“Part of the kidnap?” I said.

“Probably.”

“Who sold out his partners,” I said. “Not exactly someone to trust.”

“We be careful,” he said. “Kid don’t have much time. If Lima still breathing, he’s going to be on edge and ready to get out of Boston. He can’t take the kid with him.”

We didn’t speak for a long time until we came into Roxbury. Hawk dialed a number and asked where and then hung up. Hawk shook his head with great disdain. “Man wants to meet at Burger King,” he said.

“Did you expect the Four Seasons?” I said.

“Kinjo pay up if the man is right?”

“Up to Kinjo.”

“And if the boy is dead?”

I didn’t answer. The ethics of laying down a bounty were pretty complex. Hawk drove along Route 28 into Dorchester and crossed over to Washington Street and a late-night Burger King. The restaurant sat on a corner with a large but empty parking lot facing a long row of recently remodeled three-story brick apartments. A large sign boasted this was part of the Codman Square Redevelopment Initiative.

Hawk parked at a crooked angle and we got out of our car.

A few minutes later, a white Crown Vic pulled in beside us. A thick-bodied black man in a white shirt and matching white ball cap crawled out and approached us. He had on dark baggy jeans and running shoes so white they gleamed. He had a mustache and goatee trimmed to a razor’s width and a coiled gold chain around his neck. He looked at Hawk and tilted his head in recognition.

We did not shake hands or introduce ourselves.

“Where’s the money?” he said.

“Ain’t no money,” Hawk said. “Money comes when we get Lima and the kid.”

“Kid’s dead.”

“How you know?”

“How you know he ain’t?”

“Where?”

“I want my fucking money, man,” the man in white said. Hawk looked from left to right and then over his shoulder at the Burger King. I rested my backside against his Jag, careful not to apply any pressure. I smiled good-naturedly at the young thug.

“What’s your name?” Hawk said.

“Papa B,” the young man said. He tilted his chin up with pride.

“You know who I am?” Hawk said.

“Yeah,” he said. “You the Hawk.”

“You know about me.”

The boy swallowed. His eyes darted away for a moment and then back on Hawk. He crossed his arms over his chest and then nodded a few times.

“Where?” Hawk said.

“I want that money.”

“You deliver,” Hawk said. “We talk. You fuck us and you get dead quick.”

The boy reached into his baggy jeans and gave Hawk a crumpled piece of paper. Hawk read it, turned his head to me, and then nodded. He turned back to Papa B and told him we’d be in touch.

“Come on, man,” he said. “I got to get something. I ain’t doing this for free.”

Hawk walked up so quickly on the boy that the boy flinched. Hawk tilted his head down into the boy’s, nearly nose to nose, and said, “You kill that girl?”

Papa B didn’t answer.

“You in with them?” Hawk said.

Papa B didn’t answer.

“You turn on your pals?”

Nothing.

“If you wastin’ our time,” Hawk said. “I will be back for your ass.”

I looked to Papa B and raised my eyebrows. There was little to add to Hawk’s comments. We got into the Jag and pulled away from the Burger King and headed to the address scrawled on the scrap of paper.

63

The address led us back down to Foxboro and an old motel off Route 1 called the Red Fox. The sign was red and neon shining what was probably a permanent vacancy for lodgings that only Norman Bates could love. The Red Fox, no relation to Buddy’s, was a one-level layout with all the room doors facing the highway. The walls were brick, the doors once white, and the center of the motel was a faux-Colonial with four large columns over an office. I was delighted to see they offered both color television and electric heat.

The lights were out in room 8, but as we walked past, we noted the dull gray flickering of a television set and the muffled voices of broadcasters calling a ball game. We walked back to Hawk’s car, parked nose toward the U-shaped units, and waited for a while. After about an hour, Z showed up. He parked next to us in his Mustang and then got into the back of the Jag. No one had come in or out of the building.

Only six cars had been parked along the units. We did not recognize any of them but took down all the tag numbers in case Lima tried to make a speedy exit. If this was indeed the place Lima had decided to hole up.

“We sure?” Z said.

“Sort of,” I said.

“Sort of?” Z said.

“It would behoove the informant not to lie to The Hawk.”

“I kind of like The in front of my name,” Hawk said. “Commands respect.”

Z got out of the back of the car and was gone about five minutes and came the long way behind us off Route 1 and back into the car. It was raining again, and he was soaked.

“Small windows in the back,” Z said. “Old pebbled glass. I can see the light on in the bathroom but nothing else. I can hear a television on but no voices.”

“Can you slip into the window?” I said.

“Nope,” Z said.

“Front-door entry,” Hawk said.

I nodded.

It was my time to get out into the rain, and I walked to the big columns over the motel office. For the size of the entry, the office was very small. A narrow room with a flat-screen television perched on a coffee table and a couple of old chairs facing forward. There was a desk to the right of the front door and two large display cases loaded down with pamphlets of fun things to do in and around Boston. There was no bell, so I coughed, and a moment later, a tired-looking guy in a Pats T-shirt, khakis, and suspenders walked up and looked me over. He was bald on top but had a prodigious amount of red hair over his ears, giving him the unsubtle look of a circus clown.

“My buddy checked in earlier,” I said. “And I don’t want to wake him up. He’s such a sound sleeper. Room eight.”

“What’s his name?” the guy said.

“Ben Franklin,” I said, and laid down a hundred-dollar bill.

The guy looked at me accusingly for about two seconds and then turned and lifted a key off a gold hook. He sucked on his tooth, swiped the money, and laid down the key.

I took the key and headed out into the rain.

I dangled it in front of the Jag’s windshield, and Hawk and Z walked from the car. The asphalt was slick with the rain and red with the neon of the Red Fox sign as we walked to unit number 8. I could still hear the television going, what sounded like a baseball game from the West Coast. I tried to listen for a few hints as to the team while I slipped the key into the lock and turned back to see Hawk and then Z staggered behind me. Both had their guns drawn. Z recently taking up with a Remington 870 pump, just in case we were faced with a zombie apocalypse.

Hawk has his .44, in case we faced a charging elephant.

I turned the key and the doorknob, and we were all inside faster than Usain Bolt.

No one shot at us. Nothing moved.

The television had very poor reception of the Dodgers playing the Giants. The Dodgers were up by three in the top of the eighth as Victor Lima lay dead in a tangle of bloody white sheets. He’d been bleeding for a long while, the white sheets over him more red than anything. He had an open liter bottle of Sprite on the bedside table and some rolls of surgical tape, bandages, and pulls. In his outstretched hand was a .357 Magnum. My gun. It dangled from his lifeless fingers, him staring into nothing with lifeless eyes.

Z walked over to the television and turned it off. On the console to the TV, he found my .38. He checked the safety and then tossed it to me.

“Damn, Spenser,” Hawk said.

Z went into the bathroom and came out shaking his head. Hawk went looking through drawers and rolling over the dead man and checking in his pockets. The room was silent except for the rain hitting the shingled roof. We needed to move fast; Ben Franklin wouldn’t buy us much more time. We searched the room for anything, coming up with a cell phone and some scraps of paper, notes on a map. Hawk held up a set of car keys he found in the man’s pocket and we all walked outside to find a blue Ford Taurus.