Perish Twice

by Robert B. Parker

  “I wish I had woman’s intuition,” Farrell said.

  “It’s invaluable,” I said. “Especially in crime fighting.”

  “So far we’re getting nothing from Jermaine. If he’s doing what Tony told him to do, we’ll continue to get nothing.”

  “Because he’s more afraid of Tony than he is of you,” I said.

  “Most people are,” Farrell said. “Can you connect him?”

  “If I do, it will be sort of a bonus,” I said. “It’s not exactly what I’m after.”

  “Which is?”

  “What I’m after? I want to know who killed Gretchen Crane and why.”

  “You’re not buying Lawrence B.?”

  “I’m not buying Lawrence B.”

  “Well,” Farrell said, “I can cut you some slack on this, I guess. You’re Phil Randall’s daughter. You used to be on the job.”

  “And you don’t believe that Lawrence B. Reeves killed Gretchen Crane any more than I do,” I said.

  Farrell smiled at me. Then looked down at Rosie, who was still lying with her head on his foot.

  “Excuse me,” he said and bent over and gently moved her head, and stood up.

  “I believe what I can prove,” Farrell said.

  “That’s because you don’t have woman’s intuition,” I said.

  “I try to make do,” Farrell said.

  CHAPTER

  44

  RICHIE AND I tried to spend one weekend a month together. Since I live in a nearly doorless loft, lovemaking, with Rosie in residence, is awkward. If she’s shut in the bathroom, she yowls. If she isn’t, it becomes a ménage à trois. So when company is staying over, Rosie gets to visit Uncle Spike.

  It was nine-thirty on a Rosie-less Sunday morning. Richie and I lay in my bed, with Richie’s arm around me and my head on his chest and the sun coming through my skylight.

  “That was nice,” I said.

  “Nice?”

  “Sure,” I said. “Nice.”

  “I suppose you think the Taj Mahal is nice.”

  “Yes. It’s pretty nice.”

  We lay on top of the covers and were quiet for a while. With my head against his chest, I was aware of Richie’s heart beating.

  “Why was it again,” Richie said, “that we got divorced?”

  “Because you tended to idealize the marriage so, that the reality was always disappointing you.”

  “Oh yeah, I knew there was a reason.”

  “We get along pretty well, now,” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “Are you happy the way we are now?”

  “I’d be happier if we were monogamous.”

  “Day at a time,” I said.

  “Sure.”

  I always got a little claustrophobic when Richie talked about exclusivity. I didn’t want to lose him, but I didn’t want him all the time.

  “It’s not like I’m sleeping around,” I said.

  “You seeing anybody?”

  “I love you, Richie, and I would die if you weren’t in my life. But, at least for now, I can’t let you become my life. I disappear too easily.”

  We were quiet again. Richie patted my shoulder. I rose up and kissed him on the mouth. When we were through kissing we looked at each other for a minute, at close range, and each of us smiled. “How’s the case you’re working on pro bono?” Richie said. “I heard somebody tried to shoot you the other night.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I know stuff,” Richie said.

  “And your family has police contacts,” I said.

  “Maybe a few,” Richie said. “I hear that the shooter was a pimp named Jermaine Lister, and we think maybe Tony Marcus sent him.”

  “If he didn’t, I don’t know who did,” I said. “Have I mentioned Natalie Goddard?”

  “No.”

  “I talked to her on Thursday. She’s Mary Lou Goddard’s girlfriend. She took Mary Lou’s last name.”

  “So?”

  “So her name before she took Mary Lou’s was Marcus.”

  “Small world,” Richie said. “They related?”

  “I don’t know. But two people in the same case named Marcus?”

  “It bears looking into,” Richie said.

  “That’s my plan,” I said.

  “How are you going to go about it?” Richie said.

  “I’m working on that.”

  “My father says you need some help, you should ask.”

  “Tell Desmond thank you,” I said.

  “He likes you. So does my uncle Felix.”

  “And I like them,” I said, “except that they’re fucking criminals.”

  “Well…yeah,” Richie said.

  “I do like them. And I do appreciate the offer.”

  “Don’t mess with Tony,” Richie said. “He may not be tougher than you are, but he’s meaner, and he’s got more resources. If you go up against him, bring some people.”

  “Your father’s people?” I said.

  “They are experienced negotiators,” Richie said. “Don’t go up against Tony Marcus alone.”

  I nodded.

  After a while I said, “It’s good not to be alone.”

  “I know,” Richie said.

  CHAPTER

  45

  I TOOK ROSIE out for her morning ablutions. As I turned up Summer Street, a tan Toyota Camry pulled away from the curb in front of my house and inched along behind me. I stopped. It stopped. I stared through the windshield but the morning sun made the glass opaque. I looked around. There were several other dogs walking with people. Up ahead, a state cop in an orange traffic vest was steering cars past a set of construction barriers. It would take a hardy soul to clip me right now. As I stood and pondered it, the car pulled in by a hydrant, and the window went down on the passenger side. I walked over, and looked in.

  “Buster,” I said. “What the hell are you doing?”

  “Felix told us to keep an eye on you.”

  Buster was a big man with very little neck and almost no hair on his head. He was one of the Burke family’s troopers. The driver was slender with freckles and red hair, a blue tattoo showing on his right forearm where he had his sleeve half-rolled. I didn’t know him. “This here’s Colley,” Buster said.

  “Hi, Colley.”

  Colley was looking straight ahead. He nodded without looking at me.

  “Buster,” I said. “I don’t need an eye kept on me.”

  “Felix told us you’d say that.”

  “I don’t want you following me around.”

  “Felix told us you’d say that too. But he says to follow you around anyway. He says Desmond don’t want you hurt.”

  “Richie,” I said.

  “I don’t know nothing about Richie,” Buster said. “We work for Desmond and Felix.”

  I nodded. There was no point arguing. Buster wouldn’t care what I said. He’d do what Felix Burke had told him to do.

  “Is that a ’possum you got there?” Buster said.

  “Rosie is a miniature bull terrier,” I said.

  “Sure,” Buster said.

  Beside him, Colley smiled, still staring up the street, his hands, one covering the other, resting on the top of the steering wheel.

  “Well,” I said, “I’m going to walk up there to the construction site. I’m going to walk back this way and leave Rosie in my loft. Then I’m going to come out and get in my car and drive over to Cambridge. I’m going to stop someplace and buy two cups of coffee and some bagels. Then I’m going to visit my friend Julie.”

  “Got that, Colley?”

  Colley nodded.

  Rosie and I finished our walk and I headed for Cambri
dge. Colley and Buster stayed behind me. Not so close that they’d have no time to react. Not so loose that I could lose them in the traffic. I took a couple of sudden turns just to see how they handled it. Colley handled it easily. I parked on Kirkland Street in front of a big old three-story mansard Victorian that had been chopped up into apartments. Julie’s place was on the third floor. A kitchen, living room, bath, and bedroom. The place was furnished in early dorm: cheap maple-stained furniture, linoleum on the kitchen floor, a machine-braided red-and-green rug in the living room.

  “I rented it furnished,” Julie said. “Just until I could get organized.”

  “Looks fine to me,” I said.

  Julie closed the door behind me.

  “I used to live in a mansion,” she said.

  By an absolute standard of mansion-ness, Julie was remembering her house with more nostalgia than accuracy. But compared to this place, she was right on the money. I took the coffee out and put it on her kitchen table.

  “Got a plate?” I said.

  Julie took a white plastic dinner plate out of the cupboard and put it down next to the coffee. I put three bagels on it.

  “I don’t have any cream cheese,” Julie said.

  “My thighs will thank you,” I said. “Plain is fine.”

  We drank coffee and chewed bagel for a little while.

  “So how’s it feel living alone,” I said.

  “You should know,” Julie said.

  “I meant how do you feel living alone?”

  Julie stared past me at the kitchen wall, on which someone had affixed flower decals. An Aunt Jemima notepad holder with no paper in it hung beside the wall phone.

  “Scared.”

  “Everyone is scared at first.”

  “You too?”

  “Sure, you wake up at night thinking My God what

  have I done? Where’s my house, my husband, my

  life?”

  “Where are my children?” Julie said.

  I nodded.

  “At least you got the dog,” Julie said.

  I nodded again.

  “Do you want to go back?” I said.

  “I can’t.”

  “You don’t have to.”

  “Does the fear pass?”

  “Absolutely,” I said.

  “God I don’t know what to do.”

  “You’ve done something already,” I said. “You don’t have to do something else right away.”

  Julie nodded. She was barefooted, wearing jeans and a black T-shirt. Her hair was done, but she wore no makeup.

  “I need to borrow your brain for a bit, if I may.”

  “I don’t know how much use it will be to you right now,” Julie said.

  “Let me give you the outline of a case,” I said.

  She nodded.

  “Mary Lou Goddard asked me to protect her from a stalker named Lawrence B. Reeves. I agreed. Then a woman named Gretchen Crane, who worked for Mary Lou and somewhat resembled her, was murdered. Then Lawrence B. Reeves was found shot dead. There was a suicide note saying he killed Gretchen mistaking her for Mary Lou. The cops liked it. It cleaned up two murders for them. But I didn’t believe it. So I kept on. I found out that Mary Lou in fact had a sexual relationship with Lawrence B. even though she is aggressively lesbian. That she has a girl friend, a black woman, Natalie Goddard. They were so committed a couple that Natalie took Mary Lou’s last name, though they don’t live together.”

  “A lot of that going around,” Julie said.

  She had broken one small segment off of her bagel and was eating a small bite of that.

  “I also discovered that Gretchen was investigating prostitution with the thought of rescuing whores from a life of depravity, and maybe organizing them politically.”

  Julie snorted. I shrugged.

  “In this quest she came into contact with Tony Marcus, who runs prostitution in this part of the world. He sent her to a pimp named Jermaine Lister. Jermaine let her talk with some of his whores, and when she did that she was often accompanied by Natalie, who was apparently helping her with this project.”

  “Natalie was Mary Lou’s girlfriend,” Julie said.

  “Right.”

  “Was she having an affair with Gretchen?” Julie asked.

  “I would guess so,” I said. “Plus, her name before she look the name Goddard was Natalie Marcus.”

  “The same as Tony, the gangster.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Is he black too?”

  “Sure.”

  “Do you think Natalie is related to Tony?”

  “After I talked with her, Jermaine…”

  “Now who’s Jermaine?”

  “The pimp that Tony sent me to. Jermaine tried to kill me.”

  “My God.”

  “It’s okay,” I said. “He didn’t. The cops have him now, and are trying very hard to turn him. They would love to get Tony Marcus.”

  “Can they?”

  “He claims that he did it on his own because I was bothering his girls.”

  “And you think?”

  “He did it because I was talking to Natalie Goddard/Marcus and there’s a connection that Tony doesn’t want known. But I think Jermaine’s too afraid of Tony to ever implicate him.”

  “Well that’s certainly complicated,” Julie said.

  “It’s worse, or better, depending how you think about it. Lawrence B. Reeves, the lover/stalker of Mary Lou Goddard, used to have a regular weekly appointment with a hooker named Jewell, who was one of Jermaine’s girls.”

  “What a tangled web we weave,” Julie said.

  She finished her coffee, looked into my cup to see that I had finished mine, then picked up both cups and got up and put them into a white plastic wastebasket.

  She leaned her hips against the kitchen counter and folded her arms.

  “I haven’t talked to my kids,” she said. “Michael won’t let me.”

  I nodded.

  “In a way I don’t blame him. He’s very angry with me. But I have the right to talk with my children, don’t I?”

  I stood and walked to the window and looked down at the street. I could see Buster and Colley double-parked beside my car. I had to admit it was sort of comforting. I turned back to Julie.

  “Of course you have a right to talk with your children,” I said. “You don’t need me to tell you that.”

  “I’m just so fragmented,” Julie said.

  “Goddamn it,” I said. “I have listened, commiserated, counseled, advised, and cared about everything you said since the shit first hit the fan. Now I’m asking you to listen to me for a minute. It might even be good for you to stop thinking about yourself, however briefly.”

  Julie stared at me. Her eyes began to fill with tears.

  “Come on, babe,” I said. “Muscle up. I need your help.”

  She was silent, looking at me. Then she turned and bent over the sink and splashed cold water on her face. She wiped it dry with a paper towel. Put the towel in the trash and sat back down at the table.

  “You’re right,” she said. “Let’s you and me think through this Mary Lou thing.”

  Which we did.

  Three hours later the sun had shifted west enough to come slanting in through the ugly little back window in Julie’s ugly little kitchen. Buster and Colley were still parked outside. And Julie had a couple of pages of yellow notepaper filled with notes and scribbles, and relationship trees, and arrows pointing to various names.

  “What are we looking for?” she said.

  “Pattern,” I said.

  Julie laughed slightly and without amusement.

  “That may be too big a demand to place on life,” she said
.

  “Just because your life is confused,” I said, “it doesn’t mean all life is confused.”

  “No? You think I’m projecting?”

  “Isn’t it sort of self-dramatizing, to assume that your angst is universal?” I said.

  Julie smiled at me.

  “Damn,” she said. “You’re thoughtful for a girl detective.”

  “Maybe it’s why I’m a detective,” I said.

  Julie widened her eyes at me and went back to looking at her notes.

  “Well,” she said, “there’s a little pattern.”

  “Sexual deceit?” I said.

  “That’s part of it, but there’s an even larger pattern.”

  “Tell me about the pattern,” I said.

  “Why bother if you see it too?”

  “You helped me see it, maybe you’ll help me understand it.”

  “Well!” Julie said. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome,” I said. “You’re pretty thoughtful for a girl therapist.”

  Julie laughed. The laugh sounded real.

  “Maybe it’s why I’m a therapist,” she said.

  “What do you see?”

  “Offbeat sex. Illicit sex. I don’t know what the right word is, inappropriate sex.”

  “Ah yes,” I said. “The therapist’s word for weird.”

  “Inappropriate? Yes. It’s a useful word. For in stance Mary Lou cheated on Natalie with Lawrence,” Julie said. “That would be inappropriate.”

  As she talked her whole persona became professional. She was no longer the confused and frantic adolescent. She was being her adult self.

  “Natalie maybe cheated on Mary Lou with Gretchen. Lawrence, I don’t suppose you’d call it cheating, they probably didn’t have much of a relationship, but you wouldn’t call it fidelity either, made regular visits to Jermaine’s whores while he was apparently wooing-slash-stalking Mary Lou. Jermaine, who tried to shoot you, sold sex for Tony Marcus, who might be related to Natalie, who was with Gretchen when she talked to Jermaine and to—what was her name?—Jewell, who was some of the sex which Jermaine sold. Whatever else it’s about, this case is about sex.”

  “Suppose it is,” I said. “Where do I start to look?”