“My father is a survivor,” Richie said.
“So was your uncle Peter until he wasn’t.”
“I don’t want to fight with you.”
“We’re not fighting,” I said.
“What you used to say when we were married.”
I sighed. It came out louder than I had intended. “I don’t need his permission to do some detecting,” I said. “But I would very much like to have yours.”
“And if not granted?”
I tried to give him a smile that once had done everything except cause his knees to buckle.
“I will have to find ways to persuade you,” I said.
“Wouldn’t that make me the treat whore?” Richie said.
There seemed to be nothing more to say at the moment. Richie finally looked at his watch.
“We should get going,” he said.
“I haven’t annoyed you to the point where you want to dump me?” I said.
“I keep trying,” Richie said. “But it just never seems to goddamn take.”
“Maybe we should agree to drop the subject of your father’s current business interests for the rest of the evening,” I said. “Unless, of course, you just can’t help yourself.”
“I’ll try to maintain control.”
“Never been much of an issue for you, big boy.”
He suddenly looked even more tired to me, as if the conversation had come close to exhausting him. I told him we could Uber to Davio’s, or have the boys drive us. Richie said he could use the air. He walked more slowly than usual up River Street and then Charles and then across Beacon, and into the Public Garden past the small duckling statues that actually made Rosie growl when we’d walk past them.
When we were finished with dinner, there seemed to be no thought, and certainly no conversation, about the two of us spending the night together at my place. Two of Desmond’s men had walked behind us on our way to the restaurant. I had seen one of them at the bar while we ate. When we finished, the car was waiting out front. The man who had been at the bar opened the door to the backseat for Richie and me.
Richie didn’t introduce me to the two men, neither of whom I recognized, which meant nothing. Desmond Burke likely employed a small army of Irish just like them.
When we got to the house, Richie kissed me softly on the cheek. I said I’d call him in the morning. He said not to make it too early.
I went inside, grabbed Rosie’s leash, took her for a quick walk so she could perform her last-walk-of-the-night obligations in the little fenced-in area around the corner that the other residents of River Street Place had sadly nicknamed the Poop Loop. Then we went back inside and I locked the front door and got ready for bed, alone.
At least nobody I knew had gotten shot today.
It might not have been progress. But as my father liked to say, it wasn’t nothing.
Sixteen
Spike and I had finished a morning run on the Esplanade.
We had crossed over Storrow on the Arthur Fiedler Footbridge, run all the way down to Mass Ave, then back. I had read somewhere that if you were particularly ambitious, or training for the marathon, you could make a seventeen-mile run for yourself on the Esplanade. Spike and I had opted for a considerably shorter distance today.
It was a beautiful morning, enhanced by the sights on the river, boats and crew teams and the familiar skyline of Cambridge on the other side of the Charles, so many of the simple pleasures that the city and its geography and its landmarks and people and culture and history had always brought me.
Now we were making our way back across the Fiedler bridge. I asked Spike if he needed to be anywhere. He reminded me that he was his own boss and a single gay man and could be wherever the hell he wanted to be on a morning like this.
“The only difference between us,” he said, “is that I will actually be making some money before this day has ended.”
“Thank you for pointing that out, dear,” I said. “But I’m willing to buy you coffee anyway.”
“I accept,” he said.
He was wearing a Foo Fighters T-shirt, baggy basketball shorts that hung to his knees, and some new Hoka running shoes that seemed to include most of the colors of the rainbow.
When we walked into Peet’s Coffee the size of him and the outfit and the shoes commanded the attention of most of the other customers, and all of the people working behind the counter.
“Tell them they’re all fine,” he whispered to me, “as long as they don’t do anything to spook me. If they do, I may burst into show tunes.”
“That will only frighten them more,” I said.
We managed to score a window table. We both had large lattes with extra shots of espresso. I told him about my dinner with Richie and how it had been something less than a triumph, mostly because I felt as if his father had been a plus-one.
“Sounds as if Desmond got romance against the ropes and hammered it with body punches,” Spike said.
“Oooh,” I said. “A sports reference. You know how those make my blood race.”
He was more interested in my meeting with Vinnie Morris, and what Vinnie had told me about Desmond and guns.
“Funny thing about guns,” Spike said. “We’ve got gun laws here as tough as anybody’s. But the illegal guns keep coming up from the South. Used to be if you wanted a gun without paper and were willing to walk around with an unregistered piece, you had to travel down to Bumfuck, Georgia, or Asshat, Virginia, to get one and bring it back. Or head up to Vermont.”
“The Green Mountain State?” I said.
“Don’t be fooled,” Spike said. “There’s always been gun money in them there hills.”
“So you think it’s what Vinnie said, a case of supply and demand?” I said. “And Desmond really has found a way to supply those demands in a more, shall we say, efficacious manner?”
“Efficacious,” Spike said. “Have I told you how much I love you?”
“Not enough,” I said. “I read somewhere that only half the handguns seized in crimes in Massachusetts could be traced back to legal owners.”
“Makes you want to do the math on the unseized guns.”
“Lot of gun money on them there streets,” I said, “especially if you could corner the market, which is what Vinnie suggested my ex-father-in-law is attempting to do.”
“So who might that piss off the most?” Spike said.
“Italians?” I said.
Spike said, “Except I’m not even sure who the big Italians are anymore in Boston. In fact, the biggest one isn’t even in Boston. It’s your friend from Providence.”
“Albert Antonioni,” I said.
Spike raised an eyebrow. Eat your heart out, Susan Silverman.
“Maybe Desmond is cutting in on his action,” Spike said. “But I heard one time that if Albert really wanted business up here, he wanted it to be with Tony Marcus, and that they could make some accommodation on girls down in Providence if Tony could cut him in on something else up here.”
“Wouldn’t just be an odd couple,” I said. “Would be the oddest.”
“Didn’t you tell me that Desmond and Felix and old Albert had agreed to stay out of each other’s businesses?” Spike said.
“Basically, Albert blinked first,” I said. “He finally decided that as appealing as the notion was of having the governor of Massachusetts on full scholarship, he didn’t want to go to war with Desmond Burke over the whole thing. ’Least not at the time.”
“Maybe you need to have another talk with old Albert,” Spike said.
“Me and what army?”
Spike grinned.
“I’ve always dreamed about being a man in uniform,” he said.
“Yeah,” I said. “Somewhat like the Village People.”
“You want me to go with you?” he said.
“Who said I was going?”