Robert B. Parker’s Revenge Tour

Twenty-Three

Lee Farrell and Phil Randall were standing in front of BPD headquarters at Schroeder Plaza, the imposing building I still thought of as new but really wasn’t by now, when I pulled up. I parked at a hydrant. What were they going to do, arrest the whole family?

Lee skipped the preliminaries.

“He broke Joe Doyle’s nose and Doyle had him arrested for misdemeanor battery,” Lee said.

“I can tell it myself,” my father said.

“So tell it.”

“Farrell here already did,” Phil Randall said. “He was asking for it and I gave it to him and then he had me arrested. Me.”

“Why don’t we all walk this off?” Lee said.

Lee was well turned out, as always. Lightweight gray summer suit with faint pinstripes, white shirt, no tie. He had lost some weight lately, but no muscle, at least not as far as I could tell. Before Spike had started seeing the morning TV dude, I had tried once more, in vain, to fix him up with Lee.

“Amazing,” Lee had said at the time, “that not all attractive single gay guys are automatically attracted to each other, practically on sight. What are the odds?”

Now my father said, “I don’t need to walk anything off. I’m fine. When I wasn’t fine is when the bastard got a rise out of me.”

We were walking away from headquarters.

“Got a rise out of you in what way, if you don’t mind me asking,” I said.

“He called me a dirty cop,” my father said. “When I was a kid, it would have been like calling me some kind of...”

He managed to stop himself, smiling sheepishly at Lee Farrell as he did.

“Oh, God,” Lee said, “you don’t mean calling you some kind of... queer, do you, Phil?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Didn’t have to,” Lee said, grinning.

According to my father, he’d just finished an early lunch with one of his old partners, Tommy Odorizzi, at one of their favorite lunch places, Max and Leo’s in Newton. When he walked around the corner to where he’d parked the car he was renting while his sporty Jetta was being repaired, Doyle was standing there, leaning against the front fender.

“Was he alone?” I said.

My father said, “I could see his SUV on the other side of the street, and could make out his goons in the front seat.”

My father asked Doyle what he wanted. Doyle said he wanted to talk. Dad told him they had nothing further to talk about, unless he’d come to Newton to tell him that he was ready to cut the shit. Then Doyle said that maybe he was talking to the wrong member of the family, now that the great Phil Randall was sending his bitch daughter to fight his battles.

“I let that one go,” my father said. “The ‘bitch’ part.”

“Hey,” I said, “I’ve been called worse.”

“Same,” Lee said.

The conversation predictably devolved from there, according to Phil Randall, Doyle telling him, with great relish, that before long the whole city would know what a dirty cop he was, and always had been.

It was at that point, according to my father, that Doyle had shoved him.

“Anybody witness the shove?” I said.

“Yeah. The aforementioned goons.”

Doyle, who had a lot of size and a lot of weight on my father, then shoved him again, harder this time, laughing as he did, asking where I was when Dad really needed me.

“Then this guy tells me he hoped I’d never have to experience the death of a child the way he had,” my father said, “and I didn’t have to ask him what he meant by that because his meaning was as plain as the big nose on his face.”

At that point, Phil Randall said, he stepped inside Doyle and threw the first punch he could remember throwing in years.

“Just out of curiosity,” I said. “How did that feel?”

“Not helpful,” Lee said.

“It felt so good,” my father said, “that I can’t properly describe it in front of my daughter, at least not with polite language.”

“So you ended up at headquarters for a playground beef?” I said. “At your age.”

“He had it coming.”

“Nevertheless.”

“Doyle called somebody he knew, one who owed him a favor,” my father said, “and before I knew it, I was in a car on my way downtown and getting perp-walked into the building. Or at least that’s the way it felt to me.”

“Then I got a call,” Lee said, “because Doyle made sure that the video of your dad hauling off and slugging him went viral almost immediately.” He started to reach inside his jacket for his phone. “Wanna see?”

“Hard pass,” I said.

“The bastard wasn’t as interested in having me arrested as he was having me embarrassed,” my father said.

“This can’t happen again,” I said.

“I’m not going to turn into some kind of shut-in,” my father said. “Hiding in the house is just as bad as running away.”

“I’ve got a better idea,” I said.

Lee had told me a few days before that he was about to have some minor construction done on his condominium, maybe a week’s worth, and was about to take a week off and Airbnb while it was. He called it a staycation. I told him to never use that word in my presence ever again. But on my way to Schroeder Plaza, I ran my idea past him while we were on the phone.

Now I ran it past Phil Randall.

“I told Lee he could stay with you,” I said to my father.

“Not happening,” my father said.

“So happening,” I said.

We were in a bit of a playground stare-down of our own until Lee slapped my father on the back and said, “Come on, roomie, it’ll be fun!”

“I don’t need a babysitter,” Phil Randall said, addressing both of us.

We had turned around and were walking by then, stopping for traffic at the corner of Ruggles and Tremont.

“Think of it more as a bonding experience,” Lee said. “And a chance to expand your sensibilities. And save me some money.”

“Don’t worry about my sensibilities,” my father said. “They’re just fine.”

“Then it’s settled,” I said.

“What’s settled?” Phil Randall said.

Lee winked at me.

“Wait till I tell the rest of the guys in Homicide that Phil Randall and I are living together,” Lee said.

“Blow it out your ass,” Phil Randall said.

“Will you listen to the mouth on him,” I said.

“That’s usually my line, missy,” my father said.

What he didn’t say was no.