Bad Business

by Robert B. Parker

  I nodded.

  "You know anything that will point us anywhere?"

  "Do I ever," I said.

  Healy's eggs arrived and he ate some.

  "His wife," I said, "hired me to get the goods on him for a divorce."

  "Did you?"

  "Yeah, he's cheating on her, but I don't have pictures."

  "Pictures," Healy said.

  "Yeah. She insists on pictures. In the act."

  "Jealous wife ain't a bad motive," Healy said.

  I didn't tell him about Elmer O'Neill. Or the Eisens. I saw nothing useful to me for the moment to say anything about the guy Rowley hired to follow his wife. She was after all a client and I might as well protect her as far as I could. I could always tell it later. For the moment holding it back might give me a useful thing to trade someday. I had never gotten into serious trouble keeping my yap shut.

  "What we can be pretty sure of," I said, "is whoever wanted him dead, wanted him dead pretty bad. Walk in and shoot him, no attempt to make it look like an accident, or a suicide. They wanted it done quick."

  Healy bit the corner off a triangle of toast and chewed it slowly and swallowed.

  "Or they were so mad it didn't matter to them," Healy said.

  "That narrows it down," I said.

  Healy grinned at me.

  "Yeah, it was either a crime of passion or it wasn't," he said.

  12

  Marlene and I discussed her husband's death, sitting on the side porch, sipping iced tea and looking at the uneventful sweep of her front lawn.

  "A person from the state police called me," Marlene said. "A captain."

  "Healy," I said.

  "Whatever," she said. "Did you get the pictures of Trent cheating?"

  "No."

  "I told you I wanted pictures." I nodded.

  "Have you identified the woman?" Marlene said.

  "Does it matter now?" I said.

  "Of course it matters," Marlene said. "I'm paying for this information."

  "Woman's name is Ellen Eisen."

  "My God," she said, "that stupid little Jew."

  "Nicely said."

  "Oh, God. Don't get PC on me. She is a stupid little Jew." There didn't seem anywhere to take that, so I nodded and left it.

  "Sorry things worked out the way they did," I said.

  "Don't worry about me. I'm strong. I can take it. I don't need any sympathy."

  "I'm sorry anyway," I said.

  "They'll think I did it," Marlene said.

  "They will?"

  "Of course they will, they always suspect the wife."

  "In a homicide," I said, "the cops routinely investigate everybody. They'll clear you."

  "My friends will think I did it. I know they will. They will love blaming me."

  "What are friends for?" I said. She paid no attention.

  "They'll think because of who I am, the police would be intimidated and not really investigate."

  The image of her intimidating Healy made me smile, but Marlene took no notice.

  "I'll need you to prove I wasn't involved," she said.

  "I don't think you do," I said. "On the reasonable assumption that you weren't, I should think the cops could do that on their own."

  "You still work for me," she Said. "I want to be cleared."

  "Where were you last night," I said, "between, say, six and ten."

  "I went to the movies."

  "Where?"

  "At that new big theater complex near the new Ritz."

  "What did you see?"

  "Chicago. And I don't like being questioned this way."

  "The easiest way to be cleared is to have an alibi," I said.

  "Well, I was at the movies. I often go into Boston alone to the movies."

  "You didn't see anyone you knew?"

  "No."

  "You have the ticket stub?"

  "No, of course not, why would I save a ticket stub?"

  I was quiet.

  "It's like you think I did do it," she said.

  "You have very little chance of getting at the truth," I said, "if you know in advance what the truth ought to be."

  "Oh don't lecture me," she said. "Go do your job."

  "Marlene," I said. "I think I'm going to have to file you under Life's Too Short."

  "Excuse me?"

  "I quit again."

  She stared at me. "You can't quit," she said.

  "Sure I can."

  I stood up.

  "I'll send my bill to Randy," I said.

  She began to cry. I started for the door. She cried harder.

  "Please," she said.

  I got to the door.

  "Please," she said again.

  I looked back. She was bent way over in her chair as if her stomach hurt. Her face was buried in her hands.

  "Please don't leave," she said. "Please don't leave me like this."

  She had me. I put my hand on the doorknob but I knew I wasn't going to turn it. I took in some air. She blubbered.

  "Okay," I said.

  "What?"

  "Okay," I said.

  I turned away from the door and went back and sat down. I was 0 for 2, quitting.

  13

  Dr. Silverman and I looked at the Gainsborough exhibit all morning at the Museum of Fine Arts. Then we went for lunch in the museum restaurant. Susan had salad. I had fruit and cheese. We shared a bottle of pinot grigio.

  "I doubt that she was faking the hysterics," Susan said to me. "It is not easy to do."

  "You ever do it?"

  "No."

  "Even when I propose sex?"

  "Those are real hysterics," Susan said. I ate a seedless grape.

  "Funny thing," I said. "She didn't get hysterical over her husband's death."

  "They were estranged, after all," Susan said.

  "First thing she wanted to know was if he was cheating, and did I get pictures."

  Susan took a bite from a leaf of Boston lettuce. "Was he?" she said.

  "Yes, I had him in a hotel room for several hours with a woman."

  "You told her."

  "Yeah. That's what she hired me for."

  "Maybe."

  "Maybe?"

  "Pictures?" Susan said.

  "No. I probably was never going to get the pictures she wanted."

  "Because?"

  "Because she wanted them en flagrante."

  "And you found it repellent to get such pictures."

  "I did."

  "And why did she want such pictures?" Susan said. Susan had forgotten her salad.

  "Said she wanted rock solid proof when she went into divorce court," I said.

  Susan nodded slowly. She was in her focused mode. In her focused mode she could set things on fire.

  "Divorces are often granted without such evidence," she said.

  "Usually," I said.

  Susan sipped her wine, and was silent. She would often stop like that, in the middle of a discussion, when she had come across something interesting. I knew she was thinking about it. I waited.

  "It's a way to be part of it," Susan said.

  "Part of ... ?"

  "The partner of someone who is having an adulterous affair is excluded. Seeing pictures, having information, is a way of not being excluded, of becoming, so to speak, a part of the action."

  "Knowledge is power?" I said.

  "Knowledge is participation," Susan said. "A way not to be left out. And, probably, a sort of revenge."

  "Because it would humiliate him to be caught on camera?"

  "His every secret revealed," Susan said.

  "You think that's why she hired me?"

  "Things are never one thing," Susan said. "There are always several truths."

  "So," I said. "She wanted to clean his clock in the divorce. She wanted revenge. And she what ... something else?"

  "Well," Susan said. "She would be a third participant in a covert sexual liaison."

  "So she'd get sexual pleasure."

/>   "Yep."

  "Voyeurism?"

  "Well, sure, I suppose. If you define voyeurism as getting pleasure out of observing sex."

  "That would cover a pretty good segment of the population," I said.

  "I seem to recall somebody peeking in the mirrors on a hotel room wall once?"

  "Voyeurism," I said.

  "Which is why, Mirror Boy, putting a name to behavior doesn't always add much information."

  "Will this be on the midterm?" I said.

  She smiled.

  "God," she said, "I do lecture, don't I."

  "And beautifully," I said.

  "Is she a suspect?" Susan said.

  "Marlene? In her husband's murder? No more than the husband's girlfriend, or the husband's girlfriend's husband, or the wife of the guy Marlene was seeing if she was seeing anybody, or the guy Marlene was seeing if she was seeing anybody."

  "Wow!"

  "A serial gang bang," I said. "Maybe."

  "So hiring you to clear her name seems a little premature."

  "It's not the cops," I said. "It's her friends."

  "How lovely," Susan said.

  "You think in fact it's really the continuing quest for, ah, voyeuristic information?"

  "Yes. "

  "Even though he's dead?"

  "Yes," Susan said. "He won't escape her that easily."

  "What do you think about her own affair?"

  "If there really was one, I'd guess it was a case of revenge fuck."

  "That a Freudian expression?" I said.

  "Actually," Susan said. "I believe I learned it from you."

  "Glad you've been paying attention," I said.

  "And, of course you have agreed to continue."

  "Well, the pay is good, and she did cry-you know how l hate crying-and I'm sort of curious about who killed her husband while I was outside watching."

  Susan smiled.

  "What?" I said.

  "Even if the pay were bad and she didn't cry," Susan said.

  "You think I'd do it just because I'm curious?"

  "Without question," Susan said.

  "You shrinks think you know everything," I said.

  "Am I right?" Susan said.

  "Yes."

  14

  Between Washington Street and Tremont, near the Boylston Street corner, in what publicists were trying to call the Ladder District, a second Ritz Carlton Hotel had been built in the same redevelopment effort that produced the movie theater complex where Marlene said she had seen Chicago. Associated with the hotel was a passel of high-end condominiums, in one of which, on the top floor, Ellen and Bernard Eisen lived in maybe less harmony than they had once hoped. Ellen was expecting me.

  When I had seen her the other night, coming out of the Hyatt Hotel with Trent Rowley, I had noted, in a professional sort of way, that she was a semi-knockout. But seeing her in tile bright morning light I decided to upgrade her knockout-ness to full. In tight maroon sweats, her legs didn't seem heavy after all. Just strong.

  "Let's sit in the living room," she said. "There's a nice view of the Common."

  I followed her down a small corridor and into a big bright room with wall-to-wall carpet and big windows through which there was in fact a nice view of the Common. And the Public Gardens. And the Charles River Basin. And Cambridge. And, maybe, on a clear day, eternity. The room had been organized around the view. There was a big beige couch facing the window, and two big tan leather high-backed wing chairs, kittycorner to the window so that the occupant could look at the view and still talk with someone on the couch. Seated in perfect repose in one of the chairs was a man with dark, very big, very deep-set eyes. He was a slender guy with a short gray beard. His hair was gray, and what was left was wavy and long in the back. His high forehead was nicely tanned.

  He rose from the chair effortlessly when Ellen Eisen introduced us. Standing he was maybe two inches taller than I was. Which made him tall. His name, she said, was Darrin O'Mara. We shook hands. His handshake, for all the near theatricality of his appearance and movements, was soft. His deep-eyed gaze was direct and sort of reassuring. When he spoke I heard a faint lilt. Irish maybe.

  "Pleasure to meet you," he said.

  "What can we do for you, Mr. Spenser," Ellen said.

  O'Mara sat back down and crossed his legs effortlessly. His freshly creased slacks were the color of butterscotch. His wingtipped loafers were burgundy. He wore no socks. He had on a starched white shirt, open at the throat, and a blue blazer with brass buttons. My clothes must never fit that well, I thought. I'd be overwhelmed with sexual opportunities, and never get any work done. I promised myself to be careful.

  "I have sort of a delicate matter to discuss," I said.

  "You may speak freely in front of Darrin," Ellen said.

  "Are you her lawyer?" I said to Darrin.

  He smiled gently. I thought maybe I'd seen him someplace before.

  "Oh, God, no," Ellen said. "I hate lawyers. Darrin is my advisor. I asked him to be here."

  "This isn't a financial thing," I said.

  "I'm an advisor in matters of the heart," Darrin said in his soft lilt.

  I t was the matters-of-the-heart phrase that made me remember him. He had a local talk show called "Matters of the Heart." It was a call-in radio talk show from seven to midnight three nights a week. In the last year or so one of the local stations had begun to televise the radio show live.

  "Ah yes," I said. "That Darrin O'Mara."

  He put his fingertips together and put them to his mouth and smiled modestly. Ellen looked at him as if he had just strolled in across the harbor.

  "As I mentioned," I said to her, "I'm looking into the death of Trent Rowley."

  "Yes."

  "You knew Mr. Rowley?"

  "Yes. He and my husband worked together."

  I looked at O'Mara. He smiled at me sweetly over his fingertips. I thought a little.

  "I have no secrets from Darrin," Ellen said.

  I nodded.

  "Okay," I said. "I know you and Trent Rowley were intimate."

  She stared at me calmly. O'Mara continued to give me the benign eyeball.

  "How do you know that?" Ellen said.

  "Reasonable supposition," I said. "I tailed him to the Hyatt in Cambridge last week. You and he were in room seven-seventeen together for about three hours."

  "And you choose to give that fact the most lurid interpretation possible."

  "I do."

  She looked at O'Mara.

  Speaking softly, he said, "Trust the truth, Ellie, remember?" She looked into his eyes for a little while.

  "There is no deceit involved," she said. "My husband and I have an open marriage."

  O'Mara looked proud.

  "And your husband is aware of that," I said.

  "Oh, don't be small-minded. It is very unbecoming."

  "So he didn't object to you spending time with Trent Rowley."

  "No. Of course not."

  O'Mara spoke in his deep gentle voice.

  "Are you familiar, Mr. Spenser, with the ancient tradition of courtly love?"

  "Love is available only without the coercion of marriage?" I said.

  O'Mara hadn't expected me to know. He was far too deeply centered to blink, but he did pause for a moment.

  "Only in circumstances where love is unbidden by law or convention can it truly be given and received."

  "That too," I said.

  "In my work I apply the courtly love tradition to contemporary marriage. Only when a wife is free to choose another can she be free to choose her husband."

  "Heady," I said. "Do you have any idea why someone would wish to shoot Trent Rowley?"

  "Lord, no," Ellen said.

  "Enlightened as he is about courtly love," I said, "your husband wouldn't put several jealous slugs into Rowley's head, would he?"

  "Don't be coarse," she said.

  "He did hire a guy named Elmer O'Neill to follow you around," I said. I had no idea whe
re I was going. I was just poking into the anthill to see if any ants came out.

  "Excuse me?"

  "Elmer O'Neill, private eye. We met at the Hyatt, me tailing Rowley, Elmer tailing you."

  "That can't be true," Ellen said. "My husband and I have traveled far beyond the petty constraints of jealousy."

  "Then why would he have you followed?" I said. She looked at O'Mara. He nodded gently.

  "It seems apparent," he said, "that Ellen cannot attest to the truth of your allegation."

  "I wasn't asking her to," I said. "I was asking her why she thought her husband might do it."

  "A quibble," O'Mara said. "I believe we are through with this interview."

  "That so, Mrs. Eisen?"

  She looked at O'Mara again. He nodded gently again. "Yes," she said. "Please go."

  There was a small schoolyard impulse, a vestige of my more heedless youth, that made me want to say no, and see what O'Mara did. But it wouldn't take me anywhere useful, so I nodded pleasantly instead.

  "Thanks for your time," I said.

  "What are you going to do?" she said.

  "I'll be traveling beyond the petty constraints of rejection," I said.

  15

  I went over to Kinergy to talk with Bernie Eisen. The security guy at the front desk took my phone call, and in a minute or two a shiny bright guy with short hair and rimless glasses appeared. His hair was so blond it was nearly white. His suit and shirt were banker gray, with a silver tie. Everything was ironed and starched and pressed and fitted. His cropped mustache was perfectly trimmed. His black wing tips gleamed with polish. His nails were manicured. He had small eyes magnified by the glasses.

  "Mr. Spenser? Gavin, director Of Security."

  He put out his hand. We shook. His grip was everything it should have been. I went easy, so as not to frighten him.

  "I wonder if you could step on into my office, for just a couple of minutes," Gavin said.

  "Sure," I said.

  Number six on the Spenser Crime Stoppers List is, go with the flow. We took the elevator to the top of the building, and walked down a bright corridor to Gavin's big office. There were three slick-looking secretaries in the outer office, all wearing skirts, and all smelling faintly of good perfume. They seemed busy. Two on computers, one on the phone.