“You like smooth jazz, Arty?”

“What part of ‘shut the fuck up’ don’t you understand?”

“You still sore about Tampa?”

“Goddamn right I’m sore,” he said, just as we passed Pru Center. “That nigger sucker-punched me.”

“I’ll pass along your complaint to Hawk.”

“I’ll deal with him soon enough.”

“I thought you’d been around, Arty.”

“I been around,” he said. “So what?”

“You sure don’t know much about Hawk.”

Arty Leblanc stayed silent until we passed though Back Bay and drove along the Common. He told me to turn on Tremont and head into the South End, where we crossed the channel into Southie. We drove along Dot Ave and deeper into the old neighborhoods, cutting along the destruction site of the Old Colony Housing Projects, where some good people I’d known had grown up. And several crooks, including Joe Broz.

“Turn here,” he said.

I turned.

“Turn there.”

I turned there.

We rode the long length of a chain-link fence with a lot of NO TRESPASSING and PRIVATE PROPERTY signs. He told me to drive to the gate and wait. Soon the chain-link gate slid open and I drove past a big sign reading DEMARCO TOWING.

“I get to finally meet Jackie,” I said. “Hot damn.”

48

Two junkyard dogs pulled at anchor chains set near two old construction trailers. They yelped and barked, claws scratching into the broken asphalt as sleet pinged off the ground. The door of one trailer opened and a thick-bodied guy with a lot of black hair and a hook nose descended a short flight of handmade steps. He wore a slick Pats jacket and an orange watch cap and stopped halfway between us and the trailer to light up a smoke. He had thick legs and a big gut. He was built like a Bulgarian power lifter gone to seed. “This him?” he said, clicking a Zippo closed.

“Yeah,” Arty said.

“Don’t look like much,” he said.

“C’mon, Jackie,” I said. “Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful.”

Arty shrugged and walked over to one of the two dogs and rubbed the pit bull’s nub ears. On one knee, he spoke to the dog like the animal was a child. The pit bull flopped over on its back for a belly rub.

“You Spenser?” Jackie said.

“Jesus Christ,” I said. “Arty just told you I was and then you said, ‘He don’t look like much.’ And then I said, ‘Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful.’”

I was ready for it, but the punch in my gut still took a little air from me. I returned with a rabbit punch to Jackie DeMarco’s kidney and then another into his bloated gut. It felt like I was punching into a lumpy mattress. By that time, both doors to both trailers had opened and both Howdy Doody and Baldy ran from the steps and pointed guns at me. They were joined by a skinny guy in an open parka, jeans, and no shoes holding a shotgun.

“The gang’s all here,” I said. I rubbed my stomach. Jackie DeMarco gave a good punch. I nodded my respect toward Jackie. The dogs were barking again and digging at the asphalt, trying to break their chains to get to me.

“At your office,” Arty said, “didn’t we tell you to get lost?”

“You did.”

“And in Tampa?” he said. “We let you go with a warning.”

“I don’t recall you saying much, Arty,” I said. “After Hawk knocked you out.”

“Shut up,” Arty said.

Jackie DeMarco lit another cigarette, clicked the lighter closed, and then eyed me with a little humor. Baldy had slipped the auto back into his belt. Howdy Doody had dropped his pistol, too. Only the new guy, Shoeless Joe, kept his gun aimed at me. He walked around in a wide circle while I talked with Jackie and Arty Leblanc. He had the jittery look of a meth head with an itchy trigger finger. I kept in close to Jackie and Arty. If he were to spray buckshot, it would be nice if we all got it. The pinging sleet gave the air an electric feel in the graying day.

There must have been more than a hundred impounded cars parked out into the spaces behind the trailers and a fleet of a couple dozen tow trucks, DEMARCO’S proudly displayed on the doors.

“I guess we’re at an impasse,” I said.

“What?” DeMarco said.

“An impasse,” I said. “You want me to quit with those two judges. And I won’t.”

“Maybe so,” DeMarco said. “But nobody is really going to care when you disappear, Spenser. You know how many guys I know who will throw a freakin’ party when you’re gone?”

“How many?” I said.

“Lots.”

“But we’ll need a head count,” I said. “Appetizers. Cocktails.”

“Arty?” DeMarco said.

Arty looked up. Howdy Doody and Baldy had joined him to stare at me as Jackie DeMarco shamed me so thoroughly. My face felt stiff and waxen in the cold. The sleet fell harder. The dogs pulled at the chains, reaching their limit, but still clawing, yelping. DeMarco took one last puff on the cigarette and tossed it to the ground. “Kill this son of a bitch,” he said, tossing Arty some keys. “Take that old Buick somewhere and burn ’em both up.”

Arty pocketed the keys and reached into his black leather coat for his gun.

I heard the boom of the rifle a millisecond after Arty’s head exploded. The three flunkies pulled their guns and started firing out into the wide-open space of the impound lot. I’d dropped to the ground and snatched back my gun and Arty’s stainless-steel Taurus. He’d fallen ugly and dead onto his back, his fingers just in reach of one of the dogs. The dog was in a yelping frenzy, biting and pulling Arty by the digits closer toward him. Blood spilled across the ground. Jackie DeMarco had come out of the trailer holding a shotgun. Two more blasts of the .44, one ripping into the skin of the trailer, and DeMarco was back inside.

I ran for cover behind a tow truck, one of those big ones that can slide a Patton tank up onto the flatbed. I exchanged a few shots with Baldy. He was behind the hood of a black Jeep Wrangler, popping up every few seconds like a game of Whack-A-Mole. Jackie DeMarco had a window opened in the construction trailer and was firing out into the lot. Another rifle blast from the lot silenced him for a bit. For a good twenty seconds, gunfire ringing in my ears, all I could hear were the pin sounds of ice needles hitting the ground.

Baldy fired at me again and then ran for a long line of impounded cars. I could hear the thud of his boots and his heavy breathing as another rifle shot sounded and he was cut down at the legs. He screamed and yelled obscenities and rolled around on the ground. I looked up over the edge of the flatbed and saw and heard nothing else but the guy’s pain. The automatic spent, I laid it on the ground and held my .38. I moved toward the cab of the tow truck, trying to keep quiet, trying to listen. In the big oversized sideview mirror, I saw the flash of red hair and turned to see Howdy Doody pointing his shotgun at me.

I shot him three times. His body jerked and spasmed like he was being jolted by an electric wire.

The ringing silence broke with the sound of a big engine starting and the squealing of tires. A big black Ford F-250 raced by the tow truck, slamming on brakes before it came to the closed gates, the gates slowly clanging open. One of the doors opened and the skinny guy with no shoes jumped in the passenger side as the truck raced off into Southie.

I stepped over Howdy Doody’s body, which now looked like a broken marionette. I felt an acid rising up in the back of my throat. I spit into the lot and kept walking forward, trying not to look over at the two dogs fighting over different pieces of Arty Leblanc. Baldy was screaming in pain. Everything was dirty and messy, but I preferred this to being burned up in the back of a Buick as Jackie DeMarco had instructed.