Pale Kings and Princes

by Robert B. Parker

  "Internist?" Susan said.

  "Yeah, I looked him up in the phone book."

  "I'll speak to him. Sedation helps, but only for so long. After a point it delays the process of reintegration."

  "Don't want to do that," Hawk said.

  Susan smiled at him. "Different kind," she said. She looked at me and back at Hawk. "Take care of each other," she said. Then she pulled away, spinning her tires, going a little too fast, as she always did.

  We got in Hawk's Jaguar.

  "Where we going?" Hawk said.

  "Might as well go talk with Esteva," I said.

  "Any chance he might want to shoot us a little?" Hawk said.

  "Some," I said.

  "Bet he can't," Hawk said. He slid the car into first and we glided out of the parking lot. The stereo was playing softly.

  "What the hell is that?" I said.

  "Waylon Jennings," Hawk said. He reached over and ejected the tape.

  "You?"

  Hawked looked over at me. "Naw, man. Susan. She into that hillbilly stuff."

  "Yeah," I said, "I know. She's smart though, and a good dancer."

  People looked at the Jaguar as we went through Wheaton. There were some workers in the yard at Esteva's produce warehouse when we pulled up. They stared at the Jaguar. When we got out, they stared at Hawk. He glanced at them and they turned quickly away and went about their business, or made some up to be about.

  There was a door near the front of the warehouse. Over it a small rustic sign hung from a wrought-iron arm. It said OFFICE. We went in. There was a desk opposite the door and filing cabinets on the wall behind it. A round-shouldered man with thick black hair and a long nose sat at the desk. The sign on his desk said SHIPPER. "Arthur" was lettered in white script above the pocket of his dark blue work shirt.

  "Help you?" he said. He glanced at me and then at Hawk and then quickly back to me.

  "Esteva?" I said.

  "Mr. Esteva's got a meeting," Arthur said. "What's it about?"

  "Tell him Spenser's here," I said.

  Arthur picked up the phone and dialed. "Arthur," he said into the phone. "Tell Mr. Esteva there's a guy named Spenser out here to see him. Another guy with him, too."

  He listened at the phone for about a minute. Then he nodded. "Okay," he said, and hung up. He pointed toward a door in the wall to our right. "Through there, turn left. There's some stairs at the far side of the warehouse. Go up the stairs."

  I said, "Thank you."

  We went through the door and were in the warehouse proper. There were roller conveyors and long flat tables and wide aisles through which forklift trucks moved. Crates of vegetables were piled on the tables and workers repacked them and sent them on down the rollers to the next station as orders were packed. Most of the workers were Hispanic.

  The wooden stairs went up at right angles, along the far wall of the building. At the top of the stairs an office with frosted-glass windows perched like a tree house halfway up the wall. When I reached the door, it opened and I stepped inside. Hawk stopped outside. Esteva was at his desk. Cesar was standing against the wall to his left. Hands hanging at his side., His small hat sitting squarely on top of his head. I glanced behind the door that had just opened. The guy in the Celtics jacket was behind me.

  "Tell your friend to come in," he said.

  "How about you walk over near the desk," I said, "where we can see you. Then he'll come in."

  Celtics Jacket looked at Esteva. Esteva made a barely perceptible nod of his chin. Celtics Jacket shrugged. He left the door open and walked over to stand against the wall to Esteva's right.

  Hawk stepped through the door and closed it quietly behind him. He looked at Cesar. Cesar looked back, with no expression. I looked at Esteva. He looked back: No one was looking at Celtics Jacket. He'd had his turn. The silence lasted for a long time, for a silence.

  "Esteva's the one in the middle," I said to Hawk. "Guy with the funny hat is named Cesar. Guy with the Celtics jacket, I don't know his name."

  "How come he wearing his jacket indoors," Hawk said.

  "Probably doesn't own a shirt," I said.

  "What do we call him," Celtics Jacket said. "He got a name or we just call him Schwartze?"

  "They call me Mr. Tibbs," Hawk said. He still hadn't taken his eyes off Cesar.

  "Tibbs, huh? Sounds like a fucking schwartze name . . ."

  "Shut up, Felice," Esteva said without looking at him. "He's kidding you."

  We were all quiet again, looking.

  Esteva lit one of his Gilbert Roland cigars. He inhaled, let out a cloud of smoke and gazed at me through it. Dramatic.

  "You come to do any business?" Esteva said.

  "Maybe," I said. "What kind of business you got in mind?"

  "I figure you got something you want to sell me."

  Beside me Hawk was as motionless as Cesar. They seemed oblivious to the rest of us, lost in contemplation.

  "What do you think that is?" I said.

  Esteva puffed on his cigar.

  "How I know you don't have a wire?" he said.

  "Let Felice pat us down, one at a time," I said.

  Esteva turned his head toward Cesar. "Not Cesar," I said. "Felice."

  "Sure," Esteva said. He nodded at Felice. Felice patted me down carefully.

  "He carrying, Mr. Esteva," Felice said.

  "Un huh," Esteva said.

  Felice moved slowly to Hawk and patted him down. Even during the frisk, Hawk's eyes never left Cesar.

  "Tibbs carrying too, Mr. Esteva."

  "Any wire?"

  "No."

  "Good," Esteva said. "No problem." Felice stepped back to his place by the wall. Esteva said, "No need to bullshit anymore. You got two hundred keys of cocaine belongs to me."

  "I had to turn in a hundred to the cops to explain what I was doing with the kid."

  "Sure, and you figure to bust me too. Hundred good as three to bust me," Esteva said. "If I go to jail you sell it to somebody else."

  "You understand," I said.

  "I understand business," Esteva said. "Two hundred keys, a lot of coke. A lot of money. It's why you still alive." He pronounced you as if it were spelled with a j.

  "Because I know where it is," I said. Esteva smiled and nodded.

  "I thought of that too," I said. "And I thought about how once I sell it back to you, there's no reason for me to stay alive."

  "Lotta money in this business," Esteva said. "But it's risky"-he inhaled some cigar smoke -"risky business. Why there's so much money."

  "So are you buying?"

  Esteva shrugged. I waited. Esteva waited. I waited some more.

  "How much you asking?" Esteva said.

  "Thirty-two thousand a kilo," I said.

  Esteva shook his head. "That's list around here," he said.

  "I know," I said.

  "I already paid for the junk once," Esteva said. "Can't make a living paying list price twice."

  I said, "Un huh."

  Esteva didn't say anything. Neither did I. Below and behind us the sounds of produce distribution went on. The clatter of the rollers on the conveyor runs, the thump of crates being tossed around.

  "Ten," Esteva said.

  "In Boston I can get over forty," I said.

  "Ten, and you stay alive," Esteva said.

  We were quiet again. Beside me Hawk was whistling to himself. Almost inaudibly. He did it between his teeth, with his lips barely parted. "Georgia on My Mind."

  "Think about it," Esteva said. "No rush, a few days."

  "I'll think about it," I said, and turned and started out the door. Hawk pointed his forefinger at Cesar with his thumb cocked. He grinned and dropped the thumb. "Bang," he said.

  Cesar never blinked. Hawk made a little laughing sound to himself that sounded like "hum." Then he turned and came after me. At the foot of the stairs were Arthur and three other guys who didn't look like workers. I recognized two of them from the lobby of the Reservoir Court Motel. W
e walked through them without comment and through the office and out into the yard.

  "How'd you like Cesar," I said.

  "Ain't no lettuce plucker," Hawk said.

  "Probably not," I said.

  We got in Hawk's car and pulled away. Slowly.

  "He ain't gonna give you money for that stuff," Hawk said. "He can't stay in business, he let people hold him up like that."

  "I know," I said. "He's smart, though. He haggled with me just like he was going to pay."

  "He'll come to a price with you and then when you show up he'll kill you."

  "Unless we prevent him."

  Hawk grinned. "Cesar going to take heavy preventing."

  "We heavy enough?" I said.

  Hawk's grin widened. "'Course," he said. "You got some kind of plan here?"

  "About half a plan," I said. "I held back the two hundred kilos so I could have some leverage with Esteva. If everything was aboveboard a hundred keys is enough to blow Esteva out of the water and if it did I could turn the other two in."

  "But it didn't," Hawk said.

  "No. Which meant pretty sure that everything was not aboveboard."

  "We back to Wheaton's finest again."

  "Yes," I said.

  "Where the stuff now," Hawk said.

  "In a storage room downstairs at the Harbor Health Club."

  "You kind of illegal," Hawk said.

  "I figured you wouldn't mind," I said.

  "Mind," Hawk said, "I like it. Just never figured out where you draw all them lines you draw."

  "I'm a little fuzzy on that myself."

  "You know Esteva's going to ace you if he can, which he can't but he don't know that. You know he's Frosty himself for maybe the whole Northeast. You think he clipped three people including a seventeen-year-old kid. You willing to hijack his truck and hold his junk and extort him, all of which making him and old Cesar mad as hell."

  "True," I said.

  "But you not willing to just dust him and fold it up."

  "No."

  "You not practical, babe."

  "True."

  "You willing to kill some people. You done it to a bunch out west a couple years ago."

  "Yeah."

  "But not here."

  "I don't know enough," I said.

  "I don't know the whole thing and Caroline Rogers has a right to know it all."

  "You had to shoot anybody since out west?" Hawk said.

  "Shot a guy in the leg, couple weeks back," I said.

  Hawk said, "Um."

  "Didn't I hear you whistling Willie Nelson back there in the warehouse?" I said.

  "Susan play those tapes at me," he said, "all the way out."

  "And maybe you kind of like Willie?" I said.

  "He ain't Jimmy Rushing," Hawk said.

  Chapter 29

  Susan came back from seeing Caroline Rogers. She came into the bar, where Hawk and I were being served in silence by Virgie. Hawk and I were drinking beer.

  "Asked for champagne," Hawk said to Susan. "They gave me Korbel."

  "Frontier living," Susan said. Hawk slid down a stool along the bar, and Susan sat between us. Virgie came down the nearly empty bar and looked at her.

  "Margarita," Susan said, "on the rocks, salt."

  "What do you think," I said.

  "I talked with Wagner. He's all right. He's not awfully sophisticated about emotions, but he knows it and is glad for the help."

  "How about Caroline," I said.

  "She's home," Susan said, "Wagner released her while I was there and we took her home. She's going to take tranquilizers for about three months and then we'll slowly reduce the dosage."

  "Otherwise you get cardiac problems," Hawk said.

  Susan and I both looked at Hawk for a moment.

  "That's right," Susan said. Hawk smiled.

  "You look like a scary Mona Lisa when you do that," Susan said.

  Hawk's smile broadened.

  "How'd Caroline feel about you," I said.

  "Ambivalent," Susan said. "She's suspicious of shrinks. She'd rather you had been there."

  "Un huh."

  "She is under the impression that you can leap tall buildings at a single bound."

  "Well," I said, "not really tall buildings."

  "But whoever she'd prefer," Susan said, "she knows she needs help with this, and she seems to believe, at least partially, that help is possible."

  "That's encouraging," I said.

  "Yes, it is," Susan said. "Hopelessness is hard."

  "Did you make any arrangements?" I said.

  "I'll see her tomorrow. Then we'll see. I don't normally do house calls. I don't know if she'll want to drive forty miles each way, twice a week, to see me."

  "You could refer her," I said.

  "Yes, for the long term. For the short term she's suicidal and you can probably help her as much as I can."

  "By doing what?" I said.

  "By being there. By seeing her. By telling her she can count on you. She's fastened on you in the middle of a time when everything has collapsed."

  "Hell, I'm part of what caused the collapse," I said.

  "Don't matter," Hawk said.

  "That's right," Susan said. "It doesn't. It's a little like the baby geese that, new hatched, imprint on their keeper and act as though he were their mother. When tragedies like this hit people, they are nearly destroyed, the old order has, at least symbolically, died."

  "Or actually died, in this case," I said.

  "Yes. So that Caroline is, as it were, new hatched."

  "And she imprinted on you, babe," Hawk said.

  "Only because you weren't around, Mona."

  "Likely," Hawk said.

  "It's more than grief," Susan said.

  "What else?" I said.

  "There's guilt," Susan said.

  "About what?"

  "I don't know yet, I barely know there's a guilt. But it's there."

  "Lot of people feel guilty when someone they're close to dies," I said. "The better-him-than-me syndrome. The if-only-I'd-been-nice-to-him-slash-her syndrome."

  "The what- am-I-going-to-do-for-money-slash-sex syndrome," Hawk said.

  "Maybe any, maybe all of those," Susan said. "But she's already idealizing her husband. She's not idealizing her son."

  "Which means?"

  "I don't know what it means. I know that it suggests a variation from the usual patterns of grief that I see."

  "It's atypical," I said.

  "Yes," Susan said. "It's atypical. Psychology is not practiced with the innards of birds. If you have experience and you've seen a lot of people in extremis, you see patterns. And then you see anyone in extremis whose behavior is different from the ones you've been seeing, and you say, in technical language, hoo ha!"

  "And Caroline is different."

  "Yes. If I were talking to a colleague I would never be this bold. I would say perhaps more often, and inappropriate, and further examination may reveal, but to you I say, there's guilt."

  "Because I'm not your colleague," I said.

  "That's right," Susan said. "You are my sweet patootie."

  A short round-faced guy in a navy pea coat and jeans came into the bar and walked toward us.

  "Spenser?" he said.

  "Yes."

  "My name's Conway. I'm the cop that was in the reception room at Wheaton Union Hospital the day you were there."

  When I was inquiring about a shooting."

  "Yeah."

  "You seemed to feel there was no shooting," I said.

  "Yeah. Can we talk?"

  "Right here is fine," I said.

  "This is private."

  "All for one," I said, "and one for all. Here is good."

  Conway took a breath and looked at Virgie. She was down at the far end of the bar.

  He lowered his voice. "You're playing against a house deck," he said.

  I nodded.

  "Cops ain't on your side," he said.

  "The Whe
aton cops."

  "Yeah. They're Esteva's."

  "I sort of figured that," I said.

  "They're going to show up here in a while and search your room and find some cocaine."

  "Which they'll bring," I said.

  "We think you maybe got some there," Conway said, "but if you don't they'll find it anyway."

  "And arrest me."

  "Conspiracy to distribute."

  "They got a warrant?" I said.

  "They can have one if they want to," Conway said. "You don't understand about this town. It's Esteva's. He owns all of it."

  "Did he own Bailey?" I said.

  "I don't know," Conway said.

  "How come you're blowing the whistle," Hawk said.

  Conway shook his head. "I ain't. I grew up with these guys. I known them all my life. But I can't be part of it anymore."

  "Which was it," I said. "Bailey or the kid?"

  "Both," Conway said. "After Bailey went down I decided to get out. Then the kid got killed. Seventeen-year-old kid." He shook his head.

  "You won't talk to the state cops?"

  "No. I'm talking to you because I don't want no more killings on my head."

  "You figure we'd be killed resisting arrest?"

  "Sooner or later," he said. "They gotta find the coke 'fore you die, but once they get you in they ain't gonna let you out. None of you." He looked at Susan.

  "So what are you going to do," I said.

  "I'm outa here," Conway said. "I'm single. Got the dog in the car outside. Got a thousand bucks I saved. I'm going to California."

  "Still want to be a cop?"

  "Yeah. I like it, or I used to. Then the money started getting so easy, and blowing the whistle on your buddies . . . I couldn't."

  "There's a homicide cop in Los Angeles, a lieutenant named Samuelson," I said. "If you go there and look him up he might be able to help. Tell him I sent you."

  "Samuelson," Conway said. "I'll remember. Thanks."

  "How about the guy I shot on the road that night?" I said.

  "Chuckie," he said. "He's okay. Didn't hit the bone."

  "Who recruited them?" I said.

  "Esteva. Chuckie and his brother both done a little time. Used to do low-level stuff like that for Esteva."

  "I'm low-level stuff?"

  "We thought so," Conway said.

  "Anything else you can tell us," I said.

  "No, I'm outa here," he said. "I should be gone now."