Robert B. Parker’s Buried Secrets

Twenty-Four

Jesse and Healy pulled up outside the grand house in Beacon Hill and parked at a hydrant. Jesse hoped the cherry lights and the big Paradise Police Department markings on the car would keep it from being towed, but you never knew with Boston parking enforcement. Sometimes he thought they’d tow the president’s limo if it was parked in the wrong spot.

The house was two stories, nestled between a couple townhomes just like it, and was probably worth ten or twelve million dollars. It was impressive what even a small-time mobster could afford.

Healy got out of the car and looked at the house, checking the address. “Long way from Southie,” he said. “Why don’t cops ever retire in places like this?”

He and Jesse had been friends since Jesse came to Paradise. Healy used to be the head of the State Homicide Division before Lundquist, and they’d worked cases together for a long time. Healy had worked even more cases before that, a lot of them dealing with organized crime. He’d seen bodies pile up in the wars between the remnants of the Irish gangs and the Italians. He knew most of the people responsible for the deaths, even if he couldn’t necessarily prove it.

He said he didn’t miss the job, that he never wanted to be pulled out of bed at three in the morning again to fish a floating corpse out of a river.

But when Jesse called, Healy almost always put down what he was doing and showed up to help.

This time, Lundquist had been right: All Jesse had to do was say the name Mulvaney and Healy started laughing. “Oh, yeah,” he said. “I want in on this one.”

So now they were at Mulvaney’s very nice townhome.

Jesse and Healy walked up the steps. Jesse knocked on the door.

A woman in a nurse’s uniform answered. She was younger than Jesse expected, and she filled the uniform very well. Especially the top.

“Yes?” she said, looking blankly between Healy and Jesse.

“Police,” Jesse said, showing his shield. “We were hoping to speak to Charles Mulvaney.”

It was like shutters went down behind her eyes. Her slight smile turned into a scowl. “I’m not sure he’ll want to see you,” she said.

Healy smiled as if she’d invited them in for coffee. “Oh, I think Mr. Mulvaney will want to talk to us,” he said. “Tell him we’re here about his nephew.”

Her scowl deepened, which Jesse didn’t think was possible. She closed the door and left them waiting there.

After five minutes, the door opened again. This time, a squat man in a tracksuit stood in front of them.

“You the cops?”

Healy looked at Jesse in his hat and jacket, both with the official seal and Paradise PD on them. Then he looked back at the Explorer, clearly visible from where they were standing, with its lights and markings. “I swear, Jesse, I dealt with a smarter breed of criminal, I really did.”

The squat man in the tracksuit didn’t appear to take offense or, really, even understand what Healy was saying. He just stared back at them.

“Yes,” Jesse said. “We’re the cops.”

He nodded, and turned and walked into the house, waving for them to follow.

Jesse and Healy walked after him.

The inside of the house was not as nice as the neighborhood’s real estate prices would suggest. The floor was scuffed and in need of a good cleaning, and the furniture seemed like it had been shipped direct from the 1980s. There were family photos on a hallway table with a thick layer of dust.

But everything inside the place had once cost a lot of money. If nothing was old enough to qualify as an antique yet, it still wasn’t thrift-store material, either.

The nurse still glared at them from a couch in the living room. The man in the tracksuit walked past her without a word. Jesse and Healy followed, though Jesse wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to turn his back on her.

Tracksuit escorted them into a room that could have been a den or an office once, but now appeared to be a part-time hospital room. There was an adjustable bed, a bank of equipment, a set of plastic drawers filled with medical supplies.

In a wheelchair, staring at them, sat an old man. White hair, paper-thin skin laced with blue veins, an oxygen tube hooked into his nose.

But he sat up ramrod straight. He grinned when they entered the room, showing a row of bright white teeth.

Tracksuit took a position by the door.

“Charles Mulvaney?” Jesse asked.

“The fuck did you expect?” the old man said. “You came to see me, didn’t you?”

Jesse flipped out his badge and credentials again. “Jesse Stone. Paradise PD. We wanted to ask you a couple questions about your nephew.”

Mulvaney didn’t look at Jesse or his badge.

“I don’t know you,” he said, turning to Jesse. “But I know Paradise. The fuck is a meter maid like you doing bothering me?”

“As I said, we want to talk to you about your nephew. Matthew Peebles.”

Mulvaney made a face. “He’s not my nephew. He’s my sister’s grandkid. Fucking useless. What did he do now?”

“He burned down a house in Paradise.”

“On purpose?”

“He threw a bottle full of gasoline at it, so, yeah, I’d say so,” Jesse said.

“Well, with that kid, you never know. Wouldn’t be surprised if he torched a place by accident. What’s it got to do with me?”

“He says he went out to Paradise to check on a friend of yours. Phil Burton. He said you ask him to look in on Burton every few weeks.”

“Phil Burton? Doesn’t ring any bells. But I’m an old man, like your pal here said. I forget things.”

“Weird,” Healy said. “You called your nephew a few hours before it happened.”

A little tic of irritation moved across Mulvaney’s face. Then he shrugged. “Did I?”

“Says so right on his phone. You might not be up on the technology these days, but it keeps all the calls on a list.”

“Oh, yeah,” Mulvaney said, not putting much effort into pretending to remember. “He’d called me for money. I was calling him to tell him to fuck off.”

“You’re not a close family, then?” Jesse said.

“Wait, wait, something’s coming back to me,” he said, rubbing his chin. He stared intently at Healy. “I know you, don’t I? Healy, wasn’t it?”

“Good memory for a guy your age,” Healy said.

“You were Boston PD — no, wait, you were State Police.”

“That’s right.”

“Can’t believe you’re still working. Didn’t you put anything away for retirement?”

“I did,” Healy said. “Sometimes I like to visit elderly crooks as a public service.”

Mulvaney laughed at that. It sounded like the last gasp of a drowning man.

“I’m no crook. Just a sad old man with an idiot nephew. Hope you put him away for a while. Getting ass-raped in prison might help him build a little character.”

Healy laughed like that was hilarious. Then he unleashed a smile as sharp as a knife as he said to Mulvaney, “Did that work for you?”

Mulvaney froze. Jesse watched him carefully, wondering how he’d react.

For a split second, the doddering old man dropped away. He glared at Healy, and someone else — someone colder, more lethal — looked out from behind his eyes.

“You musta been a terrible cop,” he said after a long moment.

Healy kept grinning, not even slightly offended. “Why would you say that?”

“ ’Cause if you were any good at your job you probably would’ve been put in a ditch somewhere.”

“Maybe I was good enough to avoid that.”

Mulvaney smiled, showing those pearly white dentures again. “You think you still are?”

Jesse kept his eyes on Mulvaney carefully during the whole exchange. Taking notes inside his head. Measuring the man.

Mulvaney turned, as if he felt the weight of Jesse’s stare on him. He shrank a little in his chair. His hands shook. He yawned, a harmless old crank again, barely capable of gumming his mush at breakfast.

“Look. I’m tired. I’m sick. And if you were gonna bust me for anything, it would’ve been back when I was actually doing something. Now I’m gonna get back in bed. And the two of you are gonna get the hell out of my house.”

He pressed a button on a lanyard around his neck. The door opened and the nurse came in and began pulling down the sheets on the hospital bed, while Mulvaney buzzed his electric wheelchair into position beside it.

“It’s time for you to leave,” the nurse said to Jesse and Healy in the same tone you’d use to tell someone you hoped they’d die of cancer.

“We were just going,” Jesse said.

The nurse didn’t respond, busy helping Mulvaney into the bed. He looked like a stack of dried kindling wrapped in silk pajamas. He settled back onto thousand-thread-count sheets and nodded at Jesse and Healy.

“Thanks for dropping by, gentlemen,” he said. “Sure livened up my morning.”

Jesse didn’t move. “What did Phil Burton do for you, Mr. Mulvaney?” he asked. “You don’t seem like the type to do favors for anyone out of the goodness of your heart. So why did you send your nephew to keep tabs on him?”

Mulvaney leaned his head back on the pillow.

“You’ll die wondering, cop,” he said, and smiled, and closed his eyes.