“Screw you.”
Z was cleaning off a lat pull-down machine and oiling the chain attached to the weights. He looked up at me and just shook his head.
“Women go crazy for Z in the uniform,” Henry said. “I got twenty new members in the last couple months. Housewives and divorcees who act like they don’t know how to use the machines. Jesus.”
“If he asks you to wear the white satin,” I said, turning to Z, “run.”
Z continued to clean off and oil the equipment as a handful of people ran on treadmills. Some local businessmen on their lunch break talking more than pumping iron. On the other side of the wide picture window facing the harbor, snow flurries twirled and whirled about, dusting across the wharves and melting on impact.
I made my way to the new-and-improved boxing room and went about wrapping my hands and wrists. The walls were mirrored, and I started off with three rounds of shadow-boxing before sliding into the gloves and attacking the heavy bags. On my third round with the bag, Hawk strolled into the room carrying a paper cup of coffee. He set the coffee on a window ledge and watched as I finished up. I took on the bag with an added ferocity, making the bag dance and jangle on the chains.
“No need to show off,” Hawk said.
“Showing you how it’s done.”
“Ha.”
“You want to spar a bit?” I said. “I have time.”
Hawk shook his head. He raised his eyebrows. “You remember our pal, Papa B?”
“Sure.”
“Motherfucker is dead.”
“DeVeiga?”
“My guess,” Hawk said. “But DeVeiga the one who told me. Said he’d been looking for Papa B since his sister got killed. Seemed upset that he wasn’t the one to finish him off.”
“Where?” I said, trying to catch my breath.
“Gone to New York,” Hawk said. “Live large.”
“What’s it to us?”
“DeVeiga wants to talk. He says someone else in on this.”
“Does it matter?”
“Matters to DeVeiga,” Hawk said. “Might matter to us. Depends on what he’s got to say.”
“Akira said there were three of them,” I said. “All dead. Victor Lima. Lela Lopes and now Papa B.”
“Real name is Pasco Barros.”
“I like Papa B better.”
“God rest his soul.”
I walked to the corner and found a pair of heavy mitts. I tossed the mitts to Hawk. He removed his black duster but not his sunglasses. He slipped the mitts onto his hands and I practiced combos for the next three three-minute rounds. Hawk told me several times that my left hook needed some work. I was breathing very heavily and sweating when I walked over to the water cooler.
“Okay,” I said.
“Figure we at least hear what the man have to say.”
“Sure.”
“And good to know a man like DeVeiga down in Glocksbury.”
“A gangbanging drug dealer?”
“You rather know someone with the Rotary Club?”
I took off my gloves and unwrapped my hands. In fifteen minutes, I was showered and changed back into my street clothes and riding in style with Hawk to meet Jesus DeVeiga.
67
We met DeVeiga at the Jim Rice ball fields in Ramsey Park. Two Outlaws stood watch at the iron gates as we walked inside and started climbing the stands toward DeVeiga. He sat alone up on the top row, staring out at the empty field dusted with snow. Hawk took two steps at a time. I followed suit.
“Took Rice a long time to get in the Hall of Fame,” Hawk said.
“Would have won the series in ’75 if he hadn’t broken his wrist.”
“Not bad in ’86 against the Mets.”
“Why did it take him so long?”
“’Cause Rice is a surly motherfucker,” Hawk said. “Press hated him.”
“Reason you like him.”
Hawk grinned. We hit the top steps and sat down beside Jesus DeVeiga. DeVeiga was wearing the same flat-billed Sox cap, and this time a navy-blue parka with a fur-trimmed hood.
I looked out onto the empty field. “‘A robin hops along the bench.’”
DeVeiga looked to the field and then back to me. He exchanged glances with Hawk, who simply shook his head. “What you got to say, Jesus?” Hawk said, again pronouncing his name with a hard J.
“Wondering what you heard about Papa B,” he said.
“We know as much as you,” I said.
“I didn’t kill him,” he said.
“Don’t care if you did,” Hawk said. “Don’t care if you didn’t.”
DeVeiga nodded. “I been looking for him since he killed Lela,” he said. “Even checked NYC. But didn’t come up with nothing. I’m now hearing he was down there trying to trade out that cash.”
“So the bounty was paid,” I said.
The wind was very cold and very brisk and shot through the open field and the wide expanse of the park. I had on a peacoat and kept my hands deep in my pockets. Not only to keep warm but to find comfort in the .38 in my right hand.
“I know people,” DeVeiga said.
“Good to know people,” Hawk said.
“People I know in New York said Papa B traded out fifty grand for thirty-five clean.”
“That money wouldn’t have been marked,” I said.
“Yeah,” DeVeiga said. “Tell that to Papa. But why he only trade a little? I heard he got at least a million.”
“Maybe he squirreled it away,” I said.
DeVeiga shook his head. “Man wanted to split town,” he said. “Ain’t the type to plan a future. He’d been talking free and easy down there. If someone hadn’t shot him, I was coming up the next day to settle the shit.”
“So he had a partner,” I said.
“A partner who got most of the cash?” DeVeiga said. “That ain’t no partner. That’s a goddamn boss.”
Hawk leaned in from the stands. He had on a leather jacket with the collar flipped up over his ears and dark shades. “You said you got something to say,” Hawk said. “Say it.”
DeVeiga nodded. The two Outlaws had come into the stadium and were walking back and forth at the bottom of the stands. They strolled end to end and crossed paths in the center like sentries. Neither of them speaking or looking at each other.
“Papa B was a snitch.”
“Okay,” I said.
“Never trusted his ass,” DeVeiga said. “Didn’t like him around any of my boys. Any my boys talk with him and they gone, too.”
“I think it’s been firmly established that Papa B was of low moral character,” I said.
“Papa B wasn’t one of the kidnappers,” he said. “I know the boy was working with Victor Lima. And took the kid.”
I looked at him.
DeVeiga laughed. “For me to know.”
“But you still think Papa B killed Lela?” I said.
DeVeiga nodded. “And Lima,” he said. “He on the hunt for that money. But here’s the thing about Papa B. I think he got tipped. Man ain’t smart enough to track down Lima or Lela. He being played.”
“By whom?” I said.
DeVeiga stared at me, tilting his head.
“Man talks funny,” Hawk said. “Who’s the motherfucker put Papa B on this?”
“A cop,” DeVeiga said.
I widened my eyes. Hawk leaned in some more and rubbed his hands together a bit in the cold. He nodded, too.
“What kind of cop?” Hawk said.
“People down here say Papa B made his money from the Feds,” DeVeiga said. “He was a goddamn CI for them. How he got his groceries. I think they the ones that planted the seed in that dumb bastard’s brain.”
Hawk stood and looked to me.
“Hmm,” Hawk said.
“You said it.”
“We straight?” DeVeiga said, touching the upper part of his chest where he’d been shot.