Now and Then s-35

by Robert B. Parker

  “I nudge it a little,” I said.

  “Yes,” she said. “You certainly do.”

  5.

  This time i duked the doorman at the Marriott a twenty to hold my car out front. Unfortunately Jordan Richmond and her male friend didn’t go to the Marriott. They went down the street to a bar called the Kendall Tap. It was small, so I waited outside across the street for two hours and twenty minutes until they came out and walked back toward the college. Before we got there they stopped beside a silver Mercedes sedan parked at an expired meter. The man took a parking ticket off the windshield and folded it and put it in his pocket. Then he went around and opened the passenger door. Jordan got in. He closed the door, walked back around, got in the driver’s side, and drove away. Foiled again. Mostly to make myself feel better, I wrote down the license plate number. Then I walked back to the Concord College parking lot. Jordan Richmond’s car was still parked there. That meant that her friend would need to bring her back. I went over to the Marriott and got my car from the doorman, and parked on the street near the Concord College parking lot. I was hungry. It was 7:13 on the dashboard clock. If Jordan kept to last night’s schedule she wouldn’t be picking her car up until about ten. I thought about a baked bean sandwich with mayo on anadama bread. I thought about corned beef hash with eggs. I thought about linguine with meatballs.

  I wondered why I never thought about foie gras, or roast guinea hen, or duck with olives. I wondered if everyone was like that or was it because I was plebeian? Probably because I was plebeian. Maybe if you were more cultured you thought about Dover sole when you were hungry.

  It had been raining in Boston much of the time since Labor Day, and it began again. I liked rain. I thought it was romantic. Susan didn’t like it. It ruined her hair. I sometimes wondered how we could possibly be together. About the only thing we liked in common was us. Fortunately we liked us a lot. There seemed little chance that linguine or Dover sole was forthcoming soon, so I watched the rain patterns on my windshield and thought about sex. Kendall Square at night is not lively. Now and then someone in rainwear would trudge past me. Occasionally a car, its wipers arcing slowly, would move along Broadway. The rest of the time it was just me, and the bright traffi c lights refl ected on the rain-shiny street.

  At about ten of ten the silver Mercedes pulled up and parked next to the parking lot. The tall stranger got out and went around and opened the passenger door. Jordan Richmond got out wearing some sort of cowboy-looking rain hat. They held hands as they walked to her car. He waited while she unlocked the door. Then she swept her hat off and turned into him and they kissed good night. It was a long kiss, enough, probably, to straggle her hair, and it involved a lot of body English. Finally they broke and she got into the car, and then got back out again and they kissed again. Thank God the rain blurred it some. I tilted my head back and stretched my neck and looked for a long moment at the roof of the car. When I looked again she was getting into her car for the second time. This one took. He waited until her door was closed and her car was running before he walked back to his. She pulled out of the parking lot and headed for the Longfellow Bridge. I stayed put. When she was safely on her way, the tall stranger went west on Broadway, and I followed him.

  He pulled into a garage on University Road, off Mt. Auburn Street. I lingered outside near the corner, where I could see both Mt. Auburn and University Road. He didn’t reappear. The garage serviced a large condominium building under which it was located, and my guess was that the tall stranger lived there and had accessed it by an elevator in the garage. There was nothing more to see there. I decided to go home and reread my collection of Tijuana Bibles.

  6.

  The silver mercedes was registered to Perry Alderson, whose address was in fact the Mt. Auburn Street building, unit 112, a condo above the garage where he’d parked. I got out my brown Harris tweed jacket, put it on over a black turtleneck, added a notebook and a camera, and drove over to Cambridge. I left my car with Richie the doorman at the Charles Hotel, and walked through the light rain over to Perry Alderson’s building. There was a woman at the concierge desk in the lobby. I smiled at her. A smile rich with warm sincerity.

  “Hi,” I said.

  She was red-haired and pale-faced and, had she allowed any of it to show, she might have had a good body. But she was shrouded in one of those voluminous ankle-length dresses that seem to be part of the municipal code in Cambridge. So the condition of her body remained moot.

  “Hello,” she said.

  “I’m writing a piece on urban living for Metropolis magazine,”

  I said. “I was in Chicago last week, Near North, you know. And next week I’m in DC doing Georgetown.”

  “Really?” she said.

  “Boston this week,” I said. “Cambridge and the Back Bay.”

  “And you want to write about this building?”

  “I sure do. It’s a beauty.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t let you bother the residents,” she said.

  “Oh, God no,” I said. “Of course not. I don’t need to. I was a guest here once, Mr. Perry Alderson, and I have pictures of his apartment and a lot of stuff I can use. But the fact-checkers are on my case. I remember I was on the first floor, number onetwelve, but I can’t remember, was it the last one at the end of the corridor?”

  “That’s all?” she said.

  “Absolutely,” I said. “I have that, and I’m in business. Take a few exterior shots. Be out of your hair.”

  “Mr. Alderson is the last door on the left,” she said. I looked down the corridor past the elevators.

  “On the left,” I said. “I would have sworn it was at the end.”

  “Mr. Alderson is on the left, sir,” she said fi rmly.

  “What a memory,” I said. “Some journalist. May I take your picture?”

  She almost blushed.

  “Photography is not permitted, sir, in the lobby, without permission of the condominium board.”

  “Of course,” I said. “Of course. Can you do me one small favor?”

  “Well, that would depend,” she said. “Wouldn’t it?”

  “I’m going to sort of hedge this story a little, and I’m hoping this conversation could just be ours?”

  “I am not a talker, sir,” she said.

  “I knew that,” I said. “Beautiful yet mysterious.”

  This time she did blush. I winked at her debonairly, and walked away. The Compleat Journalist.

  7.

  Iwaited near the entrance to the lobby bar at the Marriott. Jordan and Perry were in place, having a drink. At about 7:40 they finished. Perry paid the bill while Jordan organized her things, and put the strap of her big purse over her shoulder. As they came out of the bar, I went in, jostled her slightly, dropped a small listening device into her bag, and said, “Excuse me.”

  She smiled absently and nodded and they kept going. As soon as they were gone, I turned and went out and ran through the rain to Hawk’s Jaguar, which was idling across the street.

  “Doorman had his car,” Hawk said. “Silver Mercedes.”

  “Follow that car,” I said.

  Hawk looked at me as he put the car in gear.

  “You being Boston Blackie?” he said.

  “That would be you,” I said.

  “Lawzy,” Hawk said. “Racial humor.”

  The silver Mercedes stopped by the Concord College park ing lot. Jordan got out with her shoulder bag and went to her car. When she was in and the car was started, the Mercedes pulled away, and Jordan followed in her Honda Prelude.

  “How come they splitting up,” Hawk said.

  “Save him driving her back afterwards, maybe.”

  “Or maybe they know we on the case and they given up.”

  “We’ll see,” I said. “Radio tuned right?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  I turned it on. There was a slightly muffled quality to the sound, but I could hear hip-hop being sung. I could also hear her windshield wipers
. Pretty good.

  “This isn’t one of your stations,” I said.

  “Not my style,” Hawk said. “She listening to the radio. ”

  The Prelude followed the Mercedes west on Broadway, which meant that she wasn’t going home.

  “Where you get the bug?” Hawk said.

  “Voyeurs-R-Us,” I said.

  “Didn’t know you was a spy tech guy.”

  “I consulted Emmett Sleeper,” I said.

  “Sleeper the Peeper,” Hawk said. “Top drawer.”

  “He says this thing will listen at fifty feet and transmit an FM signal half a mile. Only problem would be background noise.”

  “They be doing what you think they doing,” Hawk said,

  “background noise be the evidence.”

  I picked up a small tape recorder from the backseat and held it in my lap. I plugged the adapter into Hawk’s cigarette lighter. Tested the thing for a minute, rewound it again, and shut it off.

  “What she gonna think when she gets home later,” Hawk said, “fi nds that thing in her bag?”

  “If she knows what it is she’ll know she’s been caught.”

  “Think she’ll stop seeing this guy?” Hawk said.

  “No.”

  “Even though she fi gure the husband know?”

  “He knows now,” I said. “I had to guess, I’d say she wants him to know.”

  “So why don’t she just tell him?”

  “She also doesn’t want him to know.”

  “And this a better way she can get even with him?” Hawk said.

  “Maybe,” I said. “If there’s something to get even for.”

  Hawk grinned.

  “There always be something to get even for,” Hawk said. The rain was heavy tonight, and there was a hard wind that made it seem even heavier. The Mercedes went into the garage beneath the condo, and the Prelude went in behind it.

  “His place is in the back, this side of the building,” I said.

  “How you know?” Hawk said.

  “Detective,” I said.

  “I keep forgetting,” Hawk said.

  Hawk parked near the back of the building.

  In a moment the sound of the hip-hop stopped, then the wipers. The car door opened and closed. I pressed the record button on the tape recorder. I heard Jordan’s voice, slightly muffl ed, but suffi cient to understand.

  “I can’t wait to get naked,” her voice said.

  I could hear a man laugh.

  “Do you think we’re oversexed?” Jordan said.

  Male laughter.

  “Probably,” the male voice said.

  Footsteps.

  “Isn’t that good,” Jordan’s voice said.

  Elevator doors. Elevator sound. Jordan giggled.

  “What if someone opened the elevator door?” the man’s voice said.

  “We could say I was helping you look for your keys,” Jordan said.

  The male voice said, “I think we should wait until we’re in my apartment.”

  “Damn,” Jordan’s voice said.

  More giggling. Elevator doors. The giggling stopped. Footstep sounds. A door.

  “A drink fi rst?” the man said.

  “Maybe a short one while I fl uff up.”

  The bag bumped on the floor, a rustle of movement, then, faintly, a sound that might have been a shower. I was uneasy. I felt slightly short of breath. I could feel Hawk looking at me.

  “Maybe we got enough,” Hawk said.

  I shook my head.

  “Hear it through,” I said.

  Which we did. All of it. Sitting in the darkened car with the wind driving the hard rain straight in against the window. We listened to the sounds of obvious intimacy. At one point Jordan actually screamed. And giggled.

  Once she said, “Perry, what are you doing to me?” in a littlegirl voice. Perry laughed. Otherwise he was quiet. Things culminated and then there was quiet.

  After a time Jordan’s voice said, “Oh my God.”

  Perry said, “Ever like this at home?”

  “No,” Jordan said. “Nothing.”

  I felt as if my soul were clenching like a fist. I was listening to something I had no right to hear. I thought about Doherty. Would I share this with him? Not unless I had to. I could probably convince him by playing the I-can’t-wait-to- get-naked part. The stuff before she was noisily in bed with another man.

  “We got plenty,” Hawk said.

  I nodded and shut off the tape. Hawk reached for the radio switch.

  “Shall we have a drink while we talk about what you know?”

  Perry said.

  Hawk’s hand stopped. He looked at me.

  “Postcoital?” he said to me.

  “Let me get my body covered,” Jordan’s voice said.

  “I like your body the way it is,” Perry said. “Stay here. I’ll get us a drink and we can talk in bed.”

  “Perfect,” Jordan said. “I’ll tell you what I’ve learned from Dennis.”

  I turned the tape recorder back on.

  8.

  We listened. Our street opened at the far end onto the river. Compressed by the high buildings on either side, the wet wind made the car tremble when it gusted. Inside it was just us and the two voices.

  “Dennis says that the bureau knows that there is some sort of antigovernment activity associated with Concord,” Jordan said.

  “But as far as I can tell it is no more interesting to them than half a dozen other groups.”

  “My name ever come up?” Perry said.

  “Only in my dreams,” Jordan said.

  Hawk grunted.

  The heavy rain flooded down the windshield, distorting what little we could see, making us seem alone in oceans of dark space, listening to disembodied words through the radio speaker.

  “I hope you don’t talk in your sleep,” Perry said.

  “Even if I did,” Jordan said, “poor Dennis wouldn’t make anything of it. He doesn’t know what to make of me, for God’s sake, or what to do with me. He has pulled his ignorance up around himself and hides.”

  “How do they know about Last Hope?” Perry said.

  “Nothing that I know of.”

  “You ever mention it to him?”

  “No, of course not. For obvious reasons.”

  “Of course,” Perry said.

  “According to Dennis, the bureau’s attention is focused at the moment on a group called FFL. I don’t know what the initials stand for.”

  “Freedom’s Front Line,” Perry said.

  “Are they violent?” Jordan said.

  “The philosophy is purgative,” Perry said.

  “By violence?”

  “Yes.”

  There was silence, then Jordan said, “Sometimes it almost seems the only way.”

  “I know,” Perry said.

  “I wonder if I could do it?” Jordan said.

  “Fight?”

  “Kill,” Jordan said, “for a cause I believed in.”

  “Fortunately you probably won’t have to make that decision,”

  Perry said.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “This country. The way this country is going . . .”

  “I know,” Perry said.

  He sounded very soothing.

  “Does Dennis talk about the bureau’s anti-terrorism operations?” Perry said.

  “There’s something called Operation Blue Squall,” she said.

  “But I don’t know much about it.”

  “It would help us in our mission,” Perry said, “if we knew more.”

  “I know. I’ll try. But Dennis and I don’t talk so much anymore.”

  “Because of us?” Perry said. “He knows there’s something going on?”

  “I can’t be here,” she said, “with you, and home with him. He knows I’m not there.”

  “What else does he know?”

  “He doesn’t even know what he knows,” Jordan said. “I told you he’s got his head down like a
man in a sandstorm.”

  “What if he decided to fi nd out?” Perry said.

  “He won’t.”

  “He’s an FBI agent,” Perry said. “He has resources.”

  “Maybe,” Jordan said. “But none that will help him here.”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  “I’m right,” Jordan said. “I’ve lived with him for twenty-fi ve years. The poor bastard.”

  “You feel sorry for him?”

  “He’s so overmatched in this,” she said.

  “So what do you think you should do?” Perry said.

  “Right now,” Jordan said, “I think I should give you a blow job.”

  “That’ll work,” Perry said.

  I reached over and shut off the radio.

  “You don’t want to listen to a BJ?” Hawk said.

  “No.”

  “Might be some more clues,” Hawk said.

  “I got all the clues I can stand.”

  We were quiet. The wind and rain kept coming.

  “She find that bug in her purse,” Hawk said, “gonna matter more than we thought it would.”

  “I know.”

  “You working on a plan?” Hawk said.

  “I am,” I said.

  9.

  How come i got to mug her?” Hawk said.

  “Sell the mugging,” I said. “You’re a big scary black guy. People expect to get mugged by big scary black guys.”

  “I too dignifi ed-looking to be a mugger,” Hawk said.

  “It’ll be dark,” I said. “Besides, I don’t want her to recognize me later.”

  “How about the guy? If he walks her to her car? What you want me to do with him.”

  “After the evening he has spent, would you get up and get dressed and walk down to the garage?”

  “Good point,” Hawk said.

  “And she’s not going to raise a ruckus either,” I said. “She’s not supposed to be here.”

  “Okay,” Hawk said.

  Hawk pulled the car up to the corner and turned off the lights.

  “Don’t want her copping the plate numbers,” he said. Hawk turned the collar up on his leather trench coat and got out into the downpour. He walked down the street away from me and turned into the garage. I punched the radio on.