LISTEN UP WHILE I explain to you how you hold a damn grudge, Sunny Randall,” Tony Marcus said.
We were in his office at Buddy’s Fox. Tony’s two most trusted troopers, Junior and Ty Bop, had driven me over here like they were Uber drivers, but only if Uber were hiring shooters and thugs this week.
“Tony wants to talk to you,” Junior had said at my front door. “And before you say something smart, like you can’t never help yourself, it really ain’t a request.”
“Fortunately, my schedule is wide open the rest of the afternoon,” I said. “So you’re in luck.”
Junior had turned to Ty Bop then. “See that right there,” he said. “She can’t never help herself.”
It occurred to me on the way to the South End that it was the most I’d ever heard Junior talk. He was as big as the Back Bay and usually just stood mute and scared the living shit out of you.
Now here we all were.
“Should I take notes?” I said to Tony.
He closed his eyes as he shook his head. I knew it wasn’t because he thought I was funny, even though we both knew I was.
“What’s the expression you’d use for a girl, you wanted to tell her she has balls?” he said.
“That she’s got balls,” I said.
“Well, you still got some balls on you,” Tony said.
“Stop or you’ll make me blush,” I said.
Junior and Ty Bop were on either side of the door that led out to the bar area at Buddy’s Fox. Ty Bop, who was Tony’s shooter, still looked as skinny as a hairpin and so jittery I was always surprised I couldn’t hear a faint hum coming off him, somewhat like a tuning fork. Junior, Tony’s body man for as long as I’d known them both, seemed to be staring out the window and perhaps all the way to Portugal.
As always, Tony Marcus brought the word bespoke to mind. He was wearing a light gray suit, the gray so light you could barely see the pinstripes in it, a matching gray shirt, and a maroon tie and a maroon pocket square. His palms were flat on the desk in front of him. I couldn’t help noticing his hands, and being more than somewhat jealous of his manicurist. In the constantly changing crime scene in Boston, Tony was somehow as powerful as he’d ever been, almost as if he were the beneficiary of crime-world gerrymandering. But he still played to and from his base, which had always been prostitution, in all its lousy and illegal forms.
“I believe you were talking about grudges,” I said.
“Like the one we got going,” he said, “since you jammed me up on that gun deal when I’d gone out of the way to help you save your former father-in-law’s sorry old ass.”
A few months ago I’d made a deal with Tony—he’d get a warehouse full of illegal guns in return for helping me save the life of Richie’s father, Desmond Burke. But I’d never had any intention of letting Tony put that many guns on the street, and instead had tipped the warehouse location to the FBI.
“Most people,” he said, “they think you got to act right away when somebody fucks you over the way you did me.” He smiled. “Hell, that ain’t how you hold a grudge.”
I waited.
“What you do is, you wait,” Tony said. “And then you wait a little more, until maybe the other person don’t even remember how they did you in the first place. Then you find a way to settle accounts. And if they say, ‘Why’d you fuck me up like that?’ you say, ‘See there, you forgot. We had a damn grudge.’”
He patted his hands lightly on the desk, as if to punctuate the thought. He smiled at me with about as much warmth as the small refrigerator next to Junior.
“You get my meaning?” he said.
“Tony,” I said, “I’m as likely to forget that you’re sideways with me as I would my email address.”
He chuckled. “Balls on you,” he said. “You forget all the other favors I did for you, back in the day. Remember that time I found out Jermaine Lister took a shot at you?”
Jermaine was a low-level pimp who’d once been Tony’s brother-in-law. He had taken a shot at me, and ended up in jail because of that, if briefly.
“You remember what happened to Jermaine?” he said.
“You had him shanked in prison,” I said. “And not because he took a shot at me. Because you were afraid he was going to tell the cops that you were the one who ordered him to take a shot at me.”
“Did you a favor, that’s the point of the story,” he said.
“Yeah,” I said. “Go with that.”
He picked up an expensive cup and sipped whatever was inside it. He’d asked if I wanted something to drink, coffee or tea or water or stronger. I had declined. This was the first time we’d been together since the Feds had confiscated guns that Tony thought were going to belong to him.
“You know I could’ve taken you out anytime I wanted to,” Tony said, “even if it would’ve gotten the Burkes all up in my shit.”
“The thought has occurred to me.”
“Somebody else did me like you did, I would have taken them out,” he said. “But I like to think our relationship has evolved since then.”
“Aren’t I the lucky girl,” I said.
“So,” he said. “You wondering why you here today?”
“You missed me?”
“Want to hire you,” he said.
I couldn’t help myself. I laughed, loud enough that I was briefly afraid that I’d startled Ty Bop, who went through life like a grenade with the pin already pulled.
“Look to you like I’m joking?” Tony Marcus said.
I was at a point in my professional life where I had the luxury of picking and choosing my cases. After I’d saved Desmond Burke’s life, he had insisted on paying me a vulgar amount of money.
But I had to admit I was curious.
“I’m listening,” I said.
Tony smiled again.
“See there?” he said. “We all whores in the end.”
“Not me,” I said.
“You must be the exception proves the damn rule,” Tony Marcus said.