Shadow Boys Read Online Free

Clark, PC.
    I’d never actually met Theo Goldberg. He’d hired me by e-mail, based on my experience as a government contractor and skill set as a former law-enforcement officer. Theo was but a voice on the phone, Charlie to my Angels.
    He answered after the first ring. A gruff hello followed by voices in the distance.
    “You could have let me know about the deputy chief,” I said.
    Kids screaming in the background, a coach’s whistle.
    “Do you have any idea how much child psychologists cost?” he said.
    This reply was so far from anything I was expecting that I had no comeback.
    “Isaac, my youngest, he’s been taking archery lessons since he was in the second grade.”
    Theo’s voice was more high-pitched and whiny than usual. He dropped his r ’s, too—the result of growing up in Boston.
    “I thought we had an agreement.” I started the Lincoln. “After the mess in Omaha. You promised to tell me everything about a job.”
    Omaha had been a simple retrieval (my bread and butter), a misappropriated shipping container full of property belonging to the Department of Energy. Unfortunately, the shipping container was in the possession of a man who owed money to some very dangerous people in Chicago. Theo Goldberg, a tiger in the courtroom, was naïve in the ways of the street, and failed to mention the Chicago connection. Luckily, I was able to keep the body count low and most of the ensuing meltdown out of the media.
    “Isaac shot a classmate,” Theo said. “With his bow and arrow. In the buttocks.”
    “Anything else I need to know about Raul Delgado?” I slid the transmission into drive.
    “Thank God the child he hit is all right,” Theo said. “A minor puncture wound in his privileged WASP ass.”
    “Focus, Theo. Fo-cus. Let’s talk about this guy in Dallas, the deputy chief—”
    “The kid he shot, his father is an undersecretary at Homeland Security.”
    I headed toward the exit.
    “Homeland Security, one of our biggest clients.” He made a tsk sound. “Not good, Jonathan. Not good at all.”
    I gave up on my topic. Best to let Theo get it all out of his system. He’d get back to the reason for my call in due course.
    “So what’s with the psychologist?” I said.
    “The school. They recommended a therapist to deal with any anger issues Isaac might have. Three hundred dollars an hour.”
    From his end of the phone, kids yelled like they were at a soccer game. I hoped it was a soccer game.
    “The deputy chief,” Theo said. The background noise got quieter. “This Gonzales fellow—”
    “Delgado,” I said. “His name is Raul Delgado.”
    “Whatever. Listen, he’s someone we want to keep an eye on. We want to know about him.”
    Theo Goldberg was in the knowing business, as he liked to put it, knowledge being the currency of power in twenty-first-century America.
    “Gotcha.”
    “Find his missing whatever,” Theo said. “Establish a relationship.”
    Another biggie at Goldberg, Finkelman, and Clark. Relationships. The currying of favors. He who has the biggest Rolodex wins.
    “That other thing,” Theo said. “You’re gonna take care of that, right?”
    “On my way, even as we speak.” I drove past the conspiracy theorists at Dealey Plaza.
    Wind noise from the other end of the line. Huffing. Heavy breathing. Footsteps, running. Theo yelled, “Isaac! Put the fucking cat down!”
    “You’re busy,” I said. “I’ll let you go.”
    He came back on the phone. “Be careful, Jonathan. You’re like the son I never had.”
    I was pretty sure we were the same age, in our forties. I didn’t mention this. Instead I said, “What about Isaac?”
    But the line was dead.

    My assignment from Theo Goldberg this fine spring morning—that “other thing” he’d spoken of—was to facilitate the return of some property that belonged to the United States: a laptop computer. The laptop had been issued to a government contractor who was reluctant to return it.
    In Texas, there were two