Desmond didn’t say anything for a long while. I could sense his anger, but I wasn’t sure about its source. It made me feel as though I had to forcibly drag it out of him—which mademeangry, too. At times like this, he reminded me of his son, and not in a good way.May as well accomplish something while I’m waiting for him to talk.I put Desmond on speaker, unloaded the gun, and placed the ammo beside it on the kitchen table. The whole time, he remained quiet. Once I was certain the gun was safe, I took Desmond off speaker and picked up the phone. “Okay, I give up,” I said. “What’s wrong?”
“Dylan Welch is a prick,” he said.
“No argument there,” I said.
“He’s owed us before. We’ve had him followed before. He’s a waste of our time, money, and manpower. I’ve informed everyone within my organization not to work with him again.”
I took a breath. “Oh,” I said.
“Moon didn’t listen to me.”
“To be fair,” I said, “Moon is a bigger prick than Dylan. And unlike Dylan, he’s old enough to know better.”
“Moon always listened to me in the past,” Desmond said. “He always did as I asked.”
“He probably forgot about Welch,” I said. “Moon is an idiot.”
“It isn’t that,” he said quietly. “He thinks I’m…slowing down.”
I knew what he meant. My dad had said similar. You get older, people don’t take you as seriously.They know you’re going to leave the party soon, so they stop bothering to serve you drinks,Phil Randall would say. And while it did upset me when he made depressing observations like that, I could see it sometimes in the way strangers treated him—waiters or sales clerks looking to me for verification, as though what he’d just requested didn’t matter. As though this decorated and revered police chief had somehow regressed back to toddlerhood, simply by virtue of his cane. “It isn’t you,” I told Desmond. Same as I would have told my dad. “It’s him.”
Desmond cleared his throat. “I’ll send one of the boys to your office to pick up the gun,” he said. “When is a good time for you?”
“Between ten and eleven works, or late afternoon,” I said. “I have a luncheon at noon on Beacon Hill.”
“You do, eh? That sounds lovely.” This made me smile. It always did, hearing this hardened criminal describe something as “lovely.” Yet it was a word he said often. It brought out his Irish lilt.
“I don’t know how lovely it will be,” I said. “The luncheon is with Dylan’s parents.”
“Well, then. You’ll have some news for them, won’t you?”
And for the first time, I thought about what that luncheon was going to be like. The good news/bad news speech I’d soon be forced to deliver about Bill and Lydia Welch’s only son.The good news is, he’s alive…I cringed. “You and Phil have it pretty lucky, you know that?” I said. “I mean, as far as your offspring goes, you’ve pretty much hit the jackpot.”
It was a bit of an exaggeration. Richie and I had messed up plenty of times in our lives, and my sister, Elizabeth, was no walk in the park. But compared to Dylan Welch…
“Don’t I know it,” Desmond said.
I smiled. “And don’t worry about Moon, okay? He’s a waste of space. A moron. I meant it when I said that’s no reflection on you.”
He let out a long, mirthless chuckle. “He made a big mistake,” he said. “But it doesn’t matter. Life’s too short. I’m already over it.”
I didn’t say anything, but I knew he wasn’t.
Twenty-Four
When I showed up at the office, Blake was involved in an animated discussion with an enormous bald guy. I’d seen the bald guy before—with Desmond, in fact—but even if I hadn’t, I’d have clocked him as Burke muscle. When it came to henchmen, Desmond had a type: enormous, scary-looking, silent, and very often hairless. (I’d always imagined that last requirement had to do with not leaving any DNA.)
This dude ticked off all the boxes—save for the silent part. “Three hundred,” he was saying now. “I used to bench-press three-fifty, but then my shoulder started bugging me.”
“Respect, man,” Blake said. “My limit is two twenty-five.”
“Ever do chin-ups?” the bald man said.
“Noooo. What a great idea, bro. So old school. You put in a bar?”
The bald guy launched into a lengthy response about chin-up bar installation. They were both drinking cans of Gonzo. Neither one of them seemed to notice I was in the room. I took off my coat. I hung it on the hook by the door and cleared my throat loudly, interrupting Blake’s enthusiastic and detailed question about leg lifts.
“Oh, hi, Sunny,” Blake said. “I didn’t see you come in. Where’s Rosie?”
