MY GUN WAS in my purse in the kitchen, but was of absolutely no use to me now. From the start, just about everybody involved in this case had been telling me not to get caught in a crossfire. But now here I was.
“You gonna shoot a cop?” Rosen said. “Seriously?”
Ty Bop wore a gray hoodie with a green Celtics shamrock on the front, what looked to be brand-new Timberlands, and jeans that made his legs look as skinny as swizzle sticks.
The .45 in his right hand had a suppressor on the end of it.
“Shoot a cop in front of a witness whose old man is a cop, too?” Rosen said.
“You’re the one who drew down,” Tony said.
“Why do you believe her and not me?” Rosen said.
“Same reason I hired her in the first place,” Tony said. “She good at finding shit out.”
Rosen took the blue eyes off Tony and put them on me.
“You were a cop yourself,” Rosen said. “You know that the phone means nothing. Which means you’ve got nothing.”
“Probably so,” I said.
He looked back at Tony. “You and me need to talk later,” he said. “Just the two of us. Settle things.”
“What Lisa said she was going to do with Tony that night,” I said. “She just never got the chance.”
“Walking out of here now,” Rosen said.
“Suit yourself,” Tony said.
“You’re letting me walk away, just like that?” Rosen said.
“Uh-huh,” Tony said.
Rosen backed around the couch and toward the door, reached behind him and opened the door, his eyes never leaving Ty Bop.
When he was outside, Tony and I walked to the window and saw Rosen backing down the front walk. It was why he didn’t notice the black Navigator parked on the street as he was putting his gun back in the holster underneath his bomber jacket.
By the time Gled was behind him, it was too late for Rosen to do much about that. Gled’s gun was already out and in Rosen’s back. Then there were two other guys out of the Navigator and throwing Rosen into the backseat and the door was closing behind him.
“You worried about security cameras on this street?” I said to Tony.
“Seems like couple of them down all of a sudden,” he said. “And one more pointing the wrong way.”
“Imagine that,” I said.
“You feel bad about this?” Tony said to me.
“He killed two women,” I said. “Three if you’re right about the girl you say didn’t OD.”
“He liked ’em young,” Tony said. “Kid in a candy store.”
“But was right about one thing tonight,” I said. “I had no way in hell of proving it.”
“No way he could have known she came to your house,” Tony said. “Not without help.”
“Nope,” I said.
“Boys will be boys,” Tony said.
“Won’t they, though,” I said.
“No way he could have known about the phone unless he took it off her and put Jabari’s number in it and put it back,” he said.
“Nope.”
“He didn’t beat up on Lisa ’fore he shot her, the way he did the others,” Tony said.
“Maybe he knew he didn’t have time,” I said. “Like a john on the clock.”
I faced him fully now. “What did he have on you?” I said.
“Got sloppy and had a pimp done the way I had Jermaine done that time,” he said. “Rosen had proof. Once he did, he had me by the balls. Finally ran myself into a cop who could have put me down for good. Once he started running all those young girls, was nothing I could do about it. And some of the shit he did to them, that was on me. I coulda stopped it and didn’t. Maybe could’ve saved that one girl. If I had, maybe Lisa wouldn’t’ve run.”
“What goes around,” I said.
“So I decided the best thing to do was give him a piece, keep him happy,” Tony said. “Only then he wanted more to keep quiet. Give a mouse a fucking cookie. I didn’t know Lisa knew that I was the one getting pimped out, and by a cop this time. But like I told you: Girl was smart.” He closed his eyes and opened them and said, “Too smart for her own good in the end.”
We both turned to stare back out the window at the snow. The black Navigator was long gone.
“Tell me again what the big Russian’s specialty was?” Tony said.
“Making people disappear,” I said.
“I needed somebody like him before I went into business with a cop,” he said.
“Live and learn,” I said.
“Not the cop,” he said.
Ty Bop was no longer in the room. Tony took out a cigar, snipped off the end, and slowly lit it with a lighter I thought might have cost as much as my car. I thought of a story my father had told me once when we were passing the statue of Red Auerbach in Faneuil Hall, that in the old days when Auerbach was coaching the Celtics, he’d light up a victory cigar at the end of games.
“You and Gabriel come to an understanding after I talked to both of you?” I said.
“Took some persuading, not gonna lie,” he said. “But at the end, the boy made a practical decision that I was worth a lot more to him alive than dead. Same with Natalie. And her new girlfriend.”
“You’re going to let that go, Olivia being in with them while she’s been working for you?” I said.
“We all on the hustle,” Tony said, “one way or another.”
“You have to give Gabriel a lot?”
“More than I wanted to, and more than I gave Rosen,” Tony said. “But remember how I told you you didn’t want to be looking over your shoulder the rest of your life? Ain’t no different for me.”
“You going to be able to trust them?”
He smiled. “Fuck no,” he said.
Then he shook his head, still smiling. “But it’s like a damn family business, you think about it. Me and the Listers. They just A-Listers now.”
He blew a perfect smoke ring in the direction of the ceiling.
“We all whores,” he said.
Then he winked at me.
“’Cepting you, of course,” he said.
I told him, not so fast, I was about to call in the favor he’d promised me.