Robert B. Parker: The Spencer Novels 1?6

by Robert B. Parker

  I parked on a hydrant in front of the theater and got out with my duplicate tape and went in. Christopholous didn’t have a VCR in his office. He took me to the conference room to view the tape. The VCR and monitor were on a two-level wheeled deal table pushed against the far wall. We sat on a couple of folding chairs in the big empty room under the bright ceiling fixtures with the stylized theater posters marching in endless gallery around the walls and watched, me for about the fifteenth time, as Jocelyn sat helpless in her chair.

  “For God sake,” Christopholous said when the tape went blank. “What is this?”

  “You now know what I know,” I said.

  “Where’d you get this?”

  “Came in the mail this morning,” I said. “Postmarked Boston.”

  “Well, is she what, a hostage? Do they want a ransom? What?”

  I shrugged.

  “Got any thoughts?” I said.

  “Thoughts? Jesus Christ, Spenser, this is your work, not mine. How would I have thoughts. Have you called the police?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, that’s all I can think of. The theater has no money. If there’s a ransom, we have no money to pay it.”

  “Be nothing left for those nice board member parties if you paid a ransom,” I said.

  “That’s not fair, damn it.”

  “No, probably isn’t,” I said. “I’m feeling kind of grouchy about things. You got any kind of personnel file on Jocelyn?”

  “I imagine we have her head shot and résumé, Social Security number, that sort of thing.”

  “Get it for me, will you?” I said.

  “Why . . . oh, of course, certainly. Be glad to.”

  “Now,” I said.

  “Surely. Excuse me.”

  Christopholous hustled off and left me alone to sit and stare at the empty room and the myriad posters of things past, without seeing anything.

  •40•

  It was late in the afternoon. I was in my office with about an inch of Irish whisky in the bottom of a water glass and my feet up on the window ledge, looking out. I had searched Jocelyn’s apartment and found nothing, except that she appeared to be a neat housekeeper. I had read her folder and learned that she had been born in 1961 in Rochester, New York. I learned that she had studied theater at Emerson College, in Boston. I learned that she had once played Portia in The Merchant of Venice, at the Williamstown Theater Festival, that she had done some commercials for a local tire dealer, and that she had been with a theater company in Framingham before she came to Port City. I was closing in fast.

  Hawk and Vinnie had gone home. I was willing to risk an ambush by the Death Dragons in exchange for a little solitude. I was sick of being guarded. I was also sick of not knowing what I was doing. It was a common condition for me, but I never got used to it. I sipped my whisky.

  Around me in the other offices in the building briefcases were snapping shut, papers were being filed, drawers were being closed, computers were turning off, copy machines were shutting down. The twenty-three-year-old women who filled the building were restoring makeup, reorganizing hair, reapplying lipstick. The young guys that worked with them were in the men’s room checking the haircut, washing up, straightening ties, spraying a little Binaca. Daisy Buchanan’s. The Ritz Bar. The Lounge at the Four Seasons. Thank God it’s Friday. Children still, most of them, everything ahead of them. Career, sex, love, disaster. All of it still to come, all of it waiting for them while they straightened their ties and smoothed their pantyhose and thought about the first cocktail, and who knew what beyond that. The light dwindled. The street lights along Boylston Street came on. The interior lights of the new building gleamed in repetitious squares across Boylston Street. Once, a while ago, through another window when a different building was there, I used to watch a woman named Linda Thomas lean across her drawing board in the advertising agency that used to be housed there. I swallowed a little more whisky.

  It bothered me that whoever had Jocelyn had sent me the tape and nothing else. Why? What did he want? No ransom demand. No threat to do something if I didn’t do something. Just a kind of notification. See, I’ve got her. Maybe it was an orchestrated effort. Let me sweat the picture for a day or so, then send me a letter. Give me a million dollars if you wish to see her alive. Why me? Would I ransom her? The kidnapper had no reason to think I would or that I could. Why kidnap her at all? I had no reason to think she was wealthy. There was nothing in her apartment to make me think that she was wealthy.

  I leaned back and got the phone from my desk and called information in Rochester, New York. There were thirty-two Colbys listed. I said thank you and hung up. My glass was empty. I poured another inch or so into it. In one of the offices across the street a young woman was putting on her coat to go home. She shrugged into the coat and then tossed her hair with both hands so that it would fall outside the coat collar. Officially my position was nonsexist. Unofficially, good-looking women were the most interesting thing in the world. I loved the way they moved, the way they canted their head when they put on lipstick, the way they tried on clothes and looked in the mirror, the way they patted their hair, the way their hips swayed when they walked in high-heeled shoes. The young woman across the street looked at herself in the window reflection for a moment, bending forward from the waist, unaffectedly interested in how she looked. Then she stood and turned away, and in a moment the window square went dark.

  I picked up my phone again and dialed State Police Headquarters at Ten-Ten Commonwealth Avenue. I asked for Captain Healy and in a moment he came on.

  “Spenser,” I said. “I need help.”

  “Glad you finally realize that,” Healy said. “Whaddya need?”

  “Remember I called you the other day? About an ex-Statie named DeSpain?” I said.

  “I remember,” Healy said.

  “I want you to talk to me about him,” I said.

  “What’s in it for me,” Healy said.

  “The pleasure of my company,” I said. “And a steak at the Capital Grill.”

  “Steak sounds good,” Healy said. “When?”

  “Now.”

  “You’re in luck,” Healy said. “My wife’s going to a movie with her sister, and there’s no basketball on.”

  “So you’re desperate.”

  “Yeah,” Healy said. “See you there in an hour.”

  We hung up. I drank some whisky. Most of the office lights were out across the street. Lights were still on in the corridors, and the offices that the janitors were starting. The desultory lighting made the building seem somehow emptier. My own building was quiet now. There were tequila sunrises being drunk now. Seductions were underway. Healthy Choice frozen entrées were popping into microwaves. The local news people were in paroxysms of jolliness at the anchor desks. Dogs were being walked. I called Susan. She wasn’t there. I left an off-color message on her answering machine.

  I finished my drink and corked the bottle and put it away in my desk. I got up and washed the glass and put it away. Then I took the Browning off my desk and put it back in its holster on my hip. I put on my coat and turned off the lights and went out of my office, and locked my door.

  It was a ten-minute walk from my office to the Capital Grill. I thought about Susan the entire walk and felt much better by the time I got there.

  •41•

  Healy ordered an Absolut martini on the rocks. I did the same. When the waiter left, Healy put a brown envelope on the table in front of me.

  “I pulled DeSpain’s personnel file,” he said. “You have no business looking at it.”

  “I know,” I said.

  I picked up the envelope and slipped it into my inside pocket. The waiter returned with the martinis. We ordered food. Healy picked up the martini and looked at it for a moment, then took a drink. He swa
llowed and shook his head slowly.

  “Martinis never disappoint you,” he said.

  I nodded. Mine was a little less compelling after several ounces of Irish whisky.

  “Not many things you can say that about,” Healy said.

  “Now and then a woman,” I said.

  Healy nodded slowly.

  “Been married thirty-seven years,” he said. “You still with Susan?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I remember when you met her. That kidnapping up in Smithfield. She still with the school system?”

  “No, she’s a shrink,” I said.

  “You ever get married?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  I shrugged.

  “Neither of us has wanted to at the same time,” I said.

  “Live with her?”

  “No.”

  “Makes the time together better, doesn’t it?” Healy said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Me and the old lady got separate bedrooms. People are shocked. Think the marriage is in trouble.”

  “Just the opposite,” I said.

  Healy nodded. He was a slim man with square shoulders and close-cut gray hair.

  “Woulda done it sooner,” he said. “But when the kids were home, there weren’t enough rooms. Now there are.”

  He grinned and drank more of his martini.

  “Keeps everything fresh,” he said.

  “Tell me about DeSpain,” I said.

  “Tell me why you want to know,” Healy said.

  I told him.

  “You do have a touch,” Healy said. “Murder, kidnapping, illegal immigrants, and you’ve managed to annoy the Kwan Chang tong.”

  “Beats hanging around outside motels with a camera,” I said.

  “You got backup against Kwan Chang?” Healy said.

  “Hawk and Vinnie Morris.”

  “Vinnie fucking Morris?” Healy said.

  “He does what he says he’ll do, and he’s good with a gun.”

  “I’ll give him that,” Healy said. “Never saw anyone could shoot as good as Vinnie.”

  I said, “Ahem.”

  Healy ignored me and cut into his steak.

  “You want to give me the name of your next of kin?” I said.

  Healy grinned.

  “My cholesterol is about 150,” he said. “I weigh the same as I did when I got out of the Marine Corps.”

  I looked at my cold seafood assortment. I looked at Healy’s steak. I was glad I wasn’t eating it. I was glad I was eating cold seafood. Cold seafood was virtuous.

  “DeSpain and I started about the same time,” Healy said. “He was tougher than a railroad spike, and smart. And stubborn. He got onto a case, he wouldn’t let go of it. And he didn’t act tough. He was folksy, like Will Rogers. Most people liked him.”

  The waiter went by, and Healy snagged him, and ordered another martini. The waiter looked at me. I shook my head. Martinis didn’t go that well with a cold seafood assortment.

  “So he had a big future,” I said.

  “Yeah. He should have been head of Criminal Investigations by now.”

  “Instead of you?”

  “Instead of me,” Healy said. “DeSpain was an investigator for the Middlesex DA, working out of the Framingham barracks. Some sort of stalking situation, and he got himself involved with the victim.”

  I felt it like a jab in the solar plexus.

  “A woman,” I said.

  “Yeah. How many men you know get stalked?”

  “One, maybe,” I said.

  “Anyway, his marriage broke up, ugly, and it screwed his career. Public Safety Commissioner hates it when we start sleeping with people we’re investigating. DeSpain resigned, and I never knew where he went, until you called.”

  “You don’t know the woman’s name?”

  “No, should be in the file. You think she’s involved up in Port City?”

  “The kidnap victim, woman named Jocelyn Colby, who claims she was stalked, used to work with a theater company in Framingham.”

  “Be a big coincidence,” Healy said. “This broad up in Port City, she got anything going with DeSpain?”

  “Nothing that shows,” I said.

  “The course of true love,” Healy said, “never did run smooth.”

  •42•

  I was back and forth between Boston and Port City so much I felt like a carrier pigeon. We were back there again, with Mei Ling, in the Puffin’ Muffin, on a rainy Saturday and I was tired of it. I was tired of the drive. I was tired of not working on the house in Concord. I was tired of the rain. I was tired of being about a step and a half behind. I was tired of not seeing Susan. I was tired of Hawk and Vinnie following me around. I missed Pearl.

  “Hawk, you and Mei Ling work Chinatown. Door to door, anybody who’ll talk. Vinnie, you do the water-front.”

  “And the Death Dragons?” Vinnie said.

  “Screw the Death Dragons,” I said.

  “Do you really think this is the way to find Miss Colby?” Mei Ling said.

  “No,” I said. “But it’s the best I can think of.”

  “Gimme Vinnie,” Hawk said.

  I stared at him. I’d never heard him ask for help.

  “I want somebody looking out for Missy,” he said. “Case I have to beat up the Death Dragons.”

  “Never thought of that,” I said.

  “I know,” Hawk said.

  “I am not afraid,” Mei Ling said.

  “I know,” I said. “Vinnie?”

  “Sure,” Vinnie said. He was eating a pumpkin muffin.

  “Okay, I’m going over to the theater, ask the same people the same questions, again. We can meet in the theater lobby at noon. Compare notes, see who’s found out the least.”

  Hawk smiled widely.

  He said, “Nice to see you so upbeat.”

  “If you see any Death Dragons, shoot them,” I said. “I’m tired of them too.” They got up and left, Mei Ling walking close beside Hawk, her head not nearly level with his shoulder. I paid the bill and went to the theater and began again to round up the usual suspects.

  At ten minutes to twelve I was in the big empty conference room with Deirdre Thompson and her chest, which she kept pointing at me. She was wearing jeans and a powder blue tee shirt that advertised the Casablanca Restaurant. The neck of the tee shirt had been cut with scissors into a low scoop that bared most of her shoulders, and barely maintained itself over her cleavage.

  “Jocelyn ever express a romantic interest in Christopholous?” I said.

  “Oh, hell,” Deirdre said. “Probably. If you’ve got a testicle, Jocelyn will sooner or later express a romantic interest.”

  “Nicely put,” I said.

  “Yeah, well, she’s a piece of work,” Deirdre said. “God, I hope you can get her back.”

  “Do you remember whether she specifically was interested in Christopholous?” I said.

  “You think he’s grabbed her?” Deirdre said.

  I took in some air and let it out, slowly.

  “No. Did she?”

  “Yeah. One of the things about Jocelyn. She likes, ah, men, who, ah, . . .” Deirdre made a kind of rolling gesture with her hands. “Authority figures. That’s what I was trying to say. She’s hot for authority figures.”

  “Like Christopholous.”

  “Sure. She was hot for Jimmy for a while. But he wasn’t interested. Don’t tell him you got this from me, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Everybody knew about it and I think it embarrassed him. Hell, nobody thought anything about it, you know? Like, that’s Jocelyn. She’s a hell of a lot of fun, you
know, so you just buy the package—the men, the drinking, the mess in the dressing room, we all got quirks.”

  “A mess in the dressing room?”

  “Yeah. Like that’s a clue?”

  “Tell me about that.”

  “Well, you ever see a theater dressing room, it’s not usually like in the movies.” She grinned and pantomimed fixing her hair in a mirror, and did a stage manager voice. “‘Five minutes, Miss Garbo.’ You know. It’s like the changing room at a discount store. Everybody’s jammed together, in their skivvies, getting out of one thing and into another. It’s a mess, and if someone is sloppy, it’s that much more of a mess. It is, in fact, a pain in the ass. But Jocelyn . . .” Deirdre shrugged. “She could never keep it neat. She’s clean, and she’s neat about herself, but she’s a slob. You should see her place.”

  “Her apartment?”

  “Yeah, looks like the day after the last day of Pompeii: bed’s a jumble, clothes everywhere, makeup on the floor. It’s hysterical.”

  “What would you think if you went in there and found it neat?”

  Deirdre laughed.

  “I’d think her mother came for a visit. Except I know her mother’s dead.”

  “Father?” I said.

  “Father took off when she was a little girl,” Deirdre said. “I don’t think she ever heard from him. I don’t think she knows if he’s dead or alive. And she says she doesn’t care.”