Robert B. Parker: The Spencer Novels 1?6

by Robert B. Parker

  “Then I’m dead,” I said.

  The office was silent. I listened. Even these kids weren’t crazy enough to walk around with a round in the chamber and the hammer back. It was a good bet. But it was still a bet. There was no sound. I’d won the bet.

  “Even if you do shoot me,” Wu said, “they’ll kill you.”

  “I’m pretty good,” I said. “Maybe they won’t.”

  My gun was a Smith and Wesson .357. Six rounds. It had a blued finish and a walnut grip, and it was alleged to stop a charging bear. Normally, unless I expected to encounter a bear, I carried a comfy little .38. But for office use the .357 was an effective negotiating tool. I kept my eyes on Wu. I was listening so hard I felt tired. The radiator pinged in the corner and almost cost Wu his life. Still he didn’t move. Still the kids crouched. Still I held steady on the end of his nose. Then Wu said something to the Vietnamese kids. Both of them put their guns away. I leaned back a little in my chair and kept the gun on Wu.

  “Tell them to put the guns on the floor,” I said.

  Wu spoke to the boys. They answered.

  “You will have to kill them, if you can, to get their guns away,” Wu said.

  The boys stared straight at me with their empty eyes. I was wrong. They had more than rage. They had face, and they wouldn’t give it up. And I couldn’t make them. I knew that. I could kill them. But I couldn’t make them lose face.

  “Maybe another time,” I said. “See you around.”

  Wu looked at me for another moment. Then without a word he dropped his burning cigarette on the floor and got up and left. Without even glancing at me, the two kids went after him. They didn’t look back. They didn’t close the door.

  I sat with my chair tilted back and the gun still in my hand. A thin blue will-o’-the-wisp trailed up from the still-burning cigarette. I stared through it, out the door, at the empty corridor. After a while I got up and went around and stepped on the cigarette. I closed the door and went back to my desk and got the phone, and called Boston Police Headquarters. I asked for Homicide. When I got Homicide I asked for Lt. Quirk. He picked up his phone, still talking to someone, and held it while he finished the conversation.

  “Fuck ATF,” he said to someone. “They got their problems. We got ours.”

  Then he spoke into the phone.

  “Quirk.”

  “Hi,” I said. “This is the ATF charitable fund . . .”

  “I know who it is. What do you want?”

  “You got a Chinatown guy?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I need to talk with him.”

  “Okay. Name’s Herman Leong. I’ll have him call you.”

  “Thanks,” I said. But Quirk had already hung up. Mister Congenial.

  •14•

  At ten in the morning, Hawk and I were drinking coffee at a too-small table, in front of a rain-streaked window, in a joint called the Happy Haddock Coffee Shop on Ocean Street near the theater. Handmade signs behind the counter advertised linguiça with eggs, kale soup, and pork stew with clams.

  “Think we should have some kale soup?” Hawk said.

  “No,” I said. “Couple of all-natural donuts.”

  “Good choice,” Hawk said.

  He got up and went to the counter and returned with four plain donuts on a plate.

  “Authentic crime-buster food,” Hawk said.

  The Happy Haddock was almost empty. There was a dark-haired kid on the counter with a ponytail and an insufficient moustache. He wore a stained apron and a pink tee shirt with Pixies World Tour printed on the front. An old woman in a shapeless dress and a bandana was scraping the grill with an inverted spatula. A couple of old men in plaid shirts and plastic baseball caps sat at the counter drinking coffee and smoking.

  “Nobody shadowing the Greek,” Hawk said. “’Cept me.”

  “If there ever was,” I said.

  “You think he made it up?”

  “No.”

  “You think he thought he was being followed and he wasn’t?”

  “No.”

  “You confused, don’t know what to think?”

  “Yeah.”

  Hawk nodded.

  “Maybe there never was a shadow,” he said. “Or maybe the shadow laying low ’cause the murder stirred everybody up. Or maybe the shadow got wind of me. What I know is, if there was a shadow, he didn’t spot me.”

  “I know.”

  “I’m getting bored,” Hawk said.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Forget it. There may be a shadow, but not while you’re around.”

  Hawk broke off a smallish piece of his second donut and ate it and wiped his fingers carefully on the paper napkin.

  “You got anything?” he said.

  “Yeah,” I said. “But I don’t know what it is.”

  Hawk ate another piece of donut and waited.

  “Woman named Rikki Wu is on the theater board with Susan. I had lunch with her couple days ago to talk about the murder.”

  “She Chinese?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good-looking?”

  “Yes.”

  “I like Chinese women,” Hawk said.

  “Also Irish women, Aleut women, French women, women from Katmandu . . .”

  “Never bopped nobody from Katmandu,” Hawk said.

  “Their loss,” I said. “Anyway. She didn’t do me much good, but the next day her husband, Lonnie Wu, came to my office with two teen-aged Vietnamese gunnies, and told me to buzz off.”

  “How nice,” Hawk said in his BBC voice. “He’s mastered the American idiom.”

  “Told me to stay away from his wife.”

  “Who wouldn’t?” Hawk said.

  “Told me to stay out of Port City, too.”

  “Awful worried ’bout his wife,” Hawk said.

  “Or something,” I said.

  “Or something,” Hawk said. “He say what he gonna do if you don’t stay away?”

  “I believe he mentioned killing me.”

  “Un huh,” Hawk said. “If he do, can I have your donut?”

  “Yeah, but you got to finish that house in Concord for Susan.”

  “Sure.” Hawk drank some coffee. “Tongs use Vietnamese kids for muscle. Kids don’t give a shit. Kill anything.”

  “Tongs?” I said. “In Port City?”

  Hawk shrugged.

  “Big Chinatown,” he said. “Bigger than Boston.”

  “True,” I said.

  “You think it’s a tong thing?” Hawk said.

  “I don’t know.”

  “You think Wu’s involved in the killing?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You saying that a lot.”

  “Yeah. I’m thinking of having it printed on my business card.”

  The rain was slower than it had been last time I was in Port City, but it was steady and it made the fall morning dark. The light from the restaurant window reflected on the wet pavement. A Port City police car cruised slowly past, its headlights on, its wipers going. The door of the Happy Haddock opened, bringing with it the rain-dampened smell off the harbor, and Jocelyn Colby came in wearing a belted tan raincoat and carrying a green-and-white umbrella. She closed the umbrella and put it against the wall and walked to our table.

  “Thank God,” she said. “I saw you through the window. I need to talk.”

  I gestured at the empty chair. She looked uneasily at Hawk and sat. I introduced them.

  “Coffee,” I said.

  “No. Yes. Black. Thank you.”

  I got up and got us three cups and brought it back. One of the old men at the counter poked the other one and they both stared at Jocelyn. The kid behind the counter went back to rea
ding The Want Advertiser. Probably looking for a deal on moustache wax.

  “What’s new,” I said when I sat down.

  Jocelyn looked sideways at Hawk.

  “May I speak freely?” she said.

  “Sure.”

  “I . . . it’s about the case.”

  I nodded. She hesitated.

  “You can talk in front of Hawk,” I said. “He’s too dumb to remember what you said.”

  “Lucky thing too,” Hawk said, “cause I a bad blabbermouth.”

  Jocelyn couldn’t tell if she were being kidded. Her glance shifted back and forth.

  “Hawk’s with me,” I said. “You can talk to us.”

  Jocelyn held her coffee mug in both hands, took a swallow, held the mug against her lower lip, and looked at me over the rim.

  “I’m being followed,” she said.

  Jocelyn waited, allowing the impact of her statement to achieve all it was going to.

  “Lot of that going around,” Hawk said.

  “Tell me about it,” I said.

  “He’s medium height and slender,” Jocelyn said. “Black coat and a black slouch hat pulled low.”

  “When did he start shadowing you?” I said.

  “Two nights ago.”

  “And why not go to the cops?”

  “Well . . . I mean, Jimmy said you were here because someone was stalking someone. And then I was hurrying along the street and I saw you . . .”

  “Sure,” I said. “And I have such a kind face.”

  “Yes,” she said. “You do.”

  “So what would you like?” I said.

  “Like? I . . . Well, I guess I thought you’d want to look into it. I don’t know exactly, but . . . in truth, I guess I thought you might want to, ah, protect me.”

  “Are you saying you want to hire me?”

  “Hire?”

  “Yeah. I do this for a living. Or I used to, before I came down here.”

  “Well . . . of course, I . . . I don’t have any money.”

  “Lot of that going around too,” Hawk said.

  He was looking out at the street. Suddenly he put out his left arm and swept Jocelyn off her chair and onto the floor. I dove on top of her and Hawk hit the floor beside us, the big .44 Magnum gleaming in his hand. Above our heads the plate glass window shattered and the bubbling chatter of an automatic weapon came with it. Glass fell on us. Jocelyn was screaming. Then there was stillness. I realized my gun was out too. I looked around the restaurant. It was as if the film had stopped. The kid reading his Want Advertiser, the old woman at the grill, the two geezers at the counter, were all frozen in silence and slow time. None of them seemed to be hurt. Hawk was up. He never seemed to get up or down; it was as if he just reincarnated in one position or the other. I started to get up and found that Jocelyn was clinging to me in an embrace that seemed as much passion as fear.

  “Stay down on the floor,” I said and shrugged loose from her and stood and looked carefully out the window. The street was empty. The rain was blowing in through the space where the window had been.

  “Uzi,” I said.

  “Un huh. Maroon Buick station wagon, maybe 1990, ’91. Coming slow, window down on the passenger side. Why somebody driving in the rain with the window down? Then he stuck the gun barrel out.”

  “Too soon,” I said.

  Hawk nodded.

  “Shoulda come down the street at a normal speed, windows up,” he said. “Shooter shoulda been in back. They should have pulled into the curb like they were parking. Driver shoulda hit the rear-window button and the shooter shoulda opened up as it went down. We be dead now.”

  “Well, maybe they’re young, and from another country,” I said.

  “Was that a machine gun?” the kid behind the counter said.

  “Assault rifle,” one of the geezers said. “I’ll bet it was one of them damned assault rifles.”

  The old woman had gone in the back room without a word. I put my gun away and reached down a hand to Jocelyn Colby. She took it and stood up, and kept hold of my hand. The old woman came out of the back room.

  “Police coming,” she said.

  “’Course they really going to do it right,” Hawk said. “Shoulda walked in and opened up.”

  He put the Magnum away under his coat. He looked out at the empty street and shook his head.

  “Drive-bys are sloppy,” he said.

  The old woman had a push broom and was carefully sweeping the broken glass into a pile in the middle of the room. She moved implacably and slow, as if movement had always hurt her and she had always moved anyway. Jocelyn continued to cling to my hand, standing very close to me.

  “Were they trying to kill me?” Jocelyn said.

  Hawk grinned without comment.

  “Maybe not,” I said. “Maybe they were trying to kill me.”

  •15•

  A close-up company was power-screwing plywood panels over the shattered window. The crime scene people were through digging slugs out of the woodwork and had departed. Everyone else had made a statement and gone home, except the old lady who was in the back room making phone calls. DeSpain sat on one of the stools, his elbows resting on the counter behind him.

  “So what were you two guys doing up here?”

  “Drinking coffee,” I said. “Eating donuts.”

  “Just like real coppers,” DeSpain said. “You still working on the murder?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What’s Hawk doing here?”

  “Helping,” Hawk said.

  “Helping what?”

  “Helping the investigation.”

  “Hawk.” DeSpain looked tired. “You don’t fucking investigate.”

  Hawk smiled.

  “What you talking to the broad about?” DeSpain said.

  “The murder. I’m trying to talk with everybody about the murder.”

  “Counter kid says she came in after you.”

  “Sure,” I said. “She knew I wanted to talk with her, saw us here, came in.”

  DeSpain nodded.

  “And Hawk was here in case she got outta hand. Who you figure fired thirty rounds or so through the window at you?”

  “What makes it us?” I said.

  “Who else was sitting in the window. You hadn’t hit the deck, you’d have been dead.”

  “And nobody else with a scratch,” I said.

  DeSpain grinned.

  “And they didn’t hit the deck,” he said.

  “Sort of suggestive?” I said.

  “So,” DeSpain said, “say they were after you. Who might they have been?”

  I spread my hands.

  “Everyone loves us,” I said.

  DeSpain looked around the room, the back wall pocked with bullet holes, the window nearly boarded up.

  “Some more than others,” he said.

  “Ain’t that always the way,” I said.

  “You got anything to say,” DeSpain said to Hawk.

  Hawk smiled his friendly smile.

  “No,” he said.

  We all sat. The last piece of plywood went in. The place was quiet.

  “Who you got in Port City,” I said, “might do this?”

  “It’s a funny city,” DeSpain said. “Population about 125,000. You got about 20,000 WASPs live up on the hill, worry about new Beaujolais and civil rights in The Horn of Africa. Along the waterfront you got some 20,000 Portagies, worry about George’s Bank and fava beans. In between, at the bottom of the hill, on the flats inland, you got about 60,000 Chinamen. Sort of a Chink sandwich, between the Yankees and the Portagies. Chinks are worried mostly about staying alive.”

  “How come so many Chinese?” I said.


  “When the mills were here it was mostly French Canuck labor. When the mills pulled out, the Canucks left. The Yankees kept looking for a place to put money. The Portagies kept fishing. They needed fish-processing plants, and they needed cheap labor to make it work.”

  “Where there’s a will, there’s a way,” I said. “You got any thoughts on who did the shooting?”

  “Probably not the Yankees,” DeSpain said. “They’re not against it, but they’d hire it done.”

  “Who would they hire?” I said.

  DeSpain looked at me and his lips curled back in what he probably thought was a smile.

  “Didn’t we get confused here?” he said. “I think I’m supposed to ask you questions.”

  “Just trying to be helpful,” I said.

  “Yeah,” DeSpain said. “Both of you. I’m lucky I don’t have to go it alone.”

  Hawk and I both smiled politely.

  “Well, unfortunately, I guess you’ll be around,” DeSpain said. “I might want to talk with you some more.”

  “Anytime,” I said.

  We were all silent again.

  “You too, Hawk,” DeSpain said after a moment.

  “Anytime,” Hawk said.

  The old lady came out of the back.

  “You wanna lock up now, Evangelista?” DeSpain said.

  She shook her head.

  “Insurance man coming,” she said.

  “Okay,” DeSpain said.

  He stood up, a big, solid, healthy-looking guy, with a big friendly face. And eyes like blue basalt.

  “Anything comes to mind,” he said, “you’ll call.”

  “In a heartbeat,” I said.

  DeSpain looked at Hawk, opened his mouth, and closed it. He shook his head.

  “Of course not,” he said and went on out the door. Hawk and I went out after him. DeSpain got in a waiting car and drove away. Hawk and I walked to my car parked by the theater.

  “You didn’t say nothing about Mr. and Mrs. Wu,” Hawk said.

  “I know,” I said. “DeSpain bothers me.”

  “Always had the reputation he cut it kind of fine,” Hawk said.

  “Yeah.”

  The rain dripped off the bill of my Chicago White Sox cap. I brushed it away. The smell of the rain mixed with the salt smell of the harbor, freshening it, making Port City downtown seem cleaner than it was.