by Ace Atkins
“When did you start working for Steiner?” I said.
“Almost immediately after my show,” Grace said. Her arms were long and muscular, paint splatters on her biceps. Her eyes seemed even a deeper shade of green in the sunlight. “Although I could never grasp what I was supposed to do. Basically, I just ran errands. I picked up dry cleaning. Ran to the package store. Answered the phone. I didn’t ask a lot of questions. I got paid good money, Mr. Spenser. And God knows I needed the money.”
“Was there anything unusual about the arrangement?”
“Nothing,” she said. “The only thing odd was that I couldn’t really tell what the hell Peter and Poppy did. Peter always talking about his big mysterious clients. Poppy was always on the phone, interviewing new models, trips to New York. I went to Paris with them twice. But if you’re asking if I sensed anything odd, no. I thought they were just typical rich white folks in the Back Bay.”
“No shortage of those types.”
“I grew up down in the ’Bury.” Grace said. “Both my parents came from Jamaica. My mom taught art at Roxbury Prep. My dad drove a truck. That kind of thing. I never thought I’d be living in a world like what Peter and Poppy showed me. A private jet to Paris? I mean, come on. I thought that shit was only in the movies.”
“Did Poppy ever ask you to model?”
“Once,” Grace said. “I told her I was flattered but too old. She seemed to be always working with the teenagers for shoots. Besides, I’m a painter. An artist. I didn’t have any interest. Would you like any coffee?”
“If I have any more coffee, I’ll blast off for the moon.”
Grace shifted in her chair and caused the cat to jump to the floor. The cat offered a judgmental look as it licked a paw.
“Do you mind talking about the incident?” I said.
“Whew,” she said, biting her lip in thought. “Yeah. I guess that’s why you’re here. Right? You really think you can do something about those people? I had to shut it out of my mind. I had to move on. Saw a shrink for years. Still seeing one. It’s not a part of my mind I care to open back up.”
“Steiner had never made advances?”
“Nope,” she said. “Honestly, I didn’t see him that much. I had my own little office at their place on Comm Ave. I took phone messages for him. He was charming and sort of funny. A real flirt. But nothing out of the ordinary. He never said anything sexual or offensive. In fact, I never thought he thought of me one way or another until they set up that residency for me.”
“Ah.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Should’ve known. Three months at a cute little brownstone in the South End. All to myself where they said I could open my mind and create. Only they didn’t say they’d require me to party with them and join in their fun and games.”
“Fun for them but awkward for you.”
“Awkward was the best of it,” she said. She pursed her mouth and closed her eyes. “I had been there nearly a week when they showed up late one night. Unexpected, of course—I was already in pajamas. Poppy had brought a case of wine and kept refilling my glass. I must’ve had two gallons of rosé.”
“God help you.”
“Not a fan of rosé?”
“Between rosé and nothing, I’ll take nothing.”
“She may have added something into it,” she said. “I don’t know. I don’t remember much of it. I was very sick and confused.”
It was very quiet in the large space. The sunlight cast gridlike patterns on the old floors, worn and scraped from years of abuse. The cat found the sun and stretched itself to maximum length.
“What I do remember is Poppy taking me back to my bedroom and undressing me,” she said. “I told her I was going to throw up, and she laid me on the bed. I blacked out for a while. I don’t know for how long. I don’t know what she did or what happened. When I came to, Peter was there, sitting on the edge of the bed rubbing my thigh. I was naked.”
“Was he dressed?”
“He had his shirt off,” she said. “That’s all I know. I screamed and forced them out of my room. I locked the door and placed a big chair in front of it. I tried to stay up, but I finally fell asleep. When I woke up later that night, the house was quiet. And when I got up the courage to walk downstairs, I found they were gone.”
“When did you go to the police?”
Her eyes were very wet as she inhaled a long breath and stared down at the cat. She smiled for a moment, watching it in the sun, and then looked back to me. “Not until I found out what they’d done to my sister.”
“This was after?”
“No,” she said. “I didn’t know what they did to Bri until I told her what had happened to me. She was ashamed and embarrassed. She blamed herself. She still blames herself even though I was the one who caused everything. I was too damn ambitious and stupid to look after my own sister.”
“Captain Glass said she was fourteen?”
“Fourteen when she first met them,” Grace said. “Fifteen when she was raped. I didn’t know how long Poppy had been grooming her. She promised Bri and my mother that Peter Steiner wanted to look out for her education. They said that Peter was a big-time donor at Harvard and could assure that she got in. Do you know what something like that would mean to our family? My mother had to put herself through a community college. Harvard?”
“Will Bri speak to me?”
“No.”
“The more victims we can find, the stronger the case.”
Grace shook her head, stood, and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “My family has been through all this before,” she said. “We were promised we would get some kind of justice. Both of us had to sit in offices for hours and hours remembering every sick detail of what those people did. Or tried to do. I knew something was wrong. Bri would come to see me, and Poppy would take her out shopping to Newbury Street or Copley Place. They’d come in with bags and bags from Neiman Marcus, Chanel, and Gucci. We laughed about it. It seemed like it was absolutely nothing to Poppy. She said she and Peter didn’t have their own kids and she loved to lavish their friends. Lavish. She used that word a lot.”
“Do you want to tell me what they did to Bri?”
I was still seated. Grace stood over me, the cat twisting and turning back through her legs.
“Not really,” she said. “Poppy was there for it. She’s the one who wanted Bri to feel comfortable with her body. That everything they did was normal and natural.”
“Was this at Steiner’s house?”
“Yes,” she said. “Several of his houses. And with his friends.”
I tasted metal at the back of my throat. I felt I’d been holding my breath and let out a long, steady exhale. I told her I was very sorry. I wish I’d said more, but that was all I had at the moment.
“Captain Glass said you were harassed.”
She nodded and told me about two men visiting after she filed charges. They knew where her parents worked and threatened to have both of them fired.
“I’d like you both to meet a lawyer friend of mine,” I said. “She’s putting together a class-action suit. Perhaps some federal charges to follow.”
“I don’t know you,” she said. “And I don’t know this lawyer. Is he even any good?”
“She,” I said. “Her name is Rita. In a courtroom, she’s as relentless as a nuclear winter.”
The calico cat wandered back between us and rubbed its flank against Grace’s leg. She reached down and stroked its back and tail. The cat purring in the sunlight.
“How many girls are there?” she said.
“Two,” I said. “You and your sister would make four.”
“Let me talk to Bri,” she said. “I sure would love to see these creeps exposed.”
33
I picked up a tail as soon as I headed north on Atlantic.
I’d
spotted the car earlier outside Grace Bennett’s building, and now it was three car lengths behind me as I passed the Boston Harbor Hotel and the Aquarium. It was a white Dodge Charger or Challenger. I couldn’t really tell at this angle.
Perhaps it was my friends from Providence we’d met that fine morning in Cambridge. Or perhaps it was someone sent north from Cerberus Security in Miami. Or maybe I was just paranoid, and some poor bastard just happened to be headed in the same direction through the city, up to the North End, and over the Zakim Bridge.
When I crossed the bridge and turned toward the Navy Yard, the car followed. When I slowed down and took a turn into the Navy Yard, the car followed. But when I turned down into the warehouses by the old docks, the car accelerated around and passed me. Still, I couldn’t get a good look inside or get a look at the plate. But now I could tell it was a Dodge Charger. Progress.
I parked my Land Cruiser and headed toward my building, a four-story brick warehouse right down the marina from Old Ironsides. I liked my new digs, but sometimes I missed the closeness to the Public Garden. I’d worn my Braves ball cap that morning and my .38 on my hip. It was a warm mid-afternoon with a nice salty breeze off the ocean.
I was already onto thinking about making a nice snack of some feta, kalamata olives, and flatbread when I heard a yip. Pearl was across the street in a common area, wandering about alone.
I looked both ways and called to her as I headed to the street.
At the same time, the white Charger turned around the south end of the old warehouse and doubled back toward me. Pearl sat down in the middle of the street in a perfect, practiced sit. She was proud of herself as she waited for me.
The car sped up.
I ran toward her.
I picked her up like an authentic Pete Rozelle football and dove over the sidewalk and into the grass.
The car raced past me, and this time I made an effort to see the plate. There wasn’t one.
I brushed myself off and picked up Pearl again. She licked my face and nuzzled my neck as the car squealed into the distance. I could rush back to my car and follow, but I knew they’d be long gone on the interstate or well into Charlestown within seconds.
I carried Pearl into my building and up the side steps to my condo. She was hot and panting. There was no telling how long she’d been outside wandering about. I checked her for injuries, but she seemed no worse for wear.
On the second floor, my door was open.
I set Pearl onto the floor and pulled out my gun. She looked up at me and tilted her head.
I pressed my index finger to my lips.
I didn’t leave doors open. I did not let Pearl roam free.
Susan was with patients all day. Our dog walker wasn’t working with Pearl until later in the week. There was no way she’d gotten out on her own unless puppy Pearl was decidedly more intelligent than her predecessors.
I listened before I entered. I took a deep breath and ran into the condo, toward the kitchen island and some cover. Still nothing. I waited several moments. Pearl had followed. She barked at my back until I picked her up.
So much for the element of surprise.
I got up and checked the large open space. I checked the bathrooms. I checked under my bed and in my closet. I returned to the kitchen and checked in the refrigerator for good measure and found a cold beer.
No one was there. But they’d left my condo a complete mess.
My bed had been stripped of sheets with mattresses tossed to the floor. Cushions from my couch had been pulled away and cut open. Closets and drawers ransacked. A small desk by the bank of windows overturned. First-edition books and treasured record albums littered the floor. Even my collection of wooden animals I’d carved had been knocked across the room.
The air was still and warm. Pearl had followed me in and sniffed at the toppled books. I picked up a rare copy of The Faerie Queen that Rachel Wallace had given me and set it back upon the shelf.
“Sniff us out a clue, Asta,” I said.
Pearl looked up at me, tongue hanging from her mouth and panting hard. I walked to the kitchen, poured some cool water into a stainless-steel bowl, and called Quirk. I drank half the beer while I waited for him to come onto the line.
“Did they take anything?”
“Nothing that I can see,” I said. “But the inside of my condo looks like it was hit by an F-4.”
“You still working on that billionaire sicko?”
“Yep.”
“Think it’s his people?”
“We’d be fools not to.”
I told him about Florida. I told him about Cerberus Security and Poppy Palmer reminding me that I wasn’t invincible or immortal.
“The deuce you say.”
“I know,” I said.
“How in the hell would she know what happened to you?” Quirk said. “Took a hell of a lot to keep that business quiet.”
“Unless a certain someone is on their payroll.”
“Don’t get paranoid, Spenser,” he said. “That guy’s long gone.”
“I’m not sure if he’s ever been gone,” I said. “Just waiting.”
34
“Does this look like a fucking doggie day care?” Henry Cimoli said.
“I’ve been a member here since Cotton Mather invented the reverse squat,” I said. “You’ve had some questionable clients over the years.”
Hawk and I sat in Henry’s private office at the Harbor Health Club. Hawk and Pearl were playing tug-of-war with a new rope toy.
“Well, just make sure the hound doesn’t take a crap under my desk,” Henry said. “Even keeping you two bozos around, I have standards.”
Henry shook his head, left the office, and closed the door behind him. Hawk tossed the rope toy into the corner, and Pearl romped over to fetch it. She shook it with all her tiny might. Had the toy been vermin, it would be quite dead.
“Security cameras?” Hawk said.
I shook my head. “Two men,” I said. “Dark clothes and wearing masks.”
“Car plates?”
“Car didn’t have plates,” I said. “White Dodge Charger.”
“Your boys from Miami?” Hawk said.
“Probably.”
“Explain the white car.”
I nodded.
“Who are these dudes?”
I told him the little I’d learned online. A multinational security company that provided bodyguards and investigative services for heavy hitters and major corporations.
“You must be getting real close to the center of that Tootsie Pop.”
I nodded. I picked up Pearl and rubbed her ears. She seemed not to pay any attention, chawing at her toy, slobbering onto my T-shirt. I didn’t mind. Nor did she. Hawk and I were both covered in sweat.
“You need to talk to Mattie,” Hawk said.
“I know.”
“Don’t care what she says or wants,” Hawk said. “This is some dangerous shit. This ain’t about trial and error.”
I nodded. I tried not to think about how those men might’ve treated Pearl while tearing up my apartment. I’d twice checked her over for injuries but could find none.
“What’s y’all’s end game?”
“Snoop until I have enough for Rita,” I said. “And enough for the Feds.”
“Simple enough.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I wish.”
Hawk leaned back in Henry’s old wooden office chair. It was the same chair Henry had used since he’d trained me back in the dark ages. A lot of the gym had changed over the years. Better and more modern equipment, the removal and then reinstatement of the boxing ring. But Henry’s office was Henry’s office, right down to the framed pictures of famous fighters from Massachusetts. From Willie Pep to Marvelous Marvin Hagler.
“Who’s backing this motherfucker?”<
br />
“Don’t have names,” I said. “But it appears Peter Steiner has great support from some cops and dirty politicians. He definitely had the former DA deep-six the charges against him from Grace Bennett and her sister.”
“Kid was fifteen.”
I nodded.
“Wouldn’t mind being in a locked room with this Petey,” Hawk said. “Might be able to knock some sense into him.”
“I’d be careful with his friend Poppy,” I said. “I think she has the ability to crack coconuts with her thighs.”
“Not these coconuts,” Hawk said. “Mine are made out of titanium.”
“Of course they are.”
Something in the corner of the room had caught Hawk’s attention. Pearl was squatting and leaving a growing stain on Henry’s new carpet.
“I won’t tell him if you won’t.”
I found some paper towels and cleaned it up. I sat back down across from Hawk. Maybe it was my imagination, but Henry’s office still had the faint trace of cigars. In the myriad framed photos, I’d nearly missed a new picture of Henry and Zebulon Sixkill. Henry and Sixkill out fishing somewhere off the coast of Revere.
“I’ll meet you back at your office.”
“Can’t pay you,” I said.
“When you ever pay me?”
“Mattie promises to be a handful.”
“Reason I like that kid.”
I nodded, got up, and walked over to Pearl. I slipped a harness over her neck and around her skinny body.
“These people aren’t like that crew that came over from Providence.”
“Think they badder than those Ukrainians in Marshport?”
“Maybe.”
“Badder than those military fucknuts we met up with deep down in Georgia?”
“Don’t know,” I said. “Guess we’ll find out.”
Hawk nodded and reached down and picked up Pearl. He rubbed her head, and she licked his face.
“Ain’t nobody mess with my little girl.”
35
Hawk drove to Susan’s while I drove Mattie home later that day.