All Our Yesterdays

by Robert B. Parker

  “That’s too bad, Gus.”

  Gus shrugged. He wondered exactly how much Laura knew about love. He wondered how much she knew about Tommy. How could she love a creep like Tommy?

  “So, what do you think, does she love him?” Gus said.

  “She says she loves him.” Laura spoke softly. “But people don’t always understand themselves. I’m afraid I have some of the same limitations you do.”

  Laura’s face was full of intelligence, and decency. Gus felt excited. It was not a feeling he was used to. And he wasn’t sure why he was feeling it now.

  “Lot of people have that limitation.”

  “Love is hard,” Laura said.

  Gus took another drink. He felt as if he needed it, and a deep breath before he spoke again.

  “It would help to have firsthand knowledge,” he said.

  Laura picked up her glass of red wine and studied it before she drank some. A trace of it remained on her upper lip, nearly the color of her lipstick. She blotted it with the corner of a napkin.

  “And it’s necessary,” she said.

  “For what?”

  “For happiness.”

  “Yeah,” Gus said. “It probably is.”

  They were quiet. Gus drank his drink and ordered another. Laura still had half a glass left and shook her head at the waiter.

  “We talking about the kids?” Gus said.

  Laura smiled at him.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know exactly where we end and they begin.”

  The room had begun to fill up now, with men in name brand suits and women in designer dresses. The noise was subdued. A lot of martinis went by on small trays, crystalline in their little decanters. Outside the afternoon had darkened to a blue tone, and taxicabs had turned on their lights. Gus picked up his fresh drink. It was clear amber in the muted light, full of ice, in a tall glass. He made a small salud gesture toward Laura with the glass, and drank. It tasted right. It was surprising how many bartenders didn’t get it right. If there was too much Scotch it tasted harsh. If there was too much soda it tasted thin.

  “So,” he said. “You got a plan?”

  “No,” she said.

  “I’d like to see them together,” Gus said.

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t know what to do about it.”

  “I don’t either, Gus. But we can try to stay in touch, talk, share a viewpoint. Be there for them. Maybe we can help.”

  “Or maybe it’s none of our Goddamned business,” Gus said softly, “and we should butt out.”

  Laura smiled. “Maybe,” she said.

  She kept her eyes on him while she twirled her wineglass by the stem slowly on the table.

  He smiled. “I think we should talk,” he said. “Even if it doesn’t do them any good. I like it.”

  “Yes,” Laura said.

  “Want to make a date?” Gus said.

  “This time Tuesdays is good for me,” Laura said. “I’m in town anyway for a New England Rep board meeting.”

  “Okay,” Gus said. “You need a ride anywhere?”

  “No, thank you, the doorman has my car.”

  Gus motioned for the check.

  “So,” Laura said as they waited. “If we were going to elope, where would we go?”

  Gus grinned at her.

  “I know the houseman here, I could get us a room upstairs.”

  Laura laughed aloud. The waiter smiled as he brought them the check. A good-looking older couple, enjoying themselves. Nice to see.

  Gus

  Chris stood near the subway kiosk on the edge of the vast brick plaza in front of City Hall. Around him was a hubbub of microphones, television cameras, sound equipment, reporters, still photographers, newspaper reporters, tape recorders, and notebooks.

  “Obviously,”—Chris was reading a prepared statement—“this is a criminal gesture of open defiance. It will not divert us from our course. The investigation of this brutal war will proceed the way criminal investigations must—with diligence, with care, and with patience.”

  Gus stood past him near the front entrance to City Hall, among the cluster of squad cars and the unmarked cruisers where the tarpaulin-covered body lay. Gus was proud of Chris. The statement was a little ornate, but it was less full of shit than most things said at City Hall.

  “We cannot,” Chris was saying, “conduct an investigation in the press. We cannot be guided by the wishes of the media. We must be guided by the rules of evidence, and the facts of each crime. We are as eager as anyone in the Commonwealth to halt the killing and tiring the killers to justice…. Questions?”

  Many of the questions were about the effect of these murders on Flaherty’s candidacy. Chris answered everything calmly and well, Gus thought, considering that he knew who was responsible for the murders, couldn’t prove it, and knew in fact that the gang war was ruining Flaherty’s campaign, and couldn’t do much about it. Kid’s a politician, Gus smiled. Where did I go wrong?

  This killing worried him. They had dumped this body in front of City Hall, scornful of the new special prosecutor, scornful of Flaherty. It was a statement and Gus didn’t think it was aimed at the mayor. They don’t care about Flaherty, Gus thought. This is for me. He didn’t even know who had done it yet. They hadn’t ID’d the body. It was Butchie’s turn, but that didn’t always hold. Whichever it was, I’m in their pocket, Gus thought. And they’re reminding me. What bothered him most was that suddenly what he was and how he lived would spill over on his son.

  Billy Callahan stood with Gus, watching Chris talk to the press.

  “This is a real fuck-you to the mayor, Captain,” he said.

  Gus nodded, watching Chris.

  “Hear the question that guy from Channel Three asked him?” Callahan said. “Did he have ballistic match on the murder weapon. Fucking stiff still here. He figure we’re going to dig the fucking bullets out with a fucking jackknife?”

  “He heard it on Perry Mason,” Gus said. “He doesn’t know what it means.”

  “Chris’s doing good,” Callahan said.

  “Yes.”

  “He’s a smart boy, Captain.”

  “He’s a smart man, Billy.”

  “Yeah, sure, no offense, I just meant how he’s your kid, you know, and after a while everyone seems like a kid, you know?”

  “I know.”

  Chris ended the questioning and walked over toward Gus. The reporter who’d asked about ballistics trailed along with a camera crew.

  “Isn’t it well known that this is a war between the O’Briens and the Malloys?”

  Chris shook his head as he stood beside his father.

  “No more questions,” he said.

  The reporter pushed in closer with his microphone, the camera crew following.

  “Do you have anyone under surveillance?”

  Again Chris shook his head.

  “Enough,” he said.

  The reporter pushed between Gus and Billy Callahan.

  “Dr. Sheridan—”

  Billy Callahan was very quick for a man his size. He turned sharply into the reporter, caught the reporter in the middle of the chest with his right elbow, and sent him sprawling.

  “Oh,” Billy said, “I beg your pardon.”

  He bent over the reporter.

  “You startled me, are you all right?”

  The reporter said, “Jesus Christ.”

  Gus walked with his son toward the car.

  “Billy has his moments, doesn’t he?” Chris said.

  Gus smiled.

  “He does, in fact,” he said.

  Gus

  They were standing on the fish pier, watching the fishing boats unload. After their third meeting at the Ritz bar, Laura suggested they try meeting in parts of the city she didn’t usually get to.

  “I’ve never been here,” she said.

  The harbor water was black and around the pier it floated a lot of debris. Gulls swooped frantically around the fishing boats, la
nding on the pier and strutting in perilous proximity to the people. The press of the sun was heavy. The smell of fish was strong. There was a wind off the water, that moved Laura’s hair.

  “Lot of people in the suburbs don’t get into the city,” Gus said.

  Laura laughed. She had on big sunglasses like Jackie Onassis. And a white summer dress and white high heels.

  “I don’t get to anywhere, Gus. I’m fifty-six years old and about all I’ve done is have children, and play tennis.”

  “Nothing wrong with having children,” Gus said.

  Laura laughed.

  “Gives you a lifelong rooting interest at least,” she said.

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s not a bad thing,” Laura said, staring across the harbor at the airport, “particularly if there isn’t too much else to root for.”

  Gus nodded. He was leaning with his forearms resting on a piling. Laura stood next to him, her white purse over her shoulder. Her hands thrust into the side pockets of her dress.

  “At least you have your work too,” she said.

  Gus laughed briefly.

  “Or not,” Laura said.

  He smiled at her. “Mostly I root for the kid.”

  One of the harbor cruise boats went by, full of people, It would go to the mouth of the outer harbor and come back in a wide circle.

  “Nothing else?” Laura said.

  Gus watched the tour boat for a while before he answered.

  “I sort of look forward to these meetings,” he said.

  Laura nodded slowly.

  “Yes,” she said. “I do too.”

  Peggy

  “I told him straight out,” Peggy said to Father Boyd, “I’m very disappointed. You had a chance to make me proud, I said, to marry into a fine family.”

  Father Boyd took a chocolate chip cookie from a white plate. The plate had a picture of a blue puppy painted on it. The cookie was the kind you bought in a bag at the supermarket. He ate half of it.

  Awful, he thought.

  “Being a mother is a heavy burden, Peggy.”

  “You’ll never know how heavy, Father. It would have been a fine marriage, good family, money. And I told him so.”

  Father Boyd ate the other half of the cookie.

  As awful as the first half.

  He swallowed the cookie and drank some of the instant coffee from a small teacup that matched the cookie plate.

  “I told him they both should have talked with me first, I could have set them straight. She was sort of highfaluting and full of ideas but she had money of her own and she wouldn’t be after his, I told him. I said, Chris, you listen to me, any woman you go out with is looking to take you for all you’re worth.”

  “I know, Peggy. I know. The things I hear in the confessional these days, Peggy, it would curl your hair. And from good Catholic girls too.”

  “Course, she wasn’t Catholic,” Peggy said. “But I’d have seen to it that the children were. He wasted nine years on that girl. Living together.”

  Peggy shook her head and popped a cookie into her mouth.

  “It’s the way nowadays,” Father Boyd said. He sipped a little more of the coffee. She had made it too strong, and it wasn’t hot enough. “It’s sinful, yes, but God is merciful.”

  “I call a spade a spade,” Peggy said.

  And a spick a spick, probably.

  “If he’d married her, and I told him, if he’d married her while he had the chance, she wouldn’t have gotten away. He’d be safe.”

  “What’s the captain say?”

  “Nothing. That’s what the captain says. That’s what he always says. Mister Say Nothing.” Peggy ate another cookie.

  “Never know these were store bought,” Peggy said. “Taste just as good as if I’d baked them.”

  Probably.

  “They’re delicious, Peggy.”

  “Chips Ahoy,” Peggy said. “That’s what they’re called, Chips Ahoy.”

  That’s why she bought them. They taste like a sawdust gumdrop, but the name is cute.

  “He was always that way,” Peggy said. “Never listen.”

  Unlike myself.

  “Talk till I was blue in the face and he’d go right ahead and do what he wanted to.”

  “It’s why God gave the job to women, Peggy. Motherhood’s too hard for men.”

  “Damned right,” Peggy said. “Pardon my French. And a mother goes through all of that, the pain of it—my womb is still tipped, you know, Father, ever since Chris—and they grow up and don’t pay a damn bit of attention to you.”

  “It’s the way of it, Peggy.”

  “Neither of them,” Peggy said. “Father or son. They don’t pay a damn bit of attention to me. My husband and my son. I talk and talk and they sit there like two bumps and when I’m through they go right off and do whatever they were going to do.”

  Father Boyd nodded sadly.

  “Your prayers guide them, Peggy, I’m sure.”

  “I don’t matter to them,” Peggy said.

  For a moment there was silence. Father Boyd cleared his throat.

  “They need you, Peggy,” he said. “I know they do.”

  “And maybe one of these days they’ll need me and I won’t be here, by God. Then maybe I’ll matter.”

  Father Boyd took her hand.

  “Let us pray together,” he said, “to Our Heavenly Father.”

  Peggy took his hand in both of hers and clenched her features and closed her eyes.

  “Our Father,” she began, and Father Boyd joined her. “Who art in heaven …”

  Some pastoral visits are tougher than others.

  Gus

  Butchie O’Brien was alone when Gus arrived. He was leaning on the rail of the Gilmour Bridge, looking at the train tracks. Butchie was usually alone. You went to talk with Pat Malloy and there were sometimes eight, ten guys around. And if you did business with the Italians there were cousins and brothers everywhere. But Butchie was different. There was something priestly in his aloofness. He seemed sometimes to Gus to be a sort of ascetic, alone with his meditations and plans.

  “Payday?” Butchie said when Gus walked onto the bridge from the Cambridge side.

  “You dumped Frankie Carey in front of City Hall,” Gus said.

  Butchie rested his chin on his folded hands.

  “Yeah?”

  “It was for me, wasn’t it?” Gus said.

  Butchie smiled and shrugged.

  “It made my kid look bad,” Gus said.

  “Yeah?”

  “You got a message for me, give it to me direct. Don’t involve my kid.”

  “Your kid is involved, Gus. He’s got a fucking bug in my office. He’s got a tap on my phone.”

  “I warned you about that,” Gus said.

  “Sure you did, that’s what you’re paid to do. But it’s still Goddamned inconvenient. I want to talk with someone, I got to come out here to do it.”

  “And I told you don’t fuck with my kid,” Gus said.

  Butchie took an envelope out of his inside pocket, and held it up.

  “You don’t tell me, Gus. I tell you. The late Frankie’s appearance in front of City Hall was just to remind you. I don’t want this investigation to get too serious. This is between me and Patrick.”

  He held the envelope out to Gus. Gus took it and without a glance tossed it over the railing. It planed briefly, then helicoptered down toward the tracks. Butchie glanced over the rail and smiled and shrugged.

  “It’s your money,” he said.

  “Not anymore,” Gus said.

  Butchie shrugged again.

  “You’re smart enough to know that it’s not just revenge, Gus. When it’s over this part of the city will belong to me or to Pat.” He smiled his meaningless smile again. “Think of it as a corporate takeover.”

  “No,” Gus said. “It’s finished. You and Pat work out a settlement.”

  “Gus,” Butchie said, “get real.”

  “Or I’ll
settle it.”

  “How you going to do that, Gus?”

  Butchie’s voice was perfectly flat.

  “You think all these years I haven’t paid attention?” Gus said. “I could package you and Patrick tomorrow.”

  “You’d go too, Gus.”

  “So what?”

  “I go, Gus. Everybody goes.”

  Gus took his gun from under his coat. It was a Glock 9-mm. He pressed the muzzle up under Butchie’s chin. Butchie’s expression didn’t change, though he raised his head slightly under the pressure of the gun.

  “You could go right here,” Gus said.

  “Could,” Butchie said.

  “You and Pat don’t settle this between you I’m going to blow both of you right out of the water. You embarrass my kid again and I’ll kill you.”

  “You said you’d let me know when you changed sides,” Butchie said. “This it? You back to being a cop?”

  Cars went by steadily on the Gilmour Bridge. Their passage made a steady swishing sound behind Gus. No one stopped.

  “This is it,” Gus said, and lowered the gun and turned his wide back toward Butchie and walked away down the length of the bridge without looking back, or bothering to holster his gun.

  Chris

  “I want you to pick them both up and bring them in,” Chris said. He was at his desk with coffee in a paper cup. John Cassidy sat across the desk with his coffee and Billy Callahan was leaning on the wall near the door.

  “Butchie and Pat?” John Cassidy said. “Together?”

  “Pick them up one at a time,” Chris said. “Quietly. I want to talk with them together.”

  “Here?”

  “I guess not here,” Chris said. “Press would spot them for sure.”

  “I can take them to Area D. I know a guy.”

  “Warren Ave?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay. Do it.”

  Cassidy finished his coffee. He came around Chris’s desk and carefully threw the cup in the wastebasket.

  “I’ll give you a call,” he said.

  Chris nodded, and Cassidy went.

  “You think you ought to talk to your father?” Billy Callahan said. He was eating a chocolate-frosted doughnut with a cream filling. There was a little spillage. Billy caught it with his forefinger and tucked it into his mouth.