Rough Weather

by Robert B. Parker

  It was easy to find Quirk. I could have probably located him from an orbiting spacecraft. There were half a dozen cruisers, some with the lights still rotating, at least two unmarked police cars, an ambulance, the coroner’s truck, yellow tape, flashbulbs, an amplitude of gawkers, and a couple of television news trucks at the edge of the scene. A uniformed cop stopped me after I parked behind one of the TV trucks and got out.

  “Crime scene, bud,” he said. “Got business here?”

  “Quirk asked me to come by,” I said.

  The cop nodded and turned and yelled.

  “Captain?”

  Quirk looked over, saw me, nodded his head, and gestured me toward him. The patrolman who had stopped me grinned, and gestured me in with a big sweep while he pretended to lift a velvet rope.

  “Right this way, sir.”

  I walked over to Quirk, who was standing with a detective I didn’t know, looking down at a body covered with a tarp.

  “Know anybody named Leonard Rezendes?” Quirk said.

  “Know a Leonard works for Tony Marcus,” I said. “Don’t think I ever knew his last name.”

  Quirk nodded.

  “He’s had several. But Rezendes is what’s on his driver’s license.”

  Quirk bent down and turned back the tarp. It was hard to be sure because his head had been shot up pretty good, but it seemed to be the Leonard I knew.

  “I think that’s him,” I said.

  “It is,” Quirk said. “Some kids called nine-one-one couple hours ago.”

  “They around?” I said.

  “They wouldn’t give a name, and there was no one here when we arrived,” Quirk said. “I got a guy canvassing the crowd.”

  “Doesn’t appear to be accidental,” I said.

  “Wow!” said Quirk.

  “I’m a detective,” I said. “It comes pretty easy.”

  “At least four rounds to the head,” Quirk said. “Probably forties. We found four shell casings.”

  “So he was done here.”

  “Unless they brought the casings and threw them around to fool us,” Quirk said.

  “Boy, you must be a detective, too,” I said.

  “And a captain,” Quirk said. “Lot of blood on the ground.”

  “Hard to fake that,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Quirk said, and grinned. “We assume he was killed here.”

  “See?” I said.

  “Leonard was Rugar’s connection to Tony,” Quirk said.

  “Yes.”

  “You think it got him killed?”

  “Something did,” I said.

  “His wallet’s still in his pants,” Quirk said. “Seven hundred dollars. His Rolex is still there; somebody told me it was worth about twenty thousand dollars.”

  “For a watch?” I said.

  Quirk shrugged.

  “Wasn’t a robbery,” Quirk said.

  “Four in the back of the head,” I said. “Sounds like an execution.”

  “Any other thoughts?” Quirk said. “You being a detective and all.”

  “Rugar killed him to break his connection to the attempt on me,” I said. “Or maybe Leonard did it without Tony, and it’s Tony’s way of explaining to him how wrong that was.”

  “And breaking the connection to him,” Quirk said, “in the process.”

  “True,” I said.

  “It’s still all speculation,” Quirk said.

  “At least,” I said, “we’re starting to have things to speculate about.”

  “Which is what we do,” Quirk said.

  “Until we know something,” I said.

  “Which we will,” Quirk said.

  38

  Hawk and I were working out at the Harbor Health Club, which was becoming accessible again as the Big Dig went out not with a bang but a whimper. Even though the place was now more upscale than Buckingham Palace, Henry Cimoli, who ran the place, still kept a small boxing room in back as some sort of gesture toward us, or maybe to his roots.

  “Susan say you going out too much by yourself,” Hawk said as he worked on the uppercut bag.

  “I figure they might let things slide a little after the last shot at me went so bad.”

  “Rugar don’t let nothing slide,” Hawk said.

  “This has been atypical Rugar,” I said, “since they started playing ‘Here Comes the Bride’ on Tashtego Island.”

  “Maybe stuff we don’t know,” Hawk said.

  “That’s for sure,” I said.

  I was throwing hooks at the heavy bag. Body, body, head, head.

  “I mean maybe he got problems distracting him, why he farmed the hit out on you,” Hawk said.

  “He doesn’t normally do that,” I said. “Sees it as being dependent on other people, I think.”

  “You ever think it a fuckup?” Hawk said.

  “Tashtego?”

  Hawk nodded.

  “Didn’t go the way it was supposed to,” Hawk said. “And Rugar be scrambling ever since?”

  “Well, it sure isn’t vintage Rugar,” I said.

  Martin Quirk came into the boxing room. He nodded at Hawk. Hawk nodded back.

  To me, Quirk said, “I need you to look at another body.”

  “Everybody’s got to be good at something,” I said to Hawk.

  “Looking at bodies?” Hawk said.

  “It’s a gift,” I said.

  I untaped my hands, put a leather jacket on over my sweats, put my gun in a side pocket of the jacket. Small gun today, five-shot .38 with a two-inch barrel. Strictly defensive.

  “You probably safe with the captain,” Hawk said. “I meet you here when you through?”

  “I’ll bring him back,” Quirk said.

  Hawk nodded and went back to the uppercut bag. I followed Quirk out to the street, where his car was illegally parked at the curb, impeding traffic. With a callous disregard for anyone else driving at the time, Quirk drove us swiftly to Boston City Hospital, where I was able to look at the distorted corpse of a man I may have killed.

  “Found him by the Charles River Dam,” Quirk said, “bumping around the lock.”

  “Pretty sure it’s him,” I said. “I only saw him for a minute, and he’s been in the water for a while.”

  “No ID,” Quirk said. “No DNA match in the database. They’re trying to lift some fingerprints, but he’s pretty waterlogged.”

  “You get a slug out of him?”

  “His head,” Quirk said.

  I nodded.

  “We’ll go over to the lab,” I said. “I’ll fire a test round for you. If the slugs match, it’s him.”

  “The driver probably dumped him soon as he cleared from you,” Quirk said.

  “Which would put him in the river somewhere this side of the BU bridge,” I said.

  “And the river brought him down.”

  “Surprising no one spotted him,” I said.

  “Might have been under for a while till he started to puff up,” Quirk said.

  I nodded.

  “Nice,” I said.

  Quirk gestured with his head, and the morgue attendant slid the drawer shut.

  “Come on,” Quirk said. “I’ll buy you lunch.”

  “What could be better,” I said.

  There was a sandwich shop up Albany Street a little where Quirk bought sandwiches and coffee for us. I declined the sandwich and drank the coffee while we sat in Quirk’s car and watched the activity at the wholesale flower market across the street.

  Without looking at me Quirk said, “And the two goons got shanked.”

  “My goons?” I said. “That tried to kill me?”

  “Yep. In the jail yard, yesterday. Guard found them both in a corner. Throats cut.”

  “Jesus Christ,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Quirk said. “Last man standing.”

  “Tony got to them,” I said.

  “Or Rugar,” Quirk said. “Pretty sure it was an inmate or a guard.”

  “What a pleasure to watch a trai
ned mind work,” I said.

  “Years on the job,” Quirk said.

  “Anybody talk to them, before their demise?”

  Quirk shook his head.

  “Epstein finally found us a translator,” Quirk said. “He and I were scheduled to interview them today.”

  “What a coincidence,” I said. “Was their attorney going to be present?”

  “Yep.”

  “Good old Lamar,” I said. “Murder weapon?”

  Quirk shrugged.

  “Maybe a utility-knife blade,” Quirk said. “We’re looking into it.”

  “What do you expect to discover?”

  “Zip,” Quirk said.

  “Any suspects?”

  “Everybody,” Quirk said. “You got yourself into something pretty ugly.”

  “Yeah, but at least I’m not making any progress,” I said.

  “Assuming it’s all related to Tashtego,” Quirk said, “I count eleven people killed so far. Two of them by you.”

  “I know,” I said.

  “For what?” Quirk said.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “Me neither,” Quirk said.

  “Don’t feel bad,” I said. “Epstein and Healy don’t know, either.”

  Quirk finished his sandwich and carefully wiped his mouth on a paper napkin.

  “The funny thing is,” he said, “we know who did the original crime. But we don’t know why, and we can’t find him.”

  “Yet,” I said.

  “Hawk walking around with you?”

  “Most of the time,” I said.

  “I was you,” Quirk said, “I’d make it all the time.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Nobody in this deal seems to mind killing people.”

  “And you are probably a sentimental favorite to be next,” Quirk said.

  “Would you miss me?” I said.

  “No,” Quirk said.

  39

  The guy in the morgue had in fact been killed with a bullet from my gun. So we sort of knew who he was. Of course, we still didn’t have a name for him. Every time we learned something, it wasn’t enough. According to Rule 4 in Spenser’s Detecting for Dummies, if you aren’t getting anywhere and you don’t know what to do, go annoy somebody. So Hawk and I went off to annoy Tony Marcus.

  Ty-Bop and Junior were in evidence. Ty-Bop was the shooter, a skinny kid wearing a watch cap pulled way down over his ears. He seemed to be listening to something the rest of us couldn’t hear, and moving to its beat. Junior was the muscle, vast and thick and stolid.

  Hawk lounged at the bar near Ty-Bop. Ty-Bop would kill anything that Tony pointed him toward. But that aside, he always seemed to admire Hawk. He never said anything, but he watched him all the time, the way a schoolyard player would watch Michael Jordan.

  Junior brought me into Tony’s office and patted me down.

  “Got a gun, Tony,” Junior said.

  “Let him keep it,” Tony said. “I just want to know he’s not wearing a wire.”

  “Nope,” Junior said. “No wire.”

  Tony gestured him out, and Junior closed the door behind him as he left.

  “Gives us a little more room,” I said.

  Tony smiled.

  “He’s a big one,” Tony said.

  “Sorry about Leonard,” I said.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “How’s your daughter,” I said.

  “No worse,” Tony said.

  “Still with . . .”

  “No,” Tony said.

  I nodded. Tony waited.

  “We’ve known each other for a while,” I said.

  “Uh-huh.”

  Tony was beautifully dressed in a brown tweed jacket with a light-blue windowpane pattern. He had on a blue shirt and a brown silk tie.

  “We’ve done each other some favors,” I said.

  “Uh-huh,” Tony said. “’Specially the time you got me sent to jail.”

  “We were much younger,” I said.

  “Everyone was,” Tony said. “You helped me out with my kid, couple years ago.”

  “I did,” I said.

  “You know I’m not wired. Anything we say in here is off the record and doesn’t leave this office,” I said. “I’m not after you.”

  Tony smiled faintly.

  “Oh, good,” he said.

  “You remember Rugar,” I said.

  “He was with you in Marshport,” Tony said.

  “As was Leonard,” I said.

  Tony took out a slim cigar and snipped the end and lit it carefully with a silver desk lighter.

  “Rugar was involved in a big-deal kidnapping on Tashtego Island a while back,” I said. “I was there.”

  “Heard about that,” Tony said.

  “So here’s a theory I’m working on,” I said. “I’ve been pecking away at the Tashtego thing since it went down. Somewhere along the way I got too close; I wish I knew where. And Rugar decides I have to go. But for whatever reason, he doesn’t want to do it himself, so he remembers Leonard from Marshport, and he asks Leonard to take care of it for him. Probably for a good price.”

  Tony took the cigar from his mouth and looked at the lit end, seemed satisfied with the way it was burning, and put the cigar back in his mouth.

  “But Leonard doesn’t do it himself,” I said. “Instead, he hires these guys from Far Goofystan, and they botch it.”

  Tony let out a soft puff of smoke. I always like the smell of a good cigar.

  “And Leonard panics,” I said. “He knows he shouldn’t have gone around you and he doesn’t know what else to do, so he tells you. You know that the trail will eventually lead back to you unless you take action. So you send Lamar down to see what these guys are likely to do, and get them out if he can. And you kill Leonard to underscore his fecklessness. Lamar can’t get these guys out, but he explains their language limitations, and that so far he’s the only one can talk with them. So you got a couple days. You use the time to make arrangements, and when Quirk and Epstein schedule an interview with their own interpreter, Lamar gives you the news and you have the two goons killed.”

  “Fecklessness,” Tony said.

  “It is also my theory that you got nothing to do with Tashtego except that Leonard dragged your name in.”

  Tony blew some more cigar smoke around.

  “Fecklessness,” he said. “I like it. Fecklessness.”

  I waited.

  “The theory makes sense,” Tony said after a while.

  “Anything I might have missed,” I said.

  “Nothing that matters,” Tony said.

  “And I shouldn’t anticipate any problems from your, ah, organization,” I said.

  “Not if you are discreet,” Tony said.

  “Any idea where Leonard got these guys?”

  “Might have been a guy he met up in Marshport,” Tony said. “There was some Afghani influence, wasn’t there?”

  “Boots Podolak was in business with an Afghani warlord named Haji Haroon,” I said.

  “It wouldn’t be feckless,” Tony said, “to think there could be a connection with Leonard.”

  “Worth looking into?” I said.

  “Dead end,” Tony said. “Somebody aced Leonard’s only contact up there.”

  “Could that someone be Ty-Bop?” I said.

  “The boy gets restless,” Tony said. “Trust me, there’s no loose ends up there.”

  “So,” I said, “you got this buttoned up pretty tight.”

  “I didn’t initiate this. I wouldn’t have permitted it. I don’t need any of this. It interferes with business.”

  “So you closed it down.”

  Tony nodded.

  “Except for Lamar,” I said. “That’s how I got to you.”

  “Lamar is my attorney,” Tony said.

  “And,” I said, “being your attorney, he can invoke privilege whenever he needs to.”

  “And will,” Tony said.

  40

  It was the way it was supp
osed to be in Boston in November. Gray and kind of chilly and a steady rain falling. Cars had their headlights on at ten in the morning when Hawk and I drove to Epstein’s office in Government Center.

  “I be out here by the elevators,” Hawk said. “I not going in any FBI office.”

  “J. Edgar’s ghost will be grateful,” I said.

  “You think it wearing a dress?” Hawk said.

  I went in. Epstein pushed a folder across the desk at me as I sat down.

  “Been working with our forensic accounting folks,” Epstein said.

  “The excitement never stops,” I said.

  “You can learn a lot from accountants,” Epstein said.

  “I have no doubt,” I said. “What’d you learn?”

  “Van Meer and Bradshaw are both nearly broke,” Epstein said.

  “Can Heidi take credit for that?”

  “She costs both of them a sickening amount of money,” Epstein said. “Van Meer didn’t help himself much by being a drunk and slopping through most of his inheritance. Bradshaw pays a huge alimony, and he still maintains that private island. Essentially, since they’ve split, for her.”

  “Tashtego,” I said.

  “Yep. He was never as rich as Van Meer in the first place, though from the looks of what he spent, he tried to pretend he was. If it was to impress her, then she pretty well cleaned him out.”

  “That college professor was lucky to escape with his life,” I said.

  “Her first husband, yeah. Other than sort of a modest income from what investments he still has working for him,” Epstein said, “Bradshaw’s biggest asset is a very large life insurance policy with Heidi as beneficiary.”

  “I were Bradshaw,” I said, “that might make me nervous. How about Van Meer.”

  “He cashed his in for the surrender value,” Epstein said.

  “So he’s not worth much to them dead or alive,” I said.

  “The bank is moving to foreclose on his condo,” Epstein said.

  “When you talk with him, he seems to have not a care in the world,” I said. “Except maybe he still misses Heidi.”

  “He’s a drunk,” Epstein said. “Drunks are good at denial.”

  “Have to be, I suppose,” I said. “How about the pre-nup and stuff.”