Robert B. Parker’s Buried Secrets

Forty-Five

Mulvaney woke up, although it was hard to say he’d ever really been asleep. Most of his nights passed in a kind of twilight now, where eventually the world grew dim but he never really rested. He’d worked his whole life to be a survivor, and he’d put plenty of other people in the ground to do it, but sometimes he wondered why he’d bothered living so long. He couldn’t remember the last time his body didn’t hurt or he’d been able to take a steady piss.

Stacy, his nurse, stood by the door of his room. He appreciated her. He had to admit he’d hired her only because she was the best-looking of the women the agency had sent over, but she’d turned out to be good at her job and fiercely loyal. Her dad, as it turned out, had grown up in one of the neighborhoods Mulvaney had helped run for the organization, way back when. Her dad told her that in those days, everyone knew their place. They looked out for each other. The gangs kept everything in order.

At least until the Feds began rounding up everyone and it all went to hell.

Mulvaney was smart and quick and always willing to make a deal. He turned in the people bigger than him, gave the cops and the Feds just enough to eliminate his competition, and so he managed to stay on the outside of a jail cell for most of his career. (Except for one fall for receiving stolen goods when he was just a kid. Which that prick Healy had known about, of course. He’d have to do something about that retired cop when all this was over.)

There were people who tried to shop Mulvaney, too, but that was why he had people like Burton. Burton would hire someone who’d pop the bastard in the head, and he’d learn the details only when he read them in the paper. Mulvaney subcontracted his dirty work, and nobody in town would know about it. No trails ever led back to him.

Until now.

Who knew Burton was sitting on a whole house full of evidence? Who would have believed that bastard would be able to finger him even after death? Now he was scrambling to keep that tourist-town cop from putting him in a cell for the remainder of his days. And the tools he had weren’t enough. He was supposed to be retired, for Christ’s sake.

Stacy waited for him to get his bearings. He always needed a little time upon waking. More and more each morning, it seemed.

“What is it?” he said.

“There’s a guy here to see you.”

“What? What guy?”

“I don’t know. He just said he was the one who killed your nephew.”

A sudden spurt of fear replaced Mulvaney’s anger. He thought of asking Stacy to get her gun. It was a .38 Special she kept in the sideboard, an untraceable old model Mulvaney had given her when he decided he could trust her. He still had a cache of weapons with no serial numbers stashed in the house. You never knew when you’d need a gun that couldn’t come back to you.

But no, someone coming to kill him wouldn’t announce himself at the front door.

“Are you all right?” Stacy asked. “Your blood pressure okay?”

She actually was a good nurse, he was reminded. “Gimme my phone,” he said. “I need to make a call.”

She put the phone in his hand and he squinted through his thick glasses at the screen. He dialed the number from memory. He could still do that, at least.

“Get your ass over to my place now,” he told Elliott. “Somebody did your job for you.”

The cop — Tate — didn’t seem at all worried.

That worried Elliott.

Raney and Elliott had seen the whole thing from the front seat of Elliott’s rental, from a safe distance.

The day before, Mulvaney had called Elliott on the burner, telling him about the plan to use the lawyer to get his nephew out of jail. He was instructed to pick Peebles up in Boston, and then, after a brief conference to find out what he’d said to the cops, deal with him. Elliott figured Raney could come along for the ride, since they were working together now. He could deal with the lawyer, if it came to that.

But instead, they watched as the cop rolled up and shot Peebles as soon as he got out of the car. Then he looked like he was about to do the same to the lawyer.

“Wow,” Raney said.

“Yeah,” Elliott said. “Did not see that coming.”

That’s when they heard the sirens in the distance, very close and getting closer.

“We should—” Raney said.

“Already gone,” Elliott had said, putting the car in gear and steering away.

They found a place to park and wait. They didn’t know what to do. They decided to wait to hear from Mulvaney.

Then he’d called and summoned them to Boston, where the cop who’d killed Peebles was waiting for them in the living room. Mulvaney’s tame thug watched him. So did the nurse. The nurse, frankly, looked meaner.

The cop seemed weirdly glad to see them. “You guys work for Mulvaney?” he’d asked.

Raney ignored the question. So did Elliott. He didn’t know what was going on, so he stayed quiet. It was a strategy that had kept him alive so far.

This was Mulvaney’s problem, Elliott decided. Let him figure it out.

Maybe they’d take the cop out back and put one in his brain. Killing a cop was always a hurricane of blowback, but he’d done it before. He could do it again.

But Elliot would have felt better if the cop would stop smiling all the time. Like he was exactly where he wanted to be.

It took Mulvaney a while to get shaved and dressed, but he eventually steered his electric wheelchair into the parlor, where Elliott waited with the cop, still in uniform, and another kid. Both of them looked too young to Mulvaney, children playing dress-up. Everyone was younger than he was now.

Even Elliott looked almost the same as he had the last time they’d seen each other more than twenty years ago. Hair gone gray, but still wound up like a coiled spring, and those creepy dead, cold eyes. He seemed to barely have aged, while Mulvaney felt like he was teetering on the edge of the grave every day. He was reminded why he had never liked Elliott.

“Who’s he?” Mulvaney asked, pointing to the new kid.

“Raney,” Elliott said. “Another one of Burton’s subcontractors.”

The kid looked mildly annoyed. “Hey. Tell the world, why don’t you.”

Elliott gave him a face. “We’re way past that now.”

Raney shrugged, conceding the point.

“Huh,” Mulvaney said, looking at him. “Well, the more the merrier, I suppose. Christ.”

He looked at the cop, who sat in one of his leather club chairs, purchased a long time ago by his dead wife to class up the room. The cop had his feet on the coffee table.

He stood up quickly and offered his hand like he was a salesman.

“Mr. Mulvaney. I’m Derek Tate. Pleasure to meet you.”

Mulvaney looked at the hand like it was a dead rat on a stick. “Are you serious?” he asked. “Why the hell are you here?”

The cop’s smile only grew wider. “Because I did you a favor. I killed the one guy who can connect you to the Burton house and everything left from it.”

“I thought you were a cop.”

“Well, I’m in the process of changing careers,” Tate said. “I think I can help you out.”

Unbelievable, Mulvaney thought. He looked at Elliott. “You searched him for a wire, right?”

Elliott nodded.

Mulvaney still looked at the door like he expected a squad of cops to bust it down at any second. Then he turned back to Tate.

“Explain,” he said. “Quickly.”

“That was on the house,” Tate said. “Consider it an audition. Or a demonstration.”

“For what?”

“I want to work with you.”

Mulvaney laughed. Well. He wheezed. Laughing, like sleeping, was hit or miss for him these days. “You want to work for me?”

“With you,” Tate said. “Not for you. I can make all your other problems go away. I can get you the money that was in the house. And all I want is half.”

This time, Mulvaney got out a real laugh. “How about a pony? Or a blowjob? You’re about as likely to get either one of those as you are the money. And as for my problems, the only problem I’ve got right now is you standing there, wasting my time.”

Mulvaney pressed the joystick on his chair and began rotating away from Tate. “We’re done here,” he said to Elliott. “Get him out of my sight.”

“I can get you into the police station,” Tate said.

Mulvaney rotated back to look at him again.

“I know the codes to the keypads to enter the cells. I know the system. I can shut off the alarm and the cameras. I know where the only remaining evidence from Burton’s house is kept.”

Mulvaney considered Tate for a moment.

“And I know when Jesse Stone will be covering the night shift again,” Tate said. “Alone.”

Ah. There was the reason. He hated Stone. Mulvaney could see it. Stone seemed to be the kind of guy who made enemies easily.

“So why come to me? Why not just grab the money and run?”

“Because I know you’d come after me. Or you’d send someone. You think that money belongs to you.”

“It does belong to me.”

“There you go. That’s why you’ve told every thug on the East Coast about it,” Tate said. “But if you let me get it — if you sign off on this — I don’t have to spend every day looking behind me.”

Mulvaney looked at Elliott, who shrugged. Could go either way.

“I could have my friends here get that information out of you.”

“I promise you,” Tate said. “They would not.”

Mulvaney saw something hard there, just below the surface. This guy wasn’t exactly smart. But he was willing. He’d killed Mulvaney’s idiot nephew, and then he’d come looking for a way to make it pay.

Mulvaney could use that.

“You really want to be a bad guy, don’t you?” he said.

Tate smiled. “I prefer to think of it as going into business for myself.”

“Why?”

“I tried to do the right thing. I tried to be a cop. Stone wouldn’t let me.”

Mulvaney thought it over a little more. It made things simpler.

“All right,” he said. “But you’re not getting fifty percent.”

“Hey, if you take out Jesse Stone, everything else is pure profit.”

“Sure. Why not.” Mulvaney put out his own hand, and Tate shook it.

He gave Elliott a look over the cop’s shoulder.

Elliott nodded slightly. They’d just have to kill the cop later. But until then, he could be useful.

“Welcome aboard,” Mulvaney said.

Tate smiled and shook the old man’s hand again. He knew they’d try to screw him. He knew they looked down on him. Like Jesse Stone, they didn’t know who they were dealing with.

He felt the red mist descend like it always did when someone underestimated him or condescended to him.

But for the first time that he could remember, he felt in control. Like he was using his anger instead of letting it drive him over the edge.

Because he’d finally found the people who would let him do whatever he wanted to do, whenever he wanted to do it.

Before, he thought that meant being a cop. Now he knew better. He was right where he belonged.

It was, honestly, the best Tate had ever felt in his life.