Robert B. Parker's Cheap Shot

by Ace Atkins

  When I arrived, Times Square was as garish as usual. Unless you happen to like fifty-foot billboards of superhero movies, all-night shops shilling the latest Japanese gizmos, or Broadway plays based on Disney cartoons. Wide-eyed tourists from Topeka and Cincinnati took pictures with their phones of costumed characters and street performers. One woman walked up and down the avenue in a white string bikini, attempting to play the guitar, with a donation bucket strapped to her hip.

  After being jostled and elbowed, I finally asked a cop on horseback where to find the restaurant. He pointed north on Broadway and said it’s beneath street level. Soon I found out that the restaurant was beneath me, too. An extraterrestrial-themed burrito restaurant that took lucky “voyagers” into the world under Mars. Naturally, the place was packed.

  Aliens with big heads and almond eyes wandered the red and green glowing caverns and passed out tall green cocktails or challenged you to video-game duels or a game of hoops. I studied the menu as I waited, for lack of anything better to do. They offered a Cerberus spicy hot chicken burrito and many Martian microbrews.

  Wow.

  Maybe I could take Susan here on our next trip. Reservations at the Carlyle, drinks at 21, and dinner on the Red Planet. How could a woman resist? What would she wear? What would I wear?

  A chubby woman in a short metallic dress took my order. I pointed to the beer choice for fear of saying it out loud. I felt a bit like Han Solo. And, after several minutes, decided that if needed, I would shoot first.

  The waitress brought my green beer. No aliens approached me or challenged me to Space Invaders. I checked my inbox. No messages from Lundquist but one from Z: INT. 10 PARENTS. 2 TEACHERS. NOT ZIP.

  As it approached midnight, I knew I had been had. Lela’s idea of a decent joke. I left my green beer untouched and stood.

  Toward the front of the restaurant, near the bubbling pools, I spotted a black man with braids turn the corner. He caught my eye, looked away, and turned quick for the launch pad door. I paid and followed the man out into Times Square. Victor Lima had changed his hair some since the photo at his mother’s house. He now wore tight cornrows. But the eyes and facial features matched. And he was, no doubt, on Lela Lopes’s speed dial.

  It was a cool night and good for walking. I tugged on my Sox cap, feeling rebellious in hostile territory, and followed Lima across to the Winter Garden and up Broadway north toward Central Park. Lima had yet to look back, figuring I didn’t recognize him. I kept twenty yards back. If he suddenly stopped, I would window-shop, turned in profile. Advanced gumshoe techniques. We passed a Duane Reade, a Starbucks, and an outdoor café modeled after spots on the Champs-Élysées.

  At 57th Street, Lima stopped and looked back. I was under some scaffolding and did not break stride, only lowered my head. He lifted his hand to hail a cab.

  I increased my pace. Two cabs passed him. He stepped back on the curb and started to walk again. I caught him roughly by the elbow.

  “In space, no one can hear you scream.”

  “Get your fucking hands off me, man.”

  “I can drag you into Central Park and tie you to a tree,” I said. “Or we can walk back a few blocks and sit down someplace nice.”

  Victor Lima tilted his head and thought about it. He didn’t speak, only nodded.

  “Good choice,” I said, and let go of his arm.

  We walked a block south and found a place to sit outside the mock-Parisian café. I ordered a cup of coffee. Lima said he didn’t want anything.

  “Sorry we didn’t chat while on Mars.”

  “I wanted to see who you were,” he said. “And what did you want with Lela and shit.”

  “To find you,” I said. “And shit.”

  “That why you hassled my mother?”

  “I only passed along my card.”

  “What the fuck do you want, man?” he said. “It’s over. No one did crap about my brother. You’re just making trouble for all of us.”

  Victor Lima was light-skinned and wore a dark jean jacket over what appeared to be a yellow soccer jersey. His jeans matched his jacket exactly, and the retro-style Jordans on his feet matched the bright yellow of the jersey. He had large, watery eyes and wore a slumped look of exhaustion, like a beaten fighter forced to go one too many rounds. He rubbed his face and leaned back in the café chair.

  “You work for Kinjo Heywood?”

  I nodded.

  “Then screw you, man.”

  “I don’t blame you,” I said. “I’m just trying to figure out a few things.”

  My coffee arrived. It was French press—of course—and I let it steep. A couple at the next table shared some dessert.

  “I saw where someone snatched his kid,” Victor said. “Man can’t stay out of trouble, can he? A straight thug.”

  So the news had broken.

  “Anyone you might know?”

  Victor sat up straighter and shot me a sour look. “Are you kidding, man?”

  “Just how do you know Heywood killed your brother?” I said.

  “’Cause the police said he did,” Victor said. “’Cause I saw them fighting and heard him say he was going to kill Antonio. ’Cause I know things.”

  I’d read Victor’s statement in the homicide file. “You held something back?” I said.

  “His three buddies all lied for him,” he said.

  “I read there were only two of his teammates,” I said.

  “The cops lied,” he said. “There were three other football players and the cops took their side. They took their word for everything. They got into it again out on the street.”

  “Did you see it?”

  Victor shot me an unpleasant look.

  “Then how do you know?”

  I mashed the plunger on the coffee, taking the swirling grounds to the bottom of the glass. I poured some into the cup, added sugar, and this time skipped the cream. I also decided to forgo dessert. It’s hard to look like a tough guy with a crème brûlée in front of you.

  “Were you inside Chrome when Heywood and Antonio got into it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Over Lela.”

  “Sure.”

  “What happened?”

  “Heywood grabbed her ass and asked her to screw him in the bathroom.”

  “And Antonio took exception to this.”

  I sipped some coffee. All the world walked by. I wondered if Toulouse-Lautrec ever strong-armed a suspect.

  “He’s an animal, man,” Victor said. “He’s the same on the field as off. He likes to hurt people. He got off on killing my brother to make a point. He couldn’t stand anyone telling him what to do. How to act like a person.”

  I put down my coffee. “And now you’d like to see him hurt?”

  “Shit, man,” he said. “You really think I have his kid?”

  I shrugged. “Some would agree you’d have good reason,” I said. “And if the kid is not harmed . . .”

  Victor rubbed his eyes and shook his head. “I don’t ever want to see that man for the rest of my life,” he said. “I don’t want to be involved with anything to do with him or his family. This is all done.”

  “How so?”

  Victor grinned and shook his head. “Heywood didn’t tell you,” he said. “Did he?”

  I waited.

  “Why do you think we dropped the lawsuit, man?” he said. “Heywood paid off my family if we let it go. That’s what my mother wanted. What we agreed. We took his dirty money. It’s finished. I didn’t want to, but my mother thought it was best. I had to agree to her wishes.”

  I sipped some coffee and kept quiet and still. Two cabs stacked up at the traffic light, held in place by the red light.

  “I’d still like to talk to Lela.”

  “She won’t talk to you,” he said. “I told her I’d take care of th
is, and that’s just what I did.”

  Victor stood.

  I stood.

  “Don’t ever come to our home again,” Victor said, standing up and walking out to Broadway, where he disappeared around 55th Street. I finished my coffee and walked back to my hotel.

  19

  Hawk picked me up at the Back Bay Station the next morning in his silver Jag.

  “You could have at least held open my door.”

  “Sure,” he said. “I aims to please.”

  “And surly, too.”

  “You learn anything?”

  “Nope,” I said. “Confused as ever.”

  Hawk drove off, and soon we were heading north on Boylston. He had brought coffee and donuts from Café Dunkin. I had eaten a bagel on the train. This was second breakfast. Maybe I was turning into a hobbit.

  “Z at Kinjo’s house,” Hawk said. “Which is now a three-ring circus.”

  “Wondered how long it would take.”

  “Waiting for someone to set up a fucking ice-cream stand.”

  Hawk wore Chanel shades with a white cashmere turtleneck under a black leather jacket. He handled the Jaguar as if it were an extension of himself, coiled and controlled.

  “How’s Kinjo?”

  “Hasn’t slept since you left.”

  “And his wife?”

  “Wife one or wife two?”

  “Who’s at the house?”

  “Wife two,” Hawk said. “Z says the woman loving all those cameras on the street. Did her makeup and everything.”

  “Must be her grief,” I said. “And wife one?”

  “I sat on her house like you asked,” Hawk said. “She doesn’t have the boy. And if she did have the boy, she staying put. State police are all over her.”

  “First to suspect a parent.”

  Hawk slowed the Jag at the corner of Boylston and Berkeley.

  “Not that I minded watching her,” Hawk said. “Damn. You meet her?”

  “Yep.”

  “And.”

  “She scratched the hell out of my face.”

  Hawk shrugged. “Reached out to some local pros,” he said. “Called in some favors.”

  “And none of our usual suspects are touching kidnapping a kid.”

  “Nope,” Hawk said. “This seem like amateur hour.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Some nut called in to a radio show last night,” he said. “Said he has the kid. Less than credible, but staties checking it out.”

  The Jag idled at the curb where the new Bank of America was going in. I sampled one of the chocolate frosted to enhance my deductive reasoning. “What did Lundquist say?”

  “State cops ain’t real fond of me,” Hawk said. “Figure they may be giving comfort to the enemy.”

  “He’d talk to you.”

  Hawk stayed silent. A tall young woman in tight jeans, a tight black sweater, and tall riding boots strode across our vision. The woman was quite fit. Hawk stayed silent.

  “Hmm,” Hawk said.

  “Hmm,” I said. “The office can wait. You mind driving me out to Chestnut Hill?”

  “Why not?” Hawk said. “Always wanted to know how the other half lived.”

  “You can be the other half,” I said. “Long as you have money.”

  “And fame,” Hawk said. “Fame helps a brother out.”

  Hawk knocked the Jag into gear and drove toward Arlington, making his way back toward Huntington and out of the city. He let the window down as we drove under the Mass Pike.

  “Which radio show?” I said.

  “Paulie and the Gooch,” Hawk said. “That sports-talk shit.”

  “Not a super-fan?”

  Hawk did not answer. We didn’t speak for a long while as we followed Route 9 into Newton. “So you struck out?”

  “Not exactly,” I said. “But those most likely to do Kinjo harm are looking less likely. It seems that some key pieces of information regarding the incident were kept private.”

  “By Kinjo himself.”

  “Yep.”

  “How key?”

  “His attorney paid off the shooting victim’s family so they’d drop the civil case,” I said.

  “Don’t mean it settled.”

  “Or that Kinjo was guilty,” I said.

  “But money sure do make this world spin.”

  20

  The back patio of the Heywood house was made of flat stones and littered with dead leaves. I had my second cup of coffee that morning as Kinjo and super-agent Steve Rosen joined me at a wrought-iron table. The inside of the big stone house was filled with Brookline cops and state police. The street at the top of the hill was crowded with news trucks and reporters and rubberneckers standing outside the gates. As we walked down the hill, Hawk again mentioned that an ice-cream stand could really turn a profit.

  Kinjo used the flat of his large hand to scrape away the decaying leaves on the patio table. He sat, but Rosen decided to stand. Through the long bank of windows, I could see Hawk sitting with Z and Lundquist.

  “How’d it go?” Rosen said. “What did you find?”

  “Why didn’t you tell me you’d paid off the Lima family?” I said.

  “Listen, we asked you to—”

  “Shut up,” I said to Rosen. “I’m asking Mr. Heywood.”

  “Don’t you ever—” Rosen said.

  “Shut up.”

  Kinjo was worn-out, red-eyed, and beaten. He leaned forward in the chair, elbows on his knees. He was dressed in nothing but workout shorts and a gray T-shirt with the Pats logo. He shook his head. “I didn’t want you to think I shot the man.”

  “Did you?”

  “What I’m trying to say—” Rosen said.

  I merely held up my hand.

  Kinjo never once looked at his agent. He looked at me. “No,” he said. “But we didn’t want the bad publicity. We wanted it to go away.”

  “How much did you pay the Limas?”

  “Kinjo, you don’t have to say a word,” Rosen said.

  “Half a million.”

  I nodded.

  “A settlement of that type isn’t unusual—surely you understand that kind of thing,” Rosen said. He had his hands in his pockets and ducked his chin as he spoke.

  “Does he ever shut up?” I said.

  “I hired you, and I can—”

  “Jeez,” I said. “That’s new. What do you want, Kinjo?”

  Cristal wandered out from the French doors with a pack of cigarettes and a lighter in one hand. Her makeup was fresh, but she hadn’t changed out of her light blue silk pajamas or fuzzy slippers. She smiled at everyone as she hunched her shoulders with a little giggle. “Just one, Kinjo,” she said. “I promise.”

  Rosen walked over to her and said something in her ear and they both disappeared back into the house.

  “If I am going to keep working on this, you need to tell me everything,” I said. “And you need to tell the police everything, too. If I’d known you’d settled with the family, I might’ve looked elsewhere.”

  “They think I killed that dude.”

  I nodded. “What about in Boston,” I said. “Has anyone ever tried to offer you money or influence your play?”

  “Like for me to shave points and cheat?” he said. “One man can’t throw a whole football game.”

  “But you could affect a point spread.”

  He looked past me up the hill to the playhouse. Behind the stone wall, smoke rose from his neighbor’s chimney. More leaves fell from high branches. “I figured if you thought I’d paid those people off, you wouldn’t want to work for me,” he said. “But I don’t cheat, man. You don’t cheat and not make plays and be All-Pro two years in a row.”

  I caught his eye and stared at him. “Don’t lie t
o me again.”

  “Akira,” Kinjo said. “He has asthma, man. The people who took him don’t know. What if they never call? I’m about to crawl out my skin, man.”

  I nodded. I warmed my hands on the coffee mug. There was much activity through the windows of the house. Hawk, Z, and Lundquist continued to talk in the sectional by Kinjo’s large television. Cristal had apparently broken away from Rosen and had taken a spot between Hawk and Z.

  “What about the call at the radio station?” I said.

  “Paulie and the Gooch,” he said. “You know them?”

  “I’ve seen their billboards,” I said. “The Sports Monstah. Boston sports all day and all night.”

  “Police played it for me last night,” he said. “Man called in and said he has Kinjo Heywood’s child and wanted a payday.”

  “Anything else?” I said.

  Kinjo shook his head. “All I know is they tried to track the call and it came back to a throwaway.”

  “So maybe it’s them?”

  “I hope so,” Kinjo said. “I don’t give a shit what it costs, I want my son back. Without him, I ain’t got shit. All this around me? I can live in a trailer like I used to, and it’s all the same to me. Something happen to Akira and you better drive me straight to the nuthouse. I can’t live.”

  “I’ll talk to Lundquist about that caller,” I said. “Maybe pay a visit to Paulie and the Gooch.”

  Kinjo swallowed. His face was impassive, but he had started to cry. He turned his hulking back to me.

  I left him outside in a slight patch of sunlight as I walked inside the glass doors.

  21

  Paulie and the Gooch talked little else but Boston sports from a two-story brick radio station off the Birmingham Parkway in Brighton. They were hitting their noontime stride when Z and I arrived. Lou from Quincy had taken the duo to task for saying the Red Sox Nation was washed up, blaming fans for lackluster play. Lou said Paulie and the Gooch were the biggest dips in Mass. Reggie from Worcester congratulated the boys for sticking by Tom Brady this season despite inexperienced tight ends and receivers. Reggie said the naysayers would soon eat their words. He actually said they’d eat something else for the five-second delay.