Robert B. Parker's Old Black Magic

by Ace Atkins

  “How do you know there was a driver?” I said.

  “C’mon,” he said. “There’s always a driver. Okay, you’re looking for a three-man crew. You sure they’re from around here?”

  “No.”

  “You know what they look like?”

  “No.”

  “You know who might’ve ordered the job?”

  “No.”

  “So,” Vinnie said. “Let me get this straight. You don’t know jack shit.”

  I shrugged. “I knew you’d understand my situation,” I said. “Get to the heart of the matter.”

  “Did they try and ransom off the painting?”

  I shook my head.

  “Or use it to knock some time off someone’s sentence?”

  “Not that I heard.”

  “You know there was a lot of action going on twenty years ago,” he said. “DeMarco’s old man was fighting for his territory in the North End. Broz was getting old and weak. Gino was sitting pretty, taking a cut of the action. I don’t know. You’re talking about a city full of hoods. It would be easier to make you a list of people I know who wouldn’t pull a job like that.”

  “I don’t think they were pros,” I said. “The paintings were damaged. Some of their movements were pretty clumsy.”

  “They got away with it?” he said. “Didn’t they?”

  “Sure.”

  “Then they’re pros,” he said. “At least now. I don’t know, Spenser. I mean, that was a long time ago. Last time I did you a favor, you screwed me.”

  I nodded. “That wasn’t my intention.”

  “But it came back around,” he said. “What do they say? Fool me once. Shame on me?”

  “Not exactly,” I said. “But I won’t fool you. I just need a little direction. Lots of people we knew from back then have gone on to that big penitentiary in the sky.”

  “Ain’t it the truth,” Vinnie said. “But where they’re headed ain’t in the sky.”

  I smiled. I offered my hand. Vinnie took a moment, nodded, and then set the cigarette at the edge of the mug. He shook his head and then my hand. “Okay, okay,” he said. “I’ll check around. But no promises.”

  5

  I MET MARTIN QUIRK LATER that day on the Greenway across from the Boston Harbor Hotel. A bunch of food trucks had gathered on the median, circled together like old-time chuck wagons, selling everything from gourmet grilled-cheese sandwiches to sushi. Quirk had double-parked his unmarked black unit in front of the hotel. You could do things like that when you were the assistant superintendent of Boston police.

  “Thanks for coming.”

  “You said you’d buy lunch,” he said. “I figured you meant Trade.”

  “I like Trade,” I said. “But I was in the mood for some Japanese fried chicken.”

  “What in the fuck is Japanese fried chicken?”

  I pointed to a purple food truck parked on the crushed gravel. The logo read Moyzilla and featured a friendly Godzilla-like creature holding a pair of chopsticks.

  “Asian comfort food.”

  “I like Asian,” Quirk said. “And I like fried chicken. But not too sure I’ll like ’em together.”

  “Might I recommend some beef noodle soup and spring rolls?”

  “You might,” Quirk said. “But I have on a nice tie. Soup always gets on the tie.”

  “And Marty Quirk can’t have a spot on his tie.”

  “Hell, no, Spenser,” he said. “Unlike you, I have a reputation to uphold. But I’ll get the soup, against my better judgment.”

  We ordered the food and took a seat at a picnic table. The rain had stopped, but the sun still hadn’t shone all day. Warm and gray. The smell of salt off the harbor blew in, with seagulls riding the wind high overhead. Quirk had on a gray suit with a crisp white shirt punctuated with a red tie clipped together with a silver pin. He was a big man, nearly my size, with gray hair and hands like a bricklayer’s.

  “How’s Frank?”

  “Getting used to the new captain,” he said. “But you know Frank. He doesn’t like change. After all these years, still won’t pay an extra buck for a decent cigar. I definitely don’t miss the smell of those damn things.”

  “Can we step back and talk for a moment about the past?” I said. “Some people from the old days.”

  “What is this?” Quirk said. “This Is Your Life? I’m not ready to retire. Not yet.”

  “I’m trying to get a sense of some of the crews working Boston in the late nineties,” I said.

  “Something you don’t know?” he said. “What is this? A joke?”

  “Thieves,” I said. “Snatch-and-grab. Bank robbers. Fences. Crews who will do anything for money.”

  “Pick up the phone book,” Quirk said. He nodded toward the Moyzilla truck. “I think our food’s ready.”

  We retrieved the food from the window and sat back down. I ate the chicken with my hands. Deep-fried and boneless, with lots of Sriracha. Throwing caution to the wind, Quirk lifted a plastic spoon and blew on the beef soup.

  “Not my line,” Quirk said. “Unless they killed someone.”

  “Who would know?”

  “The guys who worked robbery back then,” he said. “Bobby Wright ran the squad. But he retired five years ago.”

  “Can you get me his number?”

  “For a bowl of soup?” Quirk said. “Oh, sure, Spenser. Anything for a big spender like you.”

  “Is it not good?”

  Quirk raised the spoon, gave me a hard eye, and then tasted it. He nodded his approval.

  “A lot of ghosts from that time,” Quirk said. “Too many dead. You remember the shootings in the North End after the Old Man went to the joint and Joe Broz got soft? No one to keep the order. The fucking Italians were turning our nice little town into a goddamn Coppola movie. DeMarco’s people in a war with the Morellis. We had one, two stiffs a week.”

  “And DeMarco came out on top.”

  “If you can call it that,” he said. “And now you got his numb-nuts fucking son running his show in Revere.”

  “I’ve dealt with him,” I said. “A few times.”

  “Yeah, talk to Bobby,” Quirk said. “He’d be a good guy to help. Just what are you looking for?”

  “Would you believe a priceless painting?”

  “No,” he said. “I wouldn’t.”

  “I am currently in the employ of the Winthrop Museum.”

  Something shifted in Quirk’s eye. He shook his head before taking a sip off the spoon, a little broth dropping onto his bright red tie. “Fuck me.”

  “Well,” I said. “You gave it your best shot.”

  “I keep extras in the trunk,” he said. He dabbed a napkin into his bottled water and wiped the stain.

  “Remember the heist?”

  “Everyone remembers the heist,” he said. “But no one got killed that night. So it wasn’t my business.”

  “What about other nights?” I said. “Later.”

  “You never change, Spenser,” Quirk said. “Always sticking your nose in places it doesn’t belong.”

  “Didn’t I see you in The Globe last week?” I said. “Bill Brett took a picture of you and McGruff the Crime Dog?”

  “Christ Almighty,” he said. “Eat your fucking fried chicken.”

  “Always good to see you, Quirk.”

  He reached for his cell phone and tapped out a message. After, he picked up an eggroll and started to eat. “Texted Wright,” he said. “I’ll let you know what he says.”

  “I ran down the same question to Vinnie Morris.”

  “And what did Vinnie say?”

  “He says Gino Fish had nothing to do with those paintings.”

  “Yep,” Quirk said. “That’s what a guy like Morris would say. You really trust him?”

 
“I do.”

  “I hate to break it to you, but there is no honor system among us and thieves,” he said. “That’s why they’re freakin’ thieves. They keep to their own.”

  Two young women in black sports bras and very tiny running shorts trotted by our table, heading down Atlantic. We both continued to eat, watching as they passed. Their muscular legs and taut abs shone with sweat.

  “When did people stop wearing clothes?” he said.

  “You have an objection to the current trend in sporting goods?”

  “Nope,” Quirk said. “I’m a cop. Just making a professional observation.”

  His cell phone buzzed. He picked it up, chewing, and placed it back on the picnic table. “Okay,” he said. “Bobby will meet with you. Five o’clock at Faneuil Hall work? He’s got an office close by.”

  I nodded.

  He tapped the phone and then finished his soup. He pushed away the bowl and gave me a hard stare. “How ’bout a friendly warning?”

  “Is there any other kind?” I said.

  “Keep a wide berth around the department,” he said. “You won’t find cops like Frank and me anymore. Those days are over.”

  “You guys were real sweethearts.”

  “But we had an understanding.”

  I shrugged. I ate a little more chicken, the Sriracha sweet and hot at the corners of my mouth.

  “Now?” he said. “Folks like Captain Glass? They’d just as soon put a cigarette out in your eye than work with a private cop. They’ll do everything they can do to jam you up if you get in their way.”

  “How would I get in their way on a painting that’s been missing for twenty years?”

  “Oh,” he said. “You’ll see.”

  I didn’t move, only looked up as Quirk gathered his trash. “A little hint?”

  “And spoil your fun?” he said. “No fucking way.”

  6

  I FOUND BOBBY WRIGHT a few hours later at the Quincy Market, sitting outside by the Red Auerbach statue. Like Auerbach, he was smoking a cigar. Both of them puffing away, one lifeless and bronze and the other smallish and black. Wright was dressed in a black polo and khakis with gray running shoes. His shirt had been embroidered with the name Wright Consulting.

  “I guess ex-cops can smoke in public.”

  “You get a freebie smoking by Red.”

  “Great coach.”

  “One of the first to integrate the game, man,” he said.

  I nodded and we shook hands. I took a seat beside him. The cobblestones near the Market were uneven and pockmarked with puddles.

  “Winthrop Museum?” Wright said. A halo of smoke around his head. “Quirk told me. I was off that case in less than twenty-four hours. Feds wanted it all to themselves.”

  “How far did you get within those twenty-four hours?”

  “Quick at the scene,” he said. “Locked it down. Took pictures and interviewed the guards. I ran some background checks. But like I said, the Feds wanted us out of the way. They flew what they called the Antiquities Unit up from Washington. Assholes. Local guy was okay. I think if he’d had any choice, we would’ve all worked together.”

  “Epstein?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Epstein. You know him?”

  I nodded. Wright smoked the cigar, taking a moment to admire it burning in his hand. He had his legs stretched out in front of him, crossed at the ankles. He flicked a little ash off a neatly clipped mustache as the Market began to fill with tourists for happy hour. A throng of hooting women in pink boas passed us. They wore T-shirts that announced ASHLEY’S OFF THE MARKET.

  “Epstein would know a lot more than me,” he said. “It’s been a damn long time. People get old. Die. Shit changes. I’d maybe go back and interview some of the witnesses. I think some kids from Northeastern saw the men sitting in their car before the heist.”

  “I’ve got the original case file coming.”

  “It’s thin,” Wright said. “Museum security was a joke. They had a few surveillance cameras and motion sensors. All the thieves had to do was knock on the door and the morons opened up. After they got what they wanted, they stole the tapes and took off without a trace. But you got to ask yourself, why would a guard open up in the middle of the night completely against museum regulations? Who’s that stupid?”

  “The guard thought they were cops.”

  “This guy wasn’t supposed to open up for anyone,” Wright said. “Not even if Miss Winthrop came back from the dead and offered free blow jobs.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “That’s a pretty good reason.”

  Wright laughed. “Say, what’s your deal with Quirk?” he said. “The captain, I mean the superintendent, doesn’t seem to do favors for anybody. How long have you two known each other?”

  “Shortly after the Pleistocene era,” I said. “We were investigating the suspicious death of a woolly mammoth.”

  “Quirk and I both worked out of the old headquarters on Berkeley Street,” he said. “Now it’s a fucking luxury hotel. Just like Charles Street Jail.”

  Some classical musicians had set up near the steps to the Quincy Market. I couldn’t see them but heard the classical orchestration of “Rocky Road to Dublin.”

  “Do you recall the name of the guard you suspected?”

  “No,” he said. “But you’ll see in my report. We spent most of our time with him. The other guy had to go to the hospital. He’d been knocked in the head by one of the thieves. Really nasty wound. These weren’t nice people.”

  “Didn’t expect them to be,” I said. “What about the Staties? Did they help out?”

  “Just to collect evidence,” he said. “They took photos of the big mess the thieves left. Fingerprints everywhere. Got some shoe prints. All those busted picture frames. We all thought this was going to turn out to be some kind of ransom situation. Everyone at the museum was waiting by the phone that never rang once.”

  “Did anything else strike you as weird about the theft?”

  “The whole damn thing was weird,” Wright said. “The security was terrible. The guards were untrained. I mean, I was shocked it hadn’t happened before. Like everyone else, I thought it was pretty much a smash-and-grab and we’d catch the bastards before the end of the week.”

  “But the Feds went in another direction.”

  “Damn college guys with tailored suits and fancy-ass ties,” he said. “Arrogant as hell. They were looking for Tom Cruise hanging from the rafters, not actual hoods. I tried to talk them into using our resources. But they figured they knew best. Twenty years later, here we are.”

  “Where would you have gone? Who would you have pulled in to question?”

  “Oh, man,” Wright said, taking a pull on the cigar. “I knew you were going to ask me that. When I retired, I tried to forget about all those sonsabitches. There are a lot of people in this town who get up in the morning, eat breakfast and get dressed, then head out and look for some shit to steal. It’s a profession like any other.”

  “Butcher, baker, candlestick maker.”

  “I’ll have to think about who did the high-end stuff,” Wright said. “I would think whoever robbed the Winthrop would also be into home invasions. I would’ve started running through my CIs at the time, finding out what they were hearing. See who was in the joint and out. There are a few that come to mind. Guys who like the real fancy stuff. They have buyers in New York. Lots of antique furniture, crystal, rugs.”

  “You’re talking Gino Fish.”

  “He’d have been high on the list,” he said. “But that asshole’s dead.”

  “So I keep hearing.”

  “What makes me think that Fish wasn’t involved is that they left the museum a goddamn mess,” he said. “They had free run of the place and left with only three paintings. Two of them weren’t even the most valuable in the collection.
It’s like they had one mission, maybe for the big one, and picked up the rest on the way out.”

  “Like someone sent them.”

  “I think they were thugs for hire,” he said. “Snatch-and-grab. Real simple.”

  “And how does that help narrow down the suspects?”

  “Ain’t nothing but fine and upstanding people in the city of Boston, man,” Wright said, grinning. He blew a wide smoke ring that held together for a few seconds and then dissipated.

  “Do you know if the evidence ever turned up anything?”

  “I doubt it,” he said. “I can’t say for sure. But I’m sure they weren’t so goddamn stupid they didn’t wear gloves. They took the videotape. The guards didn’t know what hit them.”

  “You said the guards were suspects?”

  “Or just damn stupid,” he said. “The guy I interviewed kept on asking when he could leave. He had to get to some damn comic-book convention. Real weirdo. He was the kind of guy who stayed on the computer in his momma’s basement. You know what I’m saying?”

  I nodded. I lifted my hand in the Vulcan salute.

  “Witnesses?”

  “Couple kids who were drunk out of their minds, walking back to their dorms,” he said. “They couldn’t tell us if it was two or three men. Or really what they looked like. All they recalled is that they were cops.”

  “Type of car?”

  “I don’t remember,” Wright said. “But check the files and detective notes. I know it wasn’t real specific. Something like a dark, late-model sedan. Shit. I mean, what can you do with that?”

  “I’m known to make a lot with a little.”

  “Oh, yeah?” he said. “Where I’m from they call that making chicken shit into chicken salad. Good luck with that.”

  “Sounds like a terrible recipe.”

  “You ain’t kidding, man.”

  7

  I LEFT A MESSAGE with Epstein at the FBI office in Miami and walked across Atlantic to Harbor Health Club. I’d been talking and driving since sunup and needed to sweat a bit. Changing out of street clothes, I went straight for a treadmill, stretching my legs and admiring the gentle movements of sailboats on the water. The skies turned a faded blue with pinkish clouds, planes drifting up and down at Logan. A beauteous evening, calm and free.