Millicent shrugged and drank some scotch. She made a face, every time, as if she were taking medicine. But it didn’t cause her to stop.
“In those sex pictures you found. Was the man recognizable?”
“I think so. I didn’t like looking at them.”
“I don’t blame you,” I said. “Do you have any of those pictures?”
“No, when I ran I didn’t have anything but what I was wearing.”
“Are there any in your room?”
“No. My mother used to search my room all the time. I never dared have anything there.”
“You don’t know any of the men your mother has been with?”
“No.”
We communed with our scotch for a moment.
“She searched your room?” I said.
“Yes. To make sure I didn’t have drugs or condoms or cigarettes, stuff like that. She said it was her responsibility to know.”
I nodded.
“If she gave you enough time, I imagine you’d have fulfilled her expectations,” I said.
“What’s that mean?”
I shrugged.
“Just a little pop psych,” I said. “Pay no attention.”
Chapter 25
Spike had a town house with guest space on the second floor, in the South End on Warren Ave.
“I thought you lived in the South End,” Millicent said to me when we were surveying the two rooms and a bath that Spike was offering.
“I live in South Boston,” I said. “This is the South End. Two different places.”
There was a bay window in my bedroom with a window seat. Rosie immediately commandeered it so that she could look down at Warren Avenue and bark at anything that moved.
“You’re sure nobody saw us come here?” Millicent said.
I noticed that she hovered near the inner walls of the room, staying away from the windows. Her bedroom was across the hall from mine, but she stayed with me. Since the shooting she had not let me out of her sight.
“I’m not an amateur,” I said. “No one followed us.”
Spike came up the stairs with my suitcase and a duffel bag.
“What the hell is in here?” Spike said. “Hand grenades?”
“My face is in the suitcase,” I said. “Duffel bag goes next door.”
Spike dropped the suitcase.
“Come on, Millicent,” he said. “I’ll show you your room.”
Millicent hesitated and then followed him across the hall. She looked back as she left the room.
“I’m right here,” I said. “Door open.”
Spike came back in a moment without her.
“You know what you’re getting into,” I said.
“Sure,” Spike said. “You’re going to the mattresses.”
“I hope not. I hope we are hiding successfully.”
Spike was wearing jeans and a tee shirt with a plaid flannel shirt open over the tee shirt. When he sat on the bed I could see that he had an Army-issue Colt .45 stuck in his belt. I took some clothes out of the suitcase and put them in the top drawer of the bureau.
“Kid’s scared,” Spike said.
“Of course she is, there are people after her. She saw me kill one of them.”
“Better than seeing you not kill him.”
“True. I have to tell Richie where I am,” I said.
“Sure,” Spike said.
“I’ve got to be able to leave her here and go and find out who her mother was going to have killed, and who the people are who are trying to get her.”
“Be the same people, wouldn’t it,” Spike said.
“That’s my assumption,” I said. “We can’t leave Millicent alone.”
“I know.”
“I hate to ask, but I don’t know who else. I can’t ask Julie. It’s too dangerous and she’s got children of her own.”
“I’ll sit her,” Spike said. “But I have to work now and then, though not very hard. Maybe you can get Richie to take a turn.”
“I don’t...”
“You don’t want to ask him for anything,” Spike said, “I know. But you don’t have that luxury.”
“I’ve already asked him a couple of times,” I said.
Millicent came out of her room and across the hall and stood inside the doorway and didn’t say anything. Rosie began to gargle and yap and growl and bark and jump straight up and down on all four feet in the bay window. Millicent seemed to press herself into the wall by the door. Spike and I both looked out the window. There was a Yorkshire terrier being walked.
“Rat on a rope,” Spike said.
“What?” Millicent said.
“Just a dog,” I said. “Rosie barks at all children, and most dogs. You might as well get used to it.”
“You want some lunch?” Spike said.
“Like what?” Millicent said.
“Like chicken piccata, or a lobster club sandwich?”
“What?”
“Come down with me,” Spike said. “You can order what you want.”
“You can cook stuff like that?”
“I’m gay, of course I can cook stuff like that.”
“I didn’t know you were gay.”
“Yes, makes me immune to your seductive ways.”
“I never met anyone gay before.”
“You did,” Spike said, “you just didn’t know it.”
Millicent looked uneasy. I didn’t know if it was because she was leaving me, or because she was going with a homosexual man.
“Come on, Mill,” Spike said. “You’ve fallen upon good times here. Make the most of it. The best thing Sunny can do with a pot is put it away.”
“Go ahead,” I said. “Maybe he’ll give you a cooking lesson.”
Millicent looked doubtfully at Spike but she went with him. Rosie, hearing talk of food, plomped down from the window seat and followed them. I went and sat on the bed and called Richie.
Chapter 26
I was in District 6 Station House, Area C, on Broadway, talking with Brian Kelly at his desk in the detectives’ room. It was a state-of-the-art squad room, which is to say overcrowded, cluttered, and painted an ugly color. In the midst of it Brian was neat and crisp, cleanshaven and smelling of good cologne.
“Everybody agrees it’s a clear case of self-defense. Nobody wants to bring charges,” Brian said.
“And one of them shoved my dog with his foot.”
“He got what he deserved,” Brian said. “You clean that shotgun?”
“Yes.”
“You don’t clean them, you know, the barrel pits.”
“I know.”
“Ten-gauge?” he said.
“You weigh 115,” I said, “you like firepower.”
Brian’s teeth were even and very white, and his eyes were very blue. His hands were strong-looking. He had on a white shirt with a buttoned-down collar and a black knit tie and a Harris tweed jacket. He nodded.
“You weigh 115. I’m surprised the recoil didn’t put you on your ass.”
“I’m very grounded,” I said.
Brian smiled.
“Terry Nee was mostly a part of Bucko Meehan’s crew,” Brian said.
“What’s Bucko’s line?” I said.
“Truck hijacking, some dope dealing, extortion.”
“Tell me about the extortion.”
“Mostly small business owners — taverns, sub shops, liquor stores. Pay off or we’ll bust up your store, or your customers, or you. Terry Nee was the bust-up specialist.”
“Not a major player,” I said.
“Bucko? Hell no. Worked the fringes.”
“Did Terry ever freelance?”
“Sure. In Boston organized crime is an oxymoron. There are affiliations, but they’re loose ones, usually ethnic. The micks hang with micks, the guineas with guineas. But everybody freelances.”
“So it didn’t have to be Bucko Meehan that sent Terry Nee and Mike whatsis to my house.”