Robert B. Parker’s Cheap Shot

51

I called Connor and he agreed to meet outside the Federal Building in Government Center. He said he wanted to save me the hassle of going through security. I figured he wanted to ditch me fast, until he invited me for a beer. Being offered a beer by Special Agent in Charge Connor might have made Faust reconsider. But as I wasn’t Faust, and a beer was a bonus with information, I agreed. We walked across the street to one of the five thousand Irish pubs around Faneuil Hall. This one was called Paddy O’s and situated next door to the Union Oyster House.

There was Irish folk music and Guinness on tap and an Irish flag hanging from the wall. I waited for the leprechaun to tap a shillelagh on the bar and ask our poison. Instead, the bartender turned out to be a tall redhead in a tight T-shirt. I ordered a Sam Adams on tap and Connor got a Tullamore Dew on the rocks. Authentic.

“I apologize that I misread you last time, Spenser,” he said. “I was wrong.”

“Yes,” I said. “You were. About a great many things.”

He smiled and laughed as if I’d been joking. His big florid face had a certain hound-dog quality that was difficult to describe. But he definitely had the look of a boozer, broken blood vessels in his cheeks and the whites of his eyes. He had on another Men’s Wearhouse special, charcoal pinstripe, and a dress shirt with a very long, unbuttoned collar. His purple and yellow tie was clipped to his shirt with an American flag pin. I resisted the urge to salute.

We drank.

I said, “I heard you’ve pulled out of the Heywood house.”

Connor didn’t react. He sipped, elbow on the wooden bar, staring straight ahead. No emotion. Noncommittal. “What else can we do?” he said. “Heywood fucked us.”

“Don’t take it personally,” I said. “If he fucked anyone, it was his own family.”

Ice cubes rattled in his glass. He shook it more to chill the whiskey.

“Our talk with him the other night was to explain things,” he said. “I wanted him to know the precarious situation, not to go vigilante.”

“He interpreted that to mean that he wouldn’t see his child again.”

“Did we fucking say that?” Connor said. He shook his head. “Jesus H. This fucking guy has gone nuts.”

The bar was completely empty at four p.m. If we stuck around until five, drinks were only two bucks each. I hoped I would not be sitting around with Tom Connor an hour from now. I tried to move the conversation along.

“Did you give up on Kevin Murphy?” I said.

“That moron didn’t do it.”

“My feelings, too,” I said. “I guess I had higher hopes for him.”

“He was bringing Heywood’s wife some blow and she wouldn’t pay up for it,” he said. “His crazy wife said it was true and I asked her why she hadn’t let her husband know about this when he pulled that gun. I mean, he could have killed someone right there.”

“How I entered the picture,” I said.

“Now we have nothing,” he said. “You can’t trace the demands. And a paid ransom is always a great starting point. We could have followed the money. Whether the child died or not, we would have had some direct contact. We could stake out the drop without them even knowing.”

I nodded.

“It’s done,” he said. “The kid is dead.”

“So you’re quitting?”

“We’re not quitting, but since our victim’s father has put a bounty on the kidnappers, I have to think about the best use of my resources. You know, we do have other major crimes in Boston.”

“I have heard as much.”

“What about you?” he said, nodding to the bartender. She poured him more whiskey while a sad Irish ballad played from the jukebox. The Irish side of me wanted to join in and sing a few verses, had I known them.

“I’m still on the case.”

Connor nodded and smiled to himself. “I grew up in the Old Colony Projects,” he said. “When I was a kid, I remember a couple girls from my church just heading home one day from school and disappearing. The police, the church, and even the local hoods looked all over Southie for them. But we never found them. Sometimes people just disappear, Spenser.”

“This was an orchestrated business deal,” I said. “The kid was taken for money.”

Connor nodded. “Not much of this shit anymore,” he said. “You really got to be some kind of fucking stupid to pull off a kidnapping like you’re Machine Gun Kelly. It’s too hard. Nobody can really work a drop anymore. That’s the shit of the whole situation. The drop is where we could have had them. Now what they did with the kid in the meantime of catching them was the question. But there was never any fucking doubt that we would’ve gotten them.”

“Probably should have explained it better to Heywood.”

“He wants us to hunt them.”

“He wants me to hunt them,” I said.

“He offer you the five mil?”

“Yep.”

“If you get the guy, will you take it?”

“Nope.”

Connor tapped at his glass and waited for it to be filled. He smiled to himself some more in that kind of off-kilter, alcohol-infused way. The bartender let us know that happy hour would begin soon. “No, thanks, sweetheart,” he said.

Connor laid down enough money to cover us both and a handsome tip.

“You see Kinjo?” he said.

“Right after it happened.”

“Have you spoken with him today?”

“Won’t talk to me.”

“I shouldn’t tell you this,” Connor said, draining the rest of the whiskey and patting his lips with a cocktail napkin. “But we have had developments not known outside the Bureau. Certainly by the press. You won’t tell the press, will you?”

I made the universal symbol of turning the key in my closed mouth. I stopped just short of throwing the imaginary key over my shoulder.

“We got some clothing sent to Heywood’s house,” he said. “Kid sizes. Sizes to fit Akira.”

I took in some air. I shook my head.

“Clothing was bloody and torn,” he said. “We got it at the lab right now to test blood types, hair, and all that CSI shit. But when we showed him the T-shirt, Kinjo broke down. He knew the clothes, IDed it as what the boy had on the day he’d been taken. I’ve seen a lot of people lose it before. But I’ve never seen something tear loose in a man like that. His brother and a couple lackeys had to hold him down. Four fucking men to hold one. I think he would have ripped down that mansion brick by brick if he could.”

“Jesus,” I said.

“Been asking for Jesus a lot around the Heywood house,” Connor said, turning to leave. “Looks like he never showed up.”

I stayed at the bar and could see Connor dodging cars as he crossed the street to the wide brick expanse of Government Center.