Mortal Stakes

by Robert B. Parker

  ”In New York, in what might be called the course of my profession,“ and off she went. She told it all, in a quiet, uninflected voice the way you might read a story to a child when you’d read it too often. Carol Curtis was a professional.

  She did not bat one of her thick-lashed eyes after the opening sentence. She asked very little. She understood her subject and she let Linda Rabb talk.

  When it was over, she said, ”And why are you telling me this?“

  Linda Rabb said, ”I’ve lived with it too long. I don’t want a secret that will come along and haunt me, later, maybe when my son is older, maybe…“ She let it hang.

  Listening, I had the feeling that she had given a real reason.

  Not the only reason, but a real one.

  ”Does your husband know?“

  ”He knows everything.“

  ”Where is he now?“

  ”At the park.“

  ”Does he know about this… ah… confession?“

  ”Yes, he does,“ Linda said without hesitation.

  ”And he approves?“

  ”Absolutely,“ Linda said.

  ”Mrs. Rabb,“ Carol Curtis said. And Linda Rabb shook her head.

  ”That’s all,“ she said. ”I’m sorry. Mr. Spenser represents me and anything else to be said about this he will say.“

  Then she sat still with her hands folded in her lap and looked at me and Carol Curtis sitting on the couch.

  I said, ”No comment,“ and Carol Curtis smiled.

  ”I bet you’ll say that often in the future when we talk, won’t you?“

  ”No comment,“ I said.

  ”Why is a private detective representing Mrs. Rabb in this? Why not a lawyer or a PR man or perhaps a husband?“

  ”No comment,“ I said. And Carol Curtis said it silently along with me, nodding her head as she did so. She closed the notebook and stood up.

  ”Nice talking with you, Spenser,“ she said, and put out her hand. We shook. ”Don’t get up,“ she said. Then she turned to Linda Rabb.

  ”Mrs. Rabb,“ she said and put out her hand. Linda Rabb took it, and held it for a moment. ”You are a saint, Mrs.

  Rabb. Not a sinner. That’s the way I’ll write this story.“

  Linda Rabb said, ”Thank you.“

  ”You are also,“ Carol Curtis said, ”a hell of a woman.“

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  WHEN CAROL CURTIS LEFT, I said to Linda Rabb, Shall I stay with you?”

  “I would rather be by myself,” she said.

  “Okay, but I want to call Harold Erskine and tell him what’s coming. I took some of his money and I don’t want him blindsided by this. I probably better resign his employ too.”

  She nodded.

  “I’ll call him from my office,” I said. “Would you like me around when you tell Marty?”

  “No,” she said. “Thank you.”

  “I think this will work, kiddo,” I said. “If you hear from Maynard, I want to know, right off. Okay?”

  “Yes, certainly.”

  “You know what Carol Curtis said to you?”

  She nodded.

  “Me too,” I said. “Me too.”

  She smiled at me slightly and didn’t move. I let myself out of the apartment and left her sitting on her ottoman.

  Looking, as far as I could tell, at nothing at all.

  I caught a cab to my office and called Harold Erskine.

  I told him what Linda Rabb had said in the papers and that it was likely to be on the street in the morning. I told him I’d found not a trace of evidence to suggest that Marty Rabb gambled or threw games or chewed snuff. He was not happy about Linda Rabb, and he was not happy that I didn’t know more about it. Or wouldn’t tell.

  “Goddamnit, Spenser. You are not giving it to me straight. There’s more there than you’re saying. I hire a man I expect cooperation. You are holding out on me.”

  I told him I wasn’t holding out, and if he thought so, he could refuse to pay my bill. He said he’d think about that too. And we hung up. On my desk were bills and some letters I should get to. I put them in the middle drawer of my desk and closed the drawer. I’d get to them later. Down the street a construction company was tearing down the buildings along the south side of Stuart Street to make room for a medical school. Since early spring they had been moving in on my building. I could hear the big iron wrecking ball thump into the old brick of the garment lofts and palm-reading parlors that used to be there. By next month I’d have to get a new office. What I should do right now is call a real estate broker and get humping on relocation. When you have to move in a hurry, you get screwed. That’s just what I should do. Be smart, move before I had to. I looked at my watch: 4:45. I got up and went out of my office and headed for home. Once I got this cleared up with the Rabbs, I’d look into a new office.

  As I walked across the Common, the Hare Krishnas were chanting and hopping around in their ankle-length saffron robes, Hush Puppies and sneakers with white sweat socks poking out beneath the hems. Did you have to look funny to be saved? If Christ were around today, He’d probably be wearing a chambray shirt and flared slacks. There were kids splashing in the wading pool and dogs on leashes and squirrels on the loose and pigeons. In the Public Garden the swan. boats were still making their circuit of the duck pond under the little footbridge.

  At home I got out a can of beer, read the morning Globe, warmed up some leftover beef stew for supper, ate it with Syrian bread while I watched the news, and settled down in my living room with my copy of Morison. I’d bought it in three-volume soft-cover and was halfway through the third volume. I stared at it for half an hour and made no progress at all. I looked at my watch: 7:20. Too early to go to bed.

  Brenda Loring? No. Susan Silverman? No. Over to the Harbor Health Club and lift a few and talk with Henry Cimoli?

  No. Nothing. I didn’t want to talk with anyone. And I didn’t want to read. I looked at the TV listings in the paper. There was nothing I could stand to look at. And I didn’t feel like woodcarving and I didn’t feel like sitting in my apartment. If I had a dog, I could take him for a walk. I could pretend.

  I went out and strolled along Arlington to Commonwealth and up the mall on Commonwealth toward Kenmore Square. When I got there, I turned down Brookline Ave and went into a bar called Copperfield’s and drank beer there till it closed. Then I walked back home and went to bed.

  I didn’t sleep much, but after a while it was morning and the Globe was delivered. There it was, page one, lower left, with a Carol Curtis by-line. sox WIFE REVEALS OTHER LIFE. I read it, drinking coffee and eating corn bread with strawberry jam, and it was all it should have been. The facts were the way Linda Rabb had given them. The writing was sympathetic and intelligent. Inside on the sports page was a picture of Marty, and one of Linda, obviously taken in the stands on a happier occasion. Balls.

  The phone rang. It was Marty Rabb.

  “Spenser, the doorman says Maynard and another guy are here to see me. Linda said to call you.”

  “She there too?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll be over. Don’t let them in until I come.”

  “Well, shit, I’m not scared…”

  “Be scared. Lester’s got a gun.”

  I hung up and ran for my car. In less than ten minutes I was in the lobby at Church Park and Bucky and Lester were glaring at me. The houseman called up and we three went together in the same elevator. No one said anything. But the silence in the elevator had the density of clay.

  Marty Rabb opened the door and the three of us went in. Me first and Lester last. Linda Rabb came out of the bedroom with her little boy holding on to her hand. Rabb faced us in the middle of the living room. Legs slightly apart, hands on hips. He had on a short-sleeved white shirt, and his lean, wiry arms were tanned halfway up the forearms and pale thereafter. Must pitch with a sweat shirt on, I thought.

  “Okay,” he said. “Get it done, and then get the hell out of here. All three of you
.”

  Bucky Maynard said, “Ah want to know just what in hell you think you gonna accomplish with that nonsense in the newspapers. You think that’s gonna close the account between you and me? ’Cause if you think so, you better think on it some more, boy.”

  “I thought on it all I’m going to think on it, Maynard,” Rabb said. “You and me got nothing else to say to each other.”

  “You think ah can’t squeeze you some more, boy? Ah got records of every game you dumped, boy. Every inning you fudged a run for the office pools, and ah can talk just as good as your little girl to the newspapers, don’t you think ah can’t.”

  Lester was leaning bonelessly against the wall by the door with his arms across his chest and his jaws working. He was doing Che Guevara today, starched fatigue pants, engineer boots, a fatigue shirt with the sleeves cut off, and black beret. The shirt hung outside the pants. I wondered if he had the nickelplated Beretta stuck in his belt.

  “You can,” I said. “But you won’t.”

  Linda and the boy stood beside Marty, Linda’s left hand touching his arm, her right holding the boy’s.

  “Ah won’t?”

  “Nope. Because you can’t do it without sinking yourself too. You won’t make any money by turning him in and you can’t do it without getting caught yourself. Marty will be out of the league, okay. But so will you, fats.”

  Maynard’s face got bright red. “You think so?” he said.

  “Yeah. You say one word to anybody and you’ll be calling drag races in Dalrymple, Georgia. And you know it.”

  Everybody looked at everybody. No one said anything.

  Lester cracked his gum. Then Rabb said, “So it looks like I got you and you got me. That’s a tie, you fat bastard. And that’s the way it’ll end. But I tell you one time: I’ll pitch and you broadcast, but you come near me or my wife or my kid and I will kill you.”

  Lester said, “You can’t kill shit.”

  Rabb kept looking at Maynard. “And keep that goddamn freak away from me,” he said, “or I’ll kill him too.”

  Lester moved away from the wall, the slouch gone. He shrugged into his tae kwon do stance like a man putting on armor…

  The little boy said, “Momma,” not very loud, but with tears in it.

  Marty said, “Get him out of here, Linda.” And the woman and the boy backed away toward the bedroom. Maynard’s face was red and sweaty.

  “Hey, kid,” Lester said, “your momma’s a whore.”

  Rabb swung a looping left hand that Lester shucked off his forearm. He planted his left foot and swung his right around in a complete circle so that the back of his heel caught Rabb in the right side, at the kidneys. The kick had turned Lester all the way around. But he spun back forward like an unwinding spring. He was good. The kick staggered Rabb but didn’t put him down. The next one would, and if it didn’t, Lester would really hurt him. Maybe he already had. A kick like that will rupture a kidney.

  Linda Rabb said, “Spenser.” And grabbed hold of her husband, both arms around him. “Stop it, Marty,” she said, “stop it.” The boy pressed against her leg and his father’s.

  Marty Rabb dragged his wife and son with him as he started back toward Lester. Lester was back in his stance, blowing a big bubble and chewing it back in again. He was about three feet to my left. I took one step and sucker-punched him in the neck, behind the ear. He fell down, his legs folding under him at the knees so that he sank to the floor like a penitent in prayer.

  “Marty,” I said, “get your wife and kid out of here. You don’t want the kid seeing this. Look at him.”

  The kid was in a huddle of terror against his mother’s leg. Marty reached down and picked him up, and with his other arm tight around Linda Rabb, he hustled them into the bedroom.

  “I will say to you what Rabb did, you great sack of guts,” I said. “You and your clotheshorse stay away from Rabb as long as you live or I will put you both in the hospital.”

  Lester came off the floor at me, but he was wobbly. He tried the kick again, but it was too slow. I leaned away from it. I moved in behind the kick and drove a left at his stomach.

  He blocked it and hit me in the solar plexus. I tensed for it, but it still made me numb. A good punch turning the fist over as it came, but there wasn’t as much steam as there should have been behind it, and I was inside now, up against him. I had weight on him, maybe fifteen pounds, and I was stronger.

  As long as I stayed up against him, I could neutralize his quickness and I could outmuscle him. I rammed him against the wall. My chin was locked over his shoulder, and I hit him in the stomach with both fists. I hurt him. He grunted. He hammered on my back with both fists, but I had a lot of muscle layer to protect back there. Twenty years of working on the lats and the lateral obliques. I got hold of his shirtfront with both hands and pulled him away from the wall and slammed him back up against it. His hand whiplashed back and banged on the wall. It was plasterboard and it broke through. I slammed him again and he sagged. I brought my left fist up over his arms and hit him on the side of the face, at the temple, with the side of my clenched fist. Don’t want to break the knuckles. A kind of pressure was building in me, and I saw everything indistinctly. I slammed him on the wall and then stepped back and hit him left, left, right, in the face.

  I could barely see his face now, white and disembodied in front of me. I hit it again. He started to sag, I got hold of his collar with my left hand and pulled him up and hit him with my right. He sagged heavier, and I jammed him against the wall with my left and hammered him with my right. His face was no longer white. It was bloody, and it bobbled limply when I hit him. I could feel my whole self surging up into my fist as I held him and hit him. The rhythm of the punches thundered in my head, and I couldn’t hear anything else. I was vaguely aware of someone pulling at me and I brushed him away with my right hand. Then I could hear voices. I kept punching. Then I could hear Linda Rabb’s voice. The pounding in my head modified a little.

  “Stop it, Spenser. Stop it, Spenser. You’re killing him.

  Stop it.”

  Someone had hold of my arm, and it was Marty Rabb, and Lester’s face was a bloody mess, unconscious in front of me. Maynard was sitting openmouthed on the floor, blood trickling from his nose. It must have been him I brushed away.

  “Stop it, stop it, stop it.” Linda Rabb had hold of my left arm and was trying to pry my hand loose from Lester’s shirtfront. I opened the fingers and stepped away, and Lester slid to the floor. Maynard slid over to him without getting up and with a handkerchief began to wipe the blood from Lester’s face. I could see Lester’s chest rising and falling as he breathed. I noticed I was breathing heavy too. Marty and Linda Rabb both stood in front of me, the kid holding Linda’s hand. Tears were running down his cheeks and his eyes were wide with fright, but he was quiet.

  “Jesus, Spenser,” Rabb said. “What happened? You were crazy.”

  I was sweating now, as if a fever had broken. I shook my head. “A lot of strain,” I said. “We’ve all had a lot of strain.

  I’m sorry the kid saw it.”

  Maynard had gone to the bathroom and come back with wet towels and was cleaning Lester up and putting a cold compress on his forehead. “Pay attention to what happened, Bucky boy,” I said. “Don’t irritate me.”

  Lester moved a little. His lips were swollen and one eye was closed. Maynard kept washing his face with the damp towel.

  “It’s okay, Lester,” he said. “It’s okay.”

  Lester sat up and pushed the towel away. “Help me up,” he mumbled.

  Maynard got up and got Lester on his feet.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Lester said.

  Maynard started to take him toward the door, his arm around Lester’s back.

  “Bucky,” I said, “we agree about the tie? And how we got no further business?”

  Maynard nodded. There was no color left in his face, just the slight smear of brown, drying blood on his lip.

  �
��I want to go home, Bucky,” Lester mumbled, and Bucky said, “Yeah, yeah, Lester, we’ll go home.” And out they went.

  Linda Rabb sat on the floor with her son and held him against her and put her face in his hair. They rocked back and forth slightly on the floor, and Marty Rabb and I stood awkwardly above them and said nothing at all. Finally I said, “Okay, Marty. I think we’ve done all there is to do.”

  He put his hand out. “Thank you, Spenser, I guess. We were in a mess we couldn’t have gotten out of without you. I can’t say quite where we’re at now, but thank you for what you did. Including Lester. I think probably he’s too good at tae kwon dong or whatever it is for me.”

  “He might have been too good for me if I hadn’t sucker-punched him first.”

  We shook hands. Linda Rabb didn’t look up. I went out the front door. She didn’t say goodbye.

  I never saw her again.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  AND YOU KEPT HITTING him, Susan Silverman said.

  We were sitting in a back booth in The Last Hurrah, looking at the menu and having the first drink of the evening.

  Mine was a stein of Harp; hers, a vodka gimlet.

  “It all seemed to bubble up inside me and explode. It wasn’t Lester; it was Doerr and Wally Hogg and me and the case and the way things worked out so everyone got hurt some. It all just exploded out of me, and I damn near killed the poor creep.”

  “From what you say he probably earned the beating.”

  “Yeah, he did. That’s not what bothers me. I’m what bothers me. I’m not supposed to do that.”

  “I know, I’ve seen the big red S on your chest.”

  “That ain’t all you seen, sweet patooti.”

  “I know, but it’s all I remember.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  She smiled at me, that sunrise of a smile that colored her whole face and seemed to enliven her whole body. “Well, maybe I can remember something else if I think on it.”