by Ace Atkins
At Seaport Boulevard, I caught a red light.
When it turned green, I didn’t move. Boston drivers, not being the most patient, expressed their dissatisfaction by honking. A few yelled some colloquial expressions. I peered in my side mirror, catching the sedan two cars back. As the light flashed yellow, I slid into the intersection and turned on red.
I raced over the bridge into the Seaport and, a few blocks over, whipped into a parking lot. It was one of those pay-as-you-go places, and I circled around the parked cars and came back out, nose to the road.
A half-minute later, the silver sedan flew past.
I waited about thirty seconds. And then I pulled out to follow the scruffy guy.
He wasn’t expecting me. I followed him in and out of the roads around the Seaport. Even with the wide, empty streets and long passages along the docks, it took him a few minutes to spot me.
I couldn’t say for sure. But I’m pretty damn sure he smacked his palm against his forehead.
It took a few minutes before he begged off. On Congress, right around the Westin and the Convention Center, he mashed his accelerator and tried to leave me toddling behind. I tailed him up and around to an on-ramp for 93. In the setting sun, in and around traffic, I chased the scruffy man all the way to Quincy.
Somewhere over the Neponset River, I lost him.
I was good. But not perfect.
I had the car’s make and model, but I couldn’t get a tag number. Maybe it was something. Or nothing. Perhaps he just caught a glance of himself in the rearview and decided to race home and clean up.
I found the nearest off-ramp, got off, and then headed back toward Charlestown.
Over the Charlestown Bridge, the modern buildings at MIT showed gold and silver, the river a coppery color as it twirled and swirled beneath me. I turned on Chelsea and dipped down into the Navy Yards. I had just picked up the phone to call Susan when I spotted yet another sedan turning out fast behind me.
And then another. At that moment, I knew there was a conspiracy against me eating pizza.
I drove faster along First Avenue and then took a hard turn up Seventh Street. As I cut up and over, a minivan pulled out from a side street and nearly T-boned my Toyota.
I braked suddenly, and the sedan came up hard and fast by the driver’s door. I pulled the .38 revolver from under the windbreaker in my passenger seat and aimed out my open window.
The sedan’s window dropped down. The sedan was a Cadillac. The man in the passenger seat was Vinnie Morris.
“Spenser?” he said. “What the fuck? You’re driving like a nutso. You know they got family shit around here. Christ.”
“Good to see you, Vinnie.”
“What the hell’s the matter with you?”
“Just taking precautions.”
“Yeah?” he said. “Well, goody for you. Do you have a minute?”
“For you, Vinnie?” I said. “Always.”
“Good,” Vinnie said. “’Cause me and you need to talk.”
26
SOME PEOPLE ARE GUNNING for you, ace,” Vinnie said.
“No kidding.”
“You see ’em?”
“I’ve seen one,” I said. “He needed a shave.”
We were upstairs in my condo. Vinnie had left his people parked down the street. His driver was the guy with the big stomach and the doo-wop hairdo who liked Hawaiian shirts. He wore a red one today, with green parrots and yellow flowers. He looked kind of like Magnum PI after he’d said to hell with the clean living and exercising.
“Older guy,” I said. “Scruffy gray beard. Drove a silver sedan. Maybe a Chevy.”
“Yeah,” Vinnie said. “That guy. We call him Scruff. Everyone knows him. He hangs out with the Joker and Two-Face, all those fucking guys.”
I looked at him. Vinnie cracked a smile.
“Want a beer?” I said. I walked to the refrigerator and opened the door.
“Got something with more kick?” he said. “Been a helluva day.”
I reached up into the cabinet and found a half-empty bottle of Wild Turkey 101. I got out a nice crystal glass and added a few cubes of ice. I poured a couple fingers and handed him the glass.
“Now we’re talking,” he said. “Come to Papa.”
Vinnie wandered around the condo with the bourbon, craning his neck around, checking out the empty brick walls and the big plate-glass window looking out onto the marina and harbor.
“Nice digs,” he said. “Lots of space. You can afford living like this? As a freakin’ snoop?”
“Sure,” I said. “Amazing what you can earn with honest work.”
“You call what you do honest?”
“Relatively speaking.”
I cracked open an Ipswich Ale and took a seat on the barstool. He continued to wander around my place, walking close to the glass, looking down at his guys, and then circling back.
“How’s Susan?”
“Good.”
“And the dog?”
“With Susan,” I said. “I was trying to bring them a pizza when I got rerouted.”
“Didn’t mean to scare you or nothing,” he said. “Like I said. We need to talk.”
He set his glass on the marble bar, condensation forming around the edges. He’d taken only a few sips, the whiskey and water a lovely caramel color. Vinnie leaned against the counter, nodding with his private thoughts. He wore a plaid cotton shirt with small pink-and-purple designs. A known shooter—and alleged boss—could pull off a shirt like that. His pants were a light gray, and he wore dark brown loafers with tiny tassels. Everything looked clean, crisp, and new.
“Who’s looking for me?” I said.
“Who else,” he said. “DeMarco’s people.”
I nodded. “Jackie himself?” I said. “Or the hired help?”
“Don’t know,” he said. “But some inquiries were made and I thought you’d better know. To, you know, watch your fucking ass.”
“Duly noted.”
“You talk to Devon Murphy?”
I nodded.
“And?”
“And he said the whole job was his idea.”
“I fucking knew it,” he said. “That shifty little bastard would’ve been the only one crazy enough to try and pull off a job at the Winthrop. I think he’s robbed about every museum in New England.”
“Problem is he was at Walpole at the time.”
“Shit.”
“Yep,” I said. “He acted like he knew who did it. But he wouldn’t tell me.”
“So it was a bust?”
“Not exactly,” I said. “He said he’d planned to bribe one of the museum guards that night with a woman of questionable character. I found said guard and the guard admitted he’d met a nice girl named Charity. Then the guard was nice enough to pass on a lead to a certain guy at a certain bar.”
Vinnie took a long swallow of the bourbon. I uncorked the bottle and poured him another. He didn’t interrupt my generosity until the glass was half full again.
“So you fucking got it?” he said. “Or one of those paintings. Right? I seen it in the papers.”
“That didn’t have anything to do with my investigation,” I said. “A local antiques broker contacted the museum.”
“Who?”
“Alan Garner.”
“Fucking Alan Garner?” he said. “This just gets richer and richer. Alan Garner. Gino’s little squeeze. Gino must’ve talked in his sleep.”
I sipped my beer. Outside the windows, the sky had turned a pinkish black in the twilight, the lights of Boston flickering on across the water. I checked my watch. Susan would be expecting her pizza just about now. Susan didn’t eat much but liked her food delivered on time.
“I promise you,” Vinnie said. “Gino never mentioned that score.”
“I know.”
“That must’ve been something Garner did later,” he said. “You know. On his own.”
“I agree.”
“So who’s this fucking guy with a fucking bar that the guard at the museum told you about?”
“Ever heard of Crazy Eddie Ciccone?”
Vinnie was in mid-sip and choked out a little bit of bourbon, some landing on his immaculate shirt. He flicked away the drops with his fingers and shook his head. “Don’t pour me any more liquor,” he said. “Okay? Cut me off.”
“I pulled his record,” I said.
“And?”
“Bad dude,” I said. “Professional wheelman. Armed robbery. Manslaughter. Ran some coke up from Florida.”
“A lot of coke,” he said. “Crazy Eddie. A fucking avalanche of coke.”
“For whom?”
“You really need to ask?” he said, bringing the glass to his lips.
“No,” I said. “But since you’re here.”
“Ciccone ran in DeMarco’s old man’s crew,” he said. “When the Old Man had his garage in Revere. They did all their business out of there, and Ciccone was one of his main guys. Did the pickups. Mainly hustled all that coke back then. There was a reason they called him crazy. He couldn’t fucking shut up. Yammering and yammering away.”
“Cocaine, the wonder drug.”
“You want to talk to him?”
“I tried,” I said. “Went to Walpole and he gave me the cold shoulder.”
“Of course he did,” Vinnie said. “He’d rather cut off his schmeckle than talk family business.”
“That’s loyal.”
“You bet,” he said. “But that’s what stirred up Jackie. Anything about the Old Man or any of his old man’s people and he goes bullshit on it. Don’t make it a thing unless you have to. Okay? I’d rather not have to step into a big flaming pile of crapola if I don’t have to.”
I nodded. Vinnie set his empty drink on the bar.
“Everyone’s just real jumpy about this on account of what happened to Benny Barboza.”
“And who is Barboza?” I said. “What happened to him?”
“Benny and Eddie ran in DeMarco’s crew,” Vinnie said. “Sometime in the late nineties, Benny got whacked. He was missing for a few weeks until some kids playing in a park noted the smell coming from the trunk of a car. It was a mess. Lots of blood. Gore. Surprised you don’t remember it from the papers.”
“Because of the heist?”
Vinnie picked up the drink, downed the rest, and set it back on the bar. He turned to leave.
“That’s up to you, ace,” he said. “All I know is that Benny got killed in a very unseemly fashion.”
27
I MADE IT TO SUSAN’S. We ate. We drank a bottle of cheap red wine. At some point, I don’t recall, she forced herself on me and committed unspeakable acts. The next morning, I changed into a pair of fresh jeans and a stylish pocket T-shirt and drove to Kane’s and then down to Roxbury and BPD headquarters. After a short wait, Quirk agreed to see me.
“If I’d known you’d brought donuts I would have let you in sooner.”
I cracked open the box from Kane’s on his desk, picked a cinnamon sugar, and took a seat. He used his advanced investigative technique to look over the rest and grabbed a coconut. He extracted it with a napkin, as if culling evidence from a crime scene.
“Be careful,” I said. “The coconut sprinkles might go flying.”
“I’ll take my chances,” Quirk said. “You’ve shown up early, by your standards. You’re shaved, clean as a ten-dollar pistol, and whistling shit from Babes in Arms. Either you hit the lottery or got lucky last night.”
“I got lucky last night,” I said. “Susan got me drunk on a cheap bottle of Chianti.”
“Is that all it takes?”
“Usually much less.”
As Quirk took a bite of the donut, a few shaved sprinkles fell across his desk like snow. He carefully set the donut on his day planner and reached for his coffee. The mug read World’s Greatest Grandfather. I had no doubt.
“And?” Quirk said.
“And what?”
“You didn’t come flitting around headquarters to deliver donuts like the freakin’ donut fairy,” he said. “Whattya want?”
“Benny Barboza.”
Quirk smiled. He picked up the donut and had a few more bites. Without a word, he stood and walked to his door. The office was glass, but the door was solid. It shut with a tight click and he sat back down and folded his extra-large hands in front of him. He continued to smile. His white hair had been buzzed short, making his features seem even more granitelike.
“This was the blood you warned me about.”
He nodded. “You want some coffee?” he said.
“Already drank a pot,” I said. “Benny ran with Old Man DeMarco’s crew in Revere. At the same time as the trouble with the Morellis over the coke.”
“Wow,” Quirk said. “Look who showed up for class. Gold fucking star, Spenser. Really. After all this time, you still astound me.”
“And you think Benny Barboza was tied in with the Winthrop job?”
Quirk shrugged, finished the donut, and neatly folded the napkin before tossing it in the trash. He dusted what remained off his hands and picked up his coffee mug. He didn’t answer, only sipped his coffee. Someone appeared at the glass wall behind me and he held up his index finger to give him a minute. Quirk’s finger loomed as large as a stop sign.
“Why didn’t you just tell me when we had lunch?” I said.
“Wouldn’t be professional just to tell you everything,” he said. “Would it? Besides, I like to keep you on your toes, Spenser. I just was curious how long it would take for you to circle on back to the Barboza murder.”
“And how’d I do?” I said.
“Slower than molasses.”
To console myself, I finished the donut. Quirk stared at me for a moment and, without breaking the gaze, yanked open a desk drawer, extracted a file, and tossed it onto the donut box. “I’ve had this waiting for a week,” he said.
I picked it up and opened it. Photocopies of the Barboza murder case file.
“Barboza was a creep,” Quirk said. “A suspect in a half-dozen killings for the Old Man. We couldn’t get him on any of them. They called him Benny the Blade because all the folks he sliced and diced. If you ask me, he got what was coming to him. Justice was served.”
“Boston justice.”
“It’s still justice,” Quirk said. “Don’t think for a minute that it doesn’t mean something to the victims’ families.”
“Who probably weren’t nice people themselves.”
Quirk shrugged. He picked up the mug extolling his virtues as a grandfather and leaned back into his chair. A few more framed photographs had joined the ever-present glass cube of family on his desk. I’d heard he had a grandson who’d just joined the department as a rookie patrol officer. What Boston needed was more Quirks. If they could clone him, crime would be at an all-time low.
“When Frank and I worked this thing, we didn’t give a flying fuck about some missing painting,” he said. “Sure, we cared if he had it and it was a motive. But we worked Homicide, not Robbery. It was just a footnote. A damn asterisk in the file. We turned the information over to Bobby Wright, who in turn turned it over to the Feds.”
“Wright never mentioned Barboza.”
“Why would he?” Quirk said, smiling. “You didn’t freakin’ ask him. Did you?”
“Okay,” I said. “Do you think he was part of the crew who stole the painting?”
“Yep.”
“And do you think he was killed because of the painting?”
“I have no idea,” he said. “In case you’re wondering about the depth of our friendship, that’s officially an open case. I hear from B
arboza’s sister every year on the anniversary of the murder and she reams me out a new a-hole.”
“Does she think it’s about the Winthrop?”
“I don’t know, Spenser,” Quirk said. “Why don’t you ask her about your goddamn missing painting? And by the way, I do have official police work to do beyond just meeting with lousy Boston snoops who bring me donuts.”
“Great donuts,” I said. “Right?”
He shrugged and nodded.
“As we both know, knowing and proving are two very different things.”
Quirk nodded again.
“Who killed Barboza?”
“We liked the Morellis,” he said. “Jimmy Morelli called it and it got done. They were battling it out for a mountain of cocaine bigger than the Matterhorn back then. Not to disappoint your current theories, but I don’t think Barboza’s death had a damn thing to do with the Winthrop. He was just caught in the crossfire of a war in the North End. When it gets down to it, it’s all about money, power, or sex.”
“To be clear, was there any evidence of the Winthrop job during your investigation?”
“Only talk,” he said. “It’s in the files.”
“Did the name Crazy Eddie Ciccone come up?”
“Of course it did,” he said. “That guy had been a pain in our nuts for years. But like I said, read the freakin’ files. Old Man DeMarco, Benny Barboza, Crazy Eddie Ciccone . . . all of those assholes worked out of that garage in Revere.”
“You think Jimmy Morelli knows anything?”
Quirk laughed and shook his head. “Why don’t you just go ask him,” he said. “That son of a bitch is tougher to open up than a green walnut.”
“I heard he’s retired.”
“Ain’t it a kick,” he said. “The hoods get to slow down and live the easy life, while the crime dogs like us are still busting our hump. Doesn’t seem fair, does it?”
I stood up and offered my hand. Shaking hands with Marty Quirk might break a few knuckles.
“Heard the commissioner is retiring at the end of the year.”