Robert Parker - Family Honor

Julie raised her eyes and looked at me and then looked at Michael. She hugged him to her and talked and sobbed simultaneously.

“I love you, honey,” she gasped, with the tears bubbling through her voice. “Mommy loves you.”

I could see Michael’s face over her shoulder. He didn’t look as if he entirely believed her.

I found her at 1:15 in the morning on Dalton Street behind the Prudential Center, handy to the big commercial hotels and the Hynes Auditorium. She stood near the curb just up from the motor entrance to the Sheraton, wearing white short shorts and heels and a sequined yellow tank top. Clever outfit . She smiled automatically when I pulled in to the curb. When I got out the smile went away, and she began once again to look up and down the street.

“Millicent Patton?” I said.

She stared at me and didn’t say anything.

“My name is Sunny Randall,” I said. “I’m a detective. Your parents asked me to bring you home.”

Without a word she turned and started running down Dalton Street toward Huntington. Not wearing fuck-me shoes, I caught her in about ten steps. I got in front of her and put my arms around her and pinned her arms and made her stop. She made no sound. But she struggled steadily against me.

“Millicent,” I said. “I will help you.”

She tried to kick me, but I was too tight against her and she didn’t really know anything about fighting.

“We’ll sit in my car,” I said, “and talk.”

“What the fuck is this,” someone said.

I let Millicent go and turned. Behind me was a tall black man wearing a six-button suit and a white shirt buttoned to the neck, no tie. He had a neat goatee and short hair. He was bony and strong-looking.

“Pharaoh Fox, I presume?”

“Who the fuck are you?” he said.

“My name is Randall,” I said. “I’m a detective.”

“Vice?”

“Private.”

“Goddamn,” Fox said, with laughter in his voice, “a private dick?”

I nodded.

“You can’t be no private dick,” Fox said. “Best you can do, be a private pussy.”

He loved his joke, and laughed a lot harder than it deserved. In his presence Millicent Patton was motionless, perfectly docile.

I said, “Millicent’s going with me, pimp boy.”

Fox stopped laughing. His face was thin. The nostrils flared and his skin had a bluish tinge to it above the beard. He looked, in fact, a little like a pharaoh. He put his right hand into his suit coat pocket.

“Get off my street, private pussy,” he said, “right now. Or I will cut you in fucking two.”

One of the advantages of being a woman in this deal is that no one takes you seriously, so they are careless. While his hand was still in his pocket I took my gun out. I thumbed back the hammer as the gun came out, and put the muzzle up under his nose, maybe half an inch from his upper lip.

“Tell Millicent that she should go with me.”

“Like hell,” Fox said.

I bumped the barrel of the gun against his upper lip.

“I’m not a patient woman,” I said. “And I haven’t shot my pimp quota this week. Tell her. Now.”

“You can’t just shoot me on the fucking street,” Pharaoh said.

“I’m a small blond cutie. You’re a big ugly pimp. You’ll be dead. I say you assaulted me. Who’s going to take your side?”

He didn’t move. He kept looking at me. There was nothing human behind his eyes. I didn’t move. I could see the muscles tighten in his shoulders and neck.

“Go for it,” I said. “Grab for the gun. Maybe I haven’t got the balls. Maybe I’ll hesitate.”

I smiled at him.

“Or maybe I won’t,” I said.

Still he held on, the hatred flickering in his eyes like heat lightning. But I knew his grip was slipping.

“Let’s find out, pimp boy.”

He let go.

“You can have her,” he said.

“Tell her,” I said.

“Go with her,” Pharaoh said to Millicent.

“Get in my car,” I said to Millicent. “Pimp boy, you turn around and walk straight down to Huntington.”

He backed away.

“What you say your name was, bitch?”

“Randall,” I said. “Sunny Randall.”

“Sunny Randall,” he said.

I was in full shooter’s stance, the gun in both hands holding steady on the middle of his body mass.

“Start walking,” I said.

He turned and began to walk slowly away. I figured he didn’t have a gun. He’d said he would cut me in two. Just the same I backed to the car. He was far enough away now that Wyatt Earp couldn’t have hit him with the two-inch .38. I put it back in its holster, slid into the car and started up. Pharaoh didn’t look back. As I drove past him he didn’t look sideways. Then we turned left at Huntington and I couldn’t see him anymore.

Millicent was sitting as far into the corner of the passenger seat as she could get, trying to be as small as she could get, and as quiet as she could get.

“We’re all right now,” I said.

We drove through Copley Square onto Stuart Street and turned left onto Berkeley. There were a couple of cop cars parked outside the old Police Headquarters. No one was on the street. There was no traffic. The mercury street lamps made everything look a bit surrealistic.

“You want to talk to me?” I said.

“About what?” Millicent’s voice was small and hostile. She didn’t seem to be feeling rescued.

“Why you ran away.”

She shook her head. We drove across Commonwealth Avenue. The Back Bay was still. The street lights here were more self-effacing, filtered through the unleaving trees. A single bum slept in a pile of clothing on one of the benches in the mall. Millicent didn’t speak. She stared straight ahead through the windshield. Her face was narrow, with a kind of incipient sharpness to it. Her eyes were black or seemed black in this light. She might become beautiful. Or she might not. It would depend, probably, on what life did to her, or what she allowed it to do.

“You like Pharaoh Fox better than you like your parents,” I said.

“He cares about me,” Millicent said.

“Like Colgate cares about toothpaste,” I said.

“What do you mean?”

“He sells you,” I said.

She shook her head. “He cares about me.”

“He’s a pimp, Millicent. He cares about money.”

“You don’t know him.”

She scrunched up a little tighter in the passenger seat, an emblem of stubbornness, hugging her knees, staring straight ahead, her sharp little face closing in on itself. She was like one of those stars that implodes and becomes so dense that no light escapes. Across Beacon Street I went out onto Storrow Drive and headed west, with the river on our right. On the other side, the big commercial buildings in East Cambridge splashed light on the empty black surface of the water. Neither of us said anything as we drove along the river. We were behind B.U. when Millicent spoke.

“You taking me home?”

“I don’t know.”

We drove some more in silence. Past the Western Avenue Bridge she spoke again.

“How come you don’t know?”

“I need to know what you ran away from before I take you back to it.”

“What do you care?”

“Maybe it was worth running away from.”

“How come you don’t just do what they paid you to do and stop pretending?” Millicent said.

“I don’t want to,” I said.

Storrow Drive had become Soldiers Field Road. I never knew quite where that happened. We went past the Harvard Business School and past the Larz Anderson Bridge. I bore left at the light, following the curve of the river, and pulled into the park on the riverside opposite WBZ. I parked near the water, and shut off the headlights. I left the motor running, so I could have the heat on. It was cold at 3 A.M. in late September, and Millicent was wearing only shorts and a tank top. I gave her my jacket. She took it without comment and shrugged it around her shoulders.