Robert Parker - Family Honor

“Sunny,” Millicent said as we sat side by side in the middle of the river and let the shells drift, “I’m sick of this. I want to go home.”

Like that.

Millicent was wearing an oversized bathrobe and drinking hot chocolate at Spike’s kitchen table. The sleeves of the robe were turned up. Her hair was fluffed from the shower and she smelled of soap and shampoo and looked maybe twelve. Rosie sat on the floor beside her feet, looking up with her mouth open and her tongue lolling. If I didn’t know better than to anthropomorphize dogs, I’d have said Rosie was smiling at Millicent.

“Did you like the rowing?” I said.

“It’s awfully hard,” she said.

She rubbed Rosie’s chest absently with the toe of her right foot.

“I know, but it’s sort of like riding a bicycle. Once you get the balance, it’s not so hard.”

“I know, I could feel that.”

“Do you think you’ll want to do it again?”

“Yes.”

I was quiet. Millicent drank some hot chocolate.

“Your mother was having an affair with the plumber,” I said.

“The plumber?”

“Yes, the one you said looked like an Italian Stallion.”

“Him?”

“Yes.”

“Are you sure? My mother? Did he tell you that?”

“I found pictures of them.”

“Pictures?”

“Yes.”

“You mean, dirty pictures? Like I found?”

“Yes.”

“Jesus. It’s like she sees a camera she yanks off her clothes.”

“Some people like to pose,” I said.

“With plumbers?”

“Sometimes what seems a drawback to one person seems an asset to another.”

“What do you mean?”

“Maybe his being a working-class guy was his appeal.”

“Well, it’s sick,” Millicent said.

“Yes,” I said. “It probably is.”

I took a deep breath. “We’re never going to get to where we need to go,” I said. “If you can’t trust me to tell you the truth... The plumber was shot to death.”

“Shot? You mean murdered?”

“Yes.”

“Do you think it was my mother?”

“It happened after she talked with Cathal Kragan about somebody who would have to be killed.”

“But there must have been a bunch of people killed since then.”

“Sixteen,” I said. “In Massachusetts. He’s the only one we can connect to your mother.”

Millicent looked at me without saying anything for a moment. The red smudges faded. She shrugged.

“Well, fuck her,” she said. “I hate her anyway.”

God, was I in over my head. I took in some more air. Rosie heard me and gave me a look. I smiled at her. It had been simpler when she was all I had to worry about.

“Yes,” I said. “You probably do. And I don’t see why you shouldn’t. But you probably feel other things, too.”

“Like what?”

“Loneliness, rejection, disappointment, fear.”

“I don’t feel anything,” she said. “I’m fine.”

“Sort of like when you were having sex with strangers in the backseat of a car,” I said.

“Hey, I did what I had to do.”

“I know. And because you had to, you tended to close down all your feelings so it wouldn’t seem so awful. I’m not a shrink. I can’t deal with that part of you, all I’m saying is don’t close down on this.”

She shrugged.

“When this is over...” I said.

“What?”

“This situation. When we’ve solved these problems and don’t have to hide out here with Spike, I’m going to ask you to see a good psychiatrist.”

“I already did that with Marguerite.”

“No. I mean a real one that knows what he or she is doing.”

“You don’t think Marguerite knew what she was doing?”

“No,” I said. “I don’t.”

“How do you know?”

“I talked with her. I believe she’s a fraud.”

“Oh, they’re all frauds anyway, aren’t they?”

“No. My friend Julie is a therapist.”

“You want me to see her?”

“No. She’d be the first to tell you she wasn’t right for you. But she can find us someone.”

“You think I’m crazy?”

“I think you’ve had more to handle than a kid can handle alone. Hell, that anyone could handle alone. You need somebody to help you with it.”

“You’re helping me.”

“Yes, but unlike Marguerite, I know my limitations.”

“I don’t want anyone else.”

“We don’t have to deal with it now, but when this is over you are going to need somebody else.”

“Instead of you?”

Whoops. Of course she’s scared. I should have foreseen it.

“No, not instead, in addition to. I’m permanent.”

Rosie got impatient on the floor by Millicent’s feet, and jumped up and put her forepaws in Millicent’s lap and scanned the table for food. Still looking at me, Millicent patted Rosie’s head. I could see the tears form in Millicent’s eyes, then she put her head down against Rosie’s and put her arms around Rosie and stayed that way while she waited for the tears to clear. I didn’t say anything. Rosie didn’t quite get the deal. She was still glancing sidelong at the table, her tail wagging, submitting graciously, but with no great pleasure, to the tears and the embrace.

Brian Kelly had a three-story brick town house on First Street in South Boston. We were sitting together in postcoital languor, on the couch in his narrow, bow-windowed front room, with a fire in the small fireplace, and some red wine, talking business. I wore one of Brian’s shirts, which came about to my knees. Brian was wearing tartan plaid boxers. We were both barefoot.

“Here’s what I think I know,” I said.

“And think you can can prove?” Brian said.

“Don’t be so picky,” I said. “I know that Betty Patton was having sex with the plumber, Kevin Humphries, who had been doing some work for them.”

“How come that never happens to cops,” Brian said.

“It does.”

“Oh, you and me?”

“Exactly,” I said.

“I know Betty posed for very explicit pictures of her relationship with Kevin, and I assume that he got hold of the pictures and blackmailed her with them. She told Kragan, and Kragan killed Humphries.”

“You’ve seen the pictures,” Brian said.

“Un huh.”

“And you have the kid’s testimony on the conversation she overheard between her mother and Kragan.”

“Un huh.”

“We know the guy she saw with her mother is Kragan.”

“Pretty likely.”

“Pretty likely? I can’t wait to go in an tell some assistant DA that it’s ‘pretty likely’”

“So don’t, wait until I get more.”

Brian leaned forward and poured a little more wine into each of our glasses.

“I know that Brock Patton is running for governor, and that a big campaign contributor is Albert Antonioni from Rhode Island. Do you know him?”

“I know Antonioni,” Brian said.

“So I figure that if these pictures surfaced, the Patton gubernatorial campaign would suffer a setback.”

“Depends how the First Lady looks in the buff,” Brian said.

“Would you like to see the pictures?”

“You bet.”

“Because they’re evidence?”

“Sure.”

“Men,” I said.

Brian smiled.

“Antonioni is not backing somebody for governor of Massachusetts because he’s concerned with good government,” Brian said.

“True.”

“He’s investing in something that will pay off in the long term.”

“It would be in anyone’s interest to own the governor,” I said.

“Especially if you’re trying to reestablish an Italian presence among the wiseguys in Boston.”

“Which somebody is,” I said.