Five Classic Spenser Mysteries

by Robert B. Parker

  “Listen,” I said. “You are in trouble enough to pull up over your head and tie a knot in. But you’re not in it alone. I’ll help you. It’s my line of work. I’ll get you a lawyer in a bit. Then I’ll call the cops. Before I do, though—” She started to speak and I squeezed her. “Listen,” I said, “When the cops come don’t say anything, don’t talk to them, don’t argue with them, don’t be hostile, don’t be smart. Do not say anything to anybody till you talk to the lawyer. His name is Vincent Haller. He’ll see you soon after you go downtown. Talk only with him present and say only what he says you should. Have you ever been busted?”

  “No.”

  “Okay. It’s not anywhere near as bad as you think it is. No one will hurt you. No one will grab you under a bright light and hit you with a hose. You’ll be okay, and you won’t be in long. Haller will take care of you.”

  She nodded. I went on.

  “Before I make my call—do you have any idea why the men did this?”

  “No.”

  “Do you use drugs?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you know what they gave you?”

  “No. It tasted like paregoric and smelled like ether. It wasn’t anything I’d tried. Whatever it was, was a downer though.”

  “Okay. Get dressed. I’m going to call.”

  Chapter 4

  The first of Boston’s finest to arrive were two bulls from a radio car. They came in, told us not to touch anything, got our names, frisked me, took my gun, and looked closely at us till the homicide people came. They came, as they always do, in large numbers: technicians, photographers, someone from the medical examiner’s. Two guys in white coats to carry out the corpse and some dicks to investigate the crime and question the suspects. In this case the crew was led by the commander of the homicide bureau, Lieutenant Martin Quirk. I’m six foot one and he was taller than I was, taller and thicker. His hands and fingers were thick and his lips were thick and his nose was broad. His thick black hair was cut close. He was clean-shaven at four A.M. and his shoes gleamed with dark polish. His shirt was freshly ironed and his tie neatly knotted. His suit was immaculate and sharply creased. He wore a Tyrolean hat with a feather in it and a white raincoat, which he never took off. His face was pockmarked and there was a short scar at one corner of his mouth.

  He stood now looking at me with his raincoat open and his hands in his hip pockets. “This is sure a lucky break for us, Spenser, having you on this to help us out. We need slick professionals like yourself to straighten us out and all. Keep us from forgetting to look for fingerprints, missing clues, and stuff.”

  “I didn’t plan to get into this, Lieutenant. The kid called me for help, and I came over and found her. And him. She was badly drugged. I got her sobered up a little and called you.”

  “How did she know you?” Quirk asked.

  “I’m on a case that she’s involved in.”

  “What case?”

  “Looking for a missing rare manuscript stolen from a university.”

  “What university?”

  “If it seems pertinent, I’ll tell you.”

  “If I want to know, you’ll tell me.” Quirk’s voice squeezed out sharp and flat like sheet metal.

  “I’ll tell you if you need to know it. I don’t make a living telling cops everything they want to know about clients.”

  “I don’t make a living taking crap from hole-in-the-wall shysters like you, Spenser.”

  A thin, blue-jowled sergeant named Belson drifted in between Quirk and me.

  “Come on, Lieutenant, this don’t get us far. Both the girl and the victim are university students, and there’s a fair bet that it’s the same university that hired Spenser.”

  Quirk looked at me, then Belson. “Do you know him?” he asked, nodding at me.

  “Yeah, he used to work out of the Suffolk County D.A.’s office about five years ago. I hear he got canned.”

  “Okay, get his story.” He turned to me. “You’re not working for the D.A. now, boy, you’re working my side of the street, and if you get in my way I’ll kick your ass right into the gutter. Got that?”

  “Can I feel your muscle?” I said.

  Quirk looked at me without saying anything, then turned away and walked over to the girl.

  Belson shook his head and pulled out a notebook.

  “Start up with the lieutenant, Spenser, and you’ll end up looking like you went through a pepper mill.”

  “I won’t be able to sleep without a night light,” I said.

  Belson shrugged. “Okay. Start from the beginning. You’re in the business. I don’t have to lead you.”

  I told him, omitting, mostly from stubbornness, the name of my client, but including, because it was sure to come out anyway, the incident in the Pub that afternoon, when I had knocked the kid down.

  Belson shook his head again. “How could anyone get mad at a sweetheart like you? I would have thought he’d have been hypnotized with the way you’re so agreeable.”

  I let that go.

  “You’re sure you might not have been hustling his chick just a little, Spenser? And maybe you were over here hustling her again and he came home and caught you, and an argument developed?”

  “Yeah, and I pulled out my fourteen-dollar Saturday night special and let fly at him. Come off it, Belson. You’re just talking for the hell of it. You know I didn’t do it. You know I wouldn’t use a piece of cheap tin like that gun. If I had, you know I would have covered it better than this.”

  “Okay, maybe I don’t like you for it. I’ve known you a long time, and it’s not your style. But it could happen. You got nothing against girls, I can recall. It could be his gun and you had to take it away from him and it went off. Lotta people get killed by people in a way that ain’t their style.”

  “And I shot him four times in the chest getting it away from him?”

  “Could be to cover it up, make it look different.”

  “You’re fishing, Frank,” I said.

  “Maybe.”

  “Have you heard the girl’s story yet?”

  “Nope, lieutenant’s getting that now.”

  “He’s going to love it,” I said.

  “Of course you got it before you called us,” Belson said.

  “She was way under from something. I had to bring her out.”

  “And then you had to ask her what happened and then she had to tell you. And then you had to fix up a story maybe.”

  “Wait till you hear the story. You don’t think I’m smart enough to work up something like that. You guys are cops, not priests. Calling you isn’t a ritual act. I called you as soon as my judgment told me it was both feasible and prudent.”

  Belson set fire to a half-smoked cigar before he said anything. Then he said, “You talk good for a dumb slug; feasible and prudent, my, my.”

  From the other side of the room Quirk spoke over his shoulder without turning his head. “Belson, bring the private license over here.”

  Belson nodded me toward Quirk and I walked over. Quirk was straddling the only straight chair in the room, with his forearms crossed on the back. Before him Terry Orchard was on the couch. She had on a denim shirt and Levi’s again, but her hair was still wet and tight on her skull. She looked awfully small.

  “Spenser,” he said without looking up. “She says she won’t say anything unless you say it’s all right. She says you told her not to talk to us without a lawyer.”

  “Right enough, Lieutenant. I knew you wouldn’t want to take advantage of her when she was confused, or perhaps in a state of shock.”

  “We’re going to take her in.”

  “I thought you might.”

  “We’d like you to come along, too,” Quirk said.

  “I wouldn’t miss it,” I said.

  Terry looked at me with her eyes very wide and dark. I said to her, “Haller will be there. Just do as I said.”

  The assistant M.E., a small man with thick glasses and gray curly hair, came o
ver to Quirk.

  “I’m through,” he said. “If you are too, we’ll haul him off.”

  “Any opinions, Manny?” Quirk asked.

  “Yeah, I’d guess he was shot in the chest.”

  “That med school training really gives you insight,” Quirk said. “Anything that I need to know that you can tell me now?”

  “Shot sometime within the last five or six hours, cause of death presumable gunshot. I don’t see any other signs. Got any corroborative testimony?”

  Quirk looked at Belson.

  “Spenser says the kid was dead when he arrived at three fifteen and that the blood had gotten tacky and the skin was cool,” Belson said.

  The assistant M.E. said, “That seems about right, but it could be a couple hours earlier for all I can prove here.”

  Quirk nodded. “Okay, thanks, Manny.” And then to the two white-coated interns, “Take him away.”

  They bundled Dennis Powell onto the stretcher. He’d already started to stiffen and he was getting awkward to handle. They straightened his arms out down by his side, put his ankles together, wrapped the tarp around him, and strapped him into the stretcher. Then they dollied him out. They had to stand him up to get him out the apartment door, and when they did the top of him lolled against the straps. Terry made a noise and looked away. The stretcher bumped down the stairs and out to the ambulance. A few curious early risers stood around staring. The two harness bulls who’d showed up first kept them away from the door. A little fat dick in a long blue overcoat with a button missing came in after letting the stretcher out.

  “Nothing, Lieutenant. Nobody heard nothing, nobody saw nothing, nobody knows nothing. Half of them are goddamn faggots, anyway.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Quirk said. “Just give me information; don’t review the witnesses’ sex life for me.”

  “Okay, Lieutenant. I mean I figured that being as they was faggots you might not want to take their word. You know how these goddamn perverts are.”

  “No, I don’t know, and I don’t want you to tell me. Stay around, ask questions. See what you can find out about these two. Try to remember you’re on the homicide squad, not the vice squad. When I want a fag count, I’ll let you know.”

  The dick hustled out. Quirk shook his head. Belson was looking up at the ceiling, puffing the cigar butt that was barely clearing his lips by now.

  “Take ’em downtown, Frank,” Quirk said to Belson. “I’ll clean up here and be along.”

  As we started out I said to Belson, “I’m still double-parked out there. Let me get it off the street before some zealous meter maid gets it hauled off.”

  Belson said, “Why don’t you follow me downtown. Then we won’t have to drive you back later.”

  I nodded and grinned. “See? I told you you didn’t think I did it.”

  “I don’t think anything,” Belson said. “But you’ll be down to look out for the little girl.”

  Belson took Terry into the squad car and they drove off. I got my car out from behind another white and blue police car with the seal of the city on the side, and followed Belson’s car up Hemenway to Boylston, down Boylston to Clarendon, right on Clarendon, then up the Stanhope Street Alley and in behind headquarters.

  Chapter 5

  We went in the back door, off Stanhope Street by the parking area that says RESERVED FOR PRESS. There were no cars there. You only go in the front door if you’re newsfilm material. If they put the arm on you in a disadvantaged neighborhood you go in past the empty press lot.

  The Homicide Division was third floor rear, with a view of the Fryalator vent from the coffee shop in the alley and the soft perfume of griddle and grease mixing with the indigenous smell of cigar smoke and sweat and something else, maybe generations of scared people. Vince Haller was leaning against one of the desks outside Quirk’s frosted glass cubicle. He was wearing a white double-knit suit, and over one shoulder he carried a camel’s-hair coat with big leather buttons. His gray hair was long and modish and he had a big Teddy Roosevelt mustache. He was a couple of inches taller than I was, but not as heavy.

  “Gentlemen?” he said in his big actorish voice.

  I gave him a wave and Belson said, “Hello, Vince.”

  “I’d like a chance to talk to my client.”

  Belson looked at Terry Orchard. “Is this man your attorney?”

  She looked at me and I nodded. She said, “Yes.”

  “You can talk with her at my desk there.” Belson nodded at a scarred and cluttered desk outside Quirk’s enclosed cubicle. “We’ll stay out of earshot.”

  “Has she been charged, Frank?” Haller asked.

  “Not yet.”

  “Will she be?”

  “I don’t know. The lieutenant will be along in a minute. He takes care of that stuff. We’ll want to talk with her a lot, though, either way.”

  “Has she been advised of her rights?”

  Belson snorted. “Are you kidding. If she were shooting at me with a flame thrower I’d have to advise her of her rights before I shot back. Yes, she’s been advised.”

  “Have you, Miss Orchard?”

  “Yes, sir.” She was numb and scared, and entirely submissive.

  “Okay, come over here and we’ll talk.” She did and Belson and I stood silently watching them. I suddenly realized how tired I was. I’d slept about three hours. As we stood there, Quirk came in with two other dicks. He looked over at Haller and Terry Orchard, said nothing, and walked into his cubicle. Belson went in after him.

  “Stick around,” he said. And closed the door. The two dicks sat down at desks, and looked at nothing.

  At the other end of the office a black cop with thick hands and a broken nose was talking into a telephone receiver cradled on one shoulder. An old guy in green coveralls came through dragging a cardboard carton with a rope handle and emptying the ashtrays and wastebaskets into it. Haller was still talking to Terry. And I thought about all the times I’d spent in shabby squad rooms like this. Sometimes it felt like all the rooms I was ever in looked out onto alleys. And I thought about how it must feel to be twenty and alone and be in one at 5:30 A.M. and not sure you’d get out. The steam pipes hissed. I wanted to hiss back.

  More than that I wanted to run. The room was hot and stuffy. The air was bad. I wanted to get out, to get in my car and drive north. In my mind I could see the route, over the Mystic Bridge up Route One, north, maybe to Ipswich or Newburyport where the houses were stately and old and the air was clean and cold and full of the sea. Where there’s a kind of mellowness and a memory of another time and another America. Probably never was another America though. And if I headed out that way I’d probably be sitting around the police station in Ipswich, smelling the steam pipes and the disinfectant and wondering if some poor slob deserved what he was getting.

  Quirk came out of his office. And looked at Haller. Then turned to me.

  “Come in and talk.”

  I did. I told the same story to Quirk that I had to Belson. Exactly the same way. Quirk listened without a word. Looking straight at me all the time I talked. When I was through he said, “Okay, wait outside.”

  I did. He called Terry Orchard in. Haller went with her. The door closed. I sat some more. The dick at the end of the room still talked into the phone. The two that had come in with Quirk continued to sit and look elaborately at nothing. The sun had come up and shone into one corner of the room. Dust motes drifted in languidly.

  “I can’t stand it anymore,” I said. “I’ll confess, just don’t give me the silent treatment anymore.”

  The two detectives looked at me blankly. “Confess what?” one of them said. He had long curly sideburns.

  “Anything you want, just no more of the cold shoulder.”

  Sideburns said to his partner, “Hey, Al, ain’t he a funny guy? Right before you go off duty after working all night it’s really great to have a funny guy like him around so you can go home happy. Don’t you feel that way, Al?”

  Al said,
“Aw, screw him.”

  More silence. I got up and walked to the window. There was a heavy wire mesh across it so suspects wouldn’t jump out, drop three stories to the ground, and run off. The windows were grimy, with a kind of ancient grime that seemed to have sunk into the glass. Three floors below a thin Puerto Rican kid with pointed shoes came out of the back of the coffee shop with a bucket and poured hot dirty water into the street. It steamed in the cold briefly. I looked at my watch. 6:40. The kid had got up awful early to come in and mop the floor. I wondered how late tonight he’d be there.

  Belson came out of Quirk’s office with Terry, through the squad room, and out. Haller came out too, and walked over to me.

  “They’ve gone down to the lab. I think they’ll book her,” he said. I didn’t say anything.

  He said, “Quickly, I wanted to check her story with you. She was asleep with her boyfriend in their apartment. Two men apparently known to Powell entered. Shot Powell, forced her to shoot Powell’s body, drugged her, and left. She called you. You came. Sobered her up, got her story. Called the cops.”

  “That’s it,” I said.

  “She knows you because the university employed you to find a missing rare book.”

  “Manuscript,” I said.

  “Okay, manuscript.… You got in touch with her because the campus security man suggested that an organization she was part of might have taken it. She had your card. In trouble, she called you.”

  “Right again,” I said.

  “As stories go it’s not a winner,” Haller said.

  “I know,” I said.

  “She’s convincing when she tells it, though,” said Haller.

  “What’s its effect on Quirk?” I asked.

  “Hard to say. He doesn’t show much, but I don’t think he’s easy about it. I think he’ll book her, but I don’t think he’s sure she’s guilty.”