Robert B. Parker’s Cheap Shot

19

Hawk picked me up at the Back Bay Station the next morning in his silver Jag.

“You could have at least held open my door.”

“Sure,” he said. “I aims to please.”

“And surly, too.”

“You learn anything?”

“Nope,” I said. “Confused as ever.”

Hawk drove off, and soon we were heading north on Boylston. He had brought coffee and donuts from Café Dunkin. I had eaten a bagel on the train. This was second breakfast. Maybe I was turning into a hobbit.

“Z at Kinjo’s house,” Hawk said. “Which is now a three-ring circus.”

“Wondered how long it would take.”

“Waiting for someone to set up a fucking ice-cream stand.”

Hawk wore Chanel shades with a white cashmere turtleneck under a black leather jacket. He handled the Jaguar as if it were an extension of himself, coiled and controlled.

“How’s Kinjo?”

“Hasn’t slept since you left.”

“And his wife?”

“Wife one or wife two?”

“Who’s at the house?”

“Wife two,” Hawk said. “Z says the woman loving all those cameras on the street. Did her makeup and everything.”

“Must be her grief,” I said. “And wife one?”

“I sat on her house like you asked,” Hawk said. “She doesn’t have the boy. And if she did have the boy, she staying put. State police are all over her.”

“First to suspect a parent.”

Hawk slowed the Jag at the corner of Boylston and Berkeley.

“Not that I minded watching her,” Hawk said. “Damn. You meet her?”

“Yep.”

“And.”

“She scratched the hell out of my face.”

Hawk shrugged. “Reached out to some local pros,” he said. “Called in some favors.”

“And none of our usual suspects are touching kidnapping a kid.”

“Nope,” Hawk said. “This seem like amateur hour.”

“Anything else?”

“Some nut called in to a radio show last night,” he said. “Said he has the kid. Less than credible, but staties checking it out.”

The Jag idled at the curb where the new Bank of America was going in. I sampled one of the chocolate frosted to enhance my deductive reasoning. “What did Lundquist say?”

“State cops ain’t real fond of me,” Hawk said. “Figure they may be giving comfort to the enemy.”

“He’d talk to you.”

Hawk stayed silent. A tall young woman in tight jeans, a tight black sweater, and tall riding boots strode across our vision. The woman was quite fit. Hawk stayed silent.

“Hmm,” Hawk said.

“Hmm,” I said. “The office can wait. You mind driving me out to Chestnut Hill?”

“Why not?” Hawk said. “Always wanted to know how the other half lived.”

“You can be the other half,” I said. “Long as you have money.”

“And fame,” Hawk said. “Fame helps a brother out.”

Hawk knocked the Jag into gear and drove toward Arlington, making his way back toward Huntington and out of the city. He let the window down as we drove under the Mass Pike.

“Which radio show?” I said.

“Paulie and the Gooch,” Hawk said. “That sports-talk shit.”

“Not a super-fan?”

Hawk did not answer. We didn’t speak for a long while as we followed Route 9 into Newton. “So you struck out?”

“Not exactly,” I said. “But those most likely to do Kinjo harm are looking less likely. It seems that some key pieces of information regarding the incident were kept private.”

“By Kinjo himself.”

“Yep.”

“How key?”

“His attorney paid off the shooting victim’s family so they’d drop the civil case,” I said.

“Don’t mean it settled.”

“Or that Kinjo was guilty,” I said.

“But money sure do make this world spin.”