RICHIE CALLED WHEN I was on my way back to the Back Bay.
“I’m going to take Kathryn and Richard out for an early dinner, but thought we might have a drink later,” he said. “Or something.”
“Catch a movie?” I said. “Binge-watch Mrs. Maisel.”
“Or something,” he said. There was a pause. “Just the two of us.”
“Not just the two of us anymore,” I said.
“We can handle this,” he said.
“You’re nicer to your ex than I could ever be,” I said. “Or will ever be.”
“What’s the alternative?” he said. “I don’t want to make this more awkward with her than it already is.”
“You mean the way I do?”
“All things considered, I thought you were reasonably well behaved.”
Somehow a laugh came out of me. “Relative to what?” I said. “Threatening to waterboard her?”
“I’m not asking you to be her friend.”
“There’s a better chance of me learning to skydive,” I said. “Where’s she staying, by the way?”
“Four Seasons, at least for the time being,” he said.
“Until she finds something more permanent.”
“It’s like she said, she didn’t know where else to go,” he said. “I don’t think she has any idea how long she might stay, or whether she even wants to stay, to tell you the truth.”
“She hasn’t been this full of surprises since the pregnancy test came up positive,” I said.
“And I’ll always be grateful it did,” Richie said. “He’s in the world. In mine. Everything else is just noise.”
“As it should be.”
“Just remember that you’re the one I always wanted,” he said, “even when I couldn’t have you.”
“I know.”
“I know you know,” Richie said.
I told him to call me when he was done with dinner, parked the car behind the house, walked and fed Rosie, and booked an Uber instead.
TONY HAD SENT me the address of the small brownstone near Symphony Hall that he’d shared, at least occasionally, with Lisa Morneau. On the way over, I told myself that I had signed no contract with Tony Marcus, and was still allowed to change my mind if I wanted to. Just because he said he only wanted to talk to her didn’t mean that was the whole truth and nothing but. He had his codes. But I had mine. I would never just turn her over to him. As my father liked to say, we’d burn that bridge when we came to it.
It got me to thinking on my way to Symphony Hall: Who did I trust more right now, Tony or Kathryn?
Or maybe the better question was which one of them did I trust less?
The two-story brownstone in which Tony had set up Lisa Morneau was actually around the corner from Symphony Plaza Towers, looking like a miniature version of the bigger brownstones on either side of it. It could not have come cheap. But I was sure that Tony, being Tony, preferred the privacy of the place, as opposed to a doorman building. I knew Tony didn’t even want doormen knowing his business.
He said that the door would be unlocked when I got there. Good thing. Just the locks on the front door looked formidable enough to stop even the best pickers of locks in Boston, some of whom I knew. I took it on faith that the alarm system would have made Bank of America jealous.
As I was reaching for the handle, Ty Bop opened the front door for me.
“Yo,” I said. “What’s crackin’, homeslice?”
He looked at me with the same indifference you got from snakes.
From behind him I heard Tony Marcus say, “Girl, you got about as much street cred as Sweden.”
He was standing in the middle of the living room, which was open and sunny and, to my surprise, elegant. There were bookcases on both walls, to his left and right, an L-shaped couch, rustic coffee table, an expensive rug that I thought might be a Penfold, just because Melanie Joan had one quite similar to it.
“You said you’d bring a picture,” I said.
Tony reached into the pocket of his overcoat and handed it to me. It was of Lisa Morneau sitting on the couch in this room. She was beautiful, with flawless skin, dark eyes, long hair. Killer smile.
“She looks young, Tony,” I said. “Even for you.”
“Yeah, but like they say, she got one of those old souls.”
I put the picture into the pocket of my coat.
“What about credit cards, ATM, phone?” I said. “I assume you’ve been checking all of those.”
“Easy to do,” he said. “I pay for all of it.”
“You told me she’s been gone a week?”
“Six days, be exact,” he said. “I left her here that morning, haven’t seen her since.”
“How long have the two of you been together? I didn’t ask the other day.”
“Coupla years,” he said.
I grinned. “Personal best?”
“If we talking exclusive,” he said, “pretty damn close.”
He sat down on the couch, put his head back, then moved it from side to side as if trying to relax the muscles in his neck. Or his brain.
“Tell me more about Lisa,” I said.
“She smart, you can see for yourself she’s nearly better looking than Beyoncé, a fast learner,” he said. “Don’t know how she learned what she learned about finance and shit, but she did. Like she was putting all her street smarts to good use. And the thing was? More I put on her, the more she showed she could handle. Businesswise, I’m talkin’ about, not just the fucking. I told her where I was going, she could come along with me.”
“And where are you going?” I said. “I thought you liked things the way they are.”
“Town’s wide open now,” Tony said. “Maybe too wide open. Old guys like Richie’s old man getting older. Felix Burke’s dead. So’s Gino Fish. Joe Broz is long gone. Don’t know what the fuck Eddie Lee’s family doing in Chinatown. DeMarcos are as fucked-up as ever. Casinos coming in, which means Vegas. Still plenty of drug business, even with them making weed legal. Somebody with vision, and muscle, and money, he could be bigger than anybody since poor old Whitey Bulger, he plays his cards right.”
“You make it sound like Silicon Valley in the old days,” I said.
“The way I see it,” he said, “if you aren’t looking forward you might as well have your head up your ass.”
I smiled.
“What?” he said.
“Can’t lie, Tony. I do like listening to you talk.”
“Same old same old,” he said. “Ain’t nothing more than alabaster and sham.”
“How much sham are you giving me now?”
“I just want to talk to the girl,” he said. “Find out why she left when I thought things were going so good.”
“Doesn’t necessarily mean she thought they were going good,” I said.
“No,” he said, “it don’t.”
“I know we talked about this,” I said. “But you can’t believe she’s with a direct competitor? It’s as I said to you already. She’d have to know better. And know you better.”
“I hear you,” he said. “Still, I don’t want to get cockolded here. Make me look weak as shit. And old.”
“I believe it’s cuckolded.”
“Makes more sense my way,” he said.
“It actually kind of does.”
“Find the girl,” he said. “As much as I know she knows about my business, might turn out she knows even more.”
“I’m not handing her over if she doesn’t want to be handed over,” I said.
“Hear you on that.”
“You don’t think she might try to blackmail you with something she might know that you don’t want her to?” I said.
“I just want her to keep all my shit to her own damn self, whether she’s coming back here or not,” Tony said.
I gave him a long look. “Is this more personal for you, or professional?”
“Ask her, you find her,” he said.
“Deal,” I said.
“Deal,” he said.
He put out his hand. I shook it, resisting the urge to count my fingers after he released his grip.
“Lisa got any close friends?” I said.
“Only one I know of,” he said. “Name’s Callie. She come out of the life, too. Says she hasn’t seen Lisa since I have. But that don’t mean she hasn’t.” He pulled out his phone, tapped out something. I felt my own phone buzzing in my purse as he did. “I just sent you the number,” he said. “You just got to be careful with her. She come up on the streets the way Lisa did.”
“What’s that mean?”
“We gone over this,” he said. “Means whores lie, even after they stop whoring.”
He stood up, telling me to take as much time as I wanted here, and to just let myself out. Told me the two locks on the front door would lock behind me.
“I’ll bet,” I said.
Tony said, “Upstairs is the master bedroom, where all that heavenly transport shit happened. And the little office she kept in the second bedroom.”
“You know this is only a onetime thing between us, right?” I said, as Ty Bop opened the door for Tony.
Tony Marcus smiled brilliantly.
“What they all say,” he said.