“And get yourself killed in the process,” Richie said.
“We have men, too,” Felix said.
“Who didn’t help us a whole hell of a lot today,” Richie said.
“You know the resources I have,” Felix said. “You remember the time I found a killer for you.”
“Tommy Noon,” I said. “I remember.”
He had been the killer in a case on which I had once worked for a young woman named Sarah Markham, who had hired me to find out who her birth parents were.
“We may need those resources before we’re through, Uncle Felix,” Richie said. “But let us handle this for now.”
“‘Us’?” he said.
“Sunny and me,” Richie said.
I looked at him.
“Sunny and I will find him,” Richie said.
“Yes,” I said. “We will.”
Sixty-Two
Richie and I went back to River Street Place. I changed into a black T-shirt and one of my pairs of preferred white jeans. I knew it was getting a little late in the year for white jeans, but I looked damn good in them. And I knew that Richie thought I looked damn good in them.
When I came down the stairs, Rosie was next to him on the couch. There were two glasses of red wine on the table in front of them. I knew he noticed the jeans. He always did. And I always noticed him noticing.
We both drank some wine.
“You honestly believe he’s not dead already?” Richie said.
“We’re getting to the end of foreplay,” I said. “But I honestly think it’s still foreplay.”
“If he is dead,” Richie said, “Felix will take an army down to Providence and kill them all and let God sort things out.”
“I know,” I said. “But you have to keep him under control for the time being. Let me do my job.”
“Our job,” Richie said.
We drank more wine.
“I feel as if we should be doing something right now,” he said.
“Tomorrow,” I said.
“First thing,” he said.
I nodded.
“You have a plan,” he said, staring at me.
I nodded again. Rosie rolled over and let Richie rub her belly.
“Dr. Silverman says that in the shooter’s mind, everything makes perfect sense,” I said.
“So how do we find where he’s taken him?” Richie said.
“The only thing that makes sense is that it’s another property of Antonioni’s,” I said.
“How do we find out which one?” Richie said.
I smiled at him.
“Forget about your uncle,” I said. “How about if we take Albert?”
Sixty-Three
Richie said he was going back to Charlestown to spend the night at his uncle Felix’s. He called it babysitting. I told him I wouldn’t necessarily refer to it that way in front of Felix.
“Felix is used to dealing from strength,” Richie said. “Being in charge. This is different. We do something wrong here, Desmond dies.”
I had explained by then that I didn’t exactly want to take Albert Antonioni, I just wanted to borrow him for a little while. And then reason with him.
“Tell me how,” Richie said.
“Let me work on my plan a little more,” I said, and then told him what he needed to find out from his uncle.
“Promise me you won’t set anything in motion without telling me,” he said.
“Have I ever lied to you?” I said.
“Often,” he said.
“But about things that matter?” I said.
“Less often,” he said.
He kissed me hard. I kissed him back. When Richie was gone, and the two men watching him were gone, I called Spike and told him my plan.
Then made two more calls after that.
I met Tony Marcus in his office at Buddy’s Fox at noon the next day. Junior was there, as was Ty Bop. Tony was behind his desk, wearing a charcoal suit with wide pinstripes and slightly wider lapels than were the current fashion, dressed for a big night on the town even in the middle of the day.
Always my relationship with him had been transactional. So was it now.
I got right to it, explaining what I wanted to happen and hoped would happen as quickly as possible. For once he did not interrupt, just nodded and listened, as if I were his stockbroker bringing him up to date on his portfolio.
“It would just be a part of the diversification project into Rhode Island you’ve been talking about,” I said.
“Think I couldn’t have come up with this on my own, if I’d’ve thought of it first?” he said.
“I’m sure you could have figured out something on the girls,” I said. “Having guns to bargain with just makes it easier.”
“You pretty cocky, girl, thinking you can produce those guns,” he said.
“I can’t,” I said. “But I believe Felix Burke can. And will be highly motivated to do so.”
“Where the guns at?”
“Somewhere,” I said.
“And you think Felix just gonna tell you where they at?”
“If it means saving his brother’s life he will,” I said. “I’d bet my own life on that.”
“You think Albert been the one calling the shots on this war on the Burkes all along?” Tony said.
“He’s the only one who could have set it all in motion,” I said.
“What’s in it for him?”
I said, “This is nothing more than a working theory. But I think he set this whole thing up to take Desmond’s guns, and then take out Desmond once and for all.”
“Lot of moving pieces,” Tony said. He smiled. “So to speak.”
“Still are,” I said. “Why I’m here.”
Tony made a steeple with his fingers. I wanted to ask him where he had his nails done, because I was convinced his manicurist was way better than my own.
“You get something you want, Albert gets Desmond’s guns, Felix gets what he wants most in the world,” I said. “He gets his brother back.”
“If that old fuck still be alive.”
“If he is,” I said, “we need to move on this.”
“And you’re telling me all’s I got to do is set up the meet,” Tony Marcus said.
“Uh-huh,” I said. “Sooner rather than later.”
“And then I got to just do a little acting job when you show up and try to find out what you lookin’ to find out,” he said.
“Who better than you to play you?” I said. “The part you were born to play.”
He smiled.
“I love it when you blow smoke up my ass,” he said, “you come here wanting something bad enough. Most girls be willin’ to fuck me to get something they want that bad.”
“You should know by now,” I said to Tony Marcus, “that I’m not most girls.”
His fingers were still steepled. He closed his eyes in thought. Finally he said, “Rewards here do seem to outweigh the risk.”
“Uh-huh,” I said again.
“I’ll set up the meet,” he said.
“Nice doing business with you,” I said.
Tony’s smile was as white as what I could see of his white shirt.
“The balls on you,” he said.
I said, “That’s what they all say.”
Sixty-Four
Tony had already managed to set up the meeting for that night at a diner on the outskirts of Taunton, not far from the Rhode Island line, not exactly halfway between him and Albert Antonioni but close enough.
I had suggested Taunton to Tony, out of the same sense of compromise that had once brought Desmond Burke and Albert Antonioni there for the sit-down I had attended during the Millicent Patton case. Desmond had been there that day to provide support for me and to have my back. If everything went as planned, though hardly anything ever did, tomorrow I would now have his.
Richie and I were on the couch in the living room after I returned from Buddy’s Fox. We had gone over my plan, and were now going back over everything that had happened since he had been shot, one last time. We knew that everything that could be set in motion for tomorrow had been set in motion, despite all the loose ends that I knew still existed and all the questions I had that still needed answers, including the one about who had shot Dominic Carbone.