coffee the size of him and the outfit and the shoes commanded the attention of most of the other customers, and all of the people working behind the counter.

“Tell them they’re all fine,” he whispered to me, “as long as they don’t do anything to spook me. If they do, I may burst into show tunes.”

“That will only frighten them more,” I said.

We managed to score a window table. We both had large lattes with extra shots of espresso. I told him about my dinner with Richie and how it had been something less than a triumph, mostly because I felt as if his father had been a plus-one.

“Sounds as if Desmond got romance against the ropes and hammered it with body punches,” Spike said.

“Oooh,” I said. “A sports reference. You know how those make my blood race.”

He was more interested in my meeting with Vinnie Morris, and what Vinnie had told me about Desmond and guns.

“Funny thing about guns,” Spike said. “We’ve got gun laws here as tough as anybody’s. But the illegal guns keep coming up from the South. Used to be if you wanted a gun without paper and were willing to walk around with an unregistered piece, you had to travel down to Bumfuck, Georgia, or Asshat, Virginia, to get one and bring it back. Or head up to Vermont.”

“The Green Mountain State?” I said.

“Don’t be fooled,” Spike said. “There’s always been gun money in them there hills.”

“So you think it’s what Vinnie said, a case of supply and demand?” I said. “And Desmond really has found a way to supply those demands in a more, shall we say, efficacious manner?”

“Efficacious,” Spike said. “Have I told you how much I love you?”

“Not enough,” I said. “I read somewhere that only half the handguns seized in crimes in Massachusetts could be traced back to legal owners.”

“Makes you want to do the math on the unseized guns.”

“Lot of gun money on them there streets,” I said, “especially if you could corner the market, which is what Vinnie suggested my ex-father-in-law is attempting to do.”

“So who might that piss off the most?” Spike said.

“Italians?” I said.

Spike said, “Except I’m not even sure who the big Italians are anymore in Boston. In fact, the biggest one isn’t even in Boston. It’s your friend from Providence.”

“Albert Antonioni,” I said.

Spike raised an eyebrow. Eat your heart out, Susan Silverman.

“Maybe Desmond is cutting in on his action,” Spike said. “But I heard one time that if Albert really wanted business up here, he wanted it to be with Tony Marcus, and that they could make some accommodation on girls down in Providence if Tony could cut him in on something else up here.”

“Wouldn’t just be an odd couple,” I said. “Would be the oddest.”

“Didn’t you tell me that Desmond and Felix and old Albert had agreed to stay out of each other’s businesses?” Spike said.

“Basically, Albert blinked first,” I said. “He finally decided that as appealing as the notion was of having the governor of Massachusetts on full scholarship, he didn’t want to go to war with Desmond Burke over the whole thing. ’Least not at the time.”

“Maybe you need to have another talk with old Albert,” Spike said.

“Me and what army?”

Spike grinned.

“I’ve always dreamed about being a man in uniform,” he said.

“Yeah,” I said. “Somewhat like the Village People.”

“You want me to go with you?” he said.

“Who said I was going?”

“You did and you didn’t.”

I told him I would make some calls and try to set it up. Spike, who liked to brag that he knew more bad men than I did, said he would do the same.

“You starting to feel like you’re in the middle of a Scorsese movie?” he said.

“Little bit,” I said.

He finished his latte and asked which one it was where everybody died in the end.

“All of them,” I said.

He said he was afraid of that.