by Mike Lupica
THE SPENSER NOVELS
Robert B. Parker’s Old Black Magic
(by Ace Atkins)
Robert B. Parker’s Little White Lies
(by Ace Atkins)
Robert B. Parker’s Slow Burn
(by Ace Atkins)
Robert B. Parker’s Kickback
(by Ace Atkins)
Robert B. Parker’s Cheap Shot
(by Ace Atkins)
Silent Night
(with Helen Brann)
Robert B. Parker’s Wonderland
(by Ace Atkins)
Robert B. Parker’s Lullaby
(by Ace Atkins)
Sixkill
Painted Ladies
The Professional
Rough Weather
Now & Then
Hundred-Dollar Baby
School Days
Cold Service
Bad Business
Back Story
Widow’s Walk
Potshot
Hugger Mugger
Hush Money
Sudden Mischief
Small Vices
Chance
Thin Air
Walking Shadow
Paper Doll
Double Deuce
Pastime
Stardust
Playmates
Crimson Joy
Pale Kings and Princes
Taming a Sea-Horse
A Catskill Eagle
Valediction
The Widening Gyre
Ceremony
A Savage Place
Early Autumn
Looking for Rachel Wallace
The Judas Goat
Promised Land
Mortal Stakes
God Save the Child
The Godwulf Manuscript
THE JESSE STONE NOVELS
Robert B. Parker’s Colorblind
(by Reed Farrel Coleman)
Robert B. Parker’s The Hangman’s Sonnet
(by Reed Farrel Coleman)
Robert B. Parker’s Debt to Pay
(by Reed Farrel Coleman)
Robert B. Parker’s The Devil Wins
(by Reed Farrel Coleman)
Robert B. Parker’s Blind Spot
(by Reed Farrel Coleman)
Robert B. Parker’s Damned If You Do
(by Michael Brandman)
Robert B. Parker’s Fool Me Twice
(by Michael Brandman)
Robert B. Parker’s Killing the Blues
(by Michael Brandman)
Split Image
Night and Day
Stranger in Paradise
High Profile
Sea Change
Stone Cold
Death in Paradise
Trouble in Paradise
Night Passage
THE SUNNY RANDALL NOVELS
Spare Change
Blue Screen
Melancholy Baby
Shrink Rap
Perish Twice
Family Honor
THE COLE/HITCH WESTERNS
Robert B. Parker’s Revelation
(by Robert Knott)
Robert B. Parker’s Blackjack
(by Robert Knott)
Robert B. Parker’s The Bridge
(by Robert Knott)
Robert B. Parker’s Bull River
(by Robert Knott)
Robert B. Parker’s Ironhorse
(by Robert Knott)
Blue-Eyed Devil
Brimstone
Resolution
Appaloosa
ALSO BY ROBERT B. PARKER
Double Play
Gunman’s Rhapsody
All Our Yesterdays
A Year at the Races
(with Joan H. Parker)
Perchance to Dream
Poodle Springs
(with Raymond Chandler)
Love and Glory
Wilderness
Three Weeks in Spring
(with Joan H. Parker)
Training with Weights
(with John R. Marsh)
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
Publishers Since 1838
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
375 Hudson Street
New York, New York 10014
Copyright © 2018 by The Estate of Robert B. Parker
Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Lupica, Mike, author. | Parker, Robert B., 1932–2010.
Title: Robert B. Parker’s blood feud / Mike Lupica.
Description: New York, New York : G. P. Putnam’s Sons, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, 2018. | Series: A Sunny Randall novel
Identifiers: LCCN 2018038036 | ISBN 9780525535362 (Hardcover) | ISBN 9780525535386 (ePub)
Subjects: | BISAC: FICTION / Mystery & Detective / General. | FICTION / Suspense. | FICTION / Mystery & Detective / Traditional British. | GSAFD: Mystery fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3562.U59 R63 2018 | DDC 813/.54—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018038036
p. cm.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Version_1
This book is for my old pal, the great Robert B. Parker, who came into my life with The Godwulf Manuscript and has been in it ever since.
And for Esther Newberg, keeper of the flame.
Contents
Also by Robert B. Parker
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
<
br /> Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Chapter Thirty-five
Chapter Thirty-six
Chapter Thirty-seven
Chapter Thirty-eight
Chapter Thirty-nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-one
Chapter Forty-two
Chapter Forty-three
Chapter Forty-four
Chapter Forty-five
Chapter Forty-six
Chapter Forty-seven
Chapter Forty-eight
Chapter Forty-nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-one
Chapter Fifty-two
Chapter Fifty-three
Chapter Fifty-four
Chapter Fifty-five
Chapter Fifty-six
Chapter Fifty-seven
Chapter Fifty-eight
Chapter Fifty-nine
Chapter Sixty
Chapter Sixty-one
Chapter Sixty-two
Chapter Sixty-three
Chapter Sixty-four
Chapter Sixty-five
Chapter Sixty-six
Chapter Sixty-seven
Chapter Sixty-eight
Chapter Sixty-nine
Chapter Seventy
Chapter Seventy-one
Acknowledgments
About the Authors
ONE
I SAID TO SPIKE, “Do I look as if I’m getting older?”
“This is some kind of trap,” he said.
“I’m being serious,” I said. “The UPS kid ma’amed me the other day.”
“I assume you shot him,” Spike said.
“No,” I said. “But I thought about it.”
We were seated at one of the middle tables in the front room at his restaurant, Spike’s, formerly known as Spike’s Place, on Marshall Street near Quincy Market. It had started out as a sawdust-on-the-floor saloon, before there even was a Quincy Market. It was still a comedy club when Spike and two partners took it over. Then Spike bought out the two partners, reimagined the place as an upscale dining establishment—“Complete with flora and fauna,” as he liked to say—and now he was making more money than he ever had in his life.
It was an hour or so before he would open the door for what was usually a robust Sunday brunch crowd. We were both working on Bloody Marys even though it was only ten-thirty in the morning, being free, well past twenty-one, and willing to throw caution to the wind.
Spike took a bite of the celery stalk from his drink. I knew he was doing that only to buy time.
“Would you mind repeating the question?” he said.
“You heard me.”
“I believe,” he said, “that what you’ve asked is the age equivalent of asking if I think you look fat in those jeans.”
I looked down at my favorite pair of Seven whites. Actually, I had no way of knowing if they were my favorites, since I had four pairs in my closet exactly like them. When any one of them started to feel too tight, I doubled down on yoga and gym time, and cut back on the wine.
“You’re saying I’m fat, too?” I said.
“You know I’m not,” he said. “And in answer to the original question, you always look younger than springtime to me.”
“You’re sweet,” I said.
“That’s what all the girls say. But, sadly, only about half the guys.”
Spike was big, bearded, built like a bear that did a lot of gym time, and able to beat up the Back Bay if necessary. He was also gay, and my best friend in the world.
“Only half?” I said.
“I’m the one who’s getting old, sweetie,” he said. “And probably starting to look fat in my own skinny-ass jeans.”
My miniature English bull terrier, Rosie, was lounging on the floor in the puppy bed that Spike kept for her behind the bar, thinking food might be available at any moment, the way it usually was at Spike’s. Spike called her Rosie Two. The original Rosie, the love of my life, had passed away the previous spring, far too soon. My father had always said that dogs were one of the few things that God got wrong, that they were the ones who ought to be able to live forever.
I’d asked Spike not to call her Rosie Two, telling him that it affected a girl’s self-esteem.
“I love you,” he’d say, “and by extension, that means I love your dog. But she’s still a goddamn dog.”
At which point I would shush him and tell him that now he was just being mean.
There was a sharp rap on the front window. Rosie immediately jumped to attention, growling, her default mechanism for strangers. There was a young couple peering in at us, the guy prettier than the woman he was with. They looked like J and Crew. Spike smiled brilliantly at them, pointed at his watch, shook his head. They moved on, their blondness intact.
“Where were we?” Spike said.
“Discussing my advancing age.”
“We’re not going to have one of those dreary conversations about your biological clock, are we?” he said. He trained his smile on me now. “It makes you sound so straight.”
“Pretty sure I am, last time I checked.”
“Well,” Spike said, sighing theatrically. “You don’t have to make a thing of it.”
“You make it sound like we have these conversations all the time,” I said.
“More lately now that you and your ex have started up again, or started over again, or whatever the hell it is you two are doing.”
My ex-husband was Richie Burke, and had long since turned Kathryn Burke into his second ex-wife. He’d finally admitted to her that he not only had never gotten over me, he likely never would.
At the time Spike said it was shocking, Kathryn being a bad sport about something like that, and racing him to see who could file for divorce first.
Now Richie and I were dating, as much as I thought it was stupid to think of it that way. But “seeing each other” sounded even worse. When we did spend a night together, something we never did more than once a week, we always slept at my new apartment on River Street Place so I didn’t have to get a sitter for Rosie. So far there had been hardly any talk about the two of us moving back in together, something I wasn’t sure could ever happen again. It wasn’t because of Richie. It was because of me.
The one time Richie had asked if I could ever see the two of us married again, I told him I’d rather run my hand through Trump’s hair.
“I keep thinking that maybe this time you two crazy kids could live happily ever after,” Spike said.
“I’m no good at either one,” I said. “Happy. Or ever after.”
“I thought you said you were happy with the way things were going?” Spike said.
“Not so much lately.”
“Well, shitfuck,” he said.
“‘Shitfuck’?”
“It’s something an old baseball manager used to say,” he said.
Spike was obsessed with baseball in general and the Boston Red Sox in particular. He frequently reminded me of the old line that in Boston the Red Sox weren’t a matter of life and death, because they were far more serious than that.
“You know baseball bores the hell out of me,” I said.
“I can’t believe they even allow you to live here,” Spike said.
We both sipped our drinks, which were merely perfect. I used to tell friends all the time that they could call off the search for the best Bloody Mary on the p
lanet once they got to Spike’s.
“What’s bothering you, really?” Spike said. “You only have to look in the mirror to see how beautiful you still are. And having been in the gym with you as often as I have, we both know you’re as fit as a Navy SEAL.”
“Remember when Richie told me it was officially over with Kathryn? He said it was because he wanted it all. And that ‘all’ meant me.”
“I remember.”
“But the problem,” I continued, “is that I’m no better at figuring out what that means to me than I was when we were married. Or apart.” I sighed. “Shitfuck,” I said.
“You sound like the dog that caught the car,” Spike said.
I smiled at him. “That’s me,” I said. “An old dog.”
“I give up,” he said.
“What you need to do is open up,” I said, “and send me and my gorgeous dog politely and firmly on our way.”
“You could stay for lunch,” Spike said.
“And have Rosie scare off the decent people? Who needs that?”
“What you need,” Spike said, “is a case. A private detective without clients is, like, what? Help me out here.”
“You without a cute guy in your life?”
“Some of us don’t need men to complete us,” he said.
We both laughed and stood up. I kissed him on the cheek.
“Go home and paint,” he said. “We both know that is something that actually does complete you. Then get up tomorrow and somehow find a way to get yourself a client.”
“What if the phone doesn’t ring?” I said.
Spike said, “It always has.”
It did.
TWO
I’D LOVED THE WATERFRONT loft in Fort Point that I’d shared with the original Rosie.
I’d loved the light it gave me to paint in the late afternoon, when I felt as if I usually did my best work. I’d loved that it was completely mine after Richie and I broke up, and even remained mine after some very bad and very dangerous men had done their best to ruin it when I was once protecting a runaway girl. Mine and the original Rosie’s, before and after the repairs. Ours.