Perish Twice

by Robert B. Parker

“In addition to you?” Julie said, trying to steady her voice.

  “I’m not actually licensed,” I said, “in that area.”

  CHAPTER

  20

  ROSIE AND I had run along Summer Street. Rosie had breakfasted, and I was on my second cup of coffee, when Lee Farrell called me.

  “Thought you’d want to know. Lawrence B. Reeves killed himself last night.”

  “How?”

  “Sat on his couch in his living room, put a .357 mag in his mouth, and pulled the trigger,” Farrell said.

  “He didn’t seem the type,” I said. “No question on the suicide?”

  “Who is the type?” Farrell said.

  “I don’t mean to kill himself. I mean to use a .357.”

  “No reason to doubt it. Powder residue on his hand and face. Track of the bullet consistent with a self-inflicted wound. And there was a note.”

  “Really?”

  “Says he hired somebody to kill Mary Lou. Didn’t say who. Says the guy made a mistake, and Lawrence B. couldn’t live with the guilt.”

  “Handwritten note?”

  “Composed on a word processor, signed. The signature is authentic.”

  “He doesn’t name the button man?” I said.

  “Nope. Note says Lawrence B. takes full responsibility.”

  Rosie went to her water dish and began to lap noisily. It was never clear to me how a thirty-one-pound dog could drink fifty pounds of water, but there was much I didn’t understand, and I was calm about it.

  “Two birds with the same stone,” I said. “Clears up a homicide for Cambridge and a homicide in Boston.”

  “Yes it do,” Farrell said. “Except for who Lawrence hired, and you know how good our chances there are.”

  “I don’t like it,” I said.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You don’t like it either,” I said, “which is why you’re calling me up.”

  “I’m a courteous guy,” Farrell said.

  “A guy like Lawrence B. Reeves,” I said, “would not know where to hire a shooter. And he would not know which end of a .357 Magnum to put in his mouth. Moreover, if he was contrite enough to kill himself, why wouldn’t he name the shooter?”

  “No case is perfect,” Farrell said.

  “Did you match the bullet that killed Reeves with the ones that killed Gretchen Crane?

  “Crane was killed with a .22.”

  “Then trying to match them doesn’t make much sense.”

  “You really know your ordnance,” Farrell said.

  “It’s a gift,” I said. “It’s probably hard to convince anyone to pursue the investigation when this conclusion explains two of them so neatly.”

  “Sunny, that’s cynical,” Farrell said.

  “I was afraid it might sound that way,” I said.

  “There’s a key on a nail on the right-hand side of the porch, under the overhang. Don’t you dare touch it.”

  “I’ll try not to,” I said. “But you know about nosy broads.”

  “I do,” Farrell said.

  I hung up, and went down to my easel, under the skylight. The sun slanted in from the east just right at this time of day and I always tried to take advantage of it. From long experience Rosie knew what would happen and trotted down to the easel ahead of me and sat in the warm rhomboid of sunlight that splashed across the floor. I was working on a painting of the former city hall from a perspective on Tremont, across the Kings Chapel Burial Grounds. And I was having trouble with the gray. Painting always completely absorbed the parts of my brain required to do it, and consequently untethered the other parts and let them meander where they would. Today they meandered over the array of sexual conundrums I had in my caseload. I had no idea what to do about my sister, Elizabeth. I hadn’t spoken with her since we dined with the loathsome Mort. Maybe I wasn’t supposed to do anything about her. Maybe she was a consenting adult. I had even less idea what to do about Julie. She too was a consenting adult. Maybe I wasn’t supposed to do anything about her either. I wondered how much part her husband and children were having in her consent. Someone, maybe Larry himself, had taken care of what to do about Lawrence B. Reeves, who liked to smack bitches.

  And what was up with Mary Lou Goddard, who was as militant a lesbian as I could remember meeting, and appeared to have been engaged in heterosexuality with the late Larry? There was enough wrong with the suicide to invite further investigation. And since I knew how to investigate, it was that path that beckoned.

  Sunny, I said, you don’t have a client on this case.

  I know, I said, but I don’t have any other clients on any other cases, either. And I can’t paint twelve hours a day.

  Farrell’s right, I said. I am a nosy girl.

  I believe you said that; Farrell just agreed.

  Whatever.

  I mixed a little blue into the gray on my palette, and tried it out. Rosie sat in her sun patch and watched me with her tongue hanging out. Now and then she took a break and inspected the white tip on her tail for a while. I painted until the sun moved away and then I put my paints away, cleaned up, and thought about detecting.

  CHAPTER

  21

  IT WAS SHARED-CUSTODY time. I dropped Rosie off with Richie at work. She knew where she was going as soon as I pulled up in front of the saloon on Portland Street. I had trouble holding her still while I snapped on her leash, and she pulled me at an undignified speed across the sidewalk and into the bar. Richie was leaning on the end of the bar talking to one of the bartenders, while two or three early customers were getting their hearts going along the bar. I felt what I always felt when I saw him: love, a little fear, some desire, and some thrills I can’t define. I unsnapped Rosie’s leash and she flew at Richie and spun around several times in the process. He squatted on his haunches and let her lap his face for a bit.

  “Hi,” I said.

  He picked Rosie up and stood and held her while she lapped his neck and wagged her tail very fast.

  “Richie, there are people who won’t believe this when I tell them,” the bartender said.

  “There are people who might be tending bar at the no-tell motel in West Boylston, Jim,” Richie said.

  Jim grinned.

  “Mum’s the word,” he said.

  Richie smiled at me.

  “You want to lap my face too?”

  “Maybe if I just raced across the floor and did a couple of spins,” I said.

  He leaned forward and I kissed him lightly on the lips. Richie put Rosie down and she went around behind the bar to say hello to Jim.

  “I usually give her a little piece of pickled kielbasa,” Jim said. “That okay?”

  “Sure,” Richie said.

  “Not too much though,” I said. “I don’t want her to turn into a porklet.”

  “See why we got divorced,” Richie said.

  “She’s had breakfast,” I said, “and a walk and pooped and peeped and done everything she’s supposed to.”

  “Good girl,” Richie said.

  Richie’s father and his uncles ran the Irish mob in Massachusetts. Richie had to my knowledge never been a part of it, except to run the legitimate things they owned, like the saloon. We used to argue about it. I said the money was dirty. Richie said maybe, but he hadn’t earned it in a dirty way, and family was family.

  We had never resolved the argument, probably because both of us were right.

  Richie was dark Irish. His hair was black and thick and short. He had to shave twice a day if he was going out at night. He wasn’t big exactly, but he seemed big, and there was about him a contained strength that made him seem dangerous. Which he could be. Though never to me, or Rosie. I thought he was about as handsome a man as I had ever met.

  �
�We’re still on for dinner tomorrow night,” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “Good. I’ll pick her up then.”

  Jim had found a ball from Rosie’s last visit and was rolling it across the barroom floor. Rosie was racing after it, skidding a little on the polished floor and rushing it back so he’d throw it again. One of the morning boozers at the bar said, “Man, I don’t need that with a hangover.”

  Nobody paid any attention to him. He looked annoyed. He spoke to Richie.

  “The mutt gotta do that?”

  Richie turned his head slowly and looked at the man. He didn’t say anything. The man looked uncomfortable. Richie kept looking at him. The man stopped looking at Richie and went back to his CC and ginger. Rosie dashed across the floor again and grabbed the ball and hustled it back behind the bar.

  She had to wait a moment while Jim poured another drink for the complaining barfly.

  “You working on anything?” Richie said.

  “I’m sort of involved in that woman that was murdered downtown.”

  “The feminist?”

  “Worked for a feminist consulting company,” I said. “The police think it might have been a contract hit.”

  “Really?”

  “You haven’t heard anything, have you?”

  “A lot of murders go down in this city without me being consulted,” Richie said.

  “I know. I just wondered.”

  “I hear anything I’ll tell you.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “I gotta go. You’ll be sure to walk her.”

  “I’ll be sure,” Richie said.

  I went around the bar and patted Rose good-bye and came back and gave Richie a light kiss.

  “Sunny?”

  “Yes.”

  “You look really good,” he said.

  “You do too, Richie.”

  We both stood.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow night,” I said.

  “Yes.”

  I put my arms around him and hugged him hard. I could feel the muscles in his back, and I remembered how strong he was. He hugged me back. We let go slowly.

  “Bye,” I said.

  “Bye.”

  CHAPTER

  22

  MOST PEOPLE HAVE a spare key hanging around somewhere, and a patient burglar could make a pretty easy living looking in mailboxes and under doormats. Lawrence B. Reeves had been a little more inventive. If Farrell hadn’t told me where it was, it would have taken at least five minutes for me to find it hanging on a small nail concealed on the right side of the porch where the decking overhung a couple of inches.

  I went in. The place already had the stale smell of a place that has been closed for a while without occupancy. Though my memory was that it hadn’t smelled that good the last time I was here. I was in the living room where Lawrence had, so to speak, volunteered the name of Bonnie Winslow. There was a dark bloodstain still on the back of the couch. Sections of TheBoston Globe, datelined the day he killed himself, were scattered on the floor by the couch. Two cans of beer sat on the coffee table in front of the couch. I picked them up. One was empty, one was half empty. People often got drunk to kill themselves, I knew. But a beer and a half? Of course, given the state of Lawrence’s housekeeping maybe the two cans had been there for a week.

  I moved through the house. There were unwashed dishes piled in the sink, and a white plastic drawstring trash bag that was beginning to reek of garbage. The bed was unmade. The bathroom fixtures were unscrubbed. There was mildew in the shower stall. In the den there was an antique mahogany desk with three drawers, and a leatherette Barcalounger. You don’t see a lot of Barcaloungers anymore. In point of fact you don’t see a lot of leatherette anymore.

  I stood in the den and let what I’d seen on my first sweep coalesce. There seemed to be nothing untoward, merely the suspended animation of a life interrupted. The place needed to be mucked out and ventilated and scrubbed. I wondered if there were next of kin. I felt like cleaning the place myself but was afraid it would reveal a deep-rooted housewifely-ness.

  I took a big breath and started the second sweep, the one I really didn’t like, which involved opening drawers and rummaging through dirty laundry.

  Looking in his desk I learned that he drew a paycheck from Boston University, though from the size of it, it was probably part-time. His checkbook had a balance of less than a hundred dollars. He was delinquent in most of his bills. He had a considerable balance outstanding on his Visa card, where he apparently paid the minimum each month. Going through his check stubs revealed that there was no sign of a significant check for cash, nor a check, however implausible, that could have been used to pay a hit man. On his most recent credit card bill there were three charges to a flower shop in Harvard Square. There was no sign of flowers in the apartment. I made a note. There was also a one-night charge for a room at a motel in Natick. I made a note.

  In the second drawer of the desk was a collection of atrocious erotic poetry written in lavender ink on blue-lined paper in what looked to my innocent eye to be a woman’s hand. I forced myself to read them. They were clearly addressed to Lawrence B., who was apparently a better lovemaker than I would have given him credit for. Unless, of course, the poet was taking artistic liberties. If she was, it was as close to artistic as she got. When I got through with the poetry, things got much worse. I found several Polaroid snapshots of Bonnie Winslow in naked abandon, on what seemed to be Lawrence B.’s bed. I put them quickly away. It could have been worse; they could have been of Lawrence himself. I looked at his calendar. There were various meaningless notations including the letter J every Thursday.

  I found his address book and glanced through it. Mary Lou’s phone number and address were there. I put it and the calendar pad aside to take with me and consider at my leisure, if I ever got any leisure. I continued to rummage, and by the time I got through rummaging it was dark and the most significant thing I’d uncovered was something I hadn’t found.

  In my car I called Farrell.

  “Nice to see you’re still working,” I said.

  “We never sleep,” Farrell said.

  “Is there a .357 registered to Lawrence B. Reeves?” I said.

  “No.”

  “But you assume the one he shot himself with was his.”

  “Lot of unregistered guns out there, Sunny.”

  “I know. Did you search Reeves’s apartment?”

  “Not in my jurisdiction,” Farrell said. “Cambridge people maybe snooped a little.”

  “They find any ammunition?”

  “Just the five rounds left in the piece.”

  “If you go out and buy a gun, don’t you buy ammo?”

  “Depends on where you get it.”

  “Okay, so you buy an illegal piece. Do you generally buy six rounds for it?”

  “No, generally you buy a box of shells.”

  “There was no box of shells,” I said. “I looked.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “Have you traced the gun?”

  “It’s Cambridge’s case. Just happens to close mine for me too.”

  “Maybe it would pay off,” I said.

  “I’m a city cop, Sunny. Like your old man. Like you were for a while. How many of us are dying to take an easy case and make it hard?”

  “In round figures,” I said, “about none.”

  “In that area,” Farrell said. “However, if I can do anything easy to help you, call me.”

  “How about something hard?”

  “Call Cambridge,” Farrell said. “It’s their case.”

  CHAPTER

  23

  ELIZABETH SAID, “WELL? What do you think?”

  “Of Mort?”

  “Yes.”

 
Elizabeth had decided to get in shape for the single life, and to that end had begun to come in to Boston on a regular basis to work out with me. Since Elizabeth was not in top shape, to accommodate her I’d had to slow the workouts way down. My sister was, thus, simultaneously accomplishing two things: She was improving her physical condition and degrading mine.

  “Whatever works,” I said. “Do you enjoy him?”

  “Enjoy him?”

  We were walking, and not very briskly, along Summer Street. Rosie was straining on her leash as we picked our way through the traffic and construction. Elizabeth had on brand-new pink sweats with a little black designer trademark on the right hip of the sweatpants, and some pink walking shoes with pink-and-white candy-striped laces in them.

  “Yes.”

  “Well, aren’t you funny,” Elizabeth said. “I never really ever thought about do I enjoy him.”

  “So how do you decide if you like him?” I said.

  “He’s an available man and he has money,” Elizabeth said firmly.

  “These are good qualities,” I said.

  We paused at a light near the Fargo Building. Two big trucks piled with excavated gravel lumbered past. The light turned. We crossed with Rosie leading out in full tug.

  “She should be taught to heel,” Elizabeth said. “I wouldn’t have a dog that wasn’t properly trained to the leash.”

  “Rosie could heel if she wanted to,” I said.

  “We’re going on a cruise,” Elizabeth said.

  “On a boat?” I said.

  “Of course on a boat. What did you think?”

  “I thought you might be going to dress up like a Las Vegas lounge act, and go from bar to bar.”

  “What?”

  “Just a little joke,” I said.

  “Mort’s paying for everything.”

  “What a guy.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means isn’t that swell,” I said.

  “We’re intimate of course.”

  “Of course,” I said.