Эйс Аткинс - Kickback

“God, no,” I said.

“Good,” Hawk said. “’Cause there’s a limit to the shit I’ll do for you.”

Hawk found a parking spot with a good vantage point in a neighboring parking lot. He killed the lights but kept the engine and the heater running. The radio was tuned to a local jazz station. Mingus and his Pork Pie Hat.

“Now what?”

“We see who shows up,” I said.

“You private detectives sho’ do have some powerful smarts.”

A few minutes later, the honorable Judge Callahan showed up in a Lincoln and met up at the table with Scali. And twenty minutes later, a thick, beefy guy in a zipped leather jacket and jeans hopped out of a tow truck and walked inside to take a seat at the table. He looked to be in his forties and had a disreputable nose and close-cropped black hair.

“You know him?” Hawk said.

“Nope.”

“I do.”

“Jackie DeMarco?”

“None other, babe.”

The men read off their menus, snapped them shut, and all laughed together at the table. “Pals,” I said, turning on the windshield wipers to clear away the ice.

“Warms a man’s heart,” Hawk said.

32

I met Sheila Yates and Megan Mullen the next day at Peet’s Coffee & Tea in Harvard Square. We sat inside, huddled around a small table in the very back. I drank coffee with only a little sugar and abstained from the scones and muffins they sold. As I sipped the nearly black coffee and watched others devouring sugary pastries, I marveled at my restraint. Had we been at Kane’s in Saugus, all bets would be off.

“They’re going to let your son go,” Megan said.

Megan Mullen removed her ski hat and set her leather satchel on the floor. A lot of people were crammed into the space. It was eighteen degrees outside. The windows were all frosted and a lot of snow and ice had been tracked inside.

Sheila put a hand to her mouth and made a little squeal. Her hair was bright and big that morning. As always, she wore quite a bit of perfume. Several bracelets jangled from her wrist.

“And they will expunge the charge,” Megan said. “That was a condition of our appeal.”

“I can’t thank you enough,” Sheila said. “When?”

“Next Friday,” Megan said. “Dillon will be taken off the island and out-processed at the Blackburn juvenile detention center.”

“Oh my God,” she said. “Thank you. Thank you both.”

She reached out and squeezed my arm. I instinctively flexed a bit. I couldn’t help but show off. Megan didn’t speak while she added a couple packets of fake sugar to her coffee and stirred. She stared down at the coffee. “Of course, there’s more to it.”

“Let me guess,” I said. “They want me out of Blackburn by sundown.”

“Did you speak to Rita already?”

I nodded.

“So you know what’s on the table,” she said. “The DA is obviously aware you’re working on Dillon’s case. That’s why they also agreed to drop charges against you. On the condition you won’t return to the city.”

“And I’d grown so fond of it.”

“No one ever mentioned a taped interview with Miss Golnick,” Megan said. “I’m betting she recanted her story. But since I got her out of jail, neither she nor her parents will answer my phone calls.”

“How grateful is that?”

“At least she didn’t accuse me of a crime.” Megan reached for her satchel and turned to Sheila Yates. She pulled out a single piece of paper and handed it over to her. “They faxed this over this morning. It’s a lot of fancy wording saying you will not pursue a civil complaint against the Blackburn Courts or Middlesex County. Someone is telling the cops to make this all go away.”

“Fat chance,” Sheila said, not reading the paper and handing it back.

“If you don’t sign it, they won’t release Dillon.”

“And my continuing to poke around would violate the terms of Dillon’s release,” I said.

“Not stated,” Megan said. “But heavily implied.”

“Can’t get me for being a pervert,” I said. “But they can threaten to punish my client.”

A long line had formed at the cash register. A middle-aged woman in a knitted red hat was having a hard time deciding between coffee and tea. She was asking the cashier which ones she’d prefer. Those behind her were growing agitated. I had ten to one that the woman was on the tenure track in Harvard’s English department.

“When I get my son back, I’m leaving,” Sheila Yates said. “I can find another job. I can’t run the risk of them arresting him again. And to release him with threats? I don’t like this. I don’t like this a bit.”

“I’m not very good at being told what to do.”

“I plan on sending them our own waiver,” Megan said, sipping coffee, her hazel eyes very big but not quite innocent over the rim of the cup. “Where the terms are more definite and applying only to a civil suit. If that’s what you want.”

Sheila Yates turned to me. She rested her hand on mine and looked me in the eye. “You,” she said. “You give ’em hell. I’m taking Dillon so far away from here they won’t ever find him. As soon as he’s off that fucking island, bust these crooks up. Okay? You do that for me?”

I smiled. She patted my hand.

“What’s wrong with these people?” Sheila said. “Jesus. They’re either greedy or lazy or just plain stupid.”

“All that’s needed for evil to triumph—” I said.

“Is some dirty, sneaky bastards,” Sheila said.

“Nobody ever said it better.”

33

Okay,” Vinnie said. “There’s this guy. A lawyer. His name is Ziggy Swatek.”

“You’re kidding me.”

“You think I’d make up a fucking name like that?”

“I guess you’re right,” I said. “Nobody in their right mind would.”

“You were asking me about the DeMarcos and this developer named Talos,” he said. “So Zig is kind of like their . . .”

“Common denominator.”

“Exactly,” Vinnie said. “They all work together, too.”

We stood at the railing overlooking the bowling lanes. Vinnie had a cigarette hanging from his lips, despite several signs around the premises forbidding smoking. Several lanes away, two old men in tracksuits took turns knocking the hell out of the pins. I had stopped counting after six strikes in a row. Vinnie eyed me for a moment and blew out some smoke.

“He’s a real shitbag,” Vinnie said.

“Give it to me straight,” I said. “Don’t pull any punches.”

“Man doesn’t have any style,” Vinnie said. “He has a picture of himself on his legal website. He’s standing by a Harley and he’s wearing a leather vest with no shirt.”

“Not a good look.”

“No,” Vinnie said. “And he don’t even have the arms for it.”

“I don’t think anyone can pull off a leather vest.”

“I don’t like these people,” he said. “None of them. Ten years ago, old man DeMarco tried to have Gino whacked just for being queer.”

“I imagine he had some territory to gain as well.”

“Yeah,” Vinnie said. “That, too. But mainly he couldn’t cut up a piece of the pie with a guy like Gino. Behind his back, he called Gino all kind of names and said he was an embarrassment to the city’s Italian community.”

“But robbing, stealing, and killing is good for the image?”

Vinnie shrugged. He blew out some more smoke. I’d forgotten how much I disliked being around it. I took off my ball cap and waved away the smoke. Vinnie smiled.

“Nobody can say the old man wasn’t stand-up,” he said. “He did a twenty-year stretch. Never opened his mouth.”

“And he died a free man.”

“So this guy, fucking Ziggy, now looks out for the old lady who’s like a hundred years old and the two sons.”