Lovelady

by Wynne, Marcus

  That didn’t sit well with Spenser. “We’re not here for drinks. We’re here on business.”

  “You are quite businesslike, Detective Spenser,” Wollheim said. “Don’t you think so, Miss Emerald?”

  Miss Emerald sat on the couch, crossed her impeccable legs, a study in elegance. “Quite businesslike. Won’t you gentlemen sit down?”

  Spenser ignored her and said to me, “Is this the guy?”

  “Yep,” I said.

  Both Wollheim and Miss Emerald turned their attention on me. I felt uneasy. Something wasn’t right about how relaxed they were. Spenser felt it too. Wollheim took a slow, arrogant, measured sip from his glass, rolling the whiskey around in his mouth. He studied me the whole time. While he did a good job of keeping his face expressionless, the set of his shoulders and his breathing marked out inner tension.

  “You saw Manfred? At a crime?” Miss Emerald said. “That’s hard to believe, Mr. Lovelady.”

  Spenser jumped in. “Do you remember where you saw Lovelady, Mr. Wollheim?”

  Wollheim waved his free hand dismissively. “Of course. I saw him and another man at the bus station, and then again at a liquor store.”

  “And what were you doing at those locations? Hardly seems like your kind of neighborhood,” Spenser said.

  Wollheim took another leisurely sip. “I was conducting research.”

  “Research for what?” Spenser said.

  Miss Emerald smiled, openly amused once again. She looked at me as though inviting me to share a private joke. Wollheim saw the look. He didn’t seem to find it amusing.

  “I’m considering a project to benefit runaway children,” he said in a voice larger than necessary. “I have a proposal to establish a half-way house for teenage runaways. I wanted to see for myself what these poor children go through.”

  “Mr. Lovelady’s friend. You remember him?” Spenser had his own large voice on.

  “Yes. Hispanic man, I believe.”

  “Have you seen him any place other than the two instances mentioned.”

  “No. I have not.”

  “Do you have household employees, Mr. Wollheim?” Spenser said.

  “Why do you ask that?” Wollheim said.

  “Please answer the question.”

  “Of course I have household employees.”

  “Do you have male household employees?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are they here now?”

  “I have a gardener who comes in five times a week to tend to the grounds. I have an executive assistant, but he’s in Minneapolis tending to some business for me right now. They are the only males on my staff.”

  “Any security personnel?”

  “Why would I need security personnel?”

  “They’re quite common out here.”

  “The homeowner’s association here provides excellent security. As you’ve seen.”

  Miss Emerald laughed, a light, tinkling sound. “I think the detective is concerned for your well being, Manfred.”

  Spenser ignored her. “What exactly do you do, Mr. Wollheim?”

  “I’m semi-retired. Investment banking, arbitrage. These days I fiddle with my portfolio, serve on several boards.” He set his glass down. “I’m also active in supporting law enforcement.”

  Spenser was dying to say something, I could tell, but he bit it back. “Mr. Lovelady’s friend was severely beaten by several men. Including a man seen in your company. The victim seems to think you were involved in some way.”

  “What man are you speaking of?” Wollheim said.

  “The man you were at the liquor store with,” I said mildly.

  “Ah. At last he speaks,” Wollheim said.

  Ms. Emerald laughed out loud again, her head turning to follow the conversation as though she were at a tennis match.

  “The man?” Spenser said.

  “The only man I spoke to at the liquor store was a panhandler. I gave him some money on the condition that he talk to me about the runaways in that neighborhood,” Wollheim said. He sounded well rehearsed.

  Spenser got that, too. “So you’d never me that man before? Never seen him, talked to him? He was just looking for spare change?”

  “Yes.”

  “Have you had any contact with that man since then? Do you have a way to contact him?”

  “No.”

  Spenser nodded slowly, a hard look on his face. “So what did he tell you?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “What did he tell you? About the runaways.”

  Wollheim picked up his glass, swirled the melting ice, a faint clicking sound. “Only what I expected to hear. There are many runaways working as prostitutes around there.”

  “You ever frequent those prostitutes?” Spenser said.

  Wollheim stopped swirling the ice, then set the glass down again, carefully, on the marble topped table in front of him. “That’s not my interest,” he said. “I’ve told you what I was doing there. Is there anything else I can help you with?”

  “The man at the liquor store. Do you remember anything about him?”

  “No. I only spoke to him briefly. Perhaps he had some other dealings with Mr. Lovelady’s friend. Dealings I have no part of.”

  Spenser was silent.

  “Detective?” Wollheim said. “Is there something else?”

  “Not right now.”

  Wollheim stood up. I was struck by how big he was. He moved like he could take care of himself and, for a moment, the room was thick with the palpable tension that comes before violence.

  “May I ask what you do, Miss Emerald?” I said.

  She ignored the look Wollheim shot her and favored me with a slow smile. “I’m a human resources consultant, Mr. Lovelady.”

  Spenser took out his business card and laid it on the table. “If you think of anything else about that man, or if you see him again, I’d appreciate a call. We want to talk to him.”

  “Of course,” Wollheim said. It was clear from his tone that there would never be a call. “I’ll contact you immediately.”

  With that, we were dismissed. As we went down the hallway to the front door, Wollheim trailed behind us, leaving Ms. Emerald in the great room.

  “By the way, Mr. Lovelady,” Wollheim said. “Did you ever find that girl you were looking for?”

  “Not yet,” I said.

  “She’s quite pretty. I hope nothing has happened to her.”

  “Do your friends call you Man?” I said.

  He considered me. “No. I prefer Manfred.”

  “Thanks for the time, Man,” I said.

  Spenser shot me a look, but said nothing as we went out. Wollheim closed the door behind us. Spenser got into the driver’s seat and looked up at the mansion. I squeezed into the front seat. From a window, Miss Emerald watched us. She saw me looking and raised one hand and wiggled her fingers girlishly, then stepped away from the window.

  Spenser started the car. “I don’t know what we’re into, Lovelady. But it’s heavy duty.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  i.

  I sat in my armchair at home and took a long slow sip of a favorite Chilean merlot. Billie Holliday sang “Lover Man” on my stereo. Spenser, in a quiet fury after the interview, was out working the streets, looking for the men who’d jumped Marcos.

  While I sat at home.

  There’s a protocol to violence on the street. First you talk. Then they try to scare you, assess you, see what you’re going to do. If things don’t get worked out, they get ugly. Sometimes all that happens in a few seconds. Sometimes it takes weeks or months. But these people didn’t play by the rules. They jumped right to ugly. That told me about how they lived and worked. They weren’t overly concerned about getting caught. And they could handle violence. Marcos was no push over, but they had pressed on and finished him when it would have been easier to walk away.

  And they didn’t walk away, did they?

  Manfred and Miss Emerald. There was something about her. A
concealed merriment, a great amusement with the whole thing, and an absolute disregard for the police. You saw that disregard for the police in some wealthy people who thought they were above the law. But I’d never seen the merriment before. It was as though she were playing a game and only she knew the rules.

  That might be a true thing.

  One of the differences between what I do and what cops do is how we handle intelligence and information. Cops look for facts that will support warrants and arrests and prosecution. By the time I’m called in to do my thing, all that has been settled. The sentence decided on. And the facts I need are those that support my operational planning for the execution. Execution, in all senses of the word, that’s what I did. But in the world of hard cold facts there’s room for intuition, for feeling, for that intangible knowing that is an essential part of a street operator’s thinking. Sometimes you act on instinct, on the intuition that a target is going to go a certain way, do a certain thing.

  I had that intuition now. The Man and Miss Emerald, they knew exactly what was going on. Not just with Marcos, but with Luella Pound. If they didn’t know where she was, they certainly knew where she’d been.

  How did I know?

  I just knew. Something about their nonverbal communication told me, the fine dance of voice intonation and word choice and subtle body language that sends a message to the trained eye as clearly as a written statement.

  So now what?

  I knew where to find the Man. I knew what he drove, where he went, and I had the intuition that he’d be back out there again soon, if only to show his disregard for the police. Spenser’s hands would be tied if he tried to lean on Wollheim in the street. And Miss Emerald…a human resources consultant. An interesting title.

  What resources could I bring to bear?

  Not many. My street source was in the hospital for the duration. Spenser didn’t want me anywhere near his investigation, and there’d been no response to the flyers.

  So it was me flying solo.

  I liked that.

  I let myself enjoy the thought that it was time to cross the line again.

  The line. The imaginary boundary between what people call good and evil. The place where I lived and worked, and now, where I would play. It might be odd to think of it as play. But work, at its best, when there’s a fusion between the operator and the job, when there is nothing more satisfying than doing your work well, at that point work becomes a high form of play. I welcomed the opportunity for some of that now. After all, I needed to get tuned up for some work on the horizon.

  I wanted to kill someone.

  For what happened to Marcos. For what I was beginning to suspect happened to Luella Pound. But mostly because it was what I did, what I did very well, and there was an opportunity here for a justifiable killing. Not in the sense of an Agency sanction or a self defense killing. This was to a higher standard, a higher calling. Some people needed killing and that’s what I was here for.

  That’s my purpose.

  It went back to my youth.

  I took out my wallet and opened it. Inside was a worn and creased laminated card with a picture of Saint Michael the Archangel on it. The patron saint of soldiers. I’d carried that card all over the world for many years. I rubbed my thumb on the worn card and read the last line of the prayer: “O Prince of the heavenly host, by the power of God, thrust into hell Satan and all evil spirits who wander through the world for the ruin of souls. Amen.”

  That was my job. To thrust into hell the evil spirits who wandered through the world for the ruin of souls. I knew evil as an actual force. I’d seen it in the eyes of Les Jones, the first man I’d killed, so long ago. And I saw it in the malevolent glee of Miss Emerald and Manfred Wollheim.

  I finished my wine and set the wineglass down, and put the picture of Saint Michael away. I took out my fighting knife and flicked it open, tested the edge with my thumb. Then I tucked it away and looked at the clock. It was only nine o’clock.

  Plenty of time for hunting.

  ii.

  My first stop was the hospital. Visiting hours were over, but I’d talked my way into tougher places. Talking wasn’t necessary this time. The sole nurse at the desk was busy with paperwork when I walked by her. I went into Marcos’s room. The other bed was still empty. He was awake and watching MTV. On the screen the Dave Mathews Band played a song while a fat man in a ball cap hugged strangers on the street.

  “Some silly shit they got on these days,” I said.

  Marcos rolled his head slowly towards me. “Hola, hermano.”

  I pulled a chair up beside the bed and sat down. “How you feeling?”

  “Like I got the living shit kicked out of me.”

  “Spenser come by?”

  “No. You finger the Man?”

  “He claims he’s got nothing to do with any of it.”

  “What else is he supposed to say?”

  “Point taken,” I said. “When are they going to let you out?”

  “When I quit pissing blood.” Marcos let a wan grin grow across his face. “What you doing out so late, Frank? Isn’t it past your bedtime?”

  “I’m changing my hours.”

  He turned his head so he could see me better out of his good eye. “Not a good idea to prowl on your own, hermano.”

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “Going out alone scares me.”

  iii.

  I left him laughing when I went. Out in the parking lot, I sat in the car and let it idle while I formed my thoughts and put on my game face. That’s an accurate description of the process. A hunter has a distinct physiology, an outward expression of the psychological state. The attunement to the world around us, the focus on our target, our willingness, no, our need to be violent…these things have a physical component that shows in our eyes and our face and our posture. It sets us apart from other men.

  And when it’s there, we can see it in others.

  Wollheim and his lackeys had seen that; so had Joe Spenser. No matter how I tried to conceal it, my true self exposed itself when I felt the need to be violent – and I’d felt that need often.

  It was time to let the hunter out.

  I’d never done this before. Not in this little bastion I called home. I’d never felt the need or the desire to do so. I’d deliberately avoided anything that might bring it out in me. I didn’t want to do that here. This was the place where I wore a peaceful face, a face to hide the other self away between jobs.

  There was a delicious sense of release in it, though. The kind of release you get when you’re in the bedroom with a new lover and you’ve taken all your clothes off and you stand there naked with all your flaws and private parts there for consideration and examination and judgment. A wonderful letting go.

  There was also something schizophrenic in it, though Doctor Marks took great pains to assure me that I wasn’t schizophrenic. There was a sense of duality, of two people in the same skin, two faces that took turns looking out at the world. Or did one face always look out, and the other face was merely a construct, a mask carefully put together to deny its sickness to the world?

  I didn’t know.

  I didn’t care.

  Someone had hurt my friend, and I was going to set things right.

  It was just past ten-thirty. Late for me, but still early for the night creatures of Minneapolis. I drove downtown and over the Washington Street Bridge to the youth hostel. The sign on the door said curfew started at midnight. That might pose a problem, but I’d deal with that later. Inside, at the front desk, I said to the clerk, “I’m looking for Ryan Cleary and Sarah Vaughn? They signed in yesterday.”

  The boy at the counter looked to be no more than twenty. He had MTV on the television and kept looking up at it while he flipped through a green covered ledger. “They’re still here. Room 24.”

  “Thanks.”

  I went up the stairwell to the second floor and turned left to follow the even numbers. I heard the South Dakota boy’s voice thro
ugh the thin door. I knocked. Ryan opened the door. Sarah, dressed in a long T-shirt and blue jeans, sat on one of the two narrow beds squeezed into the tiny room.

  Ryan was surprised. “Hey, Mr. Lovelady. Come in?”

  There wasn’t enough room for three in there, so I stood in the door.

  “Ryan, Sarah. Have you circulated that flyer around?”

  “Yes, sir, we have,” Ryan said. Sarah nodded in agreement. “We showed it to every shift on the front desk and to all the people in the day room. We put one up on the bulletin board downstairs and on the boards at the end of each hall. Nobody knows anything about her.”

  They watched me, their eyes wide and guileless.

  “I need you two to come do some work with me,” I said. “I’ll put you both on the clock, ten dollars an hour for each of you.”

  They looked at each other, then back at me.

  “What do we have to do?” Ryan said.

  “I want you to talk to some kids on the street. They won’t talk to me. I’ll tell you what to say, you say it for me.”

  “Are you going to be there?” Sarah said.

  “Yes,” I said. “You’ll be safe.”

  “Does Sarah need to go?” Ryan said. “Can’t she stay here?”

  “I can work,” she said.

  I looked at her, her blondness, her innocent face.

  “Yes,” I said. “She needs to go.”

  iv.

  I put them out on the corner of Nicollet and Franklin, across the street from the liquor store where we’d seen Wollheim. I gave them a stack of flyers, put money in their pockets, and sent them down the block towards the clusters of men, to the girls lurking in the shadows, and the boys huddled in small defiant knots.

  “I don’t like this,” Ryan said. “I think Sarah should stay here.”

  They both looked scared.

  “I’ll be right behind you,” I said. “It’ll be all right.”

  I urged them along, then pulled across the street into the liquor store parking lot. I watched them go and saw how the street people turned to watch the two of them. Black was the predominant color, but there was a handful of white boys and girls, even a few men. The body language of the street people changed when they saw my two teens, fresh in their blondness, walking hesitantly from person to person. The street was assessing them, weighing them in the balance of vulnerability. Men turned to look at them, drawn by Sarah, and I saw how Ryan’s posture puffed up as he tried to ignore the comments made by the men and boys he walked by. But he was doing his job. He stopped people and handed them the flyer, tried to talk to the boys and girls lingering back in the shadows. Sarah was working, too; the boy prostitutes found her easier to talk to, coming out only after ignoring Ryan. The two North Dakota kids were like a small boat making its way across a still pond, their wake rippling to the farthest corner, where dark things lurked.