Next of Kin (3 page)

‘And?’ Finn said. ‘How’d he take it?’

‘Not so well. First thing this morning, he comes out of his apartment with a cardboard box, and climbs into his car. He heads out to the restaurant, pulls around the back and tosses the
box into the dumpster.’

‘You climbed into a dumpster?’ Finn said.

Kozlowski frowned. ‘Don’t be stupid. You think he wouldn’t notice someone digging around in the dumpster out back of his restaurant?’

‘Fair point.’

‘I was gonna wait till late tonight, but it turns out today’s trash day at the place; while I’m sitting there a big Waste Management truck pulls up and cleans out the dumpster.
So I followed. At the next stop, I gave the guy a fifty to let me in the back of the truck.’

‘Good thinking,’ Finn said. He looked at Lissa. ‘I can see why you love the man.’

‘He’s hard to resist.’

‘So’s the Ebola virus.’

‘Keep it up,’ Kozlowski said. ‘I won’t tell you what I found.’

‘Sorry,’ Finn said. ‘Continue.’

‘It’s all here. Dates. Amounts. Customers. A whole second set of books. It all matches the drug buys the FBI is charging Carlo Manelli with. We got the guy nailed. It wasn’t
our client, it was his partner, Spencer, at the restaurant.’

‘Weird,’ Finn said, winking at Lissa. ‘My money was on Colonel Mustard in the study with the candlestick.’

‘You don’t think this gets Manelli off?’ Kozlowski demanded.

‘How do we know they weren’t in this together?’ Finn pointed out. ‘They’re partners in the restaurant, why not in drug dealing, too? Why didn’t Manelli notice
the restaurant had a cash surplus every week? We go to the feds with this, they’re just gonna indict Spencer and charge the two of them as co-conspirators, and they’ll probably make it
stick whether it’s right or not.’

‘So don’t go to the feds with it,’ Kozlowski said. ‘Let them push the case against Manelli alone. When the trial goes forward, you pull this out on cross. It’ll
mess with the entire theory of the case the prosecutors have laid out for the jury, and
voilà
, you’ve got reasonable doubt.’

Finn considered this for a moment. ‘It might work,’ he admitted skeptically. ‘It’s better than anything else we’ve got to work with.’

‘See?’ Kozlowski said. ‘Worth a night’s work, fifty bucks and some new clothes. All of which I’m billing you for.’

‘Fine,’ Finn said. ‘I’ll charge it back to Manelli as trial preparation expenses.’

Kozlowski took off his jacket, rubbing a finger against a dark stain on the lapel. ‘As long as I get paid.’

‘What’s a new sport coat go for at Wal-Mart these days, anyway?’

‘Laugh if you want, but the people I deal with don’t trust a man in a thousand-dollar suit. You want people to talk to you, you gotta look like one of them.’ He rolled the
jacket into a ball and tossed it into the garbage. ‘Anything happen while I was out?’

‘Finn agreed to represent Eamonn McDougal’s son,’ Lissa said.

‘I did not,’ Finn protested. ‘I agreed to talk to him.’

‘ To give him legal advice?’ Kozlowski asked.

‘Yeah.’

‘Isn’t that representing him?’

‘Technically,’ Finn admitted. ‘But it’s not like I agreed to take the case to trial. And I told Eamonn that I’m not crossing the line. I’m treating his kid
like anyone else. He accepted that.’

‘You’re a moron. You know that, right?’

‘Your wife already pointed that out, thanks.’

‘She knows what she’s talking about. McDougal doesn’t want you to treat his son like anyone else. He wants you to get his son off. No matter what. And if you don’t,
he’s gonna be pissed.’

‘I know,’ Finn said.

‘He’s gonna be a real pain in the ass if he gets pissed. He’s dangerous and unstable.’

‘I know that, too.’

‘So, why’d you agree to represent him?’

Finn shrugged. ‘I guess I just believe that everyone is entitled to the best representation they can afford.’

‘Bullshit. You agreed to represent him because it’s a challenge.’

The door opened behind Kozlowski and Reggie walked in. ‘I’ve got lattes!’ he said. As soon as he stepped through the door, his face screwed itself into a frown. ‘Ugh!
Jesus Christ on a popsicle stick, what reeks in here?’

Finn and Lissa pointed to Kozlowski. ‘Him,’ they said in unison.

Reggie regarded Kozlowski with revulsion. ‘What happened? Did you go swimming in garbage?’

‘Yeah,’ Kozlowski replied. He looked uncomfortable. ‘Sorta.’ Reggie rolled his eyes and looked at Lissa. ‘I swear, sweetheart, you don’t have to live like
this. Just say the word, and my people can have you and that child in a safe house in Provincetown within two hours.

He’d never find you, I promise.’

Lissa smiled. ‘Yes, he would,’ she said. She looked over at her husband, still covered in a film of waste, his features rough and hard set, and her smile broadened. ‘I’d
die if he didn’t.’

CHAPTER TWO

Zachary Long climbed the stairs to the second floor of the Massachusetts Avenue brownstone slowly, evaluating everything as he went. Judging from the edges, the carpeting on
the staircase had once been beige, but that was a long time ago. Now it was mottled and brown and stained. The wooden railing was beaten and sagging, and the stairs themselves listed from the wall.
Even at noon on a sunny fall day, the place was dark. A lamp hung from the wall on the second floor, dislodged and dangling from its wire. There was no bulb, not that a bulb would have been of much
use.

As he approached the landing, he caught the stench from the back apartment. It became more pronounced as he reached the top, and he put his arm up to his nose. He wondered how no one had called
it in before that morning. As he looked around, the door closest to the stairway, marked 2B, cracked open and a man stuck his head out. His eyes were too big for his face, he was gaunt and he had
fringes of white hair around a bald, dark brown head. He was wearing a dress shirt buttoned to the top and a cardigan. Long judged him to be in his eighties.

The man nodded to Long. ‘Safe to come out yet?’ ‘Safe, yeah,’ Long said. ‘But we need you to stay in your apartment for a little while longer.’

The man looked around the hallway, stuck his head out further and glanced down the stairway, frowning. ‘We?’

Long pulled his shield out of his pocket, held it up. ‘BPD,’ he said. ‘I’m Detective Long.’ He tucked it into the breast pocket of his coat so it would be
visible.

‘I see,’ the man said. He made a face. ‘Bad smell.’

Long nodded. ‘How long’s it smelled like that?’

The man shrugged. ‘Don’t know. Don’t go out much. I cook; my place always smells good. You wanna get the ladies, you gots to keep your crib fresh.’

‘That work? With the ladies?’

‘Hell yes, fool. Been workin’ for me since before your daddy was born.’

‘I’ll remember that,’ Long said. ‘Someone will be back to talk to you in a little while, okay?’

‘I got nothing to say.’

‘Maybe you’ll think of something. Till then, just stay in your apartment.’

The old man scowled and closed the door.

Long looked around the floor. There were three apartments. One in the front, one in the middle, one in the rear. The back and the middle were accounted for with the deceased and the old man. The
third apartment, according to the mailbox in the entryway, was occupied by an individual or a family with the last name Wolfe. It was an open question in a place as run-down as this whether the
mailbox was accurate and up to date.

He glanced around the stairway one last time. Seeing nothing of note, he walked toward 2C. He stopped before he entered and pulled out a flashlight, flipping it on and leaning down to take a
close look at the doorknob. There were marks; fresh scratches on ancient copper. Moving up, he could see similar scratches at the keyhole for the deadbolt.

He pulled on gloves and turned the doorknob, being careful not to smudge any prints. It was unlikely that they’d get anything useful, but you never knew. The knob turned with little
resistance and he pushed the door in. It swung free and easy on the hinges, and Long stepped into the apartment.

The stench was overpowering. The blinds were pulled and the place was dark; slashes of light cutting through at the sides of the window did little to aid his vision. The shelves along the walls
of the living room had been cleared, the books and pictures were spilled on the floor. The coffee table was overturned, and a desk in the corner had been stripped, its drawers heaped nearby along
with bills and papers and letters. A purse lay on the floor just in front of the front door, turned inside out, its contents in a loose pile. Elizabeth Connor’s body lay in the middle of it
all, splayed face down on the faded carpet.

Long stepped carefully around the debris and moved toward her. She was thin, with dark hair and fair skin. She was wearing blue slacks and a yellow blouse. A zebra-print shoe was still on one
foot; the other had been knocked off and lay nearby. A long dark stain spread out on the rug from her head, and a fire poker lay to the left of the body. The fireplace was on the far wall, and Long
could see the set to which the poker belonged.

He squatted and looked at the woman’s face. Her eyes were still open, staring at the carpet, and he had to resist a natural impulse to close them. It wasn’t his job, and he
didn’t want to touch anything until the coroner and the crime lab boys had been over everything. ‘Sorry,’ he mumbled to the body.

Long heard footsteps on the stairway. ‘Doc’s here,’ Officer Washington called. He came up the stairs, breathing heavily, coughing from the smell. ‘Truck’s on the
way, but Doc’s coming up.’ He was standing in the doorway, and Long could feel him looking around. ‘You see anything interesting?’

Long stood and shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Probably a junkie looking for enough cash to score his next high.’

‘You think?’

Long shrugged. ‘No way to know for sure until we do some more poking around, but it fits. Locks were picked. Place was tossed, but tossed quickly. Looks like he just hit the places where
he’d likely find basic valuables.’ He looked around at the mess and the furnishings. ‘Probably didn’t find much. Maybe enough to get high once or twice. Maybe not even that
much. Most likely she was either already here, back in the bedroom, or she came home when it was going down. Perp grabs the easiest thing he can find – the fire poker – and gives her a
whack. Then he’s gone.’

‘That’s it?’ Washington said. ‘You think someone kills that easily?’

‘Trust me,’ Long said. ‘People kill a lot easier than that.’

Finn and Kozlowski walked into Murphy’s Law, a bar at the edge of the commercial district in South Boston. It was a long cement building with a bright red awning and dark
tinted windows. At night the place served a decent cross-section of the community, from older locals and blue-collar stalwarts to some of the urban pioneers homesteading on office salaries from
downtown in the business district. When Finn and Kozlowski walked in, though, it was still only two in the afternoon. At two in the afternoon, the only people in the place were those who had
nowhere else to go.

Kevin McDougal was sitting in a booth at the far end of the bar with two others keeping him company. His companions were bigger than Kevin, which wasn’t saying that much. Eamonn McDougal
was over six feet tall, but his wife was tiny; no taller than five feet and no heavier than ninety pounds. Their son inherited her build. What he lacked in physical presence, though, he made up for
in attitude. He worked out incessantly, and his muscles bulged under tight clothing. His arms, legs and neck were covered in tattoos that seemed to spread like vines, engulfing him further and
further every month. He had a quick temper and a reputation for fighting dirty.

Finn and Kozlowski walked the length of the bar, Finn in front, toward the trio in the booth. Kozlowski nodded to the bartender as they made their way; the bartender nodded back.

The three in the booth noticed Finn and Kozlowski coming – in the quiet of the afternoon drinking crowd, they were hard to miss – and McDougal’s two companions stood up,
guarding the booth.

‘Fuck you want?’ one of them barked at Finn.

‘I want to talk to your boy, there,’ Finn replied. ‘Kevin, right?’ He extended his hand.

McDougal looked up at him. ‘I don’t know you, mutherfucka,’ he said. He had a watch cap pulled low over his brow, and his street accent was exaggerated, as if to convince
people he was tough.

‘No, you don’t.’ Finn said. ‘My name’s Finn. We need to talk.’

‘You cops?’ the friend standing closest to Finn asked.

‘No,’ Finn said. ‘We’re not cops.’

‘Then my boy don’t need to fuckin’ talk to you.’

‘Yeah, he does.’

‘Says who?’

‘Says his father,’ Finn said. That made all three of them pause. The two standing looked at McDougal, seeking direction.

McDougal looked down at the table. ‘My father don’t fuckin’ run me,’ he mumbled.

After a beat, the young man standing closest to Finn said, ‘Yeah, his father don’t fuckin’ run him.’ He took a step into Finn’s face. He wasn’t tall, but he
was meaty, with thick shoulders and a layer of fat across a prominent brow that jutted out beneath a shaved head. A tattoo spread out from his neck up to his ear, reading,
Don’t Mess
.
‘He don’t wanna fuckin’ talk, he don’t fuckin’ talk. Get the fuck outta here.’

Finn looked the young man in the eyes. ‘You kiss your boyfriend with that mouth?’ he said, nodding toward the other man standing by the booth. The tattooed man moved closer, until
his face was only inches away. ‘You don’t want to act tough,’ Finn said. ‘You want to sit down.’

‘You wanna make me siddown, asshole?’

‘Me? No.’

The young man reached up and grabbed Finn by the collar. He pulled back his other hand in a fist, sneering confidently. The look lasted only a split second, though. Before he could throw the
punch, Kozlowski moved forward and grabbed him by the elbow. In one swift move, he twisted the young man’s arm around far enough that the back of his hand was above his shoulder blade. The
move forced the young man to let go of Finn’s collar and double over as he gave a high-pitched squeal. Kozlowski used the momentum to drive the man’s forehead down hard into the top of
a nearby table, splitting the skin just above the nose. Leaning over him, Kozlowski used all of his weight to keep him immobilized. ‘Man asked you to sit,’ Kozlowski said.