Robert Parker - Family Honor

“One other thing,” he said to Mother. “You can spread your legs for anybody you want. We don’t care. You can fuck as weird as you want. We don’t care. Long as it’s private. You understand?”

“Of course. It was a mistake. We can correct it. It won’t happen again.”

“We will correct it,” the man said.

Millicent heard the two of them walk across the room and open the door to the hall. The door closed. The room was silent. She stood in the shower stall in the bathroom, stiff with terror. Nothing moved in the room. She forced herself to step rigidly out of the shower stall and look around the corner of the bathroom door. The study was empty. She ran to the door, feeling as if her legs wouldn’t work right, and opened it a crack and peeked into the hall. No one was there. She stepped into the hall and walked to the French doors at the end of the hall that led to the back lawn. No one stopped her. She opened the French doors and closed them soundlessly behind her and began to run.

“Why didn’t he say anything to my mother,” Millicent said.

“My guess is he decided he’d have to get rid of you, too, and didn’t want your mother to know.”

“Get rid of?”

“Kill,” I said.

“Oh my God,” Millicent said.

“It’s okay,” I said. “I won’t let him.”

“How are you going to stop him, you should have seen him, what he looked like, what he sounded like, you’re a girl like me, for crissake, what are you going to do?”

“What have I done so far,” I said.

She thought about that.

“It would be nice,” I said. “If I weighed two hundred pounds and used to be a boxer. But I’m not, so we find other ways. I can shoot. I can think. I am very quick. The dangerous stuff almost always boils down to people with guns, and guns make size and strength irrelevant. With guns it only matters how tough you are, and I’m as tough as anybody they’re likely to send.”

She thought about that, too. She wanted to believe it, because it would make her feel safer. In principle I believed it. It was the theory under which I worked. Though I knew privately that it was a more comfortable theory when Richie was around.

“You know this man’s name?” I said.

“No. You think he sent those men today?”

“Yes.”

“What are we going to do?”

“We’ll move tomorrow. We’re all right tonight with the cops outside.”

“Where we going to go?”

“Someplace safe,” I said. “Do you know what deal your mother was talking about with the man?”

“No.”

“Do you know who they were talking about killing?”

“Some guy who must have been bopping my mom.”

“But you don’t know who?”

“No.”

“Sounds like somebody planning to go public with details,” I said.

“Yes.”

“Embarrassing, maybe,” I said, “but would she have him killed for that? I mean there’s a lot of that going around.”

Millicent shrugged and drank some scotch. She made a face, every time, as if she were taking medicine. But it didn’t cause her to stop.

“In those sex pictures you found. Was the man recognizable?”

“I think so. I didn’t like looking at them.”

“I don’t blame you,” I said. “Do you have any of those pictures?”

“No, when I ran I didn’t have anything but what I was wearing.”

“Are there any in your room?”

“No. My mother used to search my room all the time. I never dared have anything there.”

“You don’t know any of the men your mother has been with?”

“No.”

We communed with our scotch for a moment.

“She searched your room?” I said.

“Yes. To make sure I didn’t have drugs or condoms or cigarettes, stuff like that. She said it was her responsibility to know.”

I nodded.

“If she gave you enough time, I imagine you’d have fulfilled her expectations,” I said.

“What’s that mean?”

I shrugged.

“Just a little pop psych,” I said. “Pay no attention.”

Spike had a town house with guest space on the second floor, in the South End on Warren Ave.

“I thought you lived in the South End,” Millicent said to me when we were surveying the two rooms and a bath that Spike was offering.

“I live in South Boston,” I said. “This is the South End. Two different places.”

There was a bay window in my bedroom with a window seat. Rosie immediately commandeered it so that she could look down at Warren Avenue and bark at anything that moved.

“You’re sure nobody saw us come here?” Millicent said.

I noticed that she hovered near the inner walls of the room, staying away from the windows. Her bedroom was across the hall from mine, but she stayed with me. Since the shooting she had not let me out of her sight.

“I’m not an amateur,” I said. “No one followed us.”

Spike came up the stairs with my suitcase and a duffel bag.

“What the hell is in here?” Spike said. “Hand grenades?”

“My face is in the suitcase,” I said. “Duffel bag goes next door.”

Spike dropped the suitcase.

“Come on, Millicent,” he said. “I’ll show you your room.”

Millicent hesitated and then followed him across the hall. She looked back as she left the room.

“I’m right here,” I said. “Door open.”

Spike came back in a moment without her.

“You know what you’re getting into,” I said.

“Sure,” Spike said. “You’re going to the mattresses.”

“I hope not. I hope we are hiding successfully.”

Spike was wearing jeans and a tee shirt with a plaid flannel shirt open over the tee shirt. When he sat on the bed I could see that he had an Army-issue Colt .45 stuck in his belt. I took some clothes out of the suitcase and put them in the top drawer of the bureau.

“Kid’s scared,” Spike said.

“Of course she is, there are people after her. She saw me kill one of them.”

“Better than seeing you not kill him.”

“True. I have to tell Richie where I am,” I said.

“Sure,” Spike said.

“I’ve got to be able to leave her here and go and find out who her mother was going to have killed, and who the people are who are trying to get her.”

“Be the same people, wouldn’t it,” Spike said.

“That’s my assumption,” I said. “We can’t leave Millicent alone.”

“I know.”

“I hate to ask, but I don’t know who else. I can’t ask Julie. It’s too dangerous and she’s got children of her own.”

“I’ll sit her,” Spike said. “But I have to work now and then, though not very hard. Maybe you can get Richie to take a turn.”

“I don’t...”

“You don’t want to ask him for anything,” Spike said, “I know. But you don’t have that luxury.”

“I’ve already asked him a couple of times,” I said.

Millicent came out of her room and across the hall and stood inside the doorway and didn’t say anything. Rosie began to gargle and yap and growl and bark and jump straight up and down on all four feet in the bay window. Millicent seemed to press herself into the wall by the door. Spike and I both looked out the window. There was a Yorkshire terrier being walked.

“Rat on a rope,” Spike said.

“What?” Millicent said.

“Just a dog,” I said. “Rosie barks at all children, and most dogs. You might as well get used to it.”

“You want some lunch?” Spike said.

“Like what?” Millicent said.

“Like chicken piccata, or a lobster club sandwich?”

“What?”

“Come down with me,” Spike said. “You can order what you want.”

“You can cook stuff like that?”