Thin Air

by Robert B. Parker

  "Luis, my husband is a cop," she said. "Sooner or later he'll find me. "

  "He will not find you," Luis said.

  "He will, Luis, and when he does you will be in a shitload of trouble."

  Luis seemed almost serene.

  "He will not find you," he said.

  Chapter 7

  Proctor was inland, well north of Boston, near the New Hampshire border, at a bend in the Merrimack River, where a series of falls and rapids had supplied power to the nineteenth-century textile industry, which had created the city. Before the war the city had belonged to the Yankees who ran the mills, and the French-Canadian and Irish immigrants who worked them. The Yankees had never lived there. Most of the mill management lived in company-built suburbs outside of Proctor. Now the name of the city was the only hint of its Yankee beginnings. The mills had followed the labor market to the sunbelt after the war. The Yankees had shifted gears and, without having to leave their suburbs, had clustered south in homage to the new transistor culture, an easy commute along route 128. City Hall belonged now to the Irish, the Canucks had scattered, and the rest of the city was a porridge of South and Central American immigrants. I drove into Proctor over a bridge from south of the city, where the dirty water of the Merrimack snarled over the rapids below and churned up a yellowish foam. The mills were still there. Red brick, chain link, imposing, permanent, and largely empty. There were discount clothing outlets in some, and cut-rate furniture stores in others.

  Everywhere there was graffiti-ornate, curvilinear, colorful, and defiant, on brick, on city buses, on the plywood with which windows had been boarded, on mail boxes, on billboards, swirling over the many abandoned cars, most of them stripped, some of them burned out, that decayed at the curbside. There were only Latino faces on the streets. Some old men, mostly adolescent boys, clustered on street corners and in doorways, hostile and aimless. The signs on the store fronts were in Spanish. The billboards were Spanish. The only English I saw was a sign that said: "Elect Tim Harrington, Mayor of All the People." I wondered how hard Tim was working for the Hispanic vote.

  East along the river the factories thinned out, and there were tenements, three-deckers with peeling paint and no yards. The tenements gave way to big square ugly frame houses, many with asbestos shingles and aluminum siding. WPOM was about a half mile out along the river, in a squat brick building with a chain-link fence around it, next to a muffler shop. There was a ten-story transmission antenna sticking up behind it, and a big sign out front that said it was the voice of the Merrimack Valley. The gate was open and I drove in and parked in the muddy lot to the right of the station. A receptionist buzzed me in. There was a security guard with a gun in the lobby. The station's programming was playing implacably on speakers in the reception area. It was a rock station, and the music was a noise I didn't know.

  The receptionist was a young woman with sadistically teased blonde hair and lime-green sneakers. The rest of her outfit seemed to be a large black bag, which she was wearing like a dress. She had a gold nose ring, and six very small gold rings in her right ear. When I came to her desk she was working on her horoscope and chewing some gum. Both. I smiled at her, about half wattage. Full wattage usually made them rip off their clothes and I didn't want this one to do that. She put down the horoscope magazine and looked up at me and chewed her gum. Both, again. Maybe I'd underestimated her.

  "My name is Spenser," I said. "I'd like to talk with the station manager."

  "Concerning what?" she said. Her voice sounded like a fan belt slipping.

  "I'm a detective," I said. "I'm looking for someone."

  "Excuse me?"

  "I'm a detective, a sleuth, an investigator."

  I took out my wallet and showed her my license. She stared at it blankly. It could have said "Maiden Spoiler" on it for all the difference it made to her.

  "Do you have an appointment?"

  "Not yet," I said. "What is the manager's name?"

  "Mister Antonelli."

  "Could you tell Mister Antonelli I'm here, please."

  She stared at me and chewed her gum. That was two things. I knew that calling Mister Antonelli on the intercom would be one thing too many. So I waited. I was hoping she'd get through staring in a while. Nothing happened. I pointed at the intercom and smiled encouragingly.

  "What was your visit concerning?"

  "Lisa St. Claire," I said.

  "Lisa isn't in," she said.

  "And I want to know why," I said.

  "You'd have to ask Mr. Antonelli about that," she said. "I just work here."

  "Okay," I said. "Give him a buzz."

  She nodded and picked up the phone.

  "A gentleman to see you, Mister Antonelli… No, I don't know… he didn't say. He's mad because Lisa isn't here… Yes Sir."

  She hung up.

  "Mister Antonelli will be out in a moment, sir."

  "Thank you for your help."

  The receptionist smiled like it was nothing and went back to her horoscope. I watched her while I waited for Antonelli. After a moment she stopped chewing her gum. Probably needed to concentrate.

  A short, overweight guy came down the hall toward me, wearing a black-checked vest over a white shirt, which he'd buttoned to the neck. He had on black jeans and gray snakeskin cowboy boots, and he flashed a diamond ring on the little finger of his left hand that would have been worth more than the station if it were real. He was bobbing slightly to the rock music as he came toward me.

  "You the one here about Lisa St. Claire?" he said.

  "Yeah, Spenser, I'm a private detective."

  "John Antonelli, I'm the station manager. What's the buzz on Lisa?"

  "Can we go somewhere?"

  "Oh yeah, sure, come on down to the office."

  I followed him into the office-beige rug, ivory walls, walnut furniture, award plaques on the wall. I'd never been in a broadcaster's office that didn't have award plaques. If you were running a pro-slavery hot line, someone would probably give you an award plaque.

  Antonelli sat in his swivel chair, and put one foot on an open desk drawer and tilted his chair back. Through the big window behind him I could see the full panorama of the transmission repair shop. The station on-air was grating through the speaker system into the office, though at less volume than in the lobby.

  "So where's Lisa?" he said. "The other jocks have been splitting shifts to cover her. We're not a big station. We got a big audience, but we don't have a lot of stand-by people, you know?"

  Antonelli smiled at me without meaning it. "Lean and mean," he said.

  "Is there a way to shut the noise off?" I said.

  "You don't dig that sound? That's Rat Free, man. Group of the Year."

  "Gee, they finally beat out the Mills Brothers?"

  Antonelli smiled again. It was like the light in a refrigerator. On. Off.

  "Kids love Rat Free," he said. "They been platinum three years in a row."

  "How nice for them," I said. "Could we lose them for a few minutes while we talk?"

  Antonelli shrugged. He leaned forward and turned a dial on his desk and the music faded away.

  "So what's the chatter?" he said.

  "Lisa left home three days ago and her whereabouts Are unknown."

  "She ditch the old man?"

  "I don't know. Did she talk about that?"

  "Lisa? No. Lisa was a very private person, you know. She never said much of anything about her personal life."

  "Not even to you," I said. "So why do you think she might have ditched the old man?"

  "That's what you usually think, isn't it, broad like Lisa? Real spunky, good looking, you seen her?"

  "Yes."

  "Girl like that, man. Most female jocks are kinda happy, you know what I mean, that's why they're in radio. But Lisa, with those looks, man she's television Stuff. I'll tell you right now, you heard it here, baby, She'll be on TV inside a year."

  "Wow!" I said. "You know anything about where She worked befo
re?"

  "Not off the top, but I guess I got her resume somewhere, she must have given me one when she applied for the job."

  "That'd be good," I said.

  He waited. I waited.

  "You want it right now?" he said.

  "Yeah."

  "Might take a little while."

  "I've got a little while."

  "Oh sure, okay."

  He picked up the phone and dialed three digits.

  "Vickie? John. Yeah, could you get Lisa St. Claire's file out and bring it down to my office. Soon as you can. Thanks, doll."

  While he was calling I thought how too bad it was that fashion dictated the button-up collar. His neck fleshed out over it and he looked uncomfortable, even if he wasn't. He hung up and gave me a little nod. His hair was smoothed back tight to his skull and glistened with the stuff he used to smooth it.

  "She friendly with the rest of the station crew?" I said.

  "She wasn't unfriendly," Antonelli said. "But they don't mingle that much. Everybody has their shift. They pass each other in the hallway, you know. Sometimes they get friendly with an engineer, or something, but Lisa wasn't much of a mixer. Tell you the truth, I think she saw this as a stepping stone. She was in ten to two, and she was gone."

  "What did she do the rest of the time? Work up her music for the next day?"

  Antonelli smiled.

  "Naw. We work off a Top 40 service. Music's all preprogged. Most of the commercials are recorded. All Lisa had to do was a little chatter, couple live commercials, maybe a PSA, segue to the news at the top of the hour. She could come in ten minutes to ten and do all the preparation she needed."

  "Challenging," I said. "What'd she get for this kind of work?"

  "Salaries are confidential," Antonelli said.

  "Sure," I said. "Just estimate the range for me. What's a midday disk jockey get from a station like this?"

  She stared at him across the small table. There was candle light and the glow of the silent monitors. She stared across at him. His face was so familiar, his voice the same as it had always been, his tone light, and pleasant, slightly mocking as it always was, but calm and loving, just as she remembered. She knew he was not calm. She knew he was unstable and crazy. It was why she had left him, fled from him, really. But except that he had kidnapped her and held her prisoner, he seemed a normal man. The familiarity helped her to control the frenzy that she held back so grimly. He was, after all, the same man she'd loved. The man who had loved her, who thought he still loved her, though she knew, in the small part of her able to think, that whatever this was, it was no longer love, maybe had never been love. God, he is beautiful, she thought. I wasn't wrong about that.

  "Every day will be fun, chiquita," he said. "Every day we will play a different game."

  "And what's this one?" Lisa said. "Tie me up and drag me up here on a damned dolly like a pig to a barbecue?"

  He laughed. "A pig at a barbecue? You. My beautiful Angela? No, I don't think so."

  She put her hands on her hips and surveyed the room.

  "Oh, and this is fun," she said. "A cartoon room, and cartoon costumes."

  There was a table set with ornate china. There was a decanter of wine, some cheese, some fruit, some bread, just like the picnic at Crane's Beach. He gestured at the table.

  "We should eat, Angel, and talk of our future."

  "Future? Future? We have a past, " she said. "But we don't have a goddamned future, Luis. My husband will find me, and he'll find you and he'll kill you."

  "No," he said. "I think not."

  "You don't know," Lisa said. "My husband… "

  He shook his head.

  "No more, " he said as if to a noisy child. "He will not come. Let us have no more talk of this man. Sit down at the table."

  Lisa sat. "This man will show up one day and kill you," she said.

  Luis smiled like an indulgent parent. Frank will come. She wasn't hungry, but she knew she should eat. I'm trying, Frank. I'm trying to stay ready. She took some bread and a slice of cheese. She broke off a small segment of each and ate them, looking quietly at him while she chewed and swallowed. The bread seemed like Styrofoam. The cheese seemed like wax. It was difficult to swallow. Her mouth was dry and her throat was tight. Gotta eat, she thought. And broke off another piece. She took some grapes. He poured some wine from the decanter into her glass. She ignored it. The semblance of another time. The sham of intimacy was hideous. She could feel tears form behind her eyes. I want to be home with my husband, she thought. I want to be in my house. She forced herself not to cry. She would not cry! She forced a grape into her mouth and chewed it and swallowed it, squeezing it down her narrowed throat, fighting the need to wash it down with the wine.

  "That is good, Angel. It is lovely to see you eat like this. It is a good beginning."

  I want to kill you, she thought.

  Chapter 8

  Merrimack State was a small cluster of mismatched buildings on the west fringe of Proctor, where the crime rate wasn't keeping up. It looked more like an elementary school with some outbuildings than a college. The administration building appeared once to have been a two-family house. The building had been painted white, but not recently, and the parking area out front was dirt covered. I parked in a spot marked Visitors and went in. I asked at the counter in the Registrar's Office, and got shunted around for maybe half an hour until I ended up talking to the Dean of Students. "I know this is trying, Mister Spenser, but obviously the right to privacy is something we must respect in regard to our students."

  "How about the right to get found, if they're lost?" I said.

  The dean smiled politely.

  "May I see your credentials, please."

  I thought about showing him my gun, rejected the idea, and let him see my license.

  "And you're employed by Ms. St. Claire's husband?"

  "Yes."

  "I'm afraid I'll need his authorization."

  "Of course you do. After all, I'm asking if she's enrolled here, and if so what courses she's taking. Hot stuff like that has got to be handled discreetly."

  "You may be as scornful as you wish, Mister Spenser, but it's not a question of what you're asking. There's a larger issue here."

  "I think it's called self-importance."

  "I beg your pardon?"

  The dean's name was Fogarty. He was a small man with a trimmed beard and receding hair. He wore a business suit. He'd probably started life as a high school principal somewhere and moved up, or down, depending on your perspective. The state college system was not a hotbed of erudition.

  "There is no issue here. I'm not asking you to reveal anything which is in any way of a private nature. You just like to think that whatever goes on here is weighty with high seriousness."

  "Are you afraid to have me call Ms. St. Claire's husband?"

  "Ms. St. Claire's husband is suffering from gunshot wounds. It will not help him to talk with a pompous asshole."

  "I'm sorry. But there's no need to be offensive."

  "You think I'm offensive? I'll give you offensive. Ms. Lisa St. Claire's husband is a cop. Cops look out for each other. I can, if I have to, have some really short-tempered guys from the Essex County DA's office come in here and ask you what I'm asking you. I could probably even get them to come in here in force with the sirens singing and the blue lights flashing, and haul your ass down to Salem and ask you these same questions in a holding cell."

  Guys like Fogarty have power over a bunch of kids and it gets them thinking it's real, which makes them think that they're tough. It took Fogarty a minute to adjust to the fact that he was misguided in these perceptions. He stared at me with his mouth partly open, and nothing coming out.

  Finally he said, "Well!"

  "Well," I said.

  "I don't wish to be unreasonable."

  "Good."

  We sat and looked at each other. Neither of us anything.

  "Well," he said again.

  I looked at my
watch. Fogarty picked up his phone. "Clara, could you see if we have a student named Lisa St. Claire, please. Probably continuing education. Yes. If we do, may I have her folder? Thank you."

  He hung up and looked at me and looked away.

  "I guess it's why I'm an educator, Mister Spenser. I'm invested in students. Sometimes, maybe, too invested."

  "Sure," I said. "That's probably it."

  He was pleased that I agreed with him. He leaned back in his chair and patted his fingertips together.

  "Young lives," he said. "Young lives."

  A very small woman who might have been 125 shuffled in with a folder in her hand. She shuffled across the room, put the folder on Fogarty's desk, and shuffled backwards out of the room. She did not speak. She did not kiss the hem of his garment.

  Fogarty picked up the folder and opened it and looked at it for a moment as if he were studying the Book of Kells. Then he raised his eyes from it and looked at me.

  "Yes. Ms. St. Claire is enrolled in our continuing education program."

  "What I would have called night school in my innocence," I said.

  Fogarty smiled politely.

  "Well, it's not really night school. Classes are held in the late afternoon and in the evening."

  "What course is she taking?"

  "HD31-6," he said. "Self Actualization: An Analytic Feminist Perspective."

  "Yikes," I said. "What's HD stand for?"

  "Human development."

  "When's it meet?"

  I was asking him to violate the code of Omerta again. He looked uncomfortable, but he rallied. "Tuesday and Thursday; eight to nine forty-five p.m. In the Bradford Building."

  "Who teaches it?"

  "Professor Leighton."

  "And where do I find him?"

  Fogarty hesitated again.

  "Pretend I'm a student, and I want to take his class. Do I stand outside and yell, `Hey, Leighton?"'

  "Her office is in Bradford, second floor."

  "Thank you very much," I said. "Is there anything in Ms. St. Claire's folder that would shed light on where she went?"