“First Cav,” I said.
Tony swung his wheelchair over to the sink. I’d just helped him move into this place, and he was still adjusting to being on his own. He’d resented being dependent, and once he was out of rehab he didn’t need nursing care, but it was a big step all the same. He rinsed out his beer bottle and left it on the drainboard. “And there’s a grandson?”
“Andy. Andy Ravenant. He took his stepfather’s name after his mom remarried, but he and Stanley have always been close.”
“Ravenant. Why’s that name ring a bell?”
“You used to see his ads on late-night TV, after Star Trek. Raving Richie Ravenant. Sold rugs and wall-to-wall.”
“Out in Lynn on the discount strip?”
“Next door to Adventure Car-Hop, home of the Ginsburger.”
“He must do a pretty high volume,” Tony said. “You’d think somebody would go after the carpet king, not Stanley.”
“Except the stepdad’s been dead for eight years, and Andy’s mom lives in Florida.”
“Puts a crimp in that line of inquiry.”
“Assuming you were using Andy for leverage,” I said.
“Unless it’s the other way around.”
I took my own bottle to the sink, rinsed it out, and got two more out of the fridge. I cracked the tops.
“Okay,” Tony said, taking the beer I handed him, “why is who-ever-this-is bothering Stanley? If they’ve got a beef with the kid, what’s it have to do with the grandfather? And how did Stanley get wind of it anyway?”
Stanley was seeing a specialist out at Beth Israel, off the Jamaica-way. He’s coming out of the hospital, headed for where he’d parked on Brookline Avenue, and some greaseball — Stanley’s description — starts giving him a hard time.
“Explain that a little better,” Tony said. “This guy comes out of nowhere?”
“Apparently,” I said. “Stanley’s like, hel-LO, what’s your story? Homeless vet, willing to work for food?”
“I take it not, unhappily.”
The guy’s trying to act smooth, but he’s antsy, like he has someplace else to be and this is just a pit stop.
“Coked up?” my brother asked.
“Good observation,” I said. “Except that Stanley wouldn’t know what to look for. I’m reading between the lines. The dude was looking over his shoulder.”
“Sorry,” Tony remarked, smiling. “You were saying?”
According to Stanley, the guy couldn’t seem to get to the point, or it was like he was talking in code. He kept using these veiled, oblique references as if they were supposed to make sense to Stanley, and Stanley finally gets fed up and just steps around him. The other guy is so frustrated with Stanley for, like, willfully refusing to understand that he calls after him he’ll send him his grandson’s tongue in a pickle jar.
“This is the first overt mention of Andy, right?”
“Right. The rest of it’s been this sly jive-ass hinting around.”
“I can see this going one of two ways,” Tony said. “Or one of one, namely Stanley drop-kicking the guy to Chestnut Hill.”
“Except that he’s past seventy and he’s on heavy medication and he doesn’t know what any of it’s about.”
“So he suppresses his natural instinct to scrub the bricks with this yo-yo’s face, not to mention that he’s maybe no longer the man he once was, and he comes to you.”
“Pretty much.”
Tony pursed his lips. “Where do you start?” he asked.
“I start with Stanley’s grandson.”
“The kid.”
“He’s not a kid, exactly.” In fact, Andy was close to my brother’s age. He was thirty-one, an attorney. Criminal law, unglamorous but always in demand. He’d done a couple of years as a public defender in Suffolk Superior Court, and now he was in private practice, with an address downtown on Milk Street.
“You hoping that dog will hunt?” Tony asked.
“Andy’s more likely to have enemies than his grandfather.”
“Yeah, you’d think so,” Tony said, but he seemed distracted by something, a thought hovering on the periphery.
“What?” I asked him.
“I can’t put my finger on it,” he said. “Maybe if I’d quit chasing after it, it would stop ducking out of sight.”
The offices of Ravenant & Dwyer were at the bottom edge of the financial district, in the shadow of the Customs House tower. It was one of the oldest sections of town, built over again and again, but like the North End or Beacon Hill, you could still see an imprint of how Boston had once been laid out back in the eighteenth century when its commerce depended on shipping and the narrow, crooked streets led down to the harborfront. The traffic then would have been horse-drawn wagons and drays lurching over the cobblestones and the small businesses would have been ship’s chandlers and jobbers, sailmakers’ lofts, and rope factories. It remained a commercial district, outlets for wholesale plumbing supplies and the like at street level, and the tenants in the offices on the upper stories were a similar mix of tradesmen and professionals, but they offered a different range of services these days. Andy’s law office was one flight up, the entry door sharing a small landing with a jeweler and an architectural drafting studio. I had a ten o’clock appointment.
I gave the receptionist my name and sat down to wait.
I’d waited all of forty-five seconds when Andy Ravenant stepped out of an inner office, came through the small wicket that fenced the receptionist off from clients, and stuck out his hand as I got to my feet. We shook hands.
“I remember you and your brother from my grandfather’s body shop,” he told me, smiling.
I had a vague recollection of his father, Stan Jr., but I didn’t remember Andy at all. Of course, if I’d been seven or eight, I wouldn’t have paid much attention to some four-year-old kid if I didn’t have to. I decided not to say that.
He took me into his office. It was small and lined with law books — Massachusetts General Statutes, extracts from federal rulings, bound trial transcripts. We sat down.
“Okay,” Andy said, leaning back and tenting his hands in front of his sternum. “What’s got Papa Stan’s bowels in such an uproar? He’s been evasive with me.”
“Did you know he was dying of cancer?” I asked him. I knew it was sudden, but I couldn’t afford to spare his feelings.
Andy sat up abruptly, his face frozen.
I made an apologetic gesture. “He’s told your grandmother about it, and he told me yesterday,” I said. “I guess he hasn’t gotten around to making it general knowledge.”
“Jesus,” Andy said softly. “I knew he was coming into town for treatments, but I didn’t realize how bad it was. He’s such a tough old bastard. You figure somebody like that’s going to die standing up. He won’t go for being an invalid.”
“Yeah, that’s the way I read it,” I said.
“Why did he come to see you, Jack?”
“Somebody threatened him,” I said. “In actual point of fact, they threatened you. Why they’d go after Stanley I don’t know. It seems sideways, or backwards.”
“What was it about?”
“The guy didn’t say, that’s the trouble.”
“Who was this guy?”
I shrugged. “Some cretin, according to your grandfather. Stanley didn’t give me much to go on, but it sounded like he was supposed to warn you off something.”
“My particular client base, that could mean damn near anything,” Andy said. He picked up the phone and punched one of the intercom buttons. “Hey,” he said, “you got a minute?” He paused and then nodded. “Bring him along,” he said to whoever was on the line, and hung up. “Let’s check it out,” he said.
There was a light tap on the door, and two people came into Andy’s office, a man and a woman.