Robert B. Parker’s Revenge Tour

Thirty-Four

“You’ve got no call to be here, son,” Desmond Burke said to his son.

“You’re right,” Richie said. “I don’t. But that’s never stopped me when I thought Sunny needed backup.”

Desmond turned to look at me. Sometimes I felt I could see his eyes change to the color of water.

“Did you tell him to come?” he said.

“I told him we’d be here, and why we’d be here,” I said. “But you must know by now how little success I’ve ever had telling your son what to do.”

Richie took the empty seat at the round table between his father and me. Now he grinned at my father.

“We having any fun yet, Phil?” he said.

“I’m the one who shouldn’t be here,” Phil Randall said to him.

“And I shouldn’t have agreed to let you come,” Desmond said.

“That’ll be the day,” my father said, “when you let me do anything.”

“I feel like I’m in a scene from Grumpy Old Men,” Richie said to me.

“Except Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau were funny,” I said.

“There’s that,” Richie said.

He wore a white oxford button-down, faded jeans. I knew without looking he was wearing penny loafers. The preppiest-looking son of a mobster I’d ever known about. There was gray in his hair now, but somehow he still never seemed to age, never looked a day older — at least not to me — than the day I’d met him, and practically fell in love with him on the spot. Even though mine was a cop family and his most certainly was not.

“This may be slightly off point,” Richie said. “But you look beautiful.”

“Focus,” I said.

“You make it difficult when you look like this,” he said.

“You can do it,” I said.

He got the bartender’s attention, pointed to the beers in front of my father and me, called over, and said he’d have what we were having.

“I love both you guys,” Richie said after the bartender had placed his beer in front of him. “But just off what I heard, you do both sound like a couple of stubborn old fools.” He drank. “All due respect,” he added.

He turned back to me.

“Has it been like this from the start?” he asked.

“Oh, my, yes,” I said.

“Sunny explained her current situation to me,” Richie said. “And that she can’t watch everybody at once, and be secure that both her father and Melanie Joan are safe. Dad, she’s got Melanie Joan covered with Spike and herself. But she feels that Doyle is a continuing threat to Phil here, a threat that she feels may have been elevated because of Doyle’s possible relationship with John Melvin, who once tried to do great harm to my wife.”

“Ex-wife,” I said.

“A technicality,” Richie said.

“You wish,” I said.

He turned and was once again addressing his father and mine.

“So,” Richie said, sounding just like his father. “Here’s what we’re going to do. What the two of you are going to do. For Sunny, and for me.” He took another sip of his beer. “Dad, you’re going to put a couple of your men on Phil, at least until Sunny gets back from the road trip she’s about to take, and maybe beyond. And Phil? You’re going to thank my father for agreeing to do something as generous as that. And if it turns out Spike and Sunny might need reinforcements, you’ll generously provide those as well.”

No one spoke. If it bothered Desmond that Richie had taken over this way, like he’d taken the room, he didn’t show it. Everyone drank. It still felt like I was attending some sort of weird mixer from hell. But my father and his father were still here.

I knew there were other measures that I could have taken so as not to worry about my father while I was away, and they weren’t as extreme as him taking protection from an old enemy. I knew I was probably being overly cautious. But any variables or possible slipups that I might encounter with other people I could ask to watch my father didn’t exist with Desmond Burke. He was a sure thing the way Spike was. Or Chief Stone. Or Deputy Chief Molly Crane.

Or Vinnie, when he didn’t have a thing in Texas.

They all did what they said they were going to do.

“I’m waiting,” Richie said.

“It’s not your decision to make!” Desmond snapped, his words clipped and fierce at the same time.

“Right again, Dad,” Richie said. “It’s not. But if you won’t do this for Sunny — and it is for Sunny — then I will.”

He smiled then, perhaps to soften sounding as much like his father as ever.

“It’s just that you can do it better,” Richie said to his father.

Desmond took a long time to answer.

Finally he said, “It will be done, then, even if I’m not very happy about it.” He nodded at my father. “When he asks.”

My father took in a lot of air, let it out.

“I’m asking,” he said. “But I’m not happy about it. I feel as if I’m aiding and abetting here.”

“Phil,” Richie said. “Maybe think about using the filter here your daughter so rarely uses.”

“Hey,” I said.

I saw my father’s face redden. Then he said, “Okay.”

“Isn’t there something else you want to say?” I said to Phil Randall.

He turned to glare at me. But I smiled and nodded at Desmond.

“Thank you,” my father said to Desmond Burke.

My father’s face reddened more, at what was clearly the effort it took for him to say those two words.

“Now, how about the two of you shake hands to seal the deal,” Richie said.

“Don’t overplay your hand,” Desmond said.

He left first. When the rest of us were outside, my father asked for the keys and said he’d bring the car around. When he was gone, I said to Richie, “Thank you.”

He leaned in toward me, our faces very close all of a sudden, and said, “I can think of a way you can show your appreciation.”

“We’ve talked about this,” I said. “Less thinking down there. More with your brain.”