Perish Twice

by Robert B. Parker

Julie tapped her lips with her fingertips gently for a moment.

  “Do you know the Robert Frost poem ‘Fire and Ice’?”

  “Detectives don’t read poetry,” I said.

  Julie nodded.

  “Therapists do,” she said and put her head back and looked up toward the ceiling and narrowed her eyes and recited the poem, adding emphatic intonation to the last lines…

  “I think I know enough of hate

  To say that for destruction ice

  Is also great

  And would suffice.”

  “Revenge?” I said.

  “With all that sex, covert and open, there’s got to be some jealousy someplace,” she said. “I’d start with the Natalie–Mary Lou relationship.”

  “Same passion,” I said. “Different application.”

  Julie smiled. It was the slightly superior smile of a therapist talking to an amateur, but it was a genuine smile, which was something I hadn’t seen much from her lately.

  “Something like that,” she said.

  CHAPTER

  46

  I WAS AT my easel, the next morning, under the skylight catching the best light of the day, when Lee Farrell called me.

  “Jermaine got shanked in the jail yard,” he said.

  “Dead?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you know who did it?”

  “I don’t know who put the knife into him,” Farrell said.

  “But you assume Tony Marcus had it done.”

  “That’s what I assume,” Farrell said.

  “To make sure he didn’t tell anyone about Tony sending him to shoot me.”

  “That’s what I assume.”

  “Which, if true, would mean that it was Tony, and then the question would be why?”

  “Except,” Farrell said, “we don’t have a rat turd of evidence that Tony had anything to do with it.”

  “So you haven’t asked him,” I said.

  “No. You have any thoughts?”

  “Well, Jermaine must have known something that Tony didn’t want him to speak of.”

  “Wow, you are Phil Randall’s kid.”

  “No need for sarcasm,” I said. “Just because I stated the obvious doesn’t mean it isn’t obvious. The question is, what did Jermaine know?”

  “Maybe Tony had him zipped because he was supposed to kill you and failed,” Farrell said. “Sort of a long-term demotion for incompetence.”

  “Maybe, but even so, why did he want me killed?”

  “Tony’s got a secret,” Farrell said.

  “Either way,” I said.

  “You have a guess,” Farrell said.

  “It’s connected to the Gretchen Crane murder,” I said.

  “Isn’t everything.”

  “You remember Mary Lou Goddard,” I said.

  “Un huh.”

  “She has a girlfriend who took her last name, Natalie Goddard.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Natalie Goddard’s former name was Natalie Marcus.”

  “Honest to God?”

  “Honest to God.”

  “Hold on a minute,” Farrell said.

  He went off the line for a moment, and I could hear some rustling of paper in the background before he came back on.

  “There is half a column of people named Marcus in the Boston white pages,” he said.

  “Maybe it’s just a coincidence,” I said.

  “And a weak one. Even if she is related. It doesn’t say anything about who killed Jermaine Lister.”

  “That’s why I didn’t mention it before.”

  “I was going to get to that,” Farrell said.

  “You had the case closed on Gretchen Crane,” I said.

  “Still is,” Farrell said. “But now we have the Jermaine Lister case and that’s open.”

  “And now I told you,” I said.

  Farrell was quiet for a minute on the phone.

  “I hate coincidences,” he said. “They don’t get you anywhere.”

  “True,” I said.

  “How old is this woman?”

  “Maybe forty,” I said.

  “Too old to be Tony’s daughter. Could be a wife or sister. I’ll check a little.”

  “And let me know what you find out?”

  “It’s my reason for living,” Farrell said.

  CHAPTER

  47

  I HAD JUST fed Rosie her breakfast when I got a call from my sister.

  “I got some legal papers in the mail,” she said.

  “Hello,” I said.

  “I need you to go over them with me.”

  “Who they from?”

  “Hal’s lawyer. They came registered mail or whatever it’s called and I signed for them before I knew what they were. Can you come over.”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “No.”

  Rosie was vigorous and forthright in her dining habits. She was eating her dog food quickly, making a steady crunch noise as I talked.

  “Sunny, you’re my sister,” Elizabeth said after a while. “I need your help.”

  “I don’t go over legal papers with someone. Lawyers do that. You need a lawyer.”

  “Did you have a lawyer?”

  “Yes,” I said. “The divorce was amicable, but you have to have a lawyer.”

  “Was he any good?”

  “She was just right,” I said. “But she won’t do you any good. She’s a judge now.”

  “A woman judge?”

  “I can get some suggestions from her.”

  “I wouldn’t want a woman,” Elizabeth said.

  “What about the old-boy network?”

  “I would want a male lawyer.”

  “Okay, I’ll get you some names.”

  “Find out where they went to school,” Elizabeth said.

  “School?”

  Rosie had finished her breakfast and was nosing the dish around the kitchen area in case there was a stray kibble.

  “Certainly. I have to be able to judge,” Elizabeth said. “I mean I don’t want some lawyer who graduated from the University of Pittsburgh or something.”

  Rosie gave up on the stray kibble and turned to her water dish. She drank loudly.

  “On second thought,” I said, “you better find your own lawyer.”

  “Me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Alone?”

  “Um hm.”

  “I don’t know anything about lawyers.”

  “You were married to one for seventeen years,” I said.

  “Sunny, you have to help me,” Elizabeth said.

  “I am helping you,” I said. “I’m helping you grow up.”

  “Grow up, for God’s sake, I’m three years older than you are.”

  “Chronologically,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Never mind. It’s time you learned to be on your own, to recognize what kind of help you need, and figure out how to get it.”

  “What the hell are you talking about,” Elizabeth said.

  I could hear her voice making up its mind whether to cry.

  I tried a different approach. “The best revenge is living well,” I said.

  “Honestly,” Elizabeth said, “half of the time I can’t follow you at all.”

  “Well maybe if you showed him you don’t need him, that you can function fine on your own, he’d be sorry.”

  I didn’t believe a word of it. But I was trying all avenues.

  “Goddamn him,” she said.

  “Hal?”

  “Of course, Hal. If he hadn’t left me I wouldn’t be in
this terrible situation.”

  “He didn’t leave you,” I said. “As I recall, he cheated on you. You caught him, and kicked him out.”

  “You’re the one who caught him,” Elizabeth said.

  “Goddamn me?”

  “Daddy will help me,” Elizabeth said. “He’ll understand.”

  “As, I’m sure, will our mother,” I said.

  It was unkind. No one could elicit unkindness like Elizabeth.

  “Oh God!” she said.

  Her voice made up its mind. She started to cry. I listened for a while. Finally she paused to breathe.

  “It’s your chance,” I said, “to get rid of all the nonsense that clatters around in your head. It’s your chance to grow up, to discover that you’re enough.”

  “What?”

  “You need courage, intelligence, a shrink, and a lawyer. No one can acquire any of them for you. You are on your goddamned own here, and I do you no favors if I let you think you’re not.”

  She sniffled a little.

  “You still see Richie,” she said.

  “Richie and I have a relationship that works for us. It is possible only because we don’t need each other to be complete. You understand that?”

  “You can talk, you’ve had a bunch of jobs.”

  “I can talk because I’m right.”

  “I’ve never even had a job,” Elizabeth said.

  “Probably time that you got one,” I said.

  “Sunny,” she said with the sniffles still trembling in her voice, “what have I done to make you so angry?”

  I took the phone away from my ear and held it and looked at it for a moment and realized I had nothing else to say and put the phone gently back in its cradle.

  CHAPTER

  48

  BECAUSE I WAS going to be gone for a while, I gave Rosie a big soup bone to work on. She dashed with it over to my bed and jumped up. This meant that when I came home there’d be soup bone juice all over my spread, but the spread was washable, and even if it weren’t, Rosie liked it there.

  I drove over to the Back Bay and found a parking space on Clarendon Street near Commonwealth, on my fourth time around the block. I ignored the meter. It would run out before I came back and I’d get a ticket anyway. The day was lovely. Temperature in the seventies, sun in the sky. No wind. I waved at Buster and Colley idling in their tan Camry near where I’d parked. They followed me as I walked down Commonwealth and cut across the Public Garden and headed down Charles to Revere Street. Charles was one-way, the other way, and the Camry couldn’t follow me, so Buster got out and followed me on foot until Colley circled the block and met me as he came up Charles Street. Buster got back in and they parked illegally near the foot of Revere Street where they could see me, as I took up my post, as inconspicuously as I could, outside Natalie’s apartment.

  I had on a big hat and a summer dress and my gun in my shoulder bag and big sunglasses, Oakleys, the kind that wrap around. Sunny Randall, mistress of disguise. I had a choice of Natalie or Mary Lou. And took Natalie. I needed a picture of her. And I was also working on the premise that she was easier to get to and more likely to go somewhere that I could follow. As far as I knew she didn’t work.

  I hadn’t thought about that before. But now it suddenly registered. Did Mary Lou support her? Was she wealthy? Did she have an ex-husband paying alimony? I had ample time to think about it because no one came or went in Natalie’s apartment all morning. In fact I had time to think about that, about Elizabeth, about Julie, about Richie and me, about a detective named Brian whom I’d liked very much but not enough to love him, and not quite enough to give up Richie for him, about how Rosie managed to be so expressive with so immobile a set of features, about how magically Vermeer got that quality of bright light into his paintings…and then about how elegant Natalie looked as she came out her front door wearing a long cream-colored coat over a short cream-colored skirt. She paused on the top step, letting the outdoors soak in for a moment.

  I followed Natalie down Charles Street and across the Public Garden. The swan boats had made their spring debut, and cruised tourists and their children serenely around the small lagoon. Natalie crossed Arlington near the George Washington statue and went in the front door of the Ritz. It was lunchtime, so I lingered briefly outside, and then went around to New bury Street and checked through the windows into the cafe. Natalie was there, across the table from Mary Lou.

  I loitered near the window, gawking at Newbury Street and sneaking a frequent peek at the two women.

  The waiter brought each of them a glass of white wine. As they sipped the wine and looked at their menus, I formulated a plan. It was one of my favorite parts of detective work. Especially if the formulation worked.

  I went into the cafe just after they gave the waiter their lunch order. I told the maître d’ I was joining them and walked to the table.

  “Well,” I said, “what a pleasure.”

  Natalie didn’t speak.

  Mary Lou said, “What do you want?”

  “Just a couple of questions while I’ve got you both together.”

  “We have nothing to say to you. Please go away.”

  I leaned over the table toward Mary Lou and knocked Natalie’s wineglass over with my left hand.

  “Oh my God,” I said. “I’m so terribly sorry.”

  I snatched the wineglass up and began to dab at the spilled area with a napkin. The waiter rushed over with more napkins.

  “Let me buy you a new glass,” I said. “And if there’s any on your suit…”

  Instead of being grateful that it wasn’t red wine, Natalie seemed concerned that some had gotten on her suit and was rubbing at it frantically with a napkin dipped in water. Mary Lou stood up.

  “Never mind that. Just go away. Goddamn it, just get the hell away from us.”

  I knew where I wasn’t wanted. I put Natalie’s glass in my bag and went away, while the waiter and Mary Lou and Natalie and the maître d’ hovered around the spilled wine. Outside, on Newbery, Colley and Buster were double-parked in the tan Camry. I walked over to the car, opened the back door, and got in.

  “Give me a ride to my car, please.”

  “What the hell was that all about?” Buster said.

  “Fingerprints,” I said.

  CHAPTER

  49

  I WAS ALREADY at the bar at a place on Columbus Avenue called Club Cafe when Lee Farrell came in and sat down beside me.

  “Sorry I’m late,” he said. “Half the city is dug up.”

  “And expensively so,” I said.

  “I just live down the street here,” Lee said. “In the South End. Used to be able to walk to work until they moved headquarters.”

  “Nothing stays the same,” I said.

  Farrell had a Beefeater martini straight up with olives. I was having a Kettle One gimlet made with fresh lime juice. Farrell raised the martini so that he could look at it against the light behind the bar. Then he gestured with it at me, and we clinked glasses.

  “We got four sets of prints off the wineglass,” Farrell said. “Yours. Another set we got no record of. Probably the bartender’s. A set belonging to a guy named Solomon Cruz, got busted in 1988 on a numbers charge. Nothing more recent. Probably the waiter. And a pair belonging to Verna Lee Lister, who got arrested about a dozen times before 1995 for soliciting.”

  “Lister?”

  “Uh huh.”

  “Like Jermaine?”

  “Uh huh.”

  “Christ,” I said. “Is she related to everybody?”

  “Maybe.”

  “And she was a hooker?”

  “If those were her prints,” Farrell said.

  “Jesus Christ,” I said.

  “You think her partner knows?” />
  “I don’t know what anybody knows,” I said. “Every time I look into anything to do with this whole case, it turns out that things are not what they seem and people are lying about it.”

  “Lot of people lie about a lot of things,” Farrell said. He took a sip of his martini. “World’s dishonest.”

  “Well, aren’t you the philosophical one,” I said.

  “Being a cop you don’t usually get to direct your feet to the sunny side of the street.”

  “I recall.”

  “Still, there is some valid reason to wonder whether Lawrence B. did the murder. So if he didn’t do it,” Farrell said, “who did?”

  “It’s the closest you’ve come to admitting you don’t think he did it,” I said.

  Farrell shrugged. “The question stands,” he said.

  “I know. I wish it didn’t.”

  “You have a theory?”

  “All I’m working on now is that there was something wrong with the relationship between Natalie and Mary Lou.”

  “That’s your theory?”

  “Yep.”

  “Isn’t that swell,” he said.

  I shrugged.

  Farrell sipped more martini and let it settle with obvious pleasure. “When I came in,” he said, “I noticed a couple of hard cases hanging around outside in a tan Camry.”

  “They’re from Richie’s father,” I said. “He and Richie’s uncle heard someone tried to shoot me and they sent bodyguards.”

  Farrell smiled.

  “Thoughtful in-laws,” Farrell said.

  “Ex-in-laws.”

  “I hear you’re still seeing Richie.”

  “I see him. I’m not married to him.”

  “A girl needs her space,” Farrell said.

  “Or something,” I said.

  “You think Richie put them up to it?”

  “He says he didn’t.”

  “You believe him?”

  “Yes.”

  “You want me to chase the bodyguards off?”

  “No. They’d just come back. You know the Burkes.”

  “Yep.”

  “And to tell you the truth, they make me feel more secure.”