Looking for Rachel Wallace s-6

by Robert B. Parker

“The right of every woman to be what she will be. To shape her life in conformity to her own impulse, not to bend her will to the whims of men.”

  I said, “Wow.”

  “Do you realize I bear my father’s name?”

  “I didn’t know that,” I said.

  “I had no choice,” she said. “It was assigned me.”

  “That’s true of me, too,” I said.

  She looked at me.

  “It was assigned me. Spenser. I had no choice. I couldn’t say I’d rather be named Spade. Samuel Spade. That would have been a terrific name, but no. I had to get a name like an English poet. You know what Spenser wrote?”

  “The Faerie Queen?”

  “Yeah. So what are you bitching about?”

  We were out of Marblehead now and driving on Route 1A through Swampscott.

  “It’s not the same,” she said.

  “Why isn’t it?”

  “Because I’m a woman and was given a man’s name.”

  “Whatever name would have been without your consent. Your mother’s, your father’s, and if you’d taken your mother’s name, wouldn’t that merely have been your grandfather’s?”

  There was a blue Buick Electra in front of me. It began to slow down as we passed the drive-in theater on the Lynnway. Behind me a Dodge swung out into the left lane and pulled up beside me.

  “Get on the floor,” I said.

  She said, “What—” and I put my right hand behind her neck and pushed her down toward the floor. With my left hand I yanked the steering wheel hard over and went inside the Buick. My right wheels went up on the curb. The Buick pulled right to crowd me, and I floored the Chevy and dragged my bumper along his entire righthand side and spun off the curb in front of him with a strong smell of skun* rubber behind me. I went up over the General Edwards Bridge with the accelerator to the floor and my elbow on the horn, and with the Buick and the Dodge behind me. I had my elbow on the horn because I had my gun in my hand.

  The Lynnway was too bright and too busy, and it was too early in the evening. The Buick swung off into Point of Pines, and the Dodge went with it. I swerved into the passing lane to avoid a car and swerved back to the right to avoid another and began to slow down.

  Rachel Wallace crouched, half fetal, toward the floor on the passenger’s side. I put the gun down on the seat beside me. “One of the advantages of driving a 1968 Chevy,” I said, “is you don’t care all that much about an occasional dent.”

  “May I sit up?” she said. Her voice was strong.

  “Yeah.”

  She squirmed back up onto the seat.

  “Was that necessary?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Was there someone really chasing us?”

  “Yeah.”

  “If there was, you handled it well. My reactions would not have been as quick.”

  I said, “Thank you.”

  “I’m not complimenting you. I’m merely observing a fact. Did you get their license numbers?”

  “Yes, 469AAG, and D60240, both Mass. But it won’t do us any good unless they are bad amateurs, and the way they boxed me on the road before I noticed, they aren’t amateurs.”

  “You think you should have noticed them sooner?”

  “Yeah. I was too busy arguing patristic nomenclature with you. I should never have had to hit the curb like that.”

  “Then partly it is my fault for distracting you.”

  “It’s not your line of work. It is mine. You don’t know better. I do.”

  “Well,” she said, “no harm done. We got away.”

  “If the guy in front of us in the Buick was just a mohair better, we wouldn’t have.”

  “He would have cut you off?”

  I nodded. “And the Dodge would have blasted us.”

  “Actually would he not have blasted you? I was on the floor, and you were much closer anyway.”

  I shrugged. “It wouldn’t have mattered. If you survived the crash they’d have waited and blasted you.”

  “You seem, so, so at ease with all of this.”

  “I’m not. It scares me.”

  “Perhaps. It scares me, too. But you seem to expect it. There’s no moral outrage. You’re not appalled. Or offended. Or … aghast. I don’t know. You make this seem so commonplace.”

  “Aghast is irrelevant, too. It’s useless. Or expressing it is useless. On the other hand I’m not one of the guys in the other car.”

  We went past the dog track and around Bell Circle. There was no one noticeable in the rearview mirror.

  “Then you do what you do in part from moral outrage.”

  I looked at her and shook my head. “I do what I do because I’m comfortable doing it.”

  “My God,” she said, “you’re a stubborn man.”

  “Some consider it a virtue in my work,” I said.

  She looked at the gun lying on the seat.

  “Oughtn’t you to put that away?”

  “I think I’ll leave it there till we get to the Ritz.”

  “I’ve never touched a gun in my life.”

  “They’re a well-made apparatus,” I said. “If they’re good. Very precise.”

  “Is this good?”

  “Yes. It’s a very nice gun.”

  “No gun is nice,” she said.

  “If those gentlemen from the Lynnway return,” I said, “you may come to like it better.”

  She shook her head. “It’s come to that. Sometimes I feel sick thinking about it.”

  “What?”

  “In this country—the land of the free and all that shit—I need a man with a gun to protect me simply because I am what I am.”

  “That’s fairly sickening,” I said.

  6

  I picked Rachel Wallace up at her door at eight thirty the next morning, and we went down to breakfast in the Ritz Cafe. I was wearing my bodyguard outfit—jeans, T-shirt, corduroy Levi jacket, and a daring new pair of Pumas: royal-blue suede with a bold gold stripe. Smith and Wesson .38 Police Special in a shoulder holster.

  Rachel Wallace said, “Well, we are somewhat less formal this morning, aren’t we? If you’re dressed that way tonight, they won’t let you in the dining room.”

  “Work clothes,” I said. “I can move well in them.”

  She nodded and ate an egg. She wore a quiet gray dress with a paisley scarf at her throat. “You expect to have to move?”

  “Probably not,” I said. “But like they say at the Pentagon, you have to plan for the enemy’s capacity, not his intentions.”

  She signed the check. “Come along,” she said. She picked up her briefcase from under the table, and we walked out through the lobby. She got her coat from the check room, a pale tan trenchcoat. It had cost money. I made no effort to hold it for her. She ignored me while she put it on. I looked at the lobby. There were people, but they looked like they belonged there. No one had a Gatling gun. At least no one had one visible. In fact I’d have been the only one I would have been suspicious of if I hadn’t known me so well, and so fondly.

  A young woman in a green tweed suit and a brown beret came toward us from the Arlington Street entrance.

  “Ms. Wallace. Hi. I’ve got a car waiting.”

  “Do you know her?” I said.

  “Yes,” Rachel said. “Linda Smith.”

  “I mean by sight,” I said. “Not just by hearing of her or getting mail from her.”

  “Yes, we’ve met several times before.”

  “Okay.”

  We went out onto Arlington Street. I went first. The street was normal nine AM busy. There was a tan Volvo sedan parked at the yellow curb with the motor running and the doorman standing with his hand on the passenger door. When he saw Linda Smith, he opened the passenger door. I looked inside the car and then stepped aside. Rachel Wallace got in; the doorman closed the door. I got in the back, and Linda Smith got in the driver’s seat.

  As we pulled into traffic Rachel said, “Have you met Mr. Spenser, Linda?”

&n
bsp; “No, I haven’t. Nice to meet you, Mr. Spenser.”

  “Nice to meet you, Ms. Smith,” I said. Rachel would like the Ms.

  “Spenser is looking after me on the tour,” Rachel said.

  “Yes, I know. John told me.” She glanced at me in the rearview mirror. “I don’t think I’ve ever met a bodyguard before.”

  “We’re just regular folks,” I said. “If you cut us, do we not bleed?”

  “Literary, too,” Linda Smith said.

  “When are we supposed to be in Belmont?”

  “Ten o’clock,” Linda said. “Belmont Public Library.”

  “What for?” I said.

  “Ms. Wallace is speaking there. They have a Friends of the Library series.”

  “Nice liberal town you picked.”

  “Never mind, Spenser,” Rachel Wallace said. Her voice was brusque. “I told them I’d speak wherever I could and to whom I could. I have a message to deliver, and I’m not interested in persuading those who already agree with me.”

  I nodded.

  “If there’s trouble, all right. That’s what you’re being paid for.”

  I nodded.

  We got to the Belmont Library at a quarter to ten. There were ten men and women walking up and down in front of the library with placards on poles made of strapping.

  A Belmont Police cruiser was parked across the street, two cops sitting in it quietly.

  “Park behind the cops,” I said.

  Linda swung in behind the cruiser, and I got out. “Stay in the car a second,” I said.

  “I will not cower in here in front of a few pickets.”

  “Then look menacing while you sit there. This is what I’m paid for. I just want to talk to the cops.”

  I walked over to the cruiser. The cop at the wheel had a young wise-guy face. He looked like he’d tell you to stick it, at the first chance he got. And laugh. He was chewing a toothpick, the kind they put through a club sandwich. It still had the little cellophane frill on the end he wasn’t chewing.

  I bent down and said through the open window, “I’m escorting this morning’s library speaker. Am I likely to have any trouble from the pickets?”

  He looked at me for ten or twelve seconds, worrying the toothpick with his tongue.

  “You do, and we’ll take care of it,” he said. “You think we’re down here waiting to pick up a copy of Gone with the Wind?”

  “I figured you more for picture books,” I said.

  He laughed. “How about that, Benny?” he said to his partner. “A hot shit. Haven’t had one today.” His partner was slouched in the seat with his hat tipped over his eyes. He didn’t say anything or move. “Who’s the speaker you’re escorting?”

  “Rachel Wallace,” I said.

  “Never heard of her.”

  “I’ll try to keep that from her,” I said. “I’m going to take her in now.”

  “Good show,” he said. “Shouldn’t be any trouble for a hot shit like you.”

  I went back to the car and opened the door for Rachel Wallace.

  “What did you do?” she said as she got out.

  “Annoyed another cop,” I said. “That’s three hundred sixty-one this year, and October’s not over yet.”

  “Did they say who the pickets were?”

  I shook my head. We started across the street, Linda Smith on one side of Rachel and me on the other. Linda Smith’s face looked tight and colorless; Rachel’s was expressionless.

  Someone among the pickets said, “There she is.” They all turned and closed together more tightly as we walked toward them. Linda looked at me, then back at the cops. We kept walking.

  “We don’t want you here!” a woman shouted at us.

  Someone else yelled, “Dyke!”

  I said, “Is he talking to me?”

  Rachel Wallace said, “No.”

  A heavy-featured woman with shoulder-length gray hair was carrying a placard that said, A Gay America is a Communist Goal. A stylish woman in a tailored suit carried a sign that read, Gays Can’t Reproduce. They Have to Convert.

  I said, “I bet she wanted to say proselytize; but no one knew how to spell it.”

  No one laughed; I was getting used to that. As we approached the group they joined arms in front of us, blocking the entrance. In the center of the line was a large man with a square jaw and thick brown hair. Looked like he’d been a tight end perhaps, at Harvard. He wore a dark suit and a pale gray silk tie. His cheeks were rosy, and his eye was clear. Probably still active in his alumni association. A splendid figure of a man, the rock upon which the picket line was anchored. Surely a foe of atheism, Communism, and faggotry. Almost certainly a perfect asshole.

  Rachel Wallace walked directly up to him and said, “Excuse me, please.”

  There was no shouting now. It was quiet. Square Jaw shook his head, slowly, dramatically.

  Rachel said, “You are interfering with my right of free speech and free assembly, a right granted me by the Constitution.”

  Nobody budged. I looked back at the cops. The wise-guy kid was out of the squad car now, leaning against the door on the passenger side, his arms crossed, his black leather belt sagging with ammunition, Mace, handcuffs, nightstick, gun, come-along, and a collection of keys on a ring. He probably wanted to walk over and let us through, but his gunbelt was too heavy.

  I said to Rachel, “Would you like me to create an egress for you?”

  “How do you propose to do it,” she said.

  “I thought I would knock this matinee idol on his kiester, and we could walk in over him.”

  “It might be a mistake to try, fellow,” he said. His voice was full of money, like Daisy Buchanan.

  “No,” I said. “It would not be a mistake.”

  Rachel said, “Spenser.” Her voice was sharp. “I don’t stand for that,” she said. “I won’t resort to it.”

  I shrugged and looked over at the young cop. His partner appeared not to have moved. He was still sitting in the squad car with his hat over his eyes. Maybe it was an economy move; maybe the partner was really an inflatable dummy. The young cop grinned at me.

  “Our civil rights are in the process of violation over here!” I yelled at him. “You have any plans for dealing with that?”

  He pushed himself away from the car and swaggered over. His half-chewed toothpick bobbed in his mouth as he worked it back and forth with his tongue. The handle of his service revolver thumped against his leg. On his uniform blouse were several military service ribbons. Vietnam, I figured. There was a Purple Heart ribbon and a service ribbon with battle stars and another ribbon that might have been the Silver Star.

  “You could look at it that way,” he said when he reached us. “Or you could look at it that you people are causing a disturbance.”

  “Will you escort us inside, officer?” Rachel Wallace said. “I would say that is your duty, and I think you ought to do it.”

  “We are here to prevent the spreading of an immoral and pernicious doctrine, officer,” Square Jaw said. “That is our duty. I do not think you should aid people who wish to destroy the American family.”

  The cop looked at Rachel.

  “I will not be caught up in false issues,” Rachel said. “We have a perfect right to go into that library and speak. I have been invited, and I will speak. There is no question of right here. I have a right and they are trying to violate it. Do your job.”

  Other people were gathering, passing cars slowed down and began to back up traffic while the drivers tried to see what was happening. On the fringes of the crowd post-high-school kids gathered and smirked.

  Square Jaw said, “It might help you to keep in mind, officer, that I am a close personal friend of Chief Garner, and I’m sure he’ll want to hear from me exactly what has happened and how his men have behaved.”

  The young cop looked at me. “A friend of the chief,” he said.

  “That’s frightening,” I said. “You better walk softly around him.”

&n
bsp; The young cop grinned at me broadly. “Yeah,” he said. He turned back to Square Jaw. “Move it, Jack,” he said. The smile was gone.

  Square Jaw rocked back a little as if someone had jabbed at him.

  “I beg your pardon?” he said.

  “I said, Move your ass. This broad may be a creep, but she didn’t try to scare me. I don’t like people to try and scare me. These people are going in—you can tell the chief that when you see him. You can tell him they went in past you or over you. You decide which you’ll tell him.”

  The young cop’s face was half an inch away from Square Jaw’s, and since he was three inches shorter, it was tilted up. The partner had appeared from the car. He was older and heavier, with a pot belly and large hands with big knuckles. He had his night stick in his right hand, and he slapped it gently against his thigh.

  The people on either side of Square Jaw unlinked their arms and moved away. Square Jaw looked at Rachel, and when he spoke he almost hissed. “You foul, contemptible woman,” he said. “You bulldyke. We’ll never let you win. You queer … ”

  I pointed down the street to the left and said to the two cops, “There’s trouble.”

  They both turned to look, and when they did I gave Square Jaw a six-inch jab in the solar plexus with my right fist. He gasped and doubled up. The cops spun back and looked at him and then at me. I was staring down the street where I’d pointed. “Guess I was mistaken,” I said.

  Square Jaw was bent over, his arms wrapped across his midsection, rocking back and forth. A good shot in the solar plexus will half-paralyze you for a minute or two.

  The young cop looked at me without expression. “Yeah, I guess you were,” he said. “Well let’s get to the library.”

  As we walked past Square Jaw the older cop said to him, “It’s a violation of health ordinances, Jack, to puke in the street.”

  7

  Inside the library, and downstairs in the small lecture room, there was no evidence that a disturbance had ever happened. The collection of elderly people, mostly women, all gray-haired, mostly overweight, was sitting placidly on folding chairs, staring patiently at the small platform and the empty lectern.

  The two cops left us at the door. “We’ll sit around outside,” the young one said, “until you’re through.” Rachel Wallace was being introduced to the Friends of the Library president, who would introduce her to the audience. The young cop looked at her. “What did you say her name was?”