Paul nodded.
"You know Richie Beaumont?" Vinnie said.
"No."
Vinnie nodded again and sucked on his upper lip a little.
"And if you knew where he was you wouldn't be here looking for him."
Neither Paul nor I said anything. Vinnie nodded again, to himself. At the end of the nod he jerked his head at the two soldiers. The guy with the pompadour started around the car toward the driver's side. The slugger made a circle around Pearl as he got in his side.
"I'll bet you never had a puppy as a kid," I said to him.
"Tiny never was a kid," Vinnie said. "You gonna be in your office today?"
"Could be," I said. "Any special time?"
Vinnie looked at his watch. "This afternoon, around four."
"I'll be there," I said.
Vinnie reached his hand out the rear window toward Pearl, who promptly licked it. Vinnie looked at her a moment and shook his head. He took the show handkerchief out of the breast pocket of his dark suit and wiped his hands. The car started up and pulled away, and as it went the tinted rear window eased silently up.
"You care to comment on any of this?" Paul said.
"The two enlisted men don't count. Vinnie Morris is Joe Broz's executive officer. Joe Broz is a crook."
"A crook."
"A major league, nationally known, well-connected crook," I said.
"Well, isn't this getting worse and worse," Paul said.
"Maybe," I said.
"Why are they interested in my mother?"
"I think they're interested in her for the same reason we're interested in Beaumont."
"They're looking for him."
I nodded.
"Why did he want you to be in your office later?"
"He wants to talk with me after he's talked with Joe."
"Mind if I am there?" Paul said.
I shrugged. "I hate an astute kid," I said.
"I shouldn't be there."
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` No.
"Because he's got stuff to say about my mother he doesn't want me to hear."
"Probably."
"We should have insisted he say what he had to say.
"Vinnie's hard to insist," I said.
I could see the chill of realization dart through him. I knew the feeling.
"Jesus," he said. "What is she into?"
"Maybe nothing," I said. "Maybe just a boyfriend who will turn out to be sleazy."
"It would be consistent," Paul said.
Pearl had discovered a gum wrapper and was busy sniffing it from all possible perspectives.
"Can we go back to your office and call him now?"
"No," I said.
"But I want to know. I don't want to wait."
"This is a business, like most businesses it has its own rules. We let him call me at the office around four."
"That doesn't make any sense," Paul said. "Why do we have to sweat all afternoon out for some goddamned rules of the game?"
"Look," I said. "Vinnie and I have a kind of working relation, despite the fact that we are, you might say, sworn enemies. Vinnie will do what he says he will do, and so will I. He knows it, and I know it, and we can function that way. It is in our best interest to keep it that way."
"This sucks," Paul said.
Pearl picked up the gum wrapper and chewed it experimentally, and found it without savor and spit it out.
"It often does," I said.
CHAPTER 11
AT four o'clock the fall sun was glinting off the maroon scaffolding of the new building across Berkeley Street. I used to be able to sit in my office and watch the art director in a large ad agency work at her board. But LindaMorris came in exactly on time, without knocking.
He'd changed his clothes. This morning it had been a black suit with a pale blue chalk stripe. Now it was an olive brown Harris Tweed jacket, with a tattersall shirt and a rust-colored knit tie, with a wide knot. His slacks were charcoal. His kiltie loafers were mahogany cordovan. His wool socks were rust. I knew he was carrying, but his clothes were so well tailored that I couldn't tell where.
"You got the piece in the small of your back?" I said. "So it won't break the line of your jacket?"
"Yeah."
"It will take you an extra second to get it. Vanity will kill you sometime,
Vinnie."
"Hasn't so far," Vinnie said. "The kid hire you?"
"No," I said. "It's personal."
"You and the kid or you and the old lady?"
"The kid. He's like family. The old lady doesn't matter to me except as she matters to the kid."
Vinnie was silent. I waited.
"I talked this over with Joe," Vinnie said. I waited some more. Vinnie didn't need prompting.
Vinnie shook his head and almost smiled. "He can't fucking stand you," he said.
"A tribute," I said, "to years of effort."
"But he left it up to me what I tell you, what I don't."
Vinnie was gazing past my shoulder out over Berkeley Street; there was a slice of sky you could see from that angle, to the right of the new building, and up, before the buildings closed you off across the street.
"We got an interest in Richie Beaumont."
I nodded.
A look of nearly concealed distaste showed at the corners of his mouth for a moment. "He's a friend of Joe's kid."
"Joe deserves Gerry," I said.
"I ain't here to talk about it," Vinnie said. "Gerry brought Rich in and gave him some responsibility."
"And…?"
"And it didn't work out."
"And Rich dropped out of sight," I said.
"Yeah."
"Maybe with some property that Joe feels is not rightfully his."
"Yeah."
"And then you heard I was looking for him."
Vinnie was nodding slowly.
"Martinelli called you."
"Somebody called somebody, don't matter who."
"And you thought I might know something useful. So you collected the two galoots and went to meet me at the condo."
"Okay," Vinnie said. "You got everything we know. Now what do you know?"
"I got nowhere near what you know," I said. "What did Beaumont take that belongs to you? Money? Something he can use for blackmail? What were he and
Gerry involved in? It had to be bad. Anything Gerry's involved in would make a buzzard puke."
"You figure Richie took off with this Giacomin broad?" Vinnie said.
"Don't know," I said. "She's not around. Thought it was logical to see if she was with her boyfriend."
"He's not around," Vinnie said.
"Un huh," I said. My repartee grew more elegant with every passing year.
"You got a thought where he might be?"
"Un uh," I said.
Vinnie sat back a little and looked at me. He had
one knee crossed over the other and he tossed his foot for a moment while he looked.
"You used to be a mouthy bastard," he said finally.
"Brevity is the soul of wit," I said.
"Why's the kid want to find her?" Vinnie said.
I shrugged. "She's not around."
"So what?" Vinnie said. "My old lady's not around either. I ain't looking for her."
"He cares about her," I said.
"There's one difference right there," Vinnie said. "She got something he wants?"
"His past," I said.
Vinnie looked at me some more, and tossed his foot some more.
"His past," Vinnie said.
I nodded.
"What the fuck is that supposed to mean?"
"Kid's about to get married," I said. "She was pretty much a bitch all his childhood and he wants to know her as something other than that before he moves too far on into adulthood."
"You shoulda been a college professor," Vinnie said.
"You say that because you don't know any college professors," I said.
Vinnie shrugged. "Anyway, t
hat may all be true, whatever the fuck it means, but it don't help my case. Or, far as I can see, yours."
"True," I said. "But you asked me."
"Yeah," Vinnie said. "Sure. The point is you'relooking and we're looking and I want to be sure we aren't trampling on each other's feet, you know?"
He took a package of Juicy Fruit gum from his coat pocket and offered me some. I shook my head, and he selected a stick, and peeled it open, and folded it into his mouth.
"Me and Joe don't give a fuck about her," he said. "We want him."
"I don't give a fuck about him," I said. "I want her."
Vinnie smiled widely. "Perfect," he said and chewed his gum slowly.
"How about Gerry?" I said.
This time there was no hint of expression in Vinnie's face. "Hey, he's
Joe's kid."
"Joe's a creep," I said, "but compared to his kid he's Abraham Lincoln."
Vinnie turned his hands palms up.
"Is Gerry going to get in the way?" I said.
"Joe told him to stay out of this."
"You think he will?"
Again Vinnie's face was without expression. His voice was entirely neutral.
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No.
"Like I said. What about Gerry?"
"Okay," Vinnie said. "We won't fuck around with this either. I been with
Joe a long time. You don't like him. That's okay. He don't like you. But
Joe says he'll do something, he will. He says he won't, he won't."
"That's true for you, Vinnie. It's not true for Joe."
"We won't argue. I know Joe a long time. But we both know Gerry and we know he's a fucking ignoramus.
"But he's mean and you can't trust him," I said.
"Exactly," Vinnie said. "And Joe loves him. Joe don't see him for the fucking weasel that he is."
"So you're going to have trouble with Gerry too."
"Nothing I can't handle."
"Tricky though," I said.
"Yeah," Vinnie said.
"You want to tell me what kind of mess Gerry is in with Richie Beaumont?"
"No."
The light was beginning to fade outside, and the traffic sounds drifting up from Boylston Street increased as people started going home. The iron workers had already left the site where Linda Thomas had worked once, across the street, and the maroon skeleton stood empty. Bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang.
"I have no interest in Richie Beaumont," I said. "But I have a lot of interest in Patty Giacomin. I would not want anything bad to happen to her."
"I got no need to hurt the old lady," Vinnie said. "You let me know if you find her?"
"You let me know if you find him?"
I grinned. "Maybe."
"Yeah," Vinnie said. "Me too."
We were silent some more, listening to the traffic. "I don't want trouble with you, Spenser."
"Who would," I said.
"You're probably half as good as you think you are," Vinnie said. "But that's pretty good. And you got resources."
"Hawk," I said.
"You and he can be a large pain in the fungones."
"Nice of you to say so, Vinnie. Hawk will be flattered."
"So let's think about helping each other out, maybe, to the extent we can."
"Sure," I said.
"Good," Vinnie said. Then he stood up and headed for the door. At the door he paused, and then turned slowly back.
"Hawk with you in this?" he said.
"Not so far," I said.
"Gerry's got a lot at stake here," Vinnie said. He looked down, and without looking up said, "Kid's a back-shooter."
"He has to be," I said. "Thanks."
Vinnie was still looking at the floor. He nodded.
"Yeah," he said. And went out.
CHAPTER 12
SUSAN insisted on cooking dinner for Paul and me. When she put her mind to it she could cook, but she had a lot of trouble putting her mind to it, and most of the time she had it delivered from The Harvest Express.
"Helmut hears you're doing your own cooking," I said, "he'll have a heart attack. You represent his profit margin."
"I won't abandon him," Susan said. She had every pot she owned, including two she had just bought for the occasion, out on the counter. Pearl was underfoot sampling the residue in a pan already used. Susan gave us each a
Catamount Golden Lager to drink and then went back to her preparation.
"Couscous," she said. "With chicken and vegetables."
"Sounds great," Paul said.
Susan cleared a space among the pans and put some chicken breasts down on the marble counter and began to cut them into cubes. Pearl stood on her hind legs, with her front paws on the counter, and pointed the raw chicken from a distance of three inches.
"Doesn't that tend to beat hell out of the knife blade?" Paul said.
Susan looked at him as if he'd espoused pedophilia.
"No," Paul said quickly. "No, of course it doesn't."
I sipped my beer. Susan continued to hack up the chicken. She had her lower lip caught in her teeth, as she always did when she was concentrating. I liked to watch her.
Paul watched me watching her.
"Is Susan the first woman you ever loved?" he said.
"Yes."
"What about this hussy you mentioned the other day in the Ritz bar?" asked
Susan.
"She was a girl," I said.
"And you?" Susan said.
"I was sixteen," I said. "And she sat in front of me in French class."
"Sixteen?" Paul said. "You had a childhood?"
Pearl managed to get a scrap of raw chicken. She got down quickly and trotted to the living room where she put it on the rug and rolled on it.
"I can hardly remember her face now," I said. "But she had long hair the color of thyme honey, and she combed it straight back and it was quite long and very smooth. Her name was Dale Carter,and I used to write her little notes of poetry and slip them to her. And she'd read them and smile and I knew she was flattered."
"Poetry?" Susan said.
Pearl returned from the living room licking her muzzle.
"Yeah. Stuff I'd read and would adjust to fit her.
Dale, thy beauty is to me like those Nicean barks of yore… that kind of thing."
Paul and Susan looked at each other. Pearl continued to point the chicken.
"Well," Susan said, "you were sixteen."
"Barely," I said.
"So," she said, "did it develop?"
"We became friends," I said. "We would talk all the time between classes and we would eat lunch together and sit on the high school steps after school, and I just couldn't get enough of her. I just wanted to look at her and hear her voice."
Paul was sitting quietly, watching me. There was no amusement in his face.
"She was slender," I said. "Medium height, from a well-off and intellectual family in the Back Bay. Very, ah, Brahmin. And there was something about her way of carrying herself. She seemed to walk very lightly. She seemed to be very, very interested in what you said, and she would listen with her lips just a little apart and breathe softly through her mouth while she listened."
Susan wet her lower lip and opened her mouth and leaned forward and panted at me.
"A little more subtly than that," I said. "And she would sort of cock her head a little to the side when she talked and look right at me."
Susan tossed her chicken into a bowl and poured some honey over it, and sprinkled on some spices. Pearl's eyes had never left the chicken. When it went in the bowl her eyes didn't leave the bowl.
"Did you go out?" Susan said.
"Not really," I said. "They used to have sort of a canteen dance every afternoon after school in the basement of the Legion hall across the street. Some sort of keep-the-kids-off-the-street campaign which lasted about six months. And we used to go over there sometimes and dance. I never danced very well."
"I'll say," Susan
murmured.
"But with her I was Arthur Murray. She seemed to operate a little off the ground, as if her feet were floating; and her hand on my shoulder was very light and yet she felt every movement of the music and seemed to know exactly where I was going before I went. And she always wore perfume. And good clothes. I don't even remember what they were like, but I knew they were good."
"Longish skirt," Susan said. "Thick white socks halfway up the calf, penny loafers, cashmere sweater, maybe a little white collar like Dorothy Collins on The Hit Parade."
"Yeah," I said. "That's exactly right."
"Of course it is. It's what I wore. It's what we all wore, those of us who wore `good clothes.'"
Paul's attention, I noticed peripherally, had intensified. Pearl had moved out of the kitchen, encouraged by a gentle shove from Susan, and now sat on the floor beside my stool, her shoulder leaning in against my leg, – her eyes still fixed on the bowl where the chicken was marinating.
"Sure," I said. "Anyway we'd dance sometimes, and dance close, but no kissing, or protestations of affection, except cloaked as badinage. I never took her out in the sense of going to her house, picking her up, taking her to the movies, to a dance, that stuff. We never had a meal together except in the school cafeteria."
"Why didn't you take her out, kiss her, take her to dinner?"
"Shy."
"Shy?" Susan said. "You?"
"When I was a kid," I said. "I was shy with girls."
"And now you're not."
"No," I said, "now I'm not."
Susan was struggling with the seal on a box of prepackaged couscous.
Pearl was leaning more heavily against my leg, her neck stretched as far as she could stretch it, to rest her head on my thigh.
"Well, weren't you weird," Susan said.
"It's great talking to a professional psychotherapist," I said. "They are so sensitive, so aware of human motivation, so careful to avoid stereotypic labeling."
"Yes, weirdo," Susan said. "We take pride in that. What happened to her?"
Paul reached over to pat Pearl's head. Pearl misread it as a food offer and snuffed at his open palm,and finding no food, settled for lapping Paul's hand. Susan got the box of couscous open and dumped it in another bowl and added some water.
"She told me one day that a close friend of mine had asked her to the junior class dance, and should she accept."
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