Robert B. Parker's Lullaby

by Ace Atkins

  Hawk and I climbed out of the car. Mattie moved into the front passenger seat and closed the door. I checked the load on the .357. I absently felt for the .38 clipped to my belt.

  We walked side by side down the street, empty except for the cars and trucks packed tight against the curbs. No people, just the quiet and stillness of sleet. The air felt thin, with a silent patter of the tiny ice pellets.

  “Can’t say no to the kid,” Hawk said.

  “It’s part of her therapy,” I said. “Watching masters at their trade.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Don’t you miss having hair in this weather?” I asked.

  “I am bulletproof.”

  “Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound?”

  “Yeah,” Hawk said. “All that shit.”

  Hawk moved ahead, Mossberg in his right hand, and skirted the edge of the pleasant two-story house. The house was painted a light green, with black shutters. From the driveway, you could see a picket fence surrounding a small backyard.

  I watched the street. Mattie watched us from the car.

  Hawk looped back around the house and met me out front.

  “Got Chico in the kitchen,” he said. “Lot of blood in that old man.”

  “Any others?”

  “Only see the two.”

  “Back door?”

  “It’s one of those wrought-iron security jobs,” he said. “Locked.”

  I nodded. We walked to the front door.

  I tried the knob, and it turned loose in my hands.

  “Shit. I wanted to kick it in,” Hawk said. He peered in a side window and moved close to my shoulder.

  With the .357 extended, I turned the knob and Hawk pushed in the door. I moved into the room fast. Hawk followed and scanned the corners and staircase. We hit the kitchen within three seconds of getting in the house.

  Red was screaming at Chico. Chico was telling Red to go fuck himself.

  I had the .357 on them. Hawk stood at my side with the pump.

  There was a lot of blood on the front of Chico’s wrinkled dress shirt. On a nearby table, I spotted several Baggies of what looked like drugs and a small digital scale.

  “Give it up,” Hawk said. “Motherfuckers.”

  Hawk grinned.

  “Shit, shit, shit,” Red said.

  “Hello, Red,” I said. “So how you been?”

  Moon was standing. He stared at us with bovine eyes. Two handguns sat on a kitchen counter. Moon and Red were maybe three feet from the counter. Miles.

  “Put your hands up,” I said.

  No one moved. Moon inched himself toward the guns.

  Hawk bolted forward and rammed the muzzle of the shotgun into Moon’s sternum. He was down. I trained my gun on Red.

  His hands went up.

  Chico put his hands up, too. He wore an ill-fitting wool suit. His right eye was swollen. The bulging eye made him look like a frog. He squinted at me. His thick glasses lay broken on the kitchen floor.

  Hawk checked the boys for weapons. He found a .45 stuck in Red’s belt. Moon wasn’t armed except for a folding knife. Moon started to get to his feet.

  He came for Hawk.

  Hawk rammed the stock of the Mossberg into his gut. Moon was down on his knees. I figured Moon must suffer some type of learning disability.

  “Where’s Theresa Donovan?” I asked. I tossed Chico a few napkins for his nose. I kept staring at Red as I bent down and picked up Chico’s glasses. One of the lenses was cracked.

  “Who?” Red said.

  “Playing dumb suits you to a T, Red,” I said. “Theresa Don-

  ovan?”

  He shook his head. “I’m not fucking lying. What the hell?”

  “How about Jack Flynn? Does he know?”

  This time Red smiled and took one step back. “Don’t know him,” Red said. “You, Moon?”

  Moon made a sound like a deflating blimp.

  “Moon don’t know him, either,” Red said. He shrugged. “Guess you’re fucked now.”

  “That’s a unique perspective.”

  Chico got to his feet. He shook his head and spit on the vinyl floor. The spitting was very theatrical but very appropriate. The old man stood next to me and put on his glasses.

  “You tell Jack and Gerry to go and have intercourse with each other.”

  “Chico,” I said. “So polite.”

  “I’m old,” Chico said. “I got to make peace with this shit.”

  Hawk smiled. The Mossberg still trained on Moon. I had the gun on Red.

  I walked to the table and laid the .357 before me. I took a breath and leaned in. I smiled. Spenser, professional mediator.

  “Who’s in charge?” I asked. “Jack or Gerry Broz?”

  Red shrugged.

  “Easy question, Red,” I said. “Shall I speak more slowly?”

  Moon wavered to his feet. He wiped the blood off his doughy face. He had the expression of a beaten man.

  I nodded. “Lots of dope on this table,” I said. “Got a ninety-year-old man ready to press charges.”

  “No,” Red said. “He won’t. We were just playing. Right, Chico?”

  Chico’s eyes shifted from me to Red. From Red to Hawk and Moon.

  He didn’t say anything.

  “Still a lot of dope,” I said. I pulled a cell phone from the inside of my coat. I laid it by the .357. “One call.”

  Red’s eyes flicked over me. He kept a tough-guy stare.

  “What do you want?” Moon asked.

  I raised my eyebrows. I turned to Moon.

  “Did you take Theresa Donovan?”

  He shook his head. His breath was labored. He’d thrown in the towel.

  “Okay,” I said. “Let’s try this. We just want to know what happened to Julie Sullivan. You answer that and we’re gone.”

  “Chico goes, too,” Chico said.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Right. Chico is with us.”

  Red shook his head at Moon. Moon looked over to Hawk and then me. He leaned against the table. He looked to Red.

  “I can’t go back to prison, man,” Moon said. “I’d rather fucking die.”

  “Shut up, Moon,” Red said.

  “We took the girl to see Flynn.”

  “Shut up, Moon,” Red said. “Shut the fuck up.”

  “This ain’t business,” Moon said. “You talk to Flynn. He had us snatch her.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Shut the fuck up, Moon.”

  “Because—”

  I had been studying Moon’s face and body language. I had been waiting for a telltale sign he was lying. I watched his eyes. The way he breathed.

  I broke eye contact with Moon.

  Red snatched up my .357 and shot Moon right in the head. Moon toppled.

  Hawk blasted a large hole in Red Cahill’s chest. There was a lot of noise and blood with the smell of smoke and gunpowder. My ears rang.

  And then silence. The silence amplified the sleet against the roof and windows. To punctuate the violence, Red’s body slipped from the chair and onto the floor beside Moon’s.

  “Holy Christ,” Chico Hirsch said. He walked over to Red and kicked him hard in the head. “Holy Christ.”

  “A fine mess you’ve gotten me into,” Hawk said.

  Hawk was not smiling. I took a deep breath.

  I left my .357 on the floor beside Red. The crime scene techs could later lecture about the setup. At least that was something.

  “Crapola,” Chico said. “That kid’s chest looks like a plate of spaghetti.”

  Death was very ugly, even among ugly people.

  “You want to call Quirk?” Hawk said. “He gonna love this.”

  I nodded.

  46

  Quirk was not pleased. He walked from the kitchen into the living room, where I’d been going over the story with Frank Belson. Hawk was outside, talking to a young female detective I didn’t know. The front door was left open, with crime scene techs and detectives going in
and out. The room had grown very cold.

  “What a mess,” Quirk said. “What a fucking mess.”

  “Spenser says he was just being a Good Samaritan,” Belson said.

  “Just happened to be tooling around Southie and ran across Chico Hirsch getting the crap kicked out of him?”

  “He and Hawk had been tailing those guys and saw them abduct Mr. Hirsch,” Belson said.

  “Oh, goody,” Quirk said.

  “I knew how much you missed seeing me,” I said.

  “I was in my easy chair, watching the game,” Quirk said. “I had about this much Johnnie Walker poured into my glass.”

  He spaced his thumb and index finger very far apart.

  “I can see you’re still in your house clothes,” I said.

  Quirk wore a stiff-collared white dress shirt under a navy V-neck cashmere sweater. His charcoal pants sported a sharp crease. His wingtips gleamed from a recent shine. The trench coat had been expertly folded under his right arm.

  “We got your gun for Moon Murphy and Hawk’s shotgun on Red,” Quirk said.

  “Red took my gun,” I said.

  “That’s embarrassing,” Quirk said.

  “It is.”

  “That’s the part I don’t get,” Quirk said. “Why would he shoot his partner?”

  “We were going to call the police,” I said. “And Moon Murphy, being a recent parolee, was not excited about returning to the pokey.”

  “And he was about to rat on Red?”

  “Something like that.”

  Quirk shook his head. He looked to Belson. Belson shook his head.

  Belson reached into his coat pocket for a cigar and stepped outside for a smoke. I recalled a time when he’d light up standing over a dead body.

  “I’m getting the feeling I’m going to be x-ed from the Citizen of the Year Award by the Boston police.”

  “Yeah,” Quirk said. He nodded as he appraised me. “But you’re number one on our shit list.”

  “Was the Johnnie Walker Red or Blue?”

  “Blue,” Quirk said.

  “Ouch,” I said.

  “Shit list,” Quirk said.

  “On the other hand, Chico Hirsch wants to name his great-grandson Hawk.”

  “Explain that at Hebrew school.”

  “Chico is an old man,” I said. “They could’ve killed him.”

  “Spenser, patron saint to bookies, con men, and thieves.”

  I shrugged. We walked outside to join Belson. From the stoop, I saw Mattie standing with a patrol officer. The officer was a young black woman. Mattie was talking, and she was taking down notes.

  “We hadn’t even talked about the kid yet,” Quirk said. “What the hell? You gone nuts?”

  “You hadn’t heard?” Belson said. “Business is so bad, Spenser babysits for beer money.”

  “That’s Julie Sullivan’s kid,” Quirk said.

  I nodded.

  “Why’d you bring her into this mess?” Quirk asked.

  Belson smoked the cigar. I was glad the cold wind scattered the smoke. Belson liked them cheap.

  “You get a dozen for a quarter, Frank?” I said.

  “Nah,” Belson said. “Are you kidding? These are a whole dollar apiece.”

  “Red and Moon kill her mom?” Quirk asked.

  I shook my head. “We were getting to that when Moon met his early demise.”

  Quirk nodded. “We’ll be taking your gun.”

  “I figured.”

  “And Hawk’s gun, too.”

  “Hawk won’t be pleased.”

  “Do I look like I give a shit?”

  “Stand a little more in the light.”

  “You mind a little off-the-record advice?” Quirk said.

  I waited.

  “You may want to rearm,” Quirk said.

  I nodded.

  “Yep,” Belson said. “You want to tell him? Or you want me to?”

  “Tell me what?” I asked.

  The two cops grinned at each other.

  “House is owned by none other than Mr. Jack Flynn,” Quirk said. “We’re going to talk to him next.”

  “He’ll probably be a little pissed about you guys redecorating the kitchen,” Belson said. “And acing a couple of his people.” He plugged the cigar into the corner of his mouth. The stubble on his face had grown thick since shaving that morning.

  “You want to tell us what the fuck is going on with Jumpin’ Jack?” Quirk said. “I know that’s not your way and all. And obviously you have the matter well in hand.”

  “We didn’t plan this,” I said. “It happened.”

  “Shit happens?” Quirk said. “You might want to put that on your business card.”

  47

  Rita met me at Boston police headquarters, and after a long while of her reading forms and me signing them, we had breakfast. We sat at the counter at Mike’s City Diner, and the same pink-haired waitress who waited on me the other day poured us each a cup of coffee. I smiled at her. She didn’t return the smile. I think my rugged but handsome appearance flummoxed her.

  “She’s flummoxed,” I said to Rita.

  “If I were in my early twenties with pink hair, you’d flummox me, too.”

  “Are you saying I’m an acquired taste?”

  “Like a single-barrel scotch,” she said. “A little bitter to all but the discerning palate.”

  “Swell.”

  Rita wrapped her fingers around the thick coffee mug. She added some cream and sugar.

  “You did the right thing.”

  “Losing my gun?”

  “Calling me,” she said. “There could be civil suits. Family members would raise hell if they knew you were such close friends with Quirk.”

  “I think Quirk would run me out of town on a greased rail if I did something wrong.”

  “I disagree,” Rita said. She sipped coffee. She left the imprint of her very red lipstick on the edge of the mug.

  “You haven’t known Quirk as long as I have.”

  Mike’s was bustling at six a.m. Plenty of young professionals and grizzled retirees packed the tables, reading fresh copies of the Globe or reading the Globe on their iPhones. I did not have an iPhone. Strangely, I used my phone to make phone calls. Simpler times.

  “So now that your suspects are dead,” Rita asked, “how does that leave Mr. Green?”

  “No worse than yesterday.”

  “So let me get this straight,” she said. “Now we believe the distinguished misters Murphy and Cahill didn’t kill Julie Sullivan?”

  Rita sipped coffee. She looked at me with her big green eyes over the mug.

  “They played a role in her killing,” I said. “But there’s more. Others. They were following orders.”

  “I know a good psychic if you’d like to go that route.”

  “I have a working theory.”

  “So let’s say the real killer’s two accomplices are now dead,” she said. “How do I make a case to exonerate Mr. Green? Those nail clippings are a long shot. It’ll take months to return from the lab, and that doesn’t necessarily clear him. A judge won’t care if his DNA is absent. We’ll need more.”

  “You ever hear of Jack Flynn?”

  “Sure.”

  “What do you know?”

  Rita shrugged. “I don’t know. Typical Southie hood. I once prosecuted some guys in his crew. They’d hijacked a cigarette truck and were selling their spoils out back of a supermarket in Quincy. Wasn’t he convicted of some killings sometime back?”

  “I’m being told he worked out a deal with the Feds.”

  “With your friend Agent Connor?” Rita raised her eyebrows. “Sticky. Sticky.”

  “Yep.”

  “And now the Feds’ ace in the hole may have killed your client’s mom.”

  “I’ve known Jack Flynn since about as long as I’ve been in this business,” I said. “He used to be a shooter for a bookie in Charlestown named Frank Doerr.”

  “Doerr still in busines
s?” Rita asked.

  “Let’s say he took an early retirement,” I said. “From there, Flynn worked a little for Joe Broz. But Broz never trusted him. Flynn’s mainly freelance. He’s really the only guy in the city who could work his own people without getting squeezed by the Italians. He’s sort of been grandfathered into the criminal system.”

  “Hoodlums and their complex codes,” Rita said. “Endlessly tiresome.”

  She set down the coffee and picked up a laminated menu. She crossed her legs as she read. Her heavy wool coat lay on the stool next to her.

  “Hash and eggs are highly recommended,” I said.

  “If I ate hash and eggs for breakfast, I’d need more sex to burn the calories.”

  “If you were any more sexed up, you’d spontaneously combust.”

  Rita raised an eyebrow. “So how certain are we that Flynn killed Julie Sullivan?”

  “Fairly,” I said.

  “Why?”

  “That’s where it gets tricky.”

  “Did Red Cahill and Moon Murphy know?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Flynn sent them for her. I think he was her boyfriend.”

  Rita nodded. “Now we’ll never know.”

  The waitress stopped at our table, refilled our coffee, and took our orders. Rita decided on a Greek omelet, no toast, with a small OJ. I had hash and eggs. I wanted to underscore my point.

  I again smiled at the pink-haired waitress. She narrowed her eyes at me and walked off.

  “Maybe she thinks you’re nuts,” Rita said.

  “You think I’ve lost it?”

  “You still got it,” Rita said. “And I got it, too. If you were smart, we could join a mutual admiration society.”

  “If only my heart did not belong to another.”

  “Your loss,” Rita said.

  I grinned. We were quiet for a moment. My ears still rang from hearing gunshots at very close range. I took comfort in the diner activity. The pouring of coffee, orders barked back to the chef, and the clang of silverware were much nicer than Jack Flynn’s kitchen.

  “How bad was it?” Rita asked.

  “To quote Quirk, ‘It was a royal clusterfuck.’”

  “Does Hawk need help?”

  “He has a good lawyer.”

  “Not as good as me.”

  “No one is as good as you.”