“Might get your picture in the Daily News,” I said.
Maguire hung up without comment.
I swiveled around and looked at the rain washing down my window. Now I could discuss these things with Deegan. If I could find him. If he didn’t shoot me when I did. If Dwayne would testify.
“I need a drink,” I said out loud.
No one said no. So I sat in my chair, got out a bottle of Glenfiddich and a glass and poured some neat and sipped it and watched the rain as night settled in behind it.
33
I didn’t have to find Bobby Deegan. He found me. I’d been sitting maybe an hour and a half watching it rain when he walked into my office without knocking. The only light in the room was my desk lamp with the Tiffany glass lamp shade that Susan had insisted would dress up the whole office. When I heard the door open, I swung around and opened the right hand drawer of the desk. I kept a spare gun in there and it was always nice to have it handy.
Deegan stood in the doorway with the light from the corridor behind him. He wore an oversized, lightweight trench coat with the collar up, and a gray tweed cap.
“I’m not here for trouble,” Deegan said.
I waited.
“We need to talk,” he said.
I nodded at the chair in front of my desk. He unbuttoned his coat and sat down and stuck his legs out straight in front of him. I took a second glass out of the left hand drawer and put it on the desk and poured some Glenfiddich into it. Deegan leaned forward and took the glass and sniffed it and took a sip. He swallowed, and nodded his head.
“Single malt,” he said.
We were quiet, the rain blurring down outside the window behind me.
“You’re trouble,” Deegan said.
“Nice of you to notice.”
“Can’t seem to get you out of the fucking way,” Deegan said.
I nodded. We both sipped some scotch. Sipped thoughtfully, an ounce and a quarter of Glenfiddich will last half an evening.
“So what are we going to do about this mess?” Deegan said.
“I been giving that some thought,” I said.
“Those were good people went after Dwayne,” Deegan said. “Brooklyn guys. Guy Dwayne’s size, you want the best.”
I waited. Deegan would get to where he was going.
“You do them?” he said.
I shook my head.
“Black guy?”
I nodded.
“Gerry said he was good,” Deegan said.
He was holding the glass of scotch in both hands in front of his chin, elbows resting on the arms of the chair. He rubbed his chin absently on the rim. I could hear the faint scratch of his beard against it. Deegan looked like a guy who would have to shave twice a day.
“Guys Gerry sent me for you didn’t work out too good either,” he said.
“Boston guys,” I said.
Deegan nodded. He drank a little scotch. I pushed the bottle across the desk and he leaned forward and poured himself another inch, and pushed the bottle back across the desk to me. He leaned back in his chair again.
“I want out of this,” he said.
“Un huh.”
“I want to deal.”
“What you got to deal with?” I said.
“I keep my trap shut about Dwayne,” he said.
“And what do I do?”
“You walk,” he said. “And I walk and nobody says nothing.”
“And nobody shoots Dwayne?” I said.
“Nobody shoots him, nobody bribes him, nobody mentions his name again.”
I leaned my head back against the padding on my chair. I was tired. Tired of Deegan, tired of Dwayne, tired of tough guys and cops and guns and deals. I was tired of almost everything but Susan.
“Whaddya think?” Deegan said.
I shook my head slowly, still against the back of my chair.
“No?” Deegan said. “Why no?”
“Davis,” I said.
“Davis,” Deegan said, “why do you give a fuck about Davis? You got nothing to do with Davis.”
“Got to get something for Davis,” I said.
Deegan took in a long breath and let it out and dipped his nose into the glass for a moment and swallowed.
“You got to get something for Davis,” he said.
I nodded.
“How about getting dead for Davis?” Deegan said.
“Hard to do,” I said.
Deegan nodded slowly. “Yeah,” he said. “It is.”
He drank again.
“But it’s not impossible,” he said.
“I can put you away on the gambling charge,” I said. “Dwayne will testify. So will I. You’re a known hoodlum. You’ll be a long time gone.”
The wind seemed to have shifted. I could hear the rain being driven at a slant against the window behind me.
“What do you want for Davis?” Deegan said.
“The rest of the OTB crew.”
“OTB?”
“You and some other guys knocked over an Off Track Betting parlor in New York. I want the guys you did it with.”
“I can’t do that,” Deegan said. “They’d fucking kill me.”
“I’ll get you a witness protection deal. You aren’t prosecuted and the Feds will give you a new identity and relocate you.”
“All to keep you from pushing this gambling thing?” he said.
“And I don’t tell your wife about Madelaine,” I said.
Deegan looked at me a long time without speaking.
“You are a hard fucking case,” he said, “aren’t you?”
The question was rhetorical. I didn’t comment.
“For a fucking arrogant asshole kid, talks about himself in the third person,” Deegan said.
“He’s good at what he does,” I said.
“So what the fuck is that to you?” Deegan said.
“Girlfriend’s nice, too,” I said.
“Chantel?”
“Yeah, she sees something in him.”
“So what the fuck is that to you?” Deegan said.
“You want to deal, or not?” I said.
Deegan stood slowly, and put his whiskey glass on my desk and walked over to the wall to the right of my desk and stretched both hands above his head and leaned on the wall. He did a couple of push-aways on the wall and then turned and leaned his back against it.
“Who you dealing with in New York?” Deegan said.
I shook my head.
Deegan grinned. “Sure,” he said. “Of course you won’t say. You don’t give a fucking inch on anything.”
“You’re not dead,” I said.
Deegan raised his eyebrows. Then he walked to my desk and poured another shot for himself.
“You get it together in New York, names, promises, the works, in detail and then we’ll talk again. Where do I reach you?” I said.
Deegan paused, thought about that for a moment, then shrugged.
“I’ll be with Madelaine,” he said.
“I’ll be in touch,” I said.
Deegan picked up the whiskey glass and tossed the rest of the scotch down. He put the glass on my desk again and turned and walked to my door. He tugged his collar up higher.
“Raining like a bastard,” he said, and went out.
34
I spent the next day on the phone. I talked three or four times to Maguire in Brooklyn, and then twice to a guy from the New York Federal Attorney’s office, a guy named Jennerette.
“Why don’t you nail him for the gambling thing up there?” Jennerette said, “if it’s so air tight.”
“Because I’m trying to protect the player,” I said.
“So why not let Deegan walk. He keeps quiet, you keep quiet?”
“Couple of reasons,” I said. I’d already gone through them with Maguire and with the commander of the Brooklyn robbery squad. “He’s walking around loose, with only the player to finger him, he might find it more sensible to ace the player. Also another kid died in th
is deal, kid named Danny Davis. I figure somebody has to pay dues for that.”
“What’s this kid Davis to you?” Jennerette said.
“Nothing,” I said. “But somebody owes something for him; and I don’t want the other kid to see Deegan walk away from this looking like a stand up guy.”
“Witness protection isn’t like doing time,” Jennerette said.
“That’s not it,” I said. “I want my kid to see Deegan rat on his buddies.”
There was silence on the phone.
“You want us to help you cover up a crime, so you can give some kid an object lesson?”
“You bet,” I said.
Again silence on the phone.
“Why not try to get Deegan on the murder of this kid Davis?” Jennerette said.
“Expose my client,” I said. “I’m trying to save this kid. He’s got a future if I can save him.”
“Mr. Fucking Rogers,” Jennerette said.
“You get several guys that are better off the streets. Brooklyn cleans up a robbery that’s been making them look bad. Witness Protection gets the chance to hang out with Bobby Deegan, always a treat. Who knows what you may find out once you get Deegan talking. Guy’s a connected guy. You could end up on ‘Nightline.’”
“Boss will end up on ‘Nightline,’” Jennerette said. “Hold on a minute.”
I could hear the phone being put down on the desk and the faint sounds of office noise: voices, other phones ringing, the tap, occasionally, of high-heeled shoes. There was maybe five minutes of this and then Jennerette came back on the phone.
“Okay,” he said. “Deegan turns, and gives us the OTB job, we’ll give him immunity and protection. If,” Jennerette paused for the “if” to sink in, “he delivers quality.”
“But of course,” I said.
“We’ll be the judge of what’s quality,” he said.
“The rest of the crew in the OTB robbery,” I said. “Is that quality?”
“Yes,” Jennerette said.
“I’ll get back to you,” I said.
We hung up.
I went down to the alley back of my building and got my car and headed for Newton. It was nearly four in the afternoon and traffic was beginning to clog things. Boston was never meant for automobiles. The streets wound in the downtown section like cattle trails without any reasonable pattern and even in Back Bay, where the grid system had been applied when the old bay was filled in in the nineteenth century, the scale was too limited for automobiles in large number. In New York they drove faster, but for simple difficulty in getting from one part of town to another, Boston was, on a scale of ten, ten.
Storrow Drive would be standing still at this time. And so would the Mass. Pike. Shrewdly, I stayed off both and went straight out Commonwealth. So did everyone else. I hit every red light, and got to Newton at five thirty-five. Bobby and Madelaine were having cocktails. There was a pitcher of martinis on the coffee table. No one offered me one.
“Brooklyn will go for it,” I told Deegan. He was sitting in a Barcalounger wearing a white cotton sweater over a crimson polo shirt, collar up. His acid-washed jeans were carefully ironed and his Top-Siders were new. “You turn on the OTB thing and they give you immunity and protection.”
“And you?” he said. Madelaine sat on the foot of the Barcalounger, near his ankles, her left hand resting on his knee, sipping a martini from a thick lowball glass. She had her shoes off but otherwise looked as if she’d just come from work in a gray wrap-around dress.
“Me? You don’t mention Dwayne, and he and I don’t mention you,” I said. “Nobody ever fixed a Taft game.”
“What happens about Davis?”
“I got no control over that,” I said. “But if there’s no gambling case, I don’t know how they’ll make you for Davis.”
“Danny Davis?” Madelaine said.
Deegan made a shushing motion with his hand.
“What about Danny?” Madelaine said. “Bobby, did you …”
“Put a lid on it, Madelaine. How do you know this guy hasn’t got a wire?”
Madelaine looked as if she’d bitten into a sawdust donut. Her mouth shut and stayed shut.
“He’s not going down for it,” I said, “but Bobby had Danny Davis killed. Tried to have Dwayne killed. If he were going down for it you’d probably be an accessory to murder.”
“I never …” she said, and that’s as far as she got. Deegan leaned forward and grabbed her arm and yanked her over, so that she was sprawled on top of him on the lounger. With his face against hers, and his lips actually touching her lips, he said, “Shut up, you understand that? Shut your fucking trap.”
I could see by the whiteness of his knuckles that he was squeezing her arm hard. She squirmed, pulling at his fingers.
“You understand?” he said again in a hoarse voice, holding her head in place with his left hand.
“Yes,” she whispered, and he let her go. She got up abruptly and went and stood near the fireplace rubbing her arm where he’d squeezed it.
“You say what you want,” Deegan said to me calmly. “I’m not saying anything at all about any murder stuff, that’s not part of this deal. I had nothing to do with any murders.”
“I’m not wired, Bobby,” I said. “And I just wanted Madelaine to know who she was sleeping with. But for the record the deal doesn’t include any murders.”
“Fine,” Deegan said. “Who do I talk to?”
“I’ll set it up,” I said. “You’ll be here?”
“Right here,” Deegan said.
35
THE next morning Dwayne bolted. He went into a washroom at the Lancaster Tap, opened the pebble glass window and went out and down the alley, leaving two campus cops having cheeseburgers and coffee and wondering what took Dwayne so long.
Chantel met him at the foot of the alley and they were off in the Trans Am, with Hawk behind them. He followed them to a house off Blue Hill Ave. near Mattapan Square. Watched them for a while until they settled in, and then he came and told me about it.
“You stuck with Chantel,” I said. “You knew he wouldn’t go without her.”
Hawk nodded. “Dwayne can’t drive,” he said.
“He could have taken a cab,” I said.
“Sure,” Hawk said.
“Let’s go see him,” I said.
“Might make him run again,” Hawk said. “I’m getting sick of chasing him.”
“We need to talk,” I said.
We went in Hawk’s car. Out the expressway and onto Columbia Road toward Mattapan Square. Hawk was listening to an album by Kinky Friedman and the Texas Jewboys.
“What happened to Hugh Masekela?” I said.
“Next tape,” Hawk said.
Hawk turned the Jag down Blue Hill Ave. and in another ten minutes we were pulling up in front of a three decker like a thousand others in Boston. Porches on the front of each floor with wooden railings. Shingle siding. Flat roof. The small yard out front was neatly trimmed. There were flowers in flower boxes on each floor. The house had been painted recently.
Hawk and I got out of the car. Everyone I saw was black, children mostly, and some older people. No one paid me any attention.
“First floor,” Hawk said as we went up the steps to the porch. We went into the little entryway. The stairs went up the left side of the hall. There was a door in the right wall. I knocked. There were footsteps, and the door opened as far as the security chain inside would let it. A black woman looked out at us.
I said, “Hello, my name is Spenser, I’m here to see Dwayne.”
“No Dwayne here,” she said.
“Yes there is, Ma’am,” Hawk said. “I know he’s here. Trans Am parked in the garage.”
“Ask Chantel,” I said. “They’ll see me.”
The door closed. Hawk stepped back out onto the porch and looked down the driveway. After a minute or two the footsteps returned and the door opened. This time it was Chantel. She looked out at me. Hawk came back from the por
ch.
“Wait a minute,” Chantel said.
She closed the door. The chain bolt slid off, and then the door opened. Chantel stepped back. We went into a den with a television, a braided rug on the floor, a daybed covered with a paisley throw, and a big leather armchair. Beyond the den was a big old kitchen, the kind that families would spend most of their time in. Chantel led us through the den and into the kitchen. There was a big square table against the wall opposite the big gas stove. There was another daybed in the kitchen, this one built in with a headboard of the same upright pine boards that formed the wainscot. At the foot of the daybed was a big old black leather rocking chair. The linoleum floor was covered with another braided rug. A door off the kitchen led to what appeared to be a dining room, another opened on a bedroom. At the far end of the kitchen was a bathroom and pantry. An old, portly black man stood at an easel in the middle of the kitchen floor under a bright fluorescent light, painting a landscape in oils. The woman who had opened the door sat at the oilcloth-covered table with Dwayne. There was coffee and the remains of a pumpkin pie on the table.
Dwayne looked up at me as Chantel brought us in.
“What you want?” he said.
Chantel went over and sat beside him. She had on a white shirt and jeans and low black boots. A scarlet scarf was knotted at her throat. Hawk went and leaned on the door jamb as he had at Madelaine’s. There was no one could lean on a door like Hawk. When he was still he was entirely still. There was no real evidence he was alive when he leaned on the door jamb. You couldn’t even see him breathe.
There was an empty chair at the table so I pulled it out and sat. The old guy at the easel ignored me. He had on a blue bib apron with paint stains on it, and he had a cigar clenched in his teeth. His brush moved in confident dabbing motions on the canvas.
“I think I got this thing fixed,” I said to Dwayne.
Dwayne stared at me without comment. The woman got up and started to clear the table. She had on a yellow dress belted at the waist.
“Deegan was involved in a robbery in New York,” I said. “To avoid prosecution on this gambling thing, he’s going to testify against his associates in the robbery.”
“So what’s that mean for us?” Chantel said.
“Means you’re clean. You can play basketball and sign with the Knicks for more than Ewing got—if the Clippers don’t draft you—and live happily ever after.”
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