Robert B. Parker’s Cheap Shot

57

To get up to speed, Quirk suggested I speak to an officer named Carlos Canuto with the gang unit. The gang unit, or what some called the Youth Violence Strike Force, worked out of District A1 in Charlestown. It was a short drive from the crime scene, and not thirty minutes later, I sat with Canuto in his office on the second floor. He was eating at his desk, a tuna sandwich on wheat, and catching up on the earlier shift’s overnight arrests.

“Jesus DeVeiga,” I said.

Canuto was a short, stocky black man, not yet thirty. He wore jeans, a black T-shirt, and a backward Chicago White Sox ball cap. The name caught his attention in a big way, although he finished chewing to speak. “You think Jesus DeVeiga kidnapped Heywood’s kid?”

“DeVeiga’s half-sister was just found in a trash barrel in Eastie,” I said. “I’d be a pretty lousy investigator if I didn’t try and find him.”

“What’s her name?”

“Lela Lopes. Also goes by Eva Lopes.”

“Don’t know her.”

“Antonio Lima?” I said. “Victor Lima?”

A smile crossed Canuto’s face. His wiped his mouth with a napkin and put down the sandwich. “Now we’re talking, man.”

“You guys have run-ins?”

“Frequently,” Canuto said. “When Antonio got killed in New York, I remember thinking he’d been headed for that bullet his whole damn life. Should have figured he’d be tied in some way with the Heywood kid.”

“Me, too,” I said. “But it’s taken some time to clarify. I kept checking the angles in New York.”

“That’s how it goes, man.”

“I knew Lima had priors. Some drug dealing. Stolen goods.”

“His report wasn’t nothing,” Canuto said. “You probably didn’t see his juvie record. He was a name on the street, him and DeVeiga, even before his eighteenth birthday. I’m from the same place in the islands, same neighborhood here. I’d have gone the same way if I hadn’t had some people look out for me.”

“What about Victor?”

“He’s an up-and-comer for sure,” Canuto said. “Picked him up a few years ago on outstanding warrants. But I heard he’d moved away with his mother when he turned eighteen. She’s a good lady, tried to do whatever it took for her boys.”

“I thought I found him living near his mother in New York,” I said. “She runs a grocery in Yonkers.”

Canuto nodded. He apologized but said he didn’t have a lot of time. He picked up the tuna sandwich and took a bite, chewing as he thought. A large picture window behind him had a nice view of Bunker Hill and the obelisk monument.

“This kind of stuff is bad for the whole Cape Verdean community,” he said. “Most of us have come here and made good in this country. But it’s only the criminals who make the papers. People hear Cape Verdean and instantly think gangbanger.”

“This won’t help,” I said. “You know where I can find DeVeiga?”

“I wish,” he said. “We’ve been looking for him for three months. There was a man shot at a barbershop in Dorchester in June and he was seen walking away. If you get a lead on him, let me know.”

“Any idea where to start looking?”

“We have the gang unit and the Fugitive guys looking for DeVeiga,” Canuto said, standing. He slipped into a black Kevlar vest and righted his baseball hat with the bill forward. He wiped his mouth again and picked up an energy drink, taking a long swallow.

“But he’s mainly Roxbury.”

“Some believe he’s taken over Roxbury,” Canuto said. “Those kids move a lot of drugs and make a lot of money. I do a lot of community outreach, go and give the kids pep talks in the gymnasiums, do fund-raisers for the Cape Verdean community. But they see a guy like DeVeiga with all that cash and power. Man. They just want to be him.”

I nodded. “Can you check your sources for anything on Victor Lima?”

“Sure,” Canuto said. “Let me see what I can do.”

We shook hands and walked out of the A1 building together. The building was all sharp angles of concrete and glass, very modern for a police station.

“You’re different than Quirk said you’d be,” Canuto said.

“More charming?”

“No,” Canuto said, smiling.

“More witty?”

“Quirk said you were a real pain in the ass,” Canuto said. “And to talk to you or you’d be bugging the shit out of him for days.”

“Dogged,” I said. “Quirk meant dogged.”