Robert B. Parker's Cheap Shot Read online

  In such situations, an entire minute of silence was a very long time.

  “Okay, okay, okay,” Ray said. “Fuck.”

  “Okay what?” I said.

  “Antonio Lima’s fucking family,” he said. “Rosen thought we could throw some money at them and all this shit would go away. But they never forgave Kinjo. They always believed he killed their son. He never would kill nobody. And now those fucking people have something to do with Akira. It’s all gone. It’s all over. Everything. Kinjo won’t ever come back from this. That boy was his heart, man. He’s done.”

  Ray hiccupped some more. He drank some coffee, but this time did not make a face.

  I took my feet off the edge of the desk and leaned forward. I dropped my chin but tilted my eyes upward. I nodded and gave him a reassuring smile. Father Flanagan returns.

  Z had not uncrossed his arms. He sat not four feet from Heywood, just staring. I continued to offer warm encouragement.

  “There was this woman.”

  “Lela Lopes?” I said.

  “You know, then,” Ray said.

  I did not answer, as I had no idea what he was talking about.

  “That bitch was trying to shake us down two months ago.”

  “Did you meet with her in New York?”

  “Here in Boston,” Ray said. “She’s back in Boston, man. She and the Lima boys grew up here.”

  53

  She was here the whole time,” Z said.

  “Yep.”

  “Right under our noses.”

  “But with a different name. A flagrant misstep by the investigator,” I said. “I focused on New York.”

  “If we hadn’t kept on Ray.”

  “You always keep up with someone like Ray Heywood,” I said. “Something will break. I think he was with Kinjo two years ago.”

  Z looked at me.

  “Working theory,” I said. “He was the third man.”

  “Why’d he lie?”

  “And why did Kinjo and his teammates lie for him?”

  We sat in my Explorer on Dudley Street in Roxbury, not far from Blue Hill Avenue. A check for an Eva Lopes, the name Ray had said Lela used now, of approximate age and ethnicity led us to a recently rehabbed two-story house cut into several apartments. The building was light blue, with white window casings. All the windows and front doors had bars, and a chain-link fence surrounded the property. Along Dudley Street, storefronts sat boarded up and shuffled between vacant lots.

  After some minutes, a young black man toting a backpack turned up the cracked walkway to the apartments. We followed him to the front door as he tapped in his security code. Z caught the door in hand.

  The young man stared at us, waiting to hear an explanation. Neither of us replied, only following him into a central hallway, where he walked up some steps, turning back only once.

  We followed the hall and knocked on the door for apartment 1C.

  No one answered.

  “Have I ever shown you my outstanding technique for removing a door frame and deadbolt without leaving a trace of tampering?” I said.

  “You have.”

  Upstairs, a door opened and closed. The hallway was silent.

  “Good.” I stepped back two paces and kicked in the door with the heel of my right boot. The door frame around the deadbolt splintered.

  “That works,” Z said.

  I removed the shattered pieces of wood below and closed the door behind us. Once inside, I flipped the switch, but the hall light didn’t work. I walked into a narrow hallway, my eyes adjusting to the dim light from a streetlamp outside the window. I turned a corner and tried another switch in a kitchen that lit a hanging lamp over a small table. The hallway led to a modest-sized living room with two closed doors on each side. Two windows offered a spectacular view of the identical-looking apartment building next door, with maybe six feet between the structures.

  The living room was a mess. There was a tornado of clothes and other crap spun around the room as if someone had just moved in or was planning on moving out. Half-empty boxes. Clothes still on hangers. Half-packed or unpacked boxes. A hand-knitted blanket covered up an old recliner in a far corner. Bookshelves constructed of plastic milk crates lined one wall. On another, a prefab entertainment center held a small flat-screen television. Z closed the blinds and turned on a table lamp. We walked around the messy piles of clothes, books, and DVDs, most in Portuguese, and searched for a clue.

  Lela Lopes had a lot of clothes and, unbelievably, more shoes and boots than Susan Silverman. This, in and of itself, may have been a crime.

  A green sleeping bag lay on a couch with an old pillow. In front of the couch was a small table covered in a pizza box from Domino’s and an open bottle of Pepsi.

  “If you find something,” I said, “please tell me the game is afoot.”

  “Afoot?” Z said.

  “Afoot.”

  Z nodded and picked up a framed photograph from a coffee table. A light-skinned black woman with a lot of black curly hair, huge brown eyes, and a bow-shaped mouth stood with an older woman, possibly her mother. If the younger woman was Lela Lopes, it was easy to see how she might ignite a battle between two men pretty quickly.

  “Not bad.”

  I agreed.

  “Not much of a homemaker,” Z said.

  I picked up an ID badge for Eva Lopes from House of Blues, the kind you wear on a lanyard. We also found four House of Blues T-shirts strewn around the room. “At least she is, or was, employed,” I said.

  Z opened the door closest to the kitchen and walked inside. I sorted through a few boxes, finding several boxes of perfume, open liquor bottles, and folded underwear and socks. I took the opposite door from where Z had entered and found a bedroom and bath, most of it dismantled, mattress and box springs on the floor and bare of sheets. A large dresser sat with open drawers empty of clothing. Two boxes were sealed with tape, and I slit them open with a pocketknife to find stacks of T-shirts, blue jeans, and designer tops. I was down on my haunches as I searched. The carpet was nondescript beige and probably had never encountered a vacuum cleaner. I stood up, a mild protest in the knees, and checked in and around the bed and in and around the bathroom and behind a big oblong mirror and through a selection of assorted shoeboxes. The shoeboxes, surprisingly, contained shoes.

  The room was dark, with a very narrow window holding a very narrow air-conditioning unit. I walked back into the living room and into the kitchen, checking cabinets and a refrigerator. Almost nothing inside, and what was left was hard and moldy. I went through a pile of bills on the counter, going through each section, step by step, not overlooking a scrap, when I heard a doorknob rattle and the scraping of door on busted frame. I stopped riffling through bills and stood very still.

  I was not sure Z heard the door, but no noise came from the bedroom.

  Footsteps echoed down the little hall, passing the kitchen with me hidden in an alcove.

  I could see part of a man from under the hanging cabinets over an open counter to the living room. I stilled my breathing and my feet and anything else that might alert him to my presence. The man was quiet, too, shuffling about the room in a leather jacket, jeans, and sneakers. He made several sighs, searching for something lost in the piles of clothing and assorted junk.

  I heard Z flick off the light switch in the bedroom and walk out.

  I pulled my .38 but holstered it quickly as the man took off down the hall, flinging open the broken door and running into the building’s main hallway. Z ran ahead of me and I followed them down the long open hallway and out through the barred security door, catching sight of both crossing a dusty, weedy lot. The man in the leather jacket, a young black man, hopped a chain-link fence, sailing across with no discernible effort.

  It had been a while since I had jumped fences. Z gripped the edge of the chain
-link fence with his left hand and sailed his legs over to the right. I had to use both hands and my right knee to get across and find us in back of a three-decker with two homemade laundry lines and plastic kids’ toys. The man kept on running, Z making some progress, as they made it to another chain-link fence, both jumping the fence with little effort. The seasoned gumshoe needed a bit more propulsion as we all sailed into a back row of storefronts and a narrow alley of Dumpsters and trash cans and flattened boxes. I was gaining on Z, catching up with him, both of us closing on the guy, when a goldish-brown Pontiac with bright silver rims came whipping around the corner, speeding straight for us. The man ahead of us stopped hard in mid-stride, looking to us and then back to the car, catching his breath as the car skidded to a stop and a passenger door flew open. He looked a final time at us and then jumped into the car, which wasted no time coming right for where we stood. Z and I jumped from the trash cans up to the top of a Dumpster as the car flew past us. There were few things less dignified than using a Dumpster to save your life.

  “At least the top was closed,” Z said.

  “Always an upside.”

  “But we lost him.”

  We were both breathing very heavy. I was glad Z was breathing just as heavy.

  “But now we know that Victor Lima is in Roxbury,” I said. “Now we just need to find out where he’s gone.”

  “That was Lima? You sure?”

  I shot Z a look. He grinned and nodded.

  “You know the other guy who was with him?” Z said.

  I shook my head. We both walked back to the car, opting to forgo the fences and take Blue Hill Avenue by using the sidewalk.

  54

  It was Friday evening, and I stood outside with Kinjo at Gillette, the team buses chugging diesel into the night. The players were flying out to Denver and Kinjo had no intention of staying behind. The night had grown cold and it had started to rain.

  “Cristal is gone,” he said.

  “You have a fight?”

  “Nope,” he said. “She was just upset and drinking and drove off about an hour before I left. She said she was going to get Akira back herself.”

  “Drunk?”

  “Hard to get Cristal drunk,” Kinjo said.

  Water beaded off his black umbrella and across the arm of his black topcoat. It puddled the blacktop of the endless and expansive lot.

  “So noted.”

  “I don’t know what else to do but keep playing ball,” he said. “I feel like I stop and sit around and I’ll go crazy. I either play ball or they might as well drug me up and take me to the psych ward. When they brought me Akira’s clothes. Damn.”

  He took a long breath and wiped his eyes. “He ain’t dead.”

  “I haven’t stopped.”

  “Why’d you want to talk to me about the Limas?” he said. “Thought that was all over.”

  “Did you know Ray was still paying them off?”

  “Nah, man,” he said. “Ray wouldn’t do that without telling me. He knows how I feel about that. I paid them money for their loss, but I didn’t admit nothing. If we kept on paying, that’d make me seem like I’m guilty. I never shot anyone. I never killed anyone. Thought we straight on that.”

  I nodded.

  “Who told you that shit about my brother?”

  “Your brother.”

  Kinjo shook his head. The team was boarding the buses to Logan. The parking lot was filled with many very fast and very expensive cars. The players wore their best, not a tracksuit among them. A lot of camel-hair coats over custom suits and handmade shoes. I noticed a lot of the players wore earrings among a ton of jewelry. The watches were big and shiny, and refracted the parking lights even in the rain.

  “Why’d he do that?” Kinjo said.

  “You’ll have to ask him.”

  “Shit.”

  “But it led us to something,” I said. “We went to see Lela Lopes and ended up finding Victor Lima.”

  “In Boston?”

  “Yep.”

  “What’s he doing in Boston?”

  “Lela Lopes, I assume.”

  “What’d he say?” Kinjo said.

  I shook my head. “He ran and we chased him through a few backyards, but he must have had a buddy with him. Someone picked him up and then tried to run down me and Z.”

  “You tell the cops?”

  I nodded. “Car make, model, and license plate,” I said. “Stolen plate. But they’re looking for Victor and the car. The Feds, too.”

  “Fuck the Feds,” Kinjo said. “They’re quitters.”

  A thick-bodied man with a shaved head and wearing a tight white polo shirt and khakis called to Kinjo. The bus sat waiting with headlights on and wipers going. The man pointed to his watch and boarded the bus.

  “Got to go, man.”

  “Good luck.”

  He nodded. “Ain’t got nothing else,” he said. “I’m wrung up and bled out, man. Nobody can do nothing more to me. They took everything I got.”

  I reached out and shook his hand. He nodded. The coach called out as the rain continued to beat down on the blacktop.

  His eyes were dark and very tired. “Spenser?”

  I waited.

  “Can you find Cristal?” he said. “I know she’s a goddamn mess. But she’s my wife and a wreck right now. I know everyone thinks low of her, but she loves me, man, and she thinks she’s killed my kid. That’s not the truth.”

  I nodded.

  “I think she’s lost her shit.”

  “I can look for her,” I said. “Any idea where she might have gone?”

  Kinjo lifted up his chin and nodded once. “Kevin Murphy.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  Kinjo boarded the bus, and I stood under the umbrella as four big silver buses cut a half-circle and headed north. I walked back to my Explorer, crawled inside, and cranked the ignition.

  “And,” Hawk said.

  “And I don’t think he knew about the extra payoffs.”

  “He say why the brother did it?”

  “Nope.”

  “You ask?”

  “You know, I do manage to sleuth without prodding.”

  “Maybe you benefit from some constructive criticism.”

  “He asked me for a favor.”

  Hawk turned to me and I told him about Cristal and Kinjo’s suspicions.

  “Dorchester again,” he said. “Shit.”

  55

  Kevin Murphy didn’t live far from his international film studios above the packie in Fields Corner. He had a two-story house with aluminum siding off a street called Toledo Terrace. A small driveway curved behind the house, where we found an open gate and recently added wooden stairs up to a kitchen. It was dark and still raining as we knocked on the back door.

  Hawk did not carry an umbrella, as Hawk was impervious to rain.

  Murphy opened the door in slippers and boxer shorts.

  “Yeah?” he said, looking us over. “What the fuck do you guys want?”

  “We came to apologize,” I said. “We’ve come to respect your contribution to the motion-picture arts and want to bestow upon you an honorary Oscar.”

  Murphy made a face and rubbed his hairless stomach. “Eat me.”

  Hawk just shook his head, grabbed Murphy’s face, and walked him backward into the kitchen. Murphy took wide, looping swings at him, but Hawk had very long arms and seemed uninterested in the resistance. I closed the door behind us; Hawk pushed hard with his right hand and dumped Murphy on his ass.

  “Where’s Cristal Heywood?” I said.

  It was a simple question, but Murphy had considerable trouble following it. He pushed himself up off the floor and scowled at Hawk. Hawk leaned against the kitchen counter and began to whistle the theme to Jeopardy!

  “Suck
it,” Murphy said.

  I shrugged. “Where’s Cristal?”

  Murphy spit at Hawk and then lunged for a kitchen knife. Hawk backhanded Murphy and gripped his wrist. As he tore the knife from Murphy’s hand there was a very ugly, very audible pop. Murphy, being a man of more pleasure than pain, fell to the ground and began to scream.

  “Did you really need me for this?” Hawk said.

  “Rainy night,” I said. “Nice to have company.”

  Hawk nodded that that was fine by him. Murphy kept on screaming, and after a few seconds of the wailing, Cristal Heywood came staggering from some dark back room. She wore only a T-shirt, her bleached hair spilling over the front and back of her shoulders. “What the hell? What the hell?”

  “Come on,” I said.

  She stepped into the kitchen and helped Murphy to his feet. He was holding his wrist and crying. If he had not been a pedophile pornographer, I might have even felt sorry for him.

  “What?” she said. “What did you do?”

  Cristal Heywood’s breath smelled of so much alcohol, it might have been considered an accelerant. I took a step back but could still see her pupils were pinpricks, and she wavered on her feet. She was indulging in something beyond vodka.

  “Smack,” Hawk said. “She’s fucked up on smack.”

  “Go to hell,” Cristal said, her arm around Murphy.

  I tilted my head to the door. “Kinjo is worried about you.”

  “Kinjo blames me,” she said. “He said I killed his son. I killed him. I fucking killed him.”

  She was screaming in a most unpleasant way. Hawk stood next to the sink, the faucet dripping every two seconds. The only light in the room spilled from a far back bedroom and over a wide-open living room with wood floors.

  “Come on,” I said.

  “I can’t,” Cristal said. “Kevin knows. He knows where to find Akira. He’s going to help me. He’s plugged in to this city. He’s important. He has friends in the Mafia, they’re going to track down the kidnappers and bring him home. Right, Kevin? Tell them. Tell them so they can leave me the fuck alone.”

  Murphy looked uncomfortable beyond the sprained wrist. The tap-tapping of the water underscored the silence in the small, darkened kitchen.