Silent Night: A Spenser Holiday Novel

by Robert B. Parker

  “Not much of a plan,” Healy said.

  “It’s all in the execution. And it’s all I got at the moment.” I hung up.

  All was quiet at Street Business when we pulled up. We walked up the front steps and banged our way through the front door.

  Joe and Frankie were in the sitting room to the right of the front door. Joe was sitting in an overstuffed chair, and Frankie was lounging on the sofa. Each had a cigarette in one hand and a Budweiser tallboy in the other.

  “Hey, what do you want?” Frankie said. Both of them started to get up.

  I decided that of the two, Frankie might be more useful to us. I walked to Joe without saying a word, grabbed his face in my right hand, and pushed him back down into the chair. Hawk and Vinnie stood on either side of Frankie.

  “You might want to sit,” Hawk said to him. Frankie sat.

  Joe struggled to stand up. I jabbed him on the nose with a quick right. Blood spurted as his hands went to his face. Beer splashed off the wood floor. He might have swallowed the cigarette. I grabbed him by the hair and yanked him over to Frankie’s sofa.

  “Hey! Hey! What the fuck?” Joe said.

  I stepped around the sofa and kicked him in the stomach. Then I picked him up with both hands and slammed him against a bookcase. He staggered for a moment, then fell, pulling the bookcase down on top of him.

  “I see the rules have changed,” Hawk said.

  I stood over Joe in a loose crouch. “A kid gets hurt,” I said, “the rules are different.”

  We all turned to look at Frankie. He was squirming on the sofa, panic in his eyes.

  “What do you want? What do you want?” He was almost screaming. “Don’t hurt me. I didn’t do nothing. I didn’t hurt no kid.”

  “Where are the boys?” I said.

  “Upstairs,” Frankie said. “They’re all locked in their rooms upstairs. They’re okay. Nobody hurt ’em.” His voice was rising in pitch, his words tumbling out.

  “Where’s Jackie?”

  “I don’t know,” Frankie said. “Honest to Christ, I don’t know. They took him away. When Joe and me got here, he was gone.”

  I leaned in and slapped him across the face. He turned his head away. A trickle of blood formed on the side of his mouth.

  “As you can probably surmise,” I said, “I have very little time to deal with you, and even less patience. So you’re going to tell us what happened here. You’re going to be clear and concise and complete. You’re going to tell us why you two geniuses let Jackie get beat up by a couple of thugs. You’re going to tell us where Jackie is. And you’re going to tell us why the residents of this safe house are locked in their rooms while you and Joe have a frat party down here. Got it?”

  Frankie looked from me to Hawk to Vinnie. Hawk stared at him without emotion. Vinnie gazed outside the bay window out onto the street. Not a sympathetic audience. There was pure terror in Frankie’s face.

  “Okay, okay,” he said. “It’s like this. Joe and I get a call from Mr. Alvarez. He says some guys are coming by, he wants them to talk to Jackie. He tells us to let the guys in, then take a walk for an hour. So that’s what we do. We let the guys in, and we get lost. When we get back, Jackie and the guys are gone. Then Mr. Alvarez calls and tells us to lock up the kids and wait for his orders. So we do that. We lock up the kids that are home, and we wait down here for the ones who are out to come back. When they do, we grab them and lock them upstairs, too. Then you guys show up.”

  “Who were these guys? Men from the farm?”

  Frankie shook his head. “No, not from the farm. Two big Hispanic guys I never seen before. Tattoos and shit. Scary guys.”

  “What did Alvarez want the guys to talk to Jackie about?”

  “I don’t know,” said Frankie. “Honest to God, I don’t know. He didn’t say, and you don’t ask Mr. Alvarez questions. You just do what he tells you.”

  “You’ve been around here awhile. You have an educated guess what Mr. Alvarez would want them to talk with his brother about?”

  Frankie rocked back and forth on the sofa. He shook his head from side to side. He swiveled his head to look at Joe. Then he looked back.

  “Please, don’t make me do this.” Frankie was almost crying. “He’ll have me killed.”

  “Who will?” I said. “Joey here? I don’t think he’s in any shape to do you much damage.”

  “No!” Frankie started to wail. “Mr. Alvarez. I talk about his business, he’ll have me killed! Please!”

  I slapped him twice to get his attention. “You don’t tell us, and the three of us are going to drag you up to the roof and bounce you off the sidewalk.”

  “You don’t know Mr. Alvarez.” Frankie was pleading.

  “You’re afraid of Alvarez? Look around you, Frankie. Alvarez isn’t here. We are. You might want to be more concerned about what we want.”

  Hawk grunted. Vinnie continued to stare out the window, as if the deserted street held more interest than the drama unfolding in the room around him.

  Frankie burst into open tears. I waited. He cried. I grabbed the neck of his sweatshirt, twisted it in my hand, and lifted him up off the sofa.

  “I’m waiting,” I said softly. “But not much longer.” I let go, and he dropped back.

  Frankie looked back again at Joe, who hadn’t stirred. Then he turned back to me and sniffed twice.

  “Okay,” he said. “Okay.” He shook his head and gave a deep sigh.

  “Mr. Alvarez hates Street Business. Wants to shut it down. It loses a ton of money, and he thinks someone will find out that it’s here and it’s not legal and the police will come, and Mr. Alvarez doesn’t want that kind of attention. But he can’t shut it down, because it’s important to Jackie and Mr. Alvarez promised his mama he’d support Jackie and he can’t go back on his promise. So he tries to buy Jackie out, but Jackie’s proud of this place and thinks he’s doing a good thing, and he says no. So then he tries to scare Jackie into giving up. He thinks Jackie is weak and will just give up if he’s threatened, so Mr. Alvarez hires some guys to cause trouble. Nothing serious, you know? Just push some of the kids around, take some of their money. Just enough to frighten Jackie.”

  “But Jackie doesn’t get frightened,” I said.

  “No,” said Frankie. He shook his head again. “Jackie grows a backbone, just at the wrong time. He won’t quit. He fights back. He asks Mr. Alvarez for more help, so Mr. Alvarez sends Joe and me to guard the place. And Jackie brings you in to make the threats stop.”

  “Not knowing that his brother is the one causing the threats. Not knowing his security guards are working for the enemy.”

  Frankie looked down and swallowed. He didn’t say anything.

  “When did Alvarez decide that Street Business was a problem, and might attract the wrong attention? When did he decide to shut it down? Funny he gets a conscience all of a sudden.”

  Frankie looked up at me, then shut his eyes tight, as though thinking caused him intense physical pain.

  “I dunno,” he said. “Maybe a month or so ago?”

  “Okay,” I said. “I’m going to ask you this just one more time. Where is Jackie now?”

  Frankie recoiled and started to shake. Tears began running down his face.

  “I told you, I don’t know!” He was shouting, his voice hoarse and filled with fear. “I’d tell you if I knew. Honest to Christ, I would. But I don’t. He just wasn’t here when Joe and me got back.”

  I stood over him for a moment. He dropped his head and didn’t say anything else. I looked at Hawk. Hawk shrugged.

  “Vinnie,” I said. “Will you entertain Frankie and Joe here while Hawk and I confer in the hall for a moment?”

  Vinnie looked at Frankie without emotion.

  “Sure,” he said.

  Hawk and I walked out to the hallway.


  “What do you think?” I said.

  “Think you scared him,” Hawk said.

  “Do you think he’s holding back anything from us?”

  “I think he’s told us all he knows. Now what?”

  I looked at my watch. It was almost three in the afternoon.

  “We’ve got to get out to Weston. Time to call in the cavalry, I think.”

  I CALLED QUIRK, who wasn’t in. I got transferred to Belson, who was.

  “Frank, I need help.”

  I told him about Slide’s beating and Jackie’s disappearance, about Alvarez and the machinations surrounding Street Business.

  “What I’m not hearing in all this, Spenser,” he said, “is the magic word ‘homicide.’ That’s what we do in this department. Why don’t you just call for a patrol car to roll by and mop up your mess.”

  “I’ve got a missing person and possible homicide,” I said. “And I need help from someone I trust. A patrol unit is going to call in Child Protective Services, and this place will get shut down. I need someone to stabilize and sit on the place for a few hours, until I get another piece of it resolved. I need time until I can figure out how to keep Street Business in business.”

  “So you need me to babysit a house filled with juvenile delinquents while you figure out how to keep an essentially illegal business in play? We have real work to do, Spenser.”

  “I need to protect another client,” I said. I gave him a brief summary of Carmen and Alvarez. I told him about Healy and the Fed and state investigations. “And so help me, Frank, if I need to shoot someone so you’ve got a homicide to get you down here, I’ll do it.”

  Belson sighed. “Okay, Spenser.”

  I gave him the address.

  “Curtis Street?” he said. “Is that by St. Bart’s?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “It’s a few blocks away.”

  “My kid sister knows the priest down there. Said the Mass at her wedding. I’m blanking on the name, but he seemed like a regular guy.”

  “Ahearn?” I said.

  “Yeah, that could be it. Ahearn. They do a lot of work with kids at St. Bart’s. I’ll send a squad car down there, too.”

  Father Ahearn arrived at Street Business in about ten minutes, along with ten guys who had to be the world’s most intimidating chapter of the Knights of Columbus. A patrol car pulled up, and Belson followed right behind in his unmarked Crown. Martin Quirk was with him.

  “I called Marty,” Belson said. “He’s got more juice than I do.”

  Quirk was dressed in a navy-blue blazer with a light blue button-down shirt and bright red sweater vest and gray slacks. His red tie had a small Christmas-tree print. He looked clean-shaven and fresh as a spring morning.

  “Left my grandkid’s Christmas pageant for this, Spenser,” said Quirk. “Make it worth my time.”

  “Sorry, Marty. It’s important.”

  Quirk nodded. “Frank filled me in.” He nodded to Hawk and Vinnie. “We’ll hold down the fort here. We never saw you. Now go.”

  We headed for Weston, Hawk riding shotgun and Vinnie in the backseat. We had just hit the Mass Pike when my cell phone rang. It was Susan.

  “Spenser,” she said. “We have a problem. Slide is missing.”

  I WAS IN THE ROOM while the doctor examined him,” Susan said. “They had to take him for X-rays of his ribs to see if any were broken. They brought him back to the room and we waited. You know how it is. Emergency room. Holidays. Slide was pretty antsy, and I tried to distract him, but conversation with eleven-year-olds is not in my résumé.”

  “How did he get away?”

  “After what seemed hours, but was probably half an hour, the doctor came back with the X-rays and said there were no broken ribs. She gave Slide a couple of Tylenol to take before bedtime if he ached too much.

  “She said he could get dressed and we could leave and he was a fortunate young man not to be more seriously hurt. I went into the bathroom for a moment, while Slide went behind the screen to get his pants and shirt on.

  “When I came out, he was gone. In thirty seconds. I ran out in the hallway and looked up and down it. Not a sign of him.”

  “Any reason to think someone grabbed him?”

  “No,” Susan said. “There was no one around in the hallway, and I ran out to the lobby and asked the desk nurse if she had seen Slide and she said yes she had and he had been alone. He had headed for the main exit. One good thing. He’s fine except for some really deep bruises.”

  “Okay,” I said. “He probably heard me say Carmen was in danger. I’ll bet he’s trying to work his way to Weston, same as we are. We’ll look out for him. Don’t worry.”

  “Easy for you to say,” Susan said. “The road out there is not a place for a kid right now. I’m going to drive toward Weston and see if I can find him.”

  “He’s a tough kid, Susan. I don’t want you mixed up in what’s going on out here. He’s found his way by himself out to Carmen a lot of times before. I’ll call you the minute I can.”

  WE CAUGHT UP with Healy in the parking lot of a Bruegger’s bagel shop on Center Street in Weston. He was in an unmarked state police cruiser, with the engine running. I pulled in to the space to his left. Hawk rolled down his window. The darkness had started to gather, but I could see someone sitting in the passenger seat next to Healy.

  “Nice touch, picking a place with bagels,” said Healy. He stared straight ahead. “Got some good news, Spenser. Boston PD located your friend Joachim Alvarez. Somebody dumped him at the emergency room at Beth Israel about an hour ago.”

  “And?”

  “He’s beaten up pretty bad. But he’ll live.”

  “Well, that’s something,” I said. “Were you able to scare up any help for this operation?”

  Healy snorted. “You wouldn’t know by looking around, but there are about twenty pairs of federal and state eyes on us right now.”

  Healy looked over at his passenger. “This is Special Agent Goldberg of the FBI. He insisted on joining me, even though it could blow the cover off the entire fucking operation. He wants to make clear that this is a federal matter and he’s in charge.”

  He stared straight ahead again. “Goldberg, the driver is Spenser. The other two guys don’t exist and you never saw them. I miss anything?”

  Goldberg cleared his throat. “Exigent circumstances, Spenser. We haven’t had time to map this out precisely. We don’t have a warrant. We’ll need some reason to go on Alvarez’s property.”

  “So there needs to be some emergency, some threat to human life.”

  “Exactly,” said Goldberg. “We’ll be waiting at several points just off the property line. Something happens, we need a pretext to go in. A gunshot, broken glass, loud shouts, something. We don’t hear anything, you’re on your own.”

  “Got it.”

  “Give him this.” Goldberg handed Healy a small walkie-talkie. Healy passed to it Hawk.

  “Worst case,” Goldberg said. “Call us.”

  “Okay,” I said. “But I won’t be reporting in every five minutes. It stays off unless I turn it on. I don’t want to be discovered because you feel the need to check on us at the wrong time.”

  “Spenser, we’re improvising here. When you do that, a lot can go wrong in a hurry. The whole thing can turn to shit pretty quick. Do you understand?”

  Healy sighed. “He understands, Goldberg. You pretty much just described his entire career.”

  Healy and Goldberg told us where the FBI and state troopers would be staging. It was quarter past six when we backed out of the parking lot and headed off to Alvarez’s farm.

  HEAVY CLOUDS CONCEALED the moon. The thermometer inside the car read 18 degrees. Better out than in. Days-old snow banked the sides of the road.

  We parked alongside the long driveway and extinguished the headlights.


  “How do we play it?” Vinnie said.

  “We sneak up to the house and wait,” I said. “Watch for sentries and try to count the guns on-site tonight.”

  “You think the fireworks start right away?” Hawk said.

  “No,” I said. “He probably waits until dinner or after, when all the guests are settled and relaxed. If he needs to stage this to make it look like he’s a victim, he needs this to be a nice, normal party, until it’s not.”

  “Once it starts, how we gonna stop things from the outside?” Vinnie said. I looked at Vinnie in the rearview mirror. He was testing the action on his Glock.

  “We wait until dinner. Cocktails will most likely be in the living room to the left of the front door. It has big picture windows on the front and side. A big archway leads from there into the dining room. That has French doors to the deck on the back of the house. When the guests move to the dining room, Hawk and I go in and cover the archway and the door to the kitchen. Vinnie, you stay outside and cover the French doors. Keep your eyes on Carmen. Hawk and I will deal with anything else.”

  Vinnie nodded.

  “And when something start to happen, we move in,” said Hawk.

  “Any idea what the something might be?” Vinnie said.

  “No,” I said. “My guess is a robbery. Healy thinks Alvarez will try to stage his own kidnapping—he disappears, and Carmen gets killed in the crossfire. All we think we know is that Alvarez needs to look like the victim.”

  “Think the guests are in on this?” Hawk said.

  “Probably not all of them. Carmen said she doesn’t know everyone invited, but some are social acquaintances Alvarez isn’t particularly close to. He likely needs some authentic guests to sell this to the police afterward,” I said.

  I waited a moment. Then, “Game time.”

  I had switched off the overhead light. We left the car in darkness and walked back up the road along the tree line to the driveway.

  Cars were arriving, mostly limousines, letting out women in furs and men in evening clothes. There was a man in livery opening the car doors and a butler opening and closing the large front door. The pillars were festooned with fir garlands, the door frame draped with boughs. A huge wreath with a red velvet bow was hung in the center.