by Mike Lupica
“Far better than I would prefer.”
“On top of everything else we’re talking about, it’s even been a while since the Burkes had the loansharking business to themselves in Boston,” Charlie Whitaker said, still staring out at the water. “So in a world where the fucking NRA becomes like an unindicted coconspirator if you want to buy and move guns, maybe switching lanes is just a practical matter for Desmond.”
“How much volume would there have to be?” I said.
“Most people just do it twenty to thirty guns at a time,” he said. “Most popular item, even after all this time, is still a nine-millimeter. But if Desmond has a way to expand that to bigger guns, like that AR-15, and trade in really big numbers, the old man could do very well for himself.”
“Albert Antonioni wanted me to think he himself isn’t particularly interested in the gun business,” I said.
“Since when?” Whitaker said. “It was always a secondary business for him. But if Albert thinks there’s money in it, he’d open a chain of lemonade stands.”
“So it might anger him off if he heard that Desmond was poking around at the edges of a big gun deal,” I said.
“Royally,” Charlie Whitaker said.
“Would you be interested in keeping your ears open for me on this?” I said, smiling at him.
Turning on the charm with another old guy.
“Royally,” he said.
We both stared at the boats on the water now.
“Just don’t tell my wife,” he said finally.
“Mum’s the word,” I said. “So to speak.”
“She’d probably shoot me,” Charlie Whitaker said and grinned. “Be ironic, if you think about it.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
AS FAR AS I knew, Charlie Whitaker’s wife didn’t shoot him after I left and neither did anyone else.
But somebody did shoot Buster Doogan, Desmond Burke’s top trooper, outside of Touchie’s Shamrock Pub in Southie, just after last call, early the next morning.
Belson called me right before Richie did to tell me what had happened.
“You might as well come on over here,” Belson said. “Maybe you can bring some ideas with you on how to keep this out of the papers that we maybe have a serial killer on our hands.”
“Serial shooter, to be precise, Frank,” I said.
“What is this,” he said, “one of those fucking debate shows on cable TV?”
I threw on a sweater and jeans and jacket, threw my short-barrel .38 into my shoulder bag, drove over to Pearl Street. There was the usual small army of crime scene people already in place and at work. Desmond Burke was there, too, and Felix, and Richie. So was Colley, Buster’s wingman, a tough young guy who looked to be in a state of shock.
When Belson saw me he waved me through the uniforms on the perimeter, and walked me up 8th Street, away from the crush. He always looked the same, day or night, always needing a shave, always slightly pissed off, never missing anything in his range of vision. Always with a cigar in his hand, sometimes lit, sometimes not.
“He lives over on Marine Road,” Belson said. “Or lived. The guy, Buster Doogan. His shift bird-dogging Desmond was over. Desmond has them working eight-hour shifts now. Doogan is walking home when he gets popped.”
“Witnesses?” I said.
“People heard,” Belson said. “Nobody saw.”
“Guy could have taken out anybody in Desmond’s crew,” I said. “But he takes out Buster, who’s been with him the longest. Means our guy has been doing his homework.”
“Richie, Peter, Felix, you, now Buster,” Belson said. “Like the asshole is tightening a noose.”
I looked past him. Desmond and Felix and Richie were watching us from their side of the yellow tape, faces lit by flashing lights.
Belson said, “What haven’t you told me?”
“Very little.”
“But something,” he said. “Just because there always is.”
“Why my clients trust me the way they do,” I said.
He stuck the cigar in his mouth, took it out without inhaling.
“Might I remind you that you have no client here,” Belson said. “From what I gather, what you mostly got is people, including your ex, who don’t want to be your clients.”
“Well, there is that,” I said.
“So talk to me.”
“It would mean telling you things that I haven’t yet told Richie,” I said. “Things to which I’m not sure how he’ll react. And things that might cause him pain.”
“You know what causes pain?” Belson said. “Getting shot. And you know what causes me pain? People getting shot and killed. So if you’ve got a theory you’d like to share, I am all fucking ears.”
So I told him more than I had already about what the guy who’d put me down in the alley had told me before he did. I told him about what Billy Leonard had said about Desmond and women and what Felix Burke, who seemed to be in some pain of his own, seemed unwilling to say about Desmond and women. Belson let me tell it at my own pace, as if we had all night, which I suppose we did.
“Was about twenty minutes ago,” he said, “that you thought this was about some kind of gun deal going wrong.”
“Maybe it still is,” I said. “But then this guy was right in my ear. And as much as he seems to be enjoying himself tightening the noose, what I really heard was rage.”
“So this might have something to do with a woman from the old man’s past,” Belson said. “And the shooter’s connection to her.”
“Brother, husband, son, friend,” I said. “Could be any of the above.”
“Or none of.”
“Frank,” I said, “this runs deep, whatever it is. If this was just about business, the guy could hit Desmond no matter how well protected he thinks he is, and be done with it.”
“Guy wants it made clear that nobody is safe,” Belson said.
“Kind of the definition of a terrorist,” I said.
“Ain’t it, though?” he said.
He said the conversation he wanted to have with Desmond could wait, if Desmond would even agree to have it at all.
“We’re on the same page here,” I said to him.
“Be still my heart,” Frank Belson said.
TWENTY-NINE
RICHIE SAID WE needed to talk. I asked him if it could wait until morning. He said, “You seemed to make time for Frank Belson.” I told him that I was just being a good citizen, and that right now I wanted to sleep more than talk.
“Used to be the other way around, as I recall,” Richie said.
I smiled and told him I’d see him at Melanie Joan’s at about nine. Of course the doorbell rang at nine sharp. I had been up since eight, had walked Rosie, done my makeup as if performing major surgery, spent way too much time on my hair, put on a new pair of skinny jeans and a white cotton sweater that Richie had given me. Vanity, thy name is Sunny Randall.
Rosie was gradually becoming more excited when Richie would suddenly appear.
“At least she didn’t pee on the floor the way she did last time,” I said.
“As women so often do in my presence,” he said.
I went into the kitchen, knowing how he liked his coffee, which was the same way I liked my coffee, and brought two mugs to the couch. Rosie sat between us.
“I’m really sorry about Buster,” I said.
“Was with us a long time,” Richie said. “Can’t remember a time in my life when he wasn’t with us.”
He looked as if he’d slept very little, but he was still put together in a Richie way: white shirt, black jeans, black penny loafers with a nice shine to them.
“Buster always said he’d take a bullet for my father,” Richie said. “Finally did.”
“You said we needed to talk,” I said.
“Actually, that was bull
shit,” Richie said. “I sensed that you needed to talk.”
“Because you know me so well,” I said.
“More than you know,” he said. “Or will ever.”
He sat. I sat. As comfortable as we could both be with silence, the silence between us was sometimes a tactile thing. I took a deep breath and let it out and said, “I need to broach an uncomfortable subject about Desmond.”
“Broach away.”
“It’s about him and women,” I said.
“I assume you mean women other than my mother,” Richie said.
“Yes,” I said.
“You’re telling me that he was involved with women other than my mother,” Richie said.
“Yes,” I said again.
And Richie said, “Tell me something I don’t know.”
* * *
—
I CAME BACK from refilling our coffee cups and said, “You knew.”
“I did.”
“For how long?”
“For my whole fucking life,” he said.
His face had not changed expression. Nor had his tone. He was as self-contained and composed as ever, as if the subject were no more serious than where we ought to have lunch. It meant he was Richie. If there was sadness in him because of this, or anger, or regret, or some combination of those emotions, he did not show it.
He was Richie. It was part of what drew me to him, and so often pushed me away, the sense that he was holding back so much of himself, whether he actually was or not. Jesse Stone had often exhibited many of the same qualities. He was gone from my life, other than an occasional phone call. Richie was not, not now and perhaps not ever.
“What does that mean, your whole life?” I said.
“A slight exaggeration,” he said. “I was a kid when I found some letters. Back when people still wrote letters.”
“Your mother was still alive?” I said.
“She had died the previous summer,” he said. “But it was clear from the letters that what had been going on between my father and the woman who had written these letters had predated my mother’s death.” Richie paused and said, “Considerably.”
Rosie had rolled over on her back to let Richie rub her belly, which he did.
“Did your mother know?” I said.
Richie sighed now. “There was some indication in one of the letters that they’d been found out, past tense, and had been forced to briefly end their relationship.” He paused again and said, “Before it resumed.”
“While your mother was dying?” I said.
“Yes,” Richie said.
“So who was she?” I said.
“She didn’t sign her letters with a name,” Richie said. “Just the letter M.”
From across the room I could hear my cell phone buzzing. I ignored it. There was just Richie and me and the air between us. And perhaps the shared knowledge that when we had been man and wife, I had never cheated on him during our marriage and he had never cheated on me. Even though the other men in my life since had made me feel as if I were cheating, more than somewhat.
“Did you ask him about the letters?” I said.
“I did.”
“What happened?”
“He slapped me,” Richie said, “for the one and only time in my life.”
Now there was hurt on his face, as if it had just happened.
“Then he told me that he had confessed his sins to his priest but was under no obligation to do the same to his own son.”
“And that was it?”
“He demanded that I hand over the letters,” Richie said. “Which I did.”
“Because you were a good son.”
“Because I didn’t want him to hit me again,” Richie said. “And I wasn’t yet big enough or strong enough to hit him back.”
“That woman could be the key to this,” I said, and then told him what had happened to me in the alley, and what the man had said to me.
“Why have you waited this long to tell me?” Richie said.
“You had enough to deal with,” I said.
“Not any part of it more important than you,” he said.
“You would have wanted to do something about it,” I said, “only there was nothing to be done. Then somebody did Buster.”
We sat there. Rosie was still on her back.
“I thought it could have been any of his women,” I said. “But perhaps it was this woman.”
“We have no proof,” Richie said.
“Call it a hunch,” I said.
“You’ve always been big on those.”
“Haven’t I.”
“We need to know who M was.”
“Do you recall anything from what she wrote to him that might help?”
“She was Italian,” Richie said. “There was something in one of the letters about the hatred between Italians and Irish and how it was almost as deep as the blacks against the whites. So there was that. And how much she had herself come to hate living in what she called their world. And how tired she was of all the death and dying.”
“You remember a lot.”
“There was a time when I had them committed to memory,” he said. “She said she wanted them to get away, from his family and hers, and go somewhere and have a life of their own.”
“Maybe if we can find her, or find out who she was, we can stop the death and dying now,” I said.
“Only one way to find out,” Richie said.
“Ask him,” I said.
“He won’t hit me this time,” Richie said.
THIRTY
DESMOND BURKE NOW lived on Flagship Wharf in Charlestown, part of the old Navy Yard, with views of both the Bunker Hill Monument and the USS Constitution.
We were seated in the large, bright, airy front room. Colley was outside, posted by the front door. There were two other troopers, neither of whom I knew, sitting in a Town Car on the street.
The room, I’d noticed, was full of photographs, on the mantel of his fireplace and the walls and spread across an antique bureau that might have been as old as the Constitution. There were pictures of Desmond Burke’s late wife and of Richie at different ages, all the way through our wedding. There was even one of Desmond and me from the wedding, one in which I looked far happier than I felt right now.
I looked younger. Much.
I was more fixed on the ones of Richie as a boy, wondering about all the things that made him the man he had become, one I knew I would love more than I would ever love another, whether we ended up together, fully together, or not.
Richie and I were on a long white couch. Desmond was across from us, once again dressed all in black today.
“I’ve not much time,” he said. He looked at me and said, “I’ve already told your friend Belson that I did not choose to speak with him.”
I smiled. “Never talk to a cop,” I said.
“Words to live by,” Desmond said.
“Then we should get right to it,” Richie said. “The woman who wrote you the letters I found—who is she?”
Richie establishing himself as the one in charge, even in his father’s home.
“I thought we had agreed never to discuss her again,” Desmond said.
“We’re past that, Dad,” Richie said. “Way past. Sunny has now been assaulted by the one doing the shooting. Sunny and I believe it might very well involve the one who wrote you those letters.”
“And she knows of these letters . . . how?”
“Because I fucking well told her,” Richie said.
Now it was as if Desmond had been slapped.
“You talk to me in such a way?” Desmond said to Richie.
“I was taught that what matters most is often what is most necessary,” Richie said. “Or something along those lines. I don’t remember every on
e of your codes.”
“I don’t appreciate your tone,” Desmond said.
“I didn’t much appreciate finding out that you cheated on my mother,” Richie said.
“I told you then,” his father said. “I don’t have to explain myself to you.”
But you could see the fight beginning to leak out of him. It was as if the words died a few feet from his mouth.
Richie said, “If we don’t stop this man, he is going to kill us all.”
“Maria Cataldo,” Desmond Burke said.
Boom.
THIRTY-ONE
IN DESMOND’S TELLING, in a flat, almost beaten voice, it all had begun after the Winter Hill Gang had consolidated its power, including with the Italians.
“You hear in politics about gerrymandering,” Desmond Burke said. “There was a lot of that going on in those days, across ethnic lines. It was around the time when a man named Bobo Petricone got himself into trouble because of a girl going around with one of the McLaughlins.”
“George,” I said.
He looked at me.
“I’m a reader,” I said.
I watched Desmond Burke, fascinated, wondering how much he was willing to tell. It was somewhat like watching the old man begin to pull on a thread.
“Bobo was a cousin of Vincent Cataldo,” Desmond said. “Maria was Vincent’s daughter.”
Richie said, “Uncle Felix told me once that Vincent Cataldo had something on Whitey Bulger, but no one ever knew what.”
“To this day we don’t know what,” Desmond said. “But Vincent ended up running his own gerrymandered district, as I ended up with my own.” He shook his head. “I always thought that it amused Whitey,” he said, “pitting Vincent and I against each other.”