“More likely,” Spike said, “he made some kind of snippy remark about the cuisine at what Boston magazine recently called the hottest restaurant in the entire Quincy Market area.”
“For me to say anything more would be a violation of client privilege,” I said.
“So he did make a snippy remark.”
“Totally.”
Spike was wearing what I was sure was a Brioni suit that might have cost more than my car, with an open-necked white shirt. All in all, he looked good enough to take the big town for a whirl. Spike wasn’t handsome in any sort of classic way. But the sum of him, the combination of looks and fun and physicality and danger, is what did make him attractive to men and to women.
No woman more than me.
“So he is a client,” Spike said.
He made no attempt to make it sound like a question. Just a simple declarative sentence. A statement of fact.
“In theory,” I said. “Just without any money changing hands.”
“There is more than one way for him to pay you,” Spike said, and raised the eyebrow again.
“Don’t be coarse.”
We each sipped some Whispering Angel, my favorite rosé and Spike’s, too, as much for the name as for the taste.
“Play this out,” Spike said. “Say this is some bill being presented to Desmond Burke because of something he did in the past. And say Richie is only the first in the family this guy’s going to come after. What makes you think he won’t come after you, too?”
“I can take care of myself.”
“To a point, girlie. But if they can hit Richie they can hit you.”
“I am ever vigilant.”
“But when you start poking around, you will eventually annoy this guy, or whomever sent him, if somebody sent him.”
“That will involve finding out who the guy is, or the whomever.”
“Sins of the father,” Spike said. “I mean, what the fuck?”
“Excellent point.”
“I’m not just eye candy,” Spike said.
“It’s amazing how often I manage to forget that,” I said.
One of the waitresses had stopped by the table to tell us that the food was being bagged up. Spike and I talked a bit more about Desmond Burke. He asked how much I really knew about his past. Most of it, I said, had come from Richie, who I knew had never told me as much as he knew. As complicated as my relationship with his father had always been, I knew that theirs was far more complicated than I would ever possibly know. As much as Richie Burke was his own man and had forged his own path in life, with me and the saloon business and everything else, he was still Desmond Burke’s son.
“You have to be aware that the detecting in this case is going to be more about Richie’s father than anything else,” Spike said.
“Profoundly aware,” I said.
“And that you will likely uncover inconvenient truths,” Spike said.
“And not Al Gore’s,” I said.
“I’m being serious,” Spike said.
“I know,” I said.
“Richie may have spent a lot of his life compartmentalizing,” Spike said. “You’re not going to have that luxury.”
“Aware of that, too.”
“He’s a fucking gangster,” Spike said, “no matter what kind of manners he has. And will most likely not want you poking around in his affairs, even if it means finding out who shot his son.”
I sipped more wine.
“The irony,” I said to Spike, “is that Richie had been telling me that his father and Felix and Peter, the youngest brother, have basically been downsizing the past couple years, mostly because they’re so goddamn old and so goddamn tired. He said that he’d heard his father say more than once that he had come to find the illegal gun trade as distasteful as he’d always found drugs.”
“Hasn’t made him quit it, from what I hear,” Spike said.
I felt as if I raised a pretty saucy eyebrow of my own.
“I know people,” Spike said. “Who know people.”
“Forgot.”
“And probably forgot that one of the biggest gangsters in town was gayer than Greenwich Village.”
“Gino Fish.”
He nodded.
“I’ve always wanted to ask you,” I said. “You never hit that, did you?”
“Don’t be coarse,” Spike said.
Eight
For the past six months Richie had been living in an apartment on Salem Street in the North End.
He hadn’t stayed in one place for very long since our divorce, and had even moved once while still married to Kathryn. After they divorced, she kept their town house in Brookline and Richie had moved to Salem Street, at least partly to be closer to the saloon. The apartment was meticulously neat and sparsely furnished, and so fit him completely. The only photographs were of me and the two Rosies. There was one ancient black-and-white of his late mother, Theresa Clancy Burke.
There was a large living room, a large master bedroom, a smaller bedroom that served as Richie’s office. When I’d arrived I’d seen a car parked across the street, and knew that at least two of Desmond Burke’s men were inside.
I didn’t think anyone would make a move on Richie here, or ever again, for that matter. But Desmond Burke hadn’t survived as long as he had in the world he inhabited without being an extremely careful man.
Richie didn’t eat much of the food Spike had sent over, saying he wasn’t as hungry as he’d originally thought. As much as he said he’d slept across the day, he still looked and sounded tired.
“Tell Spike thanks, though,” he said. “And that the food didn’t suck.”
“A review like that will probably make him want to kiss you,” I said.
“Then maybe you better tell him that I thought it did suck,” Richie said. “Can’t take any chances.”
We were sipping a pinot noir from Willamette Valley that he’d requested. I’d asked if that was wise, given the pain meds he was taking. Richie said that if I wouldn’t squeal to the doctors, he was willing to risk it.
He was wearing a plain gray pocketed T-shirt and faded jeans, and was barefoot. There was more beard to him than usual, which meant he hadn’t seen fit to shave a second time today. We were next to each other on a couch I’d helped him pick out when he’d moved in. There was a Red Sox game, muted, on the big screen mounted on the wall across from us. I think he had the game on only for his own twisted amusement. We had many things in common, but he knew that baseball wasn’t one of them. He just didn’t think my indifference toward baseball was sick and depraved as Spike did.
“I think we can agree,” Richie said, “that it was a shot that might of gone through me but was intended to go across my father’s bow.”
“We can,” I said. “We think so, your family thinks so, Spike thinks so, as do the cops.”
He grinned.
“You and Dad,” he said, “chopping it up at Durty Nelly’s. Would you mind terribly if I asked you to live-stream it next time?”
“I know I probably set a low bar where he’s concerned,” I said, “but it wasn’t as awkward as I thought it might be.”
“He never showed it very much,” Richie said, “but he was always quite fond of you, even if you are Phil Randall’s kid.”
“I was looking through our wedding album before I went to Spike’s,” I said. “In the few pictures your father and my father were in together, they each looked like somebody had just pulled a knife on the two of them.”
“I don’t believe they’ve spoken since,” Richie said.
“Oddly enough,” I said, “they might be able to help each other on this.”
“Might, but won’t,” he said. “The last person my father wants involved is you. Second-to-last would be Phil.”