Robert Parker - Family Honor

“Nope.”

Marcus smiled and looked at Junior.

“Amicable divorce,” he said to Junior.

Junior didn’t look as if he knew what amicable meant. He also didn’t look like he cared. Tony leaned back in his chair and checked to see that the proper amount of French cuff showed under the sleeves of his blue suit.

“So you’re looking for a whore, Miss Sunny?”

“Fifteen-year-old runaway,” I said.

Tony smiled. “That may be what she used to be, she on the street now, she’s a whore.”

“Either way,” I said. “I’d like to find her.”

“Why?”

“I’ve been hired to.”

“So you really a detective,” Tony said.

“Un huh.”

“You don’t look much like a detective,” he said.

“You don’t look much like a pimp,” I said.

Tony laughed.

“Feisty,” Tony said to Junior.

Junior nodded.

“Calling me a pimp,” Tony said, “like calling Henry Ford an auto worker.”

“Think you can help me find this kid?” I said.

“Sure,” Tony said, “she hooking, I can find her.”

“And if she isn’t you’ll know?”

“‘Less she hooking in East Long-fucking-meadow or someplace.”

“Probably not,” I said.

“She hooking east of Springfield, I can find her. Worcester, Lynn, Lawrence, Lowell, New Bedford, Fall River, she be one of mine.”

“Not Springfield?” I said just to be saying something. Guys like Tony Marcus like to talk. Especially to women.

“Springfield belongs to Hartford,” Tony said. “The Spices run it.”

“So how shall we do this?”

“You think I’m going to do something?”

“I assume you didn’t get me in here to tell me no personally,” I said.

Tony grinned.

“Knew your father, you know that?”

“No.”

“Never busted me,” Tony said. “Sonovabitch tried hard enough.”

“I didn’t know he worked vice,” I said.

“When he after me he working homicide,” Tony said.

That was to scare me in case Junior hadn’t already scared me. I remained calm.

“So how we going to find Millicent Patton?”

“You got a picture?” Tony said.

I’d had copies made of the one her father had given me. I produced one. Tony looked at it, and nodded slowly.

“She’ll make some money,” he said.

“Will she keep any?”

“‘Course not,” Tony said without looking up from the picture.

I waited. After a time Tony handed the picture to Junior.

“Have some copies made,” he said. “Circulate them. Let me know if we got her and who her pimp is.”

Junior took the picture and continued to stand against the wall. Tony winked at me.

“Junior,” he said. “I think I be safe with Sunny Randall here, while you go out and get that picture started.”

“She ain’t been searched,” Junior said.

“I going to risk it,” Tony said. “Go ahead.”

Junior looked at me for a minute, then nodded and went out of the office. Tony leaned far back in his big high-backed leather swivel chair and put his feet up on the desk. His loafers had gold chains on them.

“I’m a pretty bad man,” he said.

“I heard that,” I said.

“A lot of women wouldn’t want to come here alone.”

“Lot of people,” I said.

He laughed.

“Ah,” he said, “a fucking feminist.”

“That may be an oxymoron,” I said.

“You ain’t scared?”

“Not yet,” I said.

“Maybe you just covering up,” Tony said.

“Maybe.”

He shook his head.

“Naw. Seen too many scared people in my time to be fooled. You ain’t scared.”

“You have no reason to harm me,” I said.

“Not so far,” he said.

“And I know you don’t want trouble with the Burkes.”

“Don’t need trouble with anybody,” he said. “Making a good living.”

“See?”

He smiled again.

“If I decided I wanted to harm you, maybe you be scared.”

“Why don’t we wait until that happens,” I said. “Then we’ll know.”

“I going to help you with this, Sunny. Richie asked me. Spike asked me. So I’ll help. But don’t make no mistake about me.”

“No mistakes,” I said. “I understand why you’d accommodate Richie, but why Spike?”

Tony smiled again.

“I like Spike,” he said.

“I didn’t know people as bad as you liked anyone.”

“Sure we do,” Tony said. “We just don’t let it interfere.”

The only show I ever had was in a small gallery on South Street. The Globe art critic said I was “a primitivist with strong representational impulses.” I didn’t sell many paintings, but I was pleased to know that I had a definition. Standing now in the studio end of my loft, using the morning sun for light, I wondered if maybe primitive was just another way of saying amateurish. I was working in oils, trying to paint a view of Chinatown along Tyler Street. I never had time to go to a place and set up, so I was working from memory and a half dozen Polaroids I’d taken. It looked like Chinatown. In fact it looked like Tyler Street. And the building in the foreground looked like the Chinese restaurant that you see when you stand where I had stood. But the painting wasn’t right, and for the moment I couldn’t quite figure how to fix it. I sometimes thought art criticism boiled down to indefinables like whether it was a complete statement or not. This painting was not. Most of my paintings weren’t... yet. I tried deepening the colors, and stood back a little and looked at it while the sun coming in the east windows made the colors as exact as I was likely to see them.

“Primitive,” I said aloud, “with a strong representational impulse.”

I was learning, but it was slow. I still took courses, and I was going to get my MFA because I hate to quit things before they’re finished. But I knew the MFA didn’t have a lot to do with my work. I had to learn myself how to do my work. Other painters could sometimes tell me things not to do, but they didn’t even know how, or exactly why, they did what they did. I’d never met one who could tell me how to do what I did. The rest of the classroom work was theory, and a review of criticism. It was interesting. I liked knowing the sort of Kenneth Clark stuff about how art both shapes and records the culture it comes from. But it didn’t help me to get Tyler Street complete. I had to figure that out myself.

Rosie was asleep on my bed with one paw over her nose. She woke up suddenly and jumped down and went to the door. In a minute the doorbell rang, and Rosie did a couple of spins and jumped up against the door and barked, her tail wagging very fast. Normally that would mean my father or Richie. I went to the door.

I was right. It was my father. Unfortunately it was also my mother.

“Did we interrupt anything?” my mother said.

“No, I was painting, I need a break.”

My father got down on the floor with Rosie and let her lap his nose. Since my father was built like a short blacksmith it was an interesting display.

“Oh God, Phil, be careful of your knee,” my mother said.

My father had been shot fifteen years before, arresting a man who’d murdered three women, and his left kneecap had been shattered. An orthopedic surgeon had pieced it back together, and while he limped slightly and it ached occasionally, it was as durable as the right knee. I knew that. He knew that, and, I think, my mother knew that. But she always warned him anyway.

My mother and I went to the kitchen and I put on coffee. My mother had brought some raspberry turnovers. My mother almost always brought something. My father got up and came into the kitchen and picked up a turnover.