Robert Parker - Family Honor

“And you’ve not yet sold them?”

“Some, now and then, and I’m trying to get a Master of Fine Arts at night, and this work supports me while I do the art.”

“You are no longer with the police?”

“Too hierarchical for me,” I said.

Sister smiled. “I often think that of the church,” she said. “If you became wildly successful as a painter, would you give this up?”

“I don’t think so,” I said.

“If you became wildly successful at this would you stop painting?”

“I don’t think so.”

Sister smiled as if I had said something smart. We were quiet again. Sister looked down at Rosie.

“What kind of dog is that?”

“An English bull terrier,” I said.

“Like General Patton’s dog?”

“Yes, only Rosie is a miniature.”

“She looks rather like a possum,” Sister said.

“No,” I said very firmly, “she doesn’t.”

Sister shrugged and stood up and put out her hand. “Good luck, Sunny Randall.”

I stood up, too. We shook hands.

Outside the church, walking to my car I looked down at Rosie.

“Possum?” I said.

There wasn’t much point strolling around Boston looking for hookers until later in the evening. So I went to see Spike, at a place called Beans & Rice, near Quincy Market, in which he was a part owner. It was open for dinner, but it was early and they weren’t busy when I got there. Spike was in the back, a phone hunched against his ear.

“Ma’am,” the maitre d’ said when Rosie and I walked in. “I’m sorry, but you can’t bring the dog in here.”

“Shh,” I said. “You want her to hear you?”

From the back, Spike said, “Dog’s a friend of mine, Herb, let her in.”

When Rosie heard Spike’s voice she strained toward him on her leash. Herb looked a little uneasily at Spike and somewhat less uneasily at Rosie, and smiled at me, and in we went.

Spike hung up the phone.

“Out walking our armadillo?” Spike said.

He pulled a chair out from one of the empty tables and I sat down.

“Rosie is not an armadillo,” I said. “Nor, by the way, a possum.”

“I never said she looked like a possum,” Spike said.

He dropped to his knees and let Rosie lap his face.

“Not a tall dog,” he said. “You want some food?”

“No, I’ve eaten,” I said. “I need to talk a little.”

“Sure.”

He took a soup bowl off the china rack near the kitchen and put it on the floor and poured water into it from a pitcher. Rosie drank some. Rosie was a very noisy drinker.

A woman in sandals and a print skirt, with an Instamatic camera hanging from her wrist, was at a table near us. She was sitting with a woman wearing a Black Dog sweatshirt that was too tight and a long-billed yachting cap that was too big.

“Waiter,” the woman in the print skirt said, “I’d like to order.”

“I’m waiting on her right now,” Spike said, nodding at Rosie, “I’ll get to you.”

“Isn’t it illegal for dogs to be in a restaurant?” the woman said.

“No, ma’am,” Spike said. “You and your friend are fine.”

The woman and her companion put their heads together and whispered. I assumed they were trying to figure out if Spike had insulted them.

“Sit here for a minute,” Spike said, “while I swill the customers.”

A large man with a red face joined the two women at the table. He was wearing green plaid shorts and oversized black running shoes, and an orange tee shirt. He must have recently gained weight because everything seemed a little too tight except the shoes, which didn’t look as if they’d ever been run in. The women whispered to him, and when Spike walked to the table he looked at him hard.

“What can I get you?” Spike said.

“You just insult these ladies?” the man said.

“Yes,” Spike said. “The special today is a chicken burrito with salsa fresca and black beans, for eight ninety-five.”

The red-faced man stared up at Spike. Spike smiled down at him.

“Would you like a moment to decide?” he said.

“I don’t think so,” the red-faced man said, and he got up with the two women and walked out.

Spike went to the service station, poured himself a cup of coffee, and came and sat at the table with me. We were alone in the restaurant.

“That was my agent on the phone,” Spike said. “He thinks he can get me something with the road company of Cabaret .”

“He better,” I said. “You’re going to be fired here pretty soon.”

“They can’t fire me,” Spike said. “I’m one of the owners.”

“That’s right,” I said. “It’s so hard to imagine, I keep forgetting.”

“Entrepreneurship, babe. You need something?”

“I’m looking for a fifteen-year-old runaway girl,” I said. “Any thoughts?”

“She got a boyfriend?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Girlfriend?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Cops find her body?”

“No.”

“Try the shelters?”

“This afternoon.”

“And they don’t have her.”

“They did. She left.”

“Well, if they don’t have her, and she’s still around here, I’d say she’s probably hooking.”

Rosie rolled over on her back beside Spike’s chair.

“She wants her belly rubbed,” I said.

“Me, too,” Spike said.

“But not by me,” I said.

Spike gently rubbed Rosie’s belly with the ball of his foot.

“No, but your ex-husband’s studly-looking.”

“I’ll tell him you think so,” I said. “If she’s hooking, I suppose she’s with Tony Marcus?”

Spike smiled at me.

“Sunny,” he said. “Every whore in the city is with Tony Marcus.”

“But Tony wouldn’t know her.”

“Does the president of GM know the guy that installs floor mats?”

“So what pimp might she be with, if she’s hooking? Who specializes in runaways?”

“She white?”

“Yes.”

“Maybe Pharaoh Fox,” Spike said.

“Does he still work St. James Ave. and Arlington?”

“Not so much anymore. Mostly it’s male prostitutes there. Pharaoh moves the girls around every night: convention, ball game, wherever the johns are, Pharaoh drives them up in a van and lets them out right when the crowd breaks.”

Spike was still rubbing Rosie’s stomach with his foot. Rosie was motionless in some sort of ecstatic trance. No one could stand to rub Rosie’s stomach for as long as she wanted them to.

“Pharaoh’s a bad sonovabitch,” Spike said.

“You don’t meet all that many pimps who aren’t,” I said.

Spike drank some coffee.

“I was you,” he said, “I’d get your ex to arrange a meeting with Tony Marcus, maybe Tony can do something for you.”

“Richie’s not in the family business.”

“He’s not out of it either,” Spike said. “Tony wants to get along with the Burkes.”

“Well, I don’t,” I said.

Spike shrugged. He took his foot off Rosie’s stomach and rested it on the floor. Rosie remained on her back, her flat-black watermelon-seed eyes staring up at Spike. Spike stared back down at her.

“I’m not rubbing your stomach again,” he said.

Rosie stared up some more, her feet in the air, one paw bent. Spike put his other foot onto her stomach and began to rub gently.

“You going to go looking for Pharaoh? Maybe I should tag along,” he said.

“To protect me?”

“More or less,” Spike said.

“I can protect myself.”

“It’s like safe sex,” Spike said. “Two protect better than one.”

I shook my head. “I’ll be fine,” I said. “Besides, there’s my savage black-and-white attack dog.”