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  THE SPENSER NOVELS

  Robert B. Parker’s Someone to Watch Over Me

  (by Ace Atkins)

  Robert B. Parker’s Angel Eyes

  (by Ace Atkins)

  Robert B. Parker’s Old Black Magic

  (by Ace Atkins)

  Robert B. Parker’s Little White Lies

  (by Ace Atkins)

  Robert B. Parker’s Slow Burn

  (by Ace Atkins)

  Robert B. Parker’s Kickback

  (by Ace Atkins)

  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 Fool’s Paradise

  (by Mike Lupica)

  Robert B. Parker’s The Bitterest Pill

  (by Reed Farrel Coleman)

  Robert B. Parker’s Colorblind

  (by Reed Farrel Coleman)

  Robert B. Parker’s The Hangman’s Sonnet

  (by Reed Farrel Coleman)

  Robert B. Parker’s Debt to Pay

  (by Reed Farrel Coleman)

  Robert B. Parker’s The Devil Wins

  (by Reed Farrel Coleman)

  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

  Robert B. Parker’s Payback

  (by Mike Lupica)

  Robert B. Parker’s Grudge Match

  (by Mike Lupica)

  Robert B. Parker’s Blood Feud

  (by Mike Lupica)

  Spare Change

  Blue Screen

  Melancholy Baby

  Shrink Rap

  Perish Twice

  Family Honor

  THE COLE/HITCH WESTERNS

  Robert B. Parker’s Buckskin

  (by Robert Knott)

  Robert B. Parker’s Revelation

  (by Robert Knott)

  Robert B. Parker’s Blackjack

  (by Robert Knott)

  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

  Publishers Since 1838

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  penguinrandomhouse.com

  Copyright © 2021 by The Estate of Robert B. Parker

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  Hardcover ISBN: 9780593087855

  E-book ISBN: 9780593087862

  Book design by Katy Riegel, adapted for ebook by Maggie Hunt

  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.

  Cover design: Lisa Amoroso

  Cover images: (paper cutout) Vicky Martin / Arcangel; (playing card) MMphotos / Alamy Stock Photo

  pid_prh_5.7.0_c0_r0

  This book is for John (Ziggy) Alderman.

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Also by Robert B. Parker

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter
Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  Chapter Sixty

  Chapter Sixty-One

  Chapter Sixty-Two

  Chapter Sixty-Three

  Chapter Sixty-Four

  Chapter Sixty-Five

  Chapter Sixty-Six

  Chapter Sixty-Seven

  Chapter Sixty-Eight

  Chapter Sixty-Nine

  Chapter Seventy

  Chapter Seventy-One

  Chapter Seventy-Two

  Acknowledgments

  About the Authors

  ONE

  I was in my brand-new office over the P. F. Chang’s at Park Plaza, around the corner from the Four Seasons and a block from the Public Garden, feeling almost as cool as Tina Fey.

  I’d just walked through the door that had Sunny Randall Investigations written on the outside, put on some coffee, sat down behind my rustic wood Pottery Barn desk. All in all, I was everything a professional woman should be, if you didn’t count the Glock in the top right-hand drawer of my desk.

  There were two chairs on the client side of the desk, a small couch against one wall, and a table on the other side of the room that I used for painting when I needed to take a break from world-class detecting. It housed my pads and boards and a palette and all the other tools of a world-class watercolorist’s trade.

  “Forget about the gun,” Jesse Stone said. “If somebody shows up and threatens you, just pull a paintbrush on them.”

  “What about the boxing classes you made me take?” I said. “You should see how good my right hand has gotten.”

  I had signed up for a half-dozen at the gym an old boxer named Henry Cimoli owned over near the harbor.

  “Here’s hoping you never need to throw it,” he said.

  Jesse. Chief of police, Paradise, Massachusetts. On-again, off-again boyfriend. Mostly on over the past year. I had given in and started calling him that, my boyfriend, just because I hadn’t found a better way to describe his role in my life. We were still together, anyway, even though we were mostly apart, our relationship having survived the virus. We were official, as the kids liked to say, even if we hadn’t announced it on Instagram, or wherever kids announced such things these days, in a world where they found everything that happened to them completely fascinating. Jesse and I had been as close as we’d ever been before the virus caused the world to collapse on itself. Now we’d once again grown more used to our own social distancing, and for longer and longer periods of time, him up in Paradise, me in Boston.

  But still official, at least in our own unofficial way.

  “I feel like Jesse and I are happy,” I said to Spike the night before, over drinks at Spike’s.

  “Low bar,” he said. “For both of you.”

  “Come on,” I said. “I’ve got a stress-free relationship going, money in the bank, my own office, I’ve still got Rosie the dog, I’ve even lost five pounds, not that you seem to have noticed.”

  “Just like a big girl,” Spike said.

  “Not as big as I was five pounds ago,” I said.

  “You also still have ex-husband issues,” he said, referring to Richie Burke, still in Boston, still in my life as he raised his son from his second marriage.

  “Do not,” I said.

  “Do so,” Spike said.

  “You sound childish,” I said.

  “Do not,” he said. “Do not, do not, do not.”

  Spike and I had been celebrating the fact that I’d finally gotten paid by Robert Magowan, who owned the second-biggest insurance company in Boston. Magowan had hired me to prove that his wife had been cheating on him. This I did, well over two months ago. Then he refused to pay, and kept refusing, until Spike and I had finally shown up at his office and Spike threatened to shut a drawer with Magowan’s head inside it. That was right before I handed Mr. Magowan my phone and showed him the images of him in bed in a suite at the Four Seasons, park view, with Lurleen from accounting, and wondered out loud who’d win the race to the divorce lawyers, him or the missus, once the missus got a load of what I thought were some very artsy photographs.

  “You were only supposed to follow her,” he said.

  “Well,” I said, “to put it in language you can understand, I thought I might need additional coverage.”

  He’d proceeded to transfer the money over speakerphone from an L.A. branch of Wells Fargo while Spike and I watched and listened.

  On our way out of the office Magowan had said to me, “They told me you were a ballbreaker.”

  “Not like Lurleen,” Spike had said.

  I knew I could have handled Magowan myself. I’d brought Spike along just for fun. His, mostly. He’d gone through a bad time during the pandemic, nearly having lost Spike’s at the worst of it. But he’d come up with the money he needed at the last minute, thanks to a loan from one of his best customers, a young hedge-fund guy named Alex Drysdale, who spent almost as much time in the place as I did.

  Spike still wasn’t back to being his old self, but threatening to kick the shit out of Robert Magowan, even if it hadn’t come to that, had made him seem happier than he’d been in a year. And more like his old self.

  He was about to pay off his loan this morning, having invited Drysdale to the restaurant so he could hand him the check in person. The thought of that made me smile, just not quite as much as the memory of the ashen look on Magowan’s face when I showed him the pictures of him and Lurleen in one particular position that should have had its own name, like a new yoga move:

  Downward dogs in heat.

  The sound of my cell phone jolted me out of my reverie.

  The screen said Spike.

  “Sunny Randall Investigations,” I said brightly. “Sunny Randall speaking. How may I help you?”

  “I need to see you right away,” he said.

  His voice sounded like a guitar string about to snap. I realized I was standing.

  “What’s the matter?” I said. “Something’s the matter. I can always tell.”

  “I just knocked Alex Drysdale on his ass, is what’s the matter,” he said.

  “The guy who loaned you the money?” I said. “That Alex Drysdale?”

  “I wanted to kill him,” Spike said. “But I stopped after breaking his fucking nose.”

  “Spike,” I said. “What the hell happened?”

  “He stole my restaurant.”

  There was a pause.

  “Wait, let me amend that,” Spike said. “I mean his restaurant.”

  I told him I was on my way, ended the call, grabbed my leather shoulder bag, remembered to turn off the coffee machine, locked the door behind me, ran down the stairs.

  I had started to believe that maybe God, at long last, had stopped being pissed off at everybody.

  Obviously She hadn’t.

  TWO

  Payback really is a bitch,” Spike said. “Only it turns out Drysdale’s the bitch.”

  We were seated at the bar. Spike had a Bloody Mary in front of him so big it looked like a fire hydrant. He also had a glas
s filled with ice next to it, and would occasionally pluck out a cube and press it to his cheek. Spike said that after he hit Drysdale, the two guys with him—neither of whom, he said, looked like fund managers—hit him back. I knew how hard it was to get the better of Spike in a fight, even when it was two against one. But they’d managed.

  “At least you got your shot in,” I said.

  “I even managed to get some good ones in on the extras from The Sopranos,” he said, “before one of them kicked my legs out from underneath me and the other just kicked the shit out of me.”

  “Literally kicking you while you were down,” I said.

  “My upper body is already starting to look more colorful than Pride month,” he said.

  Drysdale, he said, finally told them to stop; he didn’t want Spike scaring the customers.

  “Called them our customers,” Spike said, and drank.

  I asked then how Drysdale had done it, if he could explain it to me without trying to sound like Warren Buffett.

  “I’m too stupid to sound like Warren Buffett,” he said. “I’m the one who let him pick my fucking pocket in broad daylight.”

  Drysdale had been a regular at Spike’s from the time he turned it from a sawdust-on-the-floor to an upscale restaurant on Marshall Street that had become one of the hottest places in town, not just because of the food, but because of the bar crowd, which could include professional athletes and local TV personalities and politicians and the lead singer from Dropkick Murphys and young women from the modeling agency that had opened around the corner. Drysdale was good-looking, a big tipper, often came in with a beautiful woman or left with one. And was rich as shit. He finally became aware that Spike, even with the government loans and takeout business and furloughing of a lot of the staff, was about to shutter the place. So he offered Spike the loan that he needed at a two percent rate, on one condition:

  He didn’t tell anybody about the terms.

  “I’m a one-percenter,” he joked to Spike, “but let’s keep that two percent between us.”

  Spike had been a business major at UMass. When Drysdale presented him with the document, he told Spike to ignore all the bullshit language about floating rates and warrants and even what would happen if Spike somehow still had to declare bankruptcy down the road, that it was all boilerplate stuff and would never come into play until maybe the next pandemic in another hundred years or so.

  “We’re friends,” Drysdale said. “We could have done this on a handshake. But my lawyers are making me.”