Robert B. Parker’s Cheap Shot

22

I dropped Z at my office and soon found Logan Wheeler in the weight room inside Gillette. He was squatting what must have equaled a tractor-trailer truck on his shoulders. As he cranked out the reps, deep and slow, he showed little sign of strain. He racked the weight with a small grunt. A coach stood nearby and tracked Wheeler’s progress on an iPad.

As more weight was added to an already bending Olympic bar, Ray Heywood stepped up and introduced me to Wheeler. Wheeler had been with Kinjo at Chrome. I’d read his interview on the train back to Boston.

“I don’t know what to tell you.”

“I work for the Heywoods,” I said. “And this isn’t about two years ago. It’s about now.”

“I don’t want to talk about it anymore,” Wheeler said. “Kinjo didn’t do jack shit, man. He’s a good guy. When I think about what happened to Akira, I want to throw up.”

Ray, dressed in a leather jacket and a scally cap, hung back a little. He told Wheeler that I was cool. I tried my best to look cool as I waited for Wheeler to add some.

“Like I told the police,” Wheeler said. “That guy, whatever his name is—”

“Antonio Lima.”

“Yeah, Lima,” Wheeler said. “He was drunk and tried to start some shit with Kinjo, which was stupid. And then he tried to start some shit with me, which was even more stupid.”

Wheeler was six-foot-six and well over three hundred pounds. He had a lot of blond hair and a stubbled beard and wore a gray T-shirt and gray sweatpants. His eyes were brown and tiny in his large head.

“And then?”

“And then nothing,” Wheeler said. “The bouncers broke it up and we went back to the Trump. We ordered up some ice cream and cake and laughed about the whole thing. The next thing I know the cops are pounding on our goddamn door, wanting to talk to Kinjo. At first, I thought it was a practical joke.”

“Not a good one.”

“We all like to screw with each other,” Wheeler said. “A couple weeks ago, we had these bumper stickers made up for the rookies. They said Small Penis On Board. The dummies didn’t notice until people started honking at them and laughing. It was funny as shit.”

The Pats’ weight room was part of the many chambers inside the stadium. There were rooms for watching film, for meetings with the position coaches, for holding press conferences, a training table, and a locker room nearly as large as the field itself. This room was even larger, with old-fashioned weights and several rubberized mats to work speed, agility, and coordination. A three-hundred-pound man with agility and quickness was a scary prospect. I thought about the other player interview I’d read.

“What about Robey?” I said. “Do you keep in touch?”

Wheeler shrugged. “It’s been a while.”

“And he was traded to Miami?”

“Yeah.”

“You have his number?”

Wheeler nodded. Ray stood next to us. The weight coach looked impatient, waiting for Wheeler to attack the next set. I stepped back and watched Wheeler knock out eight reps. There was more weight this time. He grunted a little.

“You want to try that?” I said to Ray.

“Shit,” Ray said. “You?”

“I value my knees too much.”

Wheeler racked the bar. He walked over to a table for a water bottle. He drank down a quart and turned back to me. He wiped his bearded face with the back of his hand. One of his sizable knees had a scar on it that looked like a zipper.

“What’s not clear,” I said, “and the reason I wanted to speak to you, is who else was there?”

“Like you said,” Wheeler said. “Me, Kinjo, and Robey.”

“Some witnesses said there was another football player there,” I said. “A third man out with Kinjo that night.”

There was a slight flick of his eyes to Ray, waiting for direction. Ray didn’t change expression or say anything. After a second, he nodded at Wheeler to continue.

“That’s not right,” Wheeler said. “I’ll give you Robey’s cell when I’m done here. You ask him.”

“And he left Chrome with you, too?”

“Yeah, man. What are you getting at?”

“Just trying to clear up a few things,” I said. “Was he involved with the fight?”

“There was no fight,” Wheeler said. “Robey was off with some girl. That Antonio guy pushed at Kinjo. Kinjo was ready to clock him and then the bouncers came up. I told him to cool off and get the hell out of there. We’re not stupid. It was all just some bullshit. How were we to know that guy was some thug? He obviously had his own problems that got himself killed. Kinjo was only talking to that girl.”

“His brother said Kinjo had inappropriately touched her.”

“Is that the reason she’d hopped up in his lap?” Wheeler said. “Kinjo doesn’t treat women like that. Why would he? Women can’t leave him alone.”

Ray nodded in agreement. Wheeler gulped down more water and looked at us with small, sad eyes. “You find out who took Akira,” he said. “Okay? God help the son of a bitch who did this. There isn’t a player on this team who wouldn’t kill for that kid.”

“Strong words.”

Wheeler nodded. “Don’t play with the meaning. You know what I mean. Kinjo is my goddamned brother.”

Ray and I walked out of the weight room and into the long concrete hall.

“What do you think?” I said.

“I think this is a waste of time,” he said. “Kinjo paid the family because he was being eaten alive by the press. The family knows he wasn’t involved. They wanted money. Kinjo didn’t want to lose endorsement deals.”

“Okay.” I nodded. “How much do you know about Cristal?”

Ray grinned. He shook his head. “Too much.”

“You think she knows more?” I said.

“Let me ask you this,” he said. “You think Cristal is mentally capable of pulling something like this?”

“I understand her background’s a bit sketchy.”

“She ain’t a virtuous woman,” he said. “But she ain’t evil, either. This isn’t an inside job, man. Not exactly a secret that Kinjo is now a ten-million-dollar man. Lots of bad folks out there who hate seeing a black man in the catbird seat. How the hell you narrow that down?”

I nodded.

“That man being killed in New York has always been the stuff of whispers and lies,” Ray said. “Don’t let it cloud what’s really happening.”

I held Ray’s eye for a while. He nodded with extreme certainty, adjusted his cap, and then led the way out of the labyrinth under Gillette.