All Our Yesterdays

by Robert B. Parker

  “No.”

  “He might not think this was a good idea.”

  “I think it’s a good idea,” Chris said.

  “Yes, sir,” Billy said.

  “And don’t call me fucking sir. For Crissake, I’ve known you since I was like ten. You used to teach me to box.”

  “And you got to be pretty good too, Chris.”

  “Bullshit. I was awful. I never liked it,” Chris said.

  “Your mother used to hate it when we boxed.”

  “I know.”

  Billy went over to the open box of doughnuts on the table and took another one with the chocolate glaze on it.

  “These Boston creams are excellent,” Billy said. “You want one?”

  “No, thanks.”

  Billy went to the extra chair and sat down with his doughnut. However much he ate, he didn’t seem to change. He works out so much, Chris thought, that he can eat what he wants. One of those single Irish guys with nothing else to do. Chris felt the bottomless down spiral in his stomach. Like me.

  Laura

  Laura Winslow gazed at her daughter’s face across the table. In the bright sunlight, she could see the faint lines beginning to show around her eyes.

  “His name is Jerry Davis,” Grace said. “I met him at work. He’s a partner in another law firm and he’s married.”

  “And you like him,” Laura said.

  “Yes, of course, he’s very nice.”

  “Have you known him long?”

  They were outside under an umbrella on Newbury Street, drinking cappuccino in the late morning.

  “Oh, sure, a bunch of years, since I started work. We got to be sort of pals, but nothing more than that until lately.”

  “And you slept with him?” Laura said.

  “Of course. You disapprove?”

  Laura smiled and shook her head.

  “No,” she said, “I don’t. I probably ought to, I’m your mother and all that. But I find it—I don’t know what exactly—charming seems too cute a way to say it. I guess I envy you.”

  “You do?”

  “Yes, I think so. I envy the freedom to do it, and the impetuosity, and the”—Laura made a circular motion with her right hand while she searched for language—“the sense of ease that it implies,” she said.

  Grace put her hand out and held on to her mother’s forearm.

  “Ease is fun,” she said.

  Laura patted the hand that rested on her forearm.

  “I imagine so,” Laura said.

  “It was like I’d come out of a cocoon,” Grace said. “Like I’d been in traction. Mother, we—in New York—we did everything. We tried everything we’d ever heard of.”

  Laura smiled.

  “That’s nice, dear.”

  Grace laughed. “I know I shouldn’t be talking like this to my mother.”

  “Who better?” Laura said. “Besides, I’m fascinated.”

  “Always with Chris,” Grace said, “it was like, about something. It was about who loved who, and who was willing to do what for who, and who controlled who, and it was always somber and heavy, you know?”

  “I know something,” Laura said.

  “With Jerry, it’s fan. We’re doing this stuff because we like it. You know? No other issues. No unspoken tests. No passing and failing. Just a balls-out good time.”

  “Perhaps an unfortunate choice of metaphor,” Laura said. And they both laughed. “And you’ve told Chris?”

  “Yes.”

  “Must be hard for him.”

  “I can’t help that.”

  “You didn’t have to tell him.”

  “He has a right to know.”

  “Or you have a need to tell him.”

  “Or both,” Grace said. “He knows there were men before him, he should know there can be men after him. It doesn’t do either of us any good if he thinks I’m home sorting things in my hope chest.”

  “Perhaps you’re right.”

  “And even if I’m not,” Grace said, and she grinned at her mother, “what I need now is tea and sympathy. And as my mother you’re obligated to provide it.”

  “At last,” Laura said, “a job description emerges. How are you feeling about Chris?”

  “God, that’s hard. Relief is one feeling. He hasn’t got hold of me anymore. All that grimness.”

  “But?”

  “But we are so connected. I mean I’ve known him since I was a child. Our families have known each other since, what? Grammy Hadley knew his grandfather, or something?”

  “Yes.”

  “And I learned a lot of things from him. I mean, he’s from a whole other place and in some ways he helped bring me up. And … I do love him.”

  “I think he’s a good man,” Laura said.

  “Well, we’ll find that out, won’t we?” Grace said. “He has potential, but he’s got to get some perspective on his family.”

  “I’m sure everyone ought to,” Laura said. “His father seems like a good man too.”

  “Yes,” Grace said. “I like Gus, but why doesn’t he stuff a sock down that woman’s throat.”

  “Peggy?” Laura said.

  “Yes.”

  “I gather she’s difficult.”

  “Difficult? She’s hideous.”

  “Must have been hard having her for a mother.”

  “Probably was,” Grace said. “But, at least for the moment, that’s his problem. I hope he solves it.”

  1994 Voice-Over

  “And the rage,” Grace said. “What have you done with the rage?”

  “Well, first I thought about killing that guy you went to New York with.”

  Grace nodded.

  “And me?” she said.

  “No. I never thought about killing you.”

  She looked at me for a while in silence, holding the big mug of tea at a level with her mouth. Only her eyes showed above the rim of it, resting on me. Then she nodded as if to herself. Outside the window the thunder and lightning came almost at the same moment, the fluorescent flash underscored immediately by the looming rumble.

  “I believe that,” she said.

  “If you didn’t,” I said, “you took a hell of a chance having me come here tonight.”

  “I had to know,” she said.

  “Yeah,” I said. “And now you do.”

  “So, what did you do with the rage?”

  “I took Flaherty’s job,” I said.

  “And now?”

  “Now I know that I can do things without triggering the rage.”

  “That’s a good thing to know,” Grace said. “What about me?”

  “Or perhaps, what about us,” I said.

  “I need to know how you feel about me. You have to be angry.”

  “Yeah, probably, but I know also that you did what you had to do. If you hadn’t left, we’d have stayed in the strangled disaster we were in.”

  “You know that intellectually,” Grace said.

  “Last year I didn’t know it at all,” I said.

  “So it’s a start,” Grace said.

  “Get ’em by the head; the soul will follow.”

  “I hope so,” Grace said.

  “Consider,” I said. “Last year I couldn’t marry you and couldn’t leave you.”

  “And this year?”

  “I can do either,” I said.

  Chris

  Butchie O’Brien and Pat Malloy were sitting quietly on straight chairs in a small room off the side entrance in the Area D station on Warren Avenue, when Chris walked in with Billy Callahan. John Cassidy, neat clothes, hair slicked back, round glasses, sat behind a yellowed maple table. His hands were folded on the table.

  Chris went behind the table beside Cassidy and remained standing. Billy Callahan leaned widely against the door.

  “I wish to call my attorney,” Butchie said.

  “Of course,” Chris said.

  “Me too,” Pat Malloy said.

  “Certainly,” Chris said. “Anyone fac
ing arrest has the right to an attorney.”

  Nobody moved. Nobody said anything. Pat Malloy glanced at the closed door against which Billy Callahan was leaning. Billy’s arms were folded and his upper arms seemed to stretch the weave of his coat. Chris smiled at both of them. He looked at Cassidy.

  “Did you place these men under arrest, Sergeant Cassidy?”

  Cassidy shook his head.

  “So we’re free to go,” Butchie said.

  “Sure.”

  Billy Callahan continued to lean on the door. Everybody looked at him. He smiled.

  “Cut the bullshit,” Pat Malloy said. “Whaddya want?”

  “I want the killing stopped,” Chris said. “I know you two are in charge. I know if you say stop, it stops.”

  “You got any proof?” Pat said.

  “Not a bit,” Chris said. “That’s why we need to talk.”

  Butchie and Pat looked at each other. Butchie smiled softly.

  “So talk,” Pat said.

  “We are all over you,” Chris said. “And I know it is hard to do business when the cops are all over you. Sooner or later we will get something and then one or both of you will be down at Cedar Junction looking out.”

  “I do land development,” Butchie said.

  “Yeah, sure,” Chris said. “And Pat does import-export. And I’m a fucking movie star. What I’m saying is that we can end this now, before more of your people get killed. You’re about even up with each other in the body count. Each of you give me one guy to take the jump, and we call it a wash.”

  “You want me to designate an employee to go to jail?” Butchie said with a small smile.

  “Somebody’s gotta go in for all the homicides,” Chris said. “Can’t be helped.”

  “You’re as bad as your old man,” Pat said. “He’s fucking crazy. You’re fucking crazy.”

  Butchie’s eyes drifted aimlessly around the room. Chris saw it.

  “It’s not bugged,” he said.

  Butchie smiled at him and shrugged.

  “But you don’t know that, so you won’t admit to anything,” Chris said. “But consider the deal. The shooting stops. We get out of your face. Your business prospers. Neither of you gets bagged. Life goes on.”

  No one said anything.

  “Think about it,” Chris said. “You want to talk about this, I’ll meet you anywhere you feel comfortable. You don’t want to talk about this, we up the stakes. If you think we’ve been in your way before …” Chris shook his head, speechless in wonderment at the level of harassment to come.

  “You don’t have a fucking thing,” Butchie O’Brien said. “And the press is on your ass and the fucking mayor is on your ass and this is all you could think of.”

  Chris took two business cards from his shirt pocket and handed them one each.

  “Call me anytime,” he said.

  Pat crumpled his without looking at it, and dropped it on the floor. Butchie read his, and carefully tore it in half, and put the two halves neatly on the table in front of him. Everyone sat quietly again. Then Chris looked at Billy Callaban and moved his head. Billy stepped away from the door. Pat Malloy got up, walked to the door, opened it, and went out, leaving it open behind him. Butchie remained seated for a moment.

  “Do I get a ride home?” he said.

  Chris shook his head. Butchie smiled slightly.

  “Take care,” he said. And stood and went out.

  Chris watched Butchie leave, and then went to the mesh-covered front window, and watched him enter one of two cars waiting at the curb. The cars pulled away and Chris stared after them until the red tail-lights disappeared. Then he turned back to the room. He hunched his shoulders and spread his hands and turned his palms up in a gesture of resignation.

  “Was that a threat?” he said.

  “‘Take care’?” Cassidy said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Chris,” Billy Callahan said, “I think you oughta talk to the captain.”

  Chris didn’t answer.

  “It might not be a bad idea,” Cassidy said.

  “Why?” Chris said.

  “Captain knows a lot,” Cassidy said.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Chris said.

  Laura

  Laura sipped from her third cup of cappuccino. The sun had shifted westward enough so that they were in the shadow now, and the memory of March still lingered in the June shade.

  “When you say you ‘tried everything,’ and perhaps this is too intimate, what do you mean?”

  Grace laughed. “Positions mostly—like him on top, me on top, in a chair … you know?”

  “No, actually, I’m embarrassed to admit, I don’t know. It’s why I’m asking.”

  “Honest to God? You and Daddy …?” Grace shook her head. “I don’t mind, ask what you want to know.”

  “We seem to have reversed roles here,” Laura said. “But your father and I come from a more constrained time. We have been, ah, quite … calm in our marital relations.”

  “The old missionary position,” Grace said, smiling. Her face felt warm. She knew she was blushing. But so was her mother.

  “At most,” Laura said. “How does one do this in a chair?”

  “There’s a couple ways,” Grace said. Her voice sounded hoarse and she cleared it before she went on to describe the options. Her mother bent slightly toward her, watching her face, nodding frequently.

  “Really,” Laura said. “And what about oral sex?”

  “Mother!”

  “Well, I’m sorry. I’ve heard about it but I’ve never known anyone I could ask.”

  “Not even Daddy?”

  “It’s not something your father would discuss,” Laura said.

  “Well,” Grace said, “what about it?”

  “Have you done it?”

  “Sure.”

  Laura was very intent now as she leaned toward her daughter.

  “Both”—she made a reciprocating gesture with her hands—“I mean, you and him?”

  “Sure.”

  Laura continued to lean forward, staring at her daughter.

  “Oh, my,” she said.

  Both of them drank some coffee. Around them people at other tables were conversing reasonably about restaurants and fashion and sports and prices.

  “Mother, I don’t mean this to be critical, I just don’t know how else to say it. What kind of a marriage have you had?”

  Laura took another sip from her cup. She looked at the coffee and shook her head.

  “I’ll never sleep, tonight,” she said.

  Grace waited.

  “We’ve had an uneventful marriage. Your father is orderly and very remote. He has never been unkind to me. He is committed to the business, and the family name. He is a good provider. He wants there to be a Senator Winslow. He is not interested in sex.”

  “My God, Mother. What about you?”

  “I was brought up in a time, and by a family, which believed that sex was something women provided in return for home, family, financial security. Women did not initiate sex, they lay still and accepted it, as was their responsibility.”

  “But, I mean you haven’t been in a vacuum. You know there’s another way to think about it.”

  “Passionate sexual response frightens your father.”

  They sat still, looking at each other’s face. The ambient buzz of conversation seemed at a great distance. Laura’s eyes were wet. The waiter came and asked if they needed anything else. Grace shook her head. The waiter put the check down on the table between them and went away.

  “Oh,” Grace said.

  “Exactly,” Laura said. “Oh.”

  “Does it frighten you?”

  “I don’t think so,” Laura said.

  “And you never thought of looking for it elsewhere?”

  “No. It was not a condition of my upbringing. I had two children to think about. And truthfully, the opportunity has not, so far, presented itself.”

>   “If it did,” Grace said, looking directly at her mother, “would you take it?”

  “I think so,” Laura said.

  Tom

  Tom Winslow sat at a small table in the middle of the food court at Cityplace in the Transportation Center. A styrofoam cup of black coffee sat untouched in front of him. Across the table with two honey-dipped crullers, and a cup of his own, was Barry Levine.

  Tom Winslow’s face felt frozen. His body felt stiff and clumsy. Barry Levine picked a piece of lint off his lapel and flicked it away. Nothing else marred his appearance. He was slim, tanned, tailored. He wore a double-breasted blue pinstriped suit, and a blue shirt with a white pin collar. His black shoes were Italian. His tie was scarlet with a white geometric pattern, and his display handkerchief was white. He knew he was worth money. He was Butchie O’Brien’s lawyer.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever been in here,” Tom Winslow said.

  “Yes, it’s a bit scruffy, but then we don’t want anyone listening in on our conversation, Tom.”

  “We’ve done business in my office for years. You think someone would listen in?”

  Barry Levine smiled.

  “It seems prudent, Tom.”

  “You think I’m under suspicion?”

  “Oh, I’m sure not, Tom. Just a lawyer’s natural caution is all.”

  Barry Levine took a bite of his cruller, leaning carefully forward to make sure no crumbs fell on his shirt-front.

  “Boy, I’m a sucker for these things,” Barry Levine said. “I try to eat right, exercise, stay fit. But I get near a Dunkin’ Donuts stand and I lose all resolve.”

  Tom Winslow didn’t say anything. He sat stiffly and waited. The public sound system in the atrium area was playing a Frank Sinatra album over the buzz of mostly adolescent conversation and the sounds of fast food being sold.

  “You sure you don’t want anything, Tom?”

  Tom Winslow shook his head.

  “Well, you’re a man of firmer resolve than I,” Barry Levine said.

  He finished his first cruller and drank some coffee and carefully patted his lips dry with a paper napkin.

  “We’ve got to do something about Gus Sheridan,” he said.

  “Gus?”

  “Gus. He’s the loose cannon in this whole situation. He pulled a gun on Butchie, for God’s sake.”