“But because of my work as a private detective,” I said, “and even having been a cop before that, I’ve frequently encountered violence. It’s kind of a weird duality, don’t you think? At the very least, it’s ironic.”
Duality.
Look at you and your shrinky words, I thought.
Susan Silverman nodded.
“There’s always a lot of that going on with Richie and you, though, isn’t there? Duality and irony.”
“Yes.”
“What emotion was most powerful and present for you?” Susan Silverman asked. “The anger or the fear?”
I thought about that, because I hadn’t until now.
“Fear, I suppose.”
“Of losing him completely.”
“Yes.”
“After all the other different ways when you felt you lost him,” she said. “When he was dating other women, and even married one of them.”
“That was different.”
“Was it?” she said, her eyes big.
“He was still in my life,” I said, “even when he wasn’t.”
“But it was you,” Susan Silverman said, “who initiated the dissolution of your marriage.”
I said, “I could still see him when I wanted.” I smiled at her. “We’ve spoken of this before. We even shared custody of the original Rosie.”
I shifted in my chair. Recrossed my legs. There was no reason for me to feel as defensive in here as I sometimes did.
But I did.
“And you didn’t feel as if some sort of order had been restored to the universe the two of you share until he was the one who ended his second marriage,” she said.
I smiled. “Bastard finally came to his senses,” I said.
She offered a smile in return.
“You’ve suggested that your feelings for Richie are uncomplicated,” she said, “even though there is no clear resolution to them, or commitment from either one of you about the future.”
“I think I might have to table those issues,” I said, “until I find the sonofabitch who shot him.”
I snuck a look at my watch. I know she saw me do it. Only a few minutes left in the session.
“There might be one other thing to consider,” Susan Silverman said. “Perhaps you feel the sense of purpose that you’re feeling right now, and clarity, because you’ve decided that in this particular case he needs you more than you need him.”
“Gotta admit,” I said. “Didn’t see that one coming.”
She tilted her head just slightly and raised an eyebrow, though not as artfully as Spike could. She wasn’t perfect.
“Kind of my thing,” she said. “And something else for you to consider until next time.”
She stood and smiled and said, “While you are occupied with the rat-bastard sonofabitch who shot your ex-husband.”
The mouth on her.
And her such a lady.
Thirteen
On my way back from Cambridge I called my father and told him I was probably going to have to make a much deeper dive into Desmond Burke’s past.
I had Phil Randall on speaker, and could hear him make a snorting noise.
“Good luck with that,” he said.
I told him that I’d already met with Wayne Cosgrove.
“Good reporter,” my father said, “for a reporter.”
“He actually knows a lot about the history of the Irish Mob,” I said.
“From the outside,” Phil Randall said. “Doesn’t make him an insider. It’s like thinking you know how to play shortstop for the Red Sox because you’ve watched a lot of baseball from the Monster Seats.”
I looked in the rearview mirror and saw myself smiling.
“You know how much I love you, Daddy,” I said. “But you do know how I stop listening when you use baseball analogies, right?”
“What I’m saying,” he said, “is that you’re gonna need someone who actually is on the inside. Or was. And whose last name isn’t Burke.” There was a pause and then he said, “I’m assuming you would have mentioned it if any of them had been shot so far today.”
“Still early,” I said.
I had slowed on Storrow Drive, and could see flashing police lights up ahead near the exit onto David G. Mugar Way.
“Desmond Burke is the most fastidious criminal I have ever encountered, if there even is such a thing,” my father said. “It is why I haven’t locked him up and no one else has, either.”
I never failed to notice that he still talked about his career as a cop in the present tense. And, I assumed, always would.
Traffic had now come to a complete stop.
“You got a minute?” he said.
“I’ve come to a complete stop on Storrow Drive,” I said. “I’ve abandoned all hope that I will ever make it back to River Street Place.”
“I think you’re being dramatic,” he said.
“I get that from mother,” I said.
He let that one go.
“One thing about the Burkes that always fascinated me is that as closely as Desmond and Felix have worked, and as much as they’re connected, there’s a wariness that exists between them,” my father said. “Like they’ve been concerned one might make some kind of move on the other. I’ve always wondered if there might be some brotherly resentment that Desmond was the one in charge.”
The traffic finally began to move again, and then I was off Storrow and onto Beacon and making my way toward Charles Street. It occurred to me that the geography of the area was starting to feel more and more normalized.
“So what are you saying?” I said.
“You need to talk to somebody who knows where all the bodies are buried.”
“Literally or figuratively?” I said.
He snorted again. “Both.”
Then he said to hold on, he wanted to check his phone contacts, a list that he had slowly transferred to the iPhone I had gotten him last Christmas, something that had taken some doing, since the list was only somewhat shorter than the Old Testament.
Finally he said, “Write this down. It’s Vinnie Morris’s new number and his address up on Concord Turnpike.”
“I’m moving again, Daddy,” I said. “Text me.”
“You know I’m not much for texting,” he said.
“Make an exception for your precious princess,” I said, then told him I should have thought of Vinnie on my own.
“It’s like I keep trying to tell you,” my father said over the speaker, “I taught you everything you know, missy. Not everything I know.”
I told him I was pretty sure he had stolen that line from a movie. He told me to prove it. And then he reminded me once again of another line, from an old boxing promoter friend of his.
“It’s better to be stolen from than to have to steal,” he said.
“But aren’t you technically the one who did the stealing?”
“What is this,” my father said, “a grand jury?”
I asked him what Vinnie was doing these days.
“He owns a bowling alley,” Phil Randall said.
“No shit?” I said.
“The mouth on you,” he said.
“Yeah,” I said. “And me such a lady.”
Fourteen
When I got home I walked Rosie, locked up, got back in the car, put Vinnie’s address into Waze. I thought about calling in advance to tell him I was coming and decided to surprise him instead, even knowing that someone who’d begun his professional career as a trigger man for Joe Broz and then moved up to bodyguard Gino Fish probably liked surprises about as much as the Secret Service did.
When I was on my way back to Cambridge, my father called back.
“I should have mentioned that the bowling alley is just a front with Vinnie,” he said.