Robert B. Parker’s Blood Feud

Forty-Seven

He was leaning against the driver’s-side door of my car.

It was one of Antonioni’s men who had been with him both times at the Old Canteen. Not the one who I thought was a Richie type. This was the shorter guy with the thicker body, the one I’d decided was meaner, even knowing I was grading him, just on appearances and from a distance, against the curve. But up close the eyes were as mean as I thought they would be. He was wearing a leather bomber jacket that had aged on its own, not fatigued as some kind of fashion strategy. Dark-rinse jeans. Black T-shirt. Black motorcycle boots. My father had spoken of hard old men at breakfast. Here was a younger model.

I took some consolation in the fact, or at least the hope, that he probably didn’t plan to shoot me where I stood.

“What are you doing here?” he said.

“Wow,” I said. “I was about to ask you the same thing.”

“Why are you hanging around this house?” he said.

“Trying to find out a little something about the woman who lived here,” I said.

“Why’s that?” he said.

“She was a friend of a friend.”

“What friend?”

“A client,” I said, as if that explained everything except the Big Bang Theory.

“We both know you’re lying.”

“Not sure our relationship has progressed to that point,” I said.

“I could make you tell me the truth,” he said.

I smiled. “Maybe you could,” I said. “But then again, maybe you couldn’t.”

“Mr. Antonioni told you to leave this alone.”

“I’m having trouble identifying what ‘this’ is,” I said. “Like trying to decide what the definition of ‘is’ is.”

“You’re not funny,” he said.

“Am, too,” I said.

“This,” he said, “is whatever the fuck it is keeps bringing you down here and bothering us.”

“I wasn’t aware I was bothering anybody,” I said. “And how did you even know I was in the neighborhood.”

“Mr. A. knows what he wants to know in Providence,” he said.

“Good for me to know,” I said.

“You being smart?”

“It comes to me naturally,” I said. “What’s your name, by the way?”

He waited, as if debating with himself if it was a good or bad idea to tell me. Then he shrugged.

“Joseph,” he said. “Joseph Marchetti.”

A car slowly passed us. I moved to my left, but not closer to him. When the car was gone, I took another step back into the street. I wondered if Connie Devane was watching the show from her upstairs window, and what she was thinking.

“Did you used to come visit Maria Cataldo here before she died?” I said.

“You just won’t stop fucking with this,” he said. “Is that what you want me to tell Mr. A.? That you won’t stop fucking with this even after being told to stop?”

“You can tell Mr. Antonioni whatever you like,” I said. “I don’t see as how I’m bothering him.”

“I’m telling you that you are,” he said. “And now I’m the one telling you to stop.”

“Or what?” I said pleasantly.

“Or you’ll get hurt,” he said.

I smiled and turned slightly away from him, as if I couldn’t believe I was having this conversation. And then I did something I had often practiced in front of a mirror at home, and reached into the bag that was over my left shoulder and pulled out my gun with my right, and had the .38 out and the hammer back as Joseph Marchetti was still practicing his death stare and not paying nearly close enough attention.

“What, you’re gonna shoot me in the middle of Pleasant Valley Parkway?” he said. “My ass.”

“Probably won’t shoot you there,” I said. “But up to the point when you threatened to hurt me, you’d only been annoying me.”

I kept the gun pointed at his nose. After I had pulled it out of my bag, I had made sure to take another step back and keep myself out of his reach, even if he was dumb enough to make a move on me.

“Now please step away from my car, and keep your hands where I can see them as you walk away from me,” I said.

“You got no idea how much more trouble you just made for yourself,” he said.

“Something else that comes to me naturally,” I said. “Now slide along the car and then get moving.”

He did that.

“No idea,” he said again.

When he was on the sidewalk, he just started walking, not looking back, as if he didn’t have a care in the world. When he was twenty-five yards away from me, I said, “Hey, Joseph.” I was leaning over the roof of my car, gun still on him, which is why he probably didn’t notice that I had my cell phone in my left hand. I had already clicked on the photo icon, so when he turned I was ready to take his picture.

“What,” he said.

“Make sure to tell Albert that a girl got the drop on you,” I said.

Then he smiled. It did absolutely nothing to soften his features.

“You a good shot?” he said.

“Good enough,” I said.

“I’m better,” Joseph Marchetti said.

When he had disappeared around the corner, I got behind the wheel of the Prius and started the engine and was thrilled that it didn’t blow up.

Then I once again got the hell out of Rhode Island, checking my rearview mirror all the way home.