“This morning has put me in a tight spot, Spenser.” His eyes wandered over my face as he shook his head. “Made me look bad.”

“Ray Heywood was going to do it on his own,” I said. “We just lent some support.”

“Should have called us.”

I felt Susan’s hand on my back. I nodded to Lundquist.

“Didn’t turn out to be much, anyway,” I said. “Maybe the worst Charlestown crew ever assembled.”

“That would be quite an accomplishment.”

Lundquist smiled and turned. His pockmarked face was chapped and raw from a recent shaving. His dress shirt and dress pants were rumpled. Everything about him said cop.

Kinjo and Nicole sat waiting for us in Akira’s bedroom. The rain had stopped and a bright gold light flowed through the curtains and across the spotless white carpet. His walls were covered with oversized posters of superheroes, fast cars, and athletes; I noted one of them was his father. In the corner of a room sat a fish tank that had grown dirty with algae since the last time I’d been there.

Nicole wore a navy Auburn sweatshirt and jeans. No makeup. Kinjo wore the same standard-issue Pats workout clothes and no shoes. They both looked as tired and emotionally raw as expected.

“This is Susan Silverman,” I said. “She’s a psychologist I work with on many occasions.”

“No,” Nicole said. “Not now. Get her out of here.”

“Susan isn’t like anyone else you’ve spoken with, Nicole,” I said. “If she helps you, you can help me find your son.”

Susan smiled that brilliant, disarming Susan Silverman smile. She could have won over Stalin to capitalism. Nicole gave her a second glance. Kinjo didn’t show much of anything, waiting to hear what I knew.

“I’m here,” Susan said. “If you want to talk. I am not about to offer any meaningless platitudes or give you a fucking pep talk. Okay?”

“Would you believe she has a Ph.D. from Harvard?” I said.

Nicole gave a slight nod. It was not a smile but seemed to be a gesture of acceptance. Susan gently shut the door with a small click and stood close.

“It was a phony,” I said.

Kinjo nodded.

“Some drug dealers heard about it on the sports talk and wanted to bleed you a little.”

“Evil.”

“Yep.”

“What did you do to them?” Kinjo said.

“We tied them up with zip cords near their stash of coke and called the cops.”

Kinjo nodded. I took a seat on the bed next to Nicole. Kinjo sat at a child’s table in a chair made for a five-year-old. Nicole started to cry. Susan did not move. She simply observed and waited. Nicole cried even more.

“That’s the second crank,” Kinjo said.

“First one wasn’t much of a crank,” I said. “He claimed to have killed Lincoln and Mama Cass.”

“Nothing,” Kinjo said. “How can you and all these cops be looking all over Massachusetts and not find anything? What about the Crown Vic they used, men in masks? Someone saw something.”

“No one seemed to have seen them except for Cristal.”

Nicole’s eyes lifted to me and then Susan. Her chin shook a bit. And then she clenched her jaw. “You want to find my son, check her out. But check her out for real, not just let her press up against you and bat her eyelashes. All I know about that woman is that she came to you because you smell like sweat, grass, and money. Am I wrong?”

“Shut up,” Kinjo said.

“Am I wrong?” she said. “She’s a gold digger, and I wouldn’t put it past her to want a big, nice cut before she leaves your dumb black ass.”

“She’s my goddamn wife,” Kinjo said.

“Yeah.” Nicole was crying but blurted out a bit of a laugh. “I forgot.” She stood up and wiped her eyes. Even dressed down the way she was, she looked regal and put together. Her brown eyes and red mouth were very large. Her short haircut was as hip and trendy as next week. Her attitude reminded me of another woman I knew.

None of us spoke for a few minutes. The cops shuffled and talked and answered phones in the great room down the hall. After a while, Kinjo looked up from his hands. “Is he dead?”

“You can’t think like that,” I said.

“Why?” Nicole said. “Why do this and ask for no money? Cristal hates Akira. She hates that he doesn’t love her and never accepted her for anything but what she is.”

Kinjo jumped up from the small table and kicked it over. He clenched and unclenched his hands, then walked over to the wall and put a nice-sized hole in the Sheetrock.

Susan stood and touched his arm. “You can tear each other apart later,” she said. “But right now, you need to keep clearheaded. Keep thinking. Whoever did this wants exactly what’s happening. They are smart enough to want to keep you unbalanced.”

Kinjo rushed from the room and left the door wide open.

“Where else should you look?” Nicole said, wiping her eyes. “Right?”

I nodded.

“Do you know anything about Cristal?” Nicole said. “Why should we take her word?”

“Point taken,” I said.

“Would you like to get away from this for a while?” Susan said. “Catch some air? Just to breathe a little.”

Nicole took a short breath and held it, as if she changed her mind. “Yes,” she said. “That would be a nice change.”

Susan smiled warmly. Nicole wiped her face with the back of her hand.

I nodded at Susan as she turned to leave Akira’s room. Susan winked back at me.

32

Bright and early the next morning, I paid a social call to my office on the assumption that even offices get lonely. I also had to pay my monthly rent for fear my desk, file cabinets, and framed Vermeer prints might end up on the curb. After urgent checks were written and sealed in envelopes, I congratulated myself with the accomplishment and set my feet at the edge of my desk.

As I gloated, I leaned back in my chair and pondered all that I didn’t know about Cristal Heywood. Which was substantial. Susan and I thought Nicole’s concerns were grounded, Nicole being more forthcoming with Susan than she had been with me. Susan said she’d thought of me as just another one of Kinjo’s yes-men. Susan assured her that agreeing with my employers was not always in my nature.

I listened to the Mr. Coffee trickle on top of my file cabinets. The bay window was slightly open, letting in a cool fall breeze. The sounds of cars, jackhammers, and an occasional siren as comforting to me as a wolf’s cry is to an Eskimo. I planned on running a basic criminal background check on Cristal through the state and AutoTrack of her prior addresses, relationships, debts. Nicole told Susan that Cristal never wanted Akira around and found him a barrier to her running Kinjo completely.

Of course, ex-wives were seldom complimentary of their successors.

It took me about ten minutes to accomplish on the Internet what used to take me a day on foot. I was reading through Cristal Heywood, formerly known as Cristal Jablonski, when a familiar face appeared in my doorway.

I looked up from my laptop. Tom Connor, special agent in charge of Boston’s FBI office, walked into my office and took a seat in front of my desk.

“To what do I owe this dishonor?”

“You fucked up, Spenser,” Connor said. “Again.”

I leaned back in my chair. I could not wait for him to explain.

“This kidnapping of the Heywood boy,” he said. “You can’t just fucking go at it without working with law enforcement. Are you nuts? I don’t know what kind of shit you got hanging over Lundquist’s head, but the same deal don’t apply to me.”

“So the Feds are taking over.”

“Goddamn right.”

“With you gallantly leading the investigation.”

Connor nodded with a lot of pride. He was a fat, florid guy with a big helmet of black hair. He always dressed like he’d just escaped the Men’s Wearhouse. Shiny double-breasted suits and bright-colored ties. His hands were thick and chubby, and on his left hand was an honest-to-God pinkie ring.