Small Vices s-24

by Robert B. Parker

  It was my turn to be quiet.

  "On the other hand," Rugar said, "even with your testimony there is simply your word against mine."

  I waited.

  "You can prove that you were shot last year."

  Rugar seemed to be thinking out loud. I nodded and let him keep thinking.

  "I have been so successful, for so long, I had begun to think I was impregnable," he said.

  I waited some more. I didn't say anything. Rugar looked at me as steadily as he had.

  "The longer they hold me," he said, "the more chance they have to look into my identity."

  "Good point," I said.

  "And giving up the man who hired me would cost me nothing."

  "Another good point," I said.

  He paid no attention. As far as I could tell he was talking to himself.

  "I promised him nothing. I never expected to fail, so there was nothing to promise. Had I succeeded, I could not implicate him without implicating myself, and he could not implicate me without implicating himself. Each had to keep the other's secret."

  "But that's not how it is now," I said.

  "No," Rugar said. "It isn't, and that is my fault. I have failed in my assignment. I am forced to compromise myself."

  "There's another way to look at it," I said.

  "Yes?"

  "You didn't fail," I said. "I succeeded."

  "My present situation remains the same," Rugar said.

  "It can be changed," I said. "You give me the guy who hired you, and you testify against him, and you walk away from this."

  "You are willing to let me go free after I came so close to fulfilling my assignment?"

  "Yep."

  "Do you fear I will try again?"

  "No."

  "Really," Rugar said. "Why not?"

  He seemed genuinely interested.

  "You are a professional. You do this for money. You don't allow ego or fear or compassion to motivate you. If you give me your client, you have no further reason to chase me."

  Rugar looked past me for a moment at the cop leaning on the wall outside the cage. Then he shifted his eyes back to me.

  "And how do you know this about me?" he said.

  I shrugged. He kept looking at me for a moment and then, oddly, he smiled.

  "It is because that is also how you are," he said.

  "Gimme a name," I said.

  "Donald Stapleton," Rugar said.

  "That's the right name," I said.

  "You knew it."

  "Yes."

  "But you couldn't prove it."

  "Correct."

  "Now you can," Rugar said.

  Chapter 50

  WHEN I CAME back from New York I went straight to the Inn Style Barbershop and had Patty cut my hair the way it's always been cut. Then I went home and shaved off my beard. Which, if you've never shaved off a beard, is not as easy as you might think. I rinsed out the sink, took a shower, and patted on some Club Man aftershave, which Susan laughed at but I liked. I put on beige slacks, sand-colored suede loafers, a white oxford shirt with a button-down collar, and a blue blazer to hide my gun. I put a white silk handkerchief in the display pocket of the blazer, checked myself in the mirror, and noticed that I looked entirely dashing, and went to Susan's house. I got there just as her last patient was coming out the front door. I went in, making no eye contact, and was standing in her front hall when she came out of her office in her tailored blue suit with the white blouse and her dark hair perfectly in place. She froze in mid-step when she saw me. I opened my arms and she stared at me for a moment as if she didn't understand, then the angularity went away and she stepped in against me and pressed her face against my chest.

  "He didn't kill you," she said after a long time.

  "Not hardly."

  "Did you kill him?"

  "He's in jail," I said.

  "Will he get out?"

  "Maybe, but he's no threat to us anymore."

  She stayed with her face against my chest and her arms around my waist under the handsome brass hanging lamp that ornamented her front entry hall. I could feel her body trembling slightly. I didn't say anything. Neither did she. Finally she pulled away and looked at me. Her eyes were red. There were tears on her face.

  "You appear to be crying," I said.

  "Yes, and it's beating hell out of my eye makeup."

  "Doesn't make you look less beautiful," I said.

  "Yes, it does," she said. "I had talked myself into it, that maybe this time you wouldn't come back. That this time you met somebody too good for you and you'd been hurt, and I knew you had to do this. I knew I wouldn't even want to be with the man you'd be if you didn't do this and you allowed me to talk you out of it, and I told myself that loving you meant letting you be you, and I was ready when Quirk, or Belson, or Hawk came and told me."

  She was holding herself from me at arm's length looking straight at me with the tears washing down her face.

  "And when they did I would have been brave and when they left me I would have wanted to die."

  I didn't have anything to say.

  "And here you come, looking just like you always have, shaved and with your hair cut and your face smelling, good God, is it Club Man?"

  "Yes."

  She shook her head.

  "And we're supposed to be all right again and just like we were."

  "Yes."

  "Well, maybe I can't rebound that quickly."

  "I think you can," I said.

  "Who gives a fuck," Susan said, "what you think."

  "Good point," I said carefully.

  "Yeah, well, maybe I do care what you think."

  "I bet you do," I said.

  "And maybe I can rebound. God knows I'm glad you're okay."

  "Both of us have had to rebound," I said. "We'll be okay."

  "Okay?" Susan said. "Just okay?"

  "How do you think we'll be?" I said.

  "I think we'll be goddamned sensational," she said.

  "Would you like me to hug you again?" I said.

  "Yes, but there have to be changes."

  "Like what?" I said.

  "Like you have to get rid of that goddamned Club Man."

  I pulled her slowly in against me and held her.

  "Would you be able to love the man I'd be if I let you talk me out of it?" I said.

  "Oh, fuck you," Susan said and put her face up and I kissed her and she kissed me back so hard that I was grateful I was bigger.

  Chapter 51

  THE NEXT MORNING, clear eyed, clean shaven, close cropped, and contumescent, I went to see Clint Stapleton again.

  He wasn't at his condo. I found him on the indoor practice court at Taft playing against a short red-haired scrambler who kept getting the ball back over the net without looking very good doing it. The tennis coach was watching them closely, and maybe ten undergraduates were in the stands. Stapleton had graduated from Taft last June while I was fighting the hill in Santa Barbara, but he'd redshirted his first two years and had another year of eligibility left. And, according to my research, his coaches didn't feel he was ready yet for the pro tour. Stapleton's game was serve and volley, and he looked overpowering. Except the red-haired kid kept returning his serve and lobbing Stapleton's volleys to push him back to the base line. It was annoying Stapleton. He kept hitting the ball harder, and the kid kept getting to it and getting his racquet on it and getting it back over the net. Sometimes he'd hit it on the rim of the racquet. Sometimes it would come back over the net like a damaged pigeon. But he kept getting it back and Stapleton kept hitting it harder. And the harder he hit it, the more erratic he became. They played three games while I watched. The red-haired kid held serve in the second one, and broke Stapleton's serve in the third. Stapleton doublefaulted on the game point and threw his racquet straight up into the air. It arced nearly to the top of the arena and fell clattering on the composition court five feet from the red-haired kid, who was grinning. I stood in the shadow of the stands fo
r a while and watched.

  "Control, Stapes, focus and control," the coach said to him. "He's not beating you. You're beating yourself."

  "Control this," Stapleton said and walked off the court and out the runway through the stands past me.

  I fell silently in beside him as he walked, and we were out of the indoor facility and into the bright fall sunshine before he took notice of me. His focus on being mad seemed good. On the walkway that led toward the student union, Stapleton stopped abruptly and turned and looked at me.

  "Are you following me?" he said.

  "I prefer to think of it as you and me forging ahead together," I said.

  Stapleton recognized me. I could see the stages of recognition play on his face. First he realized he knew me. Then he realized who I was. Then he realized I was supposed to be dead. And finally he realized that I wasn't dead. The effect of the sequence was cumulative. He stepped back two big steps.

  "What the fuck are you doing here?"

  "We need to talk."

  "I heard you were dead," he said.

  "Where'd you hear that?"

  "It was in the paper."

  "Media distortion's a drag, isn't it?"

  Stapleton started walking again. I stayed with him.

  "I can talk with you this way, but we've got hard things to talk about," I said. "And it might go better if we sat on that bench there by the pond."

  He looked at me for a time without stopping, then he sort of sighed and gave a big forbearing shrug and walked over to the bench and sat. I sat beside him. Several ducks waddled promptly over expecting to be fed. They were brown ducks for the most part except one which had a green head and was probably a male duck, though I wasn't sure. I didn't know a hell of a lot about ducks.

  "Your old man," I said, "hired a guy named Rugar to kill me."

  Stapleton didn't say a word. He didn't look at me. He sat straight upright on the bench with his feet flat on the ground and stared at the ducks.

  "He'll testify to that in court," I said.

  Stapleton didn't speak. The abyss was starting to open in front of him.

  "But the question still to be answered is why did he?"

  The abyss opened wider. Stapleton stared harder at the ducks.

  "You know why he did that?" I said.

  Stapleton shrugged, just enough to let me know he'd heard the question. The ducks waddled briskly back and forth in front of us, looking anxious about the possibility of scoring some stale bread.

  "I think he did it to keep me from finding out that you killed Melissa Henderson."

  The abyss was beneath him. Looking at the ducks didn't help.

  "You want to talk about that?" I said.

  He shook his head.

  "You're going to have to," I said. "Sooner or later. I know you did it. And I know you and Miller and your old man set up a guy you didn't even know named Ellis Alves to take the fall for it. And you or your father got your cousin Hunt to testify that he did it. What I don't know is why did you kill her?"

  Stapleton seemed frozen in his position, looking at the ducks but seeing the abyss. No more big man on campus, no more cold beer, no more women, no more picture in the paper, no more condominium in a nice section. No more leisurely Sunday mornings with oranges and a green cockatoo. The abyss was too wide and too deep and he was in it. He stood suddenly and began to walk away from me. I didn't bother to follow him. He walked faster and then broke into a run. I watched him running away until he passed the corner of the gym and was out of sight.

  I looked at the ducks. The one with the green head looked back at me with black eyes that held no expression of any kind.

  "Yeah," I said to the duck, "I know."

  Chapter 52

  SUSAN AND I were making dinner together at my place. The sublet tenant had finally departed. Pearl was demonstrating why she is known as the Wonder Dog by managing to sleep soundly while lying flat on her back on my sofa with all four paws in the air. I had bought a Jenn Air stove a couple ofyears back and it had a rotisserie unit on which I was roasting a boneless leg of lamb, which I had seasoned with olive oil and fresh rosemary. After it's seasoned and put on the spit thereisn't a great deal demanded of the guythat's cooking it, so I stood at thecounter while the roast turned slowly and watched Susan as she made beet risotto.

  "I saw a woman on the Today show make this," she said.

  "And you loved it because it was such a pretty red color," I said.

  "Yes. Does this rice look opaque to you?"

  I looked and said that it did. Susan ladled some broth into the rice and began to stir it carefully. While she stirred, she looked in the pot and then at the rice.

  "Do you think I have to put this broth in a little at a time, the way the recipe says?"

  I said that I did. She stirred some more.

  "It has to all absorb before I put in more?" she said.

  "When you see the bottom of the pan as you stir, add some more broth," I said.

  She nodded. The counter around the stove and the space on the stove not occupied by the risotto fixings and the roast was covered with pans and plates and dishes and cups and measuring spoons and forks and knives and a grater and two wooden spoons and a platter of grated beets and a dish of grated cheese and some onion skins and three pot holders and a crumpled paper towel and a damp sponge and her glass of barely sipped red wine and a lip-liner tube and a copy of the recipe written in Susan's pretty illegible hand on the back of a paperback copy of Civilization and Its Discontents. Susan was not a clean up as you go kind of cook.

  "They always lie to you on television," Susan said.

  "I know," I said.

  "This woman never said you had to stand here for an hour and stir the damn stuff."

  "When you tear away the mask of glamour…" I said.

  Susan stirred some more, studying the rice, looking for the bottom of the pan.

  "Hurry up," she said into the pan.

  I thought about explaining to her how a watched pot never boils, but it might have seemed contentious to her, so I skipped it and went and looked out the front window at Marlborough Street. There was an east wind coming off the water, slowing down as it funneled through the financial district and downtown, picking up speed as it came down across the Common and the Public Garden, driving some leaves and some street litter past my building at a pretty good clip. I watched it for a while, keeping my mind on the wind, trying not to think of anything, sipping red wine.

  "Look how pretty," Susan said behind me.

  I turned and left the window. The big white pot of bright red rice was in fact pretty, though had we been eating at Susan's house the pot it was in would have been pretty, too.

  "Keep it warm in the oven," I said, "while I make the salad and then we'll eat."

  "You didn't say it was pretty."

  "The beet risotto is very pretty," I said.

  "Thank you."

  Susan set the table while I made the salad. Then we ate the lamb and risotto with a green salad and some bread from Iggy's Bakery.

  "You feel sort of mad about having to sell Concord?" I said.

  Susan shrugged.

  "It had to be done," she said. "But yes, I probably resent it a little. If you were a stockbroker maybe I wouldn't have had to."

  I nodded.

  "How about the baby, any new thoughts on that."

  "Yes."

  "Care to tell me?"

  Susan drank some of her wine and touched her lips with a napkin.

  "I can't bring a child into this kind of a life," Susan said.

  "A life where I may be off getting shot on her first day in kindergarten?"

  "Or his," Susan said. "Yes, that kind of life."

  "I think you're right," I said.

  "You have thought that since I first mentioned the idea," Susan said.

  I shrugged. We ate together for a moment in silence. The risotto was very good. Susan put her fork down.

  "And I suppose that makes me a little
angry as well," she said.

  "Yeah," I said. "I can see where it would."

  "And I suppose I'm angry sometimes because the man I love keeps getting in harm's way and I have to be frightened that he might not come back."

  "It's the only thing I'm any good at," I said.

  "Not entirely true, but I understand. I don't want you to change. I just wish I didn't have to be scared as much as I am."

  "Me too," I said.

  Pearl, with her hunter's instinct, had come instantly awake when we started to eat and was now sitting alertly on the floor between us, watching closely.

  "Life is imperfect," Susan said.

  I nodded.

  "But it is not so imperfect that we cannot enjoy it," Susan said. "We don't have our country house, and I will probably never be a mother. But I love you, and you love me, and we are here, together."

  "Works for me," I said. "And what about the anger, what are you going to do with that?"

  "I'm not going to do anything with it. Anger doesn't have to be expressed. It is enough to know that you're angry, and know why, and not lie to yourself about it."

  "You mean it's not repression if I keep my feelings to myself?"

  "No," she said. "It's repression if you pretend to yourself you don't have them."

  "Does Dr. Joyce Brothers know about this?" I said.

  "I doubt it," Susan said. "Our life together has not always been placid. You must certainly have some anger at me. What do you do with it?"

  "I know that I'm angry," I said. "And I know why, and I don't lie to myself about it."

  "Very good," Susan said and smiled at me. "We'll both keep doing that."

  "Till death do us part?" I said.

  "Or hell freezes over," Susan said. "Whichever comes first."

  "You sure adorable little Erika didn't have any influence on your decision to adopt a child?"

  Susan smiled slowly.

  "You are a cynical bastard," she said.

  "Of course," I said.

  Pearl put her head on my lap and looked up at me by rolling her eyes up. I gave her a spoonful of the risotto. She liked it. On the other hand she liked just about everything. Things were quite simple with Pearl.