Robert B. Parker’s Buried Secrets

Thirty-Seven

Elliott met the kid at Daisy’s.

The kid — it was impossible to think of him as a grown-up, though he had to be pushing thirty — probably would have preferred someplace with neon and cheap tables and greasy food. He probably got all his ideas about the business from Reservoir Dogs.

Elliott didn’t have any such illusions. He came up in the last days of the Irish Mob, when it was all falling apart and Whitey Bulger was ratting every one of his rivals out to the Feds. All those big, hard men squealing like pigs for whatever scraps of mercy the U.S. attorney would offer. Elliott was just a kid himself then, but that pretty much killed any illusions he had about honor among thieves. They tried to bring him inside one of the gangs, but everything was too chaotic, everyone too scared of the indictments coming down. So he did odd jobs for Mulvaney and the others who were too small or too smart to get caught in the net. It was like a paid internship in killing.

It turned out he was pretty good at it. There might have been other things he could have been good at, but killing people paid a lot more. He went freelance as soon as he was able to, expanding beyond the Irish, doing contracts for the Italians, Tony DeMarco and Morelli, anyone who’d pay him. He’d earned a reputation as someone clean and quiet.

Then Burton found him. He wasn’t sure how, but he suspected Mulvaney had something to do with it. It was a good relationship. Burton always got top dollar. Elliott got to travel, put more distance between himself and the work. He liked that. Killing in Boston felt a little too close to home. He eventually saved enough to slide into a comfortable retirement.

But he always kept a line open to the gangsters who knew his real name — if only because he wanted to make sure they never offered him up in exchange for a lighter sentence when they inevitably got caught doing something stupid.

He knew where they lived, too.

Almost forty years in this business, Elliott knew it was nothing glamorous or romantic or exciting. It was garbage work. Maintenance. Sewage disposal. It was hours and hours of boredom with a few moments of cold terror and pure adrenaline.

He really thought he was out of it.

He was happy to sit in a clean, well-lighted place and enjoy some good food instead of meeting in a dive bar or a strip club. If you were trying to look and act like a hit man, you were probably too stupid to actually be one.

The kid entered, and Elliott grudgingly gave him some credit: Without his leather jacket, he was dressed strictly in catalog wear from L.L.Bean. He could have been a young dad away from his family or a mid-level marketing exec on vacation. He didn’t look like a thug.

He waved and smiled at Elliott and headed over to his table like they were old friends. He didn’t try to play it cool or tough or sneaky, which were the easiest ways to get noticed.

Good. Maybe he wasn’t a complete idiot.

Elliott smiled and shook hands with Raney. Nobody paid any attention to them. A young guy meeting someone for a business breakfast. Or a nephew and his uncle. Or, God forbid, a son seeing his dad again.

They sat and looked over the menu.

“Everything looks pretty good here,” Elliott said.

“You talking about the food or the job?” Raney said, smirking.

Elliott held back a sigh. Of course, this kid couldn’t wait for breakfast first. He put the menu down.

“Look,” he said, “I’m glad you wanted to talk. I appreciate it. Don’t get me wrong. But I’m not leaving town.”

“I never said you should,” Raney said reasonably, pouring himself a cup of coffee from the decanter the waiter had left, along with a fresh mug. “I just don’t particularly want you getting in my way.”

Well, the kid had balls, Elliott would give him that. He liked his use of the word particularly.

“I don’t want you in my way, either,” Elliott said. “You seem smart enough to want to avoid that, too. Smart people try to stay out of my way.”

Raney smiled and leaned forward. “This is great coffee,” he said, holding the mug up with both hands, like he was just about to dive into it headfirst. “I mean it. Really good stuff.”

“Okay. You’re not scared of me. And I’m not scared of you. Glad we’ve got that established. What now?”

“I don’t know,” Raney said, shrugging. “I try not to do any jobs I’m not paid for. That’s why I thought we should talk.”

“Fair enough. Why are you here, then?”

Raney tilted his head toward the small, flat-screen TV playing over the diner’s counter. It was on CNN.

“I caught some pictures on TV. I was told they were destroyed. So I need to be here to make sure nothing else was left behind. You?”

“Same thing.”

As young as this kid was, Elliott was mildly surprised that Burton had made the connection and was still hiring people out. Elliott thought he would have retired a long time before he died.

But then Elliott thought of a guy he knew who used to repair cars at the dealership where he took his Mercedes for service. He got Alzheimer’s, early onset, and the only way anyone realized was when he began forgetting the names of his coworkers. He could still repair an engine, like he was doing it on autopilot.

Some skills don’t go away, Elliott thought. At least that’s what he hoped.

“So you’re not getting paid for this, either,” Raney said. “This is cleaning up your old mess. Just like me.”

“Well, there is that big pile of money Burton died on.”

Raney made a face. “You think they’re telling the truth about that? Come on. That’s got to be bullshit.”

“You think so? Why would the cops lie about that?”

“Bait.” Raney said it like it was obvious. “They’re trying to get people to come sniffing around, looking for leads. Looking for someone dumb enough to come try to claim it.”

Elliott considered that. He might have thought the same thing, if he didn’t know better.

“The money is real,” he said.

Raney sat back. “You’re sure?”

Elliott nodded.

“How the hell would you know?”

“I got a guy.”

“Oh, this is one of those old-school gangster things, huh? You got a guy. I bet you got a lot of guys. Sitting around the old folks’ home, telling stories...”

Elliott rolled his eyes. “Yeah, I know. A lot of those guys are full of shit. Not this time. This guy is the reason I’m here. He doesn’t screw around.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’d be happier if it wasn’t true.”

“Why’s that?”

“You think anyone just gets to walk away with that money? That much cash?”

Raney shrugged. “I would certainly be willing to give it a try.”

“The guy I was talking about? He wants it. Or at least his cut.”

“What? He didn’t do anything for it.”

“Welcome to the glamorous world of organized crime.”

“That’s horseshit. Why should either of us worry about what some ancient Italian—”

“Irish,” Elliott said.

Raney made a face. “—whatever — gangster asshole wants?”

“You want to spend the rest of your life looking over your shoulder? Waiting for someone to poison your coffee?”

“Come on. The Godfather is just an old movie on cable now. Guys like that don’t exist anymore.”

“They do,” Elliott said. “But now they hire guys like us. You going to tell me you’ve never done any work for any of them?”

Raney thought about that for a moment. “Well, that’s a good point.” He thought some more. “Why are you telling me all this?”

Finally, Elliott thought. A smart question. “Because the more I learn about this job, the more complicated it seems. You know where they’re keeping it?”

“The money? No. Where?”

Elliott smiled and pointed with his chin out the window, down the street.

Raney’s eyes lit up and his mouth broke into an involuntary grin. “The police station? Seriously?”

“Yup.”

“That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“It’s a lot of money. People get stupid.”

Raney looked away. Sat there quietly for a moment.

“I guess you’re saying we shouldn’t be stupid, either.”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying. You and me, if we race to the finish line, we’re only going to get in each other’s way. Or, worse, we do something to tip off this police chief, and we both get screwed.”

Raney looked skeptical again. “This place barely has traffic lights. How much of a problem can this cop be?”

Elliott did let out a sigh this time, because he thought it helped make his point. He took out his phone. “I thought kids these days knew how to use the Internet.” He tapped the screen and a series of news articles came up on Google. They were all about Jesse Stone.

He handed the phone over to Raney.

Raney tried to look bored and unimpressed at first. Then he frowned. His eyes narrowed. He kept tapping the screen, scrolling through more and more pages.

After three minutes of this, he put the phone face down on the table and slid it back toward Elliott.

“Well,” he said. “Shit.”

“Yeah. That’s what I thought.”

“This guy seems pretty good.”

“He does.”

Raney sat quietly again. Elliott did, too. He had time. He could let the kid get there on his own.

“Maybe we could work together,” Raney finally said.

“That’s what I was thinking, too,” Elliott said.

Raney leaned over the table. “All right,” he said. “But don’t think you’re the boss just because you remember when dinosaurs roamed the earth. Don’t tell me what to do.”

Elliott smiled and picked up his menu. “Wouldn’t dream of it,” he said. “Now. You want some breakfast? You’re still a growing boy.”

“Fuck you,” Raney said, but he was smiling.

“I’ll let you have chocolate milk.”

“Fuck you,” Raney said, and now he was laughing.

That’s right, Elliott thought. He was just a harmless, funny old man.

Until he wasn’t anymore.

But until that moment came, he could see some use for Raney.