Family Honor - Robert B Parker

by Parker

  "Okay," I said.

  Anderson got up and walked out of his cubicle. I looked at the stack of photographs. They weren't Polaroids. They were goodquality color photographs. I counted them. There were forty-two. I selected one that showed Betty Patton clearly and full face in a completely compromising pose. I put that picture in my purse and put the other forty-one back in the envelope, and crossed my legs and folded my hands in my lap. In a couple of minutes Anderson came back. He walked to his desk, picked up the envelope and counted the pictures.

  "Forty-one," he said. I nodded.

  "Does anything about those pictures bother you?" I said. Anderson grinned at me.

  "Aside from that," I said.

  "Like who took them?" Anderson said.

  "Yes. If they were taking pictures of themselves wouldn't they set the camera up on a tripod and use some sort of timer or remote?"

  "That's what people usually do."

  "These pictures are taken from different angles at different distances," I said. "And some of them seem to have been taken seconds apart from different angles and distances."

  "So maybe there's a third party," Anderson said.

  We looked at each other. Neither of us seemed pleased with the image of a third party with a camera lurking just outside of every picture.

  "I guess there would have to be," I said.

  "You suppose Humphries kept that private mailbox for anything else?" Anderson said.

  "Well, he wouldn't want his wife to see these pictures," I said. "Did he get other mail there?"

  "No."

  "How about the handwriting on the envelope?"

  "Wife says it's his. Our guy says it matches other samples of his handwriting."

  "So he rented the box to hide these pictures," I said.

  "Looks like."

  "If it were just his wife why wouldn't he just hide them in his office? They were separated. She says that she never went there."

  "Un huh."

  "If the woman in the pictures had money these would be a good basis for blackmail."

  "Your client got money?" Anderson said.

  "On the other hand, the picture taker could use them for the same purpose."

  "One wouldn't preclude the other," Anderson said.

  "'Preclude', " I said. "Wow."

  "Impressive, huh?"

  "And accurate," I said. "One would not preclude the other."

  "Still be nice to know who the photographer was."

  "It couldn't hurt," I said.

  "Too bad, I only got forty-one of those pictures," Anderson said. 'Cause if the broad in the pictures turned out, just by a crazy chance, to be your client, and you had one of the pictures you might be able to use it for leverage."

  I didn't say anything.

  "'Course you gotta wonder," Anderson said, "would a woman who'd pose for pictures like this care about being blackmailed?"

  "Maybe her husband would."

  "Or maybe it's just vanity," Anderson said. "Maybe she told everyone she was a real blond."

  CHAPTER 45

  I was going to find something that Millicent liked to do if I had to invent a new pastime. Which was why we were sitting on two Alden fiberglass rowing shells, side by side on the river, twenty yards from shore, with a cold wind blowing at us. "Have you ever rowed a boat?" I said.

  "No."

  Millicent was trying so desperately to balance that she could barely speak.

  "Good," I said. "This is nothing like that, and if you had you'd just have to unlearn it."

  Millicent said "yes" as minimally as possible. She looked entirely miserable in her yellow life vest.

  "Okay, first, just let the oars rest on the water ... That's right ... Now rock the boat. Go ahead. See how long the oars are? You can't tip over with the oars spread like that."

  Millicent shifted her weight a millimeter. The shell didn't tip.

  "Good, now we'll just sit here a bit until you get used to it. We have as much time as we need. There's no reason to hurry."

  We sat. It was early October and everything along the river near the boat club was still green. Cars moved steadily along the parkways on both sides of the river. People ran along the sidewalks next to the river, running the loop around the upper Charles where it bent toward Watertown, using the Larz Anderson Bridge to cross the river in one direction and the Eliot Bridge to cross in the other. We stayed in close to shore, out of the current, just far enough from land to keep the oars from hitting.

  "Okay," I said, "see, you're not going to tip over."

  "Yet," Millicent said between her teeth.

  "Now, when you row, you want the blades to dip in, but not too deep, and of course to come out of the water entirely, but not too high. Watch me."

  I rowed across the river and back staying where she could see me without turning. I remembered when I had first learned to row these boats. It was like sitting on a needle. I knew she wouldn't turn.

  "Okay, now look at my hands, see how they are? It's all in the way you roll your wrist. See? Again. See?"

  Millicent nodded very carefully, her head barely moving. "Now you do it," I said.

  "Where shall I row?"

  "Just roll your wrists first, see how the blades turn?" She tried it, rolling her wrists maybe a half an inch.

  "Let's practice rolling the wrists so that the oar blades are vertical, then horizontal, vertical, horizontal, that's right. If you feel like you're losing your balance just let the oars drop onto the water, there, yes, like that."

  We practiced that for a while. I wasn't having a nice time. I had housebroken Rosie faster than I was teaching Millicent to row. But it was the first thing she'd shown any interest in. She'd seen the college teams rowing on the river and said that it looked like it might be nice. I had pounced on it like an Ocelot. I used to row, I said, in college. She said, Really? I said, Yes. She said, Could you teach me. And here we were.

  "It's the legs," I said, "that do the real work in rowing. You get the push off the big quadriceps. It's why the seat is like that. See, you lay out over the oars like this and then pull them toward you while you drive with your legs."

  I demonstrated and my rental shell shot halfway across the river. I returned to her, backstroking, stern first.

  "You can try that now. Look around and make sure it's clear because the first stroke will send you a pretty good distance."

  She did as I told her and caught a crab with her right oar and almost fell out of the boat.

  "Oars in the water," I said. "Oars in the water."

  She did what I told her. The boat steadied. I looked at her. Her face was gray with fear and concentration.

  "Everybody almost falls in," I said. "Try it again. Remember about rolling the wrists."

  The gun at the small of my back was not appropriate to singleshell rowing, and I felt like we were two ducks sitting out there on the river in plain view. But I was goddamned if I was going to let Cathal Kragan bury us alive. And I was pretty sure he wouldn't be looking for us out on the river.

  "Okay," I said, "I'll be right beside you, go ahead, don't press, let the oars into the water pull, extend your legs, good, roll the wrists, good."

  We slid out across the dark water.

  "Again," I said, "pull, push with the quads, roll wrists, relax. Try it with your eyes closed so that you get the full feel."

  I felt like a single mother. It was too much to try and bring Millicent up and protect her and find the guys who wanted to kill her and figure out what was going on with her parents. I needed help and much of the help I needed was the kind that men usually were better at than women. The kind that Julie couldn't really give. The kind that Spike was good at, but how fair was it to ask him? The kind that Brian Kelly could give me, but he was a cop. He had his own agenda. My father? Daddy, I'm grown up and on my own but could you help me do my job? Richie? No, I won't sleep with you, but could you risk your life for me? Did getting help mean selling out? I didn't mind getting help from Julie.
Why was I having the vapors about getting a different kind of help from men? I was getting really sick of I-amwoman-hear-me-roar. Maybe if you're really integrated, you asked for the help you needed and got it on your own terms.

  "Sunny," Millicent said as we sat side by side in the middle of the river and let the shells drift, "I'm sick of this. I want to go home."

  Like that.

  CHAPTER 46

  Millicent was wearing an oversized bathrobe and drinking hot chocolate at Spike's kitchen table. The sleeves of the robe were turned up. Her hair was fluffed from the shower and she smelled of soap and shampoo and looked maybe twelve. Rosie sat on the floor beside her feet, looking up with her mouth open and her tongue lolling. If I didn't know better than to anthropomorphize dogs, I'd have said Rosie was smiling at Millicent. "Did you like the rowing?" I said.

  "It's awfully hard," she said.

  She rubbed Rosie's chest absently with the toe of her right foot. "I know, but it's sort of like riding a bicycle. Once you get the balance, it's not so hard."

  "I know, I could feel that."

  "Do you think you'll want to do it again?"

  "Yes."

  I was quiet. Millicent drank some hot chocolate.

  "Your mother was having an affair with the plumber," I said.

  "The plumber?

  "Yes, the one you said looked like an Italian Stallion."

  "Him?"

  "Yes."

  "Are you sure? My mother? Did he tell you that?"

  "I found pictures of them."

  "Pictures?"

  "Yes."

  "You mean, dirty pictures? Like I found?"

  "Yes."

  "Jesus. It's like she sees a camera she yanks off her clothes."

  "Some people like to pose," I said. "With plumbers?"

  "Sometimes what seems a drawback to one person seems an asset to another."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Maybe his being a working-class guy was his appeal."

  "Well, it's sick," Millicent said.

  "Yes," I said. "It probably is."

  I took a deep breath. "We're never going to get to where we need to go," I said. "If you can't trust me to tell you the truth ...The plumber was shot to death."

  "Shot? You mean murdered?"

  "Yes."

  "Do you think it was my mother?"

  "It happened after she talked with Cathal Kragan about somebody who would have to be killed."

  "But there must have been a bunch of people killed since then."

  "Sixteen," I said. "In Massachusetts. He's the only one we can connect to your mother."

  Millicent looked at me without saying anything for a moment. The red smudges faded. She shrugged.

  "Well, fuck her," she said. "I hate her anyway."

  God, was I in over my head. I took in some more air. Rosie heard me and gave me a look. I smiled at her. It had been simpler when she was all I had to worry about.

  "Yes," I said. "You probably do. And I don't see why you shouldn't. But you probably feel other things, too."

  "Like what?"

  "Loneliness, rejection, disappointment, fear."

  "I don't feel anything," she said. "I'm fine."

  "Sort of like when you were having sex with strangers in the backseat of a car," I said.

  "Hey, I did what I had to do."

  "I know. And because you had to, you tended to close down all your feelings so it wouldn't seem so awful. I'm not a shrink. I can't deal with that part of you, all I'm saying is don't close down on this."

  She shrugged.

  "When this is over. .." I said.

  "What?"

  "This situation. When we've solved these problems and don't have to hide out here with Spike, I'm going to ask you to see a good psychiatrist."

  "I already did that with Marguerite."

  "No. I mean a real one that knows what he or she is doing."

  "You don't think Marguerite knew what she was doing?"

  "No," I said. "I don't."

  "How do you know?"

  "I talked with her. I believe she's a fraud."

  "Oh, they're all frauds anyway, aren't they?"

  "No. My friend Julie is a therapist."

  "You want me to see her?"

  "No. She'd be the first to tell you she wasn't right for you. But she can find us someone."

  "You think I'm crazy?"

  "I think you've had more to handle than a kid can handle alone. Hell, that anyone could handle alone. You need somebody to help you with it."

  "You're helping me."

  "Yes, but unlike Marguerite, I know my limitations."

  "I don't want anyone else."

  "We don't have to deal with it now, but when this is over you are going to need somebody else."

  "Instead of you?"

  Whoops. Of course she's scared. I should have foreseen it.

  "No, not instead, in addition to. I'm permanent."

  Rosie got impatient on the floor by Millicent's feet, and jumped up and put her forepaws in Millicent's lap and scanned the table for food. Still looking at me, Millicent patted Rosie's head. I could see the tears form in Millicent's eyes, then she put her head down against Rosie's and put her arms around Rosie and stayed that way while she waited for the tears to clear. I didn't say anything. Rosie didn't quite get the deal. She was still glancing sidelong at the table, her tail wagging, submitting graciously, but with no great pleasure, to the tears and the embrace.

  CHAPTER 47

  Brian Kelly had a three-story brick town house on First Street in South Boston. We were sitting together in postcoital languor, on the couch in his narrow, bow-windowed front room, with a fire in the small fireplace, and some red wine, talking business. I wore one of Brian's shirts, which came about to my knees. Brian was wearing tartan plaid boxers. We were both barefoot. "Here's what I think I know," I said.

  "And think you can can prove?" Brian said.

  "Don't be so picky," I said. "I know that Betty Patton was having sex with the plumber, Kevin Humphries, who had been doing some work for them."

  "How come that never happens to cops," Brian said.

  "It does."

  "Oh, you and me?"

  "Exactly," I said.

  "I know Betty posed for very explicit pictures of her relationship with Kevin, and I assume that he got hold of the pictures and blackmailed her with them. She told Kragan, and Kragan killed Humphries."

  "You've seen the pictures," Brian said.

  "Un huh."

  "And you have the kid's testimony on the conversation she overheard between her mother and Kragan."

  "Un huh."

  "We know the guy she saw with her mother is Kragan."

  "Pretty likely."

  "Pretty likely? I can't wait to go in an tell some assistant DA that it's 'pretty likely'. "

  "So don't, wait until I get more."

  Brian leaned forward and poured a little more wine into each of our glasses.

  "I know that Brock Patton is running for governor, and that a big campaign contributor is Albert Antonioni from Rhode Island. Do you know him?"

  "I know Antonioni," Brian said.

  "So I figure that if these pictures surfaced, the Patton gubernatorial campaign would suffer a setback."

  "Depends how the First Lady looks in the buff," Brian said.

  "Would you like to see the pictures?"

  "You bet."

  "Because they're evidence?"

  "Sure."

  "Men," I said.

  Brian smiled.

  "Antonioni is not backing somebody for governor of Massachusetts because he's concerned with good government," Brian said.

  "True."

  "He's investing in something that will pay off in the long term."

  "It would be in anyone's interest to own the governor," I said. "Especially if you're trying to reestablish an Italian presence among the wiseguys in Boston."

  "Which somebody is," I said.

  "Yeah. There's alre
ady been some skirmishing," Brian said. "The micks and the dagos. OCU says the dagos are from Providence."

  "Except for Cathal Kragan."

  "He's not from Providence?"

  "He lives in Swampscott, and Cathal Kragan is an Irish name."

  "Hire a guy knows the turf, I guess." Brian said.

  "Whatever," I said. "There's a good motive in the connection between Patton, Kragan, and Antonioni."

  "You know they're connected."

  "I have testimony that Kragan and Antonioni came to Patton's house together," I said.

  Brian was quiet for a time. We had our feet up on the coffee table. And we both stared into the fire while he was being quiet.

  "There's one crime here," he said after a while. "The murder of Kevin Humphries. And you can't tie Kragan to it, or Antonioni."

  "No," I said. "I can't. There is the matter of two men coming to my house and trying to kill me."

  "You can't tie Kragan to that either," Brian said. "Only thing we had was testimony from Bucko Meehan, and he's dead."

  "True."

  "So you know a lot, but you can't prove much."

  "Yet," I said.

  "And the murder of the plumber isn't even in my district."

  "Also true.

  "We need to think about all of this," Brian said.

  His arm was around me. I had pushed tightly in against him, with my head on his chest.

  "What should we do while we're thinking?" I said.

  "Hell, Sunny, I don't know."

  "Maybe we should have sex again," I said.

  "Why didn't I think of that," he said, and put his hand under the tail of the borrowed shirt. Our conversation was somewhat more exclamatory for a while, and then we were quiet and after a while we were still and I had his shirt back on, and the couch was back together, and he was pouring us some more wine. In the fireplace, the fire settled in on itself. I looked around the high-ceilinged nineteenth-century room.

  "This is a very comfy house," I said.

  "A remnant of my marriage," he said to me.

  "Are there any others?" I said.

  "Like kids? No. She took off with the man of her dreams before we ever got to kids."

  "Does it still bother you?" I said. He shook his head.

  "The other guy thing bothered me for a while, but when I got over that I realized I was lucky to be rid of her."