Family Honor - Robert B Parker by Parker Read Free Book Online Page A

ahead."
    Junior looked at me for a minute, then nodded and went
out of the office. Tony leaned far back in his big high-backed leather
swivel chair and put his feet up on the desk. His loafers had gold chains
on them.
    "I'm a pretty bad man," he said.
    "I heard that," I said.
    "A lot of women wouldn't want to come here alone."
    "Lot of people," I said.
    He laughed.
    "Ah," he said, "a fucking feminist."
    "That may be an oxymoron," I said.
    "You ain't scared?"
    "Not yet," I said.
    "Maybe you just covering up," Tony said.
    "Maybe."
    He shook his head.
    "Naw. Seen too many scared people in my time to be fooled.
You ain't scared."
    "You have no reason to harm me," I said.
    "Not so far," he said.
    "And I know you don't want trouble with the Burkes."
    "Don't need trouble with anybody," he said. "Making a
good living."
    "See?"
    He smiled again.
    "If I decided I wanted to harm you, maybe you be scared."
    "Why don't we wait until that happens," I said. "Then
we'll know."
    "I going to help you with this, Sunny. Richie asked me.
Spike asked me. So I'll help. But don't make no mistake about me."
    "No mistakes," I said. "I understand why you'd accommodate
Richie, but why Spike?"
    Tony smiled again.
    "I like Spike," he said.
    "I didn't know people as bad as you liked anyone."
    "Sure we do," Tony said. "We just don't let it interfere."
 
    CHAPTER 10 
The only show I ever had was in a small gallery on South
Street. The Globe art critic said I was "a primitivist with strong representational
impulses." I didn't sell many paintings, but I was pleased to know that
I had a definition. Standing now in the studio end of my loft, using the
morning sun for light, I wondered if maybe primitive was just another way
of saying amateurish. I was working in oils, trying to paint a view of
Chinatown along Tyler Street. I never had time to go to a place and set
up, so I was working from memory and a half dozen Polaroids I'd taken.
It looked like Chinatown. In fact it looked like Tyler Street. And the
building in the foreground looked like the Chinese restaurant that you
see when you stand where I had stood. But the painting wasn't right, and
for the moment I couldn't quite figure how to fix it. I sometimes thought
art criticism boiled down to indefinables like whether it was a complete
statement or not. This painting was not. Most of my paintings weren't ...
yet. I tried deepening the colors, and stood back a little and looked at
it while the sun coming in the east windows made the colors as exact as
I was likely to see them.
    "Primitive," I said aloud, "with a strong representational
impulse."
    I was learning, but it was slow. I still took courses,
and I was going to get my MFA because I hate to quit things before they're
finished. But I knew the MFA didn't have a lot to do with my work. I had
to learn myself how to do my work. Other painters could sometimes tell
me things not to do, but they didn't even know how, or exactly why, they
did what they did. I'd never met one who could tell me how to do what I
did. The rest of the classroom work was theory, and a review of criticism.
It was interesting. I liked knowing the sort of Kenneth Clark stuff about
how art both shapes and records the culture it comes from. But it didn't
help me to get Tyler Street complete. I had to figure that out myself.
    Rosie was asleep on my bed with one paw over her nose.
She woke up suddenly and jumped down and went to the door. In a minute
the doorbell rang, and Rosie did a couple of spins and jumped up against
the door and barked, her tail wagging very fast. Normally that would mean
my father or Richie. I went to the door.
    I was right. It was my father. Unfortunately it was also
my mother.
    "Did we interrupt anything?" my mother said.
    "No, I was painting, I need a break."
    My father got down on the floor with Rosie and let her
lap his nose. Since my father was built like a short blacksmith it was
an interesting display.
    "Oh God, Phil, be careful of your knee," my mother