Robert B. Parker's Cheap Shot

by Ace Atkins

  “What if we say they don’t get the money unless we see Akira in person,” he said. “Get him back right there.”

  “You can ask that,” Connor said. “But they won’t go for it.”

  “Why not?” Kinjo said.

  “Because they know we could swoop down on them and grab them all,” Connor said. “They want to convince you to give them the money, let them get away, and that Akira will be released once they feel safe.”

  “And then what?”

  “When Akira is back?”

  Kinjo nodded. Nicole just stared at Connor. I could tell she disliked him a little more than she disliked me. That was saying something.

  “We birddog their asses to the ends of the earth.”

  “And if he doesn’t come back?” Nicole said.

  Connor leaned back in the chair. “The same.”

  Kinjo stood up and walked to the windows. He stared out into the backyard with his back to us. Everyone was quiet for a good long while. The sun rose brighter and higher, bringing long shadows onto the wood floor and up onto the walls. Kinjo illuminated against the glass. “What if I don’t pay?”

  “Shut up,” Nicole said.

  “What if I don’t give them the money?” Kinjo said.

  “Shut the fuck up, Kinjo,” Nicole said. “You will pay it all.”

  I rubbed my jaw and stood. I was tired of sitting and talking. I was tired of waiting and being pawns of kidnappers with cell phones and all the time in the world.

  Connor stared at me, and without breaking the gaze, said what I knew he’d say. “Same odds,” Connor said. “Fifty-fifty, whether you give them the five mil or not. These are bad people who want your money and want nothing or nobody to connect them.”

  Nicole buried her head in her hands. Kinjo was a large darkened shadow against the bright windows. When he turned, something very ugly had happened to his face.

  Kinjo did not acknowledge any of us as he bolted from the room, grabbed his car keys, and sped out from his mansion’s driveway.

  I put my hand on Nicole’s shoulder. She brushed my hand away.

  I left the room.

  47

  Two hours later, there was no word from the kidnappers and no word from Kinjo.

  I’d left the Heywood household and walked down the hill, away from the Feds, reporters, cameramen, and anonymous weirdos, and returned to my Explorer. A few minutes later, Z pulled in behind me and crawled into the passenger seat.

  He had brought a sack from Dunkin’ and two coffees. The bag was heavy. Being a trained detective, I knew something was amiss.

  “Breakfast sandwiches,” Z said.

  “Is this retaliation?”

  He shook his head. “Eggs and ham,” he said. “Some protein to give you some strength today.”

  “May not need it,” I said. “Our client has flown the coop.”

  Z reached over and turned on the radio, scanning the dial to the Sports Monstah. Paulie and the Gooch were on early, talking about the kidnapping. I reached over to turn it off and Z stopped me, telling me to wait. After a few seconds, I heard a third voice in the studio with them. Kinjo Heywood.

  I looked to Z.

  “Came into the studio about ten minutes ago,” Z said. “Said he wanted to reach out to his fans through the show. He said his true fans would look out for him because everyone else had failed him.”

  “Connor and I had a harsh talk with him and Nicole,” I said. “But now they know the odds of getting Akira back.”

  We sat there and listened to a very talkative Kinjo Heywood chatting with Paulie and the Gooch about Boston being a tough city. He talked about the way the city handled adversity, took care of its own. He talked about growing up in Georgia with nothing, coming here as a rookie, and now being part of the Boston sports family.

  “I represent this fucking city,” Kinjo said. “With pride.”

  “The FCC phone bank just exploded,” I said.

  “Spoken from the heart,” Z said.

  We opened up our breakfast sandwiches and ate on a fine, chilly fall morning. The sky was thick with gray clouds. Up the hill from us, two Hispanic men with leaf blowers worked to clear the sidewalks. Heywood’s neighbors had not been thrilled about the influx of visitors. Many had posted NO PARKING signs on their front lawns.

  “I know whoever took my son will be found and confronted by the city I love,” Kinjo said.

  I drank some coffee. I watched the men in my rearview, cleaning the sidewalks and street of debris. They had parked an old truck nearby, loaded with black plastic bags of leaves. The trees were still full of them, still coming down in piles.

  “That’s why I need y’all’s help,” Kinjo said. “I need the people of Boston to help me find my son.”

  Z and I did not speak. I put down the coffee in the Explorer’s nifty holder.

  “My son is only eight,” he said. “He is a good kid. He loves life. He loves to play and have fun. Who took him ain’t even human. Somebody out there knows who’s done this. They know the man or men who have broken into my world and did this, don’t deserve to live. What they have done to Akira and to my family is sick. It’s cowardly and a disgrace to this city.”

  Z nodded along as Kinjo spoke. I had not said “right on” in many years. I nearly said it.

  “That’s why I’ve come here to speak to this city and those who have supported me and my family since coming to Boston,” Kinjo said. “Whoever you are out there, you cowards who took my boy, you can e-mail me, tweet to me, write it up in the goddamn sky. But we are done. I am not playing any more games. I’m through. Y’all had my child for a week. I have done everything you said. And now you’ve gone away. So I guess now it’s my move.”

  I looked to Z. He had quit nodding. The leaf blowers walked closer to my Explorer, making a lot of racket, and I turned up the volume. Two television news trucks passed us in the opposite direction, heading up the hill.

  “I have five million dollars cash money in hand,” Kinjo said. “It’s neatly packed and ready to go. I just posted a picture of all that green onto my Twitter account. I wanted the kidnappers to check it out and see what they’re missing. Because this is as close as y’all gonna get to this money.”

  I realized that I had been holding my breath, and let it out as I listened.

  “I am offering five million dollars to anyone in Boston who will take these bastards out,” Kinjo said. “One of y’all listening knows who did this. You find them, kill them, and I’ll be proud to give up this money. Y’all messed with the wrong man and I’ve now laid down a bounty on your heads. I will not pay a cent—”

  Before Heywood finished his speech, I reached over and turned off the radio. The landscapers had tucked away their leaf blowers and equipment into their old truck. The old truck started with a plume of black smoke and puttered into the driveway and then backed out. Another television truck raced up the hill and nearly hit the truck. It had started to rain.

  “This is my fault,” I said.

  “Kinjo had this in mind,” Z said. “The pictures of his child in the jersey? It was too much. Calling him out as a man. You telling him the score just gave him an excuse.”

  I wasn’t so sure. We sat in the car for a long while. Neither of us ate or drank. The rain came on fast and hard, pounding the windshield. I turned on the wipers and sat, waiting for Kinjo to return. Z sprinted out into the weather to his car and back to the gym. He had to work a shift for Henry. Life goes on.

  48

  Kinjo did not return home.

  But he did call me two hours later.

  We met at a park bench overlooking the Charles River, within spitting distance of the Hatch Shell. I sat with him, and we did not speak for a long while. We watched the crew teams scull up and back across the river. The coaches yelled. The rowers pulled with great intensity. The day
was dark, drizzling, and a little cold. A fine day in Boston.

  “I don’t regret it,” Kinjo said.

  “May I ask why?”

  “Tired of being pushed around,” Kinjo said. “They gonna kill him anyway.”

  I nodded. The words could not be reversed. My reprimanding him for his decision was pointless. His phone kept chirping until he turned it off. He looked around to see if anyone recognized him.

  “Did they contact you again?” I said.

  “Nope.”

  I remained silent. Besides the crew teams, single rowers worked alone, with coaches in nearby boats yelling at them. The boats glided with no effort across the flat, calm water. Soon it would be frozen from here to MIT. Many had tried to walk across the ice, but there were often weak spots. I did not wish to ever try it. The Longfellow Bridge was built for a reason.

  “I fucking mean it,” Kinjo said. “If whoever took Akira winds up dead, I want you to bring the killer the money.”

  “What if the killer is part of the group that took him?”

  “Does it matter?” he said. “I want the man who set this up, set it in motion.”

  “Might be hard to tell who’s the bad guy from the rest.”

  “Maybe someone out there knows I mean business and are setting Akira free right now,” he said. “That the case, I want every cent in that person’s hand.”

  I rested my hands inside my coat pockets and adjusted my ball cap against the drizzle. A team of eight rowers was close enough for us to hear the coxswain tell them to pick it up some. The rowers were impervious to the cold, their overgrown shoulder muscles and deltoids bursting from tank tops.

  “You think I fucked up?” he said.

  “Not my call.”

  “If my boy is dead,” Kinjo said, “I’ll pay you whatever you want for as long as you want to find out who took him.”

  “I haven’t stopped trying.”

  “I don’t care if it’s ten years from now,” he said. “I want you to hunt down who did this and kill them. All that money is yours. You hear me?”

  I nodded. I stretched my legs out and watched the rowing. I did not want to explain that assassin was seldom part of my job description. Hawk wouldn’t mind, perhaps. A young couple with a child in a stroller jogged past us. The stroller balanced on three wheels, the kid exhilarated with the fast ride, the couple fit and steadfast at jumping puddles.

  “I won’t quit,” I said.

  Kinjo leaned forward and rested his head in his large hands. He wasn’t looking at the rowers, he was light-years away, thinking on revenge and killing and dark thoughts about what may have happened to his child.

  “My job isn’t to doubt you,” I said.

  Kinjo nodded. A hard wind buffeted along the river.

  “But others will,” I said. “A lot of your fans will question you. It could get very ugly.”

  “I don’t give two shits,” he said. “It’s not their kid. I laid it the hell down and we’ll see the next play. I’m not going to sit around and wait for Akira to be some kind of game to them.”

  “What if you don’t hear back?”

  “I guess I will have to fucking live with what I did.”

  “You prepared for that?”

  Kinjo didn’t answer.

  “And Nicole?”

  “She been trying to call me,” he said. “You know as well as I do what she’ll say.”

  “Perhaps you should have spoken to her before laying down the bounty.”

  Kinjo’s eyes turned hard and fast on me. He stared at me for a while, breathing hard and uneasy out of his nose. I thought for a moment he was going to hit me. But he just stood, hands on hips, and looked across the river to MIT.

  “I did what I thought was best for Akira,” he said. “I made the move. I have to live with it. But I’ll tell you something. I don’t regret it. It’s the right play. You’ll see. He’ll come back. That boy is tough. Me and him the same. Ain’t nothing going to get to my boy. He’s coming the hell back home.”

  I stood with him.

  “Goddamn it, Spenser,” Kinjo said. He was crying very softly and quietly.

  I put my hand on his shoulder. And he thanked me before walking away, down a very skinny trail toward the Hatch Shell.

  The trail was way too small for a guy like Kinjo Heywood. As he walked, he swatted at the overgrown branches that blocked his way.

  49

  Did you speak to Kinjo again?” Susan said.

  “No.”

  “Are you the one who advised him this was the best course of action?”

  “Of course not.”

  Susan’s last appointment of the day had canceled, so she decided to surprise me at my office. I leaned back in my chair and stared at her as she sat at the corner of my desk. Staring at Susan Silverman was the highlight of some long, dark days.

  “But you’re still blaming yourself,” Susan said.

  “What makes you say that?”

  She nodded at an open bottle of Bushmills next to my coffee mug. I shrugged and poured out a couple fingers more. It had been two days since the Sports Monstah bounty, and in those very long forty-eight hours, all communication from the kidnappers had ceased. Not a phone call. Not a tweet. Silence. All the talk around the case now focused on Kinjo, not Akira. The blame was harsh and consistent.

  “I understand why he did what he did,” Susan said. “Given the exact same circumstances, and if Akira had been my child, I may have done the same.”

  “You are far more tactical than emotional.”

  “A fifty-fifty chance, either way?” Susan said. “Why not hedge the bet and hope someone turns on the kidnappers?”

  “Then he shouldn’t have answered their messages,” I said. “He didn’t just confront them. He put a price on their heads.”

  Susan pondered, legs crossed, head crooked in thought. Susan, being Susan, looked elegant and smart as hell while pondering in a black dress with tall black heels. She was dressed for dinner at Grill 23. I was in jeans and a T-shirt and looked more appropriate for takeout at Taco Bell.

  “Did you try and talk to him?” Susan said.

  I nodded.

  “But he wouldn’t see you?”

  “He won’t see anyone,” I said. “Kinjo hasn’t gone back to practice or left his house since returning from the radio station. He might not admit it, but I’m sure he’s thinking long and hard about the choice he made.”

  “And what about the other leads?”

  “Cristal Heywood’s ex?” I said. “I turned over that information to the FBI. He was being grilled by the Feds at the same time Kinjo was getting his final ransom instructions.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Even at his chosen vocation, Kevin Murphy comes up short.”

  “And nothing more from the FBI or the police?”

  “I’ve spent the last two days going through every interview on the Antonio Lima killing,” I said. “I’ve spoken to the lead investigators, tracked down old witnesses, and located two new ones. I learned the Limas once lived in Boston, that the nightclub fight was over before it started, and that the woman who started it all seems to have vanished off the face of the earth.”

  “Lela?”

  “Lopes,” I said. “With an s.”

  “Strange that they were from Boston?”

  “Apparently Boston is where most Cape Verdeans move first,” I said. “Didn’t make them Pats fans.”

  “Perhaps you should look at this from another angle,” Susan said. “What if Kinjo had done as he was told and paid the ransom?”

  “The serial numbers would have been recorded,” I said. “Witnesses might have eventually stepped forward.”

  “And now?”

  “Now every lowlife criminal in greater Boston is looking for the kidnappers,” I s
aid. “This kidnapper or kidnappers have become a human Powerball ticket.”

  “So this screws the pooch?”

  “I’m glad Pearl isn’t here,” I said. “She’d find that offensive.”

  I drank a bit of the Bushmills. I had started to drink early, in an effort to think upon the little I knew about the case. As the shadows fell in my office, I knew it had become more of an escape from how I’d been feeling.

  “Can you do any more tonight?” Susan said.

  “Nope.”

  “Tomorrow?”

  “Yes.”

  Susan walked to my hat tree and grabbed my bomber jacket. She tossed the jacket to me, along with my ball cap. “I’m buying you dinner.”

  “As long as you won’t try and take advantage of me later.”

  “I make no promises.” Susan grinned.

  I grinned back but wasn’t feeling it much. The loss of a child seldom brought out my jovial side.

  Long evening shadows crept through my office windows. I stood up, slid into the jacket, and met Susan by the door. We walked down the steps and out onto Berkeley Street, heading away from the river and toward Grill 23.

  “How’d you know Grill 23?” she said.

  “The shoes,” I said. “I can always tell by the shoes.”

  We walked for a minute, Susan’s hand in mine. “Is Kinjo being watched?”

  I nodded. “His brother removed all the guns from the house,” I said. “There are still some local cops on duty.”

  “And will he speak to anyone about what’s going on?”

  “Nope,” I said. “And Nicole?”

  “Did I mention she is now a patient?”

  “I had hoped.”

  “I can’t discuss her state of mind,” Susan said. “But she does have the benefit of very solid family support. They’ve flown in to be with her. She’s a very tough, resilient woman.”

  “Who hasn’t given up.”

  Susan smiled.

  “Support is nice,” I said.