Robert B. Parker's Someone to Watch Over Me
Page 1
THE SPENSER NOVELS
Robert B. Parker’s Someone to Watch Over Me
(by Ace Atkins)
Robert B. Parker’s Angel Eyes
(by Ace Atkins)
Robert B. Parker’s Old Black Magic
(by Ace Atkins)
Robert B. Parker’s Little White Lies
(by Ace Atkins)
Robert B. Parker’s Slow Burn
(by Ace Atkins)
Robert B. Parker’s Kickback
(by Ace Atkins)
Robert B. Parker’s Cheap Shot
(by Ace Atkins)
Silent Night
(with Helen Brann)
Robert B. Parker’s Wonderland
(by Ace Atkins)
Robert B. Parker’s Lullaby
(by Ace Atkins)
Sixkill
Painted Ladies
The Professional
Rough Weather
Now & Then
Hundred-Dollar Baby
School Days
Cold Service
Bad Business
Back Story
Widow’s Walk
Potshot
Hugger Mugger
Hush Money
Sudden Mischief
Small Vices
Chance
Thin Air
Walking Shadow
Paper Doll
Double Deuce
Pastime
Stardust
Playmates
Crimson Joy
Pale Kings and Princes
Taming a Sea-Horse
A Catskill Eagle
Valediction
The Widening Gyre
Ceremony
A Savage Place
Early Autumn
Looking for Rachel Wallace
The Judas Goat
Promised Land
Mortal Stakes
God Save the Child
The Godwulf Manuscript
THE JESSE STONE NOVELS
Robert B. Parker’s Fool’s Paradise
(by Mike Lupica)
Robert B. Parker’s The Bitterest Pill
(by Reed Farrel Coleman)
Robert B. Parker’s Colorblind
(by Reed Farrel Coleman)
Robert B. Parker’s The Hangman’s Sonnet
(by Reed Farrel Coleman)
Robert B. Parker’s Debt to Pay
(by Reed Farrel Coleman)
Robert B. Parker’s The Devil Wins
(by Reed Farrel Coleman)
Robert B. Parker’s Blind Spot
(by Reed Farrel Coleman)
Robert B. Parker’s Damned If You Do
(by Michael Brandman)
Robert B. Parker’s Fool Me Twice
(by Michael Brandman)
Robert B. Parker’s Killing the Blues
(by Michael Brandman)
Split Image
Night and Day
Stranger in Paradise
High Profile
Sea Change
Stone Cold
Death in Paradise
Trouble in Paradise
Night Passage
THE SUNNY RANDALL NOVELS
Robert B. Parker’s Grudge Match
(by Mike Lupica)
Robert B. Parker’s Blood Feud
(by Mike Lupica)
Spare Change
Blue Screen
Melancholy Baby
Shrink Rap
Perish Twice
Family Honor
THE COLE/HITCH WESTERNS
Robert B. Parker’s Buckskin
(by Robert Knott)
Robert B. Parker’s Revelation
(by Robert Knott)
Robert B. Parker’s Blackjack
(by Robert Knott)
Robert B. Parker’s The Bridge
(by Robert Knott)
Robert B. Parker’s Bull River
(by Robert Knott)
Robert B. Parker’s Ironhorse
(by Robert Knott)
Blue-Eyed Devil
Brimstone
Resolution
Appaloosa
ALSO BY ROBERT B. PARKER
Double Play
Gunman’s Rhapsody
All Our Yesterdays
A Year at the Races
(with Joan H. Parker)
Perchance to Dream
Poodle Springs
(with Raymond Chandler)
Love and Glory
Wilderness
Three Weeks in Spring
(with Joan H. Parker)
Training with Weights
(with John R. Marsh)
G. P. Putnam’s Sons
Publishers Since 1838
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
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Copyright © 2020 by The Estate of Robert B. Parker
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Atkins, Ace, author.
Title: Robert B. Parker’s someone to watch over me / Ace Atkins.
Other titles: Someone to watch over me
Description: New York : G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2020. | Series: The Spenser novels
Identifiers: LCCN 2020042102 (print) | LCCN 2020042103 (ebook) | ISBN 9780525536857 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780525536871 (epub)
Subjects: GSAFD: Mystery fiction. | Suspense fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3551.T49 R65 2020 (print) | LCC PS3551.T49 (ebook) | DDC 813/.54—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020042102
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020042103
p. cm.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Cover art by Lisa Amoroso
Cover images: (umbrella under rain) Lucadp / Shutterstock; (hook) Jeffrey Coolidge / The Image Bank / Getty Images
pid_prh_5.6.1_c0_r0
For Mel Farman:
Keeper of Bob’s memory and Spenser’s spirit. A true friend.
Contents
Cover
Also by Robert B. Parker
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Map
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
About the Authors
1
It was early evening and early summer, and my bay window was cracked open above Berkeley Street. I had a half-eaten turkey sub on my desk and the sports page from The Globe splayed out underneath. Dan Shaughnessy proclaimed Mookie Betts to be overrated. I’m sure many said the same thing about me. But I was pretty sure being overrated was better than being underrated. A mistake few made twice.
I contemplated Mookie’s situation as I heard a knock on the anteroom door.
“Second door on your left,” I said.
Mattie Sullivan entered my office.
“Still having trouble with the advertising firm?”
“Bad advertising to list their own address wrong.”
“Freakin’ morons,” Mattie said.
Like me, Mattie suffered few fools. And as my occasional secretary, part-time assistant, and sleuthing apprentice, she didn’t take kindly to the two-person agency that had rooms down the hall. Mattie leaned into the doorframe. She’d grown into a tall girl with long limbs, long red hair, and a heart-shaped Irish face full of freckles. When she smiled, she could light up a room. But Mattie rarely smiled and wasn’t smiling now.
“You need anything else today?” she said.
“Nope.”
“I paid the rent, deposited the checks, and talked to the painters about next week.”
“What happens next week?”
“They paint,” Mattie said. “This place hadn’t had a touch-up since 1982.”
“What do you know about 1982?”
“That’s the year my mother was born.”
“Ouch.”
“Yeah,” Mattie said. “Truth hurts, big guy.”
Mattie hung in the doorway, green eyes lingering on me as I turned the page of the newspaper. I still bought a physical copy at the newsstand around the corner. I was old-fashioned that way. In fact, Susan reminded me I was old-fashioned in most ways, from my music to my movie choices. But who doesn’t enjoy a little Django Reinhardt before their Thin Man triple feature?
“Something on your mind?” I said.
“I don’t know.”
I looked up from where I’d spread out the newspaper and reached for my coffee mug. Taking a sip, I realized it had grown cold. Mattie, having noted my expression, walked forward, plucked the mug from my hand, and dumped out the cold contents into the sink. She refilled the mug from the Mr. Coffee atop my file cabinet, slid it before me, and took a seat in one of my clients’ chairs.
“Sugar?”
“Nope.”
“So there’s this girl.”
“Okay.”
“She’s a friend, but not a great friend,” she said. “Just the younger sister of a girl I know. She was a Gatey girl, too.”
“Gatey girl?”
“Gates of Heaven church in Southie,” Mattie said. “Christ. Keep up, Spenser.”
I nodded and took a sip of coffee. Mattie demanded a keen mind and reflexes firing on all cylinders.
“So this girl, her name is Chloe Turner by the way, not that it matters to the story, but there you are,” Mattie said, leaning forward from the chair. “Chloe comes to me because of the stuff I used to do in the neighborhood. You know, running favors for friends. Asking questions to the right people. Finding shit.”
“Sleuthing.”
“I call it finding shit out,” Mattie said. “But sure. Sleuthing. Chloe wanted me to sleuth for her.”
“And what does she wish you to sleuth?”
“Chloe lost her backpack and her laptop at some fancy- schmancy club off the Common,” she said. “And she wants it back.”
“Sounds simple,” I said. “Why does she need to enlist your services?”
“Because they wouldn’t let her back in,” Mattie said. “They threatened to call the cops if she didn’t leave. And Chloe had everything on that laptop, not to mention some personal shit in the bag.”
“Personal shit is hard to come by.”
“And so I went to the club and got the whole ‘fuck off’ thing from some guy working the door,” Mattie said. “Not only did they say they’d never heard of Chloe Turner, they told me that if I, or anyone connected to her, came back, they’d call the cops. How do you like that?”
“Not at all,” I said. “What club?”
“Place called the Blackstone Club,” Mattie said. “Down toward Chinatown in some crummy brick building. No sign. Just a big door and a buzzer. What kind of freakin’ club doesn’t have a sign?”
“One that wishes to be elite and confidential,” I said, starting to stand. “Shall we?”
“Sit down, Spenser,” Mattie said. “You know the rules. When you need help, you ask. When I need help, I ask.”
“So what do you need?”
“Advice.”
“I am an open book of knowledge.”
Mattie nodded. I nodded. I took a sip of coffee. It tasted much better hot, but I still missed the cream and sugar. Small steps.
“Here’s what happened,” Mattie said. “Chloe doesn’t want to cause any trouble and, more than anything, doesn’t want to go to the cops. Her mother would go bullshit if she knew what Chloe’d been up to.”
I leaned back from the desk. Outside, down on the street, I could hear the whine of an industrial drill and planks of wood tossed against the pavement. A car without a muffler passed and headed out of earshot. A symphony of the Back Bay.
“Chloe knows a girl who knows a girl who promised her an easy five hundred bucks.”
“To meet a man at the club?”
“And give him a massage,” Mattie said. “Chloe says she was promised that was all there was to it.”
“Had she ever met him?”
“Nope.”
“Did she have any expertise as a massage therapist?”
“Christ, no,” Mattie said. “She’s just a kid.”
“How old?”
Mattie tossed her head to the side and leveled her eyes at me. “Fifteen.”
I felt the hair raise up my neck. My stomach turned a bit.
“I know,” Mattie said. “But part of what I promise is confidentiality.”
“This sounds like a felony.”
“Hold on,” Mattie said. “Only gets worse.”
I listened.
“Chloe says when she first got there, a woman met her at the club and gave her an envelope stuffed with cash,” Mattie s
aid. “The woman told her the guy was some big-time executive hotshot. She didn’t need to speak unless spoken to, had to wear this special outfit, pay attention to his feet.”
“His feet.”
“All creeps are into feet,” Mattie said. “Anyway, she goes in there, the room all dim with scented candles and all that. And there’s the man, laying on his back with a sheet covering the lower half of his body. Chloe says she was so nervous her hands were shaking. She starts to rub the man’s feet like she’d been told. The man makes some small talk with her. What’s your name? What music do you like? Do you have a boyfriend? All that kind of stuff. She said he was nice. And not bad-looking for an old dude. She said he was polite until things got weird.”
“Massaging a grown man’s feet is the definition of weird.”
“Chloe said she thought the whole thing was legit until at one point the man raised up, threw off the sheet, and started going to town on himself.”
I felt my face flush. I wasn’t comfortable talking about such matters with Mattie. I remembered when she was fourteen, coming to see me with a collection of crumpled bills in the hope of finding her mother’s killer. She was tough as old boots but would always be a lost little girl to me.
“Chloe said she just froze up,” Mattie said. “She couldn’t scream. She couldn’t talk. She couldn’t move. She just stood there as the man got finished with his business.”
“Ick,” I said.
“Yep,” Mattie said. “That’s when she bolted from the room and the club and left her clothes, her laptop inside that backpack. She doesn’t want any trouble. She doesn’t want to see that man again. All she wants is her stuff.”
“Okay,” I said. “Let me help.”
“Advice,” Mattie said. “I only want advice.”
“I’d much rather assist.”
“Maybe I shouldn’t have told you.”
“You made the right move.”
“You want to beat the hell out of this guy,” she said. “Don’t you?”
“Chloe should file a complaint with the police.”