by Mike Lupica
THE SPENSER NOVELS
Robert B. Parker’s Someone to Watch Over Me
(by Ace Atkins)
Robert B. Parker’s Angel Eyes
(by Ace Atkins)
Robert B. Parker’s Old Black Magic
(by Ace Atkins)
Robert B. Parker’s Little White Lies
(by Ace Atkins)
Robert B. Parker’s Slow Burn
(by Ace Atkins)
Robert B. Parker’s Kickback
(by Ace Atkins)
Robert B. Parker’s Cheap Shot
(by Ace Atkins)
Silent Night
(with Helen Brann)
Robert B. Parker’s Wonderland
(by Ace Atkins)
Robert B. Parker’s Lullaby
(by Ace Atkins)
Sixkill
Painted Ladies
The Professional
Rough Weather
Now & Then
Hundred-Dollar Baby
School Days
Cold Service
Bad Business
Back Story
Widow’s Walk
Potshot
Hugger Mugger
Hush Money
Sudden Mischief
Small Vices
Chance
Thin Air
Walking Shadow
Paper Doll
Double Deuce
Pastime
Stardust
Playmates
Crimson Joy
Pale Kings and Princes
Taming a Sea-Horse
A Catskill Eagle
Valediction
The Widening Gyre
Ceremony
A Savage Place
Early Autumn
Looking for Rachel Wallace
The Judas Goat
Promised Land
Mortal Stakes
God Save the Child
The Godwulf Manuscript
THE JESSE STONE NOVELS
Robert B. Parker’s Fool’s Paradise
(by Mike Lupica)
Robert B. Parker’s The Bitterest Pill
(by Reed Farrel Coleman)
Robert B. Parker’s Colorblind
(by Reed Farrel Coleman)
Robert B. Parker’s The Hangman’s Sonnet
(by Reed Farrel Coleman)
Robert B. Parker’s Debt to Pay
(by Reed Farrel Coleman)
Robert B. Parker’s The Devil Wins
(by Reed Farrel Coleman)
Robert B. Parker’s Blind Spot
(by Reed Farrel Coleman)
Robert B. Parker’s Damned If You Do
(by Michael Brandman)
Robert B. Parker’s Fool Me Twice
(by Michael Brandman)
Robert B. Parker’s Killing the Blues
(by Michael Brandman)
Split Image
Night and Day
Stranger in Paradise
High Profile
Sea Change
Stone Cold
Death in Paradise
Trouble in Paradise
Night Passage
THE SUNNY RANDALL NOVELS
Robert B. Parker’s Payback
(by Mike Lupica)
Robert B. Parker’s Grudge Match
(by Mike Lupica)
Robert B. Parker’s Blood Feud
(by Mike Lupica)
Spare Change
Blue Screen
Melancholy Baby
Shrink Rap
Perish Twice
Family Honor
THE COLE/HITCH WESTERNS
Robert B. Parker’s Buckskin
(by Robert Knott)
Robert B. Parker’s Revelation
(by Robert Knott)
Robert B. Parker’s Blackjack
(by Robert Knott)
Robert B. Parker’s The Bridge
(by Robert Knott)
Robert B. Parker’s Bull River
(by Robert Knott)
Robert B. Parker’s Ironhorse
(by Robert Knott)
Blue-Eyed Devil
Brimstone
Resolution
Appaloosa
ALSO BY ROBERT B. PARKER
Double Play
Gunman’s Rhapsody
All Our Yesterdays
A Year at the Races
(with Joan H. Parker)
Perchance to Dream
Poodle Springs
(with Raymond Chandler)
Love and Glory
Wilderness
Three Weeks in Spring
(with Joan H. Parker)
Training with Weights
(with John R. Marsh)
G. P. Putnam’s Sons
Publishers Since 1838
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
penguinrandomhouse.com
Copyright © 2021 by The Estate of Robert B. Parker
Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.
Hardcover ISBN: 9780593087855
E-book ISBN: 9780593087862
Book design by Katy Riegel, adapted for ebook by Maggie Hunt
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Cover design: Lisa Amoroso
Cover images: (paper cutout) Vicky Martin / Arcangel; (playing card) MMphotos / Alamy Stock Photo
pid_prh_5.7.0_c0_r0
This book is for John (Ziggy) Alderman.
CONTENTS
Cover
Also by Robert B. Parker
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter
Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-One
Chapter Fifty-Two
Chapter Fifty-Three
Chapter Fifty-Four
Chapter Fifty-Five
Chapter Fifty-Six
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Chapter Sixty
Chapter Sixty-One
Chapter Sixty-Two
Chapter Sixty-Three
Chapter Sixty-Four
Chapter Sixty-Five
Chapter Sixty-Six
Chapter Sixty-Seven
Chapter Sixty-Eight
Chapter Sixty-Nine
Chapter Seventy
Chapter Seventy-One
Chapter Seventy-Two
Acknowledgments
About the Authors
ONE
I was in my brand-new office over the P. F. Chang’s at Park Plaza, around the corner from the Four Seasons and a block from the Public Garden, feeling almost as cool as Tina Fey.
I’d just walked through the door that had Sunny Randall Investigations written on the outside, put on some coffee, sat down behind my rustic wood Pottery Barn desk. All in all, I was everything a professional woman should be, if you didn’t count the Glock in the top right-hand drawer of my desk.
There were two chairs on the client side of the desk, a small couch against one wall, and a table on the other side of the room that I used for painting when I needed to take a break from world-class detecting. It housed my pads and boards and a palette and all the other tools of a world-class watercolorist’s trade.
“Forget about the gun,” Jesse Stone said. “If somebody shows up and threatens you, just pull a paintbrush on them.”
“What about the boxing classes you made me take?” I said. “You should see how good my right hand has gotten.”
I had signed up for a half-dozen at the gym an old boxer named Henry Cimoli owned over near the harbor.
“Here’s hoping you never need to throw it,” he said.
Jesse. Chief of police, Paradise, Massachusetts. On-again, off-again boyfriend. Mostly on over the past year. I had given in and started calling him that, my boyfriend, just because I hadn’t found a better way to describe his role in my life. We were still together, anyway, even though we were mostly apart, our relationship having survived the virus. We were official, as the kids liked to say, even if we hadn’t announced it on Instagram, or wherever kids announced such things these days, in a world where they found everything that happened to them completely fascinating. Jesse and I had been as close as we’d ever been before the virus caused the world to collapse on itself. Now we’d once again grown more used to our own social distancing, and for longer and longer periods of time, him up in Paradise, me in Boston.
But still official, at least in our own unofficial way.
“I feel like Jesse and I are happy,” I said to Spike the night before, over drinks at Spike’s.
“Low bar,” he said. “For both of you.”
“Come on,” I said. “I’ve got a stress-free relationship going, money in the bank, my own office, I’ve still got Rosie the dog, I’ve even lost five pounds, not that you seem to have noticed.”
“Just like a big girl,” Spike said.
“Not as big as I was five pounds ago,” I said.
“You also still have ex-husband issues,” he said, referring to Richie Burke, still in Boston, still in my life as he raised his son from his second marriage.
“Do not,” I said.
“Do so,” Spike said.
“You sound childish,” I said.
“Do not,” he said. “Do not, do not, do not.”
Spike and I had been celebrating the fact that I’d finally gotten paid by Robert Magowan, who owned the second-biggest insurance company in Boston. Magowan had hired me to prove that his wife had been cheating on him. This I did, well over two months ago. Then he refused to pay, and kept refusing, until Spike and I had finally shown up at his office and Spike threatened to shut a drawer with Magowan’s head inside it. That was right before I handed Mr. Magowan my phone and showed him the images of him in bed in a suite at the Four Seasons, park view, with Lurleen from accounting, and wondered out loud who’d win the race to the divorce lawyers, him or the missus, once the missus got a load of what I thought were some very artsy photographs.
“You were only supposed to follow her,” he said.
“Well,” I said, “to put it in language you can understand, I thought I might need additional coverage.”
He’d proceeded to transfer the money over speakerphone from an L.A. branch of Wells Fargo while Spike and I watched and listened.
On our way out of the office Magowan had said to me, “They told me you were a ballbreaker.”
“Not like Lurleen,” Spike had said.
I knew I could have handled Magowan myself. I’d brought Spike along just for fun. His, mostly. He’d gone through a bad time during the pandemic, nearly having lost Spike’s at the worst of it. But he’d come up with the money he needed at the last minute, thanks to a loan from one of his best customers, a young hedge-fund guy named Alex Drysdale, who spent almost as much time in the place as I did.
Spike still wasn’t back to being his old self, but threatening to kick the shit out of Robert Magowan, even if it hadn’t come to that, had made him seem happier than he’d been in a year. And more like his old self.
He was about to pay off his loan this morning, having invited Drysdale to the restaurant so he could hand him the check in person. The thought of that made me smile, just not quite as much as the memory of the ashen look on Magowan’s face when I showed him the pictures of him and Lurleen in one particular position that should have had its own name, like a new yoga move:
Downward dogs in heat.
The sound of my cell phone jolted me out of my reverie.
The screen said Spike.
“Sunny Randall Investigations,” I said brightly. “Sunny Randall speaking. How may I help you?”
“I need to see you right away,” he said.
His voice sounded like a guitar string about to snap. I realized I was standing.
“What’s the matter?” I said. “Something’s the matter. I can always tell.”
“I just knocked Alex Drysdale on his ass, is what’s the matter,” he said.
“The guy who loaned you the money?” I said. “That Alex Drysdale?”
“I wanted to kill him,” Spike said. “But I stopped after breaking his fucking nose.”
“Spike,” I said. “What the hell happened?”
“He stole my restaurant.”
There was a pause.
“Wait, let me amend that,” Spike said. “I mean his restaurant.”
I told him I was on my way, ended the call, grabbed my leather shoulder bag, remembered to turn off the coffee machine, locked the door behind me, ran down the stairs.
I had started to believe that maybe God, at long last, had stopped being pissed off at everybody.
Obviously She hadn’t.
TWO
Payback really is a bitch,” Spike said. “Only it turns out Drysdale’s the bitch.”
We were seated at the bar. Spike had a Bloody Mary in front of him so big it looked like a fire hydrant. He also had a glas
s filled with ice next to it, and would occasionally pluck out a cube and press it to his cheek. Spike said that after he hit Drysdale, the two guys with him—neither of whom, he said, looked like fund managers—hit him back. I knew how hard it was to get the better of Spike in a fight, even when it was two against one. But they’d managed.
“At least you got your shot in,” I said.
“I even managed to get some good ones in on the extras from The Sopranos,” he said, “before one of them kicked my legs out from underneath me and the other just kicked the shit out of me.”
“Literally kicking you while you were down,” I said.
“My upper body is already starting to look more colorful than Pride month,” he said.
Drysdale, he said, finally told them to stop; he didn’t want Spike scaring the customers.
“Called them our customers,” Spike said, and drank.
I asked then how Drysdale had done it, if he could explain it to me without trying to sound like Warren Buffett.
“I’m too stupid to sound like Warren Buffett,” he said. “I’m the one who let him pick my fucking pocket in broad daylight.”
Drysdale had been a regular at Spike’s from the time he turned it from a sawdust-on-the-floor to an upscale restaurant on Marshall Street that had become one of the hottest places in town, not just because of the food, but because of the bar crowd, which could include professional athletes and local TV personalities and politicians and the lead singer from Dropkick Murphys and young women from the modeling agency that had opened around the corner. Drysdale was good-looking, a big tipper, often came in with a beautiful woman or left with one. And was rich as shit. He finally became aware that Spike, even with the government loans and takeout business and furloughing of a lot of the staff, was about to shutter the place. So he offered Spike the loan that he needed at a two percent rate, on one condition:
He didn’t tell anybody about the terms.
“I’m a one-percenter,” he joked to Spike, “but let’s keep that two percent between us.”
Spike had been a business major at UMass. When Drysdale presented him with the document, he told Spike to ignore all the bullshit language about floating rates and warrants and even what would happen if Spike somehow still had to declare bankruptcy down the road, that it was all boilerplate stuff and would never come into play until maybe the next pandemic in another hundred years or so.
“We’re friends,” Drysdale said. “We could have done this on a handshake. But my lawyers are making me.”
