“Somehow Albert had convinced him that he was the only one who had ever truly loved his mother,” Desmond said. “There had been something between them before we took up together. She honestly did never tell me. In the world in which we existed, she clearly thought there was enough bad blood, and did not want to be responsible for more.”
He looked at Richie and said, “I’ve always known how much Albert hated me. I just did not know how much he loved her.”
He drank. We all did.
“Why do you suppose Albert pointed him at you?” Richie said.
“Maybe someday,” Desmond said, “I will get to ask him that myself.”
Desmond took in some air slowly, and held it, and then let it out as slowly as he had taken it in. Then drank more Irish whiskey. I had watched him drink a lot. And show no signs of being drunk in any way.
“He had always wanted to beat me, in everything,” Desmond said. “Now he saw a chance to take my guns and so take my money, and tell himself he didn’t have to be the one to kill me in order to beat me.”
“Blood money,” Richie said.
“Felix’s blood,” Desmond said.
“Do you think Albert ever suspected that Bobby might be Felix’s son?” I said.
“Maybe I can ask him that, too,” Desmond said, “if the occasion arises.”
Public lives, I thought, private lives.
Secret lives.
Two weeks later, there were two stories played on the same page of The Boston Globe, as if of a piece.
One was about the body of Albert Antonioni, described as a notorious Rhode Island crime boss, found floating in the water of Narragansett Bay, between Antonioni’s own home at Black Point and the Bonnet Shore Beach Club, two bullet holes in him, one in the forehead, one more in the back for good measure. Providence police, the story said, had been notified that the body was there by an anonymous call made to their Crimestoppers tip line.
The other story was about two Cranston, Rhode Island, warehouses filled with illegal guns — most of them automatic weapons — being raided by ATF agents. The estimate for the value of the guns was two million dollars. The story said it was the biggest raid of its kind in the history of New England. The warehouses, now abandoned, had once been owned by the Palomino Vending Company, owned by the late Albert Antonioni.
It was, I knew, the interesting place where Felix had stored their guns.
I was still at the kitchen table reading my Globe and drinking my coffee and occasionally feeding Rosie some of my blueberry scone from Starbucks when my phone rang.
I saw the name come up and so was smiling as I answered.
“You’re welcome,” I said to Charlie Whitaker.
Seventy-One
Richie and Rosie and I had walked along the river for a bit and were now sitting on the dock facing Cambridge. It was the second week of October, an Indian-summer afternoon, and the scene across the Charles looked pretty enough to paint. Maybe even by me someday. Just not until I finished, finally, my small stone cottage from Concord. I was close now, and happy with it. Just not totally happy. So it went.
“For the last time,” I said, “do you believe Desmond somehow shot Albert himself?”
“The last time?” Richie said. “You promise?”
“Well, maybe last time today,” I said.
Before he answered he fed Rosie a treat from his pocket. She was on a leash but at rest between Richie and me. Because of the treats. And because she liked being between Richie and me.
“I think he did it,” Richie said. “I don’t know how he got to him. I don’t want to know. But yes, I believe he would do it himself. His own sense of justice, and vengeance.”
“Always been a lot about him you didn’t want to know,” I said.
“And look what it got me,” Richie said. “Now I know more about him than I ever wanted to.” He paused and said, “About both of them.”
“You miss Felix,” I said.
An answer, not a question.
“It’s odd, if you think about it,” Richie said. “I looked up to him the way he always looked up to Desmond.”
He fed Rosie another treat. We had been discussing where to have dinner. I had even promised to watch a Red Sox playoff game with him later. I had suggested cooking dinner myself. Richie had smiled when I made the offer and said, “No, thank you.”
“Desmond loved her,” I said now.
“Probably more than he loved my mother,” Richie said. “But that’s something he’ll probably only admit to God. If he even admits it to Him.”
“And Felix loved her,” I said.
“Maybe more than Desmond did.”
“Albert loved her,” I said.
“She must have really been something.” He turned to look at me. “Like you.”
“Taking care of her at the end may have been Albert’s one true thing,” I said.
“Won’t be enough to get the old bastard into heaven,” Richie said.
“How Catholic of you.”
“Comes and goes,” he said.
“The ironic part of this,” I said, “if irony even applies here, is that Albert wanted Bobby to take out Desmond. But in the end, Albert and Bobby really ended up taking out each other.”
Rosie roused herself, briefly, having noticed another dog, a pug on a leash being walked by a pretty young redheaded woman. But we both knew Rosie was only bluffing. If she didn’t know there were more treats, she sensed it.
Richie said, “It’s interesting, what Bobby told my father about Maria working at the church.”
“I wonder if she saw her greatest sin as having gotten pregnant outside of marriage,” I said, “or that Felix was the one who’d gotten her pregnant.”
“Maybe both,” Richie said.
“Powerful force, guilt.”
“That and grudges,” Richie said.
“Make the world go ’round,” I said.
He reached over and took my hand and held it in his.
“Dr. Silverman,” I said, “thinks that in a vastly complicated way Albert convinced himself that not directly punishing Desmond himself was a form of respect, even if a subordinate did the shooting and the killing.”
“I think it just makes him a coward,” Richie said. “Who fucking well got what he deserved.”
The Burke in him coming out, the way it did sometimes.
“There’s so much we’ll never know,” I said.
“That bother you?”
“No,” I said.
“Liar,” he said, and squeezed my hand.
“So what do you want to eat tonight?” I said.
He turned to look at me again. “Not Italian,” he said.
We held hands and stared at the water.
I received the first of two phone calls then, one right after another, by sheer chance.
Or not.
The small screen read “Desmond.”
I stood, held up a finger to Richie, and walked about twenty yards away, out of his earshot.
There were no salutations.
“You told the coppers where to find my guns,” he said. “That wasn’t part of our deal.”
“We had no deal,” I said, “other than me keeping you alive.”
“Those were my guns,” he said.
“I probably never mentioned it before,” I said. “But I hate illegal guns. Hate them. Especially the fast-shooting kind that shoot schoolchildren.”
And ended the call.
Before my phone was in my back pocket, it started buzzing again.
This time the screen read “Unknown Caller.”
I stayed where I was, almost certain of who the unknown caller was.