School Days s-33

by Robert B. Parker

" 'Course they did, man. What you think?"

  "Can you set me up with Yang?" I said.

  "I want to," Major said. "I can."

  I nodded.

  "What you want to do with him," Major said. "I can have somebody dart him, you want."

  "No. His brother maybe supplied the guns used in that big school shootout last spring."

  "And you want to know if Chink Frito supply them. Say he do. What you gonna do then?"

  "Nothing right away," I said. "I'm just gathering information."

  "And what you do if Jose don't like you asking, and decide to deuce yo white ass?"

  "I figure you won't let him."

  Major sat back in the big, expensive swivel chair and looked at me, beginning to smile. I hadn't seen him in more than twelve years. He'd been a kid then. Now he was probably in his early thirties, and he looked like Tommy Hearns. His eyes were bright with intelligence and scorn and anger, as they had been. But there was control in them, too, instead of the craziness. Hawk had said a long time ago that Major Johnson was more like Hawk than most people.

  "You got some big bangers," he said, "for a Bud Light. You see Hawk around?"

  "Often," I said.

  "Tell him I say hello," Major said.

  "You want to set up my meeting with Jose Yang?" I said.

  "Sure," Major said.

  Chapter 30

  WITH PEARL ASLEEP in the backseat, I pulled into the parking lot at the country store in the late afternoon, and sat with the motor running and the a/c on low. In maybe five minutes, a vast Chevy Suburban pulled up beside me and Janey got out. I rolled down my window.

  "Thanks for coming," she said. "I didn't know who else to call."

  "Nice vehicle," I said.

  "Oh, the car, that's Daddy's. We have horses."

  "They ride in the backseat?" I said.

  She smiled faintly.

  "George's in the car," Janey said. "Animal beat her up."

  "Can she move around?" I said.

  "Yes."

  "Okay, put her in my front seat. You get in back with Pearl."

  "She's scrunched down in the front seat," Janey said. "She's afraid Animal will see her."

  "I'll take care of her," I said.

  Janey nodded.

  When George got out of the car, she moved very carefully, as if her ribs hurt. She had one eye swollen shut and a fat lip and a long welt along her jawline. She eased herself into my front seat, and Janey closed the door behind her carefully and got in back. Without raising her head, Pearl opened her eyes and growled. Janey froze.

  "I don't think she'll bite you," I said.

  "You don't think?"

  I reached back and patted Pearl's head.

  "You pat, too," I said.

  Janey did, cautiously. Pearl stopped growling. Her short tail wagged.

  "Easy," I said.

  I looked at George. She had cowered down into the corner of the front seat.

  "How are you?" I said.

  "I don't know," she said.

  "In pain?"

  "I'm real sore," she said.

  "I'm going to take you to the emergency room," I said. "They'll give you something to feel better."

  "I can't go to no hospital," George said. "Animal said I went to a hospital or anything, he'd kill me."

  "He won't," I said.

  I put the car in drive and pulled out onto the street.

  "He beat her up for talking to you," Janey said from the backseat. "Somebody saw us at the mall."

  "He said he was going to kill me if he ever saw us together again."

  "You tell him what we talked about?" I said.

  "I said you was asking about Jared Clark, but I didn't tell you nothing," she said.

  She mumbled some because her lip was so fat.

  "He's gonna kill me," she said.

  "No," I said. "He's not."

  "He'll find out," she said.

  "He's not going to hurt you," I said.

  "How you gonna stop him?" she said. "You can't stay with me all the time."

  "Parents?" I said.

  She made a noise.

  "Shit," she said.

  So much for parents. At the hospital, Janey stayed in the car with Pearl. I went in with George and waited while they cleaned her up. When he was through with her, the young emergency-room doctor came out to talk with me.

  "You her father?" he said.

  "No. Friend of a friend."

  "Well," he said. "She'll be okay. No broken bones. I don't think anything wrong internally. She's scared to death and in some discomfort."

  "You give her something?"

  "Yes. Three days' worth."

  "She tell you she uses drugs?" I said.

  "No, but I assumed. I didn't give her a prescription."

  "Any limits on what she should do?"

  "She should stay away from whoever hit her," the doctor said. "Otherwise, just rest."

  "I'll see to both," I said.

  "You know who did it?" the doctor said.

  "Yes."

  "We'll have to report this to the police," the doctor said. "It's an obvious beating."

  "I know."

  "We'll need your name for the police," the doctor said. He smiled a little. "And she has no medical insurance."

  I took out one of my cards and gave it to him.

  "Send me the bill," I said.

  Chapter 31

  WE DROPPED JANEY OFF near the Coffee Nut, and George and I and Pearl went back to Boston to my place.

  "You want to call your parents?" I said.

  "Naw."

  "They won't be wondering where you are?" I said.

  "Naw."

  "You have parents," I said.

  "Sort of."

  "You live at home?"

  "Sometimes."

  It wasn't going anywhere, so I decided to drop it.

  "Okay, you'll stay here until I have squared things to Animal," I said.

  "How you gonna do that?"

  "Vigorously," I said. "Take the bedroom."

  "You gonna have sex with me?" she said.

  "Nope."

  "Why not?"

  "Too young," I said.

  "I know how," she said.

  "Good to have a skill," I said.

  "I done it a lot."

  "Practice makes perfect," I said. "You don't wanna?"

  "I'm flattered to be asked," I said. "But my heart belongs to another."

  "You gonna let me stay here for nothing?"

  "That's what I'm going to do," I said.

  I took the couch. It was a big, comfortable couch, but it was less convenient than it sounded, because Pearl also took the couch, and my first night there was not very restful. Nor was Pearl's.

  In the morning, George was moving better. She emerged late, wearing one of my shirts for a nightgown. It was sufficiently modest. The shirttails reached her knees. I made us breakfast and left her to eat it, and Pearl to watch her, while I went into my bathroom for a shower and then to my bedroom for clean clothes. By the time I came out, freshly scrubbed and clean shaven, she had finished breakfast. I noticed that she hadn't eaten too much. She took out a pack of cigarettes and lit one. I disapproved, but I figured this wasn't the week for her to quit, so I just opened one window a crack in the living room, and didn't comment.

  I didn't want to leave her alone yet, so I sat and read David McCullough's book on John Adams while she was in the bedroom with the television going. We didn't have much to say, so we didn't say it. She slept a lot. I made her some soup.

  At supper, I asked her a few questions about Jared Clark that she didn't know the answers to. I was pretty sure that we could make a very long list of questions she wouldn't know the answer to. After supper, Pearl and I watched the Sox game on the living-room television and spent a second night on the couch in territorial conflict.

  The next morning, when George came out she was wearing another of my shirts, but her hair was combed and she looked like she'd washe
d. She was moving pretty well, and she didn't seem either pained or drugged. After breakfast, I showed her how to operate my washer-dryer, and she put her clothes through. While she was doing that, I checked my answering machine at the office. There was a message from Major Johnson. I wrote down the details.

  Late in the afternoon, fully dressed in her laundered clothes, George came into the living room, smoking a cigarette.

  "I'm bored," she said.

  "Me, too."

  She looked startled, as if it hadn't occurred to her that I might experience anything.

  "How long I gotta stay here?"

  "Long as you think you need to," I said.

  "I gotta hide from Animal."

  "Doesn't mean you can't go out and walk around," I said. "It's a big city."

  "What are you going to do?"

  "Got some business tonight," I said. "How you feeling?"

  "I feel okay."

  The bruise along her jawline was now blue and yellow, and the swollen eye had opened a little. Her lip was still fat. I went to the kitchen and got a spare set of keys from what Susan called the "crap drawer," where I kept such things. The name seemed harsh to me.

  "You want to go out," I said. "Big key opens the front door downstairs. Other one opens my door. Pearl should stay in until I get back."

  "I never been in Boston before," she said.

  "Of course not," I said. "It must be forty miles."

  "I never been anywhere," she said.

  I wrote my address and home phone number on the back of one of my business cards and gave it to her.

  "You get lost, take a cab back here," I said. "Or you call me."

  "I don't have any money," she said.

  Of course she didn't. I gave her some.

  Chapter 32

  THE SOUTH BAY SHOPPING MALL was tucked in under Southampton Street, just west of Andrew Square across the expressway. It was dark when I got there and met Major Johnson in front of the Home Depot. There were a number of other youngish black men with Major, and none of them seemed impressed with me.

  "So," Major said. "Whitefish, wha's happenin'."

  "Wha's happenin'?"' I said. "I keep telling you, Major, you African guys aren't going to integrate with our culture if you insist on talking funny."

  "Fuck you," Major said.

  "There you go," I said. "White guys say that to me, too."

  Major grinned at me suddenly.

  "I forgot what you was like," he said.

  "How could you," I said. "Jose arrive yet?"

  "He be along," Major said. "Gonna meet us over there by the fence, where the tracks are."

  "Why don't I go over and wait for him?" I said.

  "No. Tole him he could come in first, set up like he wanted. We'd walk in on him."

  "Make him feel secure," I said.

  "Sho'," Major said.

  "He know about me?" I said.

  "Knows there a honkie muthafucka wants to talk with him."

  "Think he'll recognize me?"

  Major grinned again.

  "As opposed to all the other honkie muthafuckas that be with us?" he said.

  "Good point," I said. "You'll know when he gets here?"

  "We'll know," Major said.

  The stores had started to close and a lot of people had left the parking lot when Jose Yang showed up. A smallish coffee-colored kid with tattoos and corn-rows came across the lot and spoke to Major.

  "He here," the kid said.

  Major turned and looked at the rest of his crew. He didn't say anything, but they moved as if he had, fanning out as they moved across the parking lot toward the railroad fence.

  "Le's go," Major said to me.

  There was no concealment in the parking lot. It was brightly lit and sparsely occupied. By the fence at the far side, I could see two cars parked side by side, parallel to the fence, their noses pointed toward Southampton Street. As we walked, people got out of the cars and stood behind them. Major's crew was now fanned out around them in a semicircle. They stopped about fifty feet from the cars. Major and I kept walking.

  When we were maybe twenty feet away, one of the men behind the cars said, "Stop there."

  We stopped. We all looked at one another. The man who had spoken was more Asian-looking than Animal, but I could see the familial connection. He was shorter than Animal, with sloping shoulders and longish arms. His black hair was long. He wore a sleeveless T-shirt, and both his thick arms were heavily tattooed.

  "You want to talk with me, Snowflake?" he said.

  "More racial animosity," I said to Major.

  "Nobody like you people," Major said. "You got to unnerstand that."

  "It's so unfair," I said.

  "You want to talk or not," the guy with the tattoos said.

  "You Jose Yang?" I said.

  "Yeah."

  "My name's Spenser."

  I was hoping the name would strike fear into Los Diablos.

  "So what?" Yang said.

  Beside me, Major Johnson snickered.

  "I know your brother," I said. "Animal."

  "So?"

  "I need to know if you got him some handguns," I said.

  "Why you need to know that?" Yang said.

  "I'm a private detective," I said. "I'm working on a case. It won't involve Animal."

  "How I know that?" Yang said.

  "He say something," Major said, "it be true."

  "You say so," Yang said to Major.

  "I do. He say something, you can take it right down the First National Bank of Cha-Cha and deposit it."

  Yang nodded.

  "I don't know nothing about no guns," he said to me.

  "Would have been last January," I said. "Four clean pieces and ammo."

  "Why I tell you shit?" Yang said.

  "I tole him you would," Major said.

  Yang looked hard at him across the hood of the Chevy Impala he was behind. Major waited. Yang was silent. Behind him, the two carloads of backup stood silently. I spotted at least a shotgun among them. I didn't know for sure what else. They stayed behind the cars. I had no idea what kind of ordnance Major's people had broken out. They were behind us, and I didn't want to violate the moment by turning to look. Far behind me was the sound of traffic on the expressway. In the parking lot, I could hear car doors open and slam, and car engines start up, as late shoppers and store employees headed home.

  "You trust him?" Yang said to Major.

  "Man do what he say he do," Major said. "Like me."

  Yang nodded. More staring. More traffic sounds. One of Yang's men coughed and tried to stifle it. We waited.

  "My brother got big muscles and no brain," Yang said.

  "Some question about the size of his cojones, too," I said.

  "Yeah," Yang said. "I know. Why I sent him out there to East Cow Fuck."

  "Last January," I said.

  "A Browning, a Colt, two Glocks," Yang said. "No history, extra magazines, lotta bullets."

  "How much?" I said.

  "Fifteen hundred," Yang said. "The works."

  "Cheap," I said.

  "He's my brother," Yang said. "I didn't make no profit."

  "He did," I said. "He had three grand to spend."

  Yang was silent for a moment, then he said, "That would be Luis."

  "He say what the guns were for?"

  "No. "

  "They were used in a bunch of murders out in Dowling."

  "You ain't involving my brother," Yang said.

  "Not if I don't have to."

  "You rat him," Yang said, "I kill you."

  "I don't want him," I said. "I'll do what I can."

  "You better do it," Yang said.

  "Don't be threatening my man," Major said.

  "Major, you and me already lived longer than we was supposed to." Yang's voice was flat. "I said what I said."

  "You fuck with my man," Major said, "and we see 'bout that."

  "I ain't heavy," I said. "I'm his brother."

  M
ajor choked off a laugh beside me. Yang gave me a hard look, and then it was over. Our side backed down toward the Home Depot. Yang's side got in their cars and drove out the Southampton Street exit.

  Chapter 33

  "HEALY SAYS I CAN bend things a little for you," DiBella told me as he parked his car behind a couple of state highway maintenance buildings off the Mass Pike near Worcester. One was an open-front garage where they stored salt and sand for the winter. We went in and found Animal Yang behind the salt pile with two mean-looking state troopers.

  "Here he is," DiBella said.

  Animal had on a black Nike Dri Fit muscle shirt and looked impressive.

  "We took a piece off him," one of the troopers said. He held up a short Beretta .380.

  "Hang on to it," DiBella said.

  He looked at Animal. "Got a permit?"

  Animal shook his head. DiBella looked at me.

  "Want us to run the piece for you?"

  I shook my head.

  "Unload it and give it back to him," I said.

  The trooper who held Animal's gun looked at DiBella. He was a big black guy with no hair visible under his campaign hat.

  "I told you," DiBella said to him, "when I called you. This is all off the record. If anyone asks you about it, it never happened. "

  The black trooper shrugged, took the magazine out of the handle, and put it in his pocket, ejected the round from the chamber, let it lie on the floor where it landed, and handed the gun back to Animal. Animal took it and held it as if he didn't know what to do with it.

  "Okay," DiBella said to the troopers, "you boys beat it. I owe you one."

  "Maybe two or three," the black trooper said. They went.

  "I'll be in the car," DiBella said.

  He went after them. I was alone with Animal.

  "You suckered me out by the lake," Animal said. "Don't mean you can do it again."

  I hit him with a left hook that staggered him back against the salt pile.

  "Does too," I said.

  I took my gun off my hip and pressed the barrel of it hard into the recess under his cheekbone below the left eye.

  "Ow," Animal said. "That hurts."

  "I know," I said.

  "Whaddya fucking want with me," he said.

  "I'm thinking about killing you," I said.

  "I never done nothing to you," he said.