“Excellent,” I said.
Millicent got up and went back and flopped on the couch. I finished my push-ups and got up and went to the door and moved the footstool, and Rosie trotted into the room and wagged at us. I picked her up and gave her a kiss and let her lap my neck.
“How come she doesn’t just jump over the footstool?” Millicent said. “Can’t she jump?”
“She can,” I said. “But she doesn’t know it. She thinks she can’t, so she doesn’t try.”
Millicent looked at me and didn’t say anything. I smiled at her innocently.
“You think I’m like that?” Millicent said.
“Sorry,” I said. “But you handed it to me.”
“But you do think I’m like that.”
“You were like that about the push-ups,” I said.
“I didn’t do a real push-up,” Millicent said.
“You did six real half push-ups,” I said. “We work on it regularly and in a while you’ll do some real full push-ups.”
“So what? I hate doing push-ups.”
“If you can do them, then you can decide if you want to do them. If you can’t do them, the decision isn’t yours.”
Millicent frowned, as if I’d said something mathematical that she suspected was correct but she didn’t understand the terms.
“Who cares about push-ups?” she said.
“It’s more sort of an attitude,” I said. “The more things you can do, the more choices you have. The more choices you have, the less life kicks you around.”
“So I do push-ups, my life will be better?”
“It’s better to be strong than weak,” I said. “And it’s better to be quick than slow. But you’re not stupid; you know I mean something a little larger.”
She shrugged again and picked up the clicker and changed channels on the television set.
“You don’t think I’m stupid?” Millicent said.
“No. I think you are probably pretty smart. It’s just that no one has taught you much.”
“Like what?”
“Like how to be a person,” I said.
“You think you know?”
“Um hm.”
“So what makes you so smart?”
“It’s not smart, it’s learning.”
“I hate school,” Millicent said.
“Me, too,” I said. “Mostly I’ve learned stuff from my father and from Richie and from my friend Julie and Spike and Rosie and from being alive and paying attention for thirty-five years. I have plenty more to learn. I need to get my love life straightened out, for instance. But I have more information than you do. I have enough to take care of myself.”
“You learned stuff from Rosie?”
“Yes. How to pay attention, how to take care of someone without owning them...”
“But you do own her.”
“I bought her,” I said. “But I don’t own her. I feed her, I give her water. I take her to the vet. I let her out and in. I take her for walks. The truth of it is she’d die if I didn’t take care of her. And because she’s completely dependent on me, I am determined that within the confines of what I just said, and allowing for her safety and mine, she can live as she wishes and do as she pleases.”
“But you just shut her out of the room.”
“Life’s imperfect,” I said. “I wish it weren’t.”
“Why don’t you train her not to bite the jump rope.”
“I think that imposes on her more than shutting her out,” I said.
“You think stuff like this all the time?”
“Sometimes I think about clothes and makeup and guys,” I said. “Want to talk about them?”
“I don’t know much about that either,” Millicent said.
“Yet.”
She shrugged. I hated shrugging.
Chapter 31
Cathal Kragan had no record. Brian had never heard of him. Neither had anybody in the organized crime unit. The name meant nothing to Millicent. Using Spike’s computer I checked out Brock Patton on the Internet.
“Be careful,” Spike said. “You download the wrong thing and you’ll be in the middle of my sex life.”
“At least you have one,” I said.
“We feeling a little deprived, are we?”
“Maybe just a little.”
“Too bad I’m not in your program,” Spike said. “Think of the symphony we could make.”
“It’s always something,” I said. “What’s your password?”
He told me and I punched it in and went online. After much more diddling around than the computer ads would allow you to imagine, I located Brock Patton.
He was in among all the listings on the planet that contained the words Brock or Patton. I got a zillion articles on General Patton, and several on a football player named Brock Marion, and quite a few on an actor named Brock Peters, and a politician named Brock, and two on a football player named Peter Brock, and another one named Stan Brock, who appeared to be Peter’s brother, and, buried among them, five or six on the guy I was actually trying to find.
Here was the CEO of MassBay Trust which was the ninth-biggest bank in the country. Before that he’d been the president of the biggest bank in Rhode Island. He had been a very active Republican fund-raiser in both Rhode Island and Massachusetts. He had served the last Republican administration as Commerce Secretary, and it was said that he would be the Republican candidate for governor in two years. He was also a world-class trap shooter, and a Harvard graduate. There was one article about Betty Patton as a ferocious fund-raiser for several deserving charities. There were no pictures of Betty Patton in the buff. There was no mention of anyone named Cathal Kragan. None of the articles mentioned a disaffected daughter.
I sat back in the swivel chair in Spike’s den and stared at the blue green screen of Spike’s seventeen-inch Sony monitor. I was alone. Spike and Millicent had taken Rosie for a walk. I had insisted that Millicent wear a hat and sunglasses. Spike said there was not much chance someone would even be cruising the South End looking for her, and if they were, they would have an even smaller chance of recognizing her. I said they might recognize Rosie and put it together. Spike said maybe I overrated Rosie’s visibility. Rosie meanwhile was jumping up in the air and turning around before she landed and biting her leash. Rosie loved to walk. She would have gone for a walk with Dracula. Millicent seemed, if not eager, at least not resistant. Anything she wasn’t resistant to was to be encouraged. Spike reminded me that Millicent would be with him and that he was both fearless and deadly. So I said okay, and Spike stuck the big Army .45 in his belt under his jacket and off they went. I had to admit I liked being alone. Maybe my judgment had swayed a little.
I had known that Brock Patton was a banker, but the fact that he might make a run for governor gave new urgency to the knowledge that his wife posed for dirty pictures, and his daughter had been, if briefly, a hooker. I could see why he would want to keep a lid on things. I could see why his wife would. But why did Cathal Kragan care? What I knew was, there was a scheme under way. Maybe about being governor, maybe about something else. But there were people willing to kill somebody in the interests of that scheme, and Betty Patton was in on it.
I could ask her, but she wouldn’t tell me and then they’d know I knew, which would make everything harder, including not getting killed. I called my answering machine on my cell phone. Even if someone were able to trace the call they wouldn’t know where I was. There was a call from Brian. There was also a call from an attorney who said he represented Brock Patton. I broke the connection and dialed Brian’s number.
“Somebody aced Bucko Meehan,” he said when I got him. “This morning, early.”
“Suspects?”
“None.”
“How?”
“In his bed. Shot in the middle of the forehead. 357 Mag. Bullet came out the back and through the mattress and buried in the floorboards under the bed.”