Robert B. Parker’s Revenge Tour

Fifty-Seven

The doctor, whose name tag read Herre, said, “He’s really too weak to have visitors. But he was insistent that I contact you.”

“Is he dying?” I said.

“Are you family?”

“Hardly.”

“All I can tell you is that he lost a lot of blood,” Dr. Herre said. “And he doesn’t appear to have a lot of wellness on which to fall back.”

“John Melvin,” Richie said, “is a wellness-free zone.”

Richie had insisted on coming with me. He said that if Melvin really was about to kick, he didn’t want to miss it. Richie hadn’t forgotten Melvin’s plan to drug and rape me before he burst through the door that day with his gun in his hand. Joe Doyle had talked about playing the long game with getting even. But maybe it hadn’t turned out to be a long game at all between Doyle and Melvin.

“He may pull out of this,” Dr. Herre said.

“Pity,” Richie said.

“You sound like your father,” I said to him.

“Comes and goes,” he said.

The version of John Melvin I saw today was like some old article of clothing that had faded so much over time you could no longer recall its original color. His glasses were on the table next to the bed. He seemed to have dozed off before Dr. Herre walked Richie and me in.

He opened his eyes, and actually smiled when he saw me. But the smile vanished as quickly as it had appeared when he saw Richie standing next to me.

“What’s he doing here?” Melvin said in a weak voice not much more than a whisper.

Richie said, “If this really is it, Melvin, I didn’t want to miss the grand finale. And the happy ending.”

“Said the gangster’s son,” Melvin said.

“To the psycho therapist,” Richie said.

Melvin adjusted his head on the pillow just enough to focus his attention on me. Somehow he seemed two sizes too small. Like the Grinch’s heart. Except that even the Grinch turned out to have a heart. I wondered, certainly not for the first time, how Melanie Joan had managed to capture something that was never really there.

I had already mentioned to John Melvin that I didn’t believe he had a soul.

“Why did you want to see me?” I said to him.

“Perhaps to make things right between us while I still can?” he said.

I heard Richie make a snorting noise.

“Did you send somebody to shoot at me and your ex?” I said.

“Wouldn’t you like to know,” Melvin said.

“The shooter was dressed the same way as the one who shot at Joe Doyle and hit my father,” I said. “On the same red bike.”

“What are the odds?” Melvin said.

He laughed softly, but the sound quickly devolved into coughing that contorted his face into pain, and was almost as painful to hear.

When the coughing ended he somehow managed to smile again. “Now, the shooting in the park,” he said, “does sound like something that might have appealed to me. But that’s ground we’ve covered before, haven’t we, Sunny?”

I said, “Joe Doyle is of the additional belief that you might have had something to do with his son’s death.”

“If he is still wondering about that after I’m gone,” Melvin said, “that would be my own sweet revenge.”

So much of that going around, I thought.

“I’m curious about something,” Richie said now. “Just how much revenge have you been looking for from in here? You can’t possibly hate Joe Doyle as much as you hate your ex-wife. Or my ex-wife, for that matter. Or me.”

Melvin raised his head slightly, as if to study Richie more closely, like an old patient, perhaps.

Even now, with what little strength he clearly had left, he seemed to be enjoying himself. Like a kid who didn’t want the game to end.

“What are you asking me, really?” he said to Richie. “Did I hire someone to kill people close to Melanie Joan? And then expand the perimeter, I guess you could call it, to include someone as close to Sunny as her father? It’s interesting to ponder, isn’t it? Maybe the first shooter was supposed to take out both Joe Doyle and poor old Phil Randall that day, and would have, until Phil started shooting back.”

“I’m supposed to believe you didn’t send the same guy after Melanie Joan and me?” I said.

“Believe whatever you want, Sunny,” he said. “It keeps the magic and mystery alive in our relationship.”

“You have no fucking relationship with her,” Richie said.

Melvin started coughing again, the sound even louder and rheumier than before, to the point where I was surprised Dr. Herre didn’t come through the door.

“You need to rest,” I said to John Melvin.

“When I’m dead,” Melvin said. And winked. “Warren Zevon.”

Richie said, “ ‘Poor Pitiful Me.’ ”

“I’m sorry?” Melvin said.

“Another Zevon song that could have been about you.”

Melvin looked at me again.

“Has it occurred to you, Sunny,” he said, “that maybe somebody just wanted you to think I’d sent the second shooter?”

He motioned me closer and whispered, “Just know that someday all of your questions about me will be answered.”

He closed his eyes then. A minute later he was snoring softly.

Melanie Joan, the closest Melvin had to next of kin, got the call a little after ten o’clock from Dr. Herre telling her that after Richie and I had left his room, Dr. John Melvin had never regained consciousness.

Now both of Melanie Joan’s ex-husbands were dead. And her boyfriend. And her editor.

It didn’t take any kind of great detective to observe that the men in her life were dropping like flies.