Текст книги "Robert B. Parker's Kickback"

46

After Iris and I compared notes, I drove back to Boston. Iris was working on a story about conditions on Fortune Island while I followed the money trail from Bobby Talos Jr. to the pockets of Judge Joe Scali. Since I’d left Tampa, I had tried to get in touch with Sydney Bennett outside Ziggy Swatek’s office. I had left three messages at her Boston office and two at her home number. I said I had something important to tell her, knowing being told you were on a hit man’s punch list was something best done in person. I was pretty sure Hallmark didn’t make a greeting card for that purpose.

I tried again. The call went right to voice mail. Being a persistent investigator, I drove to her office in Brookline. Ziggy Swatek kept his Boston office in the heart of Brookline Village. The building was decidedly less grandiose than the beer-can building and was located on the second floor of a short brick building on Harvard Street.

I bought a corned-beef on rye at Michael’s and ate while I watched. I knew her car tag and her car, parked five spaces away. I didn’t really get bored until three hours later. The sandwich was gone, as were the chips and a pickle. I used my branch office, the closest Dunkin’, for the facilities and bought a coffee.

I listened to “Here and Now” with Robin Young. I watched the world stroll by in their heavy coats and ski hats. A woman in a white puffy coat and blue jeans walked a high-strung black Lab on a red leash. The woman had on aviator sunglasses and had a blond ponytail that fell the length of her back. The Lab bounded and jumped, grabbing the leash with its mouth, wanting to take the lead.

After nearly four hours, Sydney Bennett emerged from the office building, waited for traffic to pass, and then crossed Harvard Street to her car.

I waited until she’d backed out and then started mine. I followed her west on Route 9 for fifteen to twenty minutes. I kept a decent distance away from her Lexus, although she had no reason to know my vehicle. I kept out of sight more as a professional courtesy than anything.

I still had some cold coffee and drank it. I turned off the radio and turned on the windshield wipers, as it had started to rain. The rain was cold, the day was gray and miserable, and soon the roads would turn to ice. But I felt comfortable back in my native habitat.

Traffic was slow and sluggish as we passed the Brookline Reservoir. I knew she wasn’t headed home. I had her address in an apartment in the South End. I had resigned myself to the fact that I might be spending the day in Framingham or Worcester when she pulled into the Chestnut Hill Mall. Again, familiar turf. Susan had propped up the gross national product of Guatemala in those hallowed halls while I’d drunk beer at Charley’s.

Sadly, Charley’s was no more. And lately Susan had preferred dragging me around Copley Place.

Sydney parked near one of the Bloomingdale’s that bookended the mall. Since I was well versed on the turf, I knew this was the one that sold women’s clothes. I was good, but blending into the intimates collection might prove difficult.

I waited until she disappeared inside and then followed. I was dressed differently than I was when we met in Tampa. I wore a leather jacket and a ball cap. I wore the ball cap down low to obscure my face. I tucked my hands in the pocket of the jacket and walked with my head down. I strolled inside and spotted her right off in the ladies shoes department.

I hung back with Ralph Lauren. I pretended to shop as if I were shopping for Susan. I would never shop for Susan. She once told me my taste seemed more fitting for Gypsy Rose Lee. I thumbed through a rack of herringbone jackets. I became immersed in a stack of navy silk blouses. I was about to move on when a perky sales clerk wandered up to me and asked if I’d found anything.

“Do these come in a double XL?”

“Men’s section is at the other end of the mall, sir.”

“Darn,” I said. “And I was starting to feel so pretty.”

When I looked up, Sydney Bennett was gone. I made my way through the shoes and into cosmetics and spotted her just as she stepped out of the store into the rest of the mall. It was a weekday and the mall crowd was thin. Even with Susan, my patience with shopping lasted only a good twenty minutes.

Not far from the Bloomingdale’s entrance, Sydney had stopped to check messages on her phone. There was a grouping of leather furniture nearby, close and comfy to keep you prisoner in the mall with the offer of Wi-Fi. As she tucked the phone into her purse, I stepped up next to her.

“Hello,” I said. “Again.”

She did not look in the least bit surprised. I think I’d have been more pleased if I’d actually startled her. She might have been easier to work with if she wasn’t sure what to say or do. But there was a reason she was second in command to a huckster like Ziggy Swatek.

“I have nothing to say.”

“‘Then follow me and give me audience.’”

“Is that a quote?”

“Yes.”

“By whom?”

“You’d rather not know,” I said. “It might lead to suspicion.”

“I am already more than suspicious, Mr. Spenser,” she said. “You followed me here.”

“Yes.”

“Because you believe I will tell you something about my client?”

“No.”

“Then why else?”

Two old women in small pink ball caps wandered by, hoisting packages in old frail fists. They sat down at the little grouping of leather seating, ruining our private place to talk, and complained about their poor, aching feet.

“Perhaps we can go elsewhere,” I said.

“I have nothing to say,” she said. “And frankly, I am—”

“Do you know the name Ray-Ray Barboza?”

“No,” she said. “Why should I?”

“Or perhaps Raymond Barboza,” I said. “I believe Ray-Ray to be his professional name.”

“What kind of professional?”

She looked annoyed and impatient, and reached into her purse for her phone. She looked at its screen and then back at me. She typed out something and then replaced the phone. She looked even more lawyerly today, wearing a fitted navy pin-striped suit with a pearl-colored silk top under a heavy blue wool coat. Her leather boots were tall and seemed like they may have been designed by the Luftwaffe.

“If you click your heels together, I bet those things make a hell of a racket.”

She turned to leave. I touched, not grabbed, her arm.

“Jackie DeMarco isn’t a nice man.”

“Is that what you came to tell me?”

“He feels you may be working with the Feds.”

“Yeah, right.”

“And he hired Mr. Barboza to make sure you would stay quiet.”

“That’s a lie.”

She turned up her small chin to look at me. She might’ve been pretty in another place and under another circumstance. It’s hard to find beauty when someone looks like they just might clock you with their purse.

“I don’t know if you’re working with the Feds,” I said. “But you know what Talos and the judges are doing with those kids is wrong. You didn’t sign on to work with a creep like Judge Scali.”

“You draw a lot of imaginary lines, Mr. Spenser.”

Her mouth twitched a bit, and as in the Tampa office, her words had little starch. She just upturned that little chin and shook a little. I placed a hand on her shoulder. “Let’s go somewhere,” I said. “I’ll tell you all I know, and then you can make up your own mind.”

I waited for the purse to clock me with all the ferocity of Ruth Buzzi. Instead, she simply nodded.

47

I told Sydney Bennett all I knew at the Café Vanille inside the mall.

She drank coffee and listened. Although the dark chocolate croissant looked terrific, I knew it was just a fancy donut. I had coffee, too. I was within a few pounds of my target two hundred and ten.

“I’m supposed to believe the word of a convicted killer.”

“No,” I said. “Only believe me. I think you got a queasy feeling about this whole business long before we met.”

She was silent. She stirred her coffee for the umpteenth time.

“Even if I had concerns about a client, I would be disbarred for speaking with you.”

“Perhaps.”

“Not perhaps,” she said. “Absolutely.”

“What if you only told me about the judges,” I said. “You said they aren’t your clients. I have a pretty good idea on what the DeMarcos are all about.”

“Oh,” she said. “Do you?”

She said it condescendingly, with a sharp edge. I shrugged and let the words hang there for a moment. I took a sip of coffee to keep my mind working to decide on what my mouth should do next. I nodded. “I knew Jackie DeMarco’s old man,” I said. “I knew the guy who sold him out and sent him to prison, too. Over my many years in this business, I’ve had the dishonor of meeting a thousand guys like Jackie. Jackie does for Jackie. I doubt he’s even conflicted about it.”

“You don’t even know my client.”

“Jackie will steal, rob, and cheat until he creates his own noose. I’m more concerned about two men who swore an oath to uphold the law. You lead me in the right direction and I walk away.”

“And why on earth would I do that?”

“Because you don’t like this any more than I do,” I said. “You don’t mind playing the game for the DeMarcos, but you want out of this.”

She looked at me, mouth open, as if about to speak. She then shut her mouth and just stared. “You got me,” she said. “Where do I sign up to unburden myself?”

“You are a tough nut,” I said.

“I have a job to do, as do you,” she said. “You keep following me, and I’ll file a restraining order.”

“Then why did you sit down with me?”

“Why else?” Sydney said. “To find out what you know. To learn what kind of an agenda you have toward my client.”

“The judges,” I said. “Sydney, I just want the judges. You can help.”

“Good-bye,” she said. “Thanks for the coffee.”

“May I offer you a maple scone?”

She stood, snatched her big bag, and turned back toward Bloomingdale’s. I paid and followed her out. Outside, the rain had indeed turned to sleet, and the wet asphalt turned slick. The sleet pinged off my hat and jacket as I walked to my car, spotting Sydney Bennett getting into her Lexus, lights blazing on, and then sitting there watching me. For a moment, I thought she might have a change of heart. But soon she drove off and I was left standing there.

I got back into my Explorer.

It was late. I could head back to my apartment and finally unpack. I could return to my office and shuffle through unpaid bills. Or I could go to the Harbor Health Club and see how much damage had been done to my knee.

When I started the engine, I felt a firm forearm wrap around my throat and the familiar click of a revolver in my ear.

“You boys take mall security seriously.”

“Drive, fucknuts,” said a familiar voice.

“Hello, Arty.”

“You say another word and I’ll ruin the leather interior.”

“Yikes.”

“Say it again.”

“You want to remove your arm or are you looking to go steady?”

“I said drive,” he said, removing the arm and reaching down on my hip for the .38. He removed my gun but kept his gun screwed behind my ear.

I drove. I nosed the car back out to Route 9. I idled at the stoplight, unsure of which way to turn. “Back to the city,” Arty said. “Back to the city.”

“This time of day it’d be much faster to hop on the expressway.”

“I’ll tell you where to go,” he said, settling in behind me. We drove around for a long time in complete silence. I wanted to turn on the radio but feared we would have a disagreement on the music. Arty LeBlanc struck me as an easy-listening kind of guy. Or maybe smooth jazz.

“You like smooth jazz, Arty?”

“What part of ‘shut the fuck up’ don’t you understand?”

“You still sore about Tampa?”

“Goddamn right I’m sore,” he said, just as we passed Pru Center. “That nigger sucker-punched me.”

“I’ll pass along your complaint to Hawk.”

“I’ll deal with him soon enough.”

“I thought you’d been around, Arty.”

“I been around,” he said. “So what?”

“You sure don’t know much about Hawk.”

Arty Leblanc stayed silent until we passed though Back Bay and drove along the Common. He told me to turn on Tremont and head into the South End, where we crossed the channel into Southie. We drove along Dot Ave and deeper into the old neighborhoods, cutting along the destruction site of the Old Colony Housing Projects, where some good people I’d known had grown up. And several crooks, including Joe Broz.

“Turn here,” he said.

I turned.

“Turn there.”

I turned there.

We rode the long length of a chain-link fence with a lot of NO TRESPASSING and PRIVATE PROPERTY signs. He told me to drive to the gate and wait. Soon the chain-link gate slid open and I drove past a big sign reading DEMARCO TOWING.

“I get to finally meet Jackie,” I said. “Hot damn.”

48

Two junkyard dogs pulled at anchor chains set near two old construction trailers. They yelped and barked, claws scratching into the broken asphalt as sleet pinged off the ground. The door of one trailer opened and a thick-bodied guy with a lot of black hair and a hook nose descended a short flight of handmade steps. He wore a slick Pats jacket and an orange watch cap and stopped halfway between us and the trailer to light up a smoke. He had thick legs and a big gut. He was built like a Bulgarian power lifter gone to seed. “This him?” he said, clicking a Zippo closed.

“Yeah,” Arty said.

“Don’t look like much,” he said.

“C’mon, Jackie,” I said. “Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful.”

Arty shrugged and walked over to one of the two dogs and rubbed the pit bull’s nub ears. On one knee, he spoke to the dog like the animal was a child. The pit bull flopped over on its back for a belly rub.

“You Spenser?” Jackie said.

“Jesus Christ,” I said. “Arty just told you I was and then you said, ‘He don’t look like much.’ And then I said, ‘Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful.’”

I was ready for it, but the punch in my gut still took a little air from me. I returned with a rabbit punch to Jackie DeMarco’s kidney and then another into his bloated gut. It felt like I was punching into a lumpy mattress. By that time, both doors to both trailers had opened and both Howdy Doody and Baldy ran from the steps and pointed guns at me. They were joined by a skinny guy in an open parka, jeans, and no shoes holding a shotgun.

“The gang’s all here,” I said. I rubbed my stomach. Jackie DeMarco gave a good punch. I nodded my respect toward Jackie. The dogs were barking again and digging at the asphalt, trying to break their chains to get to me.

“At your office,” Arty said, “didn’t we tell you to get lost?”

“You did.”

“And in Tampa?” he said. “We let you go with a warning.”

“I don’t recall you saying much, Arty,” I said. “After Hawk knocked you out.”

“Shut up,” Arty said.

Jackie DeMarco lit another cigarette, clicked the lighter closed, and then eyed me with a little humor. Baldy had slipped the auto back into his belt. Howdy Doody had dropped his pistol, too. Only the new guy, Shoeless Joe, kept his gun aimed at me. He walked around in a wide circle while I talked with Jackie and Arty Leblanc. He had the jittery look of a meth head with an itchy trigger finger. I kept in close to Jackie and Arty. If he were to spray buckshot, it would be nice if we all got it. The pinging sleet gave the air an electric feel in the graying day.

There must have been more than a hundred impounded cars parked out into the spaces behind the trailers and a fleet of a couple dozen tow trucks, DEMARCO’S proudly displayed on the doors.

“I guess we’re at an impasse,” I said.

“What?” DeMarco said.

“An impasse,” I said. “You want me to quit with those two judges. And I won’t.”

“Maybe so,” DeMarco said. “But nobody is really going to care when you disappear, Spenser. You know how many guys I know who will throw a freakin’ party when you’re gone?”

“How many?” I said.

“Lots.”

“But we’ll need a head count,” I said. “Appetizers. Cocktails.”

“Arty?” DeMarco said.

Arty looked up. Howdy Doody and Baldy had joined him to stare at me as Jackie DeMarco shamed me so thoroughly. My face felt stiff and waxen in the cold. The sleet fell harder. The dogs pulled at the chains, reaching their limit, but still clawing, yelping. DeMarco took one last puff on the cigarette and tossed it to the ground. “Kill this son of a bitch,” he said, tossing Arty some keys. “Take that old Buick somewhere and burn ’em both up.”

Arty pocketed the keys and reached into his black leather coat for his gun.

I heard the boom of the rifle a millisecond after Arty’s head exploded. The three flunkies pulled their guns and started firing out into the wide-open space of the impound lot. I’d dropped to the ground and snatched back my gun and Arty’s stainless-steel Taurus. He’d fallen ugly and dead onto his back, his fingers just in reach of one of the dogs. The dog was in a yelping frenzy, biting and pulling Arty by the digits closer toward him. Blood spilled across the ground. Jackie DeMarco had come out of the trailer holding a shotgun. Two more blasts of the .44, one ripping into the skin of the trailer, and DeMarco was back inside.

I ran for cover behind a tow truck, one of those big ones that can slide a Patton tank up onto the flatbed. I exchanged a few shots with Baldy. He was behind the hood of a black Jeep Wrangler, popping up every few seconds like a game of Whack-A-Mole. Jackie DeMarco had a window opened in the construction trailer and was firing out into the lot. Another rifle blast from the lot silenced him for a bit. For a good twenty seconds, gunfire ringing in my ears, all I could hear were the pin sounds of ice needles hitting the ground.

Baldy fired at me again and then ran for a long line of impounded cars. I could hear the thud of his boots and his heavy breathing as another rifle shot sounded and he was cut down at the legs. He screamed and yelled obscenities and rolled around on the ground. I looked up over the edge of the flatbed and saw and heard nothing else but the guy’s pain. The automatic spent, I laid it on the ground and held my .38. I moved toward the cab of the tow truck, trying to keep quiet, trying to listen. In the big oversized sideview mirror, I saw the flash of red hair and turned to see Howdy Doody pointing his shotgun at me.

I shot him three times. His body jerked and spasmed like he was being jolted by an electric wire.

The ringing silence broke with the sound of a big engine starting and the squealing of tires. A big black Ford F-250 raced by the tow truck, slamming on brakes before it came to the closed gates, the gates slowly clanging open. One of the doors opened and the skinny guy with no shoes jumped in the passenger side as the truck raced off into Southie.

I stepped over Howdy Doody’s body, which now looked like a broken marionette. I felt an acid rising up in the back of my throat. I spit into the lot and kept walking forward, trying not to look over at the two dogs fighting over different pieces of Arty Leblanc. Baldy was screaming in pain. Everything was dirty and messy, but I preferred this to being burned up in the back of a Buick as Jackie DeMarco had instructed.

Hawk wandered out of the maze of impounded cars, propping a .380 hunting rifle over his shoulders like old stills I’d seen of Woody Strode.

“You want to call Quirk?” he said. “Or split.”

“Call Quirk.”

“Then I split.”

I nodded at Hawk. He nodded slightly to me and disappeared out the gate and into Southie. It was another ten minutes before I heard the police sirens.