Эйс Аткинс - Kickback

I shot him three times. His body jerked and spasmed like he was being jolted by an electric wire.

The ringing silence broke with the sound of a big engine starting and the squealing of tires. A big black Ford F-250 raced by the tow truck, slamming on brakes before it came to the closed gates, the gates slowly clanging open. One of the doors opened and the skinny guy with no shoes jumped in the passenger side as the truck raced off into Southie.

I stepped over Howdy Doody’s body, which now looked like a broken marionette. I felt an acid rising up in the back of my throat. I spit into the lot and kept walking forward, trying not to look over at the two dogs fighting over different pieces of Arty Leblanc. Baldy was screaming in pain. Everything was dirty and messy, but I preferred this to being burned up in the back of a Buick as Jackie DeMarco had instructed.

Hawk wandered out of the maze of impounded cars, propping a .380 hunting rifle over his shoulders like old stills I’d seen of Woody Strode.

“You want to call Quirk?” he said. “Or split.”

“Call Quirk.”

“Then I split.”

I nodded at Hawk. He nodded slightly to me and disappeared out the gate and into Southie. It was another ten minutes before I heard the police sirens.

49

You know, I saw this movie once,” Frank Belson said. “The private eye kills a bunch of hoodlums before the police show up. And you know what the detective does?”

“What’s that, Frank?”

“The guy gives the shamus his weapon back,” he said. “No questions asked. He tells the boys on patrol, ‘He’s okay, guys. No problem.’ Our hero rides off into the sunset or drives his fucking sportscar, or whatever.”

“And that’s what you’re going to do for me, Frank?” I said.

“Ha,” Belson said, plugging an old cigar into his mouth. “Ha, ha.”

There were a lot of BPD cars and a lot of cops scouring the impound lot. I spotted an ambulance, two hearses, and a lot of unmarked units parked inside or near the chain-link fence. It was night now and the sleet had stopped. I wanted to go home very badly. Belson kept laughing.

“Something funny?”

“I don’t give a crap if this is Jackie DeMarco’s impound lot or Lucky Luciano’s,” he said. “You got a lot of explaining to do, hotshot.”

“I had just run in to get some takeout,” I said. “I didn’t even see the meter.”

“And so you got pissed about them towing your ride and killed two guys and sent another guy to the hospital?”

“How’s he doing anyway?” I said.

“Do you care?” Belson said.

“Nope,” I said. “Not really. They had just offered to snuff out my candle and burn me up in the trunk of an old Buick.”

“The indignity,” Belson said. “I would’ve figured you for a Cadillac.” He looked over my shoulder to a couple uniformed cops walking the impound lot. One of them held up a thumb, finding the place where DeMarco’s crew had returned shots with Hawk. They set little tags on the hood and windshield for the bullet holes.

“Who was with you?” Belson said. “Hawk, Vinnie Morris? Or was it that Indian kid you’re training these days?”

“I ride alone.”

“Bullshit,” Belson said. “I don’t need some tech people to tell me they’re pulling rifle slugs out of that one on the ground. The other one, Jesus Christ. I saw he’d been shot, but son of a bitch. What that dog did to him. They had to tranq the fucking dogs and send ’em to the pound.”

“His name is Arty Leblanc,” I said. “He used to work with Broz. Back in the day.”

“Not many of you guys left,” he said. “Maybe I should salute or something.”

I shrugged. Despite my history with Frank Belson and the guys in homicide, they took my .38 and the Taurus I’d pulled from Arty Leblanc. They would test the weapons, conduct autopsies, draw maps and diagrams, and ultimately pull me into an inquest. The inquests were seldom interesting or helpful to me. I’d sat through many before. I’d be cleared but not without a lot of questions from the Suffolk County DA.

In the darkness, the impound lot and the triple-deckers and remnants of Old Colony that surrounded it seemed as welcoming and homey as a foreign planet. Despite my protests, Belson fired up his old cigar. The smoke looked and smelled like a piece of old rope. He made an effort to exhale in my direction. The lights over the lot shone down on the iced hoods and windshields in colorful bright patterns.

“Where’s Quirk?”

“He’s coming.”

“Goody.”

“He was off this week,” he said. “Spending time with grandkids.”

“It’s been a while,” I said.

“Not long enough.”

“And you think he’ll be upset?”

“He’ll be more than upset,” Belson said. “He’ll be fucking pissed.”

“Terrific.”

“Who was the other shooter, Spenser?”

“Beats me,” I said. “Rough neighborhood.”

“Do you know how much you make my ass hurt?”

I walked over to the steps to the trailer and sat down. They’d been made inexpertly with some two-by-fours and penny nails. Belson pulled out a notebook and asked me to go back to the beginning. “At the mall,” he said. “When exactly did this guy Leblanc pull his weapon?”

50

I was lucky to get to Susan’s a little after ten that night. I had called and she was waiting up. Pearl was very happy to see me, her nubbed tail moving as fast as hummingbird wings. Susan set out a bottle of Eagle Rare bourbon on the kitchen counter. I added some ice to a glass and poured out three fingers of whiskey.

“Bad?”

“Worse,” I said.

“How many?”

“Three dead,” I said. “Two got away.”

“Same men from Florida?”

“Same men.”

“And now?” Susan said.

I removed my jacket and my ball cap. I wandered over to her leather couch and set down my drink. Pearl hopped up beside me and nuzzled her head into my lap. Dogs had a sixth sense for knowing when their pals were down. I rubbed her head and patted her lean, muscular flank. She sniffed at my shirt and my hands. I wondered how much the smell had told her.

“You don’t want to talk about it,” she said.

“I’ve been talking about it for the last four hours with Frank Belson and Quirk,” I said. “Quirk was about as mad as I’ve ever seen him. He said I put him in an irregular position with the commissioner.”

“Irregular?”

“Yep,” I said. “Well, actually he said ‘fucking irregular’ because that’s the way Quirk talks.”

I leaned forward, Pearl still huddled close to me, and picked up the glass. I drained a lot of the whiskey. I could feel the alcohol hitting the bloodstream and dilating the capillaries. The tension in my trapezius muscles started to unclench. Susan sat on the other end of the couch and watched me as I stared and drank. She had on silk pajama bottoms and one of my old BU T-shirts.

The television was on, but she’d turned down the sound. She’d been watching some kind of cable drama show where people were throwing things and crying. A vintage movie poster for The Gay Caballero hung close by. Lee Farrell had given it to Susan as an inside joke. Caesar Romero as the Cisco Kid. I wondered if the Cisco Kid or Gordito ever had problems with shooting outlaws. Or was his sidekick Pancho? I couldn’t recall. I mainly remembered Gilbert Roland as The Kid. He had a hell of a fancy suit.

“Are you hungry?”

“Nope.”

“Have you eaten?”

“I almost had a chocolate croissant at the Chestnut Hill Mall.”

“And before that?”

“A nice corned-beef sandwich from Michael’s.”

“You know you don’t have to eat kosher just for me.”