The diner, a dive called Jake’s, was up the road from a sports bar on Bay Street called Home Plate.
It served a breakfast and lunch crowd and was generally closed, we had learned, by four in the afternoon at the latest. The original Jake was an old Providence friend of Albert Antonioni’s. The family still ran it but were long gone by the time the principals and their seconds arrived at a little after nine o’clock. That part of the deal had quickly been brokered by Antonioni’s people.
Pete Colapietro had called the Taunton cops and told them to ignore lights inside if they were passing by, telling them there was a meeting taking place that might help him close the books on what he told them was some major shit.
“I am taking it on trust,” he’d told me, “that this isn’t going to turn into Gunfight at the O.K. Corral.”
“Okay,” I’d said.
“Okay meaning it won’t,” Pete had said, “or that you’re hoping it won’t?”
“Little of both.”
“What I was afraid of.”
Richie and I were in one of the two cars parked up Bay Street. Tony had brought Ty Bop and Junior with him. Albert had brought two of his own troopers. That was the deal.
Tony had chuckled speaking to me from his car and said, “I know that old man tougher than a cheap steak. But he don’t know that even though the sides look even, they not.”
“What do you know about cheap steaks?” I said.
“You forget, Sunny Randall,” he said. “I wasn’t always slicker than shit.”
He knew that he had about half an hour to conclude his business and then we were coming in. Albert Antonioni had once told me that if I wanted to take him on, I needed to bring an army. So I had brought a small one.
At a quarter to ten o’clock, Richie and I walked through the front door of Jake’s at the same moment that Spike and Vinnie Morris came through the door from the kitchen, both with guns in their hands. Vinnie had a .44. Spike had a Smith & Wesson nine-millimeter that I was fairly certain was new.
Junior and Ty Bop and Albert’s men looked at Spike and Vinnie. Tony Marcus and Albert looked at Richie and me.
“Don’t,” Vinnie said to the other shooters in the room.
“We need to talk,” I said to Tony and Albert, but Tony knew I really only wanted to talk to Albert.
Tony spoke first.
“You just made a whole lot of fucking trouble for yourself, girl,” Tony Marcus said, playing it as well as Denzel would have.
“Well, yeah,” I said. “But let’s face it, that’s not the first time you’ve told me that.”
“This wasn’t part of no deal,” Tony said.
“You’re a businessman, Tony,” I said. “Did you think I was going to let Felix Burke cut you in on this gun deal and get nothing in return?”
“Why isn’t Felix here?” Tony said.
“Because I am,” Richie said.
Albert looked across the booth at Tony.
“You didn’t tell me she was in this,” he said.
“All due respect, Albert,” Tony said. “Just ’cause we about to do business don’t mean I got to tell you all my business.”
Richie and I stood in the middle of the room. Richie had said nothing. By instinct I looked over at where Ty Bop was standing near the counter. I knew that he knew how much of this was show. But I also knew that he had the jangled nerves and attention span of a hummingbird. So I was hopeful that he was still processing that in the moment Richie and Spike and Vinnie and his boss — and me — were all on the same team.
“Deal’s off,” Albert said, and started to slide out of the booth.
“Don’t,” Vinnie said again.
“I know who you are,” Albert said.
“So don’t,” Vinnie said.
“What,” Albert Antonioni said to me, “you just gonna hold us here?”
“I just think of this as an extension of the negotiations that I assume you and Tony have now concluded,” I said.
“This ain’t your business,” Tony said, still acting, and still selling it like a champion.
“Think of this as my commission,” I said. “As I understand it, you are getting a whole new territory for your prostitution business, a territory you say you have sought for some time. In return, Albert is about to make a killing, so to speak, on the biggest bulk shipment of illegal guns ever to make its way into New England. My ex-husband and I want nothing to do with any of that. But we do want a little somethin’ somethin’ in return.”
I looked at Albert. “I’m curious about something,” I said. “If you wanted Desmond and Felix’s guns so badly, why didn’t you just take them, and not go after the Burke family this way?”
There was something completely reptilian now in Albert’s eyes as he stared at me.
“The first time I ever met you was during that thing with Brock Patton and his daughter, remember?” he said. “You and your husband and Desmond and me. I never told you, because it wasn’t shit you needed to know, it was between Desmond and me. But there was a price tag came with me leaving you alone. He never talked about it with anybody else. I never talked about it with anybody else. But the price tag was that Desmond would leave the gun business to me.”
I looked at Richie. He shook his head, like it was news to him, too.
“We had an understanding,” Albert said. “Now all this time later, he breaks it. I couldn’t let that stand.”
“I get that,” I said. “But why wait this long?”
The old man shrugged. “I figured that I’d let him do the work and then take what should’ve been mine all along.”
“Street justice,” Tony said. “Gotta respect that.”
“So what do you want from me?” Albert Antonioni said to me.
“You need to tell us where we can find Desmond and Bobby Toms,” I said.
“I got no fucking idea what you are talking about,” he said. He looked at Tony, as if for backup. “You got any idea what she’s talking about?”
Tony made a helpless gesture with his hands.
Albert turned back to me. “You better kill me,” he said. “Because if you don’t, you’re the one’s dead once I get out of here.”
“I don’t think so,” I said.
He started to say something. I held up a finger.
“Here’s why,” I said. “Because Felix Burke believes you are up to your eyeballs in this. He believes you had at least prior knowledge of the harm having been done to his brothers and his family. It was his intent to come here tonight and kill you and your men. Richie convinced him otherwise. Felix has given us his word that if you help him get his brother back, you get his guns and your money. And you’re the one who doesn’t end up dead.”
“Fuck you,” Albert said.
“Beautifully put,” I said.
“You think I’m still afraid of the Burkes?” he said. “Fuck them, too.”
“Take the deal, Albert,” I said. “Take the guns, give us Desmond. Because I have the feeling that whatever happens now, Tony is going to get his girls, anyway.”
Tony shrugged and smiled and said to Albert, “The heart wants what the heart wants.”
I was trying to appear, and remain, calm, even though I was the opposite of that, even though I was once again in a room in the company of men, some as dangerous as men could be. Including, in this moment, Richie Burke.
“I don’t know how much of this you have had a hand in, Albert,” I said. “But I refuse to believe that you don’t know where Bobby Toms has Desmond. I refuse to believe you didn’t set this whole thing in motion. So tell us where they are. There are other things I wish to know, but, again, this is not the time, which is now being wasted.”
“Say you’re right,” Albert Antonioni said finally. “Say I do know. What makes you think I don’t call him and warn him the minute you walk out that door?”
Spike said, “We’re just gonna hang out here while they do their thing, Albert.”
“You think the two of you can just keep us here?” Tony said.
Spike smiled.
“Well, kind of,” he said.
I knew they could, mostly because I knew Ty Bop and Junior weren’t going to try them. And I knew that two of the guys from Vinnie’s crew were now posted outside, one at the front door, one the back.
I looked at Albert.
“He’s her son, isn’t he?” I said.
He slowly nodded his head.
“And Desmond’s?” I said.
He nodded again, as if he had a nice, slow rhythm going for him with his nods.
“Take the deal, Albert,” Tony said.
“Where are they?” I said to Albert Antonioni.
He looked around the room, at Spike and Vinnie, at Richie, at his own men, finally at me. It was as if he was working out a math problem.
He nodded one last time.
“The beach house,” he said.