She shook her head. "I don't quite know why I'm so bitchy lately," she said.
"It's not bitchy, exactly. It's pushy. I feel from you a kind of steady pressure. An obligation to explain myself."
"And you don't like a pushy broad, right?"
"Don't start up again, and don't be so goddamned sensitive. You know I don't mean the cliche. If you think I worry about role reversal and who keeps in whose place, you've spent a lot of time paying no attention to me."
"True," she said. "I'm getting a little hyped about the whole subject."
"What whole subject? That's one of my problems. I think I know the rules of the game all right, but I don't know what the game is."
"Man-woman relationships, I guess."
"All of them or me and you."
"Both."
"Terrific, Suze, now we've, got it narrowed down."
"Don't make fun. I think being middle-aged and female and single one must think about feminism, if you wish, women's rights and women vis-a-vis men. And of course that includes you and me. We care about each other, we see each other, we go on, but it doesn't develop. It seems directionless."
"You mean marriage?"
"I don't know. I don't think I mean just that. My God, am I still that conventional? I just know there's a feeling of incompleteness in us. Or, I suppose I can only speak for me, in me, and in the way I perceive our relationship."
"It ain't just wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am."
"No, I know that. That's not a relationship. I know I'm more than good tail. I know I matter to you. But..."
I paid my fifteen cents on the Mystic River Bridge and headed down its north slope, past the construction barricades that I think were installed when the bridge was built.
"I don't know what's wrong with me," she said.
"Maybe it's wrong with me," I said.
There weren't many cars on the Northeast Expressway at this time of night. There was a light fog and the headlights made a scalloped apron of light in front of us as we drove.
"Maybe," she said. Far right across the salt marshes the lights of the G.E. River Works gleamed. Commerce never rests.
"Explaining myself is not one of the things I do really well, like drinking beer, or taking a nap. Explaining myself is clumsy stuff. You really ought to watch what I do, and, pretty much, I think, you'll know what I am. Actually I always thought you knew what I am."
"I think I do. Much of it is very good, a lot of it is the best I've ever seen."
"Ah-ha," I said.
"I don't mean that," Susan said. The mercury arc lights at the newly renovated Saugus Circle made the wispy fog bluish and the Blue Star Bar look stark and unreal across Route 1.
"I know pretty well what you are," she said. 'It's what we are that is bothersome. What the hell are we, Spenser?"
I swung off Route 1 at the Walnut Street exit and headed in toward Smithfield. "We're together," I said. "Why have we got to catalogue. Are we a couple? A pair? I don't know. You pick one."
"Are we lovers?"
On the right Hawkes Pond gleamed through a very thin fringe of trees. It was a long narrow pond and across it the land rose up in a wooded hill crowned with power lines. In the moonlight, with a wispy fog, it looked pretty good.
"Yeah," I said. "Yeah. We're lovers."
"For how long?" Susan said.
"For as long as we live," I said. "Or until you can't bear me anymore. Whichever comes first."
We were in Smithfield now, past the country club on the left, past the low reedy meadow that was a bird sanctuary, and the place where they used to have a cider mill, to Summer Street, almost to Smithfield Center. Almost to Susan's house.
"For as long as we live will come first," Susan said.
I drove past Smithfield Center with its old meeting house on the triangular common. A banner stretched across the street announced some kind of barbecue, I couldn't catch what in the dark. I put my hand and Susan took and we held hands to her house.
Everything was wet and glistening in the dark, picking up glints from the streetlights. It wasn't quite raining, but the fog was very damp and the dew was falling. Susan's house was a small cape, weathered shingles, flagstone walk, lots of shrubs. The front door was a Colonial red with small bull's-eye glass windows in the top. Susan unlocked it and went in. I followed her and shut the door. In the dark silent living room, I put my hands on Susan's shoulders and turned her slowly toward me, and put my arms around her. She put her face against my chest and we stood that way, wordless and still for a long time.
"For as long as we live," I said.
"Maybe longer," Susan said. There was an old steeple clock with brass works on the mantel in the living room and while I couldn't see in the dark, I could hear it ticking loudly as we stood there pressed against each other. I thought about how nice Susan smelled, and about how strong her body felt, and about how difficult it is to say what you feel. And I said, "Come on, honey, let's go to bed." She didn't move, just pressed harder against me and I reached down with my left hand and scooped up her legs and carried her to the bedroom. I'd been there before and had no trouble in the dark.
Chapter 17
In the morning, still damp from the shower, we headed back for the Cape, stopped on the way for steak and eggs in a diner and got to the hotel room I still owned about noon. The fog had lifted and the sun was as clean and bright as we were, though less splendidly dressed. In my mailbox was a note to call Harv Shepard.
I called him from my room while Susan changed into her bathing suit.
"Spenser," I said, "what do you want?"
"You gotta help me."
"That's what I was telling you just a little while back," I said.
"I gotta see you, it's, it's outta control. I can't handle it. I need help. That, that goddamned nigger shoved one of my kids. I need help."
"Okay," I said. "I'll come over."
"No," he said. "I don't want you here. I'll come there. You in the hotel?"
"Yep." I gave him my room number. "I'll wait for you."
Susan was wiggling her way into a one-piece bathing suit.
"Anything?" she said.
"Yeah, Shepard's coming apart. I guess Hawk made a move at one of the kids and Shepard's in a panic. He's coming over."
"Hawk scares me," Susan said. She slipped her arms through the shoulder straps.
"He scares me too, my love."
"He's..." She shrugged. "Don't go against him."
"Better me than Shepard," I said.
"Why better you than Shepard?"
"Because I got a chance and Shepard has none."
"Why not the police?"
"We'll have to ask Shepard that. Police are okay by me. I got no special interest in playing Russian roulette with Hawk. Shepard called him a nigger."
Susan shrugged. "What's that got to do?"
"I don't know," I said. "But I wish he hadn't done that. It's insulting."
"My God, Spenser, Hawk has threatened this man's life, beaten him up, abused his children, and you're worried about a racial slur?"
"Hawk's kind of different," I said.
She shook her head. "So the hell are you," she said. "I'm off to the pool to work on my tan. When you get through you can join me there. Unless you decide to elope with Hawk."
"Miscegenation," I said. "Frightful."
She left. About two minutes later Shepard arrived. He was moving better now. Some of the stiffness had gone from his walk, but confidence had not replaced it. He had on a western-cut, black-checked leisure suit and a white shirt with black stitching, the collar out over the lapels of the suit. There was a high shine on his black-tassled loafers and his face was gray with fear.
"You got a drink here," he said.
"No, but I'll get one. What do you like?"
"Bourbon."
I called room service and ordered bourbon and ice. Shepard walked across the room and stared out the window at the golf course. He sat down in the armchair by the window and got right up again. "Sp
enser," he said. "I'm scared shit."
"I don't blame you," I said.
"I never thought... I always thought I could handle business, you know? I mean I'm a businessman and a businessman is supposed to be able to handle business. I'm supposed to know how to put a deal together and how to make it work. I'm supposed to be able to manage people. But this. I'm no goddamned candy-ass. I been around and all, but these people..."
"I know about these people."
"I mean that goddamned nigger..."
"His name's Hawk," I said. "Call him Hawk."
"What are you, the NAACP?"
"Call him Hawk."
"Yeah, okay, Hawk. My youngest came in the room while they were talking to me and Hawk grabbed him by the shirt and put him out the door. Right in front of me. The black bastard."
"Who are they?"
"They?"
"You said your kid came in while they were talking to you."
"Oh, yeah," Shepard walked back to the window and looked out again. "Hawk and a guy named Powers. White guy. I guess Hawk works for him."
"Yeah, I know Powers."
The room service waiter came with the booze on a tray. I signed the check and tipped him a buck. Shepard rummaged in his pocket. "Hey, let me get that," he said.
"I'll put it on your bill," I said. "What did Powers want? No, better, I'll tell you what he wanted. You owe him money and you can't pay him and he's going to let you off the hook a little if you let him into your business a lot."
"Yeah." Shepard poured a big shot over ice from the bottle of bourbon and slurped at it. "How the hell did you know?"
"Like I said, I know Powers. It's also not a very new idea. Powers and a lot of guys like him have done it before. A guy like you mismanages the money, or sees a chance for a big break or overextends himself at the wrong time and can't get financing. Powers comes along, gives you the break, charges an exorbitant weekly interest. You can't pay, he sends Hawk around to convince you it's serious. You still can't pay so Powers comes around and says you can give me part of the business or you can cha-cha once more with Hawk. You're lucky, you got me to run to. Most guys got no one but the cops."
"I didn't mismanage the money."
"Yeah, course not. Why not go to the cops?"
"No cops," Shepard said. He drank some more bourbon.
"Why not?"
"They'll start wanting to know why I needed money from Powers."
"And you were cutting a few corners?"
"Goddamnit, I had to. Everybody cuts a few corners."
"Tell me about the ones you cut."
"Why? What do you need to know that for?"
"I won't know till you tell me."
Shepard drank some more bourbon. "I was in a box. I had to do something." The drape on the right side of the window hung crookedly. Shepard straightened it. I waited. "I was in business with an outfit called Estate Management Corporation. They go around to different vacation-type areas and develop leisure homes in conjunction with a local guy. Around here I was the local guy. What we did was set up a separate company with me as president. I did the developing, dealt with the town planning board, building inspector, that stuff, and supervised the actual construction. They provided architects, planners and financing and the sales force. It's a little more complicated than that, but you get the idea. My company was a wholly owned subsidiary of Estate Management. You follow that okay?"
"Yeah. I got that. I'm not a shrewd-o-business tycoon like you, but if you talk slowly and I can watch your lips move, I can keep up, I think. What was the name of your company?"
"We called the development Promised Land. And the company was Promised Land, Inc."
"Promised Land." I whistled. "Cu-ute," I said. "Were you aiming at an exclusive Jewish clientele?"
"Huh? Jewish? Why Jewish? Anybody was welcome. I mean we wouldn't be thrilled if the Shvartzes moved in maybe, but we didn't care about religion."
I wished I hadn't said it. "Okay," I said. "So you're president of Promised Land, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Estate Management, Inc. Then what?"
"Estate Management went under."
"Bankrupt?"
"Yeah." Shepard emptied his bourbon and I poured some more in the glass. I offered ice and he shook his head. "The way it worked was the Estate Management people would see the land, really high-powered stuff, contact people, closers, free trips to Florida, the whole bag. The buyer would put a deposit on the land and would also sign a contract for the kind of house he wanted. We had about six models to choose from. He'd put a deposit on the house as well, and that deposit would go into an escrow account."
"What happened to the land deposit?"
"Went to Estate Management."
"Okay, and who controlled the house escrow?"
Shepard said, "Me."
"And when Estate Management pulled out, and you were stuck with a lot of money invested and no backing, you dipped into the escrow."
"Yeah, I used it all. I had to. When Estate Management folded, the town held up on the building permits. All there was was the building sites staked off. We hadn't brought the utilities in yet. You know, water, sewage, that kind of thing."
I nodded.
"Well, the town said, nobody gets a permit to build anything until the utilities are in. They really screwed me. I mean, I guess they had to. Things smelled awful funny when Estate went bankrupt. A lot of money disappeared, all those land deposits, and a lot of people started wondering about what happened. It smelled awful bad. But I was humped. I had all my capital tied up in the goddamned land and the only way I was going to get it back was to build the houses and sell them. But I couldn't do that because I couldn't get a permit until I put in the utilities. And I couldn't put in the utilities because I didn't have any money. And nobody wanted to finance the thing. Banks only want to give you money when you can prove you don't need it, you know that. And they really didn't want to have anything to do with Promised Land, because by now the story was all around financial circles and the IRS and the SEC and the Mass attorney general's office and the FCC and a bunch of other people were starting to investigate Estate Management, and a group of people who'd bought land were suing Estate Management. So I scooped the escrow money. I was stuck. It was that or close up shop and start looking for work without enough money to have my resume typed. I'm forty-five years old."
"Yeah, I know. Let me guess the next thing that happened. The group that was suing Estate Management also decided to get its house deposit back."
Shepard nodded.
"And of course, since you'd used it to start bringing in utilities, you couldn't give it back."
He kept nodding as I talked.
"So you found Powers someplace and he lent you the dough. What was the interest rate? Three percent a week?"
"Three and a half."
"And, of course, payment on the principal."
Shepard nodded some more.
"And you couldn't make it."
Nod.
"And Hawk beat you up."
"Yeah. Actually he didn't do it himself. He had two guys do it, and he, like, supervised."
"Hawk's moving up. Executive level. He was always a comer."
"He said he just does the killing now, the sweaty work he delegates."
"And so here we are."
"Yeah," Shepard said. He leaned his head against the window. "The thing is, Powers' money bailed me out. I was coming back. The only money I owe is Powers and I can't pay. It's like—I'm so close and the only way to win is to lose."
Chapter 18
Shepard looked at me expectantly when he was through telling me his sins.
"What do you want," I said, "absolution? Say two Our Fathers and three Hail Marys and make a good act of contrition? Confession may be good for the soul but it's not going to help your body any if we can't figure a way out."
"What could I do," he said. "I was in a corner, I had to crib on the escrow money. Estate Management got off with four or five million bu
cks. Was I supposed to watch it all go down the pipe? Everything I've been working for? Everything I am?"
"Someday we can talk about just what the hell you were working for, and maybe even what you are. Not now. How hot is Powers breathing on your neck?"
"We've got a meeting set up for tomorrow."
"Where?"
Robert B Parker - Spenser 04 - Promised Land Page 11
