Robert B Parker - Spenser 23 - Chance

by Chance(lit)

  "And I hope your wife can find some consolation."

  Julius nodded. His head was forward a little. He seemed to have sunk deeper into his chair.

  "She ain't going to," he said.

  CHAPTER 42

  On Thursday nights Susan ran a walk-in clinic at The Spence Health Center in Cambridge, and didn't get out until 9:00. Then she always drove over to my place to have dinner with me and spend the night. And always before we went to bed we walked Pearl the Wonder Dog together up the Commonwealth Avenue Mall. Which was what we were doing on this Thursday night, at about 11:30. It was definitely fall now. The leaves had turned, and where the streetlights made them bright they seemed almost artificial against the darkness. There was little traffic, the eleven o'clock news was over, and many of the brownstone and brick townhouses were dark. Susan held Pearl's leash. Pearl leaned firmly into her choke collar and made an occasional huffing sound.

  "Ever wonder why she's in such a hurry?" I said.

  "She's not going anywhere."

  "She likes to hurry," Susan said.

  We crossed Dartmouth Street. Ahead of us at the Exeter Street crossing a car pulled up and two men got out and began to walk toward us. Behind us I heard a car slow and stop on Dartmouth Street. I glanced back; a man got out of the passenger side and began walking behind us.

  I said to Susan, "Kiss me good night, and take Pearl and go right across the street here as if you were going home. When you're behind the parked cars crouch down and get the hell away from here."

  "What is it?"

  "Trouble, I think."

  I turned her toward me and kissed her as if there were nothing else to do in the world. As I kissed her I took my gun out from under my coat.

  I murmured against her mouth, "When I let you go, move. Don't hurry, but don't linger. Wave to me as you cross the street."

  Susan didn't say another word. When we stopped kissing, she touched me on the face once, briefly, and headed across Commonwealth Avenue in the middle of the block; as she and Pearl squeezed between two parked cars she gave me a happy wave.

  When she reached the sidewalk, she turned and started back toward Arlington Street. The guys in front of me paid her no mind.

  I pretended to look after her. The guy behind me was walking casually, looking around like a late-night tourist. I palmed my gun, so that in the darkness no one could see that I was carrying it. It was the easy-to-carry little Smith & Wesson.38 chambered for five rounds. I always left the chamber empty under the hammer, so I had four. Usually that was enough, and would have to be again.

  After all, I had one more bullet than attackers. Though I would have, had I known the agenda, brought the Browning 9mm which had thirteen in the magazine. To my right was a bench. I stopped and put my right foot up on it and pretended to tie my shoe. The two ahead of me were about thirty feet away. The guy behind me was a little closer. I saw one of the guys ahead of me move his hand and caught the flash of a stainless-steel handgun in the light that fused out from the streetlamps. A blued finish is better for being sneaky. I stepped suddenly up onto the bench and went over it and landed in a crouch behind it. There was a shot from in front and a bullet whanged off the cement leg of the bench. Across the street a car alarm began its siren call. I cocked my gun, took a breath, let it out, and drilled the guy with the stainless-steel handgun right in the middle of the chest. He made a huff, not unlike Pearl's huff, and fell over on his back. Another bullet plowed into the bench, hitting the wooden seat this time, and splintering it. I cocked the.38, breathed out again, aimed for the middle of the mass which was coming at me on the run, and shot the guy behind me. He pitched forward, his momentum overcoming the impact of the slug, and sprawled toward the bench on his face. I whirled toward the third guy, who should have been on top of me. He wasn't. He was running back down the mall toward Exeter Street.

  The car that had been idling on Dartmouth pulled away and disappeared toward the river, running a red light in the process. I stood, and turned sideways and shot at the running gunman. But the range was too great for the two-inch barrel. He opened the back door, dove in, and the car screamed away from the curb as the door closed behind him.

  Behind me the car alarm was whooping and whining. I took some bullets from my coat pocket and reloaded while I looked for Susan. I saw her come out from behind a car with Pearl at the

  corner of Dartmouth Street. Pearl, gun-shy to the end, was trying to climb into Susan's lap. I put my gun away and knelt beside the man who'd followed me. He was a large man with a beard and a significant belly. He had no pulse. I moved to the front guy, beardless and skinny. He was dead too. I couldn't think much anymore, but I could still shoot.

  "You hit?" Susan said.

  I put my arm around her.

  "No," I said.

  "What's with the car alarm."

  "I banged into every car along the street," Susan said.

  "One was bound to have a motion alarm."

  "Smart," I said.

  "I have a Ph.D. from Harvard."

  "You didn't say stupid stuff when I told you to move," I said.

  "You'd be worried about me and Pearl," Susan said.

  "I'd have been in the way."

  Pearl weaseled her way in between us, and jumped up with her paws on my chest. I patted her head.

  "They're dead?" Susan said. She didn't look at them.

  "Yes."

  "Who were they?" Susan said.

  "I don't know."

  In the distance, up Commonwealth Ave. from the Kenmore Square end, I could hear a siren above the racket of the car alarm.

  There were lights on in many of the windows that had been dark.

  "You should take Pearl and go back to my place, otherwise they'll want to talk with you too, and it'll take half the night, and Pearl won't like it."

  "No, you'll need a witness."

  "Good point," I said.

  "I'm glad you're not dead."

  "That's so sweet," I said.

  The first patrol car swung up over the curb at Dartmouth Street and drove down the middle of the mall toward us. The headlights lit the scene harshly and I could see the blood spreading out on the sidewalk around both the men I'd killed.

  The patrol cops got out on each side of the squad car with guns drawn, hatless, keeping the open doors between me and them.

  Pearl barked at them. Susan shushed her. I put my hands on top of my head.

  "Gun's on my right hip," I said.

  "You want me to take it out, or you want to come get it."

  "Stay just like you are," the cop on the passenger side said.

  "And step away from the lady."

  I did as I was told and the cop came out from behind the door with his gun leveled.

  "Walk over here, put your hands on the roof."

  I did as he told me. I backed away and spread my legs so that my weight rested on my hands and I couldn't move suddenly. The cop on the driver's side kept his gun on me over the roof, while his partner came and took my gun off my hip. He smelled it. Then he patted me down.

  "Put your left hand behind your back," he said.

  I did and he put a cuff on it.

  "Now the other hand."

  I had to straighten away from the car to do it. He finished cuffing me.

  "You shoot them?" he said.

  "Yes."

  "With that thing?"

  "Yeah."

  When the cuffs were on his partner went to the two bodies and felt for pulses.

  "They dead?" the first cop said.

  "Yeah, both of them."

  His partner was young and muscular with his uniform shirt tailored and his hair cut very short. I could hear more sirens in the distance, coming from both ends of Commonwealth and at least one coming down Dartmouth.

  "Why'd you shoot them?" the first cop said.

  "They tried to shoot me."

  "You know who they are?"

  "No."

  "You see this, lady?"

  "
Yes," Susan said.

  "I'm with him. We were walking Pearl when these two men and another one came at us and tried to kill him."

  "Pearl's the dog?"

  "Yes."

  "Where's the other shooter?"

  "He got away in a waiting car," Susan said.

  The first cop stepped away from me. He was older than his partner with longish gray hair, wearing the kind of translucent eyeglasses that they used to issue in the army.

  "Three guys come to shoot you, two of them get killed and the third one runs away," the older cop said.

  "Don't usually happen that way."

  "It was exciting," I said.

  "I'll bet it was," he said.

  "You got a permit for the piece?"

  "Yes."

  "ID?"

  "Yes, in my wallet, left hip pocket."

  He took out my wallet, found my licenses: gun, private, and driver's. He studied them. He looked at my ID picture in the car headlights and then looked at me carefully. Then he put everything back in my wallet and slipped the wallet into my back pocket. A second patrol car came down the mall from Exeter Street, a third one pulled in behind the first one from Dartmouth Street, and Frank Belson got out of an unmarked car parked on Dartmouth Street and walked up the mall toward us. The scene was now lit like an opera set. Belson spoke to the older of the first two cops.

  "I was in the area. Whaddya got, Chick?"

  "Guy shot two guys, claims self-defense, girlfriend's a witness."

  Belson looked at me.

  "Oh shit," he said.

  Then he looked at Susan and Pearl and walked over and patted Pearl's head.

  "Excuse my language," he said to Susan.

  "I will not," she said.

  "It's fucking disgusting."

  Belson nodded and grinned at her and turned.

  Chick said, "You know him, Frank?"

  "Yeah."

  "He's a private detective."

  "I know. You can take the cuffs off."

  "He shot two guys," Chick said.

  "You got him under arrest?"

  "No."

  "You gonna arrest him?"

  "I'll leave that up to you."

  "Take off the cuffs."

  Chick unlocked the cuffs, and put them back in their little case on his belt. I resisted the temptation to rub my wrists, too trite.

  Susan and Pearl came over to stand beside me. I put an arm around her shoulder. Belson turned to the other detective who had walked down behind him.

  "You better get Quirk," he said.

  The dick nodded and headed back to the car. Belson turned toward Chick and his partner.

  "You should probably have your hats on when Quirk gets here," he said.

  Both cops obviously agreed. They headed for the squad car, and one of the late-arriving cops went back to the car for his hat too.

  Belson turned, finally, to me, and folded his arms, took a big inhale and let it out.

  "Okay," Belson said, "tell me about it."

  CHAPTER 43

  I was having dinner at the Capital Grill with Hawk and Susan.

  "You let one get away?" Hawk said.

  "Plus the drivers of the two getaway cars, whom you, of course, would have run down on foot."

  "And bitten their heads off," Hawk said.

  The waiter arrived with drinks.

  "Merlot," he said as he put the glass of wine in front of Susan.

  She said, "Thank you, John."

  I had beer, Hawk had a glass of champagne.

  "And you didn't get no license plate numbers?"

  "Of course not," I said.

  "If I had I might have been able to learn something."

  "So you don't know who they were?" Hawk said.

  "Actually, I do," I said.

  "Belson called me. They were a couple of Russians, with long names."

  "Russians?" Susan said.

  "From Russia?"

  "Yeah, via New York. Since the demise of the evil empire, the Russian mob has developed a base in New York. OCU told Belson they're moving into Boston now."

  "OCU?" Susan said.

  "Organized Crime Unit," I said.

  "So why are they trying to shoot you?" Susan said.

  "I don't know."

  "We been talking to a lot of organized crime types lately," Hawk said.

  "One of them could have hired some help."

  "Why?"

  "We getting too close to the merger plans?"

  "If there are any merger plans."

  "Fast Eddie say there are."

  "What he said was that the rocks were bumping up against each other or something like that."

  "He meant there were merger plans," Hawk said.

  "If there are, and we're so close, how come we don't know it?" I said.

  "

  "Cause we stupid," Hawk said.

  "Oh," I said.

  "That's why."

  John brought us two steaks and the cold seafood platter. He put the seafood in front of Susan.

  "Isn't it a lot?" she said.

  "We can help," I said.

  "We can't solve nothing," Hawk said, "but we good eaters.".

  Susan speared a clam, dipped the end of it in cocktail sauce, bit off the sauced corner, and chewed it thoughtfully.

  "What I can't figure out," she said after she'd swallowed, "is how you start out looking for Bibi Anaheim and end up in a shootout with some Russian gangsters."

  "We can't figure that out either," I said.

  "Steak's good. You want a bite?"

  Susan shook her head.

  "Do you think they'll try again?"

  "Got no way to know," I said.

  "Except that whoever wanted you dead didn't get what they wanted," Susan said.

  "Except that," I said.

  "Aren't you worried about it?"

  I shrugged.

  "What kind of gun are you carrying tonight?" Susan said.

  "Browning," I said.

  "The one that's heavier and more uncomfortable to carry, but it will shoot a lot of bullets before you have to reload."

  "Thirteen in the clip, one in the chamber."

  Susan nodded slowly while she looked at me.

  "What do you think?" she said to Hawk.

  "Think I'll stick around," Hawk said.

  "That would make me feel better," Susan said.

  "Make anyone feel better," Hawk said.

  Susan smiled and ate the rest of her clam.

  "I can't eat all of this," she said.

  "Maybe the baby would like some."

  "You going to give it to the dog?" Hawk said.

  "She's a good eater too," Susan said.

  CHAPTER 44

  Hawk had on a dark blue serge suit and a collarless white linen shirt. His shaved head gleamed. His black ankle boots gleamed at the other end. He had one of my office chairs tipped back against the wall to my left, and he was sitting in it reading a book called Remembering Denny, by Calvin Trillin. I was at my desk trying to learn how to say "you'll never get me, you dirty rat," in Russian.

  "You got a plan yet?" Hawk said without looking up from his book.

  "We could hide in here with the door locked, sleep in shifts."

  - "I thought of that," Hawk said.

  The phone rang.

  "Be nice if we could figure out which anthill we stepped in," I said.

  "Yeah, be great, we could call them names while we sleeping in shifts."

  "We know who they are, we might know what to do."

  The phone rang again.

  "Be a nice change," Hawk said.

  I nodded and picked up the phone.

  "Da?" I said.

  "I want to speak to Spenser," a voice said.