Chance s-23

by Robert B. Parker

  I walked on to Dartmouth Street and turned right toward Copley Square. Across from the public library, I turned right onto Boylston Street and went past H. H. Richardson's other church back toward Mass Ave. By the time I reached Exeter Street, the guy in the Patriots football jacket was turning up Boylston. I stopped outside Morion's Steak House and leaned on the doorway. He walked on past me and crossed Exeter Street and leaned idly against the streetlight post, musing on the new addition to the library. Probably agreed with me that the new addition was ugly. I walked across Exeter Street, and stood beside him on the corner, looking at the new part of the library.

  "Looks like corporate headquarters for an oil refinery," I said.

  "Don't you think?"

  "You talking to me?" he said.

  "Doesn't it just leave a sour taste in your mouth when an architectural treasure is esthetically debased?" I said.

  "Sure, pal. I'll be talking to you."

  "That why you're following me around?" I said. "

  "Cause you want to talk to me?"

  "Following you? What the fuck are you talking about?"

  He started to walk away. I walked along beside him. At Fair field, he turned right and I turned right with him. He stopped. I stopped.

  "Buzz off," he said.

  I smiled at him. He walked again, across Newbury down to Commonwealth. I walked with him. He stopped.

  "Keep it up, pal," he said, "and I'm going to knock you on your ass."

  "Probably not," I said.

  "I warned you," he said.

  We crossed the inbound side of Commonwealth and turned right on the mall toward The Public Gardens. He was stepping out smartly.

  "Don't you think this is a great stretch of city?" I said.

  He kept walking.

  "I don't know if I've seen another stretch of urban space like it," I said.

  "The brick and brownstone townhouses, the wide pedestrian mall in the center, all the statues, the trees, the flowering shrubs. You know any other places like it?"

  Apparently he didn't.

  "And you can see the full length of it, from Charles Street to Kenmore Square, because it's dead flat, you know?"

  Apparently he knew.

  At Clarendon Street he stopped under the arching trees, near a bench. I stopped too. A gray-haired woman in a black and white checked pant suit passed us walking a honey-colored spaniel on a red leash.

  When she had passed the big guy said, "You don't know who you're fucking with, pal. Now you either get lost or I knock you on your ass."

  "Who am I fucking with?" I said.

  The big guy led with his right, which is effective only with amateurs. I pulled my head out of the way and smiled. He followed up with a meandering left hook which I avoided also.

  "You loop your punches," I said.

  He lunged at me and I stepped sideways and played him past me with my hands.

  "You're going to hurt yourself," I said.

  He stood staring at me, breathing hard. Then he lowered his head and charged at me. I slipped the charge again and drove my right fist into his left kidney as he went by. He grunted and fell face forward. I stepped away from him.

  "See," I said.

  "Short punches. The one I hit you with didn't travel a foot, but I turned into it when I threw it and got a lot behind it."

  He got to his hands and knees, and then to his feet. He stood crookedly, as if his left kidney were hurting, which it surely was, and stared at me.

  "We going to walk some more?" I said.

  He unzipped his jacket with his right hand and reached inside.

  By the time he got his hand on his gun, mine was out and pointing at him.

  "Silly to walk around with your gun zipped up inside," I said.

  "I know you didn't expect you'd need it, but once I got annoying, you should have at least un zippered just in case."

  He didn't know what to do. He stood staring at my gun, holding his gun half out from under his coat.

  "Did the folks who told you to follow me also tell you it would be okay to shoot me in the middle of Comm Ave. at ten-thirty in the morning?"

  He let the gun slide back into its place and took his hand away from his coat.

  "No."

  "Good," I said.

  "Why don't you zip the coat up good, and I'll just sort of keep my piece handy here in my pocket."

  "Why don't you kiss my ass," he said. And turned and started walking toward The Public Gardens again. I walked with him. My gun was the short-barreled Smith & Wesson.38 and I could easily hold it inside the pocket of my green windbreaker. We reached Arlington Street in silence and crossed and went into The Public Gardens which was still bright with flowers in the early fall. Near the big statue of George Washington on horseback he stopped again.

  "You going to follow me home?" he said.

  "Sure," I said.

  "You're making me look bad, you know? You're gonna get me in trouble, following me like this." – "Un huh."

  Ahead of us the swan boats were still in the water, full of people, trailed by a convoy of hungry ducks to whom the tourists gave peanuts.

  "Whyn't you gimme a fucking break, pal?"

  "Naw."

  He stood some more. He looked at Washington above him. He looked back at the Swan Boat Lagoon, and the boats full of people being slowly pedaled about by college kids with quads of steel. He looked back at me.

  "Okay," he said.

  "I'm fucked. What do you want?"

  "I want to know why you are following me."

  "Guy asked me to."

  "Who?"

  "You gotta promise me, you don't say I told you, you know. It don't make me look real good."

  "Don't feel bad," I said.

  "You just weren't ready for what you got. You're used to collecting overdue from some guy fixes timing chains for a living. Doesn't matter you loop your punches, you still hit him. You don't need to have your gun where you can get at it quick."

  "You gotta promise," he said.

  "Sure."

  "They find out I let you roust me, it won't do me no good."

  I waited. Behind him one of the swan boats drifted under the little bridge. The ducks glided behind it.

  "Marty told me to see who you talked to," the Big Guy said.

  "Marty who?"

  "Marty Anaheim," he said. There was surprise in his voice that there could be another Marty.

  "Works for Gino Fish," I said.

  Again the guy looked startled.

  "He don't work for him, man. Marty's his number-one guy," he said.

  "Awesome," I said.

  "You know why he wanted me followed?"

  "Naw. I'm just a fucking laborer, you know. Grunt work. They don't tell me shit."

  "When did Marty tell you to start following me?"

  "Sent me out this morning."

  "How long were you supposed to stay on me?"

  "Till he told me to stop."

  "Okay, here's what you do. Tell him I made you, and you decided the wisest course was to bail out on the tail. You got that?"

  "The wisest course…?"

  "Ad lib if you want to."

  "Yeah, but Marty'll put somebody else on you."

  "Tell him not to," I said.

  "I can't tell Marly Anaheim what to do."

  "Anyone else follows me around I'm going to speak to Marty direct."

  "Jesus, you can't do that, he'll know I told you."

  I shrugged and turned and walked away from him. I crossed Arlington Street at the light. Down at the corner of Newbury Street people were going into the Ritz, probably having lunch in the cafe.

  The bar would be open. I wondered if they served New Amsterdam Black & Tan these days. I looked back at the Big Guy. He was still standing there beside Washington. Next to the monumental sculpture he looked small.

  CHAPTER 6

  I was sitting at my desk with my feet up, reading the Globe, when Hawk came into my office with a bag of donuts
and two large cups of coffee. My windows were open behind me and the sound and scent of morning traffic drifted up, along with the smell of bacon cooking somewhere, and beneath it, the smell from the river five blocks away. Even though it was September, it still smelled like summer.

  "Got you some delicious decaffeinated," Hawk said.

  "You drinking real coffee?" I said.

  "Guatemalan dark roast," he said.

  "Keep drinking that stuff you'll be bouncing around like one of the Nicholas Brothers."

  Hawk set out the coffee for each of us and put the bag of donuts between us. He hooked one of my client chairs over near the desk where he could reach the donuts and sat down. He was wearing a dark blue suede jacket made to look like denim, over a white silk tee-shirt. His jeans were pressed and his black cowboy boots were hand tooled from the skin of some reptile I didn't recognize.

  "Just up tempo my natural rhythm," he said.

  "What we going to do about Marty Anaheim?"

  "Sort of a problem," I said.

  "I told the slugger I wouldn't spill the beans."

  "That you made him, and he told you who sent him?"

  "Yeah."

  Hawk stared at me for a time. Then he shook his head.

  "… obedient, cheerful, thrifty," he muttered, more to himself than to me, "brave, clean, and reverent."

  "I'm not too obedient," I said.

  "You ain't too fucking reverent either," Hawk said, "but you still a goddamned Eagle Scout."

  "I told him I wouldn't," I said.

  "You know what Marty's like."

  "I remember once Marty beat a guy to death with a pool cue," Hawk said.

  "They playing pool, and the guy kidding Marty. Saying how Patriots folded against the Bears in the eighty-five Super Bowl. Marty likes those Patriots. So he starts hitting the guy with the butt end of the pool cue."

  "Guy overestimated Marty's sense of humor," I said.

  Hawk nodded.

  "Your slugger probably be in some trouble, you tell Marty he screwed up the tail job."

  "He's a dope," I said.

  "He couldn't tail a bull through a china shop. No need to get him killed."

  "Everybody know Marty's a psycho. You work with him, you gotta be prepared to deal with that."

  "I sort of promised."

  "Okay," Hawk said.

  "I know what you like. How we going to do it?"

  I ate a plain donut and drank some decaf. Hawk sipped his Guatemalan dark roast.

  "Well, the best guess is that Marty, or more likely Gino Fish, knew that Julius hired me. And they wanted to see who I talked to and what I found."

  "Julius hired us," Hawk said.

  "You're so sensitive," I said.

  "Nobody follow me."

  "For cris sake I said.

  "You haven't been doing anything."

  "I waiting for my kind of work," Hawk said.

  "I don't do gumshoe work, rattle fucking doorknobs."

  Hawk stood and went to my window and looked down at the corner of Berkeley and Boylston. It was a fine bright morning.

  There was a lot of foot traffic at ten of nine, people going to work at the big insurance companies that littered the Back Bay. The young women were still in their summer dresses. The young men wore no topcoats.

  "Cross Boylston," Hawk said.

  "Corner near Louis'."

  I stood beside him and looked.

  "Sort of tall with square shoulders," Hawk said.

  "Fishing hat, tan raincoat, looking uninterested."

  "I see him," I said.

  "Newspaper under his arm."

  "So he can lean on a lamppost and read it," Hawk said.

  "He's doing everything but," I said.

  "Your guy?"

  "No," I said.

  "They wouldn't send the same tail two days in a row."

  "They haven't been too smart so far," Hawk said.

  "You made the first guy as quick as we made this one."

  "Not the same thing," I said.

  "We were looking for this one."

  "Sure," Hawk said.

  "Why don't we just go see Marty, see what he wants?"

  "You know where to find him?"

  "Sure," Hawk said.

  "

  "Course it's possible," I said, "we brace Marty Anaheim, we get ourselves in trouble."

  "Or him," Hawk said.

  CHAPTER 7

  The guy in the raincoat followed Hawk and me to a bar on Canal Street, near the old Boston Garden.

  "Marty here about every morning," Hawk said.

  The bar was called Poochie's, and through the big plate glass window in front we could see that Marty was there with a couple of other guys in suits drinking draught beer, and watching a motorcycle race on the big color television over the bar.

  "Why don't you wait out here and confuse the tail," I said.

  Hawk smiled and leaned against the entrance wall. The guy in the raincoat was across the street, near the MBTA entrance, pretending to count his change.

  "He'll doodle around out here for a while," Hawk said.

  "Trying to figure out if Marty'll be mad, and then he'll come in."

  "That's about right," I said.

  I walked in and sat on a bar stool next to one of Marty's companions and ordered a beer. Marty glanced at me and away, then he let his glance drift back to me out of the corner of his left eye.

  The guy in the raincoat was decisive. After a minute or so, he came in and spoke to Marty, standing on the other side of Marty, whispering so I couldn't hear. Marty listened without taking his eyes off the motorcycle races.

  "Okay, Dukes, beat it," Marty said when the guy in the raincoat finished whispering.

  "I'll talk to you later."

  Marty glanced casually past me at the street through the big window, then let his glance drift disinterestedly over me. I gave him a big friendly smile. He didn't smile back. Marty was a bodybuilder, and a successful one, if you judged by the way his suit didn't fit. He was clean shaven with shoulder-length blond hair and a dark tan. He had a small scar at the left corner of his mouth.

  And his right eye seemed to wander off center. There was a gold earring in his left earlobe, and a very big emerald ring on his right pinky. The two guys with him were weight-room types. The one next to me had a medallion of some kind on a gold chain around his neck. On the television another motorcycle race was under way. I didn't watch. Marty and his pals did, with Marty occasionally glancing at me. I waited. Finally it was more than Marty could stand. He leaned forward and looked at me from the other side of his buddy with the medallion.

  "How you doing," he said.

  He had a surprisingly high voice.

  "Fine," I said.

  The beer was growing slowly flat in front of me, but ten in the morning seemed a little early. Marty kept leaning forward. His two friends were looking at me too.

  "I know you?" Marty said.

  "Sure you do," I said.

  "I'm your hero. You want to be just like me."

  "That a wise remark?" Marty said.

  "Yeah. I'm just practicing on you, in case I meet somebody smarter."

  Marty's tan darkened, and a small nerve in his right cheek began to twitch, below the walleye. He slid off the bar stool and stepped around his associate to stand beside me.

  "You come in here looking for trouble?"

  "No, but your guy Dukes was tailing me. Thought I'd ask you about it."

  "My guy?"

  "Guy in the raincoat. I wanted to see who sent him. And sonovagun, Marty, it was you."

  "I don't know no Dukes."

  "Sure," I said, "and you don't know no Spenser either, and you didn't have a guy on my tail."

  Marty took a half step back and folded his thick arms. His two friends were both turned on the bar stools toward me. I noticed the friend without the medallion sported some crude prison tattoos on his forearms. The bartender had moved as far down the bar away from us as he could
and was busy slicing lemons. Marty kept his pose as he stared at me. His coat sleeves pulled tight around his upper arms. His Rolex watch gleamed at me from his left wrist.

  "Chills," I said, "run up and down my spine."

  "Whaddya doing for Julius Ventura?" Marty said.

  "Why do you want to know?" I said.

  "

  "Cause I'm softhearted," Marty said.

  "Give you a chance to tell me what's going on, and maybe walk out of here with your balls still swinging."

  I had a couple of killer responses to that all ready, but I didn't get to use them because Hawk came in. He stepped inside the bar and took off his sunglasses and tucked them into the side pocket of his suede-denim jacket. Then he unbuttoned the jacket and walked down the bar past where we were sitting, and leaned on the wall behind Marty and his pals. It was nice theater and also made it harder for all of them to concentrate on giving me the hard eye.

  Which had been getting pretty boring anyway.

  "So," I said.

  "Why do you want to know what I'm doing with Julius Ventura?"

  Marty was still looking at me, but his two pals had swung farther around in their seats and were looking at Hawk.

  "The colored guy don't make no difference," Marty said.

  "The hell he doesn't," I said.

  "Still three to two," Marty said.

  "Yeah, but one of the two is me," I said.

  "And the other one's him."

  Marty wasn't scared of me, or of Hawk. Marty was much too predatory to be scared. But he was confused. He'd put a simple tail on a guy and ended up having the guy, so to speak, on his tail.