Darkness, Take My Hand (Kenzie & Gennaro 2)

“Would be morons, yeah.” He took the bottle back.

I glared at Angie and she stuck her tongue out at me.

Bubba said, “Want me to kill him for you?” and stretched out on the couch.

I blinked. “Ahm…”

Bubba yawned. “It’s not a problem.”

Angie touched his knee. “Not at the moment.”

“Really,” he said, sitting up, “no sweat. I built this new thing, and what you do is clamp it around the guy’s skull, right here, and—”

“We’ll let you know,” I said.

“Cool.” He lay back on the couch, looked at us for a moment. “I didn’t figure a freak like Kevin for having a girlfriend, though. He seems like a guy either pays for it or takes it by force.”

“That bothered me too,” I said.

“Anyway,” Bubba said, “you don’t want to meet Jack Rouse and Kevin alone.”

“We don’t?”

He shook his head. “You go up to them, and say, ‘Back off our client,’ they’ll kill you. They’d have to. They ain’t real stable.”

A guy who used a minefield for home protection was telling us Jack and Kevin weren’t stable. This was good news. Now that I knew just how dangerous they really were, I considered walking back into that minefield, doing a jig, getting it over with quick.

“We’ll go through Fat Freddy,” Bubba said.

“Are you serious?” Angie said.

Fat Freddy Constantine was the godfather of the Boston Mafia, the man who’d wrested control from the once preeminent Providence outfit and consolidated his power. Jack Rouse, Kevin Hurlihy, anyone who so much as sold a nickel bag in this city answered to Fat Freddy.

“It’s the only way,” Bubba said. “You go through Fat Freddy, you’re showing him respect, and if I set up the meet, they know you’re friends, they won’t whack you.”

“Bonus,” I said.

“When you want the meet?”

“Soon as possible,” Angie said.

He shrugged and picked up a cordless phone off the floor. He dialed and took another swig from the bottle as he waited. “Lou,” he said, “tell the man I called.” He hung up.

“‘The man?’” I said.

He held out his hands. “They all watch Scorsese movies and cop shows, think it’s the way they’re supposed to talk. I humor them.” He reached across his whale’s-hump chest and poured another shot into Angie’s glass. “You officially divorced yet, Gennaro?”

She smiled and downed the shot. “Not officially.”

“When?” He raised his eyebrows.

She propped her feet up on an open crate of AK-47s and leaned back in her chair. “The wheels of justice turn slowly, Bubba, and divorce is complicated.”

Bubba grimaced. “Smuggling surface-to-air missiles from Libya is complicated. But divorce?”

Angie ran both hands through the hair along her temples, looked up at the peeling heating pipes stretched across Bubba’s ceiling. “A relationship in your hands, Bubba, lasts about as long as a six-pack. So what do you know about divorce? Really?”

He sighed. “I know people seem to go out of their way to fuck up things usually should be snapped off clean.” He swiveled his legs off the couch, dropped the soles of his combat boots to the floor. “How about you, home-boy?”

“Moi?” I said.

“Si,” he said. “How was your divorce experience?”

“Piece of cake,” I said. “Like ordering Chinese—one phone call, and everything’s taken care of.”

He looked at Angie. “See?”

She waved a dismissive hand in my general direction. “You’d take his word for it? Mr. Introspection?”

“I doth protest,” I said.

“You doth full of shit,” Angie said.

Bubba rolled his eyes. “Would you guys just bang each other and get it over with?”

There was one of those awkward pauses that comes up every time someone suggests there’s a lot more than friendship between me and my partner. Bubba smiled, getting a charge out of it, and then, thankfully, his phone rang.

“Yeah.” He nodded at us. “Mr. Constantine, how you doing?” He rolled his eyes as Mr. Constantine elaborated on just how he was. “Glad to hear it,” Bubba said. “Listen, Mr. C., I got a couple friends need to speak with you. Take a couple minutes.”

I mouthed, “Mr. C.?” and he shot me the bird.

“Yes, sir, they’re good folks. Civilians, but they may have stumbled onto something could maybe interest you. Has to do with Jack and Kevin.” Fat Freddy began talking again and Bubba made the universal masturbatory gesture with his fist. “Yes, sir,” he said eventually. “Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro.” He listened, then blinked and looked at Angie. He put his hand over the mouthpiece and said, “You related to the Patriso Family?”

She lit a cigarette. “’Fraid so.”

“Yes, sir,” Bubba said into the phone. “The very same Angela Gennaro.” He raised his left eyebrow at her. “Ten

tonight. Thanks, Mr. Constantine.” He paused, looked at the wooden crate Angie was using as a footstool. “What? Oh, yeah, Lou knows where. Six cases. Tomorrow night. You bet. As a whistle, Mr. Constantine. Yes, sir. Take care.” He hung up and sighed loudly, shoved the antenna back into the phone with the heel of his hand. “Fucking wops,” he said. “Everything’s ‘Yes, sir. No, sir. How’s the wife?’ Least the Harp mobs, they’re too mean to give a fuck how the wife is.”

Coming from Bubba, this was high praise for my ethnicity. I said, “Where do we meet him?”

He was looking at Angie with something akin to awe on his rubbery face. “At his coffee shop on Prince Street. Ten tonight. How come you never told me you were connected?”

She flicked her cigarette ash on his floor. It wasn’t disrespectful; it was Bubba’s ashtray. “I’m not connected.”

“According to Freddy, you are.”

“Well,” she said, “he’s mistaken. An accident of blood, that’s all.”

He looked at me. “You know she was related to the Patriso mob?”

“Yup.”

“And?”

“And she never seemed like she cared, so I didn’t either.”

“Bubba,” she said, “it’s not something I’m proud of.”