Barnes smiled. Perhaps this had nothing to do with the vote of confidence from Robert Kraft. I wanted to believe I had won him over with my wit and charm.

“You were a cop, Spenser?”

“Yep.”

“I worked for the Pennsylvania state police before getting into this circus,” he said. “Started off with the Eagles and took this job three years ago. I miss the old job, but there are plenty of perks in the NFL.”

“All the hot dogs and beer you want.”

“And the travel details, the groupies, and endless bullshit, too.”

I followed Barnes out of the reception area and along a few hallways and into the stadium itself. He had a key to the side door and carefully locked it before we rounded the upper level and went into the press box facing the end zone. Barnes palmed a handheld radio but turned it off as he stood facing a large glass wall of an empty stadium.

He was dressed as he always dressed, dark suit, white shirt, and red tie. But there was something uncertain and shifting in his eyes. He seemed to have had all the confidence drained from him.

“Have you spoken to Connor?” he said.

“Should I?”

“He won’t call me back,” he said. “I’ve called him fifteen, twenty times.”

“Maybe he’s styling his hair,” I said.

A few men worked on the field below, moving large stencils over yard markers and NFL logos. The motor on the sprayer hammering away, a delicate hiss as color was applied onto the artificial grass.

“Connor always called me back.”

“Maybe he doesn’t have anything to report.”

“That’s what I’m worried about,” he said. “That he’s given up. Moved on.”

I stared at Barnes, appraising his comment. Barnes adjusted the NFL pin on his lapel. He looked away and down at the sprawling field. “They pulled out of Heywood’s house this morning.”

“Not much to investigate when that cord is severed.”

“They could wait and see,” he said. “Follow up on every crank and every lead. Giving up is complete absolute bullshit.”

“Just because they left doesn’t mean they’ve quit.”

“Can you find out?” Barnes said. “Can you let me know if you hear anything? Or know what the hell is going on? There is an additional reward being offered by the team.”

“I never left the job,” I said. “I still work for Kinjo.”

“Good,” Barnes said, clasping me on the shoulder. “You need anything checked out or run down, let me know. I will have my people on standby. Whatever you need. Anything.”

“By the way, just who said a good word about me to Kraft?”

“Some guy named Hugh Dixon.”

“Jesus,” I said. “He’s still alive?”

“Apparently so,” he said. “They serve on the same charitable board.”

“Wow,” I said.

Barnes wasn’t listening. He shook his head. “Someone knows something. Someone needs that money.”

“Kinjo said dead or alive.”

“So do we just wait until someone brings in the head of the kidnapper?”

“That’s certainly the idea.”

“This whole thing is barbaric as hell.”

I agreed with him. He let out a very long, very deep breath and took a seat next to me in the press box. We sat and stared out at the empty stadium for a good long while, until his phone rang and he was urgently needed. He walked me to the parking level and offered his hand. I shook it before driving back to Boston and Government Center to see my old pal Tom Connor.

51

I called Connor and he agreed to meet outside the Federal Building in Government Center. He said he wanted to save me the hassle of going through security. I figured he wanted to ditch me fast, until he invited me for a beer. Being offered a beer by Special Agent in Charge Connor might have made Faust reconsider. But as I wasn’t Faust, and a beer was a bonus with information, I agreed. We walked across the street to one of the five thousand Irish pubs around Faneuil Hall. This one was called Paddy O’s and situated next door to the Union Oyster House.

There was Irish folk music and Guinness on tap and an Irish flag hanging from the wall. I waited for the leprechaun to tap a shillelagh on the bar and ask our poison. Instead, the bartender turned out to be a tall redhead in a tight T-shirt. I ordered a Sam Adams on tap and Connor got a Tullamore Dew on the rocks. Authentic.

“I apologize that I misread you last time, Spenser,” he said. “I was wrong.”

“Yes,” I said. “You were. About a great many things.”

He smiled and laughed as if I’d been joking. His big florid face had a certain hound-dog quality that was difficult to describe. But he definitely had the look of a boozer, broken blood vessels in his cheeks and the whites of his eyes. He had on another Men’s Wearhouse special, charcoal pinstripe, and a dress shirt with a very long, unbuttoned collar. His purple and yellow tie was clipped to his shirt with an American flag pin. I resisted the urge to salute.

We drank.

I said, “I heard you’ve pulled out of the Heywood house.”

Connor didn’t react. He sipped, elbow on the wooden bar, staring straight ahead. No emotion. Noncommittal. “What else can we do?” he said. “Heywood fucked us.”

“Don’t take it personally,” I said. “If he fucked anyone, it was his own family.”

Ice cubes rattled in his glass. He shook it more to chill the whiskey.

“Our talk with him the other night was to explain things,” he said. “I wanted him to know the precarious situation, not to go vigilante.”

“He interpreted that to mean that he wouldn’t see his child again.”

“Did we fucking say that?” Connor said. He shook his head. “Jesus H. This fucking guy has gone nuts.”

The bar was completely empty at four p.m. If we stuck around until five, drinks were only two bucks each. I hoped I would not be sitting around with Tom Connor an hour from now. I tried to move the conversation along.

“Did you give up on Kevin Murphy?” I said.

“That moron didn’t do it.”

“My feelings, too,” I said. “I guess I had higher hopes for him.”

“He was bringing Heywood’s wife some blow and she wouldn’t pay up for it,” he said. “His crazy wife said it was true and I asked her why she hadn’t let her husband know about this when he pulled that gun. I mean, he could have killed someone right there.”

“How I entered the picture,” I said.

“Now we have nothing,” he said. “You can’t trace the demands. And a paid ransom is always a great starting point. We could have followed the money. Whether the child died or not, we would have had some direct contact. We could stake out the drop without them even knowing.”

I nodded.

“It’s done,” he said. “The kid is dead.”

“So you’re quitting?”

“We’re not quitting, but since our victim’s father has put a bounty on the kidnappers, I have to think about the best use of my resources. You know, we do have other major crimes in Boston.”

“I have heard as much.”

“What about you?” he said, nodding to the bartender. She poured him more whiskey while a sad Irish ballad played from the jukebox. The Irish side of me wanted to join in and sing a few verses, had I known them.

“I’m still on the case.”

Connor nodded and smiled to himself. “I grew up in the Old Colony Projects,” he said. “When I was a kid, I remember a couple girls from my church just heading home one day from school and disappearing. The police, the church, and even the local hoods looked all over Southie for them. But we never found them. Sometimes people just disappear, Spenser.”

“This was an orchestrated business deal,” I said. “The kid was taken for money.”

Connor nodded. “Not much of this shit anymore,” he said. “You really got to be some kind of fucking stupid to pull off a kidnapping like you’re Machine Gun Kelly. It’s too hard. Nobody can really work a drop anymore. That’s the shit of the whole situation. The drop is where we could have had them. Now what they did with the kid in the meantime of catching them was the question. But there was never any fucking doubt that we would’ve gotten them.”