The Pats’ weight room was part of the many chambers inside the stadium. There were rooms for watching film, for meetings with the position coaches, for holding press conferences, a training table, and a locker room nearly as large as the field itself. This room was even larger, with old-fashioned weights and several rubberized mats to work speed, agility, and coordination. A three-hundred-pound man with agility and quickness was a scary prospect. I thought about the other player interview I’d read.

“What about Robey?” I said. “Do you keep in touch?”

Wheeler shrugged. “It’s been a while.”

“And he was traded to Miami?”

“Yeah.”

“You have his number?”

Wheeler nodded. Ray stood next to us. The weight coach looked impatient, waiting for Wheeler to attack the next set. I stepped back and watched Wheeler knock out eight reps. There was more weight this time. He grunted a little.

“You want to try that?” I said to Ray.

“Shit,” Ray said. “You?”

“I value my knees too much.”

Wheeler racked the bar. He walked over to a table for a water bottle. He drank down a quart and turned back to me. He wiped his bearded face with the back of his hand. One of his sizable knees had a scar on it that looked like a zipper.

“What’s not clear,” I said, “and the reason I wanted to speak to you, is who else was there?”

“Like you said,” Wheeler said. “Me, Kinjo, and Robey.”

“Some witnesses said there was another football player there,” I said. “A third man out with Kinjo that night.”

There was a slight flick of his eyes to Ray, waiting for direction. Ray didn’t change expression or say anything. After a second, he nodded at Wheeler to continue.

“That’s not right,” Wheeler said. “I’ll give you Robey’s cell when I’m done here. You ask him.”

“And he left Chrome with you, too?”

“Yeah, man. What are you getting at?”

“Just trying to clear up a few things,” I said. “Was he involved with the fight?”

“There was no fight,” Wheeler said. “Robey was off with some girl. That Antonio guy pushed at Kinjo. Kinjo was ready to clock him and then the bouncers came up. I told him to cool off and get the hell out of there. We’re not stupid. It was all just some bullshit. How were we to know that guy was some thug? He obviously had his own problems that got himself killed. Kinjo was only talking to that girl.”

“His brother said Kinjo had inappropriately touched her.”

“Is that the reason she’d hopped up in his lap?” Wheeler said. “Kinjo doesn’t treat women like that. Why would he? Women can’t leave him alone.”

Ray nodded in agreement. Wheeler gulped down more water and looked at us with small, sad eyes. “You find out who took Akira,” he said. “Okay? God help the son of a bitch who did this. There isn’t a player on this team who wouldn’t kill for that kid.”

“Strong words.”

Wheeler nodded. “Don’t play with the meaning. You know what I mean. Kinjo is my goddamned brother.”

Ray and I walked out of the weight room and into the long concrete hall.

“What do you think?” I said.

“I think this is a waste of time,” he said. “Kinjo paid the family because he was being eaten alive by the press. The family knows he wasn’t involved. They wanted money. Kinjo didn’t want to lose endorsement deals.”

“Okay.” I nodded. “How much do you know about Cristal?”

Ray grinned. He shook his head. “Too much.”

“You think she knows more?” I said.

“Let me ask you this,” he said. “You think Cristal is mentally capable of pulling something like this?”

“I understand her background’s a bit sketchy.”

“She ain’t a virtuous woman,” he said. “But she ain’t evil, either. This isn’t an inside job, man. Not exactly a secret that Kinjo is now a ten-million-dollar man. Lots of bad folks out there who hate seeing a black man in the catbird seat. How the hell you narrow that down?”

I nodded.

“That man being killed in New York has always been the stuff of whispers and lies,” Ray said. “Don’t let it cloud what’s really happening.”

I held Ray’s eye for a while. He nodded with extreme certainty, adjusted his cap, and then led the way out of the labyrinth under Gillette.

23

Play it again, Sam?” I said to Susan.

“How’d I know that was coming?”

“That’s not really the line, but it sounds better than ‘Play it, Sam. Play ‘As Time Goes By.’”

“Do you want to hear ‘As Time Goes By,’ or do you still want my professional opinion?”

We sat outside on Susan’s small wooden deck, drinking and listening to the phantom caller from a portable CD player. Susan drank a glass of Barolo while I worked on an Amstel. There was a pizza ordered and a quick meal planned before I’d drive back to Chestnut Hill. Being able to combine official work and time with Susan Silverman is always a perk of the job.

I played the message again. And then, to punctuate the question, raised my eyebrows.

Susan closed her eyes in thought. After taking a sip of the wine, she nodded. “I hear sexual repression, some Oedipal mother issues, and maybe some hypochondria mixed with erectile dysfunction.”

“Zowie.” I raised my brows again. “Really?”

“God, no,” Susan said. “Do you really expect a clue from a five-second threat as read by a computer?”

“Cops call it a synthetic computerized voice changer.”

“Can you even tell if it’s a man or woman?”

“I would hope you could tell me.”

“Erectile dysfunction would imply man,” Susan said.

“So, right.”

“Has this been the only contact with the kidnappers?” Susan said. “Or should I say alleged contact?”

“We believe,” I said, sipping the Amstel. “You take what you can get.”

“And the only thing Akira’s parents can do is sit around and wait,” she said.

“Separately,” I said. “They’ve been divorced for two years.”

“And there’s a new wife?”

I explained about Cristal Heywood and the little I’d learned from Lundquist and Ray. I told her Cristal had bragged earlier in the day to Z about how the kidnapping increased her Twitter followers.

“Did Nicole really try and attack her?”

“She did more than try,” I said. I pointed to the scratch on my cheek.

“Wow,” she said. “Not exactly the reaction of a parent who’d be in on the kidnapping.”

“No,” I said. “The state police ruled her out pretty quickly. As did I.”

“So why’s Hawk still following her?”

“Kinjo’s paying us to watch her.”

“Which she doesn’t know?”

I nodded and grinned. “I think Hawk is a bit smitten.”

Now was the moment for Susan to raise her eyebrows. The doorbell rang and Pearl launched into attack mode. Susan stood, placed her wine on the table, and turned to the door. “Smitten?” she said. “That word has never been used to describe Hawk.”

“Scary, isn’t it?”

Susan nodded and walked downstairs to grab the pizza. She returned in a few seconds with a pizza box and Pearl trotting enthusiastically behind her.

“She has a nose for wild game and anchovies,” I said.

Susan opened the box at the kitchen island and grabbed some good plates from the cupboards. We ate standing up at the island. Pearl sat at our feet, studying how we worked on each slice, waiting for one morsel to drop.

“Perhaps you should be watching Cristal instead?”

“Lundquist has it,” I said. “Even a super-sleuth like me can only follow so many leads.”

“You know much about wife two?”

I shrugged.

“And that’s why you will check her out, even if she comes up clean.”

“Being of a suspicious and doubtful nature has served me well.”

“I just hope whoever has Akira calls soon,” she said.

I nodded.

“The unknowing is the worst,” Susan said. “A parent’s mind will go to terrible places.”