Текст книги "Robert B. Parker's Cheap Shot"

Автор книги: Ace Atkins

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Текущая страница: 16 (всего у книги 17 страниц)

63

The address led us back down to Foxboro and an old motel off Route 1 called the Red Fox. The sign was red and neon shining what was probably a permanent vacancy for lodgings that only Norman Bates could love. The Red Fox, no relation to Buddy’s, was a one-level layout with all the room doors facing the highway. The walls were brick, the doors once white, and the center of the motel was a faux-Colonial with four large columns over an office. I was delighted to see they offered both color television and electric heat.

The lights were out in room 8, but as we walked past, we noted the dull gray flickering of a television set and the muffled voices of broadcasters calling a ball game. We walked back to Hawk’s car, parked nose toward the U-shaped units, and waited for a while. After about an hour, Z showed up. He parked next to us in his Mustang and then got into the back of the Jag. No one had come in or out of the building.

Only six cars had been parked along the units. We did not recognize any of them but took down all the tag numbers in case Lima tried to make a speedy exit. If this was indeed the place Lima had decided to hole up.

“We sure?” Z said.

“Sort of,” I said.

“Sort of?” Z said.

“It would behoove the informant not to lie to The Hawk.”

“I kind of like The in front of my name,” Hawk said. “Commands respect.”

Z got out of the back of the car and was gone about five minutes and came the long way behind us off Route 1 and back into the car. It was raining again, and he was soaked.

“Small windows in the back,” Z said. “Old pebbled glass. I can see the light on in the bathroom but nothing else. I can hear a television on but no voices.”

“Can you slip into the window?” I said.

“Nope,” Z said.

“Front-door entry,” Hawk said.

I nodded.

It was my time to get out into the rain, and I walked to the big columns over the motel office. For the size of the entry, the office was very small. A narrow room with a flat-screen television perched on a coffee table and a couple of old chairs facing forward. There was a desk to the right of the front door and two large display cases loaded down with pamphlets of fun things to do in and around Boston. There was no bell, so I coughed, and a moment later, a tired-looking guy in a Pats T-shirt, khakis, and suspenders walked up and looked me over. He was bald on top but had a prodigious amount of red hair over his ears, giving him the unsubtle look of a circus clown.

“My buddy checked in earlier,” I said. “And I don’t want to wake him up. He’s such a sound sleeper. Room eight.”

“What’s his name?” the guy said.

“Ben Franklin,” I said, and laid down a hundred-dollar bill.

The guy looked at me accusingly for about two seconds and then turned and lifted a key off a gold hook. He sucked on his tooth, swiped the money, and laid down the key.

I took the key and headed out into the rain.

I dangled it in front of the Jag’s windshield, and Hawk and Z walked from the car. The asphalt was slick with the rain and red with the neon of the Red Fox sign as we walked to unit number 8. I could still hear the television going, what sounded like a baseball game from the West Coast. I tried to listen for a few hints as to the team while I slipped the key into the lock and turned back to see Hawk and then Z staggered behind me. Both had their guns drawn. Z recently taking up with a Remington 870 pump, just in case we were faced with a zombie apocalypse.

Hawk has his .44, in case we faced a charging elephant.

I turned the key and the doorknob, and we were all inside faster than Usain Bolt.

No one shot at us. Nothing moved.

The television had very poor reception of the Dodgers playing the Giants. The Dodgers were up by three in the top of the eighth as Victor Lima lay dead in a tangle of bloody white sheets. He’d been bleeding for a long while, the white sheets over him more red than anything. He had an open liter bottle of Sprite on the bedside table and some rolls of surgical tape, bandages, and pulls. In his outstretched hand was a .357 Magnum. My gun. It dangled from his lifeless fingers, him staring into nothing with lifeless eyes.

Z walked over to the television and turned it off. On the console to the TV, he found my .38. He checked the safety and then tossed it to me.

“Damn, Spenser,” Hawk said.

Z went into the bathroom and came out shaking his head. Hawk went looking through drawers and rolling over the dead man and checking in his pockets. The room was silent except for the rain hitting the shingled roof. We needed to move fast; Ben Franklin wouldn’t buy us much more time. We searched the room for anything, coming up with a cell phone and some scraps of paper, notes on a map. Hawk held up a set of car keys he found in the man’s pocket and we all walked outside to find a blue Ford Taurus.

The three of us stood by the car for a moment, none of us wanting to see what was inside but knowing we had to find out. There could be another phone, an address, or something linking us to Akira. I tossed the keys to Z, and he stared at me a long while. He silently nodded and started to walk toward the trunk.

Hawk and I stood shoulder to shoulder with him. The walk was short but felt long.

Z lifted the key to punch the button as we heard the kicking and muffled yells.

Z popped the trunk.

Akira was bound by hand and foot with silver duct tape. His mouth had been covered in duct tape as well. He was crying and kicking and rolling.

I reached into the trunk and lifted him out. His pants and shirt were wet and soiled. I held him up in my arms as Hawk gently pulled the tape from his mouth. Z used his pocketknife to cut into the tape, freeing the boy’s hands and feet. He was crying, which we took as a good sign.

He took in deep mouthfuls of air as if hyperventilating. Hawk went to the car to grab an unopened Coke.

Akira wrapped his arms around my neck. Z nudged me to look into the trunk. Scrawled into the top of the trunk hatch was the number 57. The boy started to cry very hard and very fast, and I told him I’d take him to his mother.

I called Susan to pass on the news to Nicole. And then we waited for the police.

64

The Foxboro police were overwhelmed with the influx of state cops, Feds, and reporters as word leaked that Akira was alive. At dawn, questions had been asked, statements given, lawyers consulted, and finally Akira could go home. The local cops had brought him a cheeseburger and fries from a local pub. He was so hungry, the cops had to get him another. Lima had not fed him for nearly forty-eight hours, the two of them jumping from apartment to apartment since he’d been taken. The kid didn’t know where. He knew there had been three of them, two men and a woman. He had picked Lima and Lela Lopes from a photo pack shown by the police.

I called Kinjo in Denver. Susan picked up Nicole in Medford.

At dawn, they had arrived at the Foxboro police station and walked into the chief’s office, where I watched over Akira. After eating, he had fallen asleep.

Nicole saw her child and pressed her hands to her face. She dropped to her knees and cried over him for a long while. The crying woke him, and Akira raised up and wrapped his arms around his mother’s neck. I could see his small face over her shoulder, eyes closed and holding on very tight. Nicole rocked him back and forth.

Susan nodded at me. I slipped with her from the room.

We stood in a long hallway with a gray linoleum floor and hard fluorescent lights. The police station was old and very institutional. I leaned against the wall next to the chief’s office. Susan had her sunglasses on top of her head and purse thrown over her shoulder. I could tell she’d jumped into her gym clothes and sped off to get Nicole.

“He’s going to be all right,” I said.

“How was he treated?”

“He wasn’t fed for nearly two days,” I said. “He spent most of the time with his eyes and mouth taped shut and carried about like a parcel.”

“Physical?”

“No.”

“Sexual?”

“No,” I said. “He was just a bargaining chip. Lima was obsessed with getting Kinjo back for his brother. He lectured a lot to Akira. Telling him his father was a murderer.”

“What did Akira say about that?”

“He said Lima was nutso.”

Susan shook her head and walked up next to me. She slipped an arm around my waist and tilted her head against my shoulder.

“Maybe totally nuts,” Susan said. “But he did keep Akira alive.”

“Maybe he wasn’t physically able to pull it off,” I said. “He did die in the bed with my gun in his hand.”

“Or maybe Victor never had any intention of killing the boy,” Susan said. “Despite doing some awful things, perhaps Victor Lima still had empathy.”

“That kid is going to be messed up for a long time,” I said. “I find few things empathetic about Victor Lima.”

“Akira is alive.”

“Yes.”

“And Lima had plenty of chances to let that be his revenge.”

I nodded. Susan continued to rest her head on my shoulder. As I set my arm around her, I spotted Steve Rosen barreling around the corner with a rail-thin woman with a lot of blond hair and very large teeth.

Rosen walked up to me and stuck out his hand. He wore his khaki pants very high and a blue polo shirt at least a size too small. His black hair was slicked back and camera-ready.

“Nice, Spenser,” he said. “Nice job.”

I shrugged.

He introduced the woman as a very important sports journalist who covered Boston for ESPN. I introduced Susan as a very important shrink who covered Cambridge and greater Boston.

“Is he in there?” Rosen said, nodding to the door reading CHIEF.

“Yep.”

Rosen licked his lips and reached for the doorknob. I caught him by his wrist.

“Hey,” Rosen said. “Jesus.”

“You open that door and I’ll break your arm,” I said.

“And then I’ll kick your ass,” Susan said.

“This is a big day,” Rosen said, smiling. An old and close friend of the family. “This is happy, huge news. Kinjo has dedicated the game to his son. It’s being picked up by CBS now. We have the Today show live from Gillette tomorrow. I promised an exclusive here, and to be direct, this doesn’t have a fucking thing to do with you, Spenser. So let me in and talk to Nicole. I’ve known Nicole since she was nineteen years old.”

“Hard to sign checks with a broken hand,” I said.

“Hard to sit down with a broken ass,” Susan said.

I shrugged. “People from Cambridge have fancy ways of speaking.”

Rosen snorted. “You want to be paid? Who do you think will write you your check on this thing? Don’t be stupid. Open the door. Is your head that freakin’ hard?”

Susan stepped up to Rosen. They were about the same height. “You have no idea, buddy,” she said.

I tapped my skull with my knuckles.

The blond woman with the big hair and the big teeth kept smiling as if her face had frozen. Her eyes switched from me to Rosen and back.

I pulled Rosen’s fingers from the door and moved to block the entrance.

“I’ll talk to the cops,” he said. “You got no power here. I’ll get the chief fucking sideline passes.”

“He’s downstairs getting ready for a press conference,” I said. “Tell him I sent you.”

Rosen turned and huffed off. The reporter looked to both of us, openmouthed, but then nodded and smiled and followed.

“Is he just learning you’re hardheaded?” Susan said.

“Apparently so.”

“Do we have to stay any longer?”

“No.”

“Can Nicole take Akira?”

“The Pats sent a private car,” I said. “It’s waiting out back. I spoke to the driver and told them I’d be walking them out.”

“Are you okay?” Susan said.

“Dandy.”

“Something’s still bothering you about this?”

“A lot.”

“Even though Akira is home safe?”

I nodded. We sat in the hall and waited until Nicole and Akira were ready to go home. As we walked out into the daylight, pictures were made and questions shouted. Sometime in the last few hours, the rain had stopped and the sun shone very bright.

65

The next morning, Ray Heywood knocked on my office door and walked inside.

He held a large Nike gym bag in his hand and set it on the floor.

“We need you to deliver this,” he said.

“Old jockstraps?”

“A half-million dollars,” he said.

“Price has gone up on jockstraps,” I said.

“Kinjo is a man of his word,” Ray said.

I leaned back in my office chair. “He promised all five million.”

“You don’t think your guy will be happy with this?” he said, smiling. “Isn’t he wanted by the cops?”

“Yep.”

“So this should help him get out of town.”

“Sure.”

Ray was still standing. He shifted from one leg to another. He was wearing a gray rollneck sweater with a matching scally cap. A large diamond glinted from his right earlobe.

“You’ll be paid, man,” Ray said.

I leaned forward and rested my elbows on my desk. I put my right hand to my face and rubbed my jaw. My contemplative look was stunning.

“We straight?”

I reached out and closed my morning paper. I covered the top of my fresh large coffee with the plastic lid. I looked right up at Ray Heywood and said, “Nope.”

“Nope?” he said. “What do you mean fucking ‘nope’?”

“I mean I don’t deliver bounties,” I said. “I agreed to bring back Akira. Akira has been brought back.”

“To his mother, man,” Ray said, snorting. “Shit. You should have waited until Kinjo flew back. Do you work for Nicole or for us?”

“Neither,” I said. “Our business is done.”

Ray bit in his cheek. He started to turn around and then caught himself. He turned to me with his index finger outstretched. “I see how it is. Now you’re through with us. Don’t need shit from the Heywood brothers anymore.”

I tilted my head and nodded a bit. “Only one thing.”

Ray crossed his fat arms across his fat body. “What’s that?”

“You were with Kinjo the night Antonio Lima was killed.”

Ray’s eyes wandered over my face. He stared at me for a while and then broke the glance and shook his head with disgust. “What are you trying to say?”

“Why would you keep on paying Lela Lopes and not tell Kinjo?”

“’Cause that’s what I do,” he said. “I look out for my brother so he can keep his head right for the game. And that’s all I need you to do, is look out for us and pay off this piece of shit like we agreed.”

“You shot Antonio Lima,” I said. “Didn’t you?”

“Bullshit.”

“You never showed up in the reports.”

“’Cause I wasn’t there.”

“Kinjo had three men with him at the club,” I said. “Sometime later, that third man disappeared from the stories of Kinjo and his teammates. A few witnesses remembered but thought you were another player. Why wouldn’t he tell police you were with him?”

Ray looked at me for a while. I leaned back in my chair and waited. It was a beautiful day on Berkeley Street, and the sunlight filled all of my office.

“You crazy.”

“Sure,” I said. “But that’s beside the point.”

Ray shook his head some more but did not deny it. “Will you take the money?”

“No.”

“How will the man get paid?”

“That’s your problem,” I said.

“Must be nice to be blameless, man,” he said. “Spotless and clean.”

“Nobody is clean in this,” I said.

Ray picked up the Nike bag and left in a huff. He didn’t even bother to shut the door behind him.

I reached for my coffee, removed the lid, and watched the steam roll out. I opened the newspaper and resumed reading the argument between Arlo & Janis.

66

I never knew, nor ever asked, if the bounty was delivered. It took more than two months for my invoice to be paid in full by Steve Rosen Enterprises. I searched within his envelope for a thank-you card or hair-styling tips but came up empty.

It was late November, Thanksgiving week, and I left my office for the Harbor Health Club. I changed in the locker room and walked out to find Z and Henry Cimoli wearing identical white golf shirts with the club logo.

I smiled.

“Don’t say shit, Spenser,” Henry said.

I lifted up my hands. I wore an old pair of blue running shorts and a gray sweatshirt cut off at the elbows and neck. “I was about to compliment you both on the professional attire,” I said.

“Screw you.”

Z was cleaning off a lat pull-down machine and oiling the chain attached to the weights. He looked up at me and just shook his head.

“Women go crazy for Z in the uniform,” Henry said. “I got twenty new members in the last couple months. Housewives and divorcees who act like they don’t know how to use the machines. Jesus.”

“If he asks you to wear the white satin,” I said, turning to Z, “run.”

Z continued to clean off and oil the equipment as a handful of people ran on treadmills. Some local businessmen on their lunch break talking more than pumping iron. On the other side of the wide picture window facing the harbor, snow flurries twirled and whirled about, dusting across the wharves and melting on impact.

I made my way to the new-and-improved boxing room and went about wrapping my hands and wrists. The walls were mirrored, and I started off with three rounds of shadow-boxing before sliding into the gloves and attacking the heavy bags. On my third round with the bag, Hawk strolled into the room carrying a paper cup of coffee. He set the coffee on a window ledge and watched as I finished up. I took on the bag with an added ferocity, making the bag dance and jangle on the chains.

“No need to show off,” Hawk said.

“Showing you how it’s done.”

“Ha.”

“You want to spar a bit?” I said. “I have time.”

Hawk shook his head. He raised his eyebrows. “You remember our pal, Papa B?”

“Sure.”

“Motherfucker is dead.”

“DeVeiga?”

“My guess,” Hawk said. “But DeVeiga the one who told me. Said he’d been looking for Papa B since his sister got killed. Seemed upset that he wasn’t the one to finish him off.”

“Where?” I said, trying to catch my breath.

“Gone to New York,” Hawk said. “Live large.”

“What’s it to us?”

“DeVeiga wants to talk. He says someone else in on this.”

“Does it matter?”

“Matters to DeVeiga,” Hawk said. “Might matter to us. Depends on what he’s got to say.”

“Akira said there were three of them,” I said. “All dead. Victor Lima. Lela Lopes and now Papa B.”

“Real name is Pasco Barros.”

“I like Papa B better.”

“God rest his soul.”

I walked to the corner and found a pair of heavy mitts. I tossed the mitts to Hawk. He removed his black duster but not his sunglasses. He slipped the mitts onto his hands and I practiced combos for the next three three-minute rounds. Hawk told me several times that my left hook needed some work. I was breathing very heavily and sweating when I walked over to the water cooler.

“Okay,” I said.

“Figure we at least hear what the man have to say.”

“Sure.”

“And good to know a man like DeVeiga down in Glocksbury.”

“A gangbanging drug dealer?”

“You rather know someone with the Rotary Club?”

I took off my gloves and unwrapped my hands. In fifteen minutes, I was showered and changed back into my street clothes and riding in style with Hawk to meet Jesus DeVeiga.

67

We met DeVeiga at the Jim Rice ball fields in Ramsey Park. Two Outlaws stood watch at the iron gates as we walked inside and started climbing the stands toward DeVeiga. He sat alone up on the top row, staring out at the empty field dusted with snow. Hawk took two steps at a time. I followed suit.

“Took Rice a long time to get in the Hall of Fame,” Hawk said.

“Would have won the series in ’75 if he hadn’t broken his wrist.”

“Not bad in ’86 against the Mets.”

“Why did it take him so long?”

“’Cause Rice is a surly motherfucker,” Hawk said. “Press hated him.”

“Reason you like him.”

Hawk grinned. We hit the top steps and sat down beside Jesus DeVeiga. DeVeiga was wearing the same flat-billed Sox cap, and this time a navy-blue parka with a fur-trimmed hood.

I looked out onto the empty field. “‘A robin hops along the bench.’”

DeVeiga looked to the field and then back to me. He exchanged glances with Hawk, who simply shook his head. “What you got to say, Jesus?” Hawk said, again pronouncing his name with a hard J.

“Wondering what you heard about Papa B,” he said.

“We know as much as you,” I said.

“I didn’t kill him,” he said.

“Don’t care if you did,” Hawk said. “Don’t care if you didn’t.”

DeVeiga nodded. “I been looking for him since he killed Lela,” he said. “Even checked NYC. But didn’t come up with nothing. I’m now hearing he was down there trying to trade out that cash.”

“So the bounty was paid,” I said.

The wind was very cold and very brisk and shot through the open field and the wide expanse of the park. I had on a peacoat and kept my hands deep in my pockets. Not only to keep warm but to find comfort in the .38 in my right hand.

“I know people,” DeVeiga said.

“Good to know people,” Hawk said.

“People I know in New York said Papa B traded out fifty grand for thirty-five clean.”

“That money wouldn’t have been marked,” I said.

“Yeah,” DeVeiga said. “Tell that to Papa. But why he only trade a little? I heard he got at least a million.”

“Maybe he squirreled it away,” I said.

DeVeiga shook his head. “Man wanted to split town,” he said. “Ain’t the type to plan a future. He’d been talking free and easy down there. If someone hadn’t shot him, I was coming up the next day to settle the shit.”

“So he had a partner,” I said.

“A partner who got most of the cash?” DeVeiga said. “That ain’t no partner. That’s a goddamn boss.”

Hawk leaned in from the stands. He had on a leather jacket with the collar flipped up over his ears and dark shades. “You said you got something to say,” Hawk said. “Say it.”

DeVeiga nodded. The two Outlaws had come into the stadium and were walking back and forth at the bottom of the stands. They strolled end to end and crossed paths in the center like sentries. Neither of them speaking or looking at each other.

“Papa B was a snitch.”

“Okay,” I said.

“Never trusted his ass,” DeVeiga said. “Didn’t like him around any of my boys. Any my boys talk with him and they gone, too.”

“I think it’s been firmly established that Papa B was of low moral character,” I said.

“Papa B wasn’t one of the kidnappers,” he said. “I know the boy was working with Victor Lima. And took the kid.”

I looked at him.

DeVeiga laughed. “For me to know.”

“But you still think Papa B killed Lela?” I said.

DeVeiga nodded. “And Lima,” he said. “He on the hunt for that money. But here’s the thing about Papa B. I think he got tipped. Man ain’t smart enough to track down Lima or Lela. He being played.”

“By whom?” I said.

DeVeiga stared at me, tilting his head.

“Man talks funny,” Hawk said. “Who’s the motherfucker put Papa B on this?”

“A cop,” DeVeiga said.

I widened my eyes. Hawk leaned in some more and rubbed his hands together a bit in the cold. He nodded, too.

“What kind of cop?” Hawk said.

“People down here say Papa B made his money from the Feds,” DeVeiga said. “He was a goddamn CI for them. How he got his groceries. I think they the ones that planted the seed in that dumb bastard’s brain.”

Hawk stood and looked to me.

“Hmm,” Hawk said.

“You said it.”

“We straight?” DeVeiga said, touching the upper part of his chest where he’d been shot.

Hawk nodded. DeVeiga nodded down to his boys. They stopped patrolling and waited for him at the foot of the steps. He gave Hawk a fist bump. He just looked at me and walked down the steps.

“I feel excluded,” I said.

“What’s that shit you said about a robin?”

“Thinking of empty ball fields.”

“Mmm-hmm,” Hawk said.

“Connor?”

“Fool me once,” Hawk said.

“Connor didn’t fool me,” I said. “Connor does for Connor.”

“Man learned from the best,” Hawk said. “Joe Broz and Jumpin’ Jack Flynn.”

“Hard to prove.”

“All but impossible,” Hawk said.