Darkness, Take My Hand Read Online Free Page B

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. “Tentonight. 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.”
    He whistled. “All these years, all the scrapes you two been in, and you never called on them for backup?”
    Angie looked at him through the long bangs that had fallen in her face. “Never even considered it.”
    “Why?” He was genuinely confused.
    “’Cause you’re all the Mafia we need, handsome.”
    He blushed, something only Angie can get him to do, something that’s always worth the effort. His huge face swelled like an overripe grape and for a moment he looked almost harmless. Almost.
    “Stop,” he said, “you’re embarrassing me.”
    Back at the office, I brewed some coffee to counteract the vodka buzz and Angie played back the messages on our answering machine.
    The first was from a recent client, Bobo Gedmenson, owner of Bobo’s Yo-Yo chain of under-twenty-one dance clubs and a few strip joints out in Saugus and Peabody with names like Dripping Vanilla and The Honey Dip. Now that we’d located Bobo’s ex-partner and returned most of the money he’d embezzled from Bobo, Bobo was suddenly questioning our rates and crying poormouth.
    “People,” I said, shaking my head.
    “Suck,” Angie agreed as Bobo beeped off.
    I made a mental reminder to toss the collection job to Bubba, and then the second message played:
    “Hallo. Just thought I’d wish you jolly good luck on your new case and all that rubbish. I gather it’s a