“Probably,” I said. “I did just receive an ominous warning from the manager of the Purple Banana.”

“What did he say?”

“He reminded me Hawk was out of town,” I said. “You mind spicy?”

“Nope,” Wayne said. He walked to my refrigerator and helped himself to a second beer. He was in a threadbare blue oxford button-down and a brown knit tie. I was pretty sure he was in the same jeans and boots from the other day.

I poured some milk into a bowl, cracked some eggs, and added a nice dose of Crystal hot sauce. The mixture was whisked to an orangish pink. I mixed the spices with the flour and tested the oil with a pinch of it. Not hot enough.

“So you connected Weinberg to the condo sales?” Wayne said.

“I did,” I said. “And I had a nice deal negotiated for the residents.”

“And then someone kills him.”

“And perhaps shadows the deal.”

“But you’re still working it?” Wayne said. “I don’t get it.”

“Rachel Weinberg was so impressed by my relentless nature and perhaps by kind words from a state police captain, they hired me.”

“You got to be kidding me.”

“Nope.” I drank some beer. “Weinberg’s right-hand man asked me himself.”

“And before his untimely death, what did you find out about Weinberg?”

“That he really liked the works of Lewis Carroll.”

“And all your work is in the shitter.”

“His wife doesn’t think so,” I said. “She’s moving ahead with what she is calling Rick’s final dream.”

“Poetic,” Wayne said. “Can I use it?”

“Talk to her.”

“I tried,” Wayne said. “Her people in Vegas hung up on me.”

“Let me see what I can do.”

Wayne smiled for the first time since he walked in my door. Maybe he was thinking of the fried chicken. I tested the oil. Still not hot enough. It took a while to get the pan just right. You don’t get the oil hot enough, and your chicken turns out greasy.

“If the property deal is still good, will your people still sell?”

“Probably.”

Wayne nodded. He finished the beer. He walked in front of my windows and placed his hands in his old jeans. “So who killed him?”

“That’s where things get fuzzy.”

“How fuzzy?”

“The back of a grizzly?”

Wayne shrugged. “Some cops I know think it was the Mob wanting to stop legal gambling on their turf.”

“You make it legal and that cuts into most of their business.”

“Is that what you’re hearing?”

“What I suspect,” I said. “I just don’t know if it’s local or imported.”

I tried the oil again. The flour sputtered and hissed and started to brown. I started in on the chicken. I dipped each piece in the flour and spices, then bathed them in the hot-sauce-and-egg mix, then rolled them back into the flour, and finally set them into the hot oil.

My efforts earned another beer. I started in on my second. Wayne was on his third. He got a phone call from the desk at the Globe and excused himself for a few minutes to argue with a copy editor. When the desk was satisfied, he came back to the kitchen with his empty beer.

“That’s a message killing,” Wayne said.

“Mario Puzo would have loved it,” I said. “Or whoever writes his books now.”

“But you’re not so sure.”

I nodded. “Almost everything in this case is screwy.”

“Why don’t you just quit?”

“Henry Cimoli asked for help,” I said. “And he’s already counting his money.”

“So all we know is that not twenty-four hours after Rick Weinberg secured a very elusive piece of real estate for his dream casino, someone whacked him.”

“Yep.”

“But we don’t know who or why,” he said. “But we suspect it’s connected to organized crime either in the city or in Las Vegas.”

“That’s about all of it.”

“What’s next?” Wayne said.

I pulled out the browned chicken pieces and set them on paper towels. I forked the chicken breasts still in the milk and started the process again. I heated a wok for the kale and began rinsing the greens.

“You’re a Yankee,” Wayne said, turning his nose up at the kale. “Ever heard of collards?”

“Heard of grits, too,” I said. “And Tallulah Bankhead.”

Wayne watched me as I cooked. “Something bothering you?”

“There’s a woman who worked for Weinberg,” I said. “She had just been fired. But I think she may be dead, too.”

“What about other employees?” he said. “Surely there were others close to him.”

“I actually went the other way,” I said. “I reached out to Harvey Rose today.”

I added some sesame oil to the wok and started chopping the kale.

“What did he say?”

“His people hung out the ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign,” I said. “Or, more precisely, said ‘Fuck off.’”

“I wrote his first profile when he was still teaching at Harvard,” he said. “I could call him. Set something up. Hell, I interviewed him today on the obit on Weinberg.”

“What did he say?”

“Off the record and for your ears only, he says he may pull his name from the casino license bidding.”

I tossed the kale into the wok and started stirring fast. Two beautiful heirloom tomatoes from the Fresh Market sat on the ledge over my sink. I reached for some plates. I found a couple more beers. Maybe bourbon for dessert.

“Did he sound scared?” I said.

“Wouldn’t you be?”

“‘Maybe everybody in the whole damn world’s scared of each other.’”

Wayne smiled and shook his head. “Never trust a detective who reads.”

I grinned and added the chicken and greens to his plate. I sliced up the purple tomato on the side. “Food for thought.”

35

IF HARVEY ROSE was trying to make shareholders feel money wasn’t being wasted on office space, he had succeeded. The following morning, I found his Boston headquarters were housed in a run-down three-story in Newton that hadn’t seen a renovation since the Nixon administration. It was built of brick-and-beige panels with rusted air conditioners jutting from aluminum windows. From where I parked in a back lot, there was a great view of the Mass Pike and a U-Haul dealer. I walked to a back door and found an intercom and security camera. I punched the speaker button and waved to the camera. The deadbolt slipped open.

Inside were a bunch of office types trapped in no-frills cubicles. Phones buzzed, keyboards clicked, and worker bees did whatever they did for Harvey Rose. I walked down a narrow hallway until I was greeted by the bald guy I had met at Rose’s house. Today he wore a blue pin-striped suit and a lot of cologne.

I sniffed. “Wood smoke?”

Rose’s guard did not respond. He just motioned with his bald head to a stairwell we followed to the second floor and a large open room with drafting boards and blueprints tacked on corkboards. On a long table that sat twenty, there were open laptop computers, countless boxes of files, and legal notepads. The beefy guy I had also met in Lexington followed us, glanced at me, and joined his pal at a folding table. He leaned back in his chair, suit jacket open and holster purposefully exposed, and eyed me with a slow indifference.

The bald guy picked up a hand of cards and tossed some chips into the pot.

“I could order a couple pizzas, pick up some beer,” I said.

They did not answer. The fat guy tossed down some cards. Somewhere in a back room, a toilet flushed and out walked Harvey Rose. He was several inches below six feet, chunky, and wore black dress pants with a wrinkled white dress shirt with French cuffs. A blazing red designer tie hung loose and careless around his neck. Remnants of lunch or breakfast spotted the shirt. He had not shaved, and his eyes were dark-rimmed and bloodshot.

“Mr. Spenser?”