Robert B. Parker’s Revenge Tour

One

“I don’t know why they just couldn’t leave well enough alone,” Phil Randall said to me.

“Dad,” I said, “I’m pretty sure you said the same thing when they broke up the phone company.”

We were seated at a window table in The Street Bar at The Newbury, which had been the old Ritz before it became the Taj. Then one of the big hotel chains had bought the property and closed it down for a couple years and done a renovation that I was certain had cost more than Bill Gates’s divorce. When I’d learned the dollar figures on both of them, I’d idly wondered how my life would have turned out if I’d married one of those men, and not a child of the Boston Mob.

We were drinking martinis just because it seemed to be the thing to do. The quality of the martinis at The Street Bar hadn’t improved as much as the condition of the hotel, which really had needed one of those extreme makeovers. But the quality of the martinis hadn’t diminished, either. My father had told them to use Beluga Gold, informing me as he often did that you only live once.

“Don’t get me started on phones,” he said. “I liked the world a lot better when the only things I needed when I left the house were a gun and badge, and not an iPhone ninety-nine.”

He had been one of the best and most decorated detectives in the history of the Boston Police Department. And still thought of himself as a cop. And, bless his heart, always would.

“Think you might be slightly off on your math there,” I said. “I think we’re only working on the iPhone fifty at this point.”

“I am making a larger point about the modern world,” he said.

“As you so often do.”

“Let me tell you another thing about cell phones,” he said, shaking his head disgustedly. “Text messaging is the devil’s handiwork.”

I grinned at him, an almost permanent condition for me when in his presence. “How do you feel about apps?”

“App this,” my father said.

He drank. I drank. It was the height of the cocktail hour, but I knew the bartender from when the place was still the Taj. So we had scored the best of the handful of window tables in the place. Every other table was occupied. So were the stools at the bar, on the other side of the room, to your left as you walked in from a lobby far more ornate than it had been before. No more masks. No more social distancing. Somehow it made everything in a wonderful old capital of the Back Bay feel new again, which is exactly what the owners of The Newbury had been shooting for, on a rather grand scale. I hadn’t priced out the rooms, but suspected that before booking one I would have had to sell jewelry if I wanted the weekend package.

“And I frankly don’t understand why they had to move the entrance to the hotel around the corner,” Phil Randall said.

“If they hadn’t,” I said, “we’d be sitting at The Arlington.”

“Cute,” he said.

“You’ve always thought so.”

“You better believe it, kid,” he said.

We raised our glasses at the same moment. He smiled at me. His smile was either elfin or impish, I’d never been able to decide which best described him. Truth was, the cute one was him.

“At least the view from here remains the same,” he said, staring across Arlington at the Public Garden.

“Well,” I said, “until they build that cell tower they’re thinking of building next to the statue of George Washington.”

“Is that supposed to be funny?”

I said, “Apparently not.”

He wore a tweed Brooks Brothers jacket and a button-down blue shirt with the Brooks roll to the collar and a bright red silk tie and pocket square to match the tie. He smelled of bay rum. He was getting older; it was happening more quickly than I would have wished. Just not older to me.

I noticed him looking past me now at the entrance to the bar, frowning, as if suddenly putting his cop eyes to use.

“What?” I said, swiveling my head around.

“Nothing,” he said. “Just thought I saw someone I know.”

“Friend or foe?” I said.

“Little bit of both,” he said, then dismissed the subject with a wave of his hand. “But then my vision isn’t what it used to be.”

“Like hell it’s not,” I said.

And we drank. I was so happy to be at this table, in this room, with him. I wasn’t all that keen on the male species these days. But Phil Randall was a notable exception. As was Spike.

It was as if my father were reading my mind.

“How’s Richie?” he said.

Richie Burke. Ex-husband.

“We had dinner the other night,” I said. “He wants to start dating again.”

“Good!” my father said.

“I told him no.”

“Why would you do something as shortsighted as that?”

“Because I don’t want for us to get back together,” I said. “At least not in that way. And it’s time for me to meet somebody new.”

“Well,” he said, “a father can hope.”

“Despite half a lifetime trying to put his father in jail,” I said.

Desmond Burke. It was silly to think of him as being the head of the Irish Mob in Boston. At this point in time, he was the Irish Mob in Boston.

“Don’t take this the wrong way,” Phil Randall said, “but you aren’t getting any younger.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “Is there a right way for a girl to take that?”

I rose out of my chair just enough and leaned across the table to kiss him on top of his head. Yup, I thought. Definitely bay rum.

“I just think you need a man in your life,” he said.

“Okay,” I said, “that’s it, you’re under arrest, in the name of modern women everywhere.”

He laughed. I laughed. As always, he made me feel that everything was going to be all right, whatever happened to be going on in my life.

“I just remembered,” he said, “you told me you had something you wanted to tell me about a new client.”

“As a matter of fact, I do,” I said. “A new old one. Like the hotel.”

“And who might that be?”

“Melanie Joan Hall,” I said.

“Your landlord?”

“I think she prefers best-selling, world-famous author,” I said.

“Isn’t she the one who nearly got my baby girl killed that time?”

“One and the same.”

“So what’s the good news?” my father said.