Title: Promised Land
Author(s): Robert B. Parker
Publisher(s): Dell
Pages: 208
Year: 1992
Format: MOBY
Language: English
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Where was I? Somewhere along the line I had touched a nerve, and somebody had called Broz. Who? Could be anybody. Broz got around. But it was probably someone today. Broz would have no reason to wait once he knew I was trampling around on his lawn. I couldn$prime;t see Broz being tied into the Godwulf Manuscript. It wasn$prime;t worth any money. It was impossible to fence. But he$prime;d implied he$prime;d put it back if I dropped out. He knew a lot of people; maybe he could push the right button without being necessarily involved. Maybe he$prime;d been lying. But something had stirred him up. Not only did he want me out of things, but he wanted to know what I knew. Maybe it was simply collateral interest. Maybe it was Powell$prime;s murder. Maybe he didn$prime;t want me digging into that. I liked that better. Terry$prime;s description of the two men included one like Sonny. The other one wasn$prime;t Phil. But Phil wouldn$prime;t do that kind of trench duty anyway. I was amazed he had done errand duty for me. But why would Broz care one way or the other about a loudmouth kid like Dennis Powell, care enough to send two employees to kill him and frame his girl? Yet somebody$prime;s employees did it. It wasn$prime;t an amateur job, by Terry$prime;s account. Came in, held them up, had her gun, the rubber gloves, the drug they$prime;d brought, the whole thing. It didn$prime;t sound like it had been ad-libbed. Did they have inside help? How did they get hold of her gun? And what possible interest would Broz have in the university? He had a lot of interests-numbers, women, dope-but higher education didn$prime;t seem to be one of them. Of his line, dope would seem the best connection. It seemed the only place where college and Broz overlapped. Dennis Powell was reputed to be a channel for hard stuff: heroin, specifically. That meant, if it were true, that he had mob connections, direct or indirect. Now he was dead, in what looked like some kind of mob killing. And Joe Broz wanted me to keep my nose out of his business.
But what did that have to do with the manuscript? I didn$prime;t know. The best connection I had was the dope and the question of the gun. How did they know she$prime;d have a gun there? She$prime;d lived with another girl before she$prime;d lived with Powell. I took another belt of the bourbon. Uncut by bitters or ice and cheap anyway, it grated down into my stomach. Catherine Connelly, Tower had told me. Let$prime;s try her. More bourbon. It wasn$prime;t really so bad, didn$prime;t taste bad at all, made you feel pretty nice in your stomach.