Hundred-Dollar Baby

by Robert B. Parker

  “Just a thought,” Hawk said.

  52

  We had been five days in New York. I was sick of room service, sick of eating out, sick of not being home. I missed Susan. I missed Pearl. I missed looking out my office window. I missed Susan. I missed Chet Curtis. I missed Mike Barnicle. I missed Boylston Street, and the Charles River, and the Common, and the Globe, and the Harbor Health Club. I missed Susan. I missed spring training speculation, and commercials for Jordan’s furniture, and Duck Tours, and the Ritz Bar, and Susan. But, on the other hand, New York, so far, was a perfect waste of time.

  “How long will you hang in there,” Susan asked me on the phone.

  “Until I can think of something better.”

  “You could come home and watch April,” Susan said.

  “Lionel’s the mover and shaker,” I said. “He’s up to something, and sooner or later he has to do something I can get hold of.”

  “A parking ticket, perhaps?”

  “Don’t be a smart ass,” I said.

  “I can’t help myself,” Susan said. “Any more than you can.”

  “I could help myself,” I said. “If I wanted.”

  We spent a few more minutes on the phone in adolescent sex talk. When we hung up, I went to the hotel window and looked down at Madison Avenue. Had April wanted Leonard to kill Ollie? If so, why hadn’t she gone to Tony when Leonard suggested it? Or maybe she didn’t need to because someone else had done it. Or maybe she had someone else in mind and it wasn’t time yet. Or maybe Tony was lying, or Leonard, or April. Or all of them in concert.

  I made myself a drink and stood sipping it at the window. It seemed that April and Lionel had, at least at one time, been engaged in trying to establish a chain of upscale bordellos, the first few of which at least they were hoping to steal from Patricia Utley. They seemed to have fallen out, but maybe they hadn’t. April seemed to not only want Dream girl to happen, she needed it. She seemed positively obsessed with it. I was pretty sure she couldn’t go it alone. She didn’t seem to like men much, but she did seem to need at least one to depend on. Maybe at first it was Lionel. Then maybe Ollie. Then maybe me. Which would explain her making a pass at me. If she needed a man, sex was what she used. It was why she didn’t warm to Tedy Sapp. On him, sex was useless.

  I drank a small, pleasant swallow of my drink. There was a lot of ice in the glass. The drink tasted clean.

  Sex hadn’t worked with me, either. Now who? Back to Lionel? Maybe that was the real thrust of her talk with Leonard. Would you kill someone for me. Maybe it was a test. If he said he’d kill someone for her, maybe he could be the man who helped her. Referring her to Tony meant he probably hadn’t passed the test. Or maybe he had passed the test and was covering himself with Tony. There was a lot I didn’t know. But working with what I did know, Lionel still seemed the logical choice to be re-anointed. Which was too bad. Lionel wouldn’t take care of April. To him she’d be prey.

  53

  It was raining in New York. I was getting wet near the park, across the street from Lionel’s building. Hawk was double-parked up the street. I wasn’t getting too wet. I had on my Red Sox 2004 World Series Championship hat and my cognac-colored leather jacket. The hat kept my head dry, and the jacket kept my gun dry. The rest was wet. Water trickled down my neck no matter how carefully I adjusted my collar. The jeans and sneakers were soaked through.

  At maybe 10:30 in the morning a silvery Porsche Boxster stopped in front of Lionel’s building and April Kyle got out wearing boots and a bright red coat and carrying a small red umbrella. She gave the car keys to the doorman and went into the building. The doorman scooted the car around the corner and came back in a few minutes, having parked it somewhere.

  I wished I had a faithful assistant to whom I could say, “The game’s afoot” or “Oh ho!” I could cross the street and say it to Hawk, but I knew he’d find it annoying. So I settled for giving myself a small nod of approval. Which made more rain leak past my collar in back.

  I knew Hawk saw her. He always saw everything. If she came out and got her car, or got in a cab, he’d follow. If she came out and walked, I’d follow and Hawk would idle along behind, ignoring the occasional angry taxi. Nothing happened for maybe three hours, except the rain. Then April came out of the building with Lionel. They stood in the shelter of the doorway while the doorman hailed them a cab. A rainy day in Manhattan is not good for cab hailing. Even for professionals. When the doorman finally succeeded, he went back, held a large golf umbrella for Lionel and April, and escorted them to the cab. The umbrella shielded their view, and as they walked to the cab I ran across the street and jumped into the rental car with Hawk as the doorman closed the cab door and slapped his hand on the taxi’s roof.

  I couldn’t help myself.

  “The game’s afoot,” I said.

  Hawk shook his head.

  “What the fuck is wrong with you?” he said.

  54

  We parked beside a hydrant and sat for two hours watching the front door of Patricia Utley’s building through the rainwashed windshield. The water on the windshield distorted things, fusing the colors and bending the straight lines of the Upper East Side. But we could see well enough, and a car parked with its wipers going for two hours is a dead giveaway if anyone is paying attention.

  It was still raining when Lionel and April came out of the apartment building. The doorman got them a cab. April tipped him. Hawk turned on the wipers, and we were behind the cab as it took them back through the park to Lionel’s building. April and Lionel got out of the cab and went into the building. The cab left us and we double-parked behind a big plumbing truck that was already double-parked itself. Hawk shut off the wipers.

  “This detective work is thrilling,” Hawk said. “No wonder you’ve made it your life’s work.”

  I leaned my head back and stretched my neck. Outside the car, the rain was coming straight down and hard.

  “I think I’ll maintain my post here in the car,” I said. “If one of them comes out, one of us can always jump out and follow.”

  “One of us?” Hawk said.

  “Hey,” I said. “Are we buddies or what?”

  “Buddies?”

  “Salt and pepper,” I said. “Black and white. Friends across the racial divide. Share and share alike.”

  “I ain’t tailing nobody in the rain, honkie,” Hawk said.

  “Chingachgook would have done it for Leatherstocking,” I said.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Jim would have done it for Huck.”

  “I ain’t tailing nobody in the rain, Huck.”

  “Tonto would do it.”

  “I ain’t your faithful Indian companion,” Hawk said.

  “Faithful Native American companion,” I said, “is now the preferred way to say that.”

  Hawk nodded as if he’d just heard useful information.

  He said, “Snow nor sleet either, kemosabe.”

  We sat. It rained. The afternoon darkened. The lights of the traffic, white oncoming, red departing, blurred quite prettily through the rainwater on the windshield. The rain-filtered emerald green of the traffic light on Central Park West was especially pleasant. The doormen at Lionel’s building changed shifts. People went into the building and came out of the building. None was April, or Lionel. The question of who would tail a suspect in the rain was probably moot, and we both knew it. Small talk had long since petered out. We sat, silently staring at Lionel’s entrance. We weren’t uncomfortable with not speaking. Hawk’s capacity for silence was limitless, and I could endure more of it than I usually got. By 7:30 we were both pretty sure April wasn’t coming out tonight. Now it had become a contest to see who would endure. Hawk was motionless behind the wheel. It was ten o’clock. I was hungry and yearning for a drink. I knew it took days to starve, so I wasn’t yet in fear of my life.

  “I’ve heard in starvation that after a while you aren’t hungry anymore,” I said.

  “Ain’t never starved
that long,” Hawk said.

  The rain stayed steady. It seemed to be in for the long haul with us.

  At five past eleven, I said, “Did you know that moderate ingestion of alcoholic beverages is good for your HDL.”

  “HDL,” Hawk said.

  “It’s clearly bad for our health,” I said. “Sitting here like this without a drink.”

  Hawk nodded.

  “Am feeling a little peaked,” Hawk said.

  I nodded. We sat.

  At 11:20 Hawk said, “Think she going to spend the night?”

  “Looks that way,” I said. “And you are looking a little peaked.”

  “You not looking so good either,” Hawk said. “Kinda pale.”

  “By your standards,” I said.

  Hawk shrugged.

  At 12:15 he turned on the wipers and headlights.

  “You win,” he said.

  I pointed east, toward our hotel on the other side of Central Park. Hawk put the car in gear.

  “Call it a draw,” I said.

  55

  I was pretty sure she’d spent the night when April came out of the building with Lionel at 11:30 the next morning. Hawk and I were there. They took a cab downtown and got out in front of an Italian restaurant on Hudson just below Spring Street. Hawk and I lingered outside. At 1:17 they came back out of the restaurant with two guys in suits. Nobody looked happy. The two suits got into a limo. I wrote down the license number.

  “You detecting?”

  I nodded.

  “It’s all in the training,” I said.

  “Something to see,” Hawk said. “We gonna stay with April and Lionel?”

  “Unless they split,” I said.

  They didn’t. They got a cab on Hudson Street and went back up the west side.

  Behind the wheel, Hawk said, “You want me to get one of those little chauffeur hats? Be like Driving Miss Daisy?”

  “No,” I said.

  Through the miracle of cell phones I called Corsetti. He wasn’t there. I left a message for him to call me, and in an hour and fifteen minutes he did.

  “You in the city?” he said when I answered.

  “Yeah, Upper East Side, near the park.”

  “There’ll probably be a sharp dip in the crime rate,” he said.

  “Can you trace a license plate for me?”

  “Sure,” he said. “Gimme something to do. We haven’t had a homicide in fifteen, twenty minutes.”

  We followed Lionel and April to 81st Street. We lingered near the corner while the cab let April and Lionel out in front of a building with a large ornate canopy keeping the water off of the front entryway. A doorman came and opened the cab door. Nothing happened for a moment while one of them paid the cabbie. Then they got out and stepped under the canopy. The doorman closed the door and the cab took off. Lionel and April went into the building.

  When they were out of sight we pulled the rental car up in front of the entrance. The doorman held the door as Hawk got out. I got out of my side, unassisted, with a roll of twenties, which I carried for just such emergencies.

  “Can you hold the car for us?” I said and peeled off a twenty.

  “Sure thing,” the doorman said. “I’ll park it right inside the garage there and get it for you when you come out.”

  “Excellent,” I said.

  We started for the door.

  “I’m supposed to call up,” the doorman said apologetically. “Who shall I say.”

  “Same place as the couple just went in,” Hawk said. “We were supposed to meet them outside, and we were late.”

  “Mrs. Utley?” the doorman said.

  “Utley?” I said.

  “Yeah. She got the top two floors.”

  I looked at Hawk.

  “They say anything to you about Utley?”

  “Nope.”

  “Me either.”

  We both stood uncertainly.

  “You’re sure they said Utley?” I said.

  “Positive,” the doorman said.

  Hawk and I looked at each other again.

  “You know what?” I said to Hawk. “I think we ought to get back in the car and call Lionel on his cell.”

  Hawk nodded.

  “Agree,” he said.

  The doorman looked sad.

  “Keep the twenty,” I said. “Thanks for helping. We’ll take a spin around the block while I call, see what’s up. Maybe we misunderstood something.”

  The doorman seemed cheerier.

  “Sure thing,” he said. “You need to come back, I’ll take care of you.”

  He held Hawk’s door while he got in, then hurried around trying to hold my door also, but it was too late. I was already in. So he closed it for me carefully.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  Hawk pulled away and we went toward the park with the wipers working smoothly back and forth on the windshield.

  56

  Corsetti called back at four.

  “You move in the best circles,” he said. “Car’s registered to Arnold Fisher.”

  “You know Fisher?”

  “I do.”

  “Professionally?” I said.

  “Arnie Fisher is a money guy for what’s left of the DeNucci family.”

  “What’s left?”

  “Yeah, we busted them up pretty good about five years back. Put Dion DeNucci upstate for life. Family business been kind of floundering ever since. His kid’s in charge now and not really up to it.”

  “Think I could talk with Mr. Fisher.”

  “If I go with you,” Corsetti said.

  “And have you a moment?” I said.

  “Tell me why you’re interested.”

  I told him. And described the two men.

  When I finished he said, “That was Arnie, okay. I wonder if the other guy was Brooks.”

  “Brooks?”

  “DeNucci, the son.”

  “Brooks DeNucci?” I said.

  “Old man always wanted to live in Greenwich,” Corsetti said.

  “Can you arrange something?” I said.

  “I’ll call you back, again,” Corsetti said.

  I hung up the phone. April and Lionel came out of the building and got a cab. We followed them west across the park to Lionel’s pad.

  “Mob?” Hawk said.

  “Maybe,” I said, and told him what I knew.

  “Something,” Hawk said.

  “It is.”

  We sat some more. It was overcast today, with now and then some weak sunshine. The sun had set by the time Corsetti called me.

  “Tomorrow,” Corsetti said, “eleven o’clock in the morning. I’ll pick you up.”

  “Where we going?”

  “Twenty-sixth Street,” Corsetti said. “Between Seventh and Eighth.”

  “His place?” I said.

  “Lawyer’s.”

  “Courteous treatment,” I said.

  “This is better,” Corsetti said. “I know these people, especially Arnie. You yank him in, he’s like a fucking clam until he gets lawyered. It’s not like I got anything on them.”

  “Good point,” I said.

  “Pick you up, ten thirty,” Corsetti said.

  Hawk looked at me.

  “Enough?” he said.

  “For today? Yeah. Let’s go eat.”

  “Cocktails first,” Hawk said

  “We’d be fools not to,” I said.

  57

  In the morning, I left Hawk with the rental car.

  “If you have to choose,” I said, “stay with April.”

  “You pay the ticket?” Hawk said. “I leave the car on a hydrant?”

  “God forbid,” I said, “a scofflaw.”

  Hawk went back across the park. I waited on Madison Avenue for Corsetti.

  “Don’t say it,” Corsetti said to me as we went downtown, “but if everybody thinks you’re a cop, too, it won’t hurt anything.”

  We got downtown easy, despite some traffic. Corsetti used his siren as nec
essary.

  “I thought you weren’t supposed to blow that thing,” I said, “except as required by your professional duties.”

  Corsetti glanced at me as if I had just spoken in tongues. Then he grinned and whooped the siren again. At nothing.

  “Oh,” I said. “I see.”

  Corsetti jammed his car into a loading zone in front of a nondescript restaurant on 26th Street. I followed him into a nondescript entry next to the restaurant. We took the shabby elevator to the third floor and went into an office perfectly in keeping with its surroundings.

  A fiftyish woman in a shapeless black dress said, “They’re in the conference room.”

  She stood and led us to it and opened the door and stepped aside. There were four men in the room, two of whom I’d seen recently on Spring Street. Corsetti went in and stood in front of them.

  “I’m Corsetti,” he said. “This is Spenser.”

  He looked at a shabby guy in his sixties with bushy white hair.

  “You’re Galvin,” he said.

  “Marcus Galvin,” the shabby guy said, “attorney at law.”

  Galvin was wearing a wrinkled gray suit and vest with a red-and-black plaid shirt and a narrow black knit tie.

  “You’d be the babysitter,” Corsetti said to a big, slick-looking guy in an expensive suit.

  The big guy looked at Corsetti with no change in expression. Corsetti laughed and shook his head.

  “How are you, Brooks?” he said to the younger of the two men I’d seen on Spring Street.

  “What did you have in mind, Corsetti?” the younger man said.

  He was a little overweight. Not huge, but soft-looking. Expensive clothes, manicure, thousand-dollar shoes. He was probably trying for a hard look at Corsetti, but all he could muster was petulant.

  “Arnie,” Corsetti said to the older man.

  Arnie was thin and well-tanned. He had an intelligent face and a bald head, and his clothes fit him well. He was quiet where he sat, tenting his long fingers on the tabletop, tapping the fingertips gently together.

  “Eugene,” he said, with the stress on the first syllable.