Free Green Monster by Rick Shefchik

ago. A drowning accident somewhere on the West Coast.”
    â€œWas he in Lou’s will?”
    â€œI don’t know. Lou never talked about him.”
    â€œWas he married?”
    â€œIf he was, Lou never heard from the wife.”
    â€œYou will, when Katherine dies.”
    â€œThat’s Lou’s problem, not mine.”
    â€œWhen Lou dies, who gets the team?”
    â€œIf he doesn’t remarry, it will probably be put into some kind of trust, same as when Jean Yawkey died. Then it will be sold. That’s how Lou got it.”
    They paid the bill at 10:30; Sam had to meet Sal Bucca at eleven. He told Heather he wanted to go alone.
    â€œLou says I go where you go,” she said. “Besides, I’m not sure I trust you with all that cash.”
    â€œHell of a thing to say to the man who took your virginity last night.”
    Heather smirked, then shouldered the leather bag, noticeably heavier with the cash inside.
    â€œWon’t Bucca know who you are?” Sam asked.
    â€œI’m never in the papers. The reporters all want to talk to Lou, the club president, or the G.M.”
    They walked out the lobby doors onto Arlington Street. The previous night’s rain had moved through, leaving the sidewalks cleaner and the air fresher. Tourists and office workers taking early lunches sat around the fountain in the Public Garden across the street, enjoying the crisp fall morning. Sam and Heather crossed Arlington at Beacon Street and walked east toward Charles. Sam wasn’t anticipating any trouble from Sal Bucca, but he was wearing his gun under his jacket, just to be the well-equipped private eye.
    They crossed Charles Street and walked along the north boundary of the Boston Common, which was also bordered by Beacon, Park, Tremont, and Boylston, and abutted Boston’s financial and government districts. They turned right at Park, where the 200-year-old steeple of the Park Street Church was being refurbished against the backdrop of modern skyscrapers. In the Granary burying ground next to the church, the headstones of Sam Adams, John Hancock, and Paul Revere poked up from the hallowed soil, a daily tourist attraction for visitors following the Freedom Trail.
    There was a noticeable difference in appearance between the Public Garden and the Common; the lawn and flowers of the Public Garden were meticulously maintained by workers who speared stray paper and cigarette butts with spiked sticks and put the refuse into the trash bags slung over their shoulders. The Common was a different story. The grass was patchier, pigeons and squirrels fought over food refuse left behind by office workers around the two-level Brewer’s fountain, and bums slept in the sunlight on the sloped hillside that led up to the Statehouse.
    Sam stood by the fountain near the corner of Park and Tremont and looked around for the fat man in the Sox cap with the cigar, but saw no one fitting that description. He checked the time read-out on his phone: eleven on the dot.
    He felt a tap on his arm.
    â€œYou Skarda?”
    He turned to see a bareheaded, balding man with a crooked nose and a perfectly even set of false upper teeth standing next to him. The voice sounded like the first guy Sam had talked to when he called Bucca’s number the night before. The face looked like that of a hockey player, or a boxer. Whatever he’d been, they’d had to stitch him back together a bunch of times.
    â€œYeah, I’m Skarda. Who are you?”
    â€œI work for Sal. Follow me.”
    He began walking westward into the Common, and Sam and Heather followed. False Teeth turned and said, “She stays here.”
    â€œNo, she doesn’t,” Sam said. “It’s her ten thousand.”
    â€œSuit yourself.”
    They walked past the fountain and up the hill to a grassy spot shaded by two towering maple trees. A short, dumpy man with a two-day beard, wearing a Red Sox cap, was sitting on a bench