Эйс Аткинс - Kickback

“Judge Price and I became friends,” he said. “This whole thing is what made him sick. When they demoted him, he kind of went nuts. All he could talk about was Scali and Callahan and their unholy alliance. He would call me in the middle of the night. We would meet in the city and in Blackburn for coffee. He had ideas. Conspiracy theories about what they were up to. Some were crazy. Some of them made sense.”

“Which ones?”

“I think Judge Scali’s ego eclipsed any type of rational behavior,” he said. “I think the job of the Commonwealth is to help children and families, not to further Scali’s political and personal agenda.”

“What’s his personal agenda?”

“Like I said, I’m not doing your job for you.”

“What about Callahan?” I said. “What’s his role?”

“To protect Scali,” he said. “They’ve been friends since first grade. I don’t know if you knew that or not. Judge Price knew everything about them. He said Callahan is the one who made some calls to Beacon Hill and had me reassigned. He’s in tight with a lot of senators and congressmen. There’s rumors he’s pals with some Mob guys.”

“Like who?”

Blakeney patted the heavy stack of paper. “I have absolutely no idea,” he said. “Do I look like I know anyone in the Mob? All I know is that some people wanted this thing buried deep.”

“Even if you never finished.”

Blakeney smiled. He leaned back into his chair. He was quiet as the waiter returned to clear my empty plates. “That’s what they think,” he said. “I spent weekends for three months finishing what I started.”

“Did Price ever know?”

Blakeney shook his head. “Jim had died,” he said. “He knew what they were doing wasn’t right. I finished out of respect to him. I thought about giving it to a reporter, but they ask too many questions. I have a wife, three kids, and a mortgage. This job sucks. The people I work for do, too. But I have to pay the bills. Jobs aren’t easy to find.”

“Besides being a private snoop, I have few marketable skills.”

“You really think you can do something with this, Spenser?”

“I’m going to try.”

“This isn’t about Blackburn,” he said. “This is about backroom Boston and old families and old favors. A shit ton of money. No one likes to be embarrassed. They’ll come after you.”

“They always do,” I said. “But I’ve dealt with worse.”

“They got rid of the judge, they got rid of me. They sure as hell will do what needs to get done with you. You won’t see it coming.”

I touched the edge of the file as if it were a new and very exciting birthday present. Blakeney did not remove his hands, staring me in the eye. I stared back. I had a full stomach, an iron disposition, and a lot of time. Snow had started to fall in big flakes along Beach Street. It was very festive on the Asian neon signs. For a moment, it was hard to imagine we were in downtown Boston.

“I didn’t give this to you,” he said.

“Nope.”

“I don’t know you.”

“We never met,” I said.

He took his hands off the file, stood, and grabbed his hat and gloves. “Good luck,” he said. “But don’t ever come to my place of work again. I’m through with all this.”

They made you shower and use some kind of soap to kill lice. The boy had never had lice in his life and the shampoo smelled like kerosene, burning his eyes. After the shower, he was given two sets of clothes. A faded-out black top and a faded-out green top. The pants were the same, both green. When he put them on, he looked like he was wearing hospital scrubs. He was told to wear socks with a pair of plastic shower shoes. When he asked about his real shoes, a guard told him this is what he wore inside. “Outside,” he said, “you get work boots.”

All the boys with facial hair were forced to shave. Everyone got haircuts whether they needed them or not. As a wrestler, the boy always kept his hair cut short. But when the guards got finished with him, he looked nearly bald.

The guards handed out heavy navy coats and walked them through the cold night to the bunkhouse. Some of the boys were sent into Building A, others were marched into Building B. The boy’s name was called at C, cold air off the harbor freezing his face.

The building wasn’t like a jail at all. It was one story and wide open. The whole place smelled like a hospital, a harsh chemical smell covering up something really bad. A black man in a guard’s uniform told him to make his way to Group 4, where he’d get a bed.

Other boys dressed the same as him—black, white, Hispanic, and Asian—followed him with their eyes. Most just grouped around a flickering television watching an MMA match and yelling and screaming with each punch. He was handed clean linens for his bunk.

“What about my pillow?”

“Not now,” the guard said.

“What?” the boy said.

“You got to earn your pillow.”

The boy nodded, not understanding any of it. The guard left and the boy went to making his bed. He stowed the change of clothes in a footlocker, trying not to pay attention to the other kids watching. Some kid was lying heavy on the top of the bunk, then swung upside down to look at the boy as he made the bed.

“What’s your name?” the kid said.

The boy told him.

“This place sucks balls.”

“No shit,” the boy said.

“You get any personal shit sent to you, keep it to yourself,” he said. “Lock it away. Doesn’t matter what it is. Someone will steal it. You stay here long enough and you get candy bars or dirty magazines, someone will kill you for it.”

“Come on.”

“Okay,” the kid said, and disappeared on the top bunk.

The windows had thick wire in the glass, bars covering every slot. The walls were white and the floors were gray. A toilet flushed in a bathroom way down the hall.

The kids in the television room yelled some more. A guard blew a whistle hard and told them to shut the hell up. The boy heard the wind coming across again and again like hard continuous slaps.

Out in the harbor, the winter wind was killer, blowing so hard he wondered if the little buildings could stand it. Like maybe all the buildings would crumble and fall into the harbor. When a real good gust would hit the windows, the lights would flicker on and off. For a moment, all the power went off and the boys from the MMA fight yelled and then started to laugh. Someone shot off an air horn. More yelling from the guards. A few flashlights scattered across the room. A generator kicked on.

The boy from the top bunk appeared again. “So maybe they won’t kill you,” the kid said. “But they’ll fight you for anything you got.”

“Great.”

“Can you fight?”

“Sure.”

“I can’t,” the kid said. “I’m screwed. I just make fun of them until they quit messing on me. The guards. The Roxbury crew. Maybe they’ll be too tired tomorrow. Tomorrow is a workday. That horn will blow at five a.m., rain, sleet, or snow. It’s kind of like sleep-away camp here. Except it sucks balls.”

“You said that already.”

“Thought you might need reminding,” the kid said.

The boy had his hands behind his head. He didn’t look at the kid anymore, just stared at the bunk over him, the weight of the kid shifting and sagging through the mattress. The wind beat the hell out of the building some more like it had nothing better to do.

“Where you from?” the kid said. The two could not see each other.