“Browning?” I said. Belson shrugged.
“Most nines fire the same load,” he said. “Whoever shot her probably emptied the piece. Most nines carry thirteen to eighteen in the magazine, and some of the casings probably ejected into the vehicle. Some of the slugs went where we couldn’t find them. Happens all the time.”
Belson was clean-shaven, but at midday there was already a five o’clock shadow darkening his thin face. He was chewing on a small ugly cold cigar.
“Baby took three, through the mother’s body. They were both dead before they hit the ground.”
“Suspects?” I said.
I was drinking coffee from a Styrofoam cup. Belson had some in the same kind of cup, because I’d brought some for both of us from the Dunkin Donut shop on Boylston Street near the Public Library. I had cream and sugar. Belson drank his black.
“Probably she was shot from a van that drove by slowly with the back door open.”
“Gang?”
“Probably.”
“Hobarts?”
“Probably.”
“Got any evidence?”
“None.”
“Any theories?”
“Gang people figure it’s a punishment shooting,” Belson said. “Maybe she had a boyfriend that did something wrong. Probably drug related. Almost always is.”
“They got any suspects?”
“Specific ones? No.”
“But they think it’s the Hobarts.”
“Yeah,” Belson said. “Double Deuce is their turf. Anything goes down there it’s usually them.”
“Investigation ongoing?” I said.
“Sure,” Belson said. “City unleashes everything on a shine killing in the ghetto. Treat it just like a couple of white kids got killed in the Back Bay. Pull out all the stops.”
“Homicide got anybody on it?” I said.
“Full time?” Belson smiled without meaning it, and shook his head. “District boys are keeping the file open, though.”
“Good to know,” I said.
“Yeah,” Belson said. “Now that you’re on it, I imagine they’ll relax.”
“I hope so,” I said. “I wouldn’t want one of them to start an actual investigation and confuse everything.”
Belson grinned.
“You come across anything, Quirk and I would be pleased to hear about it,” he said.
“You’re on the A list,” I said.
CHAPTER 6
I was in a cubicle at the Department of Youth Services, talking to a DYS caseworker named Arlene Rodriguez. She was a thin woman with a large chest and straight black hair pulled back tight into a braid in back. Her cheekbones were high and her eyes were black. She wore bright red lipstick. Her blouse was black. Her slacks were gray and tight and tucked into black boots. She wore no jewelry except a wide gold wedding band.
“Major is his real name,” she said. She had a big manila folder open on her desk. “It sounds like a street handle but it’s not. His given name is Major Johnson. In his first eighteen years he was arrested thirty-eight times. In the twenty-seven months preceding his eighteenth birthday he was arrested twenty times.”
“When he turned eighteen he went off the list?” I said.
“He’s no longer a juvenile,” she said. “After that you’ll have to see his probation officer or the youth gang unit at BPD.”
“What were the offenses?” I said.
“All thirty-eight of them?”
“Just give me a sense of it,” I said.
“Drugs, intent to sell… assault… assault… possession of burglary tools… possession of a machine gun… assault… suspicion of rape… suspicion armed robbery… ” She shrugged. “You get the idea.”
“How much time inside?” I said.
She glanced down at the folder on her desk. “Six months,” she said. “Juvenile Facility in Lakeville.”
“Period?”
“Period,” she said. “Probably the crimes were committed within the, ah, black community.”
