The waitress smiled and took our plates.
“Funny, isn’t it?” Richie said. “We both love to eat, but when we’re together we don’t seem to have any appetite.”
“These are not casual dinners,” I said.
“Oh,” Richie said, “you noticed.”
“I noticed.”
The waitress returned with pork loin for Richie and roast goose for me.
“You dating anyone these days?” I said.
“Yeah, several.”
“Anyone serious?”
“I’m only serious about you,” Richie said.
“That might not be the best idea in the world,” I said.
“It’s not an idea, Sunny. It’s a feeling.”
There was something thin-edged and sharp in Richie’s voice when he said it. It reminded me of how dangerous Richie could be. He’d never been dangerous to me, nor did I think he ever would be. But he was so nice-looking, so pleasant in his dark-haired Irish way that other people occasionally misjudged him.
“Feelings can change,” I said.
“Probably,” Richie said. “But these haven’t.”
“I know,” I said.
“Everyone I go out with knows the score. I tell anyone I’m dating, ‘If I can be with Sunny, I will be.”’
“I know I can’t imagine life without you,” I said. “But I don’t know how to live with you.”
Richie nodded slowly. It was familiar ground.
“It’s not just the family stuff, is it?”
“It doesn’t help,” I said. “My father’s a cop, yours is a mobster.”
“And still my father,” he said.
“Yes. And I’m a detective and you’re . . .” I shrugged.
“A saloon keeper.”
“You carry a gun,” I said.
“So do you.”
“It’s not just the family stuff, is it?” Richie said again.
“No,” I said. “Not entirely.”
I shook my head. We were quiet for a moment. Richie took in a big breath and let it out slowly through his nose.
“So,” he said. “How’s the goose?”
I stared down at my plate while I came back from where we’d been going.
“It looks good,” I said.
Neither he nor I had taken a bite. Richie smiled. We both ate. It was good. We were quiet for a time.
“You want something?” Richie said.
“Why do you ask?” I said.
“I know you. I’ve been looking at you for a long time. You want something and you don’t want to ask.”
“God,” I said. “You should be the detective.”
“And betray my entire heritage?”
I smiled.
“So what do you need?” he said.
“The thing is,” I said, “it makes me so damned hypocritical.”
“You need something that I can do because my family’s in the rackets,” Richie said.
“Yes.”
“Maybe not hypocritical,” he said. “Maybe just inconsistent.”
“And a foolish consistency . . .” I said.
“Is the hobgoblin of little minds,” Richie said.
“Exactly.”
We were quiet again. Richie looked at me, waiting. I looked at my dinner. I had only eaten a little of it. Too bad. It really was good. Richie had barely touched his food either.
“Let’s eat someplace awful next time,” Richie said. “Then if we don’t eat, it won’t be such a waste.”
I smiled and drank a little wine. “I need a favor from Tony Marcus,” I said.
“Okay.”
“I’m looking for a fifteen-year-old runaway girl and I need to know if she’s hooking.”
“Chances are,” Richie said.
“I need to know, and know where.”
“What do you do when you know?”
“I go get her.”
“What if she won’t come?”
“I force her,” I said. “There are better lives than hooking.”
“Tony doesn’t know every whore in Boston,” Richie said.
“I know, but he knows every pimp.”
“He knows people who know every pimp,” Richie said.
“Same thing.”
Richie was resting his chin on his fist. He nodded slowly.
“Her pimp may object.”
“They do that,” I said.
“Unless of course Tony spoke to him.”
I nodded. We looked at each other. I knew there was the usual conversation hum and the gentle sounds of service in the restaurant, but he and I seemed to be surrounded by resonant soundlessness. I could feel my breathing.
“I can get you to Tony,” Richie said.
CHAPTER 8
My date wasn’t going well. He was a lawyer, maybe two years younger than I was, making his way through a big firm. I had met him in night school, during the midevening break. I was still chasing my MFA in painting. He was taking an art appreciation course. His name was Don Bradley. He was lean and looked like a tennis player, and wore good clothes. He slicked his hair back a little tight, but nobody’s perfect. We agreed to meet for a drink in the late afternoon.
“What I can’t figure is the professor,” Don said when the drink order was in. “Sonovabitch won’t let you take notes or use a tape recorder or anything. How’s he expect you to learn anything?”
“Maybe he wants you to listen,” I said.
“I listen but I can’t remember half what he says.”
“And look,” I said. “Maybe he wants you to look at the art.”
“But if I can’t take notes how do I know what I’m looking at.”
“Original reaction?”
Don laughed and shook his head.
“Yeah, sure. So you’re a real painter, Sunny.”
“I paint.”
“Got a studio and all?”
“I have a loft in Fort Point, I live there and paint there.”
“Live alone?”
“I live with a bull terrier.”
“A pit bull?”
“No, a bull terrier. Bull terriers are nothing like pit bulls.”
“Yeah that’s what they all say,” Don said.
The drinks came. A Belvedere martini for him. A glass of Merlot for her. Don drank half of his.
“You’re with a big firm?”
“Yes. Cone, Oakes and Belding on State Street. Man, they are working me to death.”
“It must be hard.”
“Hard if you care about getting there.”
“Getting where?”
“To the top,” Don said. “I want a partnership.”
“How’s it look?” I said.
“Well,” he finished his martini and looked for the waiter. “I figure there’s twenty-four hours in every day and if I can’t find something useful to do with twenty of them, then I don’t deserve to get there.”
“Four hours’ sleep?” I said.
The waiter saw Don’s plight and brought him another martini. Don grinned at me over the rim of the glass. He drank and put the glass down.
“Oh baby, oh baby,” he said. “Four hours’ sleep on the nights I don’t have a date.”
His smile got wider.
“Energetic,” I said.
“You got that right,” Don said.
We were at the bar in Sonsie where most of the patrons looked like the anorexic models in high fashion magazines. Men and women. I never knew why emaciated and angry was fashionable.
“What is your legal specialty?” I said.
He grinned at me again. He had on the power-broker uniform: dar
k suit, striped shirt. Bright silk tie with little golf tees on it. I’d have bet most of my loft that if he took his coat off he’d be wearing suspenders.
“Winning cases,” he said.
“You’re a litigator.”
“Right on, babe. That’s pretty good. Most of the girls I go out with don’t know a litigator from a guy that draws up trust agreements.”
“Maybe you should start going out with women,” I said.
“Like you?”
“Sure,” I said. “Just like me.”
“Well, that’s what I’m doing, Sunny. That’s just what I’m doing.”
He spent most of the late afternoon and somewhat too far into the early evening drinking Belvedere martinis, telling me about his most famous cases. By 7:30 he was sloshed. I thought about leaving, but I wasn’t sure he could get himself home.
“You have a car?” I said.
He did.
“Why don’t we go home in mine?” I said.
“I kin drive,” he said.
“I’m sure you can, but so can I. Let me drive you home.”
“You feel better about that, Sunny?”
“Yes.”
“Okey baby dokey.”
I got him to the curb and gave the valet my ticket and when the car came I got him into the passenger side. Bending over, I was glad I had decided against my adorable little slip dress. With a little prodding he remembered where he lived and I drove him there, a cellar apartment on the corner of Mass Ave. and Commonwealth.
I pulled into a hydrant space at the curb. He sat without moving.
“Don’t pass out,” I said.
He giggled.
“Not me,” he said. “I’m frisky as a lamb.”
He ran “as-a-lamb” together. We sat. Nothing happened. You have to get out, Julie kept telling me. You have to date. You can’t sit home wishing you and Richie could make it work. I got out and went around and opened the car door for him.
“Hop out, Don,” I said.
“Besh offer I had,” he said and swung his legs around. I got a hand under his right arm and together we got him out of the car. Together we wobbled him across the sidewalk and down four steps to his front door. He fumbled the keys out and dropped them, and pressed his head against the door jamb and giggled some more. I found his keys and opened the door for him and together we wobbled into his apartment.
“Wan’ a nightcap?” he said.
“No, thank you.”
“You arn’ going?”
“Yep, I am.”
“Hey,” he said.
I turned and started out. Don wobbled after me and put his arms around me from behind.
“Come on,” he said.
“Let go, Don,” I said.
“Un unh,” he said. “Night’s young.”
He rubbed himself against me. I was amazed he could still become erect. I wondered if he could feel the gun in the small of my back. If he could it didn’t distract him.
“C’mon, Sunny, lighten up,” he said.
He started to maneuver me toward the couch. I took in a deep breath and let it out. I stomped one of my two-inch heels hard on his toes, and twisted as if I were grinding out a cigarette. He screamed and let go of me. I opened the door and looked back at him. He was hopping on one foot and saying “Bitch” and trying not to tip over, drunk as he was.
“Good night,” I said. “And thanks for a lovely evening.”
As I drove back to South Boston, I thought there might be worse things than sitting home wishing Richie and I could make it work.
CHAPTER 9
I sat across from Tony Marcus in the back room of a restaurant that Tony owned called Buddy’s Fox. I was the only woman in the room. I was the only white person in the room. Tony had about him the kind of dissipated handsome look that Gig Young used to have in old movies, if Gig Young had been black. He also had the biggest bodyguard I had ever personally seen. It reminded me a little of the short men I’d known who owned huge attack dogs. Leaning on the side wall of Tony’s office, like the threat of rain, Junior might or might not have been bigger than Delaware. He was certainly bigger than Rhode Island.
“You got some good advance notices,” Tony Marcus said. “Richie Burke and my man Spike.”
“Spike?”
“Yeah. He called me this morning.”
“Spike gets around,” I said.
“He do,” Marcus said.
“You still married to Richie?”
“Nope.”
Marcus smiled and looked at Junior.
“Amicable divorce,” he said to Junior.
Junior didn’t look as if he knew what amicable meant. He also didn’t look like he cared. Tony leaned back in his chair and checked to see that the proper amount of French cuff showed under the sleeves of his blue suit.
“So you’re looking for a whore, Miss Sunny?”
“Fifteen-year-old runaway,” I said.
Tony smiled. “That may be what she used to be, she on the street now, she’s a whore.”
“Either way,” I said. “I’d like to find her.”
“Why?”
“I’ve been hired to.”
“So you really a detective,” Tony said.
“Un huh.”
“You don’t look much like a detective,” he said.
“You don’t look much like a pimp,” I said.
Tony laughed.
“Feisty,” Tony said to Junior.
Junior nodded.
“Calling me a pimp,” Tony said, “like calling Henry Ford an auto worker.”
“Think you can help me find this kid?” I said.
“Sure,” Tony said, “she hooking, I can find her.”
“And if she isn’t you’ll know?”
“‘Less she hooking in East Long-fucking-meadow or someplace.”
“Probably not,” I said.
“She hooking east of Springfield, I can find her. Worcester, Lynn, Lawrence, Lowell, New Bedford, Fall River, she be one of mine.”
“Not Springfield?” I said just to be saying something. Guys like Tony Marcus like to talk. Especially to women.
“Springfield belongs to Hartford,” Tony said. “The Spices run it.”
“So how shall we do this?”
“You think I’m going to do something?”
“I assume you didn’t get me in here to tell me no personally,” I said.
Tony grinned.
“Knew your father, you know that?”
“No.”
“Never busted me,” Tony said. “Sonovabitch tried hard enough.”
“I didn’t know he worked vice,” I said.
“When he after me he working homicide,” Tony said.
That was to scare me in case Junior hadn’t already scared me. I remained calm.
“So how we going to find Millicent Patton?”
“You got a picture?” Tony said.
I’d had copies made of the one her father had given me. I produced one. Tony looked at it, and nodded slowly.
“She’ll make some money,” he said.
“Will she keep any?”
“‘Course not,” Tony said without looking up from the picture.
I waited. After a time Tony handed the picture to Junior.
“Have some copies made,” he said. “Circulate them. Let me know if we got her and who her pimp is.”
Junior took the picture and continued to stand against the wall. Tony winked at me.
“Junior,” he said. “I think I be safe with Sunny Randall here, while you go out and get that picture started.”
“She ain’t been searched,” Junior said.
“I
going to risk it,” Tony said. “Go ahead.”
Junior looked at me for a minute, then nodded and went out of the office. Tony leaned far back in his big high-backed leather swivel chair and put his feet up on the desk. His loafers had gold chains on them.
“I’m a pretty bad man,” he said.
“I heard that,” I said.
“A lot of women wouldn’t want to come here alone.”
“Lot of people,” I said.
He laughed.
“Ah,” he said, “a fucking feminist.”
“That may be an oxymoron,” I said.
“You ain’t scared?”
“Not yet,” I said.
“Maybe you just covering up,” Tony said.
“Maybe.”
He shook his head.
“Naw. Seen too many scared people in my time to be fooled. You ain’t scared.”
“You have no reason to harm me,” I said.
“Not so far,” he said.
“And I know you don’t want trouble with the Burkes.”
“Don’t need trouble with anybody,” he said. “Making a good living.”
“See?”
He smiled again.
“If I decided I wanted to harm you, maybe you be scared.”
“Why don’t we wait until that happens,” I said. “Then we’ll know.”
“I going to help you with this, Sunny. Richie asked me. Spike asked me. So I’ll help. But don’t make no mistake about me.”
“No mistakes,” I said. “I understand why you’d accommodate Richie, but why Spike?”
Tony smiled again.
“I like Spike,” he said.
“I didn’t know people as bad as you liked anyone.”
“Sure we do,” Tony said. “We just don’t let it interfere.”
CHAPTER 10
The only show I ever had was in a small gallery on South Street. The Globe art critic said I was “a primitivist with strong representational impulses.” I didn’t sell many paintings, but I was pleased to know that I had a definition. Standing now in the studio end of my loft, using the morning sun for light, I wondered if maybe primitive was just another way of saying amateurish. I was working in oils, trying to paint a view of Chinatown along Tyler Street. I never had time to go to a place and set up, so I was working from memory and a half dozen Polaroids I’d taken. It looked like Chinatown. In fact it looked like Tyler Street. And the building in the foreground looked like the Chinese restaurant that you see when you stand where I had stood. But the painting wasn’t right, and for the moment I couldn’t quite figure how to fix it. I sometimes thought art criticism boiled down to indefinables like whether it was a complete statement or not. This painting was not. Most of my paintings weren’t . . . yet. I tried deepening the colors, and stood back a little and looked at it while the sun coming in the east windows made the colors as exact as I was likely to see them.
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