Five Classic Spenser Mysteries

by Robert B. Parker

  5

  Margery Bartlett had gone upstairs to lie down, Dr. Croft had come over and given her a shot. Roger Bartlett had gone to a neighbor’s house to pick up his daughter. Trask had brought back the maps, and he and Healy and I were looking at them spread out on the kitchen table. A small slick-haired state cop in plainclothes and rimless glasses had hooked a tape recorder to the phone in the den off the kitchen and sat next to it with earphones, reading a copy of Playboy he’d found in the magazine rack. He turned it sideways to look at the centerfold.

  “Sonova bitch,” he said, “hair and all. You see this, Lieutenant?”

  Healy didn’t look up. “If you gotta read that garbage, read it, but don’t narrate it.”

  The little cop held the magazine out at arm’s length. “Sonova bitch,” he said.

  Healy said, “What’s up here, back of the riding stable?”

  “Nothing,” Trask said, “just woods. It’s the west end of the Lynn Woods. Runs for miles back on into Lynn.”

  “Hills?”

  “Yeah, low ones; it slopes up back of the stable riding ring.

  “Can we put someone up there with glasses?”

  “Sure, the woods are thick. He could climb a tree if he wanted.”

  “You know the people at the stable?”

  “Sure.”

  “Can we put somebody in there?”

  “In the stable?”

  Healy said, “I don’t mean inside the stable. Can we have someone posing as an employee?”

  “Oh yeah, sure. I’ll set it up.”

  Healy made some notes on a small notepad he’d taken from inside his coat. He used a big red fountain pen that looked like one my father had used when I was small.

  “If they pick up the money here,” I said, “that’s northbound. Where’s the first place they can get onto Route 1 north?”

  “Saugus,” Healy said. “Here, by the shopping center.”

  “And the first place they can get off?”

  “Here, about two hundred yards up, at this intersection. Otherwise they could dip down through the underpass here and head up Route 1 or turn off here at 128. We can put a couple of people at each place.”

  “And a walkie-talkie up on the hill with the glasses?”

  Healy nodded. “We’ll put an unmarked car here.” He put a cross on the map at the intersection of Route 1 and Salem Street. “Here, here, he could U-turn at the lights. So here, southbound.” Healy marked out eleven positions on the map.

  “That’s a lot of cars,” Trask said.

  “I know. We’ll have your people use their own cars and supply them with walkie-talkies. How many people can you give me?”

  “Everybody; twelve men. But who’s going to pay them per diem?”

  Healy looked at him. “Per diem?”

  “For the cars. They’re supposed to get a per diem mileage allowance for the use of their own cars on official business. This could mount up if all of them do it. And I have to answer to a town meeting every year.”

  I said, “Do you accept Master Charge?”

  Trask said, “It’s not funny. You’ve never had to answer to a town meeting. They’re a bunch of unreasonable bastards at those things.”

  Healy said, “The state will rent the cars. I’ll sign a voucher. But if you screw this up, you’ll learn what an unreasonable bastard really is.”

  “There won’t be any screw-up. I’ll be right on top of every move my people make.”

  “Yeah,” Healy said.

  “Who you going to put into the stable?” I asked Healy.

  “You want to do it? You’re the least likely to be recognized.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You know anything about horses?”

  “Only what I read in the green sheet.”

  “It doesn’t matter. We’ll go up and look around.”

  Healy put on his coat, tightened his tie, put the snap-brimmed straw hat squarely on his head, and we went out. The rain had started again. Healy ignored it. “We’ll go in your car,” he said. “No need to have them looking at the radio car parked up there. Stick here, Miles,” he said to the cop leaning against the cruiser. He had on a yellow rain slicker now. “I’ll be back.”

  “Yes, sir,” Miles said.

  I backed out, pulling the car up on the grass to get around the state cruiser.

  “Your roof leaks,” Healy said.

  “Maybe I can get the state to give me per diem payment for a new one,” I said.

  Healy said nothing. The stable was about ten minutes from the Bartletts’ home. We drove there in silence. I pulled into the parking lot in front of the stable, parked, and shut off the motor. The stable was maybe one hundred yards in from the road. The access to it was between a restaurant and a liquor store. The restaurant was roadside colonial: brick, dark wood and white plastic, flat-roofed. In front was an enormous incongruous red and yellow sign that advertised home cooking and family-style dining and cocktails. The store was glass-fronted; the rest was artificial fieldstone. It too had a flat roof rimmed in white plastic. In the window was an inflated panda with a sign around his neck advertising a summer cooler. Across the top of the store was a sign that said Package Store in pink neon. Two of the letters were out. The parking lot narrowed to a driveway near the stable.

  The stable looked like someplace you’d go to rent a donkey. It was a one-story building with faded maroon siding, the kind that goes on in four-by-eight pregrooved panels. The trim was white, and the nails had bled through so that it was rust streaked. The roof was shingled partly in red and partly in black. Through it poked three tin chimneys. Next to it was a riding ring of unpainted boards and the trailer part of a tractor trailer rig, rusted and tireless on cinder blocks. In front of the stable parked among the weeds were five horse trailers, an old green dump truck with V-8 on the front, an aqua-colored ’65 Chevy hardtop, a new Cadillac convertible, and a tan ’62 Chevy wagon. A sign, Solid Fill Wanted, stood at the edge of the road, and a pile of old asphalt, bricks, paving stones, tree stumps, gravel, crushed stone, sewer pipe, a rusting hot water tank, three railroad ties, and a bicycle frame settled into the marshy ground behind it. Marlboro country.

  Healy looked at it all without speaking. Carefully. A sea gull lit on the containerized garbage back of the restaurant and began working on a chunk of something I couldn’t identify through the rain.

  “Let’s get out,” Healy said. We did. The rain was steady and warm and vertical. No wind slanted it. Healy had on no raincoat but seemed not to notice. I turned the collar up on my raincoat. We walked down toward the stable. The bare earth around it had been softened into a swamp of mud, and it became hard to walk. On the other side of the riding ring a handmade sign said Bridle Path, and an arrow pointed to a narrow trail that led into the woods. We walked back out to the parking lot and stood at the edge of Route 1 at the spot where Mrs. Bartlett was to stand. Cars rushed past in a hiss of wet pavement. To the left the road curved out of sight beyond a hill. To the right it dipped into a tunnel with a service road branching off to the right and parallel. Two hundred yards down was a light on the service road and a cross street.

  Healy turned and headed back toward the stable. I followed. Healy seemed to assume I would. I walked a little faster so I’d be beside him, not behind him. I was beginning to feel like a trainee.

  At the far end of the stable was a door marked Office. The torn screen door was shut, but the wooden door inside was open and a television set was tuned to a talk show. “Were you first into transcendental meditation before or after you made this picture?” “During, actually. We were in location in Spain …” Healy rapped on the door, and a dark-haired man answered. He was wearing black Levi’s jeans and a white T-shirt that was too small for him. His stomach spilled over his belt and showed bare where the T-shirt gapped. His skin was dark and moist-looking, and his face sank into several layers of carelessly shaved chin. He went perfectly with the stable. He also smelled strongly of garlic and beer.
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  “Yeah?”

  I said, “I’d like to rent a high-spirited palomino stallion with a hand-tooled Spanish leather saddle and silver-studded bridle, please.” The man looked at me with his eyes squinting, as if the light were too bright.

  “A what?” he said.

  “Shut up, Spenser,” Healy said and showed his badge to the fat man. “May we come in, please?”

  The fat man stepped back from the door. “Sure, sure, come on in; I’m just having lunch.”

  We went in. The television was on top of a rolltop desk. The actress was saying to the talk show hostess, “Sylvia, I never pay any attention to the critics.” On the writing surface of the desk were a big wedge of cheese and a salami on the white butcher’s paper in which they’d been wrapped. There was also a half-empty quart bottle of Pickwick ale, an open pocketknife, and a jar of pickled sweet peppers. The fat man belched as he waved us to a seat. Or waved Healy to a seat. There was only a straight-backed chair by the desk and a sprung swivel chair with a torn cushion on it. The fat man sat in the swivel chair, Healy took the straight chair, and I stood. “The critics I care about, Sylvia, are those people out there. If I can make them happy, I feel that I’m …” Healy reached over and shut off the television.

  “What’s up?” the fat man said.

  “My name is Healy. I’m a detective lieutenant with the Massachusetts State Police. I want to have this man spend the next two days here as if he were an employee, and I don’t want to tell you why.”

  A dirty white cat jumped up on the desk and began to chew on a scrap of salami. The fat man ignored it and cut a piece of cheese off the wedge. He speared it with the jackknife and popped it into his mouth. With the other hand he fished a pickled pepper out of the jar and ate it. Then he drank most of the rest of the ale from the bottle, belched again, and said, “Well, for crissake, Lieutenant, I got a right to know what’s happening. I mean, for crying out loud, I don’t want to screw up my business, you know. I got a right.”

  Healy said, “You gotta right to discuss with the building inspector the code violations he and I are going to spot in this manure bin if you give me any trouble.”

  The fat man blinked a minute at Healy and then said, “Yeah, sure, okay. Look, always glad to help out. I was just curious, you know. I don’t want no trouble. Be glad to have this fellow around.”

  Healy said, “Thank you. He’ll be here tomorrow morning dressed for work, and he’ll hang around here for the next couple of days. I don’t want you to say anything about this to anyone. It is a matter of life and death, and if anyone starts talking about this, it could be fatal. Kind of fatal for you too. Got me?”

  “You can trust me, Lieutenant. I won’t say nothing to nobody. Don’t worry about it.” He looked at me. “You’re welcome to stay around all you want. My name’s Vinnie. What’s yours?”

  “Nick Charles,” I said. He grabbed my hand.

  “Good to meet you, Nick. Anything you need, just holler. Want a piece of cheese or salami, anything?”

  “No, thanks.” Vinnie looked at Healy. Healy shook his head.

  “Remember, Vinnie, keep your mouth shut about this. It matters.”

  “Right, Lieutenant. Mum’s the word. Wild horses …”

  “Yeah, okay. Just remember.” Healy left. I followed.

  6

  I spent two days hanging around the riding stable and learned only that horses are not smart. Vinnie spent most of his time in with the TV and the Pickwick. And assorted kids, more girls than boys, in scraggly Levi’s jeans and scuffed riding boots and white T-shirts which hung outside the jeans fed the horses and exercised them in the oozy ring and occasionally rented one to someone, usually a kid, who would ride it off into the bridle trail. I looked good in a plaid shirt with the sleeves cut off and a pair of jeans and high-laced tan work shoes. I had a gun stuck in the waistband under the shirt, and it dug into my stomach all day. For a prop I had a big wooden rake, and I spent the days moving horse manure around with it while I whistled “Home on the Range.”

  Pickup day was beautiful, eighty-two degrees, mild breeze, cloudless sunshine. A day for looking at a ball game or walking along with a girl and a jug of apple wine or casting for a smallmouth black bass where an elm tree hung out over the Ipswich River. That kind of a day. A day for collecting ransom, I supposed, if that was your style. I straightened up and stretched and looked around. Healy should have everyone in place by now. I saw nothing. The hill behind the stable culminated in a water tower; up in a tree near it there was supposed to be a guy with glasses and a walkie-talkie. I looked for sun flash on the lenses. I didn’t see any. Healy would see that there was no lens flash. Just as he’d see that the two guys in Palm Beach suits he had in the window booth of the restaurant wouldn’t be oiling their blackjacks. I looked at my watch—quarter to twelve. Marge Bartlett was supposed to arrive at noon. High noon the letter had said. I wondered if there was a low noon. No one would make an appointment for it if there was.

  I went back to the manure. In the woods behind the riding ring cicadas droned steadily in pleasant monotony. Now and then in the stable a horse would snort, or rattle a hoof against the stall. Several sea gulls were doing a good business in the garbage container back of the restaurant. I checked the parking lot again out of the corner of my eye. Marge Bartlett was there. Just getting out of her red Mustang. She went to the edge of the driveway carrying the green canvas book bag full of money and stood. She was dressed for a bullfight. Tight gold toreador pants with a row of buttons along the wide flare. A ruffled red shirt, a bronze-colored leather vest that reached to her thighs and closed with two big leather thongs across the stomach, high-heeled bronze boots with lacings, a bronze wide-brimmed vaquero hat, bronze leather gloves. I’d always wondered what to wear to a ransom payment. Traffic went by. Usually cars, now and then a truck downshifting as it came up the hill beyond the curve. Occasionally a motorcycle loud and whining. Noisy bastards. My hands were sweaty on the rake handle. My neck and shoulder muscles felt tight. I kept shrugging my shoulders, but they didn’t loosen. I stood the rake against the stable and went and sat on a bale of straw against the wall. I’d brought lunch in a paper bag so I could be sitting and eating and looking when the pickup was made. A big refrigerator truck lumbered by on the highway. Marge Bartlett stood rigid and still, looking straight ahead with the bag held at her side. The sea gulls rustled away at the garbage. Somewhere in the woods a dog barked. Down the highway another motorcycle snarled. It appeared around the curve. A big one, three-fifty probably, high-rise handlebars, rearview mirror, small front wheel, sissy bar behind. My favorite kind. It swung into the parking lot, and without stopping the rider took the bag from Marge Bartlett, took one turn around the mirror support with the straps, and headed straight across the parking lot toward the stable.

  Bridle path, I thought as he went by me. The license plates were covered. I got one flash of Levi’s jeans and engineer’s boots and field jacket and red plastic helmet with blue plastic face shield, and he was behind the riding ring into the bridle path and gone in the woods. I could hear the roar of the bike dwindle, and then I couldn’t hear it, and all there was was the drone of the cicadas. And the traffic. Bridle path. Sonova bitch. A lot of per diem shot to hell.

  Marge Bartlett got back in her Mustang and drove away. I threw my sandwich at the sea gulls, and they flared up and then came down on it and tore it apart. I stood up and took the rake from against the wall and broke the handle across my knee and dropped the two parts on the ground and started for my car. Then I stopped and took a ten-dollar bill out of my wallet and went back and folded it around one of the rake tines and left it there. Vinnie didn’t look as if he could afford my temper tantrum. With the profits he’d shown in the two days I’d spent there, he couldn’t buy a pocket comb.

  Healy and Trask were sitting in the front seat of Trask’s cruiser in the parking lot of the Catholic church four blocks from the stable. There was a map spread out against the dashboard in f
ront of them. I pulled up beside them and shut off the engine.

  “Your man in the tree spot them?” I asked.

  “Nope, lost him as soon as he went into the woods. The trees overhang the trail.”

  Trask said, “The goddamned trail splits and runs off in all different directions. There’s no real way to tell where it comes out. Some of the people riding have made new trails. He could have come out in Lynn, in Saugus, in Smithfield past the roadblock. He’s gone.”

  Healy’s face was stiff and the bones showed. He said, “Two days, two goddamned days looking at that place, looking at that goddamned bridle path sign, listening to motorcycles going by on Route 1. Two days. And we stood there with our thumb in our butt. For crissake, Spenser, you were there, you saw people riding into that path; why the hell didn’t you put it together? You’re supposed to be a goddamned hotshot.”

  “I’m not a big intellect like you state dicks. I was overextended raking the manure.”

  Healy took the map of the woods he’d been looking at and began to wad it into a ball, packing it in his thin freckled hands the way we used to make snowballs when I was a kid. The radio in Trask’s car crackled, and the dispatcher said something I couldn’t understand. Trask responded.

  “This is Trask.”

  Again the radio in its crackly mechanical voice. And Trask. “Roger, out.” Jiminy, just like in the movies. “Aren’t you supposed to say ‘Ten Four’?” I said.

  Trask turned his big red face at me. “Look, you screwed this thing up, and you feel like a horse’s ass now. Don’t take it out on me.” He looked at Healy. “Did you get that on the radio?” Healy nodded. I said, “What was it?”

  “The Bartletts got a phone call from the kidnappers telling them where to get the kid.” He put the car in gear and backed out of the parking lot. I followed. Maybe they’ll give him back, I thought. Maybe.