Robert B Parker - Spenser 16 - Playmates

by Playmates(lit)

  Counterproductive, Hawk said. Now we got to worry about Bobby Deegan putting a hit on you cause you screwing up his scam, and we got to worry about Gerry putting a hit on you cause you hurt his feelings.

  Had to ask, I said. Sure, Hawk said. Hurting Gerry Broz's feelings isn't a bad day's work, True, Hawk said. I was back on paralegal watch when Chantel knocked on the frame of the open door.

  I put my feet on the floor and stood. Come n, I said. She was wearing black stockings and a red leather mini skirt and a silver gray silk blouse with the top three buttons open. Her high-heeled shoes were gray and she wore a silver gray duster open over her outfit. She walked in slowly, looking at my office the way people look around at a museum. She stopped maybe two feet in front of my desk, holding her black alligator purse in front of her thighs with both hands. Her hair wasn't corn rowed today, it framed her head in soft black curls. She wore eye makeup and red lipstick, and probably more subtle stuff that I didn't know about. She looked maybe twenty years old and she was beautiful. I she started and stopped. She looked back at the open door. Can I close the door?

  she said. I came around the desk. 'I will, I said. I went and shut the door and came back and pulled one of the client chairs a little closer to her. Sit down, please, I said. She looked at the chair and then at the closed door. Her movements were all slow, as if she had to think through each one before she made it. She looked at me again and then at the chair and then carefully smoothed her skirt against the backs of her thighs with her left hand and sat down.

  She sat upright, forward in her chair, her knees together, both feet on the floor, side by side. I went around my desk and sat down and smiled at her. Encouraging. Supportive. Attentive. Entirely without sexual or racial prejudice. She could tell me anything. She did not smile back. She gazed at me without any affect at all that I could discern.

  She held her purse now in her lap with both hands.

  We sat and looked at one another. The steam knocked for a moment in the pipes and then stopped. I heard heels clack in the corridor again.

  Dwayne don't know I'm here, she said. Her quiet gaze didn't move.

  He be really pissed off if he knew. I nodded. Nice to hear a human voice again. We were quiet some more. She turned the purse once in her lap so that the open end now faced her. Too bad I didn't smoke.

  The heels in the hall clacked back from wherever they had clacked before. Excuse me, Chantel said. I don't mean to just stare like this, but I'm shy around white people until I know them. I nodded again. I don't know many white people, she said.

  Even at Taft I stay mostly with other black people. You live with Dwayne? Yes, since the end of sophomore year. You going to get married, you think? Un huh. After graduation. Dwayne probably going to be drafted by the Clippers so we probably going to move to LA.

  You mind? I said. No, Chantel said. Me and Dwayne be fine anywhere.

  I nodded. How's his reading coming? Chantel shrugged. We sat and looked quietly some more. She didn't seem to be uncomfortable with the silence. I wasn't either. I'd heard too many silences to get uncomfortable. You told anybody? Chantel said. About Dwayne can't read? No, nobody that you'd care about. How 'bout the other thing?

  Same answer, I said. Chantel nodded, as much to herself as to me.

  I waited. You married? Chantel said. Not quite, I said. You got somebody? Yes. She nodded again, as if I'd passed some kind of test.

  What you going to do? she said. I can't seem to help Dwayne from Dwayne's end, I said. So I'm going to try to go back door. I'm going to bust his connection and see if I can spring him free.

  Dwayne's a boy, she said. I know we not supposed to say 'boy." We supposed to talk that man child shit; but it's true. He looks like a man, and he's good as any man, but he hasn't grown up at all.

  He's been a star so long he's never had a chance to, I said.

  Chantel nodded her head four or five times rapidly. Yes, she said, that's right, and he always been bigger and stronger than everybody and he never had to, you know, do stuff he didn't like, do stuff he wasn't too good Like reading and writing, I said. That's right, Chantel said.

  He wasn't so good at that so he just didn't do it. He so good at other stuff that he don't have to do it. What happens when you try to teach him? I said. He get mad, Chantel said. No, he don't get mad.

  That's not right. Chantel paused for a moment and looked out my window while she thought. She pushed her lower lip.

  And frowned just slightly. I wanted to pick her up and kiss her on the forehead. He gets embarrassed, she said. Yeah, I said. He is very proud, Chantel said. He got this whole Dwayne Woodcock thing he got to live up to and protect and be, and it cost him a whole lot to do that all the time. You grow up with him, Chantel? She shook her head. No, he from Brooklyn; I grew up in Germantown. You know, Philly. Met him here, freshman year. Damn lucky thing for him that you did, I said.

  Why you say that? Chantel said. Because you are a woman and a half, Chantel. What's your last name? deRosier, she said. Chantel deRosier. What would you like me to do, Chantel?

  Her gaze was steady and unembarrassed on my face. I want you to help us, she said. Chantel, I will help you do anything you want forever, I said. Where would you like me to start? She shook her head. They are bad people he's with, she said. They don't care about him. They call him 'big guy' and they tell him how terrific he is and they pretend to be scared of him cause he's so big and so good. But they aren't scared. And they don't think he's a man like them. They think they've got this here poor nigger boy by the nose.

  Chantel's eyes were shiny, maybe a little damp. And they have, I said.

  She nodded. Yeah, they have, and he doesn't know it. He think they the cat's ass. They got cars, they got money, they take us to restaurants and clubs, and give us clothes. They treat you good? I said. They treat me like I'm Dwayne's piece of ass, she said softly.

  And Dwayne don't seem to notice. I stood up from my chair and turned and looked out the window for a moment, down at Boylston Street and the people moving by. I looked across at the trees in very early flower outside the building that used to be Bonwit's and I was going to be Louis'. Right below me a young man in a tuxedo passed carrying a cluster of balloons that read HAPPY BIRTHDAY KATIE KROCK. He crossed Boylston with the balloons and headed on down Berkeley toward the river. I turned back around and looked at Chantel. She was crying, though not very much. I said, Whatever comes out of this, Chantel, I'm going to do three things. I'm going to save Dwayne's ass, I am going to see to it that no one involved will treat you like anyone's piece of anything, and I'm going to make the bastards wish they hadn't treated you like that to start with. I'm not, you know, she said. Dwayne's piece of ass? Yeah. He loves me. I love him. We got each other. We got a space nobody can come in. When we sleep together that's making love, it's not no piece of ass thing. I know, I said. How you know that? Chantel said. Because that's the kind of woman you are, I said.

  She nodded, the movement of her head barely percepHow you going to save him?

  she said. Like I said, I'm going to go after Bobby Deegan. You get them it going to get Dwayne in trouble. I know, that's the part I haven't figured out yet, I said. Be nice to get some feedback from Dwayne. Chantel shrugged and looked at her lap. How much they paying him? I said. I don't know. Dwayne never talks about that.

  Who's in on it with him? On the team? Yeah. Chantel looked down and shook her head again. Don't know, or won't say? Won't, Chantel said.

  I nodded. Okay, I said. We figure it's Danny Davis. Chantel didn't move. You know anything that will help? mister Deegan got a friend named Gerry, she said. Gerry Broz? Don't know his last name. White guy, scraggly mustache. Kinda fat not really fat, just sort of flabbylooking. That's Gerry, I said. You know what he's got to do with this? No, Chantel said. I just see them together when we go out.

  They talk to Dwayne. Dwayne don't want me talking to them.

  He knows I don't like them. He's afraid I'll say something bad.

 
Dwayne likes them? I said. He likes mister Deegan, she said. I don't think he likes Gerry so much. Most people don't, I said.

  Dwayne don't like white people exactly, but he likes them to like him, you know? He needs to have them think he's a big man. And Deegan makes him feel good? Chantel leaned a little forward toward me.

  Yes.

  mister Deegan got money, and he acts like he got money.

  He know what to do in restaurants and how to talk to headwaiters and what to tip the hat check girl, you know, that kind of man.

  Real sure of himself. Confident, seems nice, but very aggressive too, like a big success. Dwayne likes that? I said. Dwayne been a star most of his life but he been poor most of his life too and where he lived was all black people like where I lived. But his was poorer.

  We weren't poor. And you'd see all these cool white guys on TV, and you didn't really think about it, and if you did you wouldn't admit it, but being a success got kind of mixed up with being white, or being like a white person, or having white people like you. mister Deegan is what Dwayne thinks he ought to be. He is better than that, Chantel, or you wouldn't love He needs to know he better than that, Chantel said.

  He got to see that mister Deegan is a sleaze with nice manners. Okay, I said. I think I've got it. I show Dwayne that Deegan's a sleaze, prove to Dwayne that he himself is not a sleaze, get Deegan off his back, keep anyone from finding out he shaved points, teach him to read and write and not let anyone know that he can't. For the first time since I'd seen her, Chantel smiled. '1es, she said, that's exactly it.

  And on the seventh day I'll rest, I said. 1I got the call from Dwayne on my office phone at four thirty on a cold drizzly Thursday afternoon.

  Hawk was with me. We'd spent most of the last hour trying to figure out how to deal with the mess Dwayne was in, and we weren't making much progress. We were in the middle of a five-minute break devoted to a discussion of the paralegal's backside when the phone rang and I answered it. I need to see you, Dwayne said. How come? I said. I been thinking 'bout what you said and I was wrong to get mad, Dwayne said. I need to talk with you without anybody seeing me. I'll meet you, I said. Gotta be private, man. Nobody better see me. Wherever you want, I said. You know the parking garage by the Aquarium? Dwayne said. Yes, I said. On Milk Street. I be on the top level at six thirty, Dwayne said. You come in your car and I'll get in. 'Six thirty, I said. Don t tell nobody, Dwayne said and hung up. I said, Dwayne wants me to meet him on the top level of the parking garage on Milk Street by the When? Six thirty. Says he's changed his mind about me being a honkie motherfucker. He actually say that? Hawk said.

  Well, he implied it, I said. Hen, Hawk said. What you think? Could be true, I said. Or he could be doing what he's told and when I get there whoever Deegan hired instead of you will jump out of a Cutlass Supreme and shoot a hole Wonder which it'll be, Hawk said. Me too, I said. We talked a little and observed the paralegal one more time as she closed up for the evening. Then Hawk left and I put my feet up on my desk and my hands behind my head and closed my eyes and thought about things.

  At six I let my feet down, unfolded my hands from behind my head and stood up. I had the Browning on my hip. I took it out, put it into the pocket of my leather trench coat, put the trench coat on and buttoned it up, turned the collar up, put on the tweed cap that Susan said made me look like Trevor Howard, and headed for the meeting with Dwayne, or whoever. By six the rush hour traffic had congealed into jams on the Southeast Expressway and the tunnel and the Mystic River Bridge. At the turnpike tolls in Allston they were cursing one another. But in the city the streets were shiny with rain and almost empty. Later the people would come in from the suburbs for dinner, or to hang around Quincy Market with the collars turned up on their Lacoste shirts, but right now the city folks were having a couple of Manhattans before dinner, and I was driving from Back Bay to the waterfront in maybe five minutes, hitting the lights on Berkeley and at Leverett Circle and cruising along Atlantic Avenue by six fifteen. I was driving a black Cherokee that year, with tinted windows. I parked it across the street from the garage and sat looking through my tinted windows at the entrance. No point arriving early. The rain along the waterfront was canted by the wind from the harbor and came in at about a sixty- degree angle against the windows on the driver's side. At the parking garage there was very little action. A car went in. Two came out. Guys with their ties loosened heading home late. Entry was an automatic gate and a ticket dispenser. At the exit was one attendant in her toll booth. At six twenty-nine I pulled across the street and took a ticket and drove into the garage. I wound up the rampways through the nearly empty garage to the top. There were seven or eight cars parked. I moved slowly down the empty aisle, the Browning out of my pocket now and on the seat beside me. At the end of the aisle in front of me a Ford station wagon backed out of its slot and blocked the way. Not an Oldsmobile Cutlass after all. I looked in the rearview mirror. A Chevy Blazer with body rot and a plow hitch had backed out and blocked the aisle behind me. I suspected that Dwayne wasn't driving either car. I was right. The people in the Ford got out of the side away from me and stood behind the car. Behind me another two guys got out of the Blazer. One of them had a shotgun. None of them was Dwayne. Nobody did anything. I sat. They stood. I picked up the Browning from the seat beside me and waited. One of the men in front of me yelled, Spenser. I lowered my side window. Yeah. Step out and we'll talk.

  He had one of those plastic Red Sox caps that has an adjustable strap and plastic mesh in the back. The hat crown was too high, and the brim was too short, and he'd done nothing to break it in or shape it, so it sat on top of his head like a saucepan. I can hear you from here, I said. I wasn't giving you a choice, stupid, the guy with the cap said.

  We got you penned in and there's four of us.

  Get out of the car. That's the ugliest baseball cap I've ever seen, I said. He put his left hand up toward it, then caught himself and rubbed his face instead. Have it your way, he said. He and his pal, a very fat guy with an untrimmed black beard, came around the Ford.

  Each had a handgun. Behind me the two from the Blazer began to move toward me. Behind them Hawk appeared and leaned over the hood of the Blazer and sighted down the barrel of a twelve gauge pump at their backs. The guys from the Blazer didn't see him, but the guys from the Ford in front of me did. I slid across the front seat and out the door on the passenger side of the Cherokee. Blackbeard and the guy with the hat raised their handguns to fire at Hawk. The big boom of the shotgun came just as Blackbeard was slammed back against the Ford. Over the hood of my car I shot the guy in the baseball cap as he was shooting at Hawk and turned and stepped to the back of the Cherokee before he hit the ground and held my gun steady on the two guys from the Blazer that Hawk had trained his shotgun on from behind. Everyone froze. In real time the whole sequence had probably taken ten seconds. In the slow motion of crisis time it had unreeled in ponderous elegance, and the crystalline immobility that followed was intensified by the lingering smell of gunfire, like an olfactory echo of the big bang.

  The set up got set up, I said. Neither man moved. We can drill you, I said. They knew that. The guns were their protection, but if they used them they were dead. They knew that too. Behind them Hawk said softly, Put them down. They still hesitated, but only for a moment.

  The guy with the shotgun bent over carefully and placed it on the ground. The other guy, just as carefully, put the big 44 Mag he'd been carrying on the ground beside the shotgun. Put your hands on the roof of the Blazer, I said. Back away. Spread the legs. I bet you've done this before. They did as I told them. Then I went to the front of the Cherokee and examined the two guys we'd shot. They were both dead. I walked back over to the quick and patted them down. The guy who'd carried the shotgun had a 25 automatic in the pocket of his leather jacket. I took it. When I stepped away, Hawk came around the Blazer, the shotgun resting butt forward, trigger guard up on his shoulder.

  They picked a good place, Hawk said.


  Yeah. Two gunshots and nothing happens. No cops. No sirens in the distance. One of you guys pick this place? I said to the two on the Blazer. The one in the leather jacket said, No. Frankie did. He made a small head gesture toward the two dead men. I said, You can get off the car now. The two men shuffled their feet in from the spread and stood straight and turned around. Let's discuss motivation, I said.

  The guy in the leather jacket had a Miami Vice two-day growth of stubble. The other guy was dressed against the weather in one of those oversized short jackets with lots of lapels and collars and cuffs and epaulets and doodads. The zipper was diagonal across the front.

  Whaddya mean? he said. Why did you try to kill me? I said. We was just going to talk with you, he said.

  What about? the guy in the leather jacket said, We was told to talk to you about staying away from Dwayne Woodcock. Who told you? I said.

  He looked at the ground. The guy in the fancy jacket looked at him.

  Hawk said, We already dumped two of you. You think we going to have a lot of trouble going four for four? Fancy jacket shook his head. Guy from New York hired us, give us five grand, said to rough you up and tell you lay off Dwayne Woodcock. Said if you were stubborn, or we thought the warning wouldn't stick, we was to kill you. He left it up to us. I looked at Hawk. Twelve fifty apiece? He smiled and shook his head. That's embarrassing, he said. It's humiliating, I said. I looked back at the two hoods. Twelve fifty?