Эйс Аткинс - Kickback

NOVELS BY ROBERT B. PARKER

THE SPENSER NOVELS

Robert B. Parker’s Cheap Shot (by Ace Atkins)

Silent Night (with Helen Brann)

Robert B. Parker’s Wonderland (by Ace Atkins)

Robert B. Parker’s Lullaby (by Ace Atkins)

Sixkill

Painted Ladies

The Professional

Rough Weather

Now & Then

Hundred-Dollar Baby

School Days

Cold Service

Bad Business

Back Story

Widow’s Walk

Potshot

Hugger Mugger

Hush Money

Sudden Mischief

Small Vices

Chance

Thin Air

Walking Shadow

Paper Doll

Double Deuce

Pastime

Stardust

Playmates

Crimson Joy

Pale Kings and Princes

Taming a Sea-Horse

A Catskill Eagle

Valediction

The Widening Gyre

Ceremony

A Savage Place

Early Autumn

Looking for Rachel Wallace

The Judas Goat

Promised Land

Mortal Stakes

God Save the Child

The Godwulf Manuscript

THE JESSE STONE NOVELS

Robert B. Parker’s Blind Spot (by Reed Farrel Coleman)

Robert B. Parker’s Damned If You Do (by Michael Brandman)

Robert B. Parker’s Fool Me Twice (by Michael Brandman)

Robert B. Parker’s Killing the Blues (by Michael Brandman)

Split Image

Night and Day

Stranger in Paradise

High Profile

Sea Change

Stone Cold

Death in Paradise

Trouble in Paradise

Night Passage

THE SUNNY RANDALL NOVELS

Spare Change

Blue Screen

Melancholy Baby

Shrink Rap

Perish Twice

Family Honor

THE COLE/HITCH WESTERNS

Robert B. Parker’s The Bridge (by Robert Knott)

Robert B. Parker’s Bull River (by Robert Knott)

Robert B. Parker’s Ironhorse (by Robert Knott)

Blue-Eyed Devil

Brimstone

Resolution

Appaloosa

ALSO BY ROBERT B. PARKER

Double Play

Gunman’s Rhapsody

All Our Yesterdays

A Year at the Races (with Joan H. Parker)

Perchance to Dream

Poodle Springs (with Raymond Chandler)

Love and Glory

Wilderness

Three Weeks in Spring (with Joan H. Parker)

Training with Weights (with John R. Marsh)

G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS

Publishers Since 1838

An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

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New York, New York 10014

Copyright © 2015 by The Estate of Robert B. Parker

Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Atkins, Ace.

Kickback / Ace Atkins.

p. cm.—(Robert B. Parker's Spenser novel series ; 28)

ISBN 978-0-698-16121-4

1. Spenser (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Private investigators—Massachusetts—Boston—Fiction. 3. Sentences (Criminal procedure)—Massachusetts—Fiction. 4. Judicial corruption—Massachusetts—Fiction. 5. Corporations—Corrupt practices—Fiction. 6. Corrections—Contracting out—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3551.T49K53 2015 2015003995

813'.54—dc23

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Version_1

For Mel Farman,

A true friend to both authors

Contents

Novels by Robert B. Parker

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Maybe he shouldn’t have gone out and celebrated. Maybe he should have stuck around for the vanilla ice cream after the lasagna victory meal. But what-ifs and should-haves didn’t cut it the next morning as the gray dawn crept up at five a.m. over a row of clapboard houses with peeling blue and green paint. You could smell the Merrimack River rolling by.

The cops were there. They were talking to the old man with the gun.

The boy stood in the open, his pal Tim already in a squad car. Tim’s old man’s Coupe de Ville getting hooked up to a tow truck with spinning lights. His parents were going to freak.

Another cop was talking to the boy now, wanting to know how much they had to drink.

“I don’t know,” he said. “A beer. Maybe two.”

“That’s illegal,” the cop said. “You’re only seventeen.”

“Yeah,” he said, not caring for a lecture, knowing he was screwed. “No shit.”

The cop just shook his head. He was young, maybe five years older than the boy. The cop stood ramrod straight, had hair clipped close like he’d been in the military. He wrote down some notes, wanting to know the boy’s parents’ phone number.

“It’s just my dad,” he said. “I live with my dad.”

“Is your mom alive?”

“Yeah,” he said. “But I don’t talk to her. Listen, this is a big mistake. We weren’t doing nothing. We were just fooling around and that crazy old guy comes busting out the garage door waving his pistol and saying he was going to blow our brains out.”

“Why were you in his garage?”

“We were lost,” the kid said. “We ran out of gas.”

“Is the car stolen?”

“No, it’s not stolen,” the kid said. “It belongs to my friend. It was his grandfather’s and then his father’s. He rebuilt the engine. Now it’s his. Kind of.”

“What do you mean ‘kind of’ his?” the cop said.

“It’s his,” the kid said. “His old man lets him use it when he wants. He’s gonna get the title on the Caddy when we graduate.”

“What school?”

“Blackburn,” he said. “I go to Blackburn High. Am I getting charged with something? Because I don’t see what we did. I mean, we’re not the one with the gun.”