“What?” I said.
“Have a healthy prostate?”
“Last time I checked, Mr. Constantine.”
He leaned forward. “Count your blessings, my young friend. Count them twice. A man without a healthy prostate is…” He spread his hands on the table. “Well, he’s a man without secrets, a man without dignity. Those doctors, Jesus, they flop you down on your stomach and they go in there with their evil little tools and they poke and they prod, they tear and they—”
“Sounds terrible,” Angie said.
It slowed him down, thank God.
He nodded. “Terrible isn’t quite the word.” He looked at her suddenly as if he’d just noticed her. “And you, my dear, are far too exquisite to be subjected to such talk.” He kissed her hand and I tried not to roll my eyes. “I know your grandfather quite well, Angela. Quite well.”
Angie smiled. “He’s proud of the association, Mr. Constantine.”
“I’ll be sure to tell him I had the pleasure of meeting his lovely granddaughter.” He looked at me and his twinkling eyes faded a bit. “And you, Mr. Kenzie, you’re keeping a careful eye on this woman, making sure she keeps out of harm’s way?”
“This woman does a pretty good job of that herself, Mr. Constantine,” Angie said.
Fat Freddy’s eyes stayed on me, growing darker by the second, like he wasn’t too keen on what he saw. He said, “Our friends will join us in just a minute.”
As Freddy leaned back to pour himself another cup of coffee, I heard one of the bodyguards out front say, “Go right on in, Mr. Rouse,” and Angie’s eyes widened slightly as Jack Rouse and Kevin Hurlihy came through the door.
Jack Rouse controlled Southie, Charlestown, and everything between Savin Hill and the Neponset River in Dorchester. He was thin, hard, and his eyes matched the gunmetal of his close-cropped hair. He didn’t look particularly threatening, but he didn’t have to—he had Kevin for that.
I’ve known Kevin since we were six, and nothing that lives in his brain or his bloodstream has ever been stained by a humane impulse. He walked through the door, avoided looking at Pine or even acknowledging him, and I knew Pine was who Kevin aspired to be. But Pine was all stillness and economy, while Kevin was a walking exposed nerve, his pupils lit with a battery charge, the kind of guy who might shoot everyone in the place simply because the idea occurred to him. Pine was scary because killing was a job to him, no different than a thousand others. Kevin was scary because killing was the only job he wanted, and he’d do it for free.
The first thing he did after shaking Freddy’s hand was sit down beside me and put his cigarette out in my coffee cup. Then he ran a hand through his coarse, thick hair and stared at me.
Freddy said, “Jack, Kevin, you know Mr. Kenzie and Ms. Gennaro, don’t you?”
“Old friends, sure,” Jack said as he took the seat beside Angie. “Neighborhood kids like Kevin.” Rouse shrugged off an old blue Members’ Only jacket and hung it behind him on his chair. “Ain’t that the God’s truth, Kev?”
Kevin was too busy staring at me to comment.
Far Freddy said, “I like everything to be above board. Rogowski says you two are okay, and maybe you got a problem I can help you with—so be it. But you two come from Jack’s neighborhood, so I ask Jack if he’d like to sit in. You see what I’m saying?”
We nodded.
Kevin lit another cigarette, blew the smoke into my hair.
Freddy turned his palms up on the table. “We’re all agreed, then. So, tell me what you need, Mr. Kenzie.”
“We’ve been hired by a client,” I said, “who—”
“How’s your coffee, Jack?” Freddy said. “Enough cream?”
“It’s fine, Mr. Constantine. Very good.”
“Who,” I repeated, “is under the impression she annoyed one of Jack’s men.”
“Men?” Freddy said and raised his eyebrows, looked at Jack, then back at me. “We’re small businessmen, Mr. Kenzie. We have employees, but their loyalties stop with their paychecks.” He looked at Jack again. “Men?” he said and they both chuckled.
Angie sighed.
Kevin blew some more smoke into my hair.
I was tired, and the last vestiges of Bubba’s vodka were chewing at the base of my brain, so I really wasn’t in the mood to play cute with a bunch of cut-rate psychopaths who’d seen The Godfather too many times and thought they were respectable. But I reminded myself that Freddy, at least, was a very powerful psychopath who could be dining on my spleen tomorrow night if he wanted to.
“Mr. Constantine, one of Mr. Rouse’s…associates, then, has expressed anger at our client, made certain threats—”
“Threats?” Freddy said. “Threats?”
“Threats?” Jack said, smiled at Freddy.
“Threats,” Angie said. “Seems our client had the misfortune of speaking with your associate’s girlfriend, who claimed to know of her boyfriend’s criminal activities, including the—how can I put it?” She met Freddy’s eyes. “The waste management of some formerly animate tissue?”
It took him a minute to get it, but then his small eyes narrowed and he threw back his massive head and laughed, booming it up into the ceiling, sending it halfway down Prince Street. Jack looked confused. Kevin looked pissed off, but that’s the only way Kevin’s ever looked.
“Pine,” Freddy said. “You hear that?”
Pine made no indication he’d heard anything. He made no indication he was breathing. He sat there, immobile, simultaneously looking and not looking in our direction.
“‘Waste management of formerly animate tissue,’” Freddy repeated, gasping. He looked at Jack, realized he
hadn’t gotten the joke yet. “Fuck, Jack, go out and pick up a brain, huh?”
Jack blinked and Kevin leaned forward on the table, and Pine’s head turned slightly to look at him, and Freddy acted like he hadn’t noticed any of it.
He wiped the corners of his mouth with a linen napkin, shook his head slowly at Angie. “Wait’ll I tell the guys at the club that one. I swear. You might have taken your father’s name, Angela, but you’re a Patriso. No question.”
Jack said, “Patriso?”
“Yeah,” Freddy said. “This is Mr. Patriso’s granddaughter. You didn’t know?”