Robert B. Parker’s Blood Feud

Sixty-Six

Narragansett, Richie informed me on the ride there, was called Providence South. And was where Mob guys went to the beach.

“How do you know that?” I said.

“Desmond and Felix thought Cape Cod was too fancy for them when I was a boy,” he said. “We used to come down here. Their form of reverse snobbery.”

Over time, Richie said, some sleazy developers tied to Antonioni had paid off enough politicians, some of whom had ended up in prison for taking kickbacks, and gotten enough permits to build big, vulgar beach homes on bluffs that had once belonged to a nature preserve.

“The area to which we are headed,” Richie said, “is now called Black Point.”

The very last house at Black Point, once belonging to the late Allie Antonioni, was set apart from the rest overlooking the bay, as if at land’s end. We parked about a half-mile away, having passed summer homes now shuttered, hardly any lights on either side of the road for as far as we could see. We walked from there. There was the chance that Bobby Toms, who had provided security for Albert Antonioni, had security for himself out here. But we had decided we just had to risk it, having run out of time.

When we got close to the driveway that fed down to Antonioni’s house, we could see lights on the ground floor. There was a big, bright moon on this night, far too bright to suit me, so we could look down the shore to a crescent of sand jutting into Narragansett Bay, and some lights actually still lit from what Richie said was the Bonnet Shore Beach Club.

Richie was wearing a black hoodie and black jeans. As was I. I had a Glock in my hand and a smaller Kel-Tec gun strapped into an ankle holster. Richie carried a Colt in his right hand.

We stood at the foot of the driveway that led down to a house that looked as if it had once been a classic saltbox and then had simply grown into some sort of Mob McMansion.

“Security cameras?” Richie said.

“If there are, there are,” I said.

“We’re going in,” he said.

“We are,” I said. “There has to be a way to get to the back of the house from the beach. You don’t own a house like this without beach access.”

“Say there is,” Richie said. “Say we get to the backyard. What happens if we trip something and all the lights go on?”

“We improvise,” I said.

There was a neighbor’s house closer to the Bonnet Shore Beach Club, maybe a quarter-mile from Antonioni’s, another that was completely dark. We made our way in that direction, through that front yard, down the bluffs to the narrow beach. Up ahead, lit by the moon, we could see a stairway leading down from Antonioni’s to the water.

“We can’t use the steps,” I said. “Let’s climb up through the bluffs if we can.”

So we did that. I stumbled a few times and went down into the sand. Not Richie. There had always been an amazing grace about him. He was one of those who could walk through a crowded room and somehow not make contact with anyone.

We finally reached the top, and the small backyard where Antonioni said that Bobby Toms was holding Desmond Burke.

“Now what?” Richie whispered.

“Now we make our way to the front and see what we can see and hope the fucker’s alone and we’ve got him outnumbered,” I said.

I could hear my breathing. And his. And the sound of the water below us, and what wind there was in the night. We made our way along the side of the house. No floodlights were lit. There were no other sounds as we tried to creep noiselessly along the house until we came to one of the side windows on the ground floor, draperies partially drawn.

I took a deep breath and inched forward enough to see in.

There, tied to a chair, face bruised and swollen, sat Desmond Burke.

It was then that we heard the click of the hammer behind us and a voice I recognized say, “Either of you move, I shoot her first.”

Joseph Marchetti then told us to drop our own weapons. We did.

“Want to take my picture now?” he said.