Robert B. Parker’s Revenge Tour

Twenty-Nine

“You broke up with Jesse,” Vinnie Morris said.

We were having coffee in the North End, an outdoor table at Caffe Lil Italy. It was a few blocks away from Richie Burke’s saloon, which was the true love of Richie’s life after his son, Richard. And me, he constantly pointed out. I’d mentioned once that I was happy just to be on the medal stand.

“Why do you persist in saying the saloon is ahead of you?” Richie had said.

“I’m a realist,” I’d said, “even though I prefer thinking of myself as a dreamer.”

“Jesse broke up with me,” I said now to Vinnie.

“Not what he says.”

“Doesn’t matter,” I said. “He’s with Rita Fiore now.”

“Man needs a hobby,” Vinnie said.

He was sipping an espresso, drawing the process out, as if that would make him forget there was hardly anything in his cup. I’d never gotten the espresso thing, even at places like this that bragged about being famous for their espresso. It had always tasted to me like yesterday’s coffee, at least until I started adding sugar, which espresso lovers viewed as some sort of felony.

I shared all that with Vinnie.

“You ask me here to share your fascinating theories on coffee beans?” he said.

“Just making conversation,” I said.

“Always a passion of mine,” Vinnie said.

“I’m trying to get you to change your mind about going off on another job.”

“Told you I would if I could, but I can’t once I give the guy my word,” Vinnie said.

I couldn’t remember him looking like anything other than a sharp dresser, and even when he was saving my life one time, he still brought the word natty to mind. Today was no exception. Light blue, windowpane sports jacket. White linen shirt. When he leaned back and crossed his legs after smoothing out his slacks, I saw that his shoes were the color of butterscotch. His mannerisms, as always, were as precise as a neurosurgeon’s. If there were best-dressed lists for guys who could still shoot the numbers off a credit card, Vinnie would be on it every year.

The lines of his jacket were so perfect I wondered where he kept his gun.

“Gimme the full story,” he said. “Maybe I can give you a few suggestions about how to handle what you got going on here before I split.”

“It’s complicated,” I said.

“What isn’t with you?” he said.

It sometimes came out as “wit” you.

“You sound like my therapist,” I said.

“Bet Susan’s got suggestions, too,” he said. “I sometimes think she could straighten out the Celtics.”

He knew Susan Silverman.

“No shit,” I said.

Being a trained detective, I might have detected a hint of a smile.

I told him everything that was going on. Both fronts. My father and Melanie Joan. Telling it with an organized timeline, from Melanie Joan hiring me, through Richard Gross’s death, to the message that came with Chapter Two. Vinnie took it all in, completely impassive, not interrupting. He and Frank Belson were on the opposite side of most things. I knew Vinnie had indeed whacked a lot of people in his life. But he and Belson had something in common. Neither one missed very much. Or needed things repeated.

“You and Spike can handle this, with maybe one more person you can trust to fill in,” Vinnie said. “You can put a lot on that guy.”

He was still working on his espresso. How was that possible?

“Toughest gay guy I ever met,” Vinnie continued.

“Pretty sure you don’t need the word gay,” I said.

Vinnie raised an eyebrow.

“He turn?” he said.

“I meant he’s the toughest guy either one of us has ever met,” I said.

“Present company excluded,” he said. “And a couple of other guys I know.”

“Well,” I said, grinning. “It’s nice for me to be in the conversation.”

“I meant me.”

“I know,” I said.

“Can’t you and Spike tag team on Melanie Joan like you been doing?” he said. “I mean, for as long as it takes.”

“Yeah,” I said. “But just not this week. I need to make a trip of my own to upstate New York, where Melanie Joan is from, and try to fill in some gaps on her younger and more vulnerable years.”

“Gatsby,” Vinnie said. “Younger and more vulnerable.”

I raised my eyes. Melanie Joan wasn’t the only one who could quote Gatsby.

He shrugged again. “There’s a lot of layers to me.”

“Let me know if you finish your thing in Texas early,” I said. “I’ll probably still need you the way my thing is going. And so you know? Melanie Joan would be the one paying.”

“Wouldn’t be doing it for her,” he said. “No matter how much she paid me. Be doing it for you.”

He flicked something off the lapel of his jacket.

“You want my opinion on this shit before I go?” he said.

We both knew it was a rhetorical question.

“This broad must have done it to make somebody come after her this hard,” he said.

“There’s easier ways to kill people than cutting their throat,” I said.

Vinnie made a gun with his right hand. “Bang,” he said. “You’re dead.”

“Somebody wants to scare her to death,” I said.

“Maybe before they go for the real thing,” he said.

“Something out of her past,” I said, “and somebody.”

“Who says she took something didn’t belong to her.”

“But there’s still been no money demand,” I said.

“Maybe there ain’t gonna be one,” Vinnie said. “Maybe this never had nothing to do with money.”

He called for the check. I told him it was on me. He just slowly shook his head and signed the check when it came. I looked across the table. His penmanship was as neat as a Catholic school student’s.

“Whoever this person is, it’s some sort of wingnut,” he said. “So you need to keep in mind that if he came for Gross as a way of getting to her, he can come for you, too. Like the guy did that other time I had to shoot.”

Bobby Toms. Illegitimate son of Richie’s Uncle Felix. And killer. Toms had thought Desmond Burke was his father, which was why he started killing people close to Desmond before Vinnie shot him.

Before Vinnie left he said, “I ain’t giving up on you and Jesse.”

“You silly old romantic,” I said.

“Fuckin’ right,” he said.

When I was in the car on my way home, Frank Belson called. He asked if I had a theory on why Richard Gross had placed a call to the prison in Concord the day he died.