Potshot s-28

by Robert B. Parker

  "To show you a good time," I said.

  "How sweet," she said. "Is that the only reason?"

  "Almost," I said. "I also have to do some recruiting."

  "Locally?"

  "Some."

  "Out of town?"

  "Some."

  "May I join you?"

  "It would be my pleasure," I said.

  "I know," Susan said.

  She rolled over and put her arms around me vice versa, and we lay still for a few moments.

  "What about your patients?" I said.

  "It's August," she said. "Shrinks are closed in August."

  "Of course," I said.

  "But Pearl could be a problem," she said.

  "Lee Farrell will take care of her," I said.

  "Will he stay with her at home?"

  "Yes."

  "Will he try on my clothes while we're gone?"

  "He might."

  "Are we getting up now?" I said.

  "Yes," Susan said.

  "Here I go." We lay still.

  "I'm hungry," Susan said.

  "Me too."

  "Lucky we're at your house, not mine," she said.

  "Unless we were dying for a bowl of Cheerios," I said.

  "I think there's Romaine lettuce, too," Susan said.

  Neither of us moved. Susan rubbed her cheek against my chest. Pearl made a grumbling kind of sigh. She might have been snoring. There were no lights on in the room, and the lavender light had faded to black in the evening sky so that it was hard to see Susan. I propped myself up a little with the arm I had around her and turned on the bedside light and looked her.

  "Are you staring at my nude bod?" Susan said.

  "I certainly am," I said.

  "Jewesses, no matter how seductive and comely, do not like to be seen naked in a bright light."

  "I'll squint," I said.

  We were quiet for a minute.

  "How's it looking?" she said.

  "I could tell you better if I weren't squinting."

  "Well, just to answer my question, open wide."

  I studied her for a moment.

  "It appears to be everything a body should be," I said. "Including naked."

  Susan looked a little embarrassed, as if even the word naked discomfited her.

  "I'm cold," she said, and yanked the sheet up over herself. "What's for eats?"

  "I could make pasta with clam sauce if I use canned clams," I said.

  "That sounds nice."

  "I could add peas, if I use frozen ones."

  "I'll get up if you will," she said.

  I took in a deep breath and slid my arm out from under her shoulders and swung my legs off the bed and stood up. Susan looked at me with only her eyes and forehead showing above the sheet. Then she giggled and pulled the sheet away and flashed me.

  "Something to think about,", she said, "while you're cooking."

  Chapter 17

  I BEGAN WITH Hawk.

  The Harbor Health Club began as a boxer's gym on the waterfront, before the waterfront went upscale. It was owned by Henry Cimoli who had once been a lightweight fighter. Hawk and I used to work out there a long time ago when we were fighters, before we too went upscale. There had been a ring with spit buckets, and heavy bags, and speed bags and an assortment of those little skeeter bags, which I had trouble hitting, and on which Hawk could play Ravel's Bolero.

  Now the waterfront was chic and the Harbor Health Club was even chic-er. Henry strolled around in white satin sweats, with Henry embroidered in gold above the pocket, and asked people if they were having a good workout. The clientele had every imaginable piece of workout gear. Designer sweatbands, wristbands, fingerless leather gloves, brilliant leotards and the absolute latest in high-tech sneakers. Most of the people who came in were so fashionable that they didn't sweat. All the exercise equipment was gleaming with chrome and flashing lights. Ergonomically engineered.

  But as a nod, perhaps to his youth, and maybe Hawk's and mine, Henry, in a small side room with a window on the harbor, kept one heavy bag, one speed bag, and one skeeter bag. No ring, no spit buckets.

  Hawk wasn't in the boxing room. He was doing dips in the main part of the gym. People looked at him covertly. Hawk would notice this. He noticed everything. But he didn't show that he noticed. He never showed anything, except maybe a slightly pleasant menace.

  "I got us a gig out west in the desert," I said.

  "That usually means I get no money," Hawk said. "And somebody shoots at me, but I got to travel a long way."

  He did the dips very strictly, going way down and back up to full extension slowly. The muscles moved ominously under his dark skin.

  "Not this one," I said. "I have a big budget and I'm paying handsomely."

  "But somebody is still likely to shoot at me," Hawk said.

  The dips seemed effortless. His voice showed no strain. But there was a glisten of sweat on his face and arms.

  "Well, yeah," I said.

  "So what we got to do?"

  "Find out who killed a guy. Rescue the town from a big gang of mountain trash."

  Henry Cimoli wandered by. He seemed to be bursting, in a small way, out of his form-fitting white health-club suit.

  "You guys want to go into the back room," Henry said. "You're scaring my clients."

  "Clients?" I said.

  "Gyms have customers," Henry said. "Health clubs have clients."

  "Health clubs run by little guys dressed like Liberace?" Hawk said, moving his body up and down on the bars.

  "I try to maintain a certain image," Henry said.

  "You too little to have an image," Hawk said.

  "You keep ragging on me," Henry said, "and I'll up your membership fees."

  "Henry," I said. "We come here free."

  "Well if the Deadly Night Shade here don't watch his mouth it'll be twice that."

  "Racial invective," Hawk said.

  "Whatever the fuck that is," Henry said.

  A middle-aged woman sitting at a chest press machine in pink knit sweats called to Henry. He hustled over.

  "Yes, m'am," he said, all smiles. "How can we help you?"

  "Is this too much weight?" the woman said. Henry checked the air-pressure dial.

  "How many reps can you do at this resistance?" Henry said.

  "Oh, I can do a lot, but I don't want to get big and muscley."

  Henry let his glance slide over at us for a moment. "That weight is fine, ma'am. Most women don't bulk up. They don't have the biology for it."

  "Really?"

  Henry nodded thoughtfully.

  "Yes, m' am. Testosterone and all that."

  "Really."

  "You can use that weight, maybe even add some."

  "Thank you," the woman said and began pumping the iron. Henry strolled back over to us.

  "How much weight she have on there?" Hawk said.

  "Ten pounds," Henry said.

  His face remained perfectly blank. Behind us the woman did five reps and stopped and drank from her water bottle and toweled off the machine and moved on.

  "Five reps," I said, "with ten pounds. You charge her for this."

  "Does her no harm," Henry said.

  The woman seemed to be confused by the lat pull setup and Henry hustled over to help her.

  "This gang of mountain trash," Hawk said. "How big we talking?"

  "Maybe thirty or forty?"

  "Well at least be a fair fight," Hawk said. "You invite anybody else?"

  "Not yet."

  "Good to be first," Hawk said.

  Chapter 18

  GINO FISH DID business out of a storefront located in the basement of an old brownstone on Tremont Street in the South End, a couple of blocks from the ballet. The door was down three steps and next to a plateglass window on which was written in black letters DEVELOPMENT ASSOCIATES OF BOSTON.

  I went in.

  The walls were antique brick, unadorned. At a desk, with dark curly hair and wearing an earring,
was a very good-looking young man. He was talking on the phone as I came in. Behind him a maroon velvet curtain separated the back room from the front.

  I said, "Hello Stan."

  When he looked up and saw me, he put his hand over the mouthpiece and spoke to me.

  "Spenser, what a treat, you decide to jump the fence at last?"

  "If I was going to, I'd jump it with you, cutie. Is Gino in?"

  "Gino's almost always in," Stan said. "Vinnie's with him."

  He nodded me toward the back room and went back to his phone conversation, which had something to do with seeing Tina Turner at The Fleet Center.

  There were more brick walls in the back room, also unadorned. Gino was in the middle of the room, under a hanging lamp with a Tiffany shade, seated at the round antique table that he used as a desk, reading a brochure for Relais Chateaux worldwide. Vinnie was to his left, chair tilted against the wall, listening to his Walkman on his headphones.

  I said, "Hello Gino."

  Gino put a finger into the page he was reading, closed the catalog, and slowly looked up at me. He was bald, slim and leathery.

  "Were you flirting with Stanley?" he said.

  "Stanley was flirting with me," I said. "I'm in another program."

  Vinnie saw me and nodded slightly and kept listening to his earphones.

  "And what brings you to me," Gino said.

  "I need to borrow Vinnie," I said.

  "Really? Where's Hawk?"

  "I've recruited him, too."

  "For what?"

  "I have a job out west that takes six or seven men. I wanted Vinnie to be one of them."

  "A shooting job, I assume," Gino said.

  He had long fingers, which he laced together and rested his chin on.

  "That's why I want Vinnie," I said.

  "I didn't imagine you were looking for a dog walker. Have you spoken to Vinnie about this?"

  "No. I wanted to clear it with you first."

  "Very respectful," Gino said. "And, if I may say so, very unlike you."

  I grinned.

  "Vinnie wouldn't do it without your say-so, anyway," I said.

  Gino nodded.

  "Vinnie," he said. "Are you listening to this?"

  Vinnie said, "Sure."

  "If I can spare you," Gino said, "do you have an interest?"

  "Pay?" Vinnie said.

  "Good money," I said.

  "I'll listen."

  I looked at Gino. Gino nodded.

  I said, "Let's take a walk."

  Gino said, "You don't wish to talk in front of me?"

  "True," I said.

  "Why?"

  "I know Vinnie never says anything to anybody about anything. So I trust him. I know that you will do what suits your best interest. So I don't trust you."

  "Be careful how you talk to me," Gino said gently.

  "You asked," I said.

  Gino nodded and looked at Vinnie and tipped his head toward the door. Vinnie got up and we went out.

  Vinnie is shorter than I am and maybe twenty pounds lighter. He's compact and always moved as if he knew exactly what he was doing. Along with a guy in L.A., Vinnie was the best shooter I'd ever seen, and had the quickest hands.

  As we walked up Clarendon Street past Hammersley's Bistro and the new ballet building, Vinnie said to me, "You need to be careful about Gino. Just cause's he's queer don't mean he's not tough."

  "I know he's tough," I said.

  "Gino's okay," Vinnie said.

  "Sure," I said.

  I told him about Potshot and the Dell and Preacher. Vinnie didn't interrupt. When I was through he said, "Who else's in it?"

  "Hawk," I said.

  "And you."

  "Yeah."

  "I come in, that's three."

  "Un-huh."

  "Who else you going for?"

  "People you don't know."

  "Out of town," Vinnie said.

  It wasn't a question. He would know anybody in town.

  "Yes," I said. "You in?"

  "Sure," Vinnie said.

  Chapter 19

  SUSAN AND I were in Atlanta, in Buckhead, at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel. Susan was on the phone with the concierge.

  When she hung up, she said, "We have a reservation at The Horseradish Grill at seven."

  "Are you planning to have a green salad and a small iced tea?" I said.

  "Maybe we could split one," she said.

  "I don't know if I should eat that much," I said. "I've got a big day tomorrow."

  "How far a drive is it to Lamarr?"

  "Couple of hours," I said. "East on Route 20."

  "Maybe I'll come with you," she said.

  "I thought you wanted to shop Buckhead."

  "I think I'd like to go with you."

  "On Rodeo Drive," I said, "on Fifth Avenue, and Worth Avenue and North Michigan Avenue, shoppers genuflect at the mere mention of Buckhead. And you, for whom shopping is one of the seven lively arts, you want to take a two-hour drive with me to Lamarr, Georgia?"

  "Yes."

  "Is it because you are hoping to score me in the back seat of the rental car on the way down?"

  "No."

  "Well it was a good guess," I said.

  "I want to go," she said, "because in a little while I won't have much chance to be with you until you come back from the desert. It's why I wanted to come this far with you."

  "Because you love me madly?" I said.

  "I think so, or it might be pity."

  I picked her up in my arms and held her there.

  "It's love," I said.

  "Yes," she said and kissed me.

  We ate fried chicken and mashed potatoes at The Horseradish Grill where Susan flirted with gluttony. After dinner, we drove back along Powers Ferry Road, in the blue evening, as it coiled languidly through a landscape of low hills, high trees and big homes, many of them with white pillars. Susan had her head back against the seat with her eyes closed with the moonlight on her face.

  "Post-gluttonous languor?" I said.

  "More like contentment," she said. "I've eaten well, I've had some wine. I'm driving through a soft night toward a fine hotel with my honey bun."

  "Whom you plan to bang like a drum once we get there?"

  "Whom I plan to snuggle until we fall asleep and the aftereffects of dining excess fade."

  "There's always tomorrow," I said.

  She rolled her head toward me and I could see her smile.

  "And we're both early risers," she said.

  I grinned.

  "So to speak," I said.

  She smiled and kept her eyes closed and didn't say anything for awhile.

  "Are we going to see that gay man you met when you were down here about the horse business?"

  "Tedy Sapp," I said. "Gay man doesn't quite cover him."

  "I know," Susan said. "It never quite covers anyone."

  She was quiet. The road turned. The moonlight shifted so that it slanted in behind her profile. In the pale shine of it, motionless, with her eyes closed, she looked like something carved out of alabaster. Looking at her I felt my throat tighten. I could hear my breathing. Leaving her to go off and rescue Potshot seemed unthinkable. I took in some air, slowly, through my nostrils, and let it out even more slowly.

  "We're both wishing you didn't have to go back to Potshot," Susan said.

  Susan's eyes were still closed, her profile still ivory. The quiet of the Georgia night muffled the sound of the car.

  After awhile I said, "We're wishing we could spend all our time together like this forever, I guess."

  She nodded without opening her eyes.

  "If we got what we wished for," she said, "it would destroy us."

  "Nothing would destroy us," I said.

  "No, you're right, nothing would," she said. "But if we were together all the time, it would make moments like this impossible."

  "A variation on Sunday Morning," I said. "Not the CBS thing."

  "No. The Stevens
poem. `Death is the mother of beauty'?"

  "Supply and demand," Susan said. "If everyone lived forever, life would devalue."

  "I think so," I said.

  "And if we were together all the time, the specialness might wane."

  "Or maybe it's all an abstract poetical conceit," I said.

  "Maybe," Susan said. "Either way, we do what we do."

  "And," I said, "the sun'll come up this morning."

  "You and the sun both," she said, and smiled to herself as if she were very pleased at her small joke.

  Chapter 20

  THE SUN HAD in fact risen this morning, and we were a little late getting started to Lamarr. When we got there it was nearly lunchtime.

  The Bath House Bar Grill still had a neon Spuds McKenzie looking raffish in the window. Inside was darker and cooler. The old-fashioned jukebox was the same, and the bar across the back was as it had been, with wine selections and lunch specials listed on a chalkboard. The dance floor to the right of the front door was empty, and there were only a couple of guys at the bar, getting an early start.

  Tedy Sapp was drinking coffee at his table to the left. His blond hair was still brightly artificial. He had a new earring, but he was still wearing the Bath House employee costume, green polo shirt and chinos. Unlike the bartender and the two waiters who were setting up for lunch, Tedy filled the green polo shirt to fabric-stretching capacity. The muscles were so prominent, and the body so hard, and the gaze so flat that if I weren't so tough, Tedy Sapp might have scared me. Fortunately I was with Susan.

  "Goodness gracious," Tedy said when he saw me. "Ya'll came back."

  His voice had a gentle hoarseness, which as he talked, you soon forgot.

  "Hello Tedy. This is Susan Silverman."

  "The shrink," Sapp said.

  "Yes," Susan said.

  "And main squeeze," Tedy said.

  "And only squeeze," Susan said, and put out her hand and smiled.

  Tedy didn't appear to scare her. Tedy smiled back and stood and put out his hand and shook hers. Susan didn't appear to scare him. He gestured us to sit.

  "Coffee? Beer? Late breakfast?"

  "Coffee," I said.

  "Could I get some hot water and lemon?"

  Sapp grinned and didn't comment. He gestured one of the waiters over.

  "Two coffees," he said. "And a pot of hot water and some lemon."

  The waiter nodded and started away.