Five Classic Spenser Mysteries

by Robert B. Parker

  As far as Wally showed anything, I might have been talking about Sam Yorty or the Aga Khan. He didn’t move. Neither did the gun. Doerr’s sun-lamp face seemed to have gotten whiter. The lines from his nostrils to the corners of his mouth had gotten deeper, and his right eyelid tremored. My stomachache continued.

  Another silence. If I weren’t so tough, I would have thought maybe I was scared. Wally’s gun was a Walther P.38. Nine-millimeter. Seven shots in the clip. Nice gun, the grip on a Walther was very comfortable, and the balance was good. Wally seemed happy with his. Below on Stuart Street somebody with a trick horn blew shave-and-a-haircut-two-bits. And some brakes squealed.

  Doerr got up suddenly, turned on his heels, and walked out. Wally put the gun away, followed him out, and closed the door. I breathed in most of the air in the office through my nose and let it out again very slowly. My fingertips tingled. I sat down again, opened the bottom desk drawer, took out a bottle of bourbon, and drank from the neck. I coughed. I’d have to stop buying the house brand at Vito’s Superette.

  I looked around at the empty office. Green file cabinet, three Vermeer prints that Susan Silverman had given me for Christmas, the chair that Doerr had sat in. Didn’t look so goddamned roachie to me.

  7

  I took a Polaroid camera with me when I visited Linda Rabb.

  “I want to think about graphics, maybe a coffee table book,” I told her. “Maybe a big format.”

  She was in blue jeans, barefoot, a ribbon in her hair, her makeup fresh. On a twenty-five-inch color console in the living room, Buck Maynard was calling the play by play. “Ah want to tell ya, Holly West could throw a lamb chop past a wolf pack, Doc. He gunned Amos Otis down by twenty feet.”

  “Great arm, Buck,” Wilson said, “a real cannon back there.”

  I snapped some pictures of Linda and the living room from different angles.

  “Do you get nervous watching Marty pitch, Linda?” I lay on the floor to get an exotic angle, shooting up through the glass top of the coffee table.

  “No, not so much anymore. He’s so good, you know—it’s more, I’m surprised when he loses. But I don’t worry.”

  “Does he bring it home or leave it at the park?”

  “When he loses? He leaves it there. Unless you’ve been watching the game, you don’t know if he won or lost when he comes in the door. He doesn’t talk about it at all. Little Marty barely knows what his father does.”

  I placed the five color shots on the coffee table in front of Linda Rabb.

  “Which one do you like best?” I said. “They’re only idea shots; if the publishers decide to go the big picture format, we’ll use a pro.” I sounded like Arthur Author—it pays to listen to the Carson show.

  She picked up the last one on the left and held it at an angle to the light.

  “This is an interesting shot,” she said. It was the one I’d taken from floor level. It was interesting. Casey Crime Photographer.

  “Yeah, that’s good,” I said. “I like that one too.” I took it from her and put it in an envelope. “How about the others?”

  She looked at several more. “They’re okay, but the one I gave you first is my favorite.”

  “Okay,” I said. “We agree.” I scooped the other four into a second envelope.

  Bucky Maynard said, “We got us a real barn burner here, Doc. Both pitchers are hummin’ it in there pretty good.”

  “You’re absolutely right, Bucky. A couple of real fine arms out there tonight.”

  I stood up. “Thank you, Linda. I’m sorry to have barged in on you like this.”

  “That’s okay. I enjoyed it. The only thing is, I don’t know about pictures of me, or of the baby. Marty doesn’t like to have his family brought into things. I mean, we’re very private people. Marty may not want you to do pictures.”

  “I can understand that, Linda. Don’t worry. There are lots of people on the team, and if we decide to go to visuals, we can use some of them if Marty objects.”

  She shook my hand at the door. It was a bony hand and cold.

  Outside, it was dark now, and the traffic was infrequent. I walked up Mass Ave toward the river, crossing before I got to Boylston Street to look at the Spanish melons in the window of a gourmet food shop. Mingled with the smell of automobiles and commerce were the thin, damp smell of the river and the memory of trees and soil that the city supplanted. At Marlborough I turned right and strolled down toward my apartment. The small trees and the flowering shrubs in front of the brick and brownstone buildings enhanced the river smell.

  It was nine fifteen when I got in my apartment. I called the Essex County DA’s office on the chance that someone might be there late. Someone was, probably an assistant DA working up a loan proposal so he could open an office and go into private practice.

  “Lieutenant Healy around?” I asked.

  “Nope, he’s working out of ten-ten Commonwealth, temporary duty, probably be there a couple of months. Can I do anything for you?”

  I said no and hung up.

  I called state police headquarters at 1010 Commonwealth Ave in Boston. Healy wasn’t in. Call back in the morning. I hung up and turned on the TV. Boston had a two-run lead over Kansas City. I opened a bottle of Amstel beer, lay down on my couch, and watched the ball game. John Mayberry tied the game with a one-on home run in the top of the ninth, and I went through three more Amstels before Johnny Tabor scored from third on a Holly West sacrifice fly in the eleventh inning. While the news was on, I made a Westphalian ham sandwich on pumpernickel, ate it, and drank another bottle of Amstel. A man needs sustenance before bed. I might have an exciting dream. I didn’t.

  Next morning I drove over to 1010 Commonwealth. Healy was in his office, his coat off, the cuffs of his white shirt turned back, but the narrow black knit tie neat and tight around the short, pointed collar. He was medium height, slim, with a gray crew cut and pale blue eyes like Paul Newman. He looked like a career man in a discount shirt store. Five years ago he had gone into a candy store unarmed and rescued two hostages from a nervous junkie with a shotgun. The only person hurt was the junkie.

  He said, “What do you want, Spenser?” I was always one of his favorites.

  I said, “I’m selling copies of the Police Gazette and thought you might wish to keep abreast of the professional developments in your field.”

  “Knock off the horse crap, Spenser, what do you want?”

  I took out the envelope containing my Polaroid picture of Marty Rabb’s coffee table.

  “There’s a photograph in here with two sets of prints on it. One set is mine. I want to know who the other one belongs to. Can you run it through the FBI for me?”

  “Why?”

  “Would you buy, I’m getting married and want to run a credit check on my bride-to-be?”

  “No.”

  “I didn’t think so. Okay. It’s confidential. I don’t want to tell you if I don’t have to. But I gotta know, and I’ll give you the reasons if you insist.”

  “Where do you buy your clothes, Spenser?”

  “Aha, bribery. You want the name of my tailor, because I’m your clothing idol.”

  “You dress like a goddamned hippie. Don’t you own a tie?”

  “One,” I said. “So I can eat in the main dining room at the Ritz.”

  “Gimme the photo,” Healy said. “I’ll let you know what comes back.”

  I gave him the envelope. “Tell your people to try and not get grape jelly and marshmallow fluff all over the photo, okay?”

  Healy ignored me. I left.

  Going out, I got a look at myself in the glass doors. I had on a red and black paisley sport coat, a black polo shirt, black slacks, and shiny black loafers with a crinkle finish and gold buckles. Hippie? Healy’s idea of aggressive fashion was French cuffs. I put on my sunglasses, got in my car, and headed down Commonwealth toward Kenmore Square. The top was down and the seat was quite hot. Not a single girl turned to stare at me as I went by.

  8<
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  I went over to Fenway and watched the Sox get ready for an afternoon game. I talked for a half hour with Holly West and a half hour with Alex Montoya to keep up my investigative-writer image, but I wondered how long that would last. Doerr knew I was there, which meant probably that someone there knew I was not a writer. Which also meant that there was a connection between Doerr and the Sox, a connection Doerr wanted to protect. He’d made an error coming to see me. But it’s the kind of error guys like Doerr are always making. They get so used to having everyone say yes to them that they forget about the chance that someone will say no. People with a lot of power get like that. They think they’re omnipotent. They screw up. Doerr was so surprised that I told him and Wally to take a walk that he didn’t know what else to do, so he took a walk. But the cat was now out of the valise. I had a feeling I might hear from Doerr again. It was not a soothing feeling.

  I was leaning against the railing of the box seats by the Red Sox dugout, watching batting practice, when Billy Carter said, “Hey, Spenser, want to take a few cuts?”

  I did, but I couldn’t take my coat off and show the gun. And I didn’t want to swing with my coat on. I didn’t need any handicaps. I shook my head.

  “Why not? Sully’s just lobbing them up,” Carter said.

  “I promised my mom when I took up the violin I’d never play baseball again.”

  “Violin? Are you shitting? You don’t look like no violinist to me. How much you weigh?”

  “One ninety-five, one ninety-seven, around there.”

  “Yeah? You work out or anything?”

  “I lift a little. Run some.”

  “Yeah. I thought you did something. You didn’t get that neck from playing no fiddle. What can you bench?”

  “Two fifty.”

  “How many reps?”

  “Fifteen.”

  “Hey, man, we oughta set up an arm wrestle between you and Holly. Wouldn’t that be hot shit if you beat him? Man, Holly would turn blue if a goddamned writer beat him arm wrestling.”

  “Who’s pitching today?” I asked.

  “Marty,” Carter said. “Who busted up your nose?”

  “It’s a long list,” I said. “I used to fight once. How’s Marty to catch?”

  “A tit,” Carter said. One of the coaches was hitting fungoes to the outfield from a circle to the right of the batting cage. The ball parabolaed out in what seemed slow motion against the high tangible sky. “A real tit. You just sit back there and put your glove on the back of the plate and Marty hits it. And you can call the game. You give a sign, Marty nods, and the pitch comes right there. He never shakes you off.”

  “Everything works, huh?”

  “Yeah, I mean he’s got the fast ball, slider, a big curve, and a change off all of them. And he can put them all up a gnat’s ass at sixty feet six, you know. I mean, he’s a tit to catch. If I could catch him every day, and the other guys didn’t throw curves, I could be Hall of Fame, baby. Cooperstown.”

  “When do you think you’ll catch a game, Billy?”

  “Soon as Holly gets so he can’t walk. Around there. Whoops … here comes the song of the South, old hush puppy.”

  Bucky Maynard had come out from under the stands and was behind the batting cage. With him was Lester, resplendent in a buckskin hunting shirt and a black cowboy hat with big silver conches on the band around the crown. Maynard had swapped his red-checked shirt for a white one with green ferns on it. His arms in the short sleeves were pink with sunburn. He had the look of someone who didn’t tan.

  “You don’t seem too fond of Maynard,” I said.

  “Me? I love every ounce of his cuddly little lard-assed self.”

  “Okay to quote you?” I wanted to see Carter’s reaction.

  “Jesus, no. If sowbelly gets on your ass, you’ll find yourself warming up relievers in the Sally League. No shit, Spenser, I think he’s got more influence around here than Farrell.”

  “How come?”

  “I don’t know. I mean, the freakin’ fans love him. They think he’s giving them the real scoop, you know, all the hot gossip about the big-league stars, facts you don’t get on the bubble-gum card.”

  “Is he?”

  “No, not really. He’s just nasty. If he hears any gossip, he spreads it. The goddamned yahoos eat it up. Tell-it-like-it-is Bucky. Shit.”

  “What’s the real story on the lizard that trails behind him?”

  “Lester?”

  “Yeah.”

  Carter shrugged. “I dunno, he drives Bucky around. He keeps people away from him. He’s some kind of karate freak or whatever.”

  “Tae kwon do,” I said. “It’s Korean karate.”

  “Yeah, whatever. I wouldn’t mess much with him either. I guess he’s a real bastard. I hear he did a real tune on some guy out in Anaheim. The guy was giving Maynard some crap in the hotel bar out there and Lester the Fester damn near killed him. Hey, I gotta take some swings. Catch you later.”

  Carter headed for the batting cage. Clyde Sullivan, the pitching coach, was pitching batting practice, and when Carter stepped in, he turned and waved the outfielders in. “Up yours, Sully,” Carter said. Maynard left the batting cage and strolled over toward me. Lester moved along bonelessly behind him.

  “How you doing, Mr. Spenser?” Maynard said.

  “Fine,” I said. “And yourself?”

  “Oh, passable, for an older gentleman. That Carter’s funny as a crutch, ain’t he?”

  I nodded.

  “Ah just wish his arm was as good as his mouth,” Maynard said. “He can’t throw past the pitcher’s mound.”

  “How’s his bat?”

  Maynard smiled. It was not a radiant smile; the lips pulled down over the teeth so that the smile was a toothless crescent in his red face with neither warmth nor humor suggested. “He’s all right if the ball comes straight. Except the ball don’t never come straight a course.”

  “Nice kid, though,” I said. Lester had hooked both elbows over the railings and was standing with one booted foot against the wall and one foot flat on the ground. Gary Cooper. He spit a large amount of brown saliva toward the batter’s cage, and I realized he was chewing tobacco. When he got into an outfit, he went all the way.

  “Maybe,” Maynard said, “but ah wouldn’t pay much mind to what he says. He likes to run his mouth.”

  “Don’t we all,” I said. “Hell, writers and broadcasters get paid for it.”

  “Ah get paid for reporting what happens, Carter tends to make stuff up. There’s a difference.”

  Maynard looked quite steadily at me, and I had the feeling we were talking about serious stuff. Lester spit another dollop of tobacco juice.

  “Okay by me,” I said. “I’m just here listening and thinking. I’m not making any judgments yet.”

  “What might you be making judgments about, Spenser?”

  “What to include, what to leave out, what seems to be the truth, what seems to be fertilizer. Why do you ask?”

  “Just interested. Ah like to know a man, and one way is to know how he does his job. Ah’m just lookin’ into how you do yours.”

  “Fair enough,” I said. “I’ll be looking into how you do yours in a bit.” Veiled innuendo, that’s the ticket, Spenser. Subtle.

  “Long as you don’t interfere, ah’ll be happy to help. Who’d you say was your publisher?”

  “Subsidy,” I said. “Subsidy Press, in New York.”

  Maynard looked at his watch. It was one of those that you press a button and the time is given as a digital readout. “Well, time for the Old Buckaroo to get on up to the booth. Nice talking to you, Spenser.”

  He waddled off, his feet splayed, the toes pointing out at forty-five-degree angles. Lester unhinged and slouched after him, eyes alert under the hatbrim for lurking rustlers. There never was a man like Shane. Tomorrow he’d probably be D’Artagnan.

  There’d been some fencing going on there, more than there should have been. It was nearly one. I went dow
n into the locker room and used the phone on Farrell’s desk to call Brenda Loring at work.

  “I have for you, my dear, a proposition,” I said.

  “I know,” she said. “You make it every time I see you.”

  “Not that proposition,” I said. “I have an additional one, though that previously referred to above should not be considered thereby inoperative.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I didn’t understand that either,” I said. “Look, here’s my plan. If you can get the afternoon off, I will escort you to the baseball game, buy you some peanuts and Cracker Jacks, and you won’t care if you ever come back.”

  “Do I get dinner afterwards?”

  “Certainly and afterwards we can go to an all-night movie and neck. What do you say?”

  “Oh, be still my heart,” she said. “Shall I meet you at the park?”

  “Yeah, Jersey Street entrance. You’ll recognize me at once by the cluster of teenyboppers trying to get me to autograph their bras.”

  “I’ll hurry,” she said.

  9

  When Brenda Loring got out of a brown and white Boston cab, I was brushing off an old man in an army shirt and a flowered tie who wanted me to give him a quarter.

  “Did you autograph his bra, sweetie?” she said.

  “They were here,” I said, “but I warned them about your jealous passion and they fled at your approach.”

  “Fled? That is quite fancy talk for a professional thug.”

  “That’s another thing. Around here I’m supposed to be writing a book. My true identity must remain concealed. Reveal it to no one.”

  “A writer?”

  “Yeah. I’m supposed to be doing a book on the Red Sox and baseball.”

  “Was that your agent you were talking with when I drove up?”

  “No, a reader.”

  She shook her head. Her blond hair was cut short and shaped around her head. Her eyes were green. Her makeup was expert. She was wearing a short green dress with a small floral print and long sleeves. She was darkly tanned, and a small gold locket gleamed on a thin chain against her chest where the neckline of the dress formed a V. Across Jersey Street a guy selling souvenirs was staring at her. I was staring at her too. I always did. She was ten pounds on the right side of plump. “Voluptuous,” I said.