He nodded. “Sometimes when me and the boys get going in the box, there’s just no stopping us.”

Captain Groning and the Boys. Bet they had barbecues and went to church together and sang Hank Williams, Jr., songs together and never met a rubber hose they didn’t like.

“So how does Anthony’s father feel about his son’s death?” Angie asked.

“Crazy Davey?” Captain Groning said. “You see in the paper how they called him a ‘mobster’?”

“Yes.”

“Every corrupt guinea north of Quincy’s a mobster all a sudden, I swear.”

“And this particular guinea?” Angie said, her hands locked together into fists.

“Small-time. The papers said ‘loan shark,’ which is partly true, but mostly he’s a chop-shop guy on the Lynnway.”

Boston is one of the safest major metropolitan cities in the country. Our murder and assault and rape rates are barely blips on the screen compared with those of Los Angeles or Miami or New York, but we have all those cities beat when it comes to car theft. Boston criminals, for some reason, love to boost cars. I’m not sure why that is, since there’s nothing terribly wrong with our public transportation system, but there you go.

And most of these cars end up on the Lynnway, a stretch of Route 1A that cuts over the Mystic River, and is lined from end to end with car dealerships and garages. Most of those dealerships and garages are legitimate, but several aren’t. That’s why most Bostonians who get their cars stolen shouldn’t even bother checking their LoJack satellite-tracking system—it will just beep from a spot in the depths of the Mystic, just off the Lynnway. The tracking system, not the car. The car’s in pieces and those pieces are on their way to fifteen different places within half an hour after you parked.

“Crazy Davey isn’t pissed about his son’s death?” I said.

“I’m sure he is,” Captain Groning said. “But there’s not much he can do about it. Oh, sure, he gave us all the usual ‘My son don’t do coke’ bullshit, but what else is he going to say? Luckily, the way the mob’s all messed up around here these days, and Crazy Davey not even being in the running for a slot, I don’t have to care what he thinks.”

“So Crazy Davey’s small-time?” I said.

“Like a guppy,” Captain Groning said.

“Like a guppy,” I said to Angie.

And got another kick.

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