Pastime

by Robert B. Parker

  Robert B Parker

  Pastime

  For my wife and sons-sine qua non

  CHAPTER 1

  THE dog was a pointer, a solid chocolate German shorthair, three years old and smallish for her breed. She sat bolt upright on the couch in Susan Silverman's office and stared at me with her head vigilantly erect in case

  I might be a partridge.

  "Shouldn't she be lying on the couch?" I said.

  "She's not in analysis," Susan said.

  "She belonged to your ex-husband."

  "Yes," Susan said. "Good point."

  The dog's eyes shifted from Susan to me as we spoke. The eyes were hazel and, because she was nervous, they showed a lot of white. Her short brown coat was sleek, like a seal's, and her oversized paws looked exaggerated, like a cartoon dog.

  "What's her name?" I said.

  Susan wrinkled her nose. "Vigilant Virgin."

  "And she's not in analysis?"

  "I believe they have to have long silly names like that because of the American Kennel Club," Susan said. "She's a hunting dog."

  "I know," I said. "I had one like her when I was a kid."

  "Like her?"

  "Yeah. Same breed, same color, which is not usual. Mine was bigger though."

  "Don't listen," Susan said to the dog. "You're perfectly big enough."

  The dog canted her head at Susan, and raised her ears slightly.

  "What are we going to do with her?" Susan said.

  "We? My ex-husband didn't give her to me," I said.

  "Well, he gave her to me, and what's mine is yours."

  "Not if I have to walk around calling her Vigilant Virgin," I said.

  "What was your dog's name?" Susan said.

  "Pearl."

  "Well, let's call her Pearl."

  "And Boink Brain isn't going to want her back?" I said.

  "He's not so bad," Susan said.

  "Anyone who let you get away is a boink brain," I said.

  "Well," Susan said, "perhaps you're right… anyway. He's been transferred to London, and you can't even bring a dog in there without a six-month quarantine."

  "So she's yours for good," I said.

  "Ours."

  I nodded. The dog got off the couch quite suddenly, and walked briskly over and put her head on my lap and stood motionless, with her eyes rolled slightly upward looking at me obliquely.

  I nodded. "Pearl," I said.

  Susan smiled. "Beautiful Jewish-American girls don't grow up with hunting dogs," she said. "If they have dogs at all they are very small dogs with a little bow."

  "Sure thing, little lady. This looks to me like man's work."

  "I think so," Susan said.

  I patted Pearl's head.

  "You could have told him no," I said.

  "He had nowhere else to place her," Susan said. "And she's a lovely dog."

  Pearl sighed. It seemed a sigh of contentment though dogs are often mysterious and sometimes do things I don't understand. Which is true also of people.

  "Do we have joint custody?" I said. "I get her on weekends?"

  "I think she can stay here," Susan said. "I have a yard. But certainly she could come to your place for sleep-overs."

  "Bring her jammies and her records? We could make brownies?"

  "Something like that," Susan said. "Of course this is the city. We can't let her run loose."

  "Which means you'll need to fence your yard."

  "I think it's the best thing for us to do," Susan said. "Don't you?"

  "No question," I said. "We'll have to work our ass off, of course."

  "Beautiful Jewish-American girls do not `work their ass off,' they bring iced tea in a pretty pitcher to the large goy they've charmed into doing it."

  "When do we get to that?"

  "The charm?"

  "Yeah."

  "Well, you remember once you suggested something and I said I'd never done it because I was too embarrassed."

  "Certainly. It's one of the two or three times you've ever blushed."

  Susan smiled and nodded.

  "Today?" I said.

  She smiled more widely and nodded again. If a serpent had come by with an apple at that moment she'd have eaten it.

  "Spenser's my name," I said. "Fences are my game.

  "Do you require a charm down payment?" Susan said.

  "Well," I said, "some small gesture of earnest intent might be appropriate."

  "Not in front of the baby," Susan said.

  Pearl was on the couch again, perfectly still, gazing at us as if she were smarter than we were, but patient.

  "Of course not," I said. "What kind of fence would you like?"

  "Let's go look at some, she can ride along with us and wait in the car."

  "What could be better?" I said.

  "You'll find out," Susan said and smiled that smile.

  CHAPTER 2

  SUSAN had selected a picket fence made of spaced 1-inch dowels in a staggered pattern. I was listening to the ball game and drilling holes in the stringers to accommodate the dowels when a voice said, "Hi, Ozzie.Where's Harriet?" It was Paul Giacomin, wearing jeans and hightop sneakers and a black tee shirt that said on it American Dance Festival, 1989, in white letters. I had taken him in hand when he was a fifteen-yearold kid caught in his parents' divorce feud with no interests but television and no prospects but more of the same. He was twenty-five now, an inch taller than I was, and almost as graceful.

  "Making iced tea in a pretty pitcher," I said. "What are you doing here?"

  "I tried your apartment first, and then followed my instincts."

  "Trained by a master," I said.

  Paul came over and shook my hand and patted me on the shoulder. Susan came out of the house and told him how glad she was to see him and gave him a hug and kissed him.

  Her range of demonstrable emotion is maybe a little wider than mine.

  "Wait until you see what we have," Susan said.

  She was wearing a glossy black leotard-esque exercise outfit and white sneakers and a bright blue headband and she looked a lot like Hedy Lamarr would have looked if Hedy worked out. She ran back to the house and opened the back door and Pearl came surging out, jumped the three steps off the back porch and, with her ears back, and her mouth open, dashed around the backyard in a slowly imploding circle until she finally ran into me, bounced off, and jammed her head into Paul's groin.

  "Jesus Christ," Paul said. Pearl jumped up with her forepaws on his chest, dropped back down, turned in a tight circle as if she were chasing her tail, and jumped up again trying to lap Paul's face before she dropped back down and streaked around the yard again. As she came by the second time,

  Susan got a hold on her collar and managed to force her to a barely contained stop.

  "She gets over her shyness," Paul said, "she might be cute."

  "Regal," I said.

  "Regal."

  "This is Pearl," Susan said. "I inherited her from my ex-husband because he's transferred to London, and her daddy is building her a fence." "This is embarrassing," Paul said.

  "Let's go get a beer," I said, "and you can see how regal she is inside."

  It took Pearl maybe fifteen minutes to calm down, climb up into the white satin armchair in Susan's living room, turn around three times, and lie with her head on her back legs in a tight ball and watch us drink beer.

  "I recall," Paul said to Susan, "that you used to kick me off that chair.

  It was for looking at, not sitting in, you said."

  "Well, she likes it," Susan said.

  Paul nodded. "Oh," he said.

  "You going to stay awhile?" I said.

  "Maybe," he said. "I left my stuff at your place." I nodded. There was more.

  I'd known him since he was
a fragmented little kid. I waited.

  "How's Paige?" Susan said.

  "Fine."

  "Have you set a date yet?"

  "Sort oњ"

  "How does one sort of set a date?" Susan said.

  "You discuss next April with each other, but you don't tell anyone else. It allows for a certain amount of ambivalence."

  Susan nodded.

  "Want a sandwich or something?" she said.

  "What have you got?"

  "There's some whole wheat bread," Susan said. "And some lettuce…"

  Paul waited.

  "Oregano," I said. "I think I saw some dried oregano in the refrigerator."

  "In the refrigerator?" Paul said.

  "Keeps it nice and fresh," Susan said.

  "That's it?" Paul said. "A lettuce and oregano sandwich on whole wheat?"

  "Low in calories," Susan said, "and nearly fat free."

  "Maybe we could go out and get something later," Paul said.

  I went to the kitchen and got two more beers and a diet Coke, no ice, for

  Susan.

  "Makes me question myself sometimes," I said when I brought the drinks.

  "Being the love object of a woman who likes warm diet Coke."

  Susan smiled at me.

  Paul said, "My mother's missing."

  I nodded. "Tell me about it."

  "We've been getting along a little better. She's a little easier mother for a twenty-five-year-old man than for a fifteen-year-old boy," Paul said.

  "And I used to call her maybe every other week and we'd talk, and maybe two three times a year we'd see each other when she was in New York. She even came to a couple of my performances."

  On the armchair, Pearl sat up suddenly as if someone had spoken to her and gazed off silently toward the bookcase on the far wall. Her head in profile was perfectly motionless and her face was very serious.

  "One thing made her easier was she had a boyfriend, has a boyfriend, I guess. When she's got a boyfriend, she's pretty good. Kind of fun, and interested in me, and not, you know, desperate."

  Pearl put her head slowly back down, this time on her front paws, which hung off the front of the armchair. She gazed soberly at the dust motes that drifted in the shaft of sunlight that came through Susan's back window.

  "Anyway," Paul said, "I've called. her three or four times and got no answer, even though I left messages on her machine. And so I came up and went by her place in Lexington before I went to your place. There's no one there."

  Paul drank some beer from the bottle, held it by the neck, and gazed for a moment at the label.

  "It's got that look, you know, that says it's empty."

  "You have a key?" I said.

  "No. I think she didn't want me walking in on her when she had a date. She was always a little embarrassed with me about dating."

  "Want me to take a look?"

  "Yes."

  "Want to go with me?"

  "Yes. I want more than that. I want you and me to find her."

  "She's probably just off on a little trip with somebody," I said.

  "Probably," he said, and I knew he didn't mean it.

  "Your father?" Susan said.

  Paul shook his head. "I haven't heard from him in maybe six years. I haven't a clue where he is. Once the tuition money stopped…" Paul shrugged.

  "Okay," I said. "We'll find her."

  "I have to know she's all right," Paul said.

  "Sure," I said.

  "Funny," Paul said. "Ten years ago you found me for her."

  The dog uncurled from the chair and hopped down and stretched and came over and got up beside me where I was sitting on the couch and began to lick my face industriously. Her tongue was rough, which was probably useful for stripping meat from bones in the Pleistocene era, but served in the late

  20th century as a kind of sloppy dermabrasion.

  "It'll be even easier this time," I said with my face clenched. "We'll have a trained hunter to help us."

  CHAPTER 3

  PAUL had gone off to the American Rep Theater to watch a performance artist smear herself with chocolate. Susan and I, feeling a little middle class and uptown, went for drinks to the Ritz bar. It had begun to rain when we got there and I got several raindrop spots on my maroon silk tie while I stashed the car with the doorman. Even with the raindrops, I looked Ritz-worthy with my black cashmere blazer and my gray slacks. I had wanted to complete the look by wearing the cowboy boots that had been handmade for me in L.A. by Willie the Cobbler. But Susan reminded me that I tended to fall off them if

  I had more than one drink, so I settled for black cordovan loafers.

  As we cut through the lobby toward the bar, Callahan, the houseman, nodded at me pleasantly. I shot him with my forefinger and he looked at Susan and whistled silently.

  "The house dick just whistled at you," I said.

  "At the Ritz?" Susan said.

  "Shocking but true," I said.

  "Which one is he?" Susan said.

  "Big guy with a red nose and gray hair. Looks fatter than he is."

  "He looks very discerning," Susan said.

  We got a table by the window in the bar, where we could look out through the rain at the Public Gardens. Susan ordered a champagne cocktail. I had scotch and soda.

  "No beer?" Susan said.

  "Celebration," I said. "I'm here with you and Paul's home. Makes me feel celebratory."

  "When did scotch become the drink of celebration?" Susan leaned her chin on her folded hands and rested her gaze on me. The experience was, as it always was, tangible. The weight of her serious intelligence in counterpoint to her playful spoiled princess was culminative.

  "Sometimes it's champagne," I said. "Sometimes it's scotch."

  The bar was dark. The rain slid down the big window, and the early evening light filtering through it was silvery and slight. Susan picked a cashew from the small bowl of mixed nuts on the table, and bit off maybe a third of it and chewed it carefully.

  "I was seventeen," I said, "the first time I had anything but beer. We were bird hunting in Maine, my father and I, and a pointer, Pearl the first. We were looking for pheasant in an old apple orchard that hadn't been farmed in maybe fifty years. You had to go through bad cover to reach it, brambles,and small alder that was clumped together and tangled. My father was maybe thirty yards off to the right, and the dog was ahead, ranging, the way they do, and coming back with her tongue out and her tail erect, and looking at me, and then swinging back out in another arc."

  "Did you train her to do that?" Susan said.

  "No," I said. "It's in the genes, I guess. They'll range like that and come back; and they'll point birds instinctively, but you've got to teach them to hold the point. Otherwise they'll stalk in on the bird and flush it too soon, and it'll fly when you're out of range. Or, if they're really good, they'll kill the bird."

  Susan ate another third of her cashew, and sipped some champagne cocktail.

  The light through the rain was getting grayer. The silver edge was thinning as the evening came down on us.

  "All of a sudden I heard her bark-half hysterical bark, half growl-and she came loping back, stopping every few yards and turning and making her barking snarling sound that had some fear in it, and then she reached me and leaned in hard on my leg and stood like they do, with her front legs stiff and her tail down and her ears sort of flattened back, and growled.

  And the hair was stiff along her spine. And I remember thinking, `Jesus, this must be the pheasant that ate Chicago.' We had just come out of the cover and into the orchard and I looked and there was a bear." "A grizzly?" Susan said. Her eyes were fixed on 21

  me and they seemed bottomless and captivated, like a kid listening to ghost stories.

  "No, they don't have grizzly bears in Maine. It was a black bear, he'd been feeding on the fallen apples that some of the trees were still producing.

  They must have been close to rotten, and they must have been fermenting in
his stomach, because he was drunk."

  "Drunk?"

  "Yeah, bears do that sometimes. Usually it happens close to a town, because that's where there are apple orchards, and the forest ranger types dart them and haul them off to some other place in the woods to sober up. But no one had tranquilized this one. He was loose, upright, drunk, and swaying a little. I don't know how big he was. Maybe a hundred and fifty pounds or so. Maybe more. They can get bigger. Standing on his hind legs he looked a lot bigger than I was."

  "What did you do?"

  "Well, the dog was going crazy now, growling and making a kind of high whining noise, and the bear was reared up and grunting. They sound more like pigs than anything else. I had a shotgun full of birdshot, sevens, I think, and it might have annoyed the bear. It sure as hell wouldn't have stopped him. But I didn't have anything else and I was pretty sure if I ran it would chase me, and they can run about forty miles an hour, so it was going to catch me. So I just stood there with the shotgun leveled. It was a pump. I had one round in the chamber and three more in the magazine, and

  I prayed that if hecharged and if I got him in the face it would make him turn. The dog was in a frenzy, dashing out a few feet and barking and snarling and then running back to lean against my leg. The bear reared up, swaying, and I can still remember how rank the bear smelled and the way everything moved so slowly.

  And then my father was beside me. He didn't make any noise coming.

  Afterwards he said he heard the dog and knew it was something, probably a bear, from the way the dog sounded. He had a shotgun too, but he also was carrying a big old.45 hogleg, a six-shooter he'd had ever since he was a kid in Laramie. And he stood beside the dog, next to me, and took that shooter's stance that I always can remember him using, and cocked the.45 and we waited. The bear dropped to all fours, and snorted and grunted and dipped its head and turned around and left. I can see us like a painting on a calendar, my father with the.45 and the dog between us, snarling, and yipping, and me with the shotgun that, if he'd charged, the bear would have picked his teeth with."

  It was dark now outside the Ritz bar, and the rain coiling down the windowpane looked black. Susan had finished her cashew and was leaning back in her chair, holding her drink in both hands, watching me.