“I did.”
“For how long?”
“For my whole fucking life,” he said.
His face had not changed expression. Nor had his tone. He was as self-contained and composed as ever, as if the subject were no more serious than where we ought to have lunch. It meant he was Richie. If there was sadness in him because of this, or anger, or regret, or some combination of those emotions, he did not show it.
He was Richie. It was part of what drew me to him, and so often pushed me away, the sense that he was holding back so much of himself, whether he actually was or not. Jesse Stone had often exhibited many of the same qualities. He was gone from my life, other than an occasional phone call. Richie was not, not now and perhaps not ever.
“What does that mean, your whole life?” I said.
“A slight exaggeration,” he said. “I was a kid when I found some letters. Back when people still wrote letters.”
“Your mother was still alive?” I said.
“She had died the previous summer,” he said. “But it was clear from the letters that what had been going on between my father and the woman who had written these letters had predated my mother’s death.” Richie paused and said, “Considerably.”
Rosie had rolled over on her back to let Richie rub her belly, which he did.
“Did your mother know?” I said.
Richie sighed now. “There was some indication in one of the letters that they’d been found out, past tense, and had been forced to briefly end their relationship.” He paused again and said, “Before it resumed.”
“While your mother was dying?” I said.
“Yes,” Richie said.
“So who was she?” I said.
“She didn’t sign her letters with a name,” Richie said. “Just the letter M.”
From across the room I could hear my cell phone buzzing. I ignored it. There was just Richie and me and the air between us. And perhaps the shared knowledge that when we had been man and wife, I had never cheated on him during our marriage and he had never cheated on me. Even though the other men in my life since had made me feel as if I were cheating, more than somewhat.
“Did you ask him about the letters?” I said.
“I did.”
“What happened?”
“He slapped me,” Richie said, “for the one and only time in my life.”
Now there was hurt on his face, as if it had just happened.
“Then he told me that he had confessed his sins to his priest but was under no obligation to do the same to his own son.”
“And that was it?”
“He demanded that I hand over the letters,” Richie said. “Which I did.”
“Because you were a good son.”
“Because I didn’t want him to hit me again,” Richie said. “And I wasn’t yet big enough or strong enough to hit him back.”
“That woman could be the key to this,” I said, and then told him what had happened to me in the alley, and what the man had said to me.
“Why have you waited this long to tell me?” Richie said.
“You had enough to deal with,” I said.
“Not any part of it more important than you,” he said.
“You would have wanted to do something about it,” I said, “only there was nothing to be done. Then somebody did Buster.”
We sat there. Rosie was still on her back.
“I thought it could have been any of his women,” I said. “But perhaps it was this woman.”
“We have no proof,” Richie said.
“Call it a hunch,” I said.
“You’ve always been big on those.”
“Haven’t I.”
“We need to know who M was.”
“Do you recall anything from what she wrote to him that might help?”
“She was Italian,” Richie said. “There was something in one of the letters about the hatred between Italians and Irish and how it was almost as deep as the blacks against the whites. So there was that. And how much she had herself come to hate living in what she called their world. And how tired she was of all the death and dying.”
“You remember a lot.”
“There was a time when I had them committed to memory,” he said. “She said she wanted them to get away, from his family and hers, and go somewhere and have a life of their own.”
“Maybe if we can find her, or find out who she was, we can stop the death and dying now,” I said.
“Only one way to find out,” Richie said.
“Ask him,” I said.
“He won’t hit me this time,” Richie said.
Thirty
Desmond Burke now lived on Flagship Wharf in Charlestown, part of the old Navy Yard, with views of both the Bunker Hill Monument and the USS Constitution.
We were seated in the large, bright, airy front room. Colley was outside, posted by the front door. There were two other troopers, neither of whom I knew, sitting in a Town Car on the street.
The room, I’d noticed, was full of photographs, on the mantel of his fireplace and the walls and spread across an antique bureau that might have been as old as the Constitution. There were pictures of Desmond Burke’s late wife and of Richie at different ages, all the way through our wedding. There was even one of Desmond and me from the wedding, one in which I looked far happier than I felt right now.
I looked younger. Much.
I was more fixed on the ones of Richie as a boy, wondering about all the things that made him the man he had become, one I knew I would love more than I would ever love another, whether we ended up together, fully together, or not.
Richie and I were on a long white couch. Desmond was across from us, once again dressed all in black today.
“I’ve not much time,” he said. He looked at me and said, “I’ve already told your friend Belson that I did not choose to speak with him.”
I smiled. “Never talk to a cop,” I said.
“Words to live by,” Desmond said.
“Then we should get right to it,” Richie said. “The woman who wrote you the letters I found — who is she?”
Richie establishing himself as the one in charge, even in his father’s home.
“I thought we had agreed never to discuss her again,” Desmond said.
“We’re past that, Dad,” Richie said. “Way past. Sunny has now been assaulted by the one doing the shooting. Sunny and I believe it might very well involve the one who wrote you those letters.”
“And she knows of these letters... how?”
“Because I fucking well told her,” Richie said.
Now it was as if Desmond had been slapped.
“You talk to me in such a way?” Desmond said to Richie.
“I was taught that what matters most is often what is most necessary,” Richie said. “Or something along those lines. I don’t remember every one of your codes.”
“I don’t appreciate your tone,” Desmond said.
“I didn’t much appreciate finding out that you cheated on my mother,” Richie said.
“I told you then,” his father said. “I don’t have to explain myself to you.”
But you could see the fight beginning to leak out of him. It was as if the words died a few feet from his mouth.
Richie said, “If we don’t stop this man, he is going to kill us all.”
“Maria Cataldo,” Desmond Burke said.
Boom.
Thirty-One
In Desmond’s telling, in a flat, almost beaten voice, it all had begun after the Winter Hill Gang had consolidated its power, including with the Italians.
“You hear in politics about gerrymandering,” Desmond Burke said. “There was a lot of that going on in those days, across ethnic lines. It was around the time when a man named Bobo Petricone got himself into trouble because of a girl going around with one of the McLaughlins.”