Robert Parker - Family Honor

“I don’t think we have a problem with Sunny that can’t be worked out,” Antonioni said. “We got some plans. We been careful making those plans, we don’t interfere with your plans.”

“I got no problem with your plans, Albert. There’s too many lone cowhands in Boston since Gerry went down. Fast Eddie got Chinatown, Tony got the niggers, we got ours. You come in and organize the rest, it’ll save me doing it. I don’t want to do it. I’m happy with what I got.”

“I appreciate that,” Antonioni said.

“But you can’t be fucking with any of us, excuse me, Sunny.”

I smiled modestly.

“Didn’t know we were, Desmond.”

“Now you do,” Felix said.

Felix had taken a couple too many punches in the neck. His voice sounded the way I’d always imagined a rhinoceros might sound clearing its throat. Antonioni smiled faintly.

“We ain’t afraid of you,” he said.

Neither Desmond nor Felix said anything.

“On the other hand we don’t need no fucking two-front war,” Antonioni said. “Begging your pardon, Sunny.”

I smiled modestly. No one else said anything.

“So whaddya need,” Antonioni said.

Desmond nodded at me.

“I need the Patton girl safe,” I said.

“She’s witness to a murder conspiracy,” Antonioni said.

“I need someone for the murder, too,” I said.

Antonioni sat back in his seat and looked at me.

“Who’d you have in mind,” Antonioni said.

“Kragan tried to kill the girl and me. I assume he did the plumber.”

Antonioni looked at his son. His son nodded.

“Cathal zipped him,” the son said.

“And Bucko Meehan.”

“He did that on his own,” Allie said.

“You want Cathal?” Antonioni said.

“Yes.”

“You know why Cathal zipped the plumber?” Antonioni said.

“Pictures,” I said.

Antonioni nodded slowly.

“You know our interest in that?”

“Governor,” I said.

Antonioni smiled again. It was an odd smile, nearly invisible. But it was real. It was the smile of a man who had once been able to laugh.

“I like a quiet woman,” he said.

He drank some coffee.

“Cold,” he said, and handed his cup to one of the men at the next table. The man got up and went for fresh coffee. “How you going to take Cathal down without messing up what I got in place with Patton?”

“Maybe I can’t,” I said.

Antonioni’s new coffee arrived. He sipped some and nodded once.

“Better,” he said.

He put the cup down and looked straight at me.

“We got a problem,” he said.

“We didn’t have a problem,” Desmond Burke said, “we wouldn’t be sitting here trying to solve it.”

Antonioni nodded. Everyone was quiet. Desmond looked at me.

“Whaddya want to do, Sunny?” he said.

“I want the girl safe,” I said.

Desmond looked at Antonioni.

“I can give you that,” Albert said. “But I can’t guarantee Kragan. Kid could bury him if she testified.”

“I can put Kragan in jail,” I said.

“But will he go quiet?” Albert said.

“You tell me,” I said. “What about omertà and all that.”

“Kragan’s Irish,” Allie said. “They don’t have no vow of silence.”

“Even if he was straight from Palermo,” Albert said, “things are different than they was. Omertà don’t look so good, you’re facing fucking three hundred years hard time.”

“Maybe I could leave Brock Patton alone,” I said.

Again everyone was quiet. Albert blew on his coffee a little, then sipped some. He looked at Allie. They looked at each other for a moment.

“Maybe we could straighten things out with Kragan,” Albert said.

“That would work,” I said.

On the ride home, alone together in my car, Richie said to me, “They’re going to kill him, you know.”

“Kragan?”

“Yep.”

“I sort of figured they would,” I said.

Richie was quiet. I could feel him looking at me as I drove.

“You’re a pretty tough cookie,” he said.

“Thank you for noticing.”

Allie Antonioni had called Felix and told him that Albert wanted him to tell Desmond that Kragan was decommissioned. Desmond told Richie and Richie had told me. I could go home. The long exile was over. I was back in my loft. Rosie was sleeping on my bed, nearly invisible among the pillows. Millicent was with Richie; and I was entertaining her mother at my kitchen table. We talked for nearly four hours. Occasionally she cried. When she did I waited. When she stopped, we talked some more. By the time her husband arrived I was quite tired. But we had a plan.

“Tea?” I said. “Coffee?”

“I have no time for this,” Brock Patton said to me. “I’m not running some kind of ma and pa store. What the hell am I here for?”

I poured some more tea for Betty Patton and for me and gestured with the teapot at Brock. He shook his head.

“For God’s sake get on with it,” he said.

He was vibrantly impatient with female silliness.

“I think I can keep most of this secret,” I said.

“Excuse me?”

“The womanizing, the Asian girls,” I said. “The gang bangs. The picture taking, the voyeurism. Of course I don’t have to keep it secret. If you annoy me, I can get even by blabbing to everyone.”

“You have no evidence.”

“I have talked with your wife and she’s prepared to go public, if she needs to.”

“That would be a very dangerous thing for anyone to do,” Patton said.

“No, it won’t be. I have talked with your owner, Albert Antonioni. He will follow my lead.”

“I don’t believe you.”

I shrugged.

“My wife won’t speak a word,” Patton said.

I looked at Betty Patton.

“Yes,” she said. “I will.”

“A wife can’t testify against her husband.”

“Depends,” I said. “But in any case she can talk to the press.”

“She’d be publicly humiliated.”

“I’m humiliated now,” Betty Patton said. “By what I’ve become. By what I’ve allowed you to turn me into.”

“Oh, you didn’t want to make it with every plumber and delivery man that came to the door. You didn’t want me to become governor and maybe someday president, you weren’t pushing me, pushing me, like Lady Macbeth. Big bad old me made you do all that.”

“I started out wanting you to love me,” she said.

“That was a while ago,” he said.

“Yes, it was,” she said. “And then I wanted at least to be able to love you. And then I wanted at least to get even, and then I wanted to get what I thought you owed me, even if we had no marriage.”

“And now what, you want to destroy me?”

“I want to save my daughter.”

“Oh God, motherhood,” Brock said. “Isn’t it a little late for motherly self-sacrifice?”

“If I can save her, maybe I can save myself,” Betty said.

Brock looked at me.

“Women!” he said. “Do you have any thoughts on how to clean up this mess?”

“I do,” I said. “Thank you for asking.”

I gave him my most charming smile. Some men sink to their knees when I give my most ingratiating smile. Patton bore up under it manfully.

“You and Albert can stay in business,” I said. “And Betty will not say anything about you to anyone. Cathal Kragan takes the fall for Kevin Humphries’s murder.”

“Who’s Kevin Humphries?” Patton said.

“Plumber from Framingham,” I said. “Was passing out pictures.”

“And when Kragan, as you so thoughtfully put it, takes the fall,” Patton said. “What ensures his silence.”

“I have Antonioni’s assurance that Kragan will be quiet,” I said.