Thin Air

by Robert B. Parker

  "You want me to wear this?" Lisa said.

  It was the first sound she had made other than the hellos. Her voice startled her. It sounded ordinary. It sounded like the voice of someone who had never been carried from her home in bondage and locked up in a dark place somewhere.

  "Every day we will be different, " he said.

  "Sure," Lisa said.

  She began to dress. Frank will find me. The phrase was like a mantra. She said it to herself the way someone might mumble a prayer. She slid the dress over her head. It fit. It would. He would know her size. What would Frank tell her to do? What should she do? Frank would tell her to be ready. Frank would tell her not to wait for him. Frank would tell her to get herself out. I'll try, she thought. I can try. When she was dressed, he seated her at the table. The light from a single candle played on his face and brightened the glassware. The sound of the monitors was shut off. The rest of the room was dark and the darkness came very close about them. He was wearing a starched collar and his hair was slicked back. He raised his glass to her.

  "Welcome home, Angel."

  She shook her head. Maybe first I can try reason, she thought. Even silently spoken, her speech sounded shaky inside her head.

  "No?" he said.

  "No," she said. "My home is with my husband."

  "That is over, Angel. It was a mistake. It will be corrected."

  He sipped some wine from his glass and poured a little more. He smiled at her gently as if he had settled a question important to a child. She felt a flash of anger.

  "It can't be corrected, Luis. I love him."

  He frowned momentarily, and then his face smoothed again and be inclined his head indulgently.

  "I won't say I didn't love you," Lisa said. "I think I probably did. It was real. But it wasn't permanent. "

  She felt as if she had to get air in after nearly every word. Her speech seemed halting to her. She was so frightened she was speaking so carefully. He didn't seem to notice. He smiled at her, indulgently, and took a cigar from his pocket. He trimmed it carefully with a small silver knife and lit it carefully, turning the cigar so that it burned evenly. Then he put the lighter away and puffed placidly on the cigar. On the soundless monitors her image, bound on the floor of his van, moved on the screens, lit by the harsh light bar of his camera. She looked away.

  "It couldn't be permanent," she said.

  The words were getting away from her. She could feel them start to bubble carelessly out, before they'd been thought about, before they'd been sanitized.

  "Because you never saw me when you looked at me. You saw a fucking bowling trophy. Some sex, some fun, to lock up in the trophy case when not in use. Like now, like I am in your goddamned camera."

  He inhaled slowly and let the smoke drift back out. He smiled at her dreamily, leaning back in his chair, turning his wine glass slowly by the stem.

  "Angel, I have loved you since I met you. It is I who am locked up-in your eyes, in your lips, by your body."

  "That's exactly the flowery bullshit that you used to smother me with. And the more I tried to be an actual goddamned human being, the more flowery bullshit you shoveled. It has never been about me. It is always about you and how I make you feel."

  The skin around his eyes looked stiff, as if someone had pulled it too tight. She seemed unable to stop the words as they tumbled out, she was frightened to be saying them, but she couldn't stop. If she could just pause, get a breath, get control.

  "Frank takes me seriously," she said.

  "And I…" he said, appalled at what he was hearing. "I do… not… take you seriously. I… who nearly died when you left me. Who spent every moment since you left looking for you? I who am nothing without you. I do not take you seriously?"

  She felt the shaky feeling spread from the pit of her stomach and dart along her arms and legs and up her spine. And yet, at the center of herself there was starting to be something else, an ill-formed kernel of self that would not yield. That would not, or, the thought skittered briefly past her consciousness, could not, cease to be Lisa. She would fight him, as best she could, with whatever she had. She had come too far, been through too much, before finally becoming Lisa. She would not go back. She would rather die than go back. She stared at him for a moment leaning intensely toward her.

  "No," she said. "You take yourself seriously."

  His face seemed to crumple and then recompose. He puffed on the cigar for a moment and there was something flickering in his eyes that frightened her intensely.

  "And so shall you," he said.

  Chapter 5

  I was in my office. Outside my window it was a bright hard spring day, not very warm, but no wind and a lot of sunshine. There were spring clothes in the shops along Newbury Street, and somebody had put a few tables outside some of the cafes. It was still too brisk for anyone to sit outside, but it was a harbinger, and it made me feel good. Breakfast was over and I was planning lunch when Quirk called. "Belson got shot last night," he said. "I'll pick you up outside your office in two minutes."

  "He alive?" I said.

  "Half," Quirk said and hung up.

  I was outside wearing my authentic replica A-2 leather jacket with the collar up when an unmarked black Ford with a buggy whip antenna swung into the curb. Quirk was in the back, and a Homicide dick named Malone was driving. I got in the back with Quirk, and Malone pulled away from the curb, hit the siren, ran a red light and headed down Boylston Street.

  "Belson was coming home last night, around eight o'clock, and while he was unlocking his front door somebody pumped three nine-millimeter slugs into him from behind," Quirk said. "One broke the left scapula, one punched a hole in his right side and went on through. One is still there, right near his spine, down low."

  "He going to make it," I said.

  "Probably," Quirk said. "They don't know how soon he'll walk."

  "Shooter didn't group his shots very tight," I said.

  "We noticed that too," Quirk said. "On the other hand, he apparently hit all three shots he took. We haven't found any other slugs."

  "So he's a pretty good shot," I said, "but maybe excited."

  "Maybe."

  Malone yanked the car dawn Arlington Street and turned left on St. James.

  "He conscious?" I said.

  "In and out," Quirk said. "But last time he was in, he said he wanted to see you."

  With the siren full on we went through Copley Square, and out Huntington Avenue.

  "What hospital?" I said.

  "Brigham," Quirk said.

  "Any suspects?"

  "No."

  We went out Huntington, turned down Francis and pulled in under the portico at the main hospital entrance, and parked. A fat black woman in a hospital security uniform came toward us as we got out, waving us away. Malone flashed his badge and she stopped and nodded and walked away.

  Belson was in the intensive care unit, a sheet pulled up to the middle of his chest. There was an IV into a vein on the back of his right hand. His left arm was in a cast. Lee Farrell was there, with his hips on a windowsill. There was another Homicide cop I didn't know sitting in a chair by Belson's bedside with a tape recorder. The recorder wasn't picking anything up. Belson appeared to be sleeping. I nodded at Farrell.

  The cop with the tape recorder said, "He's coked to the eyeballs, Lieutenant. He hasn't said a word."

  Quirk nodded.

  "Frank," he said. "Spenser's here."

  Belson made no movement for maybe twenty seconds, then his eyes opened. He shifted his eyeballs slowly toward Quirk's voice and slowly past Quirk and looked at me. The cop beside the bed turned on the tape recorder.

  "Talk… to… Spenser," he said slowly in a very soft voice. Everything he did was slow, as if the circuits weren't connected very well.

  I moved a little closer to the bed and bent over.

  "What do you need?" I said.

  His eyes remained fixed for a moment at the spot where I had been, then slowly they m
oved and, even more slowly, they refocused on me.

  "You… find… her," he said.

  "Lisa," I said.

  "Can't… look… now. You… look."

  "Yeah," I said. "I'll find her."

  Belson was silent for a while. His eyes were on me, but they didn't seem to be seeing me. Then he moved his lips carefully. For a moment no sound came.

  Then he said, "Good."

  Everyone was quiet in the room. Belson kept his blank eyes on me. Then he nodded faintly and let his eyes close and didn't move. The cop with the tape recorder turned it off.

  In the corridor, Quirk said, "You chase the wife, we'll chase the shooter. They turn out to be connected, we'll cooperate in our common endeavor."

  "He say anything I can use?"

  "He hasn't said anything anybody can use. Even if he was lucid, I don't think he knows what hit him. He got it in the back and he never cleared his piece."

  "A real pro," I said, "would have made sure it was finished."

  "A real amateur wouldn't have hit all three shots," Quirk said. "Maybe something scared him off."

  "If something did, be nice to find out what it was and talk to it."

  "We're looking," Quirk said.

  "Doctors give you any idea how long before he can talk more than he's doing now?"

  "No. They've shot him full of hop right now, and they say he'll need it for a while."

  "So I'm on my own," I said.

  "Aren't you always?" Quirk said.

  We walked slowly through the hospital corridors to the elevator.

  "You want to look through Frank's house?" Quirk said.

  He handed me a new key with a little tag hanging from it on a string. On the tag "Belson, FD" was written in blue ink.

  "I suppose I got to," I said.

  "Don't get delicate," Quirk said. "It's a case now."

  Chapter 6

  Belson and his bride had a condominium on Perkins Street in Jamaica Plain right next to Brookline. It was a good-looking collection of gray and white Cape Cod-style semihouses attached in angular ways and scattered in a seemingly random pattern like an actual neighborhood that had evolved naturally. Across the street and down a slope behind me was Jamaica Pond, gleaming in the late March afternoon as if it were still a place where Wampanoags gathered. Across the pond, cars went too fast along the Jamaica Way, and in the distance the downtown city rose clean and pleasant looking against a pale sky in the very early spring. I could see the gouge where someone had dug out a slug from the door frame, about hip high. I opened the door and went in. I didn't like it much. It made me uncomfortable to nose around in the privacy of somebody I'd known for twenty years. I'd seen Belson at home once or twice with the first wife in an ugly frame house in Roslindale. I'd been in Belson's new living room once, after the wedding. But now I felt like an intruder. On the other hand, I had to start somewhere. I didn't know what Belson had done, looking for his wife. Had he listened to her messages? Checked her mail? Looked for missing clothing? Purse? I had to start from scratch.

  I was in a small entryway. A breakfast nook was to my left. The living room was straight ahead. On my right was a stairway to the second floor, and under the stairs was a lavatory. The kitchen was between the breakfast nook and the living room. Nothing was very big. Everything was very new. There was a fireplace in one corner of the living room. There was a Sub Zero refrigerator in the kitchen, and a Jenn Air cook stove, a Kitchen Aid dishwasher, a trash compactor, a microwave, some terra-cotta tile, and a variety of nuts and grains in clear acrylic canisters, which appeared never to have been opened. It wasn't much different than a lot of condos I'd been in, where mass production cut the building costs and the builder spent money on accessories that made the owners feel with it.

  Upstairs a huge draped four-poster filled up the bedroom. There was a Jacuzzi in the bathroom. The third room was small but served at least to acknowledge the possibility of a child or a guest. It had been converted to a study which obviously belonged to Lisa.

  There was a picture of her and Frank framed on the wall. Short blonde hair, wide mouth, big eyes. She was quite striking, and even more so in person, because she had a good athletic body, and a lot of spring. Being a trained detective, I had taken note of the body at the wedding. Next to the picture was a framed award certificate announcing that Lisa St. Claire of WPOM-FM served with honor as chairman of the media division of the Proctor United Fund. Below the certificate, on the desk, was a Macintosh computer, a cordless phone setup, and an answering machine. The digital display said that there were four messages. I punched the All Messages button.

  "Hey, St. Claire, it's your buddy Tiffany. I'll pick you up for class tonight about seven, give us time for coffee… Lisa, it's Dr. Wilson's office, confirming your appointment at two forty-five on Tuesday for cleaning… Lisa, how lovely to hear your voice. I hope soon to see you… Honey, I get off about seven tonight. I'll pick up some Chinese food on the way home. I love you."

  The phone had a redial button. I punched it. At the other end a voice said, "Homicide." I hung up. Her last phone call had been to her husband. Probably wanted extra mu shu chicken and I love you too… or maybe just the mu shu.

  Aside from Belson, nobody on the machine meant anything to me. If he were functional, I could have played the messages and asked him to identify the callers. But he wasn't. I listened to the messages again and made notes.

  The first message was self-explanatory if I knew what class, and where and who Tiffany was, which I didn't. Tiffany called Lisa by her maiden name, if that meant anything. I wondered for a moment if "maiden name" was any longer acceptable. What would be the correct locution? Prenuptial name? Birth name? Nonspousal designation?

  Unless it was a coded message, the second one was a dentist. The third message was a man who might, I couldn't tell for sure, have an accent. The fourth one was Belson. I looked around the study. There was a catalog from Merrimack State College. That would explain the class. I opened the desk drawer and found three Bic pens, medium black, some candy-striped paper clips, some rubber bands, an instruction manual for the answering machine, a battered wooden ruler, a letter opener, a roll of stamps, and bills from three credit card companies. I put the bills in my coat pocket. There was no phone book; it was probably in her purse. On her desk calendar pad at the top, associated with no specific date, the word Vaughn was written in several different decorative ways, as if someone had doodled it while talking on the phone. There wasn't anything else. I went into their bedroom and looked around. There was no sign of her purse. I opened a closet. It was hers. The scent of her cologne was strong. There was no purse in the closet. I opened the other closet. It was Belson's. I closed it. I looked at her bureau and shook my head. I declined to rummage further in the bedroom.

  I took a tour of the downstairs, looking in closets and cupboards. There was no sign of a purse. If she hadn't taken her purse, it was a good bet she didn't leave on her own. It didn't mean she had left voluntarily. But it was hopeful. Or not. I wasn't exactly sure what I should be hoping for. If she had simply walked out on him without a word, that would be pretty awful. If someone had forced her to leave, that would be pretty awful. Probably better just to find her, and when I did then I'd know.

  I took the calendar with me when I left the condo and walked back to my car. There was still snow in some shadowed areas, and ugly mounds of it compacted by salt and sand and pollution squatted where the plows had tossed it in the winter. But there was also bird song and the ground was spongy, and somewhere doubtless a goat-footed balloon man was whistling far and wee. I drove back to my office with the windows down.

  He had her dressed in a Southern Belle costume today, like Scarlett O'Hara. He himself was wearing some sort of riverboat gambler getup with a black string tie and ruffled-front shirt. There was some salad and some French bread and a bottle of champagne on the table. He poured her some wine and handed it to her.

  "I don't drink anymore, Luis."

  "Not e
ven a little champagne?"

  "I'm an alcoholic, Luis. I can't drink."

  "You drank when we were together before."

  "I was relapsing," she said, "in more ways than one."

  "What does that mean?"

  "It just means I can't drink," she said.

  "I could force you," he said.

  "I know."

  "But I won't."

  "Thank you," she said, and hated saying it as soon as it was out.

  "There will be more for me," he said.

  He drank. She stood silently in her ridiculous dress, thinking that she could use a drink now and how it would help her courage and knowing she was lying to herself as she did it. I won't go back, she said to herself. I won't be that thing again. The monitors were playing the scenes of her captivity and their early romance. This time it played against a background of music by stringed instruments that sounded like the stuff you hear in elevators. What a jerk, she thought.