Pastime

"Good," Joe said. "Good."

We were quiet for a moment.

"Richie Beaumont," Vi

"Yeah. Richie." Joe shifted a little in his chair so I could see his profile against the rain-translucent picture window. "Him and Gerry were associated in a deal we had going."

"What kind of deal?" I said.

Joe raised the fingers of his left hand maybe two inches. "A deal. We have a lot of deals going."

"And Gerry's involved in all of them," I said.

Joe's shoulders shrugged. The movement was minimal, maybe a half an inch.

"He's my son," Joe said.

"So what makes this deal special?" I said.

Joe shrugged again. His shoulders hunched higher this time.

"Nothing special, just another deal we were doing."

I looked at Vi

"Gerry's my only kid," Joe said.

I nodded. He was silent. On the window the rain twisted into thick little braids of water in places.

"I'm seventy-one."

I nodded some more.

"Like anybody coming into a business, he needs some room. Some room to make mistakes, u

"Gerry made a mistake," I said.

"Sure," Joe said. "Sure he did. Everybody does when they're starting out.

You can tell them, and tell them. But it's not the same, they got to do it themselves, and fuck it up. Like we did."

"Sure," I said.

Out across the harbor I could see a DC 10 angling down out of the overcast, slanting in through the rain toward Logan Airport. Joe was looking down at his hands spread on the desk top. Then he looked up at me, and for a moment the staginess was gone. For a moment there seemed to be something like recognition in his face and his eyes were, briefly, the eyes of an old man, tired, with time ru

"We gotta let Gerry straighten this out himself," he said.

"So he can learn?"

"So he can feel like one of us, Spenser. So he can be a fucking man."

Broz got up suddenly and turned and stared out the picture window at the rain coming down over the harbor. To my left Vi

"I don't care much about what Gerry becomes, Joe. I'm worried about the kid

I know."

"The Giacomin kid." Joe didn't turn around.

"Yeah. He wants to find his mother. I told him we'd find her. We figure she's with Beaumont."

"Vi

"Un huh."

Joe looked out at the rain some more.

"Tell him about the deal, Vi

"Sure," I said.

Vi

"What'll it be?" he said.

"Scotch and soda," I said. "Tall glass. Lot of ice."

Vi

"You know the kind of work we do," Vi

I said I knew.

"We make some gifts to people in Vice, to people on the OCU, maybe a captain in Command Staff, maybe an intelligence guy out at Ten Ten."

Vi

Joe took it without turning from the window. He took a swallow and continued to stare at the rain while he held the glass.

"Some of these are standup guys, still do the job, bust the freaks, take out the street punks, but they give us a little edge. They treat us right, we treat them right. Some mutual respect. We got some good cops we do business with."

Vi

"Well, Joe has this, whaddya call it, this network in place for a while. He builds it slow, careful, for a long time. Does business with guys we can trust, our kind of people, steady guys, you know? Not flighty, you might say."

He put the glass up on the bar and I stood and walked across the room and took it and went and sat back down. Vi

Joe's back was perfectly still as he stared out the window. If he heard

Vi

"Well, Joe's interested in Gerry learning all of the business, so he puts

Gerry in charge of overseeing that part of things, paying out; and Gerry decides it should be changed a little."

Vi

"Gerry started buying up cops like they were made in Hong Kong. He's paying off people at school crossings, you know. And he's got this guy Rich

Beaumont as his bagman. Pretty soon Gerry's got a payroll, looks like the welfare list, makes us like the third-biggest employer in the state. And he's not choosy. Anybody he can bribe, he bribes. Joe hears about it first because one of our guys hears one of Gerry's guys bragging about it. About how he's got Gerry shoving money up his nose, and the guy's laughing. The guy can't do him any good. He's like in Community Relations and Gerry thinks he's still in Vice, and the guy's laughing at us."

"And talking," I said.

Vi

"And talking," Vi

From the window Joe said, "Vi

"So I talked with Joe about it," Vi

Vi

Joe's hand. Then he returned to the bar and gazed for a moment at Joe's back. He took in some bourbon. Then he looked straight at me.

"… Beaumont had taken off with a bagful of our money.

"How much?" I said.

Vi

"No," I said, "I don't. But I need to know if it was enough."

"It was enough," Vi

"More than a million?" I said.

"Don't matter," Vi

"Matters when I look for him," I said. "Where I look depends on what he can afford."

"Okay, more than a million. He can afford pretty much anything he wants.

But that ain't the point. The point is you can't stay in business and let a chipmunk like Richie Beaumont take your money and give you the finger. He can't be allowed to get away with it."