Taming a Sea Horse s-13

by Robert B. Parker

  "Lehman's connected," I said.

  "Indeed," Marcus said.

  "Connected so good that you can't touch him."

  "It's a boat I don't want to rock," Marcus said.

  "And you want me to rock it."

  Marcus finished another beer and glanced around for the waiter.

  "Anything bad happening to Lehman is good happening to me," he said.

  The waiter appeared, with more beer. "Never mind the beer," Marcus said. "Gimme a double Scotch."

  "Okay," I said. "Let's start with Artie Fioyd. I find him and we'll see what happens."

  Marcus said, "Daryl?" and the big guy with the telltale shoulder strap said, "He lives in Salem, Six Grey Street, down by the water." The waiter came back with Marcus's Scotch, and another showed up with littlenecks in black bean sauce. I stood up. Hawk followed.

  "Thanks for lunch," I said.

  "Don't miss the clams," Marcus said. "Clams are the best."

  I shook my head.

  Hawk said, "Bon appetit." And we left the restaurant.

  18

  The Salem waterfront was in the early throes of restoration chic. Run-down buildings were being rehabbed and condo-ized, people were buying jeeps and BMWs, the bars were serving nachos and potato skins, there were Vietnamese and Mexican restaurants, and it was only a matter of time before nouvelle cuisine was vying for position with Cajun cooking. Looming over all were the twin stacks of the 'power plant, which gently dusted the new condos with a fine black grit.

  I drove down Derby Street past the Pickering Wharf development, full of restaurants, and shops that sold things like teddy bears and silk flowers, past the old custom house where Hawthorne had worked, past a barroom called In a Pig's Eye, and turned right onto Grey Street behind the House of Seven Gables.

  Grey Street was very short and ended in a boatyard. Just before the boatyard was a five unit condominium development that hinted at having once been a warehouse. Floyd lived in unit five. He answered my second ring smoking a pipe, wearing Top-Siders and white duck pants and a short-sleeved khaki safari jacket. His hair was blond and longish and his mustache was thick and shagged over his upper lip. He was flawlessly tanned and was probably thought a hunk by sexually liberated young women.

  I said, "Art Floyd?"

  He smiled. "Absolutely," he said.

  "My name is Spenser, and I want to talk with you about a kid named Ginger Buckey."

  Floyd squinted at me, his bright blue eyes narrowing effectively. "Gee," he said, "I'm sorry, but I don't think I know anyone by that name."

  "Oh, darn," I said. "I was so hoping you would. How about Perry Lehman?"

  Floyd held the squint, his cheeks dimpling engagingly as he smiled in honest puzzlement, "Gee, mister," he said, "are you sure you've got the right guy? I don't know any of these people."

  I put the flat of my hand against his chest and pushed him back into his living room and closed the front door behind us.

  "Take your goddamned hands off me," Floyd said.

  "Hand," I said. "It was only one hand."

  Floyd was tall and slender and soft. He looked hard at me for a moment and then dropped his eyes.

  "You're going to get yourself in real serious trouble," Floyd said.

  "I'm used to it," I said. The living room was sunken and the dining room was two stairs up. I went and sat on the edge of the dining level. "You are a pimp, Arthur. A while ago you went up to Portland, Maine, and bought a young woman named Ginger Buckey from a whorehouse called Magic Massage. I want to know what you did with her."

  Habit is hard to break. Floyd gave me his upward-mobile smile again. "Well, damn," he said. "I just don't know what to tell you."

  I sat on the edge of the dining room and rested my weight on my hands and didn't say anything.

  Floyd glanced at the front door. Somewhere in the house there was music playing; the Beatles' "Penny Lane." Floyd glanced at the phone behind me, through the dining room, in the kitchen. He looked back at me.

  "Listen, guy," he said. "Let's get this straight before you get in so deep over your head that you can't get out. I can push some buttons and pull some switches on you that'll make your head spin."

  "Excessive," I said. "Buttons, or switches. Either one would have been enough."

  "I'm not joking," Floyd said. He frowned seriously. "I know some people who will swat you like a fly."

  "Name one," I said. .

  Floyd opened his mouth and closed it.

  I smiled. "If you threaten me with your big connections you'll be answering my question."

  "You'll find out," he said.

  "Yes," I said, "I will."

  The Beatles were now singing "Maxwell's Silver Hammer." It was okay but it wasn't the Ink Spots. Floyd looked at the door again. Then back at me. He put his hands in his side pockets. His pants were the kind that didn't have back pockets. Don't want to ruin the bun line.

  "One phone call and I can have you killed," Floyd said.

  "If the people you call feel like doing it," I said, "or can."

  Beyond Floyd's front window, behind a gray rustic fence, the boatyard was busy. An apparatus like a mobile dry dock was being used to shuttle yachts to the water. Everything moved very slowly but without surcease.

  Floyd moved away from me slightly, toward the door. I got up and went past him to the door and leaned against it. He looked at me. I looked at him. The Beatles moved into "Hey Jude." They weren't the Mills Brothers either.

  "What do you want?" Floyd said.

  "I want to know what you did with Ginger Buckey after you brought her back from Portland."

  "Why do you care?" I didn't answer.

  "I don't know anything about you," Floyd said. "You push in here, ask me a bunch of questions, block my way when I try to leave. I don't know anything about you. Why don't you get out of here."

  I smiled at him. He walked across the room and sat on the edge of the dining level, as I had, then he stood up and walked back and leaned against the wall opposite me. He tilted his head to the side a bit and stared at me. The Beatles were still singing "Hey Jude."

  "Okay," Floyd said. "You want to know what happened to her when I brought her down."

  I nodded.

  "I got her a job," Floyd said. "Good job at the Crown Prince Club."

  "Hostess," I said.

  "Sure. Chance to meet some class people and make some real money."

  "And share it with you," I said.

  Floyd shook his head. "No. Absolutely not. I took a finder's fee on this. I don't live off the earnings."

  "The minute I saw you I knew you had the right stuff," I said.

  "Well, I don't live off the earnings," he said. He looked a little sulky.

  "We're proud of you back home, Artie."

  "You want anything else?" he said.

  "Nope."

  "Then why don't you just leave," he said.

  "It's just that I was breathless with admiration there for a minute," I said. "Hard to tear myself away."

  "Try," he said.

  The Beatles were singing "Michelle." They weren't the Platters either. Or the Ravens. Too bad.

  "A thing is what it is," I said to Floyd, "and not something else."

  He looked blank and pointed to the door and I departed.

  19

  It was Memorial Day and Susan and I packed a picnic and went canoeing on the Concord River. Actually I went canoeing and Susan went riding in the front of the canoe in a onepiece bathing suit catching some rays and occasionally trailing the fingers of her left hand in the water. The river was quiet and flat and gentle. Trees arched over it often and made the surface of the water dapple with shade. There were others on the river, as there usually were, but it was not crowded.

  "We'll head upstream going out," I said. "So it'll be downstream coming back and we're tired."

  "I don't expect to be tired," Susan said. She was facing me, her eyes closed, her face turned toward pre-summer sunshine. Her paddle lay on
the floor of the canoe beside the red-and-white Igloo cooler.

  "Must be all that Nautilus training," I said. She smiled without opening her eyes.

  It was easy paddling, the current was very gentle and I wasn't hurrying to get anywhere. Some kids were fishing from the shore. One of them spoke to Susan.

  "Hey, lady," he said. "There's snapping turtles in here must weigh fifty pounds. I wouldn't put my hands in the water like that."

  Susan kept her eyes closed but she pulled her hand back.

  "Egad," she said.

  "Nature red in tooth and claw," I said.

  "Confirms your view of the world, I suppose," Susan said.

  "I suppose."

  "A lovely world with danger just beneath."

  "Doesn't make the world less lovely," I said.

  "Maybe makes it more," Susan said.

  "Death is the mother of beauty?"

  She opened her wonderful large eyes and looked at me and said, "Maybe." Her look was always kinetic. It always had the weight of mischief and passion and intelligence in it.

  "How about prostitution," I said. "Got any thoughts on that?"

  "Probably hard to generalize," Susan said, "though it's a pretty good bet that most prostitutes are working from a pathological base."

  The backyards of many houses came down to the river in the section past the Concord Bridge, and the smell of barbecued hamburger drifted past us.

  "But not necessarily the same pathological base," I said.

  Susan nodded. Her bathing suit was cut fashionably high at the side and her thighs looked strong and smooth.

  "A pathological base being another way to say that they're whacko."

  She smiled. "That's the technical term for it. But it's a little broad, no pun intended, I would think, and my experience tells me that people choose to be whores for reasons which, when discovered, I would attempt to treat therapeutically."

  "Aside from needing money," I said.

  "Aside from that. Many people need money, not all of them choose to be prostitutes in order to earn it."

  "How about they enjoy sex?" I said. The sun was warm on my back as I paddled slowly, letting the canoe slide along gently between strokes, listening to Susan. I had a pleasant sweat developing.

  "Again it's hard to generalize, but I would guess that prostitution has little to do with sex."

  "Patricia Utley says that the men and women involved in the transaction tend not to like one another."

  The sun, as it got higher, reached more of the river and the dappling of shade contrasted more sharply.

  "Sexual activity, unredeemed by love, or at least passion, is not the most dignified of activities," Susan said. "It offers good opportunities for degradation."

  "For both parties," I said.

  "For both parties.

  "On the other hand," Susan said, "finding a way to satisfy pathological needs does not always make life untenable. Failing to satisfy the need makes it untenable. Many whores may be in a state of equilibrium."

  "Meaning maybe they're better off being whores?"

  "Sure, put that way, it's the decision we reached on April Kyle three years ago."

  "But," I said.

  "But," Susan said, "finding a way to fulfill a pathological need is not as satisfactory an answer as treating the need."

  "But April wouldn't."

  "Not then," Susan said. "Maybe not ever. Depends on how much pressure she feels."'

  "Tough way to look at it," I said.

  "Psychology is a tough-minded business," Susan said. "As tough as yours. Maybe tougher. There's not much room for romanticism."

  "Noted," I said.

  "Do you know where April is?"

  "Not, yet, but I have hold of one end."

  Susan smiled at the metaphor. "I'll bet you do," she said. "And when you find her?"

  "We'll see. Depends on her situation," I gaid. "Let's eat."

  We slid around a gentle meander in the river into a cove with a small strip of sand along the water's edge. I beached the canoe on the sand and Susan held it while I climbed out with the Igloo cooler.

  We sat against the low banking together while I opened a bottle of white zinfandel. We each had a plastic glass of it and ate a smoked turkey sandwich on whole wheat. Our shoulders touched. There was no one on this stretch of the river.

  "Do you think a natural setting enhances lovemaking?" I said.

  Susan sipped a little of her wine. She ate a small wedge of Crenshaw melon. She gazed up at the sky, and pursed her lips. She looked at the slate-colored river.

  "No," she said, "I don't think so."

  "Oh," I said. I swallowed a bit of smoked salmon on pumpernickel.

  "But it doesn't do it any harm either," she said, and leaned her head into the place where my neck joins my shoulders. I kissed her on top of her head. She put her wine down and put her arms around me and kissed me on the mouth. I could taste the wine and melon. I could feel the rush I always felt.

  Getting her out of the bathing suit was a bitch.

  But worth it.

  20

  The Crown Prince Club was located at the end of an alley off Boylston Street near the Colonial Theatre. There was a heavy dark oaken door with a brass crown canted at a rakish angle just above the peephole. An antique brass turnbell handle projected from the middle of the door. I turned it and a bell rang distantly inside. Beside the door was a slot for card keys so that the members could go right in without ringing. It was three-thirty in the afternoon and no members were in sight.

  The door opened. The guy who opened it was at least six four and looked like a nineteenth-century British soldier in the King's African Rifle Brigade. He had on a red tunic and a white pith helmet and gold epaulets, and his round black face was shiny and severe.

  He said, "Yes, sir?"

  I said, "I'm thinking of joining the club. Is there anyone I can talk to?"

  "I'm sorry, sir, club memberships are not presently available."

  "Damn," I said. "Tony Marcus told me that there was an opening."

  The doorman looked at me instead of through me. "Mr. Marcus?"

  "Yes, Tony sent me over. Said he'd talked with Perry Lehman about it."

  "Mr. Lehman?"

  "Yeah, said Perry could fix me up. I'm new in town."

  "If you'd step in, sir, I'll ask our marketing director to speak with you."

  "Thanks."

  I went into the foyer. It was paneled in the same kind of dark oak that the front door was made of, and lit by Tiffany lamps. On the right wall was a high, narrow fireplace, and above it a painting of a horse that might have been by George Stubbs. The doorman gestured- me to a large red leather chair near the fireplace. On a table beside the chair was a sandalwood box of cigars and a decanter of port, and several squat thick glasses.

  "Please help yourself, sir," he said, "while I speak with Miss Coolidge."

  I sat and the doorman disappeared through a door on the opposite side of the room. I poured myself a glass of port. The heft of the glass in my hand was masculine and weighty. There were two other paintings on the walls. One opposite the entrance door was of a black-and-white English spaniel curled up beside several recently shot partridge. The other, beside the door through which the Royal Zulu had departed, was of a British officer mounted on a red roan horse looking directly at me. A vaguely desert background rolled away behind him. The sun never sets on the British Empire.

  I had drunk about half the wine when a brisk middle-aged woman appeared in the doorway with the big black man. She strode into the room.

  "I'm Gretchen Coolidge," she said. "Would you come with me, please."

  "Sure."

  The doorman stepped aside and I followed Gretchen Coolidge out of the waiting room and down a short corridor to an elevator. She gestured me in and we went up five floors and stopped and the doors slid silently open onto a brilliantly sunlit glass-canopied space. Compared with the dark Edwardian elegance of the waiting room the brilliance
of the fifth floor was overpowering.

  I followed Gretchen out into a corridor of potted plants to a large circular pool in the center of the room. The plants were exotic flowering types that I didn't recognize, but the scent of them and the density of colors was intense. Beside the pool a man sat at an emerald cube of a desk in a silk bathrobe talking into a silver telephone.

  Gretchen Coolidge said, "Please sit down." I sat near the desk in an angular chrome chair with green upholstery. Gretchen sat next to me. The guy at the desk continued to listen to the phone, nodding slightly. I looked around.

  Gretchen Coolidge looked to be in her early forties. She had prominent cheekbones and short blond hair and large black-rimmed aviator glasses. She wore a double-breasted gray suit with a fine pinstripe in it and a lavender shirt with a narrow lavender-and-gray dotted necktie. A lavender handkerchief showed in her breast pocket. Her hose were a paler shade of lavender with very pale gray patterns in them. And she wore sling-strap three-inch heels of a deeper lavender. Her nails were short and painted pink. Her lipstick was pink. Her teeth were very white and even. Her breasts were large and looked as if, freed from restraint, they'd be even larger. She had slim hips and her ankles were small.

  The guy on the phone was Perry Lehman. I'd seen his picture enough to recognize him. He was smallish and had long black hair. He wore a thick gold chain around his neck with a diamond-studded miniature crown suspended from it. The crown was hung to the same rakish cant as the trademark on the front door. He was darkly tanned. His small hands were manicured. He smoked a large cigar as he listened on the phone. Taking it from his mouth occasionally to study it, admire the pale greenish precision of the wrapper.

  He had a big diamond ring on the little finger of his right hand. Where the silk robe gaped, there was a sprinkle of gray hair on his cocoa-butter chest.

  He said into the phone, "Okay, bottom line is one million, no more. You crunch the figures any way you want to, but it's one million, no more."

  He listened again, then nodded once and said "Yes," and hung up the phone. He let the chair tilt forward and touched a button on his desk phone. Actually desk phone didn't quite cover it. There were enough buttons and lights and switches to qualify it as a communications console. He leaned back again in his high-backed green leather swivel and put his feet up on the desk. He was barefooted. A black man even larger than the one downstairs came in from behind some greenery carrying a silver tray with a silver ice bucket with an open bottle of champagne in it. There was a tall fluted champagne glass on the tray. The black man placed the tray on a small glass table beside the desk and stepped back. He was wearing a regimental tunic with brass buttons and gold epaulets, like the guy downstairs. But this tunic was white. He was hatless, his hair cropped close to his head: He looked at me without expression.