Family Honor - Robert B Parker

by Parker

  "He's cooked," the EMT said.

  "There's a gun on the counter," I said. "I took it from Mike on the floor."

  "Glock on the floor out there," the younger cop said.

  "Leave everything for the detectives," the older cop said. "You, on the floor, you stay right there.

  The young cop left Mike and went and bent over and looked at the dead man.

  "Well, hello," he said. "It's Terry Nee."

  "If it had to be somebody," the older cop said, his eyes moving around the room as he spoke, "it might just as well be Terry Nee." The young cop opened the big cardboard box and peered in. "Empty," he said.

  Rosie crept out from under the bed waggling tentatively. I scooched down and put my arms out and she scuttled over, and I picked her up. Millicent stood up behind the bed and stayed there, her back against the wall. The older cop looked at Rosie who was lapping my neck as if it were her last chance.

  "Not an attack dog, I'd guess."

  "Not unless you're a liver snap," I said. He looked at a scrap of paper.

  "Sonya Randall?"

  "Sunny," I said.

  "Sunny Randall?"

  "Yes."

  "You Phil Randall's kid?"

  "Yes."

  "I was in a cruiser once with Phil. You're a lot better-looking."

  "Yes," I said.

  "You want to tell me what happened?"

  I could hear more sirens on Summer Street. And the sound of the elevator heading up. It was going to be a long day.

  CHAPTER 23

  It helped that I had been a cop. It helped that I was a licensed private investigator. It helped that I had a gun permit. It helped that Millicent confirmed my story, however monosyllabically. It helped that I was a woman defending a young girl against two known thugs. It helped that I was kind of cute. It probably helped a little that Rosie was cuter than is legally permissible in many states. And it helped a lot that I was Phil Randall's daughter. We didn't have to go downtown. We agreed that Millicent would be better off if she weren't mentioned to the press. The lead detective on the case was a sergeant named Brian Kelly who had thick black hair and a cute butt and a wonderful smile. "We'll need to talk again, Sunny," he said about five in the afternoon as they were cleaning up the crime scene. "Is it okay if I call you Sunny?"

  "Absolutely, Sergeant," I said.

  "And I'd appreciate you calling me Brian," he said.

  We were sitting at my kitchen table with Rosie plomped on one of Brian's feet, looking up at him with her tongue lolling out. Millicent was sitting up on my bed with her knees to her chin and her arms wrapped around them, staring at the television.

  "I'll do what I can to shelter the kid. If there's a trial she may have to testify, but I doubt that there'll be a trial."

  "You don't plan to bring old Mike into court?"

  "The guy you didn't shoot?" Brian looked at his notes. "Mike Leary. Don't know him. But he hangs around with Terry Nee, we'll find some use for him, and he'll plea-bargain."

  "Fine," I said.

  "You don't have any thoughts you've not shared with me, do you, about why they were here and what they were doing?"

  "You know what I know," I said.

  "Maybe," Brian said.

  "Would I lie to you?"

  Brian smiled at me. When he smiled his eyes widened a little and seemed to get brighter.

  "Of course you would, Sunny. We both know that."

  "So young and yet so cynical," I said.

  He stood and put his notebook away. I stood with him.

  "Lemme get back to the station," Brian said, "and sort of fold this up and put it away for the night. I'll call you in a couple days."

  "Fine."

  "You okay?"

  "Sure," I said. "I'm fine."

  "You ever kill somebody before?"

  "No."

  "It's sort of a heavy thing," he said.

  "I know," I said. "I'll be fine."

  "I'll leave a cruiser out front for the night, just until we shake this down a little."

  "Thank you."

  "Okay. I'll call you."

  "Do," I said.

  And he left. I followed him to the door and locked it after he left. Rosie went down the length of the loft and jumped up on the bed beside Millicent and lay down. I sat at my kitchen counter for a while. My ears were still ringing. When the mass of buckshot had hit him, Terry Nee's shirt had disappeared in a mass of blood. I wondered if he felt it. He might have made a sound when he went backward. I wondered if he had been alive when his leg was twitching, or if it was just some weird reflex and Terry was already somewhere else. I'd have to clean the shotgun. If you fired them and didn't clean them, the barrel got pitted. Terry was a guy who couldn't believe a woman would shoot him, or couldn't allow himself to back down to a woman. Whatever it was, it killed him.

  They would have taken the girl. He went for his gun. He'd have shot me. With a 10-gauge shotgun at two feet you can't aim to wound. I had to kill him. The ringing wouldn't go away. I shook my head a little and got up and went to the cabinet and got a green bottle of Glenfiddich and a short glass. I poured an inch of scotch and sipped it, and poured some more. I could feel my heart moving in my chest. I was aware of my breathing. It seemed shallow. I took another sip of scotch, and shivered slightly and got up and went to the refrigerator and added some ice. As I was putting the ice in, some of it slipped from my hand and scattered on the floor. When I bent to pick it up I dropped the glass. The glass broke. I couldn't leave broken glass on the floor with Rosie in the house, so I went to the broom closet and got the dustpan and a broom and cleaned up the glass and ice, and put it in the trash compactor and closed the compactor and turned the switch. I walked over to the broom closet and put the broom away and hung the dustpan on the hook. It slipped off the hook and dropped to the floor. I bent to pick it up and felt all the strength go from me, and sat down on the floor and began to cry. I heard Rosie jump down from the bed and trot down the length of the loft. She came around the kitchen counter and began to lap my face. Maybe to comfort me. Maybe because she liked salt. Then Millicent appeared around the corner of the counter, barefooted, and stared at me. Her face was stark and colorless. Her eyes seemed nearly black in the oval of her face.

  "You all right?" she said.

  Rosie lapped industriously. I nodded.

  "How come you're crying?" Millicent said.

  Her voice had the flat tinny sound fear makes.

  I shook my head. She stood. I sat. Then I put my hand up and took hers and squeezed it. Rosie lapped the other cheek. I could feel control starting to come back. I was beginning to breathe more slowly. I let go of Millicent's hand and put Rosie off my lap and got to my feet. I got another glass and put some ice in it and poured some single malt into it.

  "Can I have some?" Millicent said.

  I got her a glass and handed it to her. She added ice and poured some scotch over it. We sat together at the counter. We both took a drink. Millicent frowned.

  "What is that stuff?"

  "Single malt scotch," I said.

  "Its not like any scotch I ever had."

  I nodded. We were quiet. Rosie lay on the rug sideways to us, looking at us obliquely.

  "It bother you, shooting that guy?" Millicent said.

  "Not at the time," I said. "Now it does."

  She shrugged and stared at the scotch for a bit and took another small sip.

  "What'd they want?" she said.

  I took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. "You," I said.

  Her eyes got bigger.

  "My mother sent them," she said.

  "I don't know who sent them," I said.

  "My mother."

  The way she said "mother" was chilling. If I ever had children, and the clock was starting to tick on me, I prayed that they would never call me mother in that voice.

  "How would your mother know men like that?" I said.

  Millicent looked at my counter and didn't answer. I waited. M
illicent sipped some more of the scotch. She was five or six years below the minimum age. I was contributing to the delinquency of a minor. So what? Everybody else had.

  "How would she?" I said.

  "My mom knows a lot of men," Millicent said, still staring down at the countertop.

  "And you think she would send them here with guns to get you?"

  "Sure."

  "These same two men beat up Pharaoh Fox, looking for you."

  Millicent shrugged.

  "You think your mother sent them to do that, too?"

  "Sure."

  "The man I... the dead man was a known criminal. The police knew him. He was a strong-arm man, an enforcer."

  Millicent took another swallow of scotch.

  "She knows guys like that," Millicent said without lifting her stare from the countertop.

  I sipped my scotch. Millicent sipped hers. The room was quiet, except for the television murmuring in front of the bed at the other end of the loft.

  "Millicent," I said finally. "There's more to this than that. Your mother is an affluent suburban housewife married to a very successful man. How in the hell would she come to know people like Terry Nee?"

  Millicent stared at my counter some more.

  "And why would she send such a person looking for you?" Stare.

  "Does this have something to do with why you ran away?" Shrug.

  I reached over and took hold of her chin with my right hand and turned her face toward me.

  "Goddamn it," I said. "I just shot a man to protect you."

  "And yourself," she mumbled.

  "And Rosie," I said. "And I'm in this because of you. And I want to know what exactly the fuck is going on."

  Tears welled suddenly. She tried to shake her head. I held on to her chin.

  "What?" I said.

  The tears were running down her face now. "What?"

  Her breath was coming in little gasps. "What?"

  "I ... I saw ... 1 saw something," she gasped.

  CHAPTER 24

  I got up from the counter and took my scotch with me and walked to the front window. I looked down through it at the police cruiser parked out front. It was comforting. I kept looking down at it. "What did you see, Millicent?" I said.

  Behind me was silence. I stared down at the cruiser. The silence continued. I waited. Finally she spoke.

  "My mother told a man to kill somebody."

  I closed my eyes. Jesus Christ. What should I say to her? I stared out the window. There was no comfort for this in the police cruiser. I had to do something. Finally, I turned back. She was sitting now, swiveled toward me on the barstool, still looking down. But now she was looking at Rosie. And her shoulders were heaving. I walked back and put my scotch down on the counter and put both my arms around her. She was stiff but she didn't struggle.

  "We seem to be crying by turn," I said. "Now being your turn."

  She didn't answer. She was crying spasmodically.

  "This is awful," I said. "And it's probably going to get awfuller. But we're in it and we're in it together and we're going to have to get out of it together. And the only way is to talk, you and me, until we know what to do."

  She cried. I held.

  "Take your time," I said. "Tell me in any way you want to. No hurry. When you get calmed down. I have to know what the problem is before I can solve it."

  As I held on to her I could feel her fighting for control. Rosie squeezed between our feet wanting to get in on the hug. I rubbed her belly with my toe. Millicent took in some deep breaths and then she started talking. The sound was muffled because she kept her face half pressed against my shoulder.

  She told me that Betty Patton had a suite of her own on the first floor, bedroom, study, private bath, and shower off of it. Millicent was never allowed in there. She was never to use the private bathroom. She was too messy. The bathroom was for guests. Millicent of' course took every opportunity to sneak into the off-limits suite and snoop about. It was how she had found the sexual pictures of her mother. And, of course, she used the bathroom as often as possible while she was in there. On the day in question, she was in the offlimits bathroom, and just coming out when the door to the study opened. Millicent ducked back and stepped into the clear glass shower stall to hide. She could hear her mother talking to a man whose voice she didn't recognize. It was a deep voice and he spoke with sort of a low rolling purr that sounded like some kind of big machine in good working order. There was strain in her mother's voice. She'd never heard her mother's voice sound like that.

  "I don't care what tingles your gonads, " the man purred. "But when it spills over into our business, I care. "

  "It won't spill over, " Mother said.

  "It already has, " he said.

  "We can prevent it from spilling anymore. "

  "You got a suggestion?"

  "You have resources, " Mother said.

  "What kind of resources are we talking?"

  "He'll have to be killed, "mother said. "We are too close to what we want to let this stop us. "

  "Brock know anything about this guy?"

  "Brock doesn't know anything about anything, " Mother said.

  "Except shooting skeet and making money. "

  "Okay, " the man said, his soft voice filling the room with energy, "we'll clip him. "

  "Quickly, " mother said. Before he damages the project. "

  "Sure, " the man said. "May I use your bathroom?"

  "Of course. "

  The man walked into the bathroom. Millicent was pressed against the back wall of the shower, looking at him through the glass shower door. He looked back at her. Without a word, still looking at her he reached back and closed the bathroom door, and then he turned and raised the toilet seat and used the toilet and flushed and closed the toilet seat carefully. He was a medium-tall man with a thick body and very thick hands. His hair was silvery and short and brushed lack. He wore a dark suit with a white shirt and a maroon silk tie. Gold cufflinks flashed beneath the sleeves of his jacket. He wore an important-looking diamond ring on the little finger of his left hand.

  He bent over the sink and washed his hands thoroughly and dried them on the towel that hung on the hook beside the shower. He stared at her some more while he did this, and then, without a word, he turned and walked out of the bathroom.

  "One other thing, " he said to Mother. "You can spread your legs for anybody you want. We don't care. You can fuck as weird as you want. We don't care. Long as it s private. You understand?"

  "Of course. It was a mistake. We can correct it. It won't happen again. "

  "We will correct it, " the man said.

  Millicent heard the two of them walk across the room and open the door to the hall. The door closed. The room was silent. She stood in the shower stall in the bathroom, stiff with terror. Nothing moved in the room. She ,forced herself to step rigidly out of the shower stall and look around the corner of the bathroom door. The study was empty. She ran to the door, feeling as if' her legs wouldn't work right, and opened it a crack and peeked into the hall. No one was there. She stepped into the hall and walked to the French doors at the end of the hall that led to the back lawn. No one stopped her. She opened the French doors and closed them soundlessly behind her and began to run.

  "Why didn't he say anything to my mother," Millicent said. "My guess is he decided he'd have to get rid of you, too, and didn't want your mother to know."

  "Get rid of?"

  "Kill," I said.

  "Oh my God," Millicent said.

  "It's okay," I said. "I won't let him."

  "How are you going to stop him, you should have seen him, what he looked like, what he sounded like, you're a girl like me, for crissake, what are you going to do?"

  "What have I done so far," I said.

  She thought about that.

  "It would be nice," I said. "If I weighed two hundred pounds and used to be a boxer. But I'm not, so we find other ways. I can shoot. I can think. I am very quick.
The dangerous stuff almost always boils down to people with guns, and guns make size and strength irrelevant. With guns it only matters how tough you are, and I'm as tough as anybody they're likely to send."

  She thought about that, too. She wanted to believe it, because it would make her feel safer. In principle I believed it. It was the theory under which I worked. Though I knew privately that it was a more comfortable theory when Richie was around.

  "You know this man's name?" I said.

  "No. You think he sent those men today?"

  "Yes."

  "What are we going to do?"

  "We'll move tomorrow. We're all right tonight with the cops outside."

  "Where we going to go?"

  "Someplace safe," I said. "Do you know what deal your mother was talking about with the man?"

  "No."

  "Do you know who they were talking about killing?"

  "Some guy who must have been bopping my mom."

  "But you don't know who?"

  "No."

  "Sounds like somebody planning to go public with details, I said.

  "Yes."

  "Embarrassing, maybe," I said, "but would she have him killed for that? I mean there's a lot of that going around."

  Millicent shrugged and drank some scotch. She made a face, every time, as if she were taking medicine. But it didn't cause her to stop.

  "In those sex pictures you found. Was the man recognizable?"

  "I think so. I didn't like looking at them."

  "I don't blame you," I said. "Do you have any of those pictures?"

  "No, when I ran I didn't have anything but what I was wearing."

  "Are there any in your room?"

  "No. My mother used to search my room all the time. I never dared have anything there."

  "You don't know any of the men your mother has been with?"

  "No."

  We communed with our scotch for a moment.

  "She searched your room?" I said.

  "Yes. To make sure I didn't have drugs, or condoms or cigarettes, stuff like that. She said it was her responsibility to know." I nodded.