Robert B. Parker’s Blood Feud

Seventy-One

Richie and Rosie and I had walked along the river for a bit and were now sitting on the dock facing Cambridge. It was the second week of October, an Indian-summer afternoon, and the scene across the Charles looked pretty enough to paint. Maybe even by me someday. Just not until I finished, finally, my small stone cottage from Concord. I was close now, and happy with it. Just not totally happy. So it went.

“For the last time,” I said, “do you believe Desmond somehow shot Albert himself?”

“The last time?” Richie said. “You promise?”

“Well, maybe last time today,” I said.

Before he answered he fed Rosie a treat from his pocket. She was on a leash but at rest between Richie and me. Because of the treats. And because she liked being between Richie and me.

“I think he did it,” Richie said. “I don’t know how he got to him. I don’t want to know. But yes, I believe he would do it himself. His own sense of justice, and vengeance.”

“Always been a lot about him you didn’t want to know,” I said.

“And look what it got me,” Richie said. “Now I know more about him than I ever wanted to.” He paused and said, “About both of them.”

“You miss Felix,” I said.

An answer, not a question.

“It’s odd, if you think about it,” Richie said. “I looked up to him the way he always looked up to Desmond.”

He fed Rosie another treat. We had been discussing where to have dinner. I had even promised to watch a Red Sox playoff game with him later. I had suggested cooking dinner myself. Richie had smiled when I made the offer and said, “No, thank you.”

“Desmond loved her,” I said now.

“Probably more than he loved my mother,” Richie said. “But that’s something he’ll probably only admit to God. If he even admits it to Him.”

“And Felix loved her,” I said.

“Maybe more than Desmond did.”

“Albert loved her,” I said.

“She must have really been something.” He turned to look at me. “Like you.”

“Taking care of her at the end may have been Albert’s one true thing,” I said.

“Won’t be enough to get the old bastard into heaven,” Richie said.

“How Catholic of you.”

“Comes and goes,” he said.

“The ironic part of this,” I said, “if irony even applies here, is that Albert wanted Bobby to take out Desmond. But in the end, Albert and Bobby really ended up taking out each other.”

Rosie roused herself, briefly, having noticed another dog, a pug on a leash being walked by a pretty young redheaded woman. But we both knew Rosie was only bluffing. If she didn’t know there were more treats, she sensed it.

Richie said, “It’s interesting, what Bobby told my father about Maria working at the church.”

“I wonder if she saw her greatest sin as having gotten pregnant outside of marriage,” I said, “or that Felix was the one who’d gotten her pregnant.”

“Maybe both,” Richie said.

“Powerful force, guilt.”

“That and grudges,” Richie said.

“Make the world go ’round,” I said.

He reached over and took my hand and held it in his.

“Dr. Silverman,” I said, “thinks that in a vastly complicated way Albert convinced himself that not directly punishing Desmond himself was a form of respect, even if a subordinate did the shooting and the killing.”

“I think it just makes him a coward,” Richie said. “Who fucking well got what he deserved.”

The Burke in him coming out, the way it did sometimes.

“There’s so much we’ll never know,” I said.

“That bother you?”

“No,” I said.

“Liar,” he said, and squeezed my hand.

“So what do you want to eat tonight?” I said.

He turned to look at me again. “Not Italian,” he said.

We held hands and stared at the water.

I received the first of two phone calls then, one right after another, by sheer chance.

Or not.

The small screen read “Desmond.”

I stood, held up a finger to Richie, and walked about twenty yards away, out of his earshot.

There were no salutations.

“You told the coppers where to find my guns,” he said. “That wasn’t part of our deal.”

“We had no deal,” I said, “other than me keeping you alive.”

“Those were my guns,” he said.

“I probably never mentioned it before,” I said. “But I hate illegal guns. Hate them. Especially the fast-shooting kind that shoot schoolchildren.”

And ended the call.

Before my phone was in my back pocket, it started buzzing again.

This time the screen read “Unknown Caller.”

I stayed where I was, almost certain of who the unknown caller was.

Women’s intuition.

“Sunny Randall!” I said in a cheerful, receptionist’s voice.

“You fucked me over,” Tony Marcus said, not sounding cheerful at all.

“Well, hello yourself, Tony,” I said.

I saw Richie staring at me. I smiled and waved.

“Once Albert was gone,” he said, “those guns should’ve reverted back to me.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Who gives a rat’s ass what you think?” he said. “I’m tellin’ you how it is. And what it is.”

“It may be a fine point,” I said. “But since we don’t know when exactly Albert died, we may be dealing with a chicken-and-egg thing here.”

“You tipped off the goddamn Feds, didn’t you?” he said.

No reason to tell one last lie. Or keep secrets.

“As a matter of fact, I did.”

“What’s Desmond think about that?” he said. “Maybe he thinks those guns were more his than mine, even if I did make a deal with his brother.”

“I don’t care what he thinks,” I said. “And I’ll tell you why, Tony. I get that guns are a part of my world. Part of my own family business, if you think about it. But if I just took a shitload of them off the street, and off you, well, hooray for me.”

“Just so you know?” Tony said. “We got a brand-new grudge going now, girl. So you take care watchin’ your back.”

“So it goes,” I said.

I hung up on him and walked back over to Richie. He asked to whom I’d been speaking.

“The usual,” I said. “Bad guys.”

“You’ll tell me which ones later?” he said.

“If you can somehow manage to charm the information out of me,” I said.

I smiled at him.

“Give me an honest answer,” I said. “Do you think I’m looking older?”

Richie smiled back.

“I’ll tell you when we get back home,” he said. “Provided you can charm that information out of me.”

I kissed him on the lips and then the three of us walked back over the bridge to River Street Place. I still didn’t think of it as home, and didn’t know if I ever would. But it would do for now.