The first twenty minutes Justin spent at his parents’ house was not conducted amid great chatter. In fact, Justin thought he’d been to substantially noisier and more entertaining morgues.
The subdued silence wasn’t just due to the shock of dealing with Ronald’s death. His parents had also seen the papers. While the burgeoning Harmon scandal and murder was not quite the front-page, explosive story it was in New York and on the east end of Long Island, it had enough juice to draw a reasonable amount of attention in New England. The headline—way more tasteful than any of the New York tabs—on page five of the Providence paper read: ex-providence hero involved in sex scandal, murder plot. There was a photograph of Justin from several years—and twenty-five pounds—ago, when he was with the Providence PD. There were some damaging and pointed quotes from DA Silverbush, and there was a typical Billy DiPezio defense of his old protégé, the Providence police chief saying that Justin was certainly capable of having an affair with the wrong woman, but he was incapable of doing anything morally wrong. Billy reminded everyone that neither of the two people arrested—David Kelley and Abigail Harmon—had been convicted, and that Justin had not even been accused of anything except by snide innuendo.
When Justin walked into his parents’ massive house, he had that sinking feeling he remembered having for most of his teenage years: that, despite his bulk, he was too small for his surroundings. He felt as if he’d just walked in the door at 3 a.m., and his parents were waiting up to punish him for staying out past curfew. Justin wondered if one ever got too old to believe in one’s mother and father as an intimidating pair of moral compasses. In a way, he hoped not. There was something reassuring in that unchanging and rock-solid superiority. On the other hand, he was confident in his own choices, in his own morality. He’d killed people and felt no guilt. And he’d befriended people who had done far worse things than he’d ever dream of doing—and made no judgment on them or at least did not let his judgment interfere with the relationship. He’d also ended relationships with people who did not live up to his standards. He’d done the same with others who couldn’t deal with the complexity of the way he saw the universe. Perhaps the key was that complexity. In some instances, he saw the world in crystal clear terms of black and white, right and wrong. But many areas were also varying and distressing shades of gray. He did not believe in authority that demanded trust without proof of being trustworthy. He did not accept rules and regulations simply because they’d existed for decades or even centuries. He did not take kindly to anyone telling him what to do without an explanation for his actions. So usually he just wouldn’t do it. As a result, he had over the past twelve or thirteen years been beaten, shot, hunted, and tortured.
Hey, nobody said he was a genius. But it came with the territory and he accepted that.
It came with the choices one made.
The thing is that he himself was an authority figure. And he often demanded the same blind obedience he abhorred. The problem there was that he was too aware of his own fallibility. He knew how wrong he could be. But when a decision had to be made—either for his own good or for the good of others—there was no one he could imagine making it other than himself.
No one.
Contradictions. Maybe that was why his view of life was so complicated. He saw so many wrong things done by so many people who thought they were right.
Justin shook his head at the meekness he felt in his own home. He did not have the need to conform to anyone else’s code—and yet he did want his family to take his side. Or at least wait a reasonable amount of time before jumping over to the other side.
So he sat now with both parents, sipping iced tea in the den—the wood-paneled room that was nearly the size of Justin’s entire East End house—waiting for Louise, their longtime housekeeper, to serve lunch. After perfunctory hugging in the entry hall, the silence had come quickly. Justin thought he might as well cut to the chase after his second sip.
“Look,” he said, “maybe we should talk about my situation. I’m sure it’s embarrassing for you.”
“Is that what you think we’re upset about,” his father said, “that you’ve embarrassed us?”
“Not entirely. I know what happened to Ronald is shocking . . . and something you’re not used to.”
“Used to?” This was Justin’s mother. Lizbeth’s voice was higher pitched than normal, as if the tension in the room had grabbed her by the throat and didn’t want to let her speak. “No, Jay, we’re not used to people we know being murdered.”
“I understand. And there’s no way to make that any easier or more palatable. We’ll talk about Ronald—of course we will, it’s why I’m here—because I can help everyone deal with that. But what’s going on with me is going to continue. What happened to Ronald is—”
“Over?” his mother asked.
“I know it sounds callous.”
“Yes, it does,” his mother said sadly. Justin couldn’t tell if she was sad because of the finality of death or because her son was someone who was able, so easily, to move past that finality. He thought about telling her it wasn’t ease, it was necessity, but he didn’t have time because his father was already speaking.
“It might be callous but it’s true,” Jonathan said, and turned slightly to directly face Justin. He took a long sip of iced tea. Justin had a feeling that his father wasn’t all that thirsty; the pause was very effective punctuation. “So what is it you want to say about things that aren’t over?”
Justin exhaled slowly. He also knew how to punctuate for effect. “Look, you read the paper. I’m involved in something messy. But what they’re saying isn’t true. I don’t think that Abigail Harmon had anything to do with her husband’s murder. And believe me, I certainly didn’t.”
“We believe you.”
Justin rubbed his eyes. This wasn’t for effect; it was to try to ward off the beginning of a headache that was rapidly approaching. “Thank you. But look at the two of you. I’ve never seen two people so tense—your entire
bodies
are clenched.”
“And you think it’s because we’re embarrassed? Or because we don’t believe you?”
“Dad, we don’t have to go into this. It’s a lot of things. I know that you blame me for certain things . . . for Alicia and Lili . . . We’ve never truly had it out about that—”
“We’ve dealt with that,” Jonathan Westwood said.
“Sure we have. And I appreciate it. I know you’ve really tried to make it work between us over the past couple of years. But dealing with something doesn’t always make it go away. I’ve dealt with it, too, I’ve dealt with it in every way I possibly can, and I still blame myself.”
“Justin . . .” This was his mother now, and her voice was no longer high-pitched. She sounded calm. Still sad, but calm. “You’re wrong about us. Both of us. We’re not acting this way because we’re embarrassed. And we’re not acting this way because—because of what happened in the past. What happened with Alicia . . . what happened to Lili . . . However terrible it was and is for us, we know that it’s been much more terrible for you. But that’s not . . . that’s not . . .” She didn’t seem to know how to finish her thought, so her husband finished it for her.
“That’s not why we hate what you do, what you’re doing.”
“Then what is it?” Justin asked.
Jonathan Westwood spoke slowly now. And, Justin couldn’t help notice, rather kindly. “You could have been many other things, Jay. We don’t have to rehash what your life could have been like. It’s what it is, you do what you do. But knowing you’ve made this choice doesn’t make us any less afraid.”
“Afraid?” Justin said. “What are you afraid of?”
There was a long silence as Jonathan Westwood seemed to search for the right words. It was his wife who found them.
“We lost our grandchild because of the world you’ve chosen to live in,” Lizbeth said. “We don’t want to lose our child.”
There was a long silence. Justin tried to pick up his iced tea, but his hand felt unsteady. He was just about under control when Louise stuck her head in the door and said the most welcome words Justin had ever heard: “Lunch is ready.”
The dining table was eighteenth-century Spanish. Heavy and ornate and austere at the same time. The twelve chairs that were placed around the table were just as austere. The chair at the head of the table was larger than the others, more like a throne. In all the meals he’d had at this table, Justin had never sat in the chair at the head of the table. That was Jonathan’s chair.
Justin had just put a small bite of Louise’s perfect roast chicken into his mouth and was nodding with pleasure when his father said, “When I told you that Ronald’s body had been found, how did you know where?”
“That place has a history.” Justin finished chewing. He quickly cut another piece off the juicy breast and popped it into his mouth.
“What kind of history?”
“A violent one.” Justin couldn’t help but notice the expression on his mother’s face now. Not anger or sadness or even confusion. It was one of wonder. When he finished chewing, he said, “Mom?” and she immediately understood his question.
“The things you know,” she responded. “I remember when you used to know toys and TV and rocking horses.”
“And business,” his father added, “and medicine.”
“Now,” Lizbeth said, “you know murder. And places with violent histories.”
There was a typical Westwood family silence. Justin used it to taste the roast potatoes and garlic, just as delicious as the chicken. He even managed to chomp on a few carrots. Then Jonathan asked, “So what are you going to do now?”
“Finish lunch ’cause it’s the best food I’ve had since the last time I was up here. Then go see Vicky. And Billy. I’m going to do what you asked me to do, which is try to figure out what the hell’s going on.” And as something occurred to him, when he realized there was something else he needed to do first, Justin couldn’t help himself: he allowed the tiniest line of a smile to cross his lips. “But first,” he said, “I’m going to see a history professor.”
Dolce was a small Italian restaurant in the heart of Providence’s Little Italy. The tables all had red-and-white–checked tablecloths, most of the pastas came with a simple red sauce, the cannolis were the best in New England, and the espresso arrived steaming hot and joltingly strong.
As Justin sat toward the back of the room, sipping his second double espresso, he was the recipient of mixed responses from the twenty or so customers idling in the late afternoon. There were several middle-aged couples; one exhausted-looking skinny man in beige Bermuda shorts busily reading a Fodor’s guide to Rhode Island; two women who were talking as if there were no tomorrow—both looked as if this was a much-needed hour break from husbands and kids. None of this crowd paid him any mind; they had never seen him before nor heard of him. Others were a little more attentive. Three men sitting four tables away were glancing over with a benign distaste. Justin had put two of them in prison and he’d attended the parole hearing for the third, attempting to dissuade the board from going along with an early release. The third man, whose name was Joey Fodera, had raped and murdered a professor of twentieth-century art appreciation at the Rhode Island School of Design. After she was dead, Fodera—his associates called him Joey Haircut—removed her sexual organs. His defense was that she’d reminded him of his first wife—who had disappeared several years before and never been found. The first wife had been so abusive, the defense attorney maintained, that seeing the professor involved in a heated conversation in a restaurant had triggered something in Joey: the memory of the rage and hatred he’d felt when his wife berated and humiliated him. The jury was hard to read—after four days of trial it could have gone either way—so both sides settled on a plea bargain of murder in the second degree and a twelve- to twenty-five-year sentence. After two and a half years in prison, Joey Haircut had ratted on another prisoner, looking to negotiate his way back onto the street. Justin’s argument to the board wasn’t enough to override the deal with the local DA and keep Fodera behind bars. Three days after the hearing, another sociopath was free and back at work.
Four or five other customers had also crossed paths with Justin back in the day. They nodded cautiously but respectfully when he walked in or as he sat and sipped.
Justin had just ordered espresso number three when the front door opened and a man who seemed nearly twice the size of anyone else in the room came inside. Along the way to the back of the restaurant, he stopped to shake a few hands. When Joey Fodera’s hand met his, it held on a few seconds too long. Fodera quietly said something to the large newcomer, something that did not seem as friendly as, say, an invitation to come over and watch a ball game. The large man drew his hand back slowly and deliberately and he smiled at Joey Haircut. Justin, watching carefully, couldn’t help himself. The smile made him shudder.
Then Bruno Pecozzi arrived at his destination. Before he could say a word of greeting, the waiter was at Justin’s side and Bruno ordered two double espressos, three cannolis, and one sfogliatelle. Then he turned to Justin and said, “Sorry I’m late. I had to do a little bobbin’ and weavin’ on my way over here.”
“Somebody following you?”
“Hey, it’s almost an insult these days if somebody ain’t followin’ me.” He stuck his hand out and Justin shook it firmly. “So to what do we owe the pleasure?” Bruno asked. And then followed up his own question with, “Who am I kiddin’? It takes your fuckin’ brother-in-law gettin’ whacked to get you back home? What’s the matter with you?”
And then Bruno drew Justin closer, dragging his chair along with him, and gripped him in a tight bear hug.
“Who we gotta kill?” the professional hit man said, and when Justin managed to give a quick shake of his head, Bruno looked disappointed. “What, this is just a social call?”
“Why don’t you shut up and listen,” Justin was able to say.
Bruno released him from the hug. “Good thing I like you,” he said.
Justin watched the huge man sit down as his two cups of coffee and several desserts were now placed in front of him. He visualized the chilling smile plastered on Bruno’s face when he’d stared into Joey Haircut’s eyes.