Robert B. Parker’s Blood Feud

Thirty

Desmond Burke now lived on Flagship Wharf in Charlestown, part of the old Navy Yard, with views of both the Bunker Hill Monument and the USS Constitution.

We were seated in the large, bright, airy front room. Colley was outside, posted by the front door. There were two other troopers, neither of whom I knew, sitting in a Town Car on the street.

The room, I’d noticed, was full of photographs, on the mantel of his fireplace and the walls and spread across an antique bureau that might have been as old as the Constitution. There were pictures of Desmond Burke’s late wife and of Richie at different ages, all the way through our wedding. There was even one of Desmond and me from the wedding, one in which I looked far happier than I felt right now.

I looked younger. Much.

I was more fixed on the ones of Richie as a boy, wondering about all the things that made him the man he had become, one I knew I would love more than I would ever love another, whether we ended up together, fully together, or not.

Richie and I were on a long white couch. Desmond was across from us, once again dressed all in black today.

“I’ve not much time,” he said. He looked at me and said, “I’ve already told your friend Belson that I did not choose to speak with him.”

I smiled. “Never talk to a cop,” I said.

“Words to live by,” Desmond said.

“Then we should get right to it,” Richie said. “The woman who wrote you the letters I found — who is she?”

Richie establishing himself as the one in charge, even in his father’s home.

“I thought we had agreed never to discuss her again,” Desmond said.

“We’re past that, Dad,” Richie said. “Way past. Sunny has now been assaulted by the one doing the shooting. Sunny and I believe it might very well involve the one who wrote you those letters.”

“And she knows of these letters... how?”

“Because I fucking well told her,” Richie said.

Now it was as if Desmond had been slapped.

“You talk to me in such a way?” Desmond said to Richie.

“I was taught that what matters most is often what is most necessary,” Richie said. “Or something along those lines. I don’t remember every one of your codes.”

“I don’t appreciate your tone,” Desmond said.

“I didn’t much appreciate finding out that you cheated on my mother,” Richie said.

“I told you then,” his father said. “I don’t have to explain myself to you.”

But you could see the fight beginning to leak out of him. It was as if the words died a few feet from his mouth.

Richie said, “If we don’t stop this man, he is going to kill us all.”

“Maria Cataldo,” Desmond Burke said.

Boom.