Family Honor

by Robert B. Parker

“If I knew why Ernie was asking . . .” Bucko said.

  Richie was quiet. I did my Meg Ryan smile again. Bucko had stopped eating his steak tips. A waitress came by and freshened our coffee cups. I added Equal and milk to mine. Richie added cream and sugar to his.

  “Think about it this way,” Richie said. “I’m asking you who sent Terry Nee to try and kill my wife.”

  “Your wife?”

  “Ex,” I said.

  “Terry kicked my dog, too,” Richie said. “And naturally I want to know how that came about. And I know Terry was with you.”

  “I didn’t send him, Richie, I swear to Christ.”

  “I’m sure you didn’t, Bucks, but you might have lent him to somebody and I’m going to find out who.”

  “She’s ex anyway, ain’t she?” Bucko said. “Didn’t she just say that?”

  Richie leaned across the table and put his hand on Bucko’s forearm.

  “She’s family,” Richie said. “As much as my father and my uncles and my brothers and me.”

  Richie didn’t seem to be squeezing, but Bucko didn’t seem able to get his arm away.

  “You lent Terry Nee to somebody, didn’t you?” Richie said softly.

  Bucko was silent. I knew what was going on. He was trying to decide who he wanted mad at him. Richie’s family, or the man who’d sent Terry Nee. He looked around the restaurant.

  “Your word, you don’t tell him where you got it?” Bucko said.

  The devil who has hold of your forearm is better than the devil who’s not around.

  “My word,” Richie said.

  “Me too,” I said.

  “Cathal Kragan,” Bucko said.

  I looked at Richie. Richie shrugged.

  “Who’s Cathal Kragan,” I said.

  “Guy,” Bucko said.

  I opened my mouth. Richie shook his head so briefly that I was sure only I had seen him. We waited.

  “He represents some people,” Bucko said. “I don’t know who they are. But I see him around and I owe him a favor and he says he needs a little scuffle work done, nothing heavy, couple broads. And I say I can put him in touch with Terry and he says fine and so I do.”

  Bucko sat back as if he’d just said three Hail Marys and made a good Act of Contrition.

  “Where do we find Cathal?” Richie said.

  “He’s around,” Bucko said. “You know?”

  “Can you get in touch with him?” I said.

  Bucko shook his head.

  “You know who he works for?” I said.

  Bucko shook his head.

  “But you’re scared of them?”

  “Don’t know nothing about them,” Bucko said. “I’m scared of Cathal.”

  “What’s he look like?” I said.

  “Thick,” Bucko said. “Like me, a little shorter, gray hair. Got hands like a stonemason. Funny voice.”

  “Funny how?”

  “I don’t know exactly. It’s real deep.”

  Richie took his hand off Bucko’s forearm.

  “My Uncle Ernie will be glad to hear you were helpful,” Richie said.

  “Give him my best,” Bucko said. “Your father, too.”

  “Sure,” Richie said.

  We stood. Richie dropped a hundred-dollar bill on the table.

  “No, no, Richie,” Bucko said. “I got it.”

  Richie took my arm and we walked away without answering.

  “You ever hear of Cathal Kragan?” I said in the car.

  “Nope.”

  We were crossing the Charlestown Bridge.

  “What kind of name is Cathal?” I said.

  “Irish,” Richie said. “There was a guy during the troubles named Cathal Brugha.”

  “How do you know that?” I said.

  “I read a book.”

  “Well,” I said. “Good for you.”

  And we laughed together as we passed the Fleet Center and Richie turned right onto Causeway Street.

  CHAPTER 30

  Whenever I skipped rope I had to block Rosie out of the room because otherwise she would attempt to participate. I was skipping rope, wearing tights and a tank top in Spike’s living room while Millicent watched television and Rosie sat in the hallway, humped up like a skunk in the fog, looking at me balefully.

  “How come you’re doing that?” Millicent said.

  “I can’t get to the gym,” I said.

  I kept skipping as I talked, trying not to sound winded.

  “Because of me?”

  “Yes.”

  “So why’nt you just forget it?”

  “Several reasons,” I said. “I try to stay in shape, for, ah, professional reasons. I like to eat and drink, but I am vain about my appearance and I don’t want to put on weight . . . also I’m compulsive about it.”

  “My mother’s always exercising,” Millicent said.

  “Would you like to try it?”

  She shook her head.

  “Didn’t you ever skip rope when you were little?” I said.

  She shrugged. I stopped skipping and dropped down on Spike’s rug and did some push-ups.

  “Have you ever done push-ups?” I said.

  “Girls don’t do push-ups,” she said with scorn of an intensity only adolescent girls can achieve.

  “Women do,” I said.

  “Well, I guess I’m not a woman.”

  “Maybe you are,” I said. “Try one.”

  She shook her head. I kept doing them.

  “Try one,” I said.

  “I can’t do them. They tried to make us in gym once.”

  “They didn’t do it right,” I said. “Get down here. I’ll show you.”

  Millicent dragged herself off the couch and flopped down on the floor on her stomach.

  “Okay,” I said. “Start with a half push-up. Put your hands out like this, and push up, but leave your knees on the floor.”

  She did what I said and pushed her torso up and let it down.

  “Okay?” she said.

  “See, you can do it,” I said. “Try five.”

  She looked disgusted, but she did five.

  “Excellent,” I said.

  Millicent got up and went back and flopped on the couch. I finished my push-ups and got up and went to the door and moved the footstool, and Rosie trotted into the room and wagged at us. I picked her up and gave her a kiss and let her lap my neck.

  “How come she doesn’t just jump over the footstool?” Millicent said. “Can’t she jump?”

  “She can,” I said. “But she doesn’t know it. She thinks she can’t, so she doesn’t try.”

  Millicent looked at me and didn’t say anything. I smiled at her innocently.

  “You think I’m like that?” Millicent said.

  “Sorry,” I said. “But you handed it to me.”

  “But you do think I’m like that.”

  “You were like that about the push-ups,” I said.

  “I didn’t do a real push-up,” Millicent said.

  “You did six real half push-ups,” I said. “We work on it regularly and in a while you’ll do some real full push-ups.”

  “So what? I hate doing push-ups.”

  “If you can do them, then you can decide if you want to do them. If you can’t do them, the decision isn’t yours.”

  Millicent frowned, as if I’d said something mathematical that she suspected was correct but she didn’t understand the terms.

  “Who cares about push-ups?” she said.

  “It’s more sort of an attitude,” I said. “The more things you can do, the more choices you have. The more choices you have, the less life kicks you around.”

/>   “So I do push-ups, my life will be better?”

  “It’s better to be strong than weak,” I said. “And it’s better to be quick than slow. But you’re not stupid; you know I mean something a little larger.”

  She shrugged again and picked up the clicker and changed channels on the television set.

  “You don’t think I’m stupid?” Millicent said.

  “No. I think you are probably pretty smart. It’s just that no one has taught you much.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like how to be a person,” I said.

  “You think you know?”

  “Um hm.”

  “So what makes you so smart?”

  “It’s not smart, it’s learning.”

  “I hate school,” Millicent said.

  “Me, too,” I said. “Mostly I’ve learned stuff from my father and from Richie and from my friend Julie and Spike and Rosie and from being alive and paying attention for thirty-five years. I have plenty more to learn. I need to get my love life straightened out, for instance. But I have more information than you do. I have enough to take care of myself.”

  “You learned stuff from Rosie?”

  “Yes. How to pay attention, how to take care of someone without owning them . . .”

  “But you do own her.”

  “I bought her,” I said. “But I don’t own her. I feed her, I give her water. I take her to the vet. I let her out and in. I take her for walks. The truth of it is she’d die if I didn’t take care of her. And because she’s completely dependent on me, I am determined that within the confines of what I just said, and allowing for her safety and mine, she can live as she wishes and do as she pleases.”

  “But you just shut her out of the room.”

  “Life’s imperfect,” I said. “I wish it weren’t.”

  “Why don’t you train her not to bite the jump rope.”

  “I think that imposes on her more than shutting her out,” I said.

  “You think stuff like this all the time?”

  “Sometimes I think about clothes and makeup and guys,” I said. “Want to talk about them?”

  “I don’t know much about that either,” Millicent said.

  “Yet.”

  She shrugged. I hated shrugging.

  CHAPTER 31

  Cathal Kragan had no record. Brian had never heard of him. Neither had anybody in the organized crime unit. The name meant nothing to Millicent. Using Spike’s computer I checked out Brock Patton on the Internet.

  “Be careful,” Spike said. “You download the wrong thing and you’ll be in the middle of my sex life.”

  “At least you have one,” I said.

  “We feeling a little deprived, are we?”

  “Maybe just a little.”

  “Too bad I’m not in your program,” Spike said. “Think of the symphony we could make.”

  “It’s always something,” I said. “What’s your password?”

  He told me and I punched it in and went online. After much more diddling around than the computer ads would allow you to imagine, I located Brock Patton.

  He was in among all the listings on the planet that contained the words Brock or Patton. I got a zillion articles on General Patton, and several on a football player named Brock Marion, and quite a few on an actor named Brock Peters, and a politician named Brock, and two on a football player named Peter Brock, and another one named Stan Brock, who appeared to be Peter’s brother, and, buried among them, five or six on the guy I was actually trying to find.

  Here was the CEO of MassBay Trust which was the ninth-biggest bank in the country. Before that he’d been the president of the biggest bank in Rhode Island. He had been a very active Republican fund-raiser in both Rhode Island and Massachusetts. He had served the last Republican administration as Commerce Secretary, and it was said that he would be the Republican candidate for governor in two years. He was also a world-class trap shooter, and a Harvard graduate. There was one article about Betty Patton as a ferocious fund-raiser for several deserving charities. There were no pictures of Betty Patton in the buff. There was no mention of anyone named Cathal Kragan. None of the articles mentioned a disaffected daughter.

  I sat back in the swivel chair in Spike’s den and stared at the blue green screen of Spike’s seventeen-inch Sony monitor. I was alone. Spike and Millicent had taken Rosie for a walk. I had insisted that Millicent wear a hat and sunglasses. Spike said there was not much chance someone would even be cruising the South End looking for her, and if they were, they would have an even smaller chance of recognizing her. I said they might recognize Rosie and put it together. Spike said maybe I overrated Rosie’s visibility. Rosie meanwhile was jumping up in the air and turning around before she landed and biting her leash. Rosie loved to walk. She would have gone for a walk with Dracula. Millicent seemed, if not eager, at least not resistant. Anything she wasn’t resistant to was to be encouraged. Spike reminded me that Millicent would be with him and that he was both fearless and deadly. So I said okay, and Spike stuck the big Army .45 in his belt under his jacket and off they went. I had to admit I liked being alone. Maybe my judgment had swayed a little.

  I had known that Brock Patton was a banker, but the fact that he might make a run for governor gave new urgency to the knowledge that his wife posed for dirty pictures, and his daughter had been, if briefly, a hooker. I could see why he would want to keep a lid on things. I could see why his wife would. But why did Cathal Kragan care? What I knew was, there was a scheme under way. Maybe about being governor, maybe about something else. But there were people willing to kill somebody in the interests of that scheme, and Betty Patton was in on it.

  I could ask her, but she wouldn’t tell me and then they’d know I knew, which would make everything harder, including not getting killed. I called my answering machine on my cell phone. Even if someone were able to trace the call they wouldn’t know where I was. There was a call from Brian. There was also a call from an attorney who said he represented Brock Patton. I broke the connection and dialed Brian’s number.

  “Somebody aced Bucko Meehan,” he said when I got him. “This morning, early.”

  “Suspects?”

  “None.”

  “How?”

  “In his bed. Shot in the middle of the forehead. .357 Mag. Bullet came out the back and through the mattress and buried in the floorboards under the bed.”

  “Who found him?”

  “Cleaning woman, had her own key. Let herself in about 9:30 this morning and there he was.”

  “How nice for her,” I said.

  “You know anything I don’t know?” Brian said.

  “No. Somebody must have seen him talking to us,” I said.

  “My guess,” Brian said. “Unless it was somebody your ex sent over.”

  “No. Richie’s not a criminal,” I said.

  “He comes from a criminal family,” Brian said.

  “I know. But it doesn’t mean he’s one.”

  “The way you tell it, he used that criminal family to squeeze Bucko for you.”

  “Yes. But he wouldn’t have anyone killed. Besides, what good would that do any of us. He was our only link to Cathal Kragan.”

  “And now he’s not,” Brian said.

  “So maybe Richie’s an unlikely suspect.”

  “Yeah, maybe he is.”

  “You sound like you wish he were a suspect,” I said.

  “Just trying to get something to grab hold of,” Brian said. “I’m not picking on Richie.”

  “Good,” I said.

  “I thought you were divorced,” Brian said.

  “I am. But that doesn’t make me silly.”

  “For sure,” Brian said. “You want to have dinner?”

  “Let
me get my book,” I said.

  I got it.

  “I’m open every night until 2003,” I said. “What’s good for you?”

  CHAPTER 32

  I thought there might be more to Brock Patton than one saw in the presence of his wife, so I went down to the MassBay building on State Street during business hours and took the elevator to his offices on the top floor. His secretary had on a little black Donna Karan suit and some pearls. She was very attractive, and felt good about it. She took my card with just enough contempt to remind me who was who, and read my name into the phone. She listened for a moment, allowed her surprise to show in a tasteful fashion and stood to usher me in.

  Patton greeted me at the door.

  “Sunny Randall,” he said. “A pleasure.”

  He gestured me in and spoke to his secretary.

  “I don’t want to be disturbed,” he said and closed the door.

  The office was about the size of a major cathedral in a poor country. There was a wet bar on the right-hand wall. Beyond it a door opened into what appeared to be a full bath. A sofa big enough to sleep two was against the left-hand wall, and opposite the wet bar was a desk on which pygmies could easily play soccer. The rug was dark green. The walls were burgundy. The sofa and several armchairs were in some sort of butterscotch leather. The wall opposite the door was glass and through it I could see Boston Harbor and the Atlantic beyond and the shoreline as far south as Patagonia. On the walls were pictures of Brock with bird dogs and dead pheasants, Brock with important people, Brock firing shotguns. Where there were no pictures there were plaques, which honored Brock’s skeet-shooting skills. On some shelves there were shooting trophies. There were no pictures of Betty Patton, and none of Millicent.

  “I must say I’m surprised to see you, Sunny,” Brock said.

  “We have a common interest,” I said.

  “You haven’t been acting as if we did,” he said.

  He had his coat off, hanging somewhere in a closet, but otherwise he was in full uniform: striped shirt with a tab collar, pink silk tie, pink-flowered suspenders, blue pinstripe suit pants, black wing tips.

  “I suppose it’s argumentative, but neither have you,” I said.

  “Goddamn,” he said. “You’re a scrappy little bitch.”