by Ace Atkins
“Yes,” Susan said. “Of course.”
“Time will tell if someone is trying to kill him,” I said. “And I’ll try to protect both him and his reputation.”
“A noble goal.”
“If they don’t shoot me in the process.”
We clicked drinks. I took a swallow of beer.
“And what will you be having for our last supper?” I said.
“Tapas,” she said. “I’m very fond of their deviled eggs and fried green tomatoes.”
“Chicken seems fitting to me,” I said. “Fries, collard greens, and more beer.”
She nodded and turned back to the wide-open space of Casablanca. She looked at the Bogart mural and then up toward the staircase leading down from Brattle Street. “Have you confronted Kinjo with your doubts?”
“Nope.”
“But your normal bullshit detector has sounded, you’re just not sure why.”
“Don’t talk too shrinky to me,” I said. “All that medical jargon is confusing.”
“When does he get back?” Susan said.
“Sunday night after the game.”
“Is it football season already?” she said.
“Sort of,” I said. “Preseason.”
“And you are to guard the Emperor of the Gridiron all season, if that’s what it takes?”
“Or until he cracks.”
“The unknowing is frustration,” she said.
“Speaking from experience?”
She toasted me with the drink. “You better believe it.”
8
I had spent the weekend reading up on Kinjo Heywood. Since the bad guys were still theoretical at this point, I needed to learn about potential enemies.
There was a lot written about the nightclub shooting in Manhattan. A twenty-two-year-old man named Antonio Lima had died. A couple witnesses said Kinjo and Lima had been fighting earlier. He denied it. The witnesses later recanted. There was a civil suit from the family for wrongful death, but it was quickly dropped. No murder weapon. No physical evidence. If it came down to it, I’d pull the file and make some calls. But at this point, I had nothing to suspect Kinjo’s problems and the incident were tied.
I sat parked for an hour outside Gillette until the team bus arrived. It was past midnight by the time Kinjo sat in the passenger seat of my Explorer. We drove north on 95. It was early Monday, with no traffic. The ride was easy and pleasant. I turned down The Jordan Rich Show so we might talk.
“Congratulations.”
“We won,” Kinjo said. “But it was an ugly win.”
“Better to win ugly than lose pretty.”
“Who said that?”
“Bobby Bowden,” I said. “I think.”
“His son coached at Auburn,” Kinjo said. “Long time before I got there.”
“Is that where you met Nicole?”
“Yeah,” he said.
“You don’t like to talk about her.”
“Doesn’t matter to me,” he said. “Met her freshman year. She got pregnant with Akira sophomore year. We were in love and now we’re not.”
“She drop out?”
“For a while,” he said. “But she finished school. I still got a year to go.”
“What’s she do now?”
“Works at a bank in Medford,” he said. “She’s a loan officer.”
“Business degree?”
“MBA, too,” he said. “I don’t know why she wants my money. She don’t need it. She knows how to get it.”
“Maybe it’s on principle.”
“Or to prove something to me.”
“Or herself.”
Kinjo was silent. I had overstepped. My headlights brightened a large swath of the interstate. We rode on an elevated platform over the triple-deckers, boarded-up storefronts, and housing projects.
“You mind me asking what happened?”
“Not much to know,” he said. “She caught me fucking another woman.”
“Ah,” I said. “That will put a damper on a marriage.”
“You married?”
“Sort of.”
“What’s that mean?”
“It means I’m in a monogamous relationship with the love of my life.”
“Kids?” Kinjo said.
“Sort of.”
“What’s a ‘sort of’ kid?”
“I helped a boy raise himself when he was fifteen,” I said. “Now he’s family.”
“How old is he now?”
“Old enough to be a very successful adult,” I said. “He teaches dance in New York. When did we switch roles? Didn’t you see investigator printed on my business card?”
“I’m just saying it’s tough for a man hadn’t been married to understand,” he said. “I stepped out because she’d given up on me, us, the whole thing. I wasn’t out just fucking. I needed someone in my life who needed me.”
“Cristal.”
“I ain’t gonna lie,” Kinjo said. “She wasn’t the first.”
“Did you try and make it work with Nicole?”
“You mean after she found out?”
“Yeah.”
“Hard to talk with dishes and glasses flying at your head.”
“Imagine so.”
Kinjo was silent. Again, I had overstepped. Spenser, master of diplomacy. We drove due north on the empty interstate, my eyes darting up the rearview. All clear. I switched lanes. No boogeymen out tonight.
“I read that piece in Sports Illustrated,” I said. “I don’t see the big deal. What bothered you about it?”
“Man fucked up some of my quotes,” he said. “And quoted some quarterbacks who said I took cheap shots.”
“Still didn’t see anyone mad enough to hurt you.”
Kinjo didn’t answer. “I didn’t like how the man implied that my relationship with Akira was a show,” he said. “That reporter hung out with us, and so we did what we always do. Man wrote it in a way like it was an unnatural weekend to be with my boy. That I was an unnatural person trying to play dad.”
“Slighted your honor.”
“Damn right.”
“As did someone trying to follow you and scare you.”
“Yeah.”
“No insults swallowed down South?”
“Hell, no.”
“Not many where I grew up, either.”
Kinjo sighed. “Maybe my head is a little messed up right now.”
“Maybe someone was following you,” I said. “But not to hurt you.”
“You weren’t there,” he said. “You didn’t see the look the man had. He was going for a gun and I pulled mine.”
“What did he look like?”
Kinjo described him as big, white, and ugly.
“Lots of that going around these days,” I said.
“When I was a kid, I always thought it would be cool to be known,” he said. “I grew up in this town down in Georgia where most everything had been logged out. Just red clay everywhere. That red clay got all over your clothes and under your fingernails. My mother worked three jobs to take care of me and Ray, wash that mud out our shirts. Year I signed with the NFL, she died of a heart attack. That make any sense to you?”
I shook my head. I drove. I listened. Failed marriage. Check. Abandonment issues. Check. Irrational behavior. You bet. I asked him a few more questions from what I’d read.
“It ain’t that nightclub thing, man,” he said. “That’s all over.”
“How do you know?”
“Because they ain’t nothing to it.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Listen, if you’re going to help me, you got to believe in me,” Kinjo said. “I never shot and killed no one. Someone is trying to do that to me. Someone try to take what I have and I got to step in.”
“But for me to work, I need to know all there is to know,” I said. “Sometimes something shakes loose that might not make sense to you.”
“Like reading an offense?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Exactly. I need to step back and see exactly what’s developing.”
“Okay.”
“I read that a couple of your teammates were there that night.”
He nodded.
“Can I speak with them?”
He nodded again. “Sure. Whatever, man.”
The highway lights scattered strobed patterns across the interior of the SUV. I got off at the exit for Route 9. A few miles down, we stopped at a red light at the Hammond intersection. There was an all-night CVS pharmacy, a liquor store, and, across the road, the Longwood Cricket Club. Inside the gates were fifty tennis courts for Brahmins to work out their deepest frustrations.
“Ever think of taking up tennis?” I said.
“You kidding me?”
The light turned green. I turned left on Hammond and on into Chestnut Hill.
“Shit, I only moved out here for Akira,” he said. “A few of my teammates moved out here. Brady moving out from downtown. I thought, why the hell not? Good schools. Good restaurants. Make his life into something right. He’s a good kid. Smart as hell. If I was smart as him, I wouldn’t need football.”
“Do you want him to play?”
“If he wants to play, I’ll help him,” Kinjo said. “He don’t want to play, that’s fine by me. Kid is special. He can draw. He can sing. He can memorize whole songs after hearing them once. Seems like a waste just to do something that’s expected.”
I nodded. We rolled up onto Heath Street and I turned toward Kinjo’s house. I pulled in, killed the engine, and sat there. The engine made hot ticking sounds as I waited for him to get out. But he just sat there, looking at his stone house lit up like a birthday cake in the night. A few leaves twirled down from the oaks.
“Steve Rosen is going to call you tomorrow,” he said. “Says whatever was going on isn’t going on anymore.”
I nodded.
“So he’s going to fire you.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time.”
“What do you think?” Kinjo said. “You think you can get these guys?”
“‘Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.’”
“Who said that?”
“Some old Greek guy.”
“I’d pay you for as long as it takes, but the front office has spoken to Steve, and now Steve isn’t so sure if it’s a good thing for you to be hanging around.”
“And you have promised to be more selective in the discharging of your weapon.”
Kinjo smiled. “Yeah,” he said. “Something like that.”
“Well, okay,” I said. “It’s been a pleasure.”
I offered my hand and he took it.
We got out of the car, and I walked with him to the back of the Explorer to open the hatch. He reached in and got his travel bag. The front door opened and Akira came running out in blue pajamas and no shoes. He jumped up high into Kinjo’s arms and clung tight to Kinjo’s body. Kinjo didn’t miss a stride, walking with the boy held tight, travel bag in right hand and left hand on the child’s back. The kid didn’t even see me, his eyes shut tight as Kinjo opened the front door.
I parked down the hill and sat on the house until late. I had been paid for the week and might as well see it through. When nothing menacing appeared, I cranked my car and drove home.
9
If they were letting you go,” Z said, “why follow through watching the house?”
“I was paid until today,” I said. “If I didn’t follow through, then I might start padding expenses, billing extra hours, charging to drink on the job. The whole thing would get shot to hell.”
“The code?”
“Maybe the code,” I said. “Or maybe it’s valuing my own self-worth.”
“But you don’t feel guilt about me buying the sandwiches?”
“I bought last time,” I said. “And I wish to value your self-worth.”
“Sandwiches are very good.”
“That they are.”
Z had stopped off in Chinatown for an early lunch of Vietnamese bánh mì sandwiches and two hot Vietnamese coffees. Shredded pork, cilantro, jalapeños, and pickled carrots on a baguette. The coffee was milky and strong and sweet.
“If the Vietnamese outnumber the Chinese in Chinatown,” I said, “perhaps a name change is due.”
“Or you might be overthinking the sandwich.”
“Perhaps.”
It was brisk and cool. Z wore a black motorcycle jacket over a gray T-shirt with old jeans and cowboy boots, true to his heritage on a Montana rez. His face still showed the scars of a savage beating. The face had mostly healed, but a large swath of skin from his left eye and cheek was mottled with scar tissue. He had spent weeks in the hospital and there had been a lot of rehab. He did not like to discuss it.
“I don’t know how much work I’ll have,” I said.
“Henry got me extra hours at the gym,” Z said. “And I got an offer to work as bouncer on Fridays and Saturdays at the Black Rose. Good pay.”
“You mind being around the booze?”
“Nope,” he said. “I like to be in control. I like to see everything around me.”
I ate the rest of my sandwich and sipped the sweet coffee. I swung around in my office chair and planted my feet on a window ledge. The bay window of my second-floor office composed a nice view of Berkeley Street. Shreve, Crump & Low had moved out. I had wished for a good restaurant to replace it but instead got a Bank of America.
“So what does a trained investigator do when business is slow?”
“Live deliberately and front only the essential aspects of life.”
“Such as sandwiches.”
I nodded and picked up the morning Globe. I tossed Z the front page and kept the sports and comics for myself. As he started to read, I furtively reached into my desk for a pair of reading glasses. Once in focus, Arlo & Janis were at it again.
The phone rang.
“Spenser? It’s Kinjo, I need you quick.” His voice sounded tight and high-pitched. I took my feet off the windowsill and cradled the phone to my ear. Z put down the paper and stared at me.
“They got him,” he said. “They fucking snatched him, man.”
“Who?”
“Whoever was following me took Akira.”
I waited a beat, my eyes lifting to Z. He listened with intent.
“Could he be with Nicole?”
“I know when my kid is gone. Cristal was taking him to school and two men with guns jacked her at a red light and took him. Nicole blames me. She’s coming over right now.”
“Did you call the police?”
“Hell, yes, I called the police,” he said. “Spenser, help me. That kid is everything. I don’t care what it costs. I don’t care. I want these motherfuckers dead.”
10
When we arrived, there was a lot of activity on Chestnut Hill. Dozens of cop cars, marked and unmarked, hugged Heath Street in both directions, up and down the winding hill. Z and I parked a good bit away and walked to the top of the Heywood driveway. Two Brookline uniform cops stopped us before we even reached a mailbox.
They asked who we were. I told them and asked who was in charge.
“Captain O’Leary,” one cop said.
“Anyone from the staties?”
The cop studied Z’s profile and pressed a radio mic on his collar. Some garbled bit of radio noise returned a few seconds later. “Detective Lieutenant Lundquist.”
“Tell Lundquist Spenser is here,” I said.
“He know you?” the cop said.
“Yeah,” I said. “I promise to brighten his day.”
“I thought Lundquist was Homicide under Healy,” Z said.
I shrugged. “Nothing gold can stay.”
The Brookline cop nodded at me but held up his hand to stop Z. “Only Spenser.”
“It’s okay,” Z said. “While I wait, I can water the horses. Give them oats.”
The cops looked at each other in confusion. I followed the sloping drive to the large stone house. At a side door, I was ushered in and taken into a study, where Kinjo Heywood sat holding court in an overstuffed white leather chair. Cristal slumped on a nearby white couch, head in hands, crying. Lundquist sat wide-legged on an ottoman across from Kinjo, taking notes. The house was thick with cops. A few had set up laptop computers on a large dining room table, orange cords running into the wall.
I shook Lundquist’s hand.
He was a sturdy man who looked as if he’d just stepped off a farm in the Midwest. He had reddish apple cheeks and clear blue eyes. His red hair had been recently shaved into a crew cut. The clothes were plain: gray slacks, white shirt, and glen plaid sport coat.
“Transfer?” I said.
“Promotion,” he said. “Healy signed off on it. Said it was time.”
Cristal’s sobs developed into wails, face in hands, shoulders shaking. Lundquist looked back at her with mild annoyance.
“I tried to help,” she said. “But I froze. God, why did I freeze like that? I stopped at a light and these two men opened the door. They had guns. They said they were going to blow my fucking head off if I moved an inch.”
Kinjo looked at the floor. His large hands were clasped in front of him as he took a deep breath.
“They just threw him inside and sped off,” she said.
“Yes, ma’am,” Lundquist said. “We’ve been through all this.”
“I tried,” she said. “I swear to Christ. I really tried to follow them. But they were too fast and I got lost.”
Kinjo continued to look at the floor. His jaw muscles flexed. He rubbed his mustache and goatee with nervous energy.
“We’re looking for the vehicle,” Lundquist said. “Sounds like an old Crown Vic. Dark green. And we’d like you to check out some photo packs. See if you recognize them.”
“Sure,” Cristal said. “I’ll do whatever you want.”
