She breathed some more and did the mouth-open, mouth-closed thing again. She looked down at the blank back of the photograph, and out the window at the snow, and back at me. She was blushing again.
“Brock,” she said.
The name hung in the air between us. She tried to meet my stare but she couldn’t hold it, and finally her gaze dropped and then she put her face in her hands.
“Your husband took these pictures of you,” I said.
She nodded.
“Did the plumber know?”
“Yes.”
“What did he think about it?”
“He was a little embarrassed, but . . .”
“But?”
“He found me desirable.”
“So he didn’t care if your husband was standing there with a camera?”
“Well, he still did, a little.”
“And?”
“And we . . .” She cleared her throat. “We gave him money.”
Jesus Christ.
Betty sat with her face in her hands. I stood up. There was no reason to stand, it was just that I couldn’t bear to do nothing. I walked the length of the room, looking at the snowfall, and turned around and walked in the other direction, and stopped by the desk.
“Did you reciprocate?” I said.
She didn’t move. Every aspect of her was angular and painful.
“What do you mean?”
“Did you take pictures of your husband with other women?”
More silence.
When she finally spoke her voice was thin and hard to hear.
“Yes,” she said.
“The Asian women?” I said.
“You . . . yes. Sometimes.”
“What next,” I said. “You rent the Fleet Center, invite everybody?”
She didn’t speak.
“Here’s some things I think,” I said. “I think you know that Kevin Humphries was murdered, because I think you agreed to his murder.”
Her shoulders hunched tighter.
“Your daughter heard the conversation,” I said. “Between you and Cathal Kragan.”
Her voice was a thin screech, barely audible.
“Oh God,” she said.
“Kragan works for Albert Antonioni, and Antonioni wants your husband to be governor. Humphries threatened to go public with the pictures, and one thing would lead to another and Antonioni’s plans would blow right out of the water. He or Kragan got wind of the blackmail, probably from you, and that was the end of Kevin Humphries.”
She was crying now, her face still in her hands. It was hard for her to cry; the sobs racked out of her paroxysmally.
“I have that about right, don’t I.”
She nodded.
“Millicent?” she said.
“She was in the bathroom when you and Kragan agreed to zip Humphries. She heard it. And when Kragan came in to use the bathroom he saw her, looked right at her, and didn’t say a word.”
“He knew she heard?” Betty Patton said in her strangulated voice.
“He had to have known,” I said. “So when he sent a couple of tough guys to get her away from me, you really think he intended to bring her home?”
“He . . .”
“Do you?”
Again her throat seemed to have closed entirely, and she struggled to swallow. Then she shook her head.
“I don’t either.”
“My daughter,” Betty Patton whispered. “I want my daughter back.”
“So she could become the house photographer?” I said.
“You bitch,” Betty Patton rasped.
“Yes, you’re right. There’s no need for that, I’m sorry.”
“I don’t want them to kill my daughter.”
“Good,” I said. “We’ve found common ground.”
CHAPTER 52
Billie had brought us some tea, and Betty Patton had poured some brandy into hers, and we had moved to a couple of summery-looking armchairs in the conservatory. The snow was mostly rain now. And the late afternoon had turned dark.
“If you tell me everything you know, maybe I can fix this,” I said.
“All of it?”
Betty had made a trip to her room and put herself back together. Her voice was still small, but it no longer sounded as if it were being squeezed from a tube.
“My concern is Millicent,” I said. “I will do what seems in her best interest.”
“And what of me?”
“I don’t know. One salvation at a time,” I said.
“That’s acceptable,” she said.
“Oh good,” I said. “Talk.”
“I don’t . . . know . . . where . . . to begin.”
“You said something about, I didn’t know what it was like to be married to him. Why don’t you tell me?”
“Brock . . .” She shook her head sadly. “Brock is one of those people for whom too much is never enough. It accounts, I suppose, for his success. He is passionate in pursuit of everything. He always seems to want more. More success, more money, more power, more prominence, more sex, more sex partners, more sexual excitement, more, more, more, more, more, more, more.”
“Excelsior,” I said.
Betty Patton looked at me blankly for a moment, decided I hadn’t said anything worth asking about, and continued.
“At first that excited me. I liked the challenge. I liked . . .” She made a searching-for-the-right-word motion with her left hand. “I liked the sense of being the one.”
“The one who was enough?” I said.
“Yes.”
“But you weren’t.”
“No. It’s not like there was someone else.” She laughed without amusement. “There was everyone else.”
“Equal opportunity,” I said, just to be saying something.
“I assume he’s made a pass at you,” Betty said.
“Yes.”
“A lot of women are flattered. He’s powerful, rich, handsome.”
“I wasn’t flattered,” I said.
She looked into her tea cup for a minute, holding it in both hands, then drank some, and put the cup on the tabletop.
“He cheated on me from the first day, I guess.”
“What did you do?”
“I got even.”
“By cheating on him?”
“Yes.”
“Did you enjoy that?”
“No.”
“Did it bring you closer together?”
“No.”
I didn’t say anything.
“But it made me feel less like somebody’s discarded toy,” Betty said. “The worse he got, the worse I became.”
“See what you made me do,” I said.
She looked at me as if I’d said something puzzling.
“We seemed somehow to fuel each other, we became more perverse and more perverse. I had my plumber. He had his China dolls. I don’t remember exactly when we joined forces.”
“Joined forces?”
“Yes. I would watch him. He would watch me.”
“And the, ah, partners, never minded?” I said.
“At first they didn’t know; we had viewing ports.”
“Peepholes?”
“Yes.”
I was beginning to feel as if I’d spent my life in a convent and was just emerging.
“The strange thing was that it gave us a thing we did together, a, ah, project. We’d plan together who, and how many, and when, and where to meet them, and what to do with them, and that led us to think about photographing them, and then how to do that and we’d buy photography equipment, and, for obvious reasons, we learned how to develop our own pictures. It was t
he closest we’d been since Millicent was born.”
“And no matter what you did, he didn’t get jealous.”
“No. He seemed to like it.”
“Some revenge,” I said. “Tell me about Kragan and Antonioni.”
“Do you know who they are?” Betty said.
“I know a little,” I said. “But go ahead, why don’t you tell me whatever you know.”
“And this will help Millicent?”
“She will be safe when there’s no one walking around with a reason to kill her,” I said.
“And you think we can accomplish that?”
“If I know what’s going on,” I said.
“Is she somewhere safe?”
“Yes,” I said, “she’s with people who will take care of her.”
“Unlike her parents,” Betty said.
I waited. Betty poured some more tea for us, and offered me brandy. I shook my head. She put some in her tea and took a sip, and sat back holding the teacup. There was very little light coming in through the wet glass of the conservatory. Had the sun been out it would have been barely visible above the western horizon.
“Brock has long been active in politics,” Betty said. “He has been a regular contributor to Republican candidates, and a vigorous fund-raiser as well. And several times he has taken a leave and served in one governmental job or another. Now he is running for governor.”
“How do you feel about that?”
“I want it very much. I would like to be First Lady of the Commonwealth, and perhaps it would lead to more.”
“And Antonioni was going to help him?”
“He was going to help us. I was very much a part of Brock’s campaign.”
“Another project,” I said.
Again Betty gave me the look that suggested she didn’t quite get me. She was not alone. Then she seemed to dismiss the puzzlement and went on talking.
“Albert Antonioni is some sort of mobster from Rhode Island. There is, as you may know, a kind of vacuum in the mob situation here.”
“Yes,” I said. “And Antonioni wants to fill it.”
“Yes. Brock knew Albert when we lived in Rhode Island. We stayed in touch when we moved here. Albert thinks that when he expands into Massachusetts, it would be useful to have a governor he could trust.”
“So he has put a lot of money into Brock’s campaign.”
“Yes.”
“And Kragan?”
“Cathal is Albert’s man on the scene. Much of what Albert wants to take over is currently owned by the Irish. I think Albert feels the need to have one of their own as a point man. You know how ethnic they all are.”
I wasn’t sure who they all were. But it didn’t seem like I needed to at the moment and I let it pass.
“Does Antonioni own your husband?” I said.
Betty drank some of her brandied tea and stared out at the dying light. She nodded slowly.
“Yes,” she said.
“So when you made the mistake of giving those pictures to Kevin the plumber, and he made the mistake of trying to blackmail you with them, you went to Antonioni.”
“Kragan,” she said. “Albert is remote and prefers it that way.”
“And that was the conversation your daughter overheard.”
“Yes.”
“Do you know that she has found some of the pictures you took?”
“She searched my room? She’s not ever . . .”
I didn’t say anything. Betty heard herself and stopped.
“She’s seen them?”
“Yes.”
Betty continued to look out at the dark rain.
“Oh God,” she said, “oh my dear God.”
CHAPTER 53
Thirty-three King’s Beach Terrace was in Swampscott, just over the line from Lynn, facing east across Lynn Shore Drive, where the Atlantic Ocean rolled ashore at King’s Beach. I parked on Lynn Shore Drive. Beside me in the passenger seat, Spike, wearing Oakley wrap-around sunglasses, was drop-dead gorgeous in a blue suit, dark blue shirt, amethyst tie, blue socks with some sort of small, round clock pattern in the weave, and black brogues gleaming with polish. He wore a big showy silk handkerchief in his breast pocket. It matched his tie.
“Spike,” I said, “you are better-looking than Leonardo DiCaprio.”
“So is Rosie,” Spike said. “I just dress better.”
“You did bring a gun,” I said.
“I don’t have one that matches,” Spike said.
“But you brought one.”
Spike grinned and opened his coat so I could see the butt of his Army Colt.
“I know you’ve explained it before,” Spike said, “but this Cathal Kragan is a stone killer, right?”
“Yes.”
“And why is it just you and me are calling on him?”
“I’m going to have to ask Richie for help if I need to talk with Albert Antonioni. I wasn’t comfortable asking him for help with Kragan.”
“He wouldn’t have even had to come,” Spike said. “His uncle could have come out with six or eight pistoleros and Kragan would have stood at attention while you talked with him.”
“Not the best way for me to learn anything,” I said. “And even if it were, I can’t ask him.”
“How about the cop you’re bopping?”
I shook my head.
“Something?” Spike said.
“I’m afraid he’s getting too serious.”
“So exploit that,” Spike said.
“No,” I said.
“Jesus Christ,” Spike said. “I gotta be pals with Nancy fucking Drew.”
“Are you scared?”
“I am without fear,” Spike said. “As you know. But if I were going to acquire some, this would be a good place to start.”
I opened the car door and got out.
“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “You’re with me, after all.”
Spike climbed out of his side of the car and shut the door.
“True,” he said. “And I look so goddamned good.”
Kragan’s front door was opened by a bright-faced woman in her forties with a mass of dark red hair. A reddish dachshund peeked between her feet growling and wagging its tail. Talk about mixed messages. The woman held the dog back with one foot.
“My name is Sunny Randall,” I said. “I called earlier. Could you tell Mr. Kragan I’m here?”
“Sure, I’ll tell him,” the woman said. “Excuse me, but I have to close the door so the dog won’t get out.”
“I understand,” I said.
Spike and I stood and looked at the ocean for a little while and the door opened again. The red-haired woman stepped aside and we went into the foyer. The dog was no longer in evidence.
“Right over here,” the woman said, “in the living room.”
He was just as Millicent had described him: squat, thick-bodied, silver-haired, impeccable, and alive with force. He was sitting in an armchair by a fireplace with a gas fire, looking a bit posed, and incredibly, wearing a green velvet smoking jacket. Standing by the archway that led to the living room was a guy that looked like the employee of the month for Bodyguards-R-Us. He was about two hundred and fifty pounds of bone and muscle, padded by at least a hundred pounds of fat. He glanced at Spike with amusement.
Kragan spoke in the deep purr that I’d heard on my answering machine.
“So you’re Sunny Randall,” he said.
“Yes.”
“Who’s the clotheshorse?”
“My friend Spike,” I said.
“What’s he doing here?”
“Design police,” Spike said. “Gas fireplaces are really tacky.”
Kragan’s expression ne
ver changed.
“Georgie,” he said, “get him out of here.”
Georgie said, “Out you go, Mary.”
He put his hand on Spike’s chest and shoved him toward the hallway. Spike hit him four or five karate-type chops, too fast for an accurate count, and Georgie fell down and lay gasping on the floor. While he was going down I took my gun out in case Kragan took offense. If he did, he didn’t show it. He seemed mildly interested in how quick Spike was. Spike leaned over and patted Georgie down and took a gun away from him. He removed the magazine and put it in his pocket. He racked the slide back and ejected the shell from the chamber, and dropped the gun back onto the floor beside Georgie.
“He gonna recover?” Kragan said.
“Few minutes,” Spike said. “I didn’t go full out.”
Kragan nodded. “Be sort of interesting sometime to see you go full out,” he said.
“I didn’t come here to cause trouble,” I said.
“You brought him for that?” Kragan said.
“I brought him to protect me,” I said.
“So far he’s doing a hell of a job of it,” Kragan said, “You don’t need the piece.”
I put my gun away. Kragan appeared to pay no further attention to Georgie. Spike leaned against the wall near the door, rubbing his hands gently.
“There’s a Boston cop named Kelly,” I said. “And a couple of members of the Desmond Burke family that know I’m here.”
I was lying, but Kragan didn’t know that.
“Being pretty careful,” he said.
“I don’t want you to make any mistakes,” I said. “You made one already and Georgie paid for it.”
Kragan waved his left hand dismissively.
“So what do you want?” he said.
“You’re trying to kill Millicent Patton,” I said.
“Really?”
“Un huh. And me, too, while you’re at it.”
“You, too?” Kragan said.
“She heard you and her mother talk about killing a man who turned out to be a plumber from Framingham named Kevin Humphries.”
“She tell you that?” Kragan said.
Georgie had slowly gotten his breathing under control and was now sitting up on the floor, trying to get oriented.
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