Chance s-23

by Robert B. Parker

"Are you sure I'm not just building up my arms?" she said.

  "You're using mostly the lats," I said.

  She finished the exercise and put her hand on her back a little above the hip bone.

  "Right here," she said.

  "I need to get rid of this."

  "Your hip?" I said.

  "No, of course not. Right here, this disgusting roll of fat."

  I couldn't see any sign of fat. But we'd had that argument before and I saw no reason to lose it again. We'd also had the discussion about the impossibility of spot reducing.

  "Think of it as a beauty mark," I said.

  We were in Susan's club surrounded by men and women, though more women, fighting age and weight. Many of them did not seem to be winning the fight, but none of them appeared ready to surrender. Susan's trainer was in Wellfleet with her boyfriend, almost certainly in sinful congress, and I had been enlisted to train Susan. Enlisted is probably not the right word. Drafted is probably the right word.

  "Would the back machine help me?" Susan said.

  "It'll strengthen your lower back," I said.

  "I doubt that it will reduce your vast corpulence."

  "Show me how it works."

  We worked on the back machine for a while. We did some lat pull downs. Susan declined the trunk twister.

  "I've heard that people develop muscle there and their waist thickens."

  "I doubt that," I said.

  "I don't want to take the chance," Susan said.

  "Of course you don't," I said.

  "Let's work on the bicep thing-y," Susan said.

  Women don't bulk up as easily as men, and they don't define as easily, but Susan had visible muscles. She had as much back fat as Akeem Olajuwon. She did three sets on the curl machine and went for a drink of water.

  "Nice to see you drinking from the water fountain," I said, "instead of carrying your own personal bottle around."

  "Woman of the people," Susan said.

  "Have you made any progress on Bibi Whatshername?"

  "Anaheim," I said.

  "Is regress a word?"

  "Yes, but probably not appropriate in this context."

  "Well anyway, I'm accumulating information on the relationships among the players in the Boston mob scene, and I've learned that Shirley Ventura and Marty Anaheim were an item."

  "Bibi's husband?"

  "The same," I said.

  "And how does that help you with Bibi?"

  "It doesn't."

  "But maybe it will," Susan said.

  "But maybe it will."

  "Do you have any idea how?"

  "It's a little like you do, I think. You keep listening and nothing much makes any sense and you keep listening and you keep listening and then something appears a pattern, an event, an evasion, a contradiction. Maybe just the small end of something you get hold of and begin to tug."

  Susan bent over and took another drink of water and stood up with a few drops of it on her chin. She wiped it away with the back of her hand. She was wearing leather weight-lifting gloves, the kind without fingers. Her nails gleamed.

  "Yes," she said.

  "Psychotherapy is like that. Though the hope is that it is the patient who sees the thing."

  "All analogies are partial," I said.

  "Anyway, that's what I'm doing. I'm walking around and listening."

  "And your goal is?"

  "To find Bibi."

  "And when you've found her?"

  "See that she's all right."

  "You are a very sentimental man," Susan said.

  "My profession permits it," I said.

  "Which is a reason you chose it," Susan said.

  I shrugged.

  "It takes a very tough guy to remain sentimental in this world," Susan said.

  "My profession permits that too," I said.

  "Which is, of course, another reason you chose it."

  "I chose it because I heard it was a good way to meet lascivious Jewish shrinks," I said.

  "Is that your specialty?"

  "No," I said.

  "Lascivious Jewish women are my specialty.

  Shrinks are a subspecialty."

  "And how many have you met?"

  "Lascivious Jewish women?" I said.

  "Thousands. Shrinks?

  One."

  "Had I been a lascivious Irish shrink, would you have loved me anyway?"

  "The answer is yes," I said.

  "But I think you've just coined a tripartite oxymoron."

  "Oy way," Susan said.

  "Can the police help you find Bibi?"

  "Vegas cops would like to talk with all three of them."

  "Anthony's her husband, Bibi's his lover, and they both disappear after Shirley was killed. Who's the third one?"

  "Marty. He was at the MGM Grand. She had the phone number for the Grand with her when she died."

  "Will they keep you informed?" Susan said.

  "I doubt it, but I'll call every once in a while."

  "How about our police? Frank Belson owes you a pretty big favor."

  "Quirk says he'll keep an eye on the wire for me."

  "Not Frank?"

  "I wouldn't ask Frank."

  "Because he owes you a favor?"

  "I wouldn't want him to think I'm collecting," I said.

  Susan took another drink, and straightened and wiped her mouth, carefully so as not to smear her lipstick. She looked at me with her great dark eyes and smiled her wide-mouthed smile.

  "Big boy," she said, "you are a piece of work."

  "How nice of you to notice."

  CHAPTER 40

  Hawk came into my office on Monday afternoon, carrying a brown paper bag.

  "He ain't in there," Hawk said, and put the bag on my desk while he took off his white leather trench coat and hung it on the rack.

  "Anthony?"

  "Yeah. Two women live there. And he ain't either one of them.

  They go to work every morning, come back every evening. After they left this morning I went in and looked around. Women only, no sign of anyone else."

  Hawk took a sandwich and a twenty-four-ounce can of Foster's lager from the bag, folded the bag flat, and used it as a place mat.

  "What kind of sandwich?" I said.

  "Lobster, basil mayo, on sourdough bread."

  "And you plan to eat all of it," I said.

  "Un huh."

  Hawk took a bite, and popped the top of the beer can while he chewed.

  "Fine," I said, "I'll just suck on this paper clip for a while."

  "How you doing in Needham?" Hawk said.

  "The husband's got a daughter by his first marriage. She visits on weekends."

  "So we oh for two."

  "At best," I said.

  "Nice detective work though, found Anthony's love nest, found Bibi's high school chum."

  "Makes you proud," I said.

  "Doesn't it."

  "Make a nice slogan," Hawk said.

  "Missing? Don't want to be found? Call Spenser. Your secret is safe with us."

  "You haven't found anybody either," I said.

  "Yeah," Hawk said.

  "But I got a lobster sandwich."

  "Good point."

  We were quiet while Hawk ate his sandwich, and drank his beer. When he was through he got up and washed his hands and face in the sink. Then he came back and sat down and put his feet up on my desk.

  "So where are we," he said.

  "I'm not sure," I said.

  "But I don't think we got a paddle."

  "Well," Hawk said.

  "We know something."

  "We know we don't know anything," I said.

  "We listen to Fast Eddie Lee," Hawk said, "we know there seem to be a hostile takeover percolating."

  "Okay, we know that."

  "And it seem to have something to do with Anthony Meeker."

  "But we don't know what," I said.

  "Not yet," Hawk said.

  "And we don't kno
w where Anthony is," I said.

  "Nor what scam he and Marty were trying to run, nor what was going on between Marty and Shirley, nor what went wrong between them, nor who is going to take over what hostilely, nor who killed Shirley Ventura, nor whether Marty is after Bibi, nor where Bibi is."

  "Okay," Hawk said, "so we don't know everything."

  "I suppose you could say that."

  "You talk to Julius since we left Vegas?"

  "No."

  "So we could do that," Hawk said.

  "Well, aren't you perky," I said.

  "I be even perkier, I knew exactly what the hell we trying to do.

  We looking for Bibi, or Anthony, or we trying to solve Shirley's murder, or we keeping tabs on the mob, or we trying to get even with Marty Anaheim for popping you in the kisser?"

  "Yes," I said.

  "Yes?"

  "All of the above," I said.

  "I don't like somebody getting killed when they are sort of my client. I don't want Marty to find Bibi and hurt her. I don't like losing Anthony. I don't like stuff going on and I can't figure it out. I'm trying to make sense out of this hairball."

  "If there is a hostile takeover coming, we can sit tight and watch and after a while we'll find out," Hawk said.

  "And maybe there'll be some fallout and we'll learn some other stuff."

  "Maybe," Hawk said.

  "And maybe Madonna will come into the office and moon us," I said.

  "That ain't perky."

  "Fuck perky."

  CHAPTER 41

  Julius lived in a three-story stucco house with a five-car garage and grates on the windows. He and I sat on high, hard, hand carved mahogany chairs in his big ornate formal living room and looked out through the grated windows at the guest cottage, in the backyard, the big house in miniature. There was no grass in the backyard. It was covered with beige pea stone, ornamented with statuary.

  "How's your wife?" I said.

  "No good."

  "Takes a while," I said.

  Julius shook his head.

  "She ain't going to get better," he said.

  "I know a shrink."

  "Shrinks are a bunch of fucking perverts," Julius said.

  "Oh yeah," I said.

  "I forgot that."

  "You know anything about where that fucking Anthony is?"

  "No," I said.

  "But I'm still looking."

  "You look all you want, long as you don't think I'm paying you."

  "My own interest," I said.

  "There's a hundred thousand out on him," Julius said.

  "You find him, you kill him, you get the hundred grand. Just like anybody else."

  "Very fair," I said.

  "Did you know he and Marty Anaheim were running some kind of scam?"

  "What kind of scam?"

  "I don't know. Did you know your daughter and Marty were friends?"

  Julius stared at me.

  "Shirley?"

  "Yeah."

  He shook his head.

  "Not with Marty Anaheim."

  "You any idea what that might be about?"

  "You know this?"

  "I got it on good authority."

  "Who?"

  I shook my head.

  "Any thoughts?" I said.

  Julius slumped back in his chair and stared at me.

  "You want some fruit?" he said.

  He made a listless gesture at a big pink and blue and white bowl on the coffee table. There was a large Technicolor picture of Shirley on the table near the fruit.

  "No thanks."

  "Her mother couldn't have no more kids," Julius said, "after her. Her womb was tipped or something."

  He was staring out the window at the guest house. His voice rumbled up out of him, as if his mind were elsewhere and his voice was on its own.

  "I had a business to run. Her mother was supposed to raise her."

  He paused. There must have been other people in the big ugly house but there was no sound. Nothing moved. The house felt as if it had been closed up for a long time.

  "She never let her out. Not even for school. One of the fucking nuns come in every day and teach her, and my wife would sit there the whole time. When she finally had to go to high school, my wife takes her in the morning, picks her up in the afternoon. She never learned to drive a car. Hell, she can't… couldn't… even ride a bicycle. She might fall off, get hurt."

  We were quiet. I could smell the ripening scent of the apples and pears in the bowl on the coffee table.

  "How'd she meet Anthony," I said.

  "She knew him from high school. He used to come around, bring some videocassettes and him and Shirley and my wife would watch movies in here."

  "The three of them."

  "Yeah. My wife had to make sure he wasn't showing her no bad movies. Make sure there was no sex going on. So they'd sit there and watch the movies and the thing is… it's a real funny thing, you feel like laughing… my wife gets to like this creep. The fucking head chicken gets to like the fucking fox. He's polite, you know, and he talks to my wife. Why not, what the fuck you going to talk to Shirley about. She's hardly ever been out of the fucking house. But my wife tells me he ain't a fucking hoodlum, except she don't say 'fucking," like the hoodlums work for me. And he's going to many Shirley and I'm going to give him a nice responsible job.

  And I say, then he'll be a hoodlum. But my wife don't pay no fucking attention. She's good at not paying no fucking attention. So I put him to work. He's collecting money for me on all of the out of-turf accounts and paying off the people I gotta pay off to do business quiet in those places. I need somebody I can trust to do it."

  "Why not pay off the people yourself?"

  "Bookkeeping. I let Anthony collect, say, from bookies on Gino's turf and he pays Gino direct out of collections, and there's no money trail. Federal guys especially like to follow the money.

  The less tracks back to me, the easier everything works."

  "And the easier it is to skim," I said.

  "Why you want a trustworthy guy doing it," Julius said.

  "Like Anthony."

  Julius nodded slowly.

  "Just like him," he said.

  "You had any interest in moving in on Tony Marcus's business while he's in jail?"

  Julius shrugged.

  "You think about it," he said.

  "Tony's got some stiff named Tarone running his errands while he's in the place. Could knock him over easy."

  "I met Tarone."

  "I unnerstand Tony's problem," Julius said.

  "You don't want no hotshot running things while you're away, 'cause when you come back it might be his."

  "Tony's in no danger there," I said.

  "Other hand, you don't want some candy ass running things, anyone can walk in and take it away from him."

  "Not easy being a crime lord," I said.

  Julius ignored me. He liked talking about business.

  "Used to be when Broz was younger, you go see him, you talk, he sorta decides what's gonna happen, everybody gets along, everybody makes money. Now, it's like, you know, an open city. So, yeah, we been looking over his operation. Gino probably has too.

  Fast Eddie Lee, I don't know. He ain't said. Fuckers never say much."

  "Gotten to push and shove yet?"

  "No, right now we're just appraising."

  "Anthony have anything to do with the appraising?"

  "Forget Anthony, I told you, there's a C-grand out on him. He don't matter anymore. He's already dead, he just don't know it yet."

  "You think Shirley and Marty Anaheim might be connected to the appraising?"

  "There ain't no Shirley and Marty Anaheim."

  "I'm told there was."

  "He's fucking lying," Julius said, his voice rumbling in his chest.

  "Give me his name."

  I shook my head again.

  "I find out who's saying that," Julius rumbled, "I'll kill him.

  Myself. Personally."


  There didn't seem anywhere to go from there. I stood up.

  "I'll go now," I said.

  "I'm sorry about your daughter."

  "Yeah," Julius said.

  "And I hope your wife can find some consolation."

  Julius nodded. His head was forward a little. He seemed to have sunk deeper into his chair.

  "She ain't going to," he said.

  CHAPTER 42

  On Thursday nights Susan ran a walk-in clinic at The Spence Health Center in Cambridge, and didn't get out until 9:00. Then she always drove over to my place to have dinner with me and spend the night. And always before we went to bed we walked Pearl the Wonder Dog together up the Commonwealth Avenue Mall. Which was what we were doing on this Thursday night, at about 11:30. It was definitely fall now. The leaves had turned, and where the streetlights made them bright they seemed almost artificial against the darkness. There was little traffic, the eleven o'clock news was over, and many of the brownstone and brick townhouses were dark. Susan held Pearl's leash. Pearl leaned firmly into her choke collar and made an occasional huffing sound.

  "Ever wonder why she's in such a hurry?" I said.

  "She's not going anywhere."

  "She likes to hurry," Susan said.

  We crossed Dartmouth Street. Ahead of us at the Exeter Street crossing a car pulled up and two men got out and began to walk toward us. Behind us I heard a car slow and stop on Dartmouth Street. I glanced back; a man got out of the passenger side and began walking behind us.

  I said to Susan, "Kiss me good night, and take Pearl and go right across the street here as if you were going home. When you're behind the parked cars crouch down and get the hell away from here."

  "What is it?"

  "Trouble, I think."

  I turned her toward me and kissed her as if there were nothing else to do in the world. As I kissed her I took my gun out from under my coat.

  I murmured against her mouth, "When I let you go, move. Don't hurry, but don't linger. Wave to me as you cross the street."

  Susan didn't say another word. When we stopped kissing, she touched me on the face once, briefly, and headed across Commonwealth Avenue in the middle of the block; as she and Pearl squeezed between two parked cars she gave me a happy wave.

  When she reached the sidewalk, she turned and started back toward Arlington Street. The guys in front of me paid her no mind.

  I pretended to look after her. The guy behind me was walking casually, looking around like a late-night tourist. I palmed my gun, so that in the darkness no one could see that I was carrying it. It was the easy-to-carry little Smith & Wesson.38 chambered for five rounds. I always left the chamber empty under the hammer, so I had four. Usually that was enough, and would have to be again.