Robert Parker - Rough Weather

It was easy to find Quirk. I could have probably located him from an orbiting spacecraft. There were half a dozen cruisers, some with the lights still rotating, at least two unmarked police cars, an ambulance, the coroner’s truck, yellow tape, flashbulbs, an amplitude of gawkers, and a couple of television news trucks at the edge of the scene. A uniformed cop stopped me after I parked behind one of the TV trucks and got out.

“Crime scene, bud,” he said. “Got business here?”

“Quirk asked me to come by,” I said.

The cop nodded and turned and yelled.

“Captain?”

Quirk looked over, saw me, nodded his head, and gestured me toward him. The patrolman who had stopped me grinned, and gestured me in with a big sweep while he pretended to lift a velvet rope.

“Right this way, sir.”

I walked over to Quirk, who was standing with a detective I didn’t know, looking down at a body covered with a tarp.

“Know anybody named Leonard Rezendes?” Quirk said.

“Know a Leonard works for Tony Marcus,” I said. “Don’t think I ever knew his last name.”

Quirk nodded.

“He’s had several. But Rezendes is what’s on his driver’s license.”

Quirk bent down and turned back the tarp. It was hard to be sure because his head had been shot up pretty good, but it seemed to be the Leonard I knew.

“I think that’s him,” I said.

“It is,” Quirk said. “Some kids called nine-one-one couple hours ago.”

“They around?” I said.

“They wouldn’t give a name, and there was no one here when we arrived,” Quirk said. “I got a guy canvassing the crowd.”

“Doesn’t appear to be accidental,” I said.

“Wow!” said Quirk.

“I’m a detective,” I said. “It comes pretty easy.”

“At least four rounds to the head,” Quirk said. “Probably forties. We found four shell casings.”

“So he was done here.”

“Unless they brought the casings and threw them around to fool us,” Quirk said.

“Boy, you must be a detective, too,” I said.

“And a captain,” Quirk said. “ Lot of blood on the ground.”

“Hard to fake that,” I said.

“Yeah,” Quirk said, and grinned. “We assume he was killed here.”

“See?” I said.

“Leonard was Rugar’s connection to Tony,” Quirk said.

“Yes.”

“You think it got him killed?”

“Something did,” I said.

“His wallet’s still in his pants,” Quirk said. “Seven hundred dollars. His Rolex is still there; somebody told me it was worth about twenty thousand dollars.”

“For a watch?” I said.

Quirk shrugged.

“Wasn’t a robbery,” Quirk said.

“Four in the back of the head,” I said. “Sounds like an execution.”

“Any other thoughts?” Quirk said. “You being a detective and all.”

“Rugar killed him to break his connection to the attempt on me,” I said. “Or maybe Leonard did it without Tony, and it’s Tony’s way of explaining to him how wrong that was.”

“And breaking the connection to him,” Quirk said, “in the process.”

“True,” I said.

“It’s still all speculation,” Quirk said.

“At least,” I said, “we’re starting to have things to speculate about.”

“Which is what we do,” Quirk said.

“Until we know something,” I said.

“Which we will,” Quirk said.

Hawk and I were working out at the Harbor Health Club, which was becoming accessible again as the Big Dig went out not with a bang but a whimper. Even though the place was now more upscale than Buckingham Palace, Henry Cimoli, who ran the place, still kept a small boxing room in back as some sort of gesture toward us, or maybe to his roots.

“Susan say you going out too much by yourself,” Hawk said as he worked on the uppercut bag.

“I figure they might let things slide a little after the last shot at me went so bad.”

“Rugar don’t let nothing slide,” Hawk said.

“This has been atypical Rugar,” I said, “since they started playing ‘Here Comes the Bride’ on Tashtego Island.”

“Maybe stuff we don’t know,” Hawk said.

“That’s for sure,” I said.

I was throwing hooks at the heavy bag. Body, body, head, head.

“I mean maybe he got problems distracting him, why he farmed the hit out on you,” Hawk said.

“He doesn’t normally do that,” I said. “Sees it as being dependent on other people, I think.”

“You ever think it a fuckup?” Hawk said.

“Tashtego?”

Hawk nodded.

“Didn’t go the way it was supposed to,” Hawk said. “And Rugar be scrambling ever since?”

“Well, it sure isn’t vintage Rugar,” I said.

Martin Quirk came into the boxing room. He nodded at Hawk. Hawk nodded back.

To me, Quirk said, “I need you to look at another body.”

“Everybody’s got to be good at something,” I said to Hawk.

“Looking at bodies?” Hawk said.

“It’s a gift,” I said.

I untaped my hands, put a leather jacket on over my sweats, put my gun in a side pocket of the jacket. Small gun today, five-shot.38 with a two-inch barrel. Strictly defensive.

“You probably safe with the captain,” Hawk said. “I meet you here when you through?”

“I’ll bring him back,” Quirk said.

Hawk nodded and went back to the uppercut bag. I followed Quirk out to the street, where his car was illegally parked at the curb, impeding traffic. With a callous disregard for anyone else driving at the time, Quirk drove us swiftly to Boston City Hospital, where I was able to look at the distorted corpse of a man I may have killed.

“Found him by the Charles River Dam,” Quirk said, “bumping around the lock.”

“Pretty sure it’s him,” I said. “I only saw him for a minute, and he’s been in the water for a while.”

“No ID,” Quirk said. “No DNA match in the database. They’re trying to lift some fingerprints, but he’s pretty waterlogged.”

“You get a slug out of him?”

“His head,” Quirk said.

I nodded.

“We’ll go over to the lab,” I said. “I’ll fire a test round for you. If the slugs match, it’s him.”

“The driver probably dumped him soon as he cleared from you,” Quirk said.

“Which would put him in the river somewhere this side of the BU bridge,” I said.

“And the river brought him down.”

“Surprising no one spotted him,” I said.

“Might have been under for a while till he started to puff up,” Quirk said.

I nodded.

“Nice,” I said.

Quirk gestured with his head, and the morgue attendant slid the drawer shut.

“Come on,” Quirk said. “I’ll buy you lunch.”

“What could be better,” I said.

There was a sandwich shop up Albany Street a little where Quirk bought sandwiches and coffee for us. I declined the sandwich and drank the coffee while we sat in Quirk’s car and watched the activity at the wholesale flower market across the street.

Without looking at me Quirk said, “And the two goons got shanked.”

“My goons?” I said. “That tried to kill me?”

“Yep. In the jail yard, yesterday. Guard found them both in a corner. Throats cut.”

“Jesus Christ,” I said.

“Yeah,” Quirk said. “Last man standing.”

“Tony got to them,” I said.

“Or Rugar,” Quirk said. “Pretty sure it was an inmate or a guard.”

“What a pleasure to watch a trained mind work,” I said.

“Years on the job,” Quirk said.

“Anybody talk to them, before their demise?”

Quirk shook his head.

“Epstein finally found us a translator,” Quirk said. “He and I were scheduled to interview them today.”