Robert B. Parker’s Blood Feud

Sixty-Nine

Richie and Desmond rode in the ambulance with Felix on the way to Rhode Island Hospital, the same one in which Maria Cataldo had died.

Then it was just Vinnie Morris and me. Before Richie and I had left Jake’s, I had told Vinnie that if he didn’t hear from us within an hour after we left him and Spike at the diner that he needed to come after us.

Spike had asked why I didn’t want him to be the one to come after us.

“Because Vinnie is a better shot than you,” I’d said.

“Better than anybody,” Vinnie had said.

Before he left, Vinnie had apologized again for not getting a clear enough shot before Marchetti shot Bobby. I told him that it had finally become a moment, as embarrassed as I was to say it, when he needed to shoot first and ask questions later.

“Yeah,” he said. Then he said, “That expression you always use about the balloon going up? That fucker had gone up.”

“There was more I wanted to know,” I said.

“It was them or you,” he said. “And Richie.”

I knew it hadn’t been an ethical choice for Vinnie, even though I knew he operated by a code he had constructed for himself, one where he wasn’t a criminal, just the people who hired him. And Vinnie knew when I had enlisted him to help tonight that I wanted Bobby Toms arrested, not shot. But what had ended in this room, Bobby is the one who had started it all. Until it had been him or us.

Then Vinnie was gone, almost as if he hadn’t been there at all, on his way back to Jake’s to pick up the men from his crew with whom he had originally driven down from Boston. Somewhere between Jake’s and his bowling alley, I knew his long gun would disappear forever.

Pete Colapietro lived close enough to Black Point that he managed to beat what seemed half of the Providence Police Department to the scene. When he arrived I told him that Bobby Toms, likely with the assistance of Joseph Marchetti, had kidnapped Desmond Burke and brought him here. That Marchetti had walked Richie and me into this room. That shortly thereafter, shooting had commenced.

Colapietro listened. By now I knew he was the kind of cop Belson was. And my father had been. He would be able to pretty much remember what I was telling him, word for word.

“So Marchetti shot Bobby Toms first,” Pete said.

“Yes.”

“Pretty much at the same time that another shot came from outside and put down Marchetti,” he said.

I could hear the first sirens in the distance.

“Must have been a sniper,” I said.

He gave me a long look. “You know I like you, Sunny,” he said. “I’ve been pulling some strings for you. I kept the Taunton cops away from that diner tonight. I rode around with you the other day on my own time. But I’m a cop. And a goddamn good one. And even both of us knowing that a couple of no-good guys came off the books tonight, I know there’s a lot of shit you’re not telling me here. Starting with who the outside shooter was who shot Antonioni’s shooter.”

The sirens were getting louder.

Pete nodded at the window.

“Guy who could make that kind of shot in the night, from a distance,” he said.

“Maybe Albert thought these guys were making too much trouble for him,” I said. “Maybe he hired somebody. Who can know these things?”

He gave me another long look. “You know anybody who can make a shot like that?” he said.

“Only heard of them,” I said.

“Yeah,” he said. “Me, too.”

“I just got caught up in the middle of a Mob war,” I said. “All the way to the end.”

“That’s your story,” Pete Colapietro said.

“And I’m sticking to it,” I said.

Pete said, “I’m gonna need you to come to the station and make a statement. And answer some questions that I might not be the only one asking.”

I told him Richie and I had left the car up the road a bit.

“We’ll go now,” Pete said.

“Understood,” I said.

By now the cavalry had arrived, lights flashing, cars making plenty of noise on the gravel driveway. Pete badged everyone in sight, telling them that I was with him. We got into his car. He drove me to my car.

On the way to downtown Providence Richie called and told me that Felix Burke had died not long after they’d gotten him inside the hospital.

Sins of the father, I thought.

Felix being the father.