by Ace Atkins
“You find that funny?” she said. “That’s why therapists often need therapists.”
“But you don’t.”
She took a seat at the kitchen table and drank a little wine. “I often only need a little time to clear my head.”
I drank a little beer. Pearl padded up to me and rested her head against my leg. She looked up at me, and I rubbed her long ears.
“Seems familiar.”
I nodded.
“Do you really believe it’s her?” Susan said. “Or is that just something that makes you feel better?”
“Does it matter?”
Susan watched as Pearl climbed into my lap and began to lick the bottle of beer. I thought about tilting it a bit to give her a sip.
“Don’t even think about it,” she said.
Susan headed back to the oven and checked on the pizza. When she returned, she leaned against the counter and took a sip of the Chianti. Pearl had stopped angling to drink my beer and settled into my lap. I stroked her smooth, almost hairless skin, and she let out a long, content breath. I also took in a deep breath, far from content, and let it out slowly.
“I have good news and bad news,” I said. “Which one do you prefer first?”
“Who in their right mind likes bad news first?”
“Masochists,” I said. “Fatalists. It makes them happy.”
“Since I’m neither,” she said.
“You’ll be happy to know that tonight’s pizza came from Armando’s.”
“I saw the box.”
“And I did not add anchovies.”
Susan thought about it and then raised her glass. “And now for the bad.”
“Perhaps we should wait until after we eat.”
“That bad?”
I waffled my hand over the table. Pearl watched the motion with great curiosity and then glanced up to Susan. I drank the second half of my beer and set down the bottle. “He’s back.”
“He?”
“Ruger,” I said. “The Gray Man.”
“And what does that have to do with us?” she said. “That business was finished a long time ago.”
“One might think.”
“You let him go,” she said. “Twice. You could’ve killed him. Or had him prosecuted.”
“A wedding gift for his daughter.”
“An inappropriate gift,” she said. “Considering what all he’d done.”
I started to get up, and Pearl sprang off my lap. I was headed to the refrigerator when Susan turned and grabbed me a new beer and cracked off the top on the countertop.
“Explain,” she said.
I told her more about the run-in with Poppy Palmer in Boca. I told Susan that Poppy had known a lot about my shooting. And then I explained about the visit to Grace Bennett’s earlier that day. She listened intently to every detail.
“You treated a dishonorable man with honor.”
“It certainly appears that way.”
Susan walked to the table and sat down. She closed her eyes and shook her head. “There are times when I can deal with this insanity clinically,” she said. “I can compartmentalize who you are and what you do and realize that’s just part of the package. But right now, at this point in our lives, I’ve had enough.”
“Meaning.”
“I am asking you to do something I seldom ask of you.”
I waited.
“Let the police handle this,” she said. “You and Mattie have done a fine and admirable job finding these victims. You have put these girls and their parents in touch with perhaps the best attorney in Boston, someone they could never know or afford. And now you’ve delivered pertinent and important details to Lee Farrell. Do you really believe Lee won’t do everything he can to make sure Peter Steiner and all his associates go to jail?”
“Nope.”
“Then step back,” Susan said. “Please. This man is paid to kill people. If he took Steiner’s money, he’ll finish this. You are a living reminder of everything he’s not. He’d be delighted if you are dead. You probably shouldn’t have let him go the last time.”
“Hawk and Quirk agree.”
“What else is there to do?” she said.
“Find more victims,” I said. “Make sure nothing happens to any of them. Make sure that Carly Ly is found and brought home.”
“None of that is your job.”
“And how would that look to Mattie?” I said. “If I quit.”
Susan gulped down the wine and reached for the bottle. She refilled the glass almost to the rim.
“Do you remember how long it took you to recover?”
“Not something easy to forget.”
“I can’t do that again,” she said, starting to cry. “I refuse to lose you and be left caring for this crazy little nibbling hound well into my golden years.”
Pearl wandered over and placed her front paws on Susan’s knees.
“No way,” she said. She knocked Pearl away, wiped her eyes, and tried to stop crying. “If something happens to you, this dog can’t live here. She’s your dog. Your responsibility. If you want to make her Pearl, you’ll just have to stick around.”
Pearl scrambled up into Susan’s lap and began lapping up the tear streaks. Susan laughed and cried and finally kissed the little puppy on its head. She gulped down some more wine.
“Goddamn you both.”
“I can’t do it, Suze.”
“I know.”
“But if it’s really him, I know what needs to be done.”
“Is that any comfort?”
“To me, it is,” I said. “Now how about some pizza?”
41
The next morning, Hawk and I were parked along Commonwealth Ave drinking coffee and eating corn muffins from Dunkin’. Dunkie’s to the locals.
“Why muffins over donuts today?” Hawk said.
“I usually call an audible once I get to the counter.”
“Good call,” Hawk said.
I nodded. I drank some coffee. Hawk was behind the wheel of his Jag since Steiner’s people were already well aware of my preference for vintage SUVs.
“Mattie won’t be pleased I chose you over her for the job.”
“This ain’t her thing, man.”
“Eating corn muffins and drinking coffee?”
“Squeezing Petey the Perv.”
“Ah.”
“You sure he’s back in town?”
I cut my eyes over at him and finished my corn muffin. I was holding at two, but I’d bought a half-dozen. That meant, in fairness, I had the option of taking another. But if I had another, it might negate the last hour at the Harbor Health Club.
“Does he travel with people?”
“He has a driver,” I said. “Sizable guy.”
“How sizable?”
“Remember Refrigerator Perry?”
“Sure.”
“This guy looks like the walk-in version.”
“Fat ain’t muscle.”
I nodded, sipping more coffee. A cool morning breeze blowing through the open windows. “Guess we’ll find out.”
We had parked on the street a block from Steiner’s place, having a view of his front entrance and the service alley. Hawk and I waited a short twenty minutes before we saw Steiner’s light blue Rolls-Royce Phantom wheel out from the alley and approach Comm Ave.
“That him?” Hawk said.
“That’s him,” I said. “Unless there are two light blue Rolls-Royce Phantoms parked in that alley.”
“I pull alongside him,” Hawk said. “And you roll down the window. Ask that motherfucker if he got any Grey Poupon.”
“I was thinking the exact same thing,” I said. “Or perhaps we discreetly tail him hither and yon to find a good place for a proper introduction.”
>
“Hither and yon.”
Hawk started the Jag, the motor purring, and waited a beat before following the Rolls across the Commonwealth Mall and heading back toward downtown. He slowed as we got close to the Public Garden, waiting for the Rolls to turn and then shoot up Boylston by the Four Seasons. Traffic had grown tight, and we almost got stuck at a light.
“I think I know where he’s going,” I said.
“Do tell.”
“Ever been to the Blackstone Club?”
“Black-stone?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m sure you’ll fit right in,” I said. “It’s just the kind of place that celebrates its diversity.”
As we edged the Common, Hawk slowed down, the cab of the Rolls a shiny beacon in the sunlight. We caught up with the car as it headed toward Chinatown and turned onto Washington. Soon the Rolls slowed to the curb and an XXL chauffeur climbed out to get Steiner’s door.
“Goddamn,” Hawk said. “What they feed him?”
“Anyone who annoys his boss.”
The bald guy who’d followed Mattie through the Common appeared outside the nondescript entrance for the club. He exchanged some kind of pleasantries with Steiner, and Steiner palmed him a tip.
Steiner was dressed in a pinkish seersucker suit with white buckskin shoes. He’d gotten even more tan from his recent visit to Florida, and his silver hair was combed straight back from his broad face.
“Never cared for seersucker,” Hawk said.
“White people love it.”
“Never seen you in it.”
“On me, it would look like I was wearing a circus tent.”
Hawk switched off the ignition. The inside of the Jag grew silent and still. I could hear the creaking of the leather as I shifted in the passenger seat. The city bustled about us. People hustling up and down the street, traffic backed up into the Financial District. A few horns honked in frustration.
“Shall we?” Hawk said.
“Will you get the door, Rochester?”
“Never have,” Hawk said. “Never will.”
“Will you still ask Steiner about that Grey Poupon?”
“Sure,” Hawk said. “While you play patty-cake with André the Giant.”
I smiled and reached for the door. “Don’t embarrass me,” I said. “I have standards among the Brahmin.”
“Me, too,” Hawk said. “Better wipe those muffin crumbs off your T-shirt.”
I got out and brushed them away before Hawk and I crossed the street to the Blackstone Club.
42
I rang the buzzer.
The bald guy who’d tailed Mattie opened the door. He seemed to remember me from our meeting on Marlborough Street and didn’t seem pleased to see me again.
As he opened his mouth to voice his displeasure, I grabbed him by the throat and marched him into the vestibule. Hawk followed, strolling, removing his sunglasses, and taking in the Blackstone Club. The patterned marble floor, the wood-paneled walls, the oil portraits of distinguished members of yesteryear.
“Always wanted a painting of an old dead white man,” Hawk said.
“So many to choose from.”
I checked the guy for a gun, found the same one I’d taken away before, and slid it into my belt. I tossed him into a nearby coat closet and stuck a chair under the knob. As he began to hammer from the inside, my old friend T. W. Shaw waddled up, nervous and mopping his face with a silk hankie.
“What on earth is going on here?” he said. “I must inform you, Mr. Spenser, you’ve been banned from the club.”
“I don’t want to be part of any club that would accept me as a member.”
“Cute,” Shaw said, making a distasteful face. Shaw had on a black double-breasted suit today, along with a black bow tie. He looked very much like a fat little penguin with his beady eyes and sharp nose.
“How about me?” Hawk said. “I can’t wait to meet all these fine folk. Maybe even bring some of my friends next time. Put on some Z. Z. Hill records and kick back.”
The pounding on the coat closet continued.
Shaw fingered his jet-black mustache. “Have you locked someone in there?”
“No,” I said. “Why?”
“Well,” he said. “Because.”
I turned to Hawk. “Do you hear something?”
“See no evil,” Hawk said. “Hear no evil.”
Shaw’s brain seemed to be stuck in civility mode, open-mouthed about the ruckus in the foyer of such a fine joint as the Blackstone Club. We left him there considering the situation and headed on into the big study, where we found Peter Steiner on a leather couch smoking a big cigar and speaking in low tones with a man hidden by a high-backed chair.
Steiner wore a white oxford cloth shirt open at the neck under the pink seersucker suit jacket. He studied me and Hawk with a lot of amusement before taking another puff on his cigar.
“Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar,” I said.
“And sometimes it’s a big black ding-dong,” Hawk said. “Right, Petey?”
Steiner smiled wide, crinkles around his brown eyes. He elevated the cigar in his hand, smoke trailing up to the second-floor balcony of leather-bound books. The other man hadn’t made himself known, staying silent and still in the high-backed chair.
“We came to clarify the situation,” I said. “Leave the girls alone. Or else you’ll be seeing a lot more of us.”
Steiner tilted his head and drew again on the cigar.
“In other words,” Hawk said, “keep that crooked old pee-pee to yourself.”
The hidden man stood up from the chair and took a seat with Steiner on the couch. I felt a chill in my blood, tension bunching up in my trapezius muscles. It was Ruger.
He was dressed in gray as always—gray linen suit, gray shirt, and gray tie. Color coordination must never be a problem.
I looked to him. I nodded.
“You two have met,” Steiner said.
No one said a word.
“And you as well, Mister—”
“Tibbs,” Hawk said. “They call me Mr. Tibbs.”
Ruger’s bloodless face twitched in what might have been a smile.
“As I was saying,” I said.
Steiner’s eyes actually twinkled as his extra-large chauffeur rushed into the library, out of breath and his face covered in sweat. Ruger leaned back in the rich leather and pulled a cigar from his jacket. Steiner passed a silver lighter, and Ruger burned the tip with a large flame.
Ruger blew a plume of smoke at me. Steiner nodded toward me and Hawk.
The chauffeur towered above both of us and reached out with his huge hand to grab Hawk by the upper arm.
Hawk landed a series of very fast and very focused blows to the big man’s gut. The big man started to make croaking sounds, gasping for air, until Hawk kicked hard against the man’s right knee and toppled him into a massive heap on the fine Oriental carpets. The sound wasn’t unlike a redwood landing in Muir Woods.
Steiner leaned forward and set the cigar in a very fine china tray. Ruger had yet to move, watching the show, puffing on the cigar again and blowing out another large cloud of smoke.
“I’ve heard you’re a reasonable man,” Steiner said.
“You must’ve spoken with the wrong people,” I said.
“I can pay you for your time,” Steiner said. “Or I can let my friend here deal with you. Again.”
“There have been other times,” I said. “I believed we had an agreement.”
“Amongst gentlemen?” Steiner said. “How old-fashioned.”
Hawk stared hard at Ruger. Ruger met his gaze and never blinked. There was an electric stillness in the air, and I waited for something ugly to happen very quickly.
“Where is Carly Ly?” I said.
Steiner shook his head, reachi
ng for the cigar and ashing it onto the edge of the tray. He took a long pull and then rested his arm against his right knee.
“How ’bout we shake loose an answer,” Hawk said. “You won’t mind, will you, Ruger?”
Steiner’s chauffeur was on his hands and knees and attempted to hold on to the couch to lift up his big frame. Hawk didn’t give him a chance, kicking out his arms and legs from under him.
“I heard you nearly bled out before they found you in the snow,” Steiner said. “A man doesn’t often come back from something like that. And rarely gets a second chance.”
I looked to Ruger. He held his cigar high in two fingers like Sydney Greenstreet often did.
“Ruger knows where to find me,” I said.
Ruger did not move. With the gray suit and sallow complexion, he appeared to be carved from granite.
“Now we have that straight,” Steiner said.
“And the police know where to find you,” I said. “Nothing happens to any of those kids. And Carly Ly comes home. Now.”
Hawk had his cowboy boot on top of the chauffeur’s back, saying in soft tones for the man to be quiet and stay down. Hawk turned to Steiner. “My .44 Magnum got a range of about three hundred yards,” he said. “You whip that thing out to a kid again, and I’ll shoot it clean off.”
Steiner shrugged and blew out a lot of smoke. “I don’t know where Carly is,” he said. “She’s a very hot-tempered young woman. With many friends. She could be anywhere.”
“You better find her, Petey,” Hawk said.
“I’m so glad to be visited by such Puritans,” Steiner said. “I’m a man of means who enjoys the company of young women. So what? If we were in France, no one would say a word or lift an eyebrow. The Greeks were with young boys. The Romans with everyone. All civilized societies have done the same. We put all these hang-ups and taboos on something that all men want and desire. Are you telling me you don’t find young girls pleasing?”
“I prefer the company of women,” I said. “Not children. I heard Poppy has procured twelve-year-olds for you.”
“Really,” Steiner said. “That young? Very interesting.”
I stared at Ruger. Ruger stared back. No one said a word for a good sixty seconds, but I knew we were being watched from the wings.