Robert B. Parker’s Revenge Tour

Sixteen

There had been no further emails or phone calls or messages left at The Newbury for Melanie Joan, so she announced at breakfast the next morning that this needed to be a shopping day, and asked if I wanted to come along because Spike would probably be bored out of his mind on such a trip.

I told her that meant she didn’t know Spike nearly as well as she thought she did.

“Are you sure you don’t want to come along?” she said.

I told her then what had happened to my father.

“Holy hell,” she said. “It sounds like he might be in more danger than I am.”

“Last night he was,” I said.

“You have an awful lot going on all of a sudden,” she said.

I flexed my biceps as a way of showing off all the work with weights I had been doing at Henry Cimoli’s gym.

“Boston strong,” I said.

Joe Doyle’s law offices were in the International Trust Company Building, a landmark Beaux Arts structure on Milk Street built in the late nineteenth century, one that still had figures representing industry and commerce and fidelity carved into the stone between the windows on the second floor. All in all, the old place was still something to see.

Doyle’s own office was on the top floor. His assistant, an attractive but severe-looking woman with steel-gray hair, asked if I had an appointment after I showed her my card.

“Only in Samarra,” I said.

She stared up at me, trying to look both imperious and vaguely amused at the same time. Her nameplate read Mary Horgan.

“Excuse me?” she said.

“Appointment in Samarra,” I said. “The O’Hara novel about fate and inevitability.”

She smiled now. I smiled back. Mine was way better. I knew I could win a smile-off with her any day of the week.

“Perhaps you could call later and state your business and try to set up an appointment,” she said. “As unlikely as that is with Mr. Doyle’s schedule.”

“But I’m here now,” I said. “And I bet he’s here now. Don’t you think it would be counterintuitive to postpone fate this way?” I shrugged. “And inevitability?”

“You should leave,” she said.

“Nope,” I said. “Not leaving. Not calling later. Not happening.”

“Do I need to call security?” she said.

By now she’d stopped smiling at me.

“What you need to do,” I said, “is tell Joe that Phil Randall’s daughter would like to see him, just so we can stop fucking around here, Mary.”