“Burkes’ interest weighs a lot,” Tony said. “Don’t scare me. I didn’t get to be who I am by letting people scare me. But I didn’t get here by wasting my time shooting it out with the Burkes either.”
I made a little doesn’t-matter-which gesture with my left hand.
“Tell me about Natalie Marcus,” I said.
Tony let his chair rock back so his feet cleared the floor. He looked at the shine on his glistening black shoes for a moment.
“What you want to know?”
“You know her.”
“Yes.”
“Did you know her real name was Verna Lee and she was Jermaine’s sister?”
“Yes.”
“Did you know she was married to you at one time? When she was known as Natalie Marcus?”
Tony smiled, though I didn’t see much warmth in the smile. But I never saw much warmth in Tony. He was playful. But what he really felt, or thought, or needed was never clear.
“I did know that,” Tony said.
“Did you know she was once a hooker?”
“Um hm.”
“Did you know she is now in a relationship with a woman named Mary Lou Goddard?”
“Sunny Randall,” Tony said. “They going to take you to Sweden, give you the Nobel Prize in snooping.”
“Did you know somebody named Lawrence B. Reeves?”
“Not sure,” Tony said. “What about him?”
“He used to date Mary Lou Goddard, who’s the current partner of your ex-wife. He used to employ the services of Natalie’s brother, one of your pimps, Jermaine Lister.”
“Ah,” Tony said. “That Lawrence B. Reeves.”
“Lawrence is dead. So is a woman named Gretchen Crane. Did you know her?”
Tony rocked slowly in his leather chair. He rubbed his eyes with the thumb and forefinger of his left hand, as if he were tired. He pursed his lips slightly. I never knew if Tony did anything spontaneously or if everything was for careful effect. I waited. He rocked.
Finally, he said, “Why you want to know all this, Sunny Randall?”
“Because I don’t know it,” I said.
“Simple as that?”
“It’s what I do. I try to find out stuff. I like the work.”
“You still got that funny-looking little dog?”
“I still have the beauteous Rosie,” I said.
Tony nodded as if that somehow explained every thing. He stopped rubbing his eyes, and with his chair still tilted back and his elbows resting on the arms of the chair, he folded his hands across the top of his stomach.
“Let me tell you a story,” he said.
He moved his clasped hands up so that they were pressed against his lips.
“I got no regard for whores,” he said. “They just product to me. Then about ten years ago, I met Verna Lee Lister. Just another whore, probably no different than any of the others. But I thought she was different.”
Tony rocked forward and took a long narrow cigar from a humidor on his desk.
“Mind if I smoke?” he said.
“Yes.”
Tony smiled and carefully lit the cigar, turning it until he had it burning evenly.
“I took her off the streets. I cleaned her up. I got her good clothes. Changed her name. Taught her table manners. Sent her to college. We were going to boogie off into the sunset together.”
“Pygmalion,” I said.
“Don’t know nothing about pig whatsis,” Tony said. “But I thought it was going to be different.”
“And it wasn’t?”
Tony smiled without any sign of happiness, and inhaled cigar smoke. As he spoke the smoke drifted out between his words.
“It was, but not the way I thought. We were married awhile and then she takes up with a lesbian.”
“Mary Lou Goddard?”
Tony nodded.
I heard myself say, “How did you feel about that?”
“How you think?” Tony said.
“Stupid question,” I said. “What I meant was how did you feel about the lesbian part?”
“I tole her she do what she have to do, but don’t embarrass me.”
“By admitting she was a lesbian?”
“By admitting she left me for a dyke,” Tony said.
“Ahhh,” I said.
Tony nodded silently.
“In my position, don’t do me no good to get laughed at,” he said.
“Did Jermaine know?”
“Yes.”
“And he exploited it,” I said.
“It helped him get ahead in the organization,” Tony said.
“Which is why he tried to kill me,” I said. “If I found out about Natalie, he had no hold on you. His career would be over.”
“And his life.”
“Which as it turned out was the result of his efforts anyway.”
“Things don’t always work out,” Tony said.
“Did you kill Gretchen Crane?” I said.
“Nope.”
“Do you know who did?”
“The dyke,” Tony said.
“Mary Lou?”
Tony nodded.
“Because she was having an affair with Natalie?”
“Yeah.”
“And Mary Lou found out and killed her.”
“Um hm.”
“How do you know?”
“Natalie told me, wanted me to fix it.”
“My God,” I said. “Lawrence B. Reeves.”
“He been following Mary Lou. Fact is he’d been fucking Mary Lou, or so Natalie says, which is why Natalie was fucking Gretchen whatsis, she says. ’Course Natalie can always come up with some good-sounding explanation, why she fucking some broad.”
Except for anger, Tony had no other way to deal with his hurt.
“So you killed a couple of birds with one stone,” I said. “You set him up for killing Gretchen and you stopped him from following Mary Lou.”
“Un huh. Junior force him to sign the confession, didn’t even have to touch him, Junior says. Reeves so scared he do whatever he was told. Probably shoot himself, they told him to.”
“But he didn’t shoot himself.”
“No.” Tony smiled. “Ty-Bop done that.”
“I would have thought,” I said, “that Natalie would have wanted Mary Lou to be punished for killing Gretchen. I mean they were lovers.”
“Natalie tole me she felt bad for Mary Lou. Mary Lou saying ‘Look what you made me do’ and shit,” Tony said.
“And Natalie felt guilty.”
“She felt something,” Tony said. “Mary Lou got the jingle. She pay for the place on Beacon Hill. She pay for the clothes and the lunches and the vacations to Truro. Only way Natalie know how to support her self is blow jobs.”
“And Mary Lou had hired me to protect her from Lawrence B. before she found out about Natalie and Gretchen. And then when she’d killed Gretchen she had to get me out of her life before I found out.”
“Smart girl,” Tony said.
“Was it Natalie who got Gretchen access to the whores and Jermaine?”
“Through me.”
“So why’d she go to Bobby Franco,” I said.
“Natalie want a cop to know we doing business,” Tony said. “She feel a little safer that way.”
“And why in God’s name would you have sent me to Jermaine, if you didn’t want this stuff revealed?”
Tony held his cigar up so he could examine the burning end.
“That a mistake,” he said. “I don’t know why I done that. Sometimes I just do shit.”
“If it all came out,” I said, “it wouldn’t hang over your head anymore.”
“You still love her, don’t you?”
Tony shook his head.
“Ain’t part of the discussion.”
Tony didn’t seem to want to hear my theories of love, anger, and ambivalence. In truth I didn’t either. I let it go.
“Is there anything to the fact that Lawrence B. did business with Jermaine every Thursday night?”
Tony snorted.
“Did he. Well, you use a whore in this city, you going to do business with one of my pimps.”
“Just a coincidence.”
“Far as I know,” Tony said.
We were quiet. Tony smoked his cigar. I was sure there were loose ends I had missed. I was sure there were questions I would wish I’d asked. But right now, as far as I could think around the buzzing in my brain, I had it all.
“I’m going to try to prove as much of this as I can,” I said.
Tony nodded. There was nothing playful about him.
“You can’t prove anything without me.”
“Just want you to know I’m going to try.”
Tony rested his dark brown gaze on me.
“This gets to be a public thing, Sunny Randall, and fuck the Burkes, I’ll have Ty-Bop shoot you dead.”
I took a breath and pushed myself to say what I had to say.
“If I can prove you killed two people it’ll be public, and I’ll take my chances. But I won’t gossip. Un less I can put you in jail I won’t talk about what you’ve told me.”
“Hope it works out that way, Sunny Randall,” Tony said gently. “I’d kind of miss you.”
Ambivalence writ large. I stood. We looked at each other and I left. I walked past Junior and Ty-Bop and the people eating breakfast and out into the sunlight.
CHAPTER
58
MY CAR WAS parked across the street. And as I walked to it, Spike stepped out of a doorway and walked to meet me. As I reached my car, Richie opened the door of a car across the street and walked over. Spike and he stared at each other.
“I was supposed to come alone,” I said.
“Can’t always have what you want,” Spike said.
“Did you two collaborate on this?” I said to Richie.
Richie smiled.
“I didn’t know he’d be here,” he said.
I looked at Spike. He shrugged.
“I didn’t know Richie would be here,” he said.
“So the two of you, each on his own, came down here.”
“I guess so,” Richie said.
“And hung around outside in case I needed help.”
Spike shrugged. I stared at both of them and began to cry harder than I may have ever cried in my life.
Keep reading for an exciting excerpt from the next Sunny Randall novel, ROBERT B. PARKER’S BLOOD FEUD.
CHAPTER
One
I SAID TO said to Spike, “Do I look as if I’m getting older?”
“This is some kind of trap,” he said.
“I’m being serious,” I said. “The UPS kid ma’amed me the other day.”
“I assume you shot him,” Spike said.
“No,” I said. “But I thought about it.”
We were seated at one of the middle tables in the front room at his restaurant, Spike’s, formerly known as Spike’s Place, on Marshall Street near Quincy Market. It had started out as a sawdust-on-the-floor saloon, before there even was a Quincy Market. It was still a comedy club when Spike and two partners took it over. Then Spike bought out the two partners, reimagined the place as an upscale dining establishment—“Complete with flora and fauna,” as he liked to say—and now he was making more money than he ever had in his life.
It was an hour or so before he would open the door for what was usually a robust Sunday brunch crowd. We were both working on Bloody Marys even though it was only ten-thirty in the morning, being free, well past twenty-one, and willing to throw caution to the wind.
Spike took a bite of the celery stalk from his drink. I knew he was doing that only to buy time.
“Would you mind repeating the question?” he said.
“You heard me.”
“I believe,” he said, “that what you’ve asked is the age equivalent of asking if I think you look fat in those jeans.”
I looked down at my favorite pair of Seven whites. Actually, I had no way of knowing if they were my favorites, since I had four pairs in my closet exactly like them. When any one of them started to feel too tight, I doubled down on yoga and gym time, and cut back on the wine.
“You’re saying I’m fat, too?” I said.
“You know I’m not,” he said. “And in answer to the original question, you always look younger than springtime to me.”
“You’re sweet,” I said.
“That’s what all the girls say. But, sadly, only about half the guys.”
Spike was big, bearded, built like a bear that did a lot of gym time, and able to beat up the Back Bay if necessary. He was also gay, and my best friend in the world.
“Only half?” I said.
“I’m the one who’s getting old, sweetie,” he said. “And probably starting to look fat in my own skinny-ass jeans.”
My miniature English bull terrier, Rosie, was lounging on the floor in the puppy bed that Spike kept for her behind the bar, thinking food might be available at any moment, the way it usually was at Spike’s. Spike called her Rosie Two. The original Rosie, the love of my life, had passed away the previous spring, far too soon. My father had always said that dogs were one of the few things that God got wrong, that they were the ones who ought to be able to live forever.
I’d asked Spike not to call her Rosie Two, telling him that it affected a girl’s self-esteem.
“I love you,” he’d say, “and by extension, that means I love your dog. But she’s still a goddamn dog.”
At which point I would shush him and tell him that now he was just being mean.
There was a sharp rap on the front window. Rosie immediately jumped to attention, growling, her default mechanism for strangers. There was a young couple peering in at us, the guy prettier than the woman he was with. They looked like J and Crew. Spike smiled brilliantly at them, pointed at his watch, shook his head. They moved on, their blondness intact.
“Where were we?” Spike said.
“Discussing my advancing age.”
“We’re not going to have one of those dreary conversations about your biological clock, are we?” he said. He trained his smile on me now. “It makes you sound so straight.”
“Pretty sure I am, last time I checked.”
“Well,” Spike said, sighing theatrically. “You don’t have to make a thing of it.”
“You make it sound like we have these conversations all the time,” I said.
“More lately now that you and your ex have started up again, or started over again, or whatever the hell it is you two are doing.”
My ex-husband was Richie Burke, and had long since turned Kathryn Burke into his second ex-wife. He’d finally admitted to her that he not only had never gotten over me, he likely never would.
At the time Spike said it was shocking, Kathryn being a bad sport about something like that, and racing him to see who could file for divorce first.
Now Richie and I were dating, as much as I thought it was stupid to think of it that way. But “seeing each other” sounded even worse. When we did spend a night together, something we never did more than once a week, we always slept at my new apartment on River Street Place so I didn’t have to get a sitter for Rosie. So far there had been hardly any talk about the two of us moving back in together, something I wasn’t sure could ever happen again. It wasn’t because of Richie. It was because of me.
T
he one time Richie had asked if I could ever see the two of us married again, I told him I’d rather run my hand through Trump’s hair.
“I keep thinking that maybe this time you two crazy kids could live happily ever after,” Spike said.
“I’m no good at either one,” I said. “Happy. Or ever after.”
“I thought you said you were happy with the way things were going?” Spike said.
“Not so much lately.”
“Well, shitfuck,” he said.
“‘Shitfuck’?”
“It’s something an old baseball manager used to say,” he said.
Spike was obsessed with baseball in general and the Boston Red Sox in particular. He frequently reminded me that in Boston the Red Sox weren’t a matter of life and death, because they were far more serious than that.
“You know baseball bores the hell out of me,” I said.
“I can’t believe they even allow you to live here,” Spike said.
We both sipped our drinks, which were merely perfect. I used to tell friends all the time that they could call off the search for the best Bloody Mary on the planet once they got to Spike’s.
“What’s bothering you, really?” Spike said. “You only have to look in the mirror to see how beautiful you still are. And having been in the gym with you as often as I have, we both know you’re as fit as a Navy SEAL.”
“Remember when Richie told me it was officially over with Kathryn? He said it was because he wanted it all. And that ‘all’ meant me.”
“I remember.”
“But the problem,” I continued, “is that I’m no better at figuring out what that means to me than I was when we were married. Or apart.” I sighed. “Shitfuck,” I said.
“You sound like the dog that caught the car,” Spike said.
I smiled at him. “That’s me,” I said. “An old dog.”
“I give up,” he said.
“What you need to do is open up,” I said, “and send me and my gorgeous dog politely and firmly on our way.”
“You could stay for lunch,” Spike said.
“And have Rosie scare off the decent people? Who needs that?”
“What you need,” Spike said, “is a case. A private detective without clients is, like, what? Help me out here.”
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