Melancholy Baby

by Robert B. Parker

18

  I had coffee and a cinnamon bun with George Markham in a Starbucks on Main Street in Andover.

  “Have you been able to persuade my daughter to stop this madness?” George said.

  “I’ve not tried,” I said.

  “Well, you should,” George said. “You’re too good-looking to waste your time chasing phantoms.”

  How charming.

  “Tell me about your radio career,” I said.

  He smiled modestly and shrugged.

  “It was nothing much,” he said. “I just got some lucky breaks along the way.”

  “Tell me about it. I’m fascinated with radio,” I said.

  “I was on Armed Forces Radio in ’Nam,” he said, “and managed, when I got out, to segue right into a job in New York. WNEW. I worked with William B. Williams there, if you know who he is.”

  “A legend,” I said.

  “In Chicago, I got to work with Milt Rosenberg at WGN.”

  “Wow,” I said. “Mostly announcing?”

  He nodded.

  “And a lot of producing,” he said. “I did some on-air fill-in for the hosts when they were on vacation or out with a cold or something. Later I went on to do network. Not as glamorous maybe as it once was in, you know, the heyday. But it paid good, and there was much less local programming politics, you know?”

  “Oh,” I said, “I can imagine. Do you miss radio?”

  “No,” he said, “not really. It was fun. But I’m happy now, managing my affairs, spending time with my wife. That was then. This is now.”

  “I was in Quad Cities last week,” I said.

  George looked at me blankly.

  “They remember you fondly out there,” I said.

  “Quad Cities?”

  “Yep. Talked with Millie at WMOL. Quad City Sound.”

  “Millie?”

  “Yep. Said you were very handy with the women.”

  “I’ve never been to Quad Cities in my life.”

  “You were there in the early eighties. Same time Lolly Drake was starting out.”

  “Lolly Drake?” he said. “The syndicated talk-show broad?”

  He was still sort of round-shouldered. But away from his wife, the furtive-nerd persona faded fast.

  “Yes,” I said. “They still talk about her out there.”

  “I don’t know anything about it or her or out there,” George said. “I simply do not know what you are talking about.”

  I took his picture out of my purse and held it up.

  “Is this you?” I said.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Sure.”

  “That’s what Millie said.” I smiled at him. “She said you hadn’t gotten better looking in twenty years.”

  “The hell with her,” George said, looking at the picture.

  Then he looked at me.

  “The hell with you too,” he said, and stood and walked out of Starbucks.

  I thought when I had him cornered, that he was supposed to crack under my relentless pressure and confess. Instead he told me to go to hell, and stuck me with the check.

  Maybe I should try rubbing my thumbs together.

  19

  In the fall, on clear days, the morning sun shined straight through my skylight until eleven. I usually painted then, to take advantage of it. While I did this, Rosie normally lay on the bed among the decorative pillows, on her back, with her head turned so that when she felt like it, she could open one black, beady eye and check on me. She was doing it this morning while I was layering gray shadows among the columns on the upper stories of my South Station front.

  My doorbell rang. Rosie jumped from the bed and charged to the door and stood, barking. As often as I’d told her, she never got that the person ringing the doorbell was several flights down and outside the building. It was one of her few confusions. I walked over and pushed the intercom button.

  “Hi,” I said.

  “Sunny?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s Sarah. I need to come in.”

  “Fourth floor,” I said. “Elevator’s right in front of you. Wait for me to buzz.”

  I went to my door and watched through the peephole until I saw her get off the elevator. She was alone. I opened my door and she came in. Rosie stopped barking and was thrilled to see her the minute the door was opened. She did a couple happy spins. Sarah pushed past Rosie without paying any attention to her. Rosie looked slightly put out and went and sat by the kitchen counter in case anyone wanted to give her a cracker. Sarah’s left eye was swollen nearly shut, and she had a darkening bruise on her left jawline.

  “Wow,” I said.

  “They beat me up,” she said. “They came to my room and beat up my boyfriend and me.”

  “Where’s your boyfriend?”

  “He ran off.”

  “And who are they?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Did you tell the police?”

  “No. I came right over here. I’m scared. I thought they were going to kill me or something.”

  I closed my front door, and, mostly for effect, pushed the bar on the slide bolt into place. Then I went to my bedside table and got my gun, and brought it back and laid it near me on the countertop. That was for effect, too, mostly.

  “Would you like some coffee?” I said.

  “No . . . yes . . . yes, I would.”

  She took out a cigarette and lit it. She didn’t ask if I minded. It didn’t seem the right time to say “Thanks for not smoking.”

  “Did anyone follow you here?” I said.

  “Follow?”

  “Yes. Might your assailants know you’re here?”

  “Here? My God. I don’t know. Can they get in?”

  “No,” I said.

  She went to the window and peeked out at the street.

  “I don’t see anybody,” she said.

  “You take cream and sugar?” I said.

  She continued to look down at the street, standing to the side so that she wouldn’t be seen.

  “Just sugar.”

  I brought the coffee over and put it on the breakfast table.

  “The building is quite secure,” I said. “And my loft is quite secure. And we have a phone to call the cops. And I’m quite a good shot.”

  “I don’t see anybody,” she said.

  “Good,” I said. “Have some coffee. Tell me about it.”

  Sarah left the window and sat across from me. Rosie came over and sat at my feet in case we were planning to eat something. Sarah looked around the loft.

  “You have a nice place,” she said.

  “So what happened?”

  “Well . . .” She drank some coffee and lit another cigarette. “My boyfriend and I were partying in my room.”

  “At the dorm,” I said.

  “Yeah, sure, at the dorm.”

  Partying could mean Hawaiian Punch, or beer or dope or sex or all of the above, though I was skeptical it meant Hawaiian Punch. On the other hand, the details of that could wait.

  “And?” I said.

  “And these two guys came in without knocking or anything and told my boyfriend to beat it, and he said, like, ‘Why?’ And one of the guys punched him out.”

  “Can you describe these guys?”

  “Sort of,” she said. “One of them was straight-looking, like a lawyer or an accountant, you know? Slim. Thick glasses. Dark suit. Tie. The other guy was bigger. He had on a leather jacket.”

  “Was it the bigger man who punched out your boyfriend?” I said.

  “Yes. He was so quick. Poor Woody.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then the guy in the leather jacket put Woody in my closet and told him to stay there, and shut the closet door. And the slim guy said to me I should
stop investigating my parents. And I was so scared I couldn’t talk and all I could do was shake my head, like, you know, I don’t understand. But he musta thought I meant no, I wouldn’t, and he, like, nodded his head to the guy in the leather jacket, and the guy hit me twice and knocked me down. And the slim guy said something like, ‘It can get a lot worse than this.’ And I said, ‘I’ll do whatever you want.’ And he said, ‘I told you what I want. Do it.’ And the leather-jacket guy put his foot on my, ah, between my legs, and he gave like a little shove and winked at me. The fucking guy winked at me! And they left.”

  “And Woody?” I said.

  With the remainder of her cigarette dangling from the corner of her mouth, away from the bruise, she poured herself some more black coffee and dumped in maybe six spoonfuls of sugar. Then she dragged on the cigarette and took it from her mouth and exhaled and drank some more coffee.

  “As soon as they left,” she said, “Woody came out of the closet and ran away.”

  “Well,” I said. “I guess it’s important to know one’s limitations.”

  She shrugged.

  “Do you remember anything else about the two men?” I said.

  “I think the tough guy had some kind of tattoos on his hand?”

  “What kind?”

  “I don’t know,” Sarah said. “Just some blue letters, like on his knuckles.”

  “Would you recognize them if you saw them again?”

  “I don’t want to see them again.”

  “We could show you a lot of pictures,” I said.

  Sarah shook her head.

  “I want out,” she said. “I want you to stop.”

  I looked at Sarah for a moment. Then I got up and walked the length of my loft to the bedroom end and looked out the window at the warehouse next door. Rosie followed me and sat down. Finally, I stopped looking at the warehouse and turned and walked back to Sarah. With what sounded like a small anthropomorphic sigh of annoyance, Rosie stood and trotted back down behind me.

  “I can protect you,” I said to Sarah.

  “You? You’re a girl. What are you going to do if these guys show up?”

  “I could shoot them,” I said.

  “You wouldn’t dare.”

  “Of course I would.”

  “You ever shoot anybody?”

  “Yes.”

  She looked at me. “I don’t believe you,” she said.

  I shrugged.

  “Did you really shoot somebody?”

  I nodded.

  “Do you think you’ll all of a sudden stop wondering whose kid you are?” I said.

  “I don’t care. I’m scared.”

  “Of course you are scared. But doesn’t this make it even more necessary to find out what’s going on? Doesn’t this tell you that someone doesn’t want you to find out anything?”

  “Jesus,” Sarah said.

  “And if you don’t find out now what the truth is, it will destroy your life.”

  “She wouldn’t hire somebody to beat me up,” Sarah said.

  “She?” I said.

  “My mother.”

  “Mrs. Markham?” I said.

  “Yes. She always used to yell at me when I was bad that she wasn’t my mother.” Sarah’s eyes began to tear. “And then, you know, later, she would come and tell me never to tell anyone, because if I did, they’d send me to an orphanage.”

  Sarah started to cry.

  “What did your father say?”

  She had some trouble talking between sobs, but she got it out.

  “I never dared tell him.”

  “Did she ever say it in front of him?”

  “Once,” Sarah spoke haltingly, struggling for control, “they had a big fight . . . and I heard them and I went . . . and sat on the floor outside . . . and listened . . . and she said, ‘It’s not like she’s my blood’ . . . and my father shushed her . . . ‘She might hear you.’ ”

  She stopped trying to talk and put both hands over her face and bent forward and simply cried. I was quiet. Rosie looked a little uneasy. Finally, the crying slowed. I waited. Finally, it stopped.

  “I think you should go wash your face with cold water,” I said. “It’ll make you feel better.”

  She nodded and didn’t move.

  “Down past the bedroom area,” I said.

  She nodded again.

  “Go,” I said. “Then we’ll talk. You won’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.”

  Sarah stood slowly and walked down the length of the loft as if she was drunk.

  “There’s makeup in there,” I said. “Feel free.”

  She went into my bathroom. While she was gone, I emptied the saucer she’d been using as an ashtray, and made some more coffee.

  20

  We were on our third pot of coffee. She’d drunk most of it. But I’d drunk enough to make my nerves jitter. Sarah was through crying for now. She was smoking.

  “But why can’t we just do what they want and they’ll leave us alone.”

  “And you’ll never know what’s being covered up,” I said.

  “So,” she said, “I won’t know. You didn’t see the look in that man’s face when he put his heel into my crotch.”

  “He meant that look,” I said. “He wanted you to feel not only scared but small and powerless.”

  “Well, I am. Why not just face it and get on with my life.”

  I leaned back in my chair and waved the cigarette smoke away from my face. If we were going to do much of this, we’d have to have some arrangement.

  “Because,” I said, “and you’ll have to excuse the psychological jargon, you are a fucking mess.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Sarah said.

  “It means that you use too many drugs, and drink too much booze, and smoke too many cigarettes, and screw too many men you don’t like.”

  “Yeah, well maybe you’d be a little messed up, too, if you grew up like me.”

  “I am messed up,” I said. “It takes one to know one. But I’m trying to fix what’s wrong with me. You’re just going to walk away.”

  “What’s wrong with you?”

  “I’ll let you know,” I said, “when I know. Right now it’s about you. You let them scare us away from this and you can kiss any chance for happiness goodbye.”

  She laughed an awful little laugh.

  “Happiness?” she said.

  “You can stay here with me,” I said. “No one knows you’re here. I can protect you. If we need them, I have friends who can protect you. If you’ll let me, I will do this for you.”

  “Where am I going to sleep?” she said.

  “Fold-out bed,” I said. “In the couch.”

  Sarah flapped her hand to indicate the openness of my space.

  “We’d live together in the same room?” Sarah said.

  “I know. It’s lousy, but it needs to be done.”

  “Is there another bathroom?”

  “No,” I said. “We’ll share.”

  “Share one bathroom?”

  “I know it’s icky, but people do it.”

  “I got no clothes or anything.”

  “Some of my stuff will fit you. The rest I can buy for you.”

  “I don’t have any money with me.”

  “I’ll put it on my bill,” I said.

  “And you promise I’ll be safe?”

  “You’ll be safe,” I said.

  “Why are you pushing me so hard to do this.”

  “I care about you?”

  Sarah laughed that awful little laugh again.

  “You must really need the money,” she said. “To do this.”

  “That’s it,” I said. “The money.”

  21

  I had Rosie o
n her leash. I had my shoulder bag with my cell phone in it, and my makeup, and my gun. I was wearing a black satin trench coat with a notched leather collar. I had on my black Oakley wraparounds. I was ready, and I was looking really good.

  “You have any problem, what will you do?”

  “I’ll call nine-one-one,” she said, “and the cell-phone number for your friend Spike.”

  “Call Spike first,” I said. “He’ll arrive quicker.”

  “Okay.”

  “Where’s the number?” I said.

  “On the little chalkboard by the phone. You’re sure he’ll come?”

  “I’ve talked to him,” I said. “He’ll come.”

  “How will I know it’s him?”

  “Big, with a beard. Looks sort of like a bear.”

  “A bear?”

  “Yes. When he rings the intercom, he’ll give you his name.”

  “Okay.”

  “You’ll be fine,” I said.

  She was drinking more coffee and smoking more cigarettes and looking very small, sitting alone at my breakfast table, looking cautiously out the window.

  “You will,” I said. “No one knows you’re here. The building is secure. My door is secure. Lock the deadbolt when I leave.”

  “Could the dog stay?” Sarah said.

  “She’d rather go with me,” I said. “She likes to ride in the car.”

  “You don’t trust me with her?”

  Actually, I didn’t. But I saw no reason to say so.

  “I bring her with me because she likes to go.”

  Sarah looked a little puzzled at that concept, but she didn’t say anything.

  “Okay. Obviously, don’t go out. There’s stuff for sandwiches and things in the refrigerator.”

  Sarah nodded. Rosie was staring at the door as if hoping it would melt.

  “I’m going out and work on your problem,” I said. “You have my cell-phone number.”

  Sarah nodded again. Rosie gave a sharp, nasty yap.

  “Okay,” I said. “We’re going.”

  Sarah said, “I can call you.”

  “Call me whenever you need to,” I said.

  “Even if I don’t really have anything to say?”

  “Even,” I said.

  22

  Rosie waited in the car. I went in and sat with the Markhams in the silent living room of their soundless house. There were no lights on. The Markhams sat on the couch. He at one end, she at the other. I sat in the flowered easy chair. Dust motes drifted in the sunlight that came in from the front windows.