“Can’t,” Hawk said. “Same way he can’t understand what it’s like to play.”

“Other people saying the same thing,” Kinjo said. “Those guys Paulie and the Gooch? They were on me last night about going back and practicing. Front office let it be known I’ll play this Sunday. What else can I do? I don’t have nothing else. I got to believe he’s going to be all right. I got to have a place to put all that anger. Hitting brings me level. I got to be level.”

Hawk nodded.

I asked for a second beer. Second beers keep me level.

“My mind goes places,” Kinjo said. “My heart feels torn to shreds. He’s everything. I don’t care who you hurt. I don’t care what Cristal thinks. You think maybe her ex got something going, check him out. But y’all don’t leave. This morning, Detective Lundquist and his people started to pack up their show. They been living with me and then I walk in and get breakfast and they’re closing up their computers and shit. Say they still working leads but they aren’t in control. Feds taking over. I don’t know these people. Or trust them.”

“Maybe for good reason,” I said.

Kinjo lifted his eyebrows, not considering I’d think he was right.

“Their special agent in charge and I have a history.”

“Does that bother you?”

“Nope.”

Kinjo shook his head. He stared straight ahead and then wiped his wet eyes. He pounded the table with his fist so hard, Hawk’s ice water spilled across the table. Hawk stood before the water dripped into his lap. The waitress came over and quickly cleared the table. My beer was unharmed.

“Be cool,” Hawk said.

Kinjo nodded.

“Do what you need to do to keep your mind right,” Hawk said. “We’ll find your boy.”

“How?”

“We always do.”

I shrugged and nodded. “I’m with him.”

“Even on nothing?” Kinjo said.

“Yep.”

“As long as it takes?” Kinjo said.

Hawk and I nodded.

“You know what y’all are?” Kinjo said, staring at Hawk. “You’re Ronin. You, him, and that big Indian guy. Don’t answer to nobody. Am I right? You understand what I’m saying?”

“I left my sword at the office.”

“I’m serious.” Kinjo’s gaze did not waver. “Y’all are samurai with no master, doing what’s got to be done. Roaming the earth, taking care of business without any rules.”

“Mostly greater Boston,” I said. “And I have rules.”

The waitress brought Hawk fresh water. He took a sip, ice rattling, and set the glass back on the table. Hawk stared at Kinjo a long while and tilted his head to the side. “He do. But I write my own.”

34

How do you manage to so artfully piss off those you work with?” Susan said.

“Gumption,” I said. “Determination.”

We were in bed, wrapped up in the sheets, listening to a cold rain tap against my apartment window. Pearl had given up scratching at the door and returned to her place on my new leather couch. We had already had supper; four mini-apple pies baked in the oven.

“From what you’ve told me about Connor, he is an absolute shit heel,” Susan said.

“True.”

“And dirty.”

“True.”

“But you don’t think his dirtiness will interfere with the investigation?”

“I think his low IQ and lack of talent will interfere.”

“So you and Hawk remain.”

“And Z,” I said. “Don’t forget Z.”

“The Three Caballeros.”

“Which one am I?”

“Why, the fucking duck, of course.”

Susan propped herself up on one elbow, and was bathed in a slice of light from outside Marlborough Street. The air smelled of baking apples and cinnamon.

“Kinjo feels a lot of guilt for returning to practice,” I said.

“If it works for him, it works.”

“Sure.”

“But you find it odd.”

“I don’t find it odd, but apparently he’s taking the heat from the piranhas who now pass as so-called sports journalists.”

“You’re not suspecting him?” she said. “For acting indifferent?”

“No,” I said. “Not at all. He’s broken up very badly. He’s as eaten up and sick with worry as is possible in a man. He walked away from us before the drop yesterday and vomited in the bathroom.”

“But you’re asking if it’s healthy?” Susan said. “Or therapeutic?”

I nodded. My eyes lingered on Susan’s chest. She smiled and settled onto her back, pillow under her head, her body half covered, and stared at the ceiling.

“Doesn’t it help you to work out, pound out frustrations on a heavy bag, whatever it takes for a release?”

“And other things.”

“But violent exercise, too.”

“Even playing in a game this Sunday?”

“If it works for him,” Susan said. “Screw the bloggers and nuts on the radios.”

“That’s the same advice I gave him,” I said. “Should I charge him an extra hundred bucks?”

“I charge one-fifty.”

I resettled against the pillow, reached over to the nightstand, grabbed my watch, and checked how long the pies had been in the oven. We had another five minutes. I turned my head to her. Her curly head lay on her pillow. We stared at each other, smiling.

“Did Nicole tell you anything specifically about why she disliked Cristal?” I said.

“She said she’s a terrible parent.”

“In what way?”

“Absent,” Susan said. “She said that Akira runs wild at their house while Cristal has cocktails with friends or watches television or posts pithy comments about Kinjo on her Twitter feed.”

“Kinjo said Nicole is jealous.”

“I’m sure she is,” Susan said. “But which woman would you trust?”

“But why might she want Akira out of the picture?” I said. “What’s in it for her?”

Susan blinked. Her large brown eyes turned slightly upward in thought. “There are bad stepparents,” she said. “And then there are bad stepparents.”

“If the child is dead,” I said. The words so horrible they seemed to resonate long after I said them in the silent room.

“Is that what you’re now thinking?”

“Five days without contact,” I said. “Doesn’t look good.”

“And you suspect Cristal?”

“She is, as the cops like to say these days, a person of interest,” I said. “Before she met Kinjo, she bedded down with a known pornographer and drug dealer in Dorchester.”

“Women do like bad boys.”

“Is that me?”

“Except for baking,” Susan said, lifting herself out of the bed and striding across my bedroom, completely naked, to my closet. “Baking puts you into a category unto your own.”

“‘She walks in beauty, like the night,’” I said.

Much to my disappointment, she fitted herself into an old navy terry-cloth robe. “Does Lord Byron stock ice cream?” she said.

“I made that, too.”

“Of course you did.”

35

My mental Rolodex of thugs had ebbed and flowed over my years of business. The old Italian and Irish crews I’d known seemed to have mostly disappeared or gone to that big house in the sky. Over the last decade, there seemed to be a lot of ethnic crime around Boston: Ukrainians and Albanians, Chinese, and lots of Vietnamese. Fast Eddie Lee had a stronger and stronger grip on the city. Gino Fish still did a nice bit of business about town, as Tony Marcus kept his eyes on much of the working ladies. I had removed Joe Broz from my Rolodex after his recent demise and had added his son’s name in light pencil.

Gerry Broz had owned a pretty posh sports bar in Southie. Sports bars being a cultural obsession in Boston almost like the coffeehouses of Vienna. But Gerry’s bar, Playmates, had gone into bankruptcy, and he’d decided to start a tropical-fish distributorship in Coolidge Corner, down the street from the old movie house.

It was still raining that morning as Z and I walked into the large brick warehouse.