Robert B. Parker's Kickback

by Ace Atkins

  The man picked up the clothes and threw them at the boy. He watched as the boy took off some white threadbare pajamas. Robocop licked his lips, his Adam’s apple bopping up and down. He ran a hand over his forehead as if he’d been the one with the fever.

  The man spit on the ground. “Follow me.”

  35

  We checked into the Vinoy in St. Petersburg, changed into lighter attire, and drove back over the bay to Tampa and a bar district called Ybor City. The Florida secretary of state’s office noted Scali and Callahan’s wives also having an interest in a place called Dixie Amusements. It was nearing night by the time we pulled up in front of the address on Seventh Avenue. There was a lot of pulsing dance music and women wearing next to nothing strolling along the street. The address for Dixie Amusements turned out to be a bar called Bikini Wings.

  “Charming,” Hawk said.

  “Marketing geniuses at work.”

  “Shall we?” Hawk said.

  “After you.”

  Bikini Wings was, as advertised, a bar that had beer and hot wings served by waitresses in bikinis. They only wore the bikini top and hot pants below. Perhaps pants is where the health inspectors drew the line. The bar was a long, open space in an old storefront, with the original terrazzo floor indicating it had once been a bank. We ordered a couple of beers at the bar and looked around the place.

  “Inspiring to watch a master at work.”

  A very short Latina in a black top and with many tattoos down one arm set down two Sam Adams. I liked to stick with one type of beer for the evening. Must be loyalty.

  The light was low and I counted eight customers in a space that could have held a hundred. I glanced down at the laminated menu, protected from the hot sauce, and noticed they served over fifty different flavors of wings. Buffalo to Szechuan.

  “You find this in the Zagat guide?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Off the rating chart.”

  Hawk glanced down at the menu. “Must be those Hawaiian wings,” he said. “Inventive.”

  Ceiling fans spun overhead. There were Sam Adams beer signs and mirrors behind the bar and framed jerseys for the Celtics, Red Sox, and Patriots on the wall. Hawk noticed me staring and pointed out the Pats jersey for Kinjo Heywood.

  “Lot of Boston down South,” he said.

  I nodded.

  He sipped his beer. Hawk had changed into a white linen suit with a navy dress shirt. He wore a gold rope chain, not unlike the magnetic charms of ballplayers, with an authentic Roman coin as a pendant. Underneath the coat, he sported a .44 Magnum with a blue finish. The coat fit well, but loose, and the bulge was not noticeable.

  In a booth across from us, a group of five guffawing men in cheap suits tossed chicken-wing bones into the center of the table. They were drunk and loud and would whistle for the two women in bikini tops to bring them another round or order another specialty off the menu. Salesmen out for an evening on the town. One of them offered the waitress a hundred-dollar bill to take her top off.

  Hawk drank a bit more beer. The fans twirled overhead. I didn’t even know he was listening. “I could make the shot backward,” he said. “Over my shoulder.”

  “May cause a disturbance,” I said.

  “Thought our job was to make ourselves known in these parts,” Hawk said.

  “To the right people,” I said. “I hate for us to waste our professional abilities on random creeps.”

  “You mind if I glower?” Hawk said.

  “Be my guest,” I said.

  Hawk turned to the table. He wore sunglasses, but the direction of his gaze was obvious.

  The table grew very quiet. The men huddled over their beers and looked up at the television monitors. Hawk turned back around and sipped his beer.

  “Bravo.”

  “Smart boys,” Hawk said.

  “What’s a nice Boston bar doing in a place like this?” I said.

  “Why don’t we ask?” Hawk said.

  I glanced back to the kitchen and saw two men walk out from the swinging door. One was big and square-jawed, with a shaved head and a Vandyke beard. The other was pudgy and redheaded. The big guy wore a black tank top to show off the muscles and tattoos on his arm. He had the look of a juicer. The pudgy kid was taller and had the same leather coat he’d worn the other day when they broke into my office.

  “Don’t think we’ll need to,” I said.

  “Those the boys who showed up at your office?”

  I nodded.

  “Hot damn,” Hawk said. “Where’s Arty?”

  The gray-headed guy came through the front door. He nodded at the two boys walking in from the kitchen, stopped to cup his hand to light a cigarette, and then glanced up at the bar. He did a double take just like you see in the movies. A cigarette hung loose in his mouth as he stared and then shook his head.

  Arty had on a Sox golf shirt, pleated khakis, and boat shoes. He looked like he sold insurance for a living.

  We didn’t move. I gave him a two-finger wave and he walked over.

  “Jesus,” he said.

  “Arty,” Hawk said. “What are the chances?”

  “Hawk,” he said.

  “Nice place, Arty,” I said. “You come up with the concept yourself?”

  “Fucking Vinnie,” he said. “I heard fucking Vinnie Morris was asking around about me. That son of a bitch.”

  “Vinnie didn’t tell us,” I said. “We came for the owners. Two nice women from Blackburn, wives of esteemed judges. I thought this was connected to a travel agency?”

  “Figured we might book a ticket on a cruise,” Hawk said. “Play some shuffleboard and shit.”

  “We got a lot of partners,” Arty said, placing his left hand in his pocket and his right on the cigarette. As he exhaled, he squinted at us through the smoke. “So the fuck what?”

  “Interesting, is all,” I said.

  Arty inhaled the last bit of cigarette, the fans scattering away the smoke. The young Latina with the tattoos asked if we’d like another round.

  “They were just going,” Arty said.

  Hawk began to whistle the theme to High Noon.

  36

  The bikini girl smiled, looked to Arty Leblanc, who was not smiling, and then quickly walked back toward the kitchen. The bald thug and the redheaded kid joined Leblanc and tried their very best to look tough. The bald thug wasn’t bad. The kid was terrible. He looked about as menacing as Howdy Doody dancing on a buckboard.

  “Anyone ever tell you that you look like Howdy Doody?” I said.

  He snorted. “Who the fuck is that?”

  “He’s fucking with you,” Baldy said. “He’s saying you’re young and don’t know shit. Howdy Doody was a fucking puppet on TV a hundred years ago.”

  “He was actually a marionette,” I said. “Marionettes are played by strings. Puppets are controlled by someone shoving their hand up their keister to make them do things.”

  “You saying I’m a fucking puppet?” Baldy said.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “From this angle, I can’t see Jackie DeMarco’s right hand.”

  Hawk smiled. He had turned on the bar stool and his feet were firmly planted on the ground, but I had never even seen him move. His right hand touched his belt slightly below where he kept the .44 Magnum.

  “This is a class place,” Arty said. “How about we all talk outside? You know, like gentlemen.”

  Two more men walked in through the front door. They were dressed about as well as Arty Leblanc. Cheap pleated khakis and golf shirts. The men’s faces glowed from being out in the sun all day. They were telling jokes and stumbled slow and fast into the situation. “What’s up, Arty?”

  Arty eyed me. Baldy stepped up closer. His nose was maybe six inches from mine. If my nose wasn’t so flat, it could have invaded my personal space. “These men were
just leaving.”

  I picked up my beer. It was half full. Or half empty. I swirled golden liquid around in the light.

  “Let me finish up,” I said.

  “Just leave,” Arty said. “Your tab is paid. Just don’t make us have to punch your ticket.”

  “Yikes.”

  The jolly businessmen walked quickly out in a cloister, like a school of fish out the front door. Three of the waitresses huddled near the kitchen door at the end of the bar. They didn’t seem scared. They were smiling and whispering to one another.

  “You know why I hate golf?” Hawk said.

  “Too many assholes play it?” I said.

  “Exactly.”

  Baldy pulled his coat back to show a shiny new automatic. Arty, unarmed on the links, smiled. He had a lot of gold fillings. As Hawk stood, Howdy Doody swallowed a couple times.

  “Why you harassing these people?” Arty said. “What’s the matter with some folks from Boston making some bucks down here? What are you, the IRS?”

  “Tell me about Jackie DeMarco and Bobby Talos.”

  “I don’t know no one named Talos,” Arty said.

  “Come on, Spenser,” Hawk said. “Shall we dispense with the pleasantries? Arty doesn’t know. He’s too low on the food chain.”

  “What’d you say, spade?”

  I took in a long breath. I stood, planted my feet firmly, and judged the distance between me and Baldy.

  “What’s my name, son?” Hawk said.

  Arty Leblanc snickered.

  Hawk moved close enough to him that he bumped chests. “What’s my name?”

  “I know you, Hawk,” he said. “You’re one badass spade.”

  Hawk hit Arty Leblanc so hard and fast under his chin, I heard the pop before I saw a thing. A neat, clean undercut turned out Arty Leblanc’s lights and he slumped to the floor. One of the other golfers dropped down to catch him as Baldy came for me, throwing a hard left at my face. I twisted and covered up my face, and his knuckle connected with my forearm. I pivoted back and shot two hard rights at his temple. The first one connected hard and knocked him back. The second one connected with the top of his head as he dipped his chin. Howdy Doody ran for Hawk and Hawk grabbed him by the front of the shirt and threw him over the bar. The two golfers attended to Arty, wanting no part of the action. One of the bikini girls shrieked. Another called for Richie to knock me on my ass. Richie. For some reason the bald guy didn’t look like a Richie. He looked like his name would be Animal or Bronco.

  I hit him again, connecting with a left. He hit me again with a right. Hawk was leaning against the bar, jacket pulled back, .44 exposed, drinking his beer.

  Richie and I circled. He was breathing hard. His body was shaped like a barrel, equal parts stomach and chest. A little blood was spilling off his lip. He felt it and wiped it away with his right hand. He smiled, trying to circle in close. I moved a little to the left and stepped in hard and fast with a couple jabs, then a right hook and another right hook. It rattled him, and he dropped the boxing and rushed for me. I sidestepped him and hit an elbow to his throat. That slowed him down a great deal. As he lurched forward, I got two uppercuts nice and clean into his big, bloated gut. He couldn’t breathe, and in a panic reached into his coat, where I caught his fingers on a revolver and ripped it from his hands.

  “Let him go,” I heard someone say.

  “Uh-oh,” Hawk said. “It’s Howdy Doody time.”

  Howdy Doody had a shotgun up in his arms and pointed it at me and then to Hawk. Hawk hadn’t moved. He picked up the beer again and finished it off.

  “Say, Art?” Hawk said. “That tab still paid?”

  Arty was unconscious. He wasn’t moving from the floor.

  “Guess so,” Hawk said.

  My breathing wasn’t as good and I could feel a bad give in my newly assembled knee. I nodded to Hawk. Hawk nodded back. One of the girls was shaking. The fun was over. She was calling the cops.

  I pushed past Richie and the trio of golfers on the floor. The redheaded kid had a wild look in his eye that I didn’t like.

  Hawk and I walked out together onto Seventh Avenue and strolled back to where we’d parked our car. The globes of the old-fashioned streetlamps were burning bright, the sky pink and blue. Women wearing next to nothing walked past us, talking on cell phones and chatting and laughing. Boys in tank tops and baggy jeans followed them into the dance clubs and bars. We passed a big plate-glass window where old men were rolling cigars for tourists.

  “Got what you wanted,” Hawk said. “DeMarcos know we here. And I didn’t even have to mess up my suit.”

  “Might need a press.”

  “How about that Richie?”

  “I think I wounded his pride.”

  “How about that knee?”

  “Might have wounded that, too,” I said.

  “Let’s get something to eat,” Hawk said. “Whipping up on white boys sho’ gives us darkies a powerful thirst.”

  37

  We had a four-hour dinner at an old steakhouse in Tampa called Bern’s. Hawk downed two bottles of Iron Horse champagne and the next morning showed no ill effects. He was dressed and ready in the lobby as I emerged from the elevator, reading the business section of the Tampa Bay Times. He had already gone for a five-mile jog and had breakfast. I was moving a bit slower, having ordered room service and called Susan.

  We drove north along Highway 19, the morning sun high and bright, to Dunedin, where the final two addresses were. Both were in a development called Esperanza Marina on an inlet off the Gulf of Mexico. It wasn’t until we got there that we realized it was, in true Florida style, a gated community. I stopped at the gate and a woman in a white golf shirt emerged from the guard shack. She held a clipboard, which seemed to indicate some serious duties. A pleasant smell of salt air blew off a warm, sticky wind.

  “Hello, sirs,” she said after I’d rolled down my window and she’d looked inside. “Names, please?”

  “We’ve come to look at some property,” I said. There were several realty signs staked around a nearby palm tree. The gate was big, wrought-iron, and impressive.

  “Which address?”

  I looked down at my printout and rattled off the addresses for Scali and Callahan. She again asked for our names.

  “I’m Bill Buckner,” I said. “And this is Mookie Wilson.”

  She wrote down the names and walked back into the guard shack. Hawk didn’t say a word but was smiling, which for Hawk was as good as slapping his knee.

  A couple seconds later, the big metal gate swung open and I drove in as if our names had been Rockefeller. “Always helps to tell the truth,” I said. “We did come to see the properties.”

  “Bill Buckner,” Hawk said. “Ha.”

  The developer of the Esperanza Marina did a lot to maximize the space of the lots. The Mediterranean Revival houses were jammed so close together, you could pass a jar of peanut butter from window to window without ever stepping outside. The light stucco façades were topped with red barrel tile roofs. Some of the houses had names like Joe’s Last Stand or The Carlisles’ Reward.

  “White people make me laugh,” Hawk said.

  “Black people don’t name their houses?”

  “Shit,” Hawk said.

  Scali’s address was along Seagull Way, apparently the premier address of the development, as all the units faced the marina and onward to the Gulf. I pulled in front of a mailbox in the shape of a full-size dolphin. Hawk and I got out of the car and looked up to admire a three-story house.

  “Look better when they put the windows in,” Hawk said.

  The windows were covered in Visqueen that popped and bucked in the hard wind. When I walked up and peered inside, I saw that plywood still lined the floors and it didn’t seem any of the fixtures had been installed. There was a pneumatic nail gun on the flo
or along with a level. The front door was locked, a realtor’s key box on the handle.

  “Maybe he ran out of money,” Hawk said.

  “Or maybe he’s in no rush.”

  We walked a block over to the next address. The contractor had only recently poured the foundation of Callahan’s place. The house had a realty sign staked out front. It was a different company from the one his wife and Scali’s owned.

  “What’s it mean?”

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “I only thought they spent a lot of time down here.”

  Between the two addresses, a long dock jutted out into the inlet lined with sailboats and Boston whalers, some larger live-aboard boats. A few of the big deep-sea fishing boats looked to be about fifty or sixty feet, made by Bertram and Hatteras, which was about the extent of my knowledge of boat makers. The engines on many were running, bubbling up seawater behind them. A guy who had skin the texture and color of shoe leather was filleting fish on a dock, ripping out the spine and guts to the sound of rock music blaring from the boat. He had the sleeves cut out of a T-shirt that read FLORA-BAMA and a long cigarette hanging from his lips.

  “You wouldn’t happen to know which boat belongs to Joe Scali?”

  “Who?”

  “Or a guy named Callahan?” I said. “He’s from Boston.”

  He looked up from his work, hands bloody to the elbows, and pointed a couple times down the dock. He took a long drag from the cigarette and pulled it slow from his lips. “That one of the judges?” he said, smoke escaping his mouth.

  “It is,” I said. “We’re here to inspect his barnacles.”

  “That seventy-seven-foot blue Hatteras down there,” he said. “Biggest boat in the marina. Can’t miss it.”

  “Nice,” I said. I looked to Hawk.

  Hawk whistled at the hulking shape of the ship. “Pretty,” he said. “Cost a few bucks?”

  “A few bucks?” the leathery man said. “How about a few million? I joke with them about it when they’re down here. I don’t think they’ve taken it out all year. The thing is brand-new. The captain is the luckiest guy I know. Doesn’t have to do much but hose down the deck.”