AT NOON THE next day I was standing at the bar at Buddy’s Fox, the place starting to fill up with another surprisingly good lunch crowd. As usual I looked as out of place in this place as Tony Marcus would have looked singing lead for the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.
I asked the bartender if Tony was around. He shook his head.
“Ain’t here,” he said.
“Might he be later?”
“Ain’t been here for a couple of days,” the bartender said.
“What about Junior or Ty Bop?” I said.
“Where Tony is, they is,” the bartender said.
I handed him my card and asked him to have Tony call me if he did happen to show up in the next few hours, and went outside and got into my car and drove to Suite.
I wasn’t sure when places like Suite opened for business. It turned out to be two in the afternoon. I didn’t think Gabriel would be around in the afternoon, but decided to go in anyway. There wasn’t the same kind of crowd here as at Buddy’s Fox. Maybe Gabriel should think about offering some tasty appetizers in addition to the strippers.
I ordered a club soda and asked the bartender here when Gabriel generally showed up.
“When he feels like showing up,” he said, placing my drink in front of me.
“Does he ever show up in the afternoon?” I said.
“He’s kind of a late riser,” the bartender said.
“If he shows up, please tell him Sunny Randall was looking for him,” I said. “We’re old friends.”
He was tall and black, with a shaved head and biceps I thought qualified as a new wonder of the world. When I handed him my card he looked at it, tore it in two, and let the pieces fall to the floor behind the bar.
“Or not,” I said.
I could go tell Natalie that I knew Gabriel was her brother. But for now I didn’t see how that got me any closer to where I wanted to go. Maybe I really should just kick the can to Lee Farrell, or Jake Rosen. Or both. Lee wanted to catch a killer and put him in jail. Jake wanted to put Tony in jail.
For all the new intel I had acquired over the past couple days, all I’d really accomplished was getting a gun pulled on me when I had a six-year-old boy in my car. Me. The big talker. You can’t threaten me.
So they hadn’t.
They’d basically threatened Richie’s son instead.
I drove to Revere Street and double-parked in front of Natalie’s building and rang the bell. No one answered. I got back into my car and drove to Olivia Hewitt’s brothel. I didn’t know what I wanted to ask her. Maybe about Gabriel. Maybe I just longed for human contact at this point. But no one answered the door. They either weren’t open yet or were closing permanently after the busts in Cambridge and Charlestown. Darcy said that sometimes places like this, no matter how well or long established, were there and gone.
It was starting to get dark when I returned to River Street Place. I parked my car in the back, came around to the front door, unlocked it, and saw Gled standing in the front hall.
I started to reach inside my purse. He shook his head. His left arm was still in a sling. His right hand, at his side, had a gun in it.
To Gled’s right, I saw Gabriel sitting on my couch, Rosie next to him, on her back as he scratched her belly.
“Dogs love me,” he said.
Then he said we needed to talk.
Again.