Robert B. Parker’s Blood Feud

Eight

For the past six months Richie had been living in an apartment on Salem Street in the North End.

He hadn’t stayed in one place for very long since our divorce, and had even moved once while still married to Kathryn. After they divorced, she kept their town house in Brookline and Richie had moved to Salem Street, at least partly to be closer to the saloon. The apartment was meticulously neat and sparsely furnished, and so fit him completely. The only photographs were of me and the two Rosies. There was one ancient black-and-white of his late mother, Theresa Clancy Burke.

There was a large living room, a large master bedroom, a smaller bedroom that served as Richie’s office. When I’d arrived I’d seen a car parked across the street, and knew that at least two of Desmond Burke’s men were inside.

I didn’t think anyone would make a move on Richie here, or ever again, for that matter. But Desmond Burke hadn’t survived as long as he had in the world he inhabited without being an extremely careful man.

Richie didn’t eat much of the food Spike had sent over, saying he wasn’t as hungry as he’d originally thought. As much as he said he’d slept across the day, he still looked and sounded tired.

“Tell Spike thanks, though,” he said. “And that the food didn’t suck.”

“A review like that will probably make him want to kiss you,” I said.

“Then maybe you better tell him that I thought it did suck,” Richie said. “Can’t take any chances.”

We were sipping a pinot noir from Willamette Valley that he’d requested. I’d asked if that was wise, given the pain meds he was taking. Richie said that if I wouldn’t squeal to the doctors, he was willing to risk it.

He was wearing a plain gray pocketed T-shirt and faded jeans, and was barefoot. There was more beard to him than usual, which meant he hadn’t seen fit to shave a second time today. We were next to each other on a couch I’d helped him pick out when he’d moved in. There was a Red Sox game, muted, on the big screen mounted on the wall across from us. I think he had the game on only for his own twisted amusement. We had many things in common, but he knew that baseball wasn’t one of them. He just didn’t think my indifference toward baseball was sick and depraved as Spike did.

“I think we can agree,” Richie said, “that it was a shot that might of gone through me but was intended to go across my father’s bow.”

“We can,” I said. “We think so, your family thinks so, Spike thinks so, as do the cops.”

He grinned.

“You and Dad,” he said, “chopping it up at Durty Nelly’s. Would you mind terribly if I asked you to live-stream it next time?”

“I know I probably set a low bar where he’s concerned,” I said, “but it wasn’t as awkward as I thought it might be.”

“He never showed it very much,” Richie said, “but he was always quite fond of you, even if you are Phil Randall’s kid.”

“I was looking through our wedding album before I went to Spike’s,” I said. “In the few pictures your father and my father were in together, they each looked like somebody had just pulled a knife on the two of them.”

“I don’t believe they’ve spoken since,” Richie said.

“Oddly enough,” I said, “they might be able to help each other on this.”

“Might, but won’t,” he said. “The last person my father wants involved is you. Second-to-last would be Phil.”

“Your father,” I said, “has to understand that this isn’t just about him, or what he wants.”

“Why don’t you tell him that?” Richie said.

He leaned forward, grimacing slightly, and reached for the bottle on the coffee table and poured each of us more wine. As he did, I looked past him and saw the painting of mine on the wall behind us, a sailboat in Boston Harbor that was one of my favorites.

“I might have to uncover secrets,” I said to Richie.

“Well, he’ll love that, won’t he?”

“You know the writer Gabriel García Márquez?” I said.

“As a matter of fact I do,” Richie said.

It shouldn’t have surprised me. As much as I knew about him and we knew about each other, I was constantly making new discoveries.

I said, “He once wrote that we all have public lives, and private lives, and secret lives. I have this feeling that the answers we’re looking for might come out of Desmond’s secret life.”

“Finding out secrets,” Richie said. “Your best thing.” He smiled. “Well, maybe not your best thing.”

There was no indication that anything had changed in the quiet of the room, or the air between us. But it had, suddenly, the way it often did. We both sensed it. I turned so I was facing him more directly. I put my glass down. He did the same.

“I have a secret,” he said.

“I don’t think it would take a great detective to figure out what kind.”

“I’m thinking of going public with it,” Richie said.

“I’ll bet you are,” I said.

He stayed where he was and let me come to him. I fitted myself carefully against his left side. He put his arm around me. I leaned up and leaned in to him and kissed him. The kiss lasted a long time. The force of it seemed to have surprised us both when we finally pulled out of it.

“Are you sure you’re up to this?” I said.

Richie brushed hair out of my eyes and gently kissed me on the forehead.

“You know what they say,” he said. “What doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger.”