There was a lot of blood on the front of Chico’s wrinkled dress shirt. On a nearby table, I spotted several Baggies of what looked like drugs and a small digital scale.

“Give it up,” Hawk said. “Motherfuckers.”

Hawk grinned.

“Shit, shit, shit,” Red said.

“Hello, Red,” I said. “So how you been?”

Moon was standing. He stared at us with bovine eyes. Two handguns sat on a kitchen counter. Moon and Red were maybe three feet from the counter. Miles.

“Put your hands up,” I said.

No one moved. Moon inched himself toward the guns.

Hawk bolted forward and rammed the muzzle of the shotgun into Moon’s sternum. He was down. I trained my gun on Red.

His hands went up.

Chico put his hands up, too. He wore an ill-fitting wool suit. His right eye was swollen. The bulging eye made him look like a frog. He squinted at me. His thick glasses lay broken on the kitchen floor.

Hawk checked the boys for weapons. He found a .45 stuck in Red’s belt. Moon wasn’t armed except for a folding knife. Moon started to get to his feet.

He came for Hawk.

Hawk rammed the stock of the Mossberg into his gut. Moon was down on his knees. I figured Moon must suffer some type of learning disability.

“Where’s Theresa Donovan?” I asked. I tossed Chico a few napkins for his nose. I kept staring at Red as I bent down and picked up Chico’s glasses. One of the lenses was cracked.

“Who?” Red said.

“Playing dumb suits you to a T, Red,” I said. “Theresa Don-

ovan?”

He shook his head. “I’m not fucking lying. What the hell?”

“How about Jack Flynn? Does he know?”

This time Red smiled and took one step back. “Don’t know him,” Red said. “You, Moon?”

Moon made a sound like a deflating blimp.

“Moon don’t know him, either,” Red said. He shrugged. “Guess you’re fucked now.”

“That’s a unique perspective.”

Chico got to his feet. He shook his head and spit on the vinyl floor. The spitting was very theatrical but very appropriate. The old man stood next to me and put on his glasses.

“You tell Jack and Gerry to go and have intercourse with each other.”

“Chico,” I said. “So polite.”

“I’m old,” Chico said. “I got to make peace with this shit.”

Hawk smiled. The Mossberg still trained on Moon. I had the gun on Red.

I walked to the table and laid the .357 before me. I took a breath and leaned in. I smiled. Spenser, professional mediator.

“Who’s in charge?” I asked. “Jack or Gerry Broz?”

Red shrugged.

“Easy question, Red,” I said. “Shall I speak more slowly?”

Moon wavered to his feet. He wiped the blood off his doughy face. He had the expression of a beaten man.

I nodded. “Lots of dope on this table,” I said. “Got a ninety-year-old man ready to press charges.”

“No,” Red said. “He won’t. We were just playing. Right, Chico?”

Chico’s eyes shifted from me to Red. From Red to Hawk and Moon.

He didn’t say anything.

“Still a lot of dope,” I said. I pulled a cell phone from the inside of my coat. I laid it by the .357. “One call.”

Red’s eyes flicked over me. He kept a tough-guy stare.

“What do you want?” Moon asked.

I raised my eyebrows. I turned to Moon.

“Did you take Theresa Donovan?”

He shook his head. His breath was labored. He’d thrown in the towel.

“Okay,” I said. “Let’s try this. We just want to know what happened to Julie Sullivan. You answer that and we’re gone.”

“Chico goes, too,” Chico said.

“Yeah,” I said. “Right. Chico is with us.”

Red shook his head at Moon. Moon looked over to Hawk and then me. He leaned against the table. He looked to Red.

“I can’t go back to prison, man,” Moon said. “I’d rather fucking die.”

“Shut up, Moon,” Red said.

“We took the girl to see Flynn.”

“Shut up, Moon,” Red said. “Shut the fuck up.”

“This ain’t business,” Moon said. “You talk to Flynn. He had us snatch her.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Shut the fuck up, Moon.”

“Because—”

I had been studying Moon’s face and body language. I had been waiting for a telltale sign he was lying. I watched his eyes. The way he breathed.

I broke eye contact with Moon.

Red snatched up my .357 and shot Moon right in the head. Moon toppled.

Hawk blasted a large hole in Red Cahill’s chest. There was a lot of noise and blood with the smell of smoke and gunpowder. My ears rang.

And then silence. The silence amplified the sleet against the roof and windows. To punctuate the violence, Red’s body slipped from the chair and onto the floor beside Moon’s.

“Holy Christ,” Chico Hirsch said. He walked over to Red and kicked him hard in the head. “Holy Christ.”

“A fine mess you’ve gotten me into,” Hawk said.

Hawk was not smiling. I took a deep breath.

I left my .357 on the floor beside Red. The crime scene techs could later lecture about the setup. At least that was something.

“Crapola,” Chico said. “That kid’s chest looks like a plate of spaghetti.”

Death was very ugly, even among ugly people.

“You want to call Quirk?” Hawk said. “He gonna love this.”

I nodded.

46

Quirk was not pleased. He walked from the kitchen into the living room, where I’d been going over the story with Frank Belson. Hawk was outside, talking to a young female detective I didn’t know. The front door was left open, with crime scene techs and detectives going in and out. The room had grown very cold.

“What a mess,” Quirk said. “What a fucking mess.”

“Spenser says he was just being a Good Samaritan,” Belson said.

“Just happened to be tooling around Southie and ran across Chico Hirsch getting the crap kicked out of him?”

“He and Hawk had been tailing those guys and saw them abduct Mr. Hirsch,” Belson said.

“Oh, goody,” Quirk said.

“I knew how much you missed seeing me,” I said.

“I was in my easy chair, watching the game,” Quirk said. “I had about this much Johnnie Walker poured into my glass.”

He spaced his thumb and index finger very far apart.

“I can see you’re still in your house clothes,” I said.

Quirk wore a stiff-collared white dress shirt under a navy V-neck cashmere sweater. His charcoal pants sported a sharp crease. His wingtips gleamed from a recent shine. The trench coat had been expertly folded under his right arm.

“We got your gun for Moon Murphy and Hawk’s shotgun on Red,” Quirk said.

“Red took my gun,” I said.

“That’s embarrassing,” Quirk said.

“It is.”

“That’s the part I don’t get,” Quirk said. “Why would he shoot his partner?”

“We were going to call the police,” I said. “And Moon Murphy, being a recent parolee, was not excited about returning to the pokey.”

“And he was about to rat on Red?”

“Something like that.”

Quirk shook his head. He looked to Belson. Belson shook his head.

Belson reached into his coat pocket for a cigar and stepped outside for a smoke. I recalled a time when he’d light up standing over a dead body.

“I’m getting the feeling I’m going to be x-ed from the Citizen of the Year Award by the Boston police.”

“Yeah,” Quirk said. He nodded as he appraised me. “But you’re number one on our shit list.”

“Was the Johnnie Walker Red or Blue?”

“Blue,” Quirk said.

“Ouch,” I said.

“Shit list,” Quirk said.

“On the other hand, Chico Hirsch wants to name his great-grandson Hawk.”

“Explain that at Hebrew school.”

“Chico is an old man,” I said. “They could’ve killed him.”

“Spenser, patron saint to bookies, con men, and thieves.”

I shrugged. We walked outside to join Belson. From the stoop, I saw Mattie standing with a patrol officer. The officer was a young black woman. Mattie was talking, and she was taking down notes.