NOVELS BY ROBERT B. PARKER
THE SPENSER NOVELS
Robert B. Parker’s Cheap Shot (by Ace Atkins)
Silent Night (with Helen Brann)
Robert B. Parker’s Wonderland (by Ace Atkins)
Robert B. Parker’s Lullaby (by Ace Atkins)
Sixkill
Painted Ladies
The Professional
Rough Weather
Now & Then
Hundred-Dollar Baby
School Days
Cold Service
Bad Business
Back Story
Widow’s Walk
Potshot
Hugger Mugger
Hush Money
Sudden Mischief
Small Vices
Chance
Thin Air
Walking Shadow
Paper Doll
Double Deuce
Pastime
Stardust
Playmates
Crimson Joy
Pale Kings and Princes
Taming a Sea-Horse
A Catskill Eagle
Valediction
The Widening Gyre
Ceremony
A Savage Place
Early Autumn
Looking for Rachel Wallace
The Judas Goat
Promised Land
Mortal Stakes
God Save the Child
The Godwulf Manuscript
THE JESSE STONE NOVELS
Robert B. Parker’s Blind Spot (by Reed Farrel Coleman)
Robert B. Parker’s Damned If You Do (by Michael Brandman)
Robert B. Parker’s Fool Me Twice (by Michael Brandman)
Robert B. Parker’s Killing the Blues (by Michael Brandman)
Split Image
Night and Day
Stranger in Paradise
High Profile
Sea Change
Stone Cold
Death in Paradise
Trouble in Paradise
Night Passage
THE SUNNY RANDALL NOVELS
Spare Change
Blue Screen
Melancholy Baby
Shrink Rap
Perish Twice
Family Honor
THE COLE/HITCH WESTERNS
Robert B. Parker’s The Bridge (by Robert Knott)
Robert B. Parker’s Bull River (by Robert Knott)
Robert B. Parker’s Ironhorse (by Robert Knott)
Blue-Eyed Devil
Brimstone
Resolution
Appaloosa
ALSO BY ROBERT B. PARKER
Double Play
Gunman’s Rhapsody
All Our Yesterdays
A Year at the Races (with Joan H. Parker)
Perchance to Dream
Poodle Springs (with Raymond Chandler)
Love and Glory
Wilderness
Three Weeks in Spring (with Joan H. Parker)
Training with Weights (with John R. Marsh)
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
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Copyright © 2015 by The Estate of Robert B. Parker
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Atkins, Ace.
Kickback / Ace Atkins.
p. cm.—(Robert B. Parker's Spenser novel series ; 28)
ISBN 978-0-698-16121-4
1. Spenser (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Private investigators—Massachusetts—Boston—Fiction. 3. Sentences (Criminal procedure)—Massachusetts—Fiction. 4. Judicial corruption—Massachusetts—Fiction. 5. Corporations—Corrupt practices—Fiction. 6. Corrections—Contracting out—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3551.T49K53 2015 2015003995
813'.54—dc23
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Version_1
For Mel Farman,
A true friend to both authors
Contents
Novels by Robert B. Parker
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Maybe he shouldn’t have gone out and celebrated. Maybe he should have stuck around for the vanilla ice cream after the lasagna victory meal. But what-ifs and should-haves didn’t cut it the next morning as the gray dawn crept up at five a.m. over a row of clapboard houses with peeling blue and green paint. You could smell the Merrimack River rolling by.
The cops were there. They were talking to the old man with the gun.
The boy stood in the open, his pal Tim already in a squad car. Tim’s old man’s Coupe de Ville getting hooked up to a tow truck with spinning lights. His parents were going to freak.
Another cop was talking to the boy now, wanting to know how much they had to drink.
“I don’t know,” he said. “A beer. Maybe two.”