Goodman had a wife and two teenage children, a boy and a girl, and they loved that house as well. Tony offered Stan Goodman a lot of money for the house, but he refused. It had belonged to his father, he said, and his father had bought it from the original owner back in the forties. He offered to find Tony Clean a similar property nearby, because Stan Goodman figured that if he kept on the good side of Tony Clean then everything would turn out okay. Except Tony Clean didn't have a good side.
One night in June, someone entered the Goodman house, shot their dog, bound and gagged the four members of the family and took them out to the old granite quarries at Halibut Point. My guess is that Stan Goodman died last, after they had killed his wife, his daughter and his son by placing their heads on a flat rock and cracking them open with a sledgehammer. There was a lot of blood on the ground when they were found the next morning, and I reckon it took the men who killed them a long time to wash it from their clothes. Tony Celli bought the house the following month. There were no other bidders.
The mere fact that Tony was here after what had taken place at Prouts Neck indicated that he wasn't screwing around. Tony wanted that money, and he wanted it bad, and he was willing to risk bringing down heat on himself to find it.
"You watch the news?" he said at last. He didn't look away from the screen, but I knew that the question was directed at me.
"Nope."
He looked at me for the first time.
"You don't watch any news?"
"Nope."
"Why not?"
"It depresses me."
"You must depress easy."
"I have a sensitive nature."
The financial report ended. He clicked off the TV using a manicured finger on the remote, then turned his full attention to me.
"You know who I am?" he said.
"Yeah, I know who you are."
"Good. Then, being an intelligent man, you probably know why I'm here."
"Christmas shopping? Looking to buy a house?"
He smiled coldly. "I know all about you, Parker. You're the one that took down the Ferreras." The Ferreras were a New York crime family, were being the operative word. I had become mixed up in their business, and it had ended badly for them.
"They took themselves down. I just watched."
"That's not what I heard. A lot of people in New York would be happier if you were dead. They think you lack respect."
"I'm sure."
"So why aren't you dead?"
"I brighten up a dull world?"
"They want to brighten up their world, they can turn on a light. Try again."
"Because they know I'll kill whoever comes after me, then I'll kill whoever sent them."
"I could kill you now. Unless you can come back from the dead, your threats aren't going to disturb my sleep."
"I have friends. I'd give you a week, maybe ten days. Then you'd die too."
He pulled a face, and a couple of the men around him snickered. "You play cards?" he asked, when they had finished laughing.
"Only solitaire. I like playing with someone I can trust."
"You know what 'fucking the deck' means?"
"Yeah, I know." Fucking the deck was something neophyte gamblers did: they screwed up the cards by making dumb calls. That was why experienced gamblers didn't play with amateurs, no matter how much money they had. There was always the chance that they'd fuck the deck so badly that the risk of losing increased to the extent that it wasn't worth gambling.
"Billy Purdue fucked my deck, and now I think you might be about to fuck my deck too. That's no good. I want you to stop. First I want you to tell me what you know about Purdue. Then I'll pay you to walk away."
"I don't need money."
"Everybody needs money. I can pay whatever debts you owe, maybe make some others disappear."
"I don't owe anybody."
"Everybody owes somebody."
"Not me. I'm free and clean."
"Or maybe you figure you got debts that money can't pay."
"That's very perceptive. What does it mean?"
"It means I am running out of reasonable ways to alter your current course of action, Bird-man." He made a little quotation marks sign with his fingers as he spoke the last syllable, then his voice lowered and he stood up. Even in his stocking feet, he was taller than I was.
"Now you listen to me, Birdman," he said, when he was only inches from me. "Don't make me tear your wings off. I hear you did some work for Billy Purdue's ex-wife. I hear also that he gave you money, my money, to give to her. That makes you a very interesting individual, because I figure you were one of the last people to talk to both of them before they went their separate ways. Now, do you want to tell me what you know so that you can go back to your little birdhouse and curl up for the night?"
I held his gaze. "If I knew anything useful and told you, my conscience wouldn't let me sleep," I said. "As it happens, I don't know anything, useful or otherwise."
"You know that Purdue has my money?"
"Has he?"
He shook his head, almost in sorrow. "You're going to make me hurt you."
"Did you kill Rita Ferris and her son?"
Tony took a step back then punched me hard in the stomach. I saw it coming and braced myself for the blow, but the force was strong enough to send me to my knees. As I gasped for breath I heard a gun cock behind me and felt cold steel against my skull.
"I don't kill women and children," said Tony.
"Since when?" I replied. "New Year's?"
A clump of my hair was gripped in someone's hand and I was dragged to my feet, the gun still behind my ear.
"How stupid are you?" said Tony, rubbing the knuckles of his right hand. "You want to die?"
"I don't know anything," I repeated. "I did some work for his ex-wife, crossed swords with Billy Purdue and walked away. That's all."
Tony Clean nodded. "What were you talking to the rummy in the bar about?"
"Something else."
Tony drew his fist back again.
"It was something else," I said again, louder this time. "He was a friend of my grandfather's. I wanted to look him up, that's all. You're right, he's just a rummy. Leave him be."
Tony stepped back, still rubbing his knuckles.
"I find out you're lying to me, you'll die badly, you understand? And if you're a smart guy, and not just a guy with a smart mouth, you'll stay out of my affairs."
The tone of his voice grew gentler, but his face hardened as he spoke again: "I'm sorry we have to do this to you, but I need to be sure that you understand what we've discussed. If at any point you feel you have something to add to what you've told me, just moan louder."
He nodded at whoever was behind me and I was forced down to my knees again. A rag was stuffed in my mouth, and my arms were pulled back and secured with cuffs. I looked up to see Harelip limping toward me. In his hand, he held a short metal rod. Crackling blue lightning danced along its length.
The first two shots from the cattle prod knocked me backward and sent me spasming to the ground, my teeth gritted in pain against the rag. After the third or fourth contact I lost control of myself and blue flashes moved through the blackness of my mind until, at last, the clouds took me and all went quiet.
When I came to, I was lying behind my Mustang, hidden from anyone walking on the street. The tips of my fingers were raw and my coat glittered with crystals of frost. My head ached badly, my body still trembled and there was dried blood and vomit on the side of my face and the front of my coat. I smelled bad. I got unsteadily to my feet and checked my coat pockets. My gun was in one, its clip gone, and my cell phone was in the other. I called a cab and, while I waited for it to arrive, made a call to a mechanic with a tow truck over by the Veteran's Memorial Bridge and asked him to take care of the car.