Valediction

by Robert B. Parker

  Paige raised her head from Paul's lap and put her arms around his neck and pulled him forward toward her. I drank most of the shot of whiskey. What I should do is sleep on it. I should just finish off the beer I was drinking and then go to bed and sleep on the situation and no doubt would wake up knowing just what I should do. That was it. I'd sleep on it. I tried saying sleep and slurred the s. So I went to bed.

  CHAPTER 42

  I woke up the next morning knowing exactly what I had to do. And I did it. I got out of bed and took two aspirin. Then I went into the kitchen. Paul and Paige had opened the sofa bed in the living room and were asleep in a tangle of bedclothes. Not neat sleepers. I made coffee and sat at the counter and drank it. I turned on the CBS morning news so I could watch Diane Sawyer. Maybe I should write her a letter. If it didn't work out with Susan, or Linda . . . I raised my coffee cup to her. "Music beyond a distant hill," I said. Diane ignored me. The phone rang. It was only 7:15. Too early for Susan to be calling from San Francisco. Maybe Diane Sawyer.

  I said, "Hello."

  It was Hawk. He said, "You want to rescue what's left of your body 'fore it's too late?"

  "You just getting in?" I said.

  "No way, babe. Something in the genes, got to git up and git to choppin' that old cotton."

  "And lifting that barge," I said, "and toting that bale."

  "And beating my feet on de mud."

  I said, "You want to run?"

  "Yeah, I want to pump some iron too. You busy?"

  "No," I said. "There's things I should do but I don't know what they are or how I should find out."

  "You ought to be used to that," Hawk said. "I be by,"

  I took a shower and put on sweat clothes and went down to the street. Hawk's Jaguar pulled into the curb as I came out. He left it there on a crosswalk and we set out along the river.

  "Want to go long," Hawk said. "You look like you got stuff to sweat out."

  I nodded. We made the big circle, up along the Charles to the Western Avenue Bridge, then across the river and down the CamIwidge side along Memorial Drive to the Charles River Dam and back up along the Mississippi esplanade to my apartment. It took us a little more than an hour. But when we got back I was loose and sweat-soaked and the hangover had gone.

  "Lemme get a change of clothes," I said, and we'll go over to the health club."

  Upstairs I put jeans and loafers and a clean shirt into my gym bag, along with a gun. The shower was running. And Paige was alone in the sofa bed with a long exposure of naked thigh sticking out from under the covers. Hawk came out of my kitchen with a glass of orange juice and pulled the spread over her. She stirred but didn't wake up. I got some orange juice too and was drinking it when Paul came out of the shower wearing a towel.

  Hawk said, "You looking pretty good for a fag dancer."

  Paul said, "A fag dago dancer."

  Hawk nodded and grinned and put a hand out and Paul gave him a low five.

  "Sherry Spellman called you," Paul said to me. "And said for you to call her as soon as you got in. I wrote the number on the edge of the Globe there. It looks like Tommy's studio number. She said be sure and call, it's very important."

  He went into the living room and began to rummage in his dance bag. I called Sherry. Sherry answered on the first ring.

  "We're all here at Tommy's studio," she said. "Tommy wants you here too."

  "Who's we all, " I said.

  There was a sound of mild confusion at the other end of the phone and then Banks's voice replaced Sherry's.

  "I got Winston and her," he said. "You get over here and they'll tell you what's been going on. You bring any cops and I'll kill them both."

  "Fifteen minutes," I said.

  "No cops," Banks said, and hung up.

  I put on a warm-up jacket and took my gun out of the gym bag. I put the gun in the righthand pocket of the warm-up jacket and said to Hawk, "Banks has Winston and Sherry Spellman as hostages. You want to come along?"

  Hawk grinned happily. "Sure."

  We went in Hawk's Jaguar. As he drove he unlocked the glove compartment and took out a 9-millimeter automatic and put it in his lap.

  "You could tuck it in your jock," I said.

  "No room," Hawk said. "You want to tell me who to shoot?"

  "Christ," I said, "I don't know. Everybody but me, I think."

  Hawk went straight up Commonwealth and turned left onto Mass Ave. I told him my speculations on Sherry and Winston and the heroin business.

  Hawk pulled the jag up along the curb in front of Symphony Hall. Tommy's studio was around the corner.

  "Banks is expecting me," I said. "If he sees you, he may panic."

  Hawk said, "I wait till you go on in and then I'll drift along up and hang around outside the door, see if I can hear what's happening. It don't sound good, I come in."

  "What wouldn't sound good," I said. "You think I need back-up for a middle-aged choreographer?"

  Hawk shrugged. "You ain't right yet, babe, you still ain't all you was."

  "Okay," I said, "just remember I don't know who the good guys are yet."

  "Maybe there ain't any," Hawk said.

  "Maybe there never will be," I said, and got out of the jag.

  Hawk got out of his side and leaned his forearms on the roof and watched me walk toward the corner.

  "You learning," he said. I turned the corner.

  CHAPTER 43

  Sherry was standing beside Bullard Winston against the mirrored wall on the far side of the dance studio away from the windows. Tommy Banks leaned his back against one of the tall columns that split the room. He held a nondescript .38 police special in his right hand. When I came in he pointed it briefly toward me then back toward Sherry and Winston and then, indecisively, at a point more or less it between us. I moved away from the door. If Hawk came in quickly, I didn't want to be in his way. I was careful to move toward the windows, away from Sherry and Winston, so that Banks wouldn't be able to point the gun ay all of us together. Banks understood. He went straight to Sherry and took her arm and held her in front of him. He pointed the gun at Winston.

  "I caught them together again," he said. "I stayed on them and I caught them together."

  "Painful," I said. "But not illegal." I stayed away from them. It meant Tommy would have to talk a little louder and Hawk would hear better from the hall.

  "Look on that table," Banks said.

  There was a canvas mail sack on the table where the coffee machine stood.

  "Look in the bag," Banks said.

  The bag was full of Baggies and the Baggies, neatly tied with green twistems, contained something that looked like heroin. It also looked like milk sugar but most people didn't bag and transport milk sugar.

  "The stuff that dreams are made of," I said.

  "They had it," Banks said. "They had that stuff with them."

  "That's not legal," I said.

  Banks jabbed the gun toward Winston. "Tell him what you're doing," Banks said.

  "You're sick," Winston said. "You're sick with jealousy."

  Winston looked at me. "Yes, Sherry and I love each other. And I'm sorry that this man has to be hurt. But love does what it will. You know that, Spenser."

  "Bullshit," Banks said. His voice hissed out, scraping over his pain. "She doesn't love you. Get her away from you and she'll recover. You're the one that's sick and you made her sick."

  Sherry stood very still. Her eyes were wide and her face very small at the motionless center of the storm.

  Winston shook his head. He seemed sad. "Tommy," he said. "You can't do this. You can't plant this dope or whatever it is on us and hold us prisoner and try to claim we're guilty of something."

  Banks put the gun to Sherry's head, pressing the muzzle against her temple. "Truth," he hissed. "Tell him the truth or I'll kill her."

  Winston looked even sadder. "Tommy," he said. "Tommy, don't."

  Banks pressed the gun harder against Sherry's temple. She winced.
r />   "Tommy," she said. Her voice was frightened. I eased my hand up toward my jacket pocket.

  "Tell him." Tommy's voice was barely human.

  "It's the truth," Winston said. "So help me God, I have told the truth."

  Banks thumbed the hammer back, I put my hand into my jacket pocket.

  "He's lying," Sherry said, and her voice was a soft scream. "He made me help him. He has been dealing drugs for years."

  "Paultz worked for him," I said.

  "Yes. And when you forced him out, he made me work with him. He drugged me, he . . . he has power."

  "You vicious little lying bitch," Winston said. There was something that looked like genuine horror in his face. Banks turned the gun toward him. "She's lying," Winston said. "She's lying. Yes, all right, I helped her. Yes, we were running heroin. But she was the one. It was her operation. I fronted for her."

  Sherry said, "Kill him, Tommy, don't let him say those things. He's made me do awful things. Kill him, kill both of them and we'll go away."

  I said, "Tommy."

  Winston said, "See, she'll use anyone." His voice was up three octaves, it seemed, and it squeaked with terror and rage and franticness. "Don't let her use you. Don't do it for her, Banks. She's . . ." He groped for words. "She's satanic. She's . . ."

  Banks shot him. Twice. It was a mistake. He should have shot me first. Sherry wrenched away from him and my bullet hit Tommy in the middle of the chest, and he fell over on his back and lay perfectly still. Winston was on the floor too. He had lurched back against the mirrors and left a long smear of blood on the mirrors as he slid to the floor. Both men were dead. You see enough of it, you know. I put my gun back into my jacket pocket. Sherry went to her knees beside Banks and as I walked toward her she picked up his gun and aimed it at me, holding it in both hands. Her face was puckered and intense. Like a schoolchild doing math.

  I said, "Sherry. It's okay. It's over."

  "Yes, it is, you motherfucker," she said. Her face still concentrated. "For you it's over."

  "Winston was right," I said.

  "I'm right," she said. "I'm the only one that knows."

  "You wanted me to look for Tommy so you'd know what he was up to."

  She smiled at me without losing her intensity.

  "You simple tool," she said. "I've used you for anything I wanted to use you for and now I'm going to kill you and take all my money and go away."

  "You killed Mickey," I said.

  "Of course."

  I began to walk toward her.

  "Stay," she said.

  I kept coming.

  "I'm going to kill you," she said.

  "So what," I said.

  She fired and the slug hit me in the right side of the chest. Everything slowed down. I could feel myself rock back and then right myself and take another step. I watched her finger tighten on the trigger, watched the cylinder begin to rotate counterclockwise, saw the hammer rise and fall and saw the muzzle flash and felt another thump, lower on the right side, still. I could feel my life begin to slither out of me. The hammer started back again when I reached down and grasped the gun by the barrel and slowly pulled it away from her with my left hand. I took hold of her throat with my right and began to raise her from her knees. She was far away from me now, way out at the very end of my extended arm, the hand at the end of that arm tightening with infinite patience on her throat. There was a remote sound and Hawk glided into the room and took her away from my hand and bent liquidly over me. The light in the room was very clear and still. I was greatly distant from it now and everything looked as if it were being viewed at the bottom of a clear lake. Hawk leaned over me. I realized I was on the floor. He pressed his mouth against mine. And breathed. As he breathed he tore away my shirt. He'd be looking for the wound, and when he found it he'd need a compress of some kind. I wondered if it would work. Just curiosity. It didn't matter much. I couldn't see what he was doing anymore. I had slithered out entirely.

  CHAPTER 44

  The lake was still and crystalline as I crossed it, and then became part of it so that the infinite clarity seemed to radiate from me and I could taste the brilliant stillness. Ahead was darkness. As I moved into it I noticed that there was scrub growth in parts of the oil field. When I was very close I could see them and see how the wind made their shapes contort as their branches moved restively, like animals too long restrained. Then I heard the shots. The sound sat on top of the wind the way a bird sits on a power line. I whirled, looking for a muzzle flash, and spotted some over to my left as more shots rode in on the wind. I ran toward them, my gun out. Two more shots. I banged into the superstructure of one of the pumps and spun around and staggered and kept my feet and kept going toward the spot where the memory of muzzle flash still vibrated in my mind. There was a brief flare of what must have been headlights swinging away, and then only the wind sound and the darkness. The wind had cooled, and there was thunder rolling to the west, and a new smell of rain in the air. I stopped for a moment and listened, staring toward the place where I'd seen the muzzle flashes and the headlights. Then lightning made a jagged flash, and I saw a car parked ahead of me. I moved toward it. I reached the car before the thunder caught up to the lightning.

  The car was a five-year-old Plymouth Duster. It was empty. I listened and heard nothing but the wind. The lightning flashed again. In front of the car was a wide, cleared space, maybe for parking. I saw no people. The rain smell was stronger now, and the thunder came closer upon the lightning. The storm was moving fast. I opened the car door and reached in and, crouched behind the open door, I turned on the headlights.

  Nothing happened. Nothing moved. I went flat on the ground, it was gravel, and looked underneath the car. Nothing. I got up carefully and moved out from the car in a crouch.

  The headlights made a wide theatrical swash of visibility in the darkness. Twenty feet in front of the car was Franco Montenegro's body and next to him was Candy's.

  I went down on my knees beside her, but she was dead, and I knew it even before I felt for a pulse and couldn't find it. She had taken a couple of bullets in the body. There was blood all over her front. Beside her on the ground her purse was open. The .32 was out. Unfired. She'd tried. Like I'd told her to. There was a small neat hole in her forehead from which a small trickle of dark blood traced across her forehead. I glanced at Franco. He had a similar hole. The last two shots I'd heard. The coup de grace, one for each. I sat back on my heels and stared at Candy. Despite the blood and the bullet hole she looked like she had. For something as large as it is, death doesn't look like much at first.

  The lightning and the thunder were nearly simultaneous now, and small spatters of rain mixed with the wind. I looked at Franco. Near his right hand was a gun. I moved over and, without touching the gun, lowered myself in a kind of push-up and smelled the muzzle. No smell of gunfire. He lay on his stomach, his face turned to one side. Blood soaked the back of his shirt. With my jaw clamped tight I rolled him over. There was no blood in front. The bullet hadn't gone through. He'd been shot from behind. Candy had been shot from in front. I got up and walked maybe fifteen feet back from Franco's body. On the soft gravel of the parking area were bright brass casings. The shooter had used an automatic, probably a 9-millimeter. I walked back and looked down at Candy. The rain was beginning to fall steadily, slanted by the wind. Already some of the blood was turning pink with dilution.

  I looked around the parking area. There was nothing to see. I looked at Candy again. There was nothing more to see there either. Still, I looked at her. The rain was hard now, and dense, washing down on her upturned face. The wind was warm no longer. Candy didn't care. My clothing was soaked, my hair plastered flat against my skull. Rain running off my forehead blurred my vision. Candy's mascara had run, streaking her face. I stared down as the rain washed it away too.

  "Some bodyguard," I said.

  We were quiet. The band on the roof was playing "Indian Summer." The smell of flowers seemed to have faded. Th
e smell of Candy's perfume was stronger. My mouth was dry.

  "Is dancing too systematic for you?" Candy said.

  "No."

  She got up and reached out toward me, and we began to dance, moving in a small circle on the narrow balcony, with the music drifting down. With her shoes off she was considerably smaller and her head reached only to my shoulder.

  "Would you care to marry me?"

  She was quiet. The water on the sound was quiet. Easy swells looking green and deep rolled in quietly toward us and broke gently onto the beach.

  Susan said, "I don't know."

  "I was under a different impression," I said.

  "So was I."

  "I was under the impression that you wanted to marry me and were angry that I had not yet asked."

  "That was the impression I was under too," Susan said.

  "Songs unheard are sweeter far," I said.

  "No, it's not that, availability makes you no less lovable. It's . . . I don't know. Isn't that amazing. I think I wanted the assurance of your asking, more than I wanted the consummated fact."

  I looked at Candy again. There was nothing more to see there either. Still, I looked down at her. The rain was hard now, and dense, washing down on her upturned face. The wind was warm no longer. Candy didn't care. My clothing was soaked, my hair plastered flat against my skull. Rain running off my forehead blurred my vision. Candy's mascara had run, streaking her face. I stared down as the rain washed it away too.