Ceremony s-9

by Robert B. Parker

  We followed the noise and smoke and smell along the hall and down the three steps to the living room. Susan's hand was on my arm.

  Susan said, "Jesus Christ."

  The room was a swarm of debauchery, a maelstrom of naked and part-naked limbs and torsos. It looked like a feverish animation of one of those Gustave Dor6 illustrations for The Inferno. Somewhere in the swarm rock music was playing at top volume on a good stereo. The smoke hung under the ceiling, eddying around the table lamps as the hot light bulbs caused a tiny thermal updraft. The thump of the music made a discernible vibration in the stairs as we stood looking in. I let Hawk stand in front of us in case Poitras or Amy or April spotted us.

  The laughter that had filtered out through the French doors as I stood there in the dark a few moments ago now snarled with the music, raw and harsh and gilded at the edges with hysteria. Slicing through the thick smell of pot and booze and perfume and sweat was a thin medicinal smell I wasn't sure of. Ether maybe. The heat was threatening. The air seemed hard to breathe. Hawk was whistling softly through his teeth again. He was less than a foot away and I could barely make out the tune; it was "Stars and Stripes Forever."

  "Thank God it's Friday," I murmured to Susan.

  The room was the same one in which I'd had my correct beer with Amy the first time I'd come, but just barely. Much of the furniture was gone and what remained had been pushed against the walls. On the bar there were half-gallon bottles of vodka and saucers of bright capsules. I could see reds and yellows and blues from where I was. There were plastic glasses in a stack and a large bag of ice tipped over and partially melted in a big puddle near the vodka. There was jug wine and some bourbon and a freezer-size baggy of grass open and some spilling. The lights around the edges of the room were bright and, reflecting off the beige walls, lit the living room like a movie set. On the wall to the right of the bar a large-screen TV was showing in color a video-tape in which two naked women and one naked man in a shower stall were involved in active foreplay while the shower head fanned a steady spray of water down on them. The actors appeared to be speaking lines, but they were soundless in the face of the music and the laughter.

  "We better move down among them," I said to Susan and Hawk. "We're too out of place up here looking down." They nodded and, Hawk first, we went down the three steps and into the maw of the beast. T. J. Eckleberg, where are you when I need you?

  I said, "Pay attention to those movies, Suze. Pick up your technique a little."

  "Anything anyone in this room or on that screen is doing," Susan said quietly, "I never wish to do with you ever."

  "Oh," I said. "Close your eyes, then, and hang on to me."

  The men in the room were generally middle-aged, the women generally children. Most of the people were sprawled on the floor, and while there seemed to be a good deal of fondling going on, I saw no actual intercourse. Nothing declassi here. We skirted a couple on the floor near the big-screen television. He had short gray hair and a clipped gray mustache and a white broadcloth shirt and a red bow tie. She was wearing only a camisole. He had one hand under the camisole as she giggled and tipped a glass of what appeared to be straight vodka against his lower lip for him to drink. Her fingernails were painted blue and so were her toenails. She appeared to be maybe fifteen. A tall angular man with gold-rimmed glasses was trying to dance to the shattering music. His partner was a tall still-faced blond girl with a long single braid down her back. She wore high-heeled shoes and tight designer jeans and no shirt. The strap of her black bra made a thin line across her white back. They were having trouble dancing because they were both drunk and because the man was trying to waltz to the music, holding the girl close against him. He bumped into me as we circled the room and said, "'Scush me," and stumbled away. As we moved on he tried to dip with his partner and they fell down, she on top of him. They stayed there.

  Susan said in my ear, "That's Foster Carmichael. He's an associate commissioner of education."

  "What dedication," I said. "Devotes even his weekends to kids."

  A black-haired kid with a freckled Irish face was standing on the coffee table against the far wall doing a slow strip-tease to music that must have come from a different drummer. She moved slowly, her face fixed in adolescent imitation of a sultry smile as she struggled with her clothes. She was too zonked to figure it out, but it was hard to strip in real clothes. It was hard to scrunch out of your designer jeans and look like Gypsy Rose lee at the same time.

  We didn't see April in the room, or Amy, or Poitras. Susan saw two other people she recognized, and I spotted a state rep that I knew. As we wedged back toward the stairs a man on the floor ran his hand up

  Susan's calf. I stepped on his stomach and he took his hand away.

  "A real compliment," I said in her ear. "Thinks you're a high school kid."

  "And he thinks you're a bully," she said.

  "He's correct."

  We made it back to the stairs. The sweat was soaking through my shirt, my collar felt as limp as an old dandelion. I realized I was holding Susan's hand. Hawk's face was shiny with sweat as he joined us on the steps.

  "Sure do know how to have a good time, don't they?" Hawk said.

  The man whose stomach I had stepped on was throwing up on the floor. Nobody paid him any attention.

  "Trendy," I said.

  The hall that had seemed oppressive when we came in now seemed cool and open after the living room. I led the way upstairs, still holding Susan's hand, with Hawk behind her. When we got to the second floor there were three December-May couples in the hallway, sitting on the floor in a circle passing a bong around. They paid no attention to us as we went past them and looked into the master bedroom. In the bed was a man and three young girls. All were without clothes. They were busy. None of the girls was April so I closed the door. There were people busy in Poitra's office also, using his swivel chair -which was tricky.

  "In a swivel chair?" Susan said.

  "To seek, to strive, and not to yield," I said. There was more activity in the guest room, and even something energetic happening in the bathroom. None of it involved Poitras or the two girls. They were on the third floor.

  Chapter 30

  When we opened the door to the photo shop, Poitras was sitting in a canvas-backed director's chair, spilling out on both sides of it. Amy stood on one side of him holding a tray of canap6s from which Poitras was eating as we entered. April stood behind him, her hands on his shoulders, massaging the base of his neck quietly. Sitting opposite was a middle-sized fiftyish man with a round face and an unhealthy-looking flush to his skin. He was wearing a gray pinstriped double-breasted suit and a conservative soft hat with a narrow brim. He looked like an unsuccessful diplomat. Behind the diplomat, leaning against the wall looking bored, with his arms folded, was an overweight slugger wearing a suede trench coat. The diplomat was reading a large sheet of lined paper. A half-drunk glass of something with a lime wedge in it was on the floor beside him. When we walked in they all turned and looked at us. Not startled, just annoyed. I looked at Hawk and then toward the slugger. Hawk nodded.

  Poitras said, "I'm sorry, this is private up here… and then recognized me and Susan.

  I said, "Say, Mitchell, you know how to throw some swell party."

  Without looking up from his lined paper the diplomat said, "Didn't Mickey tell you the third floor was off limits? Get the fuck out of here."

  The overweight slugger was still leaning against the wall, but he had uncrossed his arms and he didn't look bored.

  I said, "We had a communications problem with Mickey when we arrived and had to ask him to leave."

  The diplomat looked up. Poitras said, "He's a private cop, Hal."

  The diplomat said, "What the fuck are you running here, you fat jerk? A private cop? Who's that with him, the fucking police commissioner?"

  "I don't know, Hal. I don't know what he's doing here. He's been bothering me about the girls."

  "You fucking baby rape
r, I shoulda known better than to try to do business with a goddamn child molester." He looked at the slugger. "Get them outta here, Vince."

  The slugger straightened from the wall and Hawk pointed a handgun at him. "I think Vince overmatched," Hawk said in his friendly, gliding voice. He grinned at the diplomat. "You too, Hal." I went and took the slugger's gun and dropped it in my jacket pocket.

  Everyone was still looking at the gun, steady in Hawk's hand, pointing at Vince. L went to the files and opened the top drawer. It was still full of evidence. I stepped across to Hal and took his sheet of lined paper from his hands. It was an inventory list for video cassettes with titles like Grade School Gals and Teeny Boppers. I folded it twice and put it in my shirt pocket. I didn't bother to pat Hal down. Guys like him never carried guns. They had employees like Vince to do that.

  "Okay, April," I said. "You go with Mrs. Silverman."

  ` No.

  "Yeah. Go sit in the car with her until we get through in here and then we'll go back to my place and have some milk and Fig Newtons, and we'll talk."

  "No."

  "You too, Amy, you should go too."

  She didn't even look up. She had her head down, looking at the plate of canap6s, and she shook it.

  "In a little while there's going to be cops here," I said.

  "Cops?" Hal said.

  "Yeah. Soon as the girls are out I'm going to call them."

  Hal said, "That's no way to make a buck."

  "Neither is this," I said.

  Hal looked at Hawk. "Hey, man," he said. "Be smart. There's some bread to be made here."

  Hawk grinned. Without taking his eyes off Vince he said to me, "Hear that 'Hey, man? This a soul brother -see how he know how to talk to us darkies? He say 'Hey, man' and he say 'bread.' ' Hawk stretched the bread out in a burlesque jive accent.

  The diplomat raised his hands. "Hey, no offense. Black, white, makes no difference to me. There's a lot of money involved here. I'm talking about giving you guys apiece of it." Poitras was motionless in all this. Amy had put her canapds aside and taken his left hand. She held it in her lap with both of hers.

  I said, "April. You don't have a choice. Go with Susan or we'll take you. Amy, you can go or stay."

  Still without looking up, Amy said in a voice as small as her prospects, "Stay." There was something almost touching about the ugly fat man sitting there in his Thom McAn shoes with a little kid holding his hand and refusing to leave. Love? A turkey like that? Someone loved him? I shook my head.

  "Go ahead, April," I said. I was beginning to feel tight inside. I'd been in here too long with the bizarre sexuality and the affectless children and the ugly men. There was force in my voice. April nodded.

  She said, "Bye, Amy," and walked out the door. Susan went with her.

  I said to Poitras, "There is a gentleman of some influence whose name we won't mention. He has offices in the South End and you served him as a supplier of youthful whores."

  Poitras said, "I don't know what you're talking about." But there was no bite in his growl now. He was scared.

  "Yeah you do. This gentleman has asked me to remind you that no mention be made of his name or his relationship to you. He says that some really dire things will happen to you if he gets involved."

  Hawk glanced at me out of the corner of his eye. "Dire?" he said.

  “I was dean's list once in school," I said.

  “I can tell."

  I said to Poitras, "You understand what I told you?" He nodded.

  "I got a deal with this gentleman," I said. "So I want to be sure."

  "I won't say nothing. I know what'd happen," Poitras said. I could barely hear him. His growl had become a mumble. Amy clutched his hand in both hers, rubbing it with the thumb of her top hand.

  I looked around the lab. No phone. There was one in the office below. "Last chance, Amy. I'm going to call the fuzz."

  She shook her head. I said to Hawk, "Think you'll be safe here without me?"

  "I can always scream," he said.

  Through the door to the lab I heard some commotion sounds from downstairs; then I heard Susan's voice.

  She yelled, "Spenser," and there was a sound in her yell I'd not heard from her before. She was scared. I headed across the room. Hawk looked at me and then at Poitras and his group.

  "Fuck them," he said. "Where they going -to go?"

  As I pounded down the stairs he was right behind me. There was no one on the second floor. And as I rounded the landing and headed toward the first I saw Susan in the middle of a crowd of men and girls.

  April was separated from her by a man wearing dark glasses. His shirt was open nearly to the waist and there was a bright smear of lipstick across the right side of his mouth.

  "She's trying to kidnap me," April was yelling. "She's trying to take me away. Help me."

  Susan is never graceless and rarely stupid. She made no attempt to argue. Instead she pushed the man in front of her and took hold of April. The man with the shades objected.

  "Who you shoving, baby?" he said, and grabbed Susan by the upper arms.

  I was three steps from the bottom when he gasped with pain and doubled forward. His hands slid from Susan's arms.

  April yelled, "Help me, please help me."

  The crowd closed around Susan and I hit the bottom stair and started to throw bodies out of the way. Someone punched me on the side of the face and I flailed out with an elbow and shoved somebody else's face and I was beside Susan. Somebody tried to bite my upper arm. I lunged my shoulder into them and they stopped.

  "Never mind April," I said to Susan. "Get out of here and call McNeely in vice."

  A young woman climbed on my back with her hands scratching at my face. I reached up and pulled her face forward with my left hand and when it was in sight I punched it with my right. Across the hall I saw Hawk pick someone up and ram him backward through the stair railing. The uprights splintered and the railing cracked in two. I jammed my way backward toward the front door, keeping Susan beside me. A fist hit my stomach, another hit me above the eye, and I could feel blood begin to flow. I kicked a groin. I smacked a gray mustache. There was a mass of bodies behind me. I spun. I whacked someone with my forearm, banged two heads together, and wedged me and Susan through the gap that formed when the two people fell. We were against the front door. I put my foot against someone's stomach and shoved, buttressing my back against the door. For a moment there was room. I opened the door and shoved Susan out. The door slammed shut behind her from the weight of thrashing people. Some were fighting. Some were trying to get away. Everyone was drunk and stupid and both and crazy with sex and dope and booze and music and heat and crowd. Vince, Hal's slugger, came charging down the stairs with Hal behind him. He tried to hit Hawk with a brass candlestick and missed, and Hawk hit him three times, his hands a mere blur in the maelstrom, and the slugger went down out of sight in the turmoil of men and girls. Someone tried to choke me. I brought my hands up together to break the grip and then chopped to the side of a neck, where it joined a shoulder. I stepped on someone that tried to bite my ankle, I punched someone in front of me. I half turned and drove my elbow into someone behind me. There was no gender anymore. I made no attempt to figure out if I was hitting men or girls. No sexist I. Someone half got me in the groin and I could feel that sick feeling that only men know, but it was a glancing blow and the feeling didn't get bad. Someone spit on me. Someone hit my shoulder with a hard object. I kneed a crotch and banged a nose. We had roiled through the hall and into the sunken living room, going down the three steps as if riding a wave. A small man with a goatee was picked up and thrown against the wall and I was beside Hawk. He moved as if he were dancing, with a kind of joyful and vicious rhythm. The sweat rolled down his face. His bald head gleamed. There was a cut on his cheek and blood mixed pinkish with the sweat. His arms swelled and relaxed inside the sleeves of his gray flannel jacket. As I jostled against him I could hear him still whistling through his teeth his soft pri
vate whistle: "Stars and Stripes Forever." A goddamned patriot. Somebody got a good shot into my jaw and my chimes rang for a minute. I hit back, and hit somebody else, and kicked at a kneecap. At my angle I could look into the hall, and as I, put my open hand on someone's yelling face and shoved, I saw Poitras and Amy standing on the stairs halfway down from the second floor, holding hands, looking in, uncertain and scared. I caught a wild roundhouse punch on my forearm and demonstrated a much better way on someone's chin. An ear flashed across my line of vision-I hammered it with the side of my left fist. Don't want to break your hand on a head. I felt slippery with sweat and a little drunk with the fumes and the contact and the way my blood pounded in my head. When I'd seen Susan in the mob there had been an adrenaline spurt enough to launch a space probe. It was carrying me now. Someone jumped at me and I caught it crotch and shirtfront and helped it on past me over my left shoulder. It smashed into two other people and all three went down. Other people stepped on them. Hawk hit two faces simultaneously, one with each hand and I realized he was punching unconsciously in time to his whistle. In a fight things slow down when you are really pumped up, and it all seems like a Sam Peckinpah movie with bodies floating around and blood flowing slowly. I felt loose and warmed up and full of oxygen. I had another cut now, I could taste the blood in my mouth. Not the nose, I thought. The nose had been broken maybe eight times. Maybe this time it would be something else. Somebody waded in toward us with a fireplace poker. He caught Hawk on the shoulder and I grabbed the end and yanked it away from him as Hawk hit him with the dark blur of his quick hands. Hawk had the fastest hands I'd ever seen. He could catch flies even in the summer when they were frisky. A wineglass broke against the wall behind me and I hit an open mouth with two excellent left hooks. I could catch summer flies too, now that I thought of it. The press of the crowd was thinning. I was getting room to maneuver, to pull back and punch full out. Hawk and I had made progress. I drove my heel into an instep and my elbow into a throat. I took a step forward and landed a textbook overhand right and was rocked from behind by someone who hit me on the side of the head with something more than a fist. I turned, ducking as I turned, and saw a furled umbrella upraised and punched in under it and heard a groan and saw it skitter away on the floor as 1 turned back and caught someone's lunge with my open hands at chest level. I shoved him away and he stumbled back and smashed through the French doors. Cold air rushed in and I filled my lungs as I knocked someone's punch off with my right forearm and landed my left on a nose. The nose spurted blood. Better yours than mine.