Looking for Rachel Wallace s-6

by Robert B. Parker

  “Rachel Wallace,” I said.

  “She some kind of queer or something?”

  “She’s a writer,” I said. “She’s a feminist. She’s gay. She’s not easy to scare.”

  The cop shook his head, “A goddamned lezzy,” he said to his partner. “We’ll be outside,” he said to me. They started up the stairs. Three steps up the young cop stopped and turned back to me. “You got a good punch,” he said. “You don’t see a lot of guys can hit that hard on a short jab.” Then he turned and went on up after his partner. Inside the room Rachel Wallace was sitting on a folding chair beside the lectern, her hands folded in her lap, her ankles crossed. The president was introducing her. On a table to the right of the lectern were maybe two dozen of Rachel Wallace’s books. I leaned against the wall to the right of the door in the back and looked at the audience. No one looked furtive. Not all of them looked awake. Linda Smith was standing next to me.

  “Nice booking,” I said to her.

  She shrugged. “It all helps,” she said. “Did you hit that man outside?”

  “Just once,” I said.

  “I wonder what she’ll say about that,” Linda Smith said.

  I shrugged.

  The president finished introducing Rachel and she stepped to the lectern. The audience clapped politely.

  “I am here,” Rachel said, “for the same reason I write. Because I have a truth to tell, and I will tell it.”

  I whispered to Linda Smith, “You think many of these people have read her books?”

  Linda shook her head. “Most of them just like to come out and look at a real live author.”

  “The word woman is derived from the Old English wifmann meaning ‘wife-person.’ The very noun by which our language designates us does so only in terms of men.”

  The audience looked on loyally and strained to understand. Looking at them, you’d have to guess that the majority of them couldn’t find any area where they could agree with her. At least a plurality probably couldn’t find an area where they understood what she was talking about. They were library friends, people who had liked to read all their lives, and liked it in the library and had a lot of free time on their hands. Under other circumstances they would have shot a lesbian on sight.

  “I am not here,” Rachel Wallace was saying, “to change your sexual preference. I am here only to say that sexual preference is not a legitimate basis for discriminatory practices, for maltreatment in the marketplace. I am here to say that a woman can be fulfilled without a husband and children, that a woman is not a breeding machine, that she need not be a slave to her family, a whore for her husband.”

  An elderly man in a gray sharkskin suit leaned over to his wife and whispered something. Her shoulders shook with silent laughter. A boy about four years old got up from his seat beside his grandmother and walked down the center aisle to sit on the floor in front and stare up at Rachel. In the very last row a fat woman in a purple dress read a copy of Mademoiselle.

  “How many books does this sell?” I whispered to Linda Smith.

  She shrugged. “There’s no way to know, really,” she whispered. “The theory is that exposure helps. The more the better. Big scenes like the Today Show, small ones like this. You try to blanket a given area.”

  “Are there any questions?” Rachel said. The audience stared at her. A man wearing white socks and bedroom slippers was asleep in the front row, right corner. In the silence the pages turning in Mademoiselle were loud. The woman didn’t seem to notice.

  “If not, then thank you very much.”

  Rachel stepped off the low platform past the small boy and walked down the center aisle toward Linda and me. Outside the hall there were multicolored small cookies on a table and a large coffee maker with a thumbprint near the spigot. Linda said to Rachel, “That was wonderful.”

  Rachel said, “Thank you.”

  The president of the Friends said, “Would you like some coffee and refreshments?”

  Rachel said, “No, thank you.” She jerked her head at me, and the three of us headed for the door.

  “You sure you don’t want any refreshment?” I said, as we went out the side door of the library.

  “I want two maybe three martinis and lunch,” Rachel said. “What have I this afternoon, Linda?”

  “An autographing in Cambridge.”

  Rachel shivered. “God,” she said.

  There was no one outside now except the two cops in the squad car. The pickets were gone, and the lawn was empty and innocent in front of the library. I shot at the young cop with my forefinger and thumb as we got into Linda Smith’s car. He nodded. We drove away.

  “You and the young officer seem to have developed some sort of relationship. Have you met him before?”

  “Not him specifically, but we know some of the same things. When I was his age, I was sort of like him.”

  “No doubt,” she said, without any visible pleasure. “What sort of things do you both know? And how do you know you know them?”

  I shrugged. “You wouldn’t get it, I don’t think. I don’t even know how we know, but we do.”

  “Try,” Rachel said. “I am not a dullard. Try to explain.”

  “We know what hurts,” I said, “and what doesn’t. We know about being scared and being brave. We know applied theory.”

  “You can tell that, just by looking?”

  “Well, partly. He had some combat decorations on his blouse.”

  “Military medals?”

  “Yeah, cops sometimes wear them. He does. He’s proud of them.”

  “And that’s the basis of your judgment?”

  “No, not just that. It’s the way he walks. How his mouth looks, the way he holds his head. The way he reacted to the protest leader.”

  “I thought him a parody of machismo.”

  “No, not a parody,” I said. “The real thing.”

  “The real thing is a parody,” she said.

  “I didn’t think you’d get it,” I said.

  “Don’t you patronize me,” she said. “Don’t use that oh-women-don’t-understand-tone with me.”

  “I said you didn’t understand. I didn’t say other women don’t. I didn’t say it was because you’re a woman.”

  “And,” she snapped, “I assume you think you were some kind of Sir Galahad protecting my good name when you punched that poor sexist fool at the library. Well, you were not. You were a stupid thug. I will not have you acting on my behalf in a manner I deplore. If you strike another person except to save my life, I will fire you at that moment.”

  “How about if I stick my tongue out at them and go bleaaah.”

  “I’m serious,” she said.

  “I’ll say.”

  We were perfectly quiet then. Linda Smith drove back through Watertown toward Cambridge.

  “I really thought the talk went very well, Rachel,” she said. “That was a tough audience, and I thought you really got to them.”

  Rachel Wallace didn’t answer.

  “I thought we could go into Cambridge and have lunch at the Harvest,” Linda said. “Then we could stroll up to the bookstore.”

  “Good,” Rachel said. “I’m hungry, and I need a drink.”

  8

  In my mouth there was still the faint taste of batter-fried shrimp with mustard fruits as I hung around the front door of the Crimson Book Store on Mass. Ave. and watched Rachel Wallace sign books. Across the street Harvard Yard glistened in the fall rain that had started while we were eating lunch.

  Rachel was at a card table near the check-out counter in the front of the store. On the card table were about twenty copies of her new book and three blue felt-tipped pens. In the front window a large sign announced that she’d be there from one until three that day. It was now two ten, and they had sold three books. Another half dozen people had come in and looked at her and gone out.

  Linda Smith hung around the table and drank coffee and steered an occasional customer over. I looked at everyone who
came in and learned nothing at all. At two fifteen a teenage girl came in wearing Levi’s and a purple warmup jacket that said Brass Kaydettes on it.

  “You really an author?” she said to Rachel.

  Rachel said, “Yes, I am.”

  “You write this book?”

  “Yes.”

  Linda Smith said, “Would you like to buy one? Ms. Wallace will autograph a copy.”

  The girl ignored her. “This book any good?” she said.

  Rachel Wallace smiled. “I think so,” she said.

  “What’s it about?”

  “It’s about being a woman and about the way people discriminate against women, and about the way that corruption leads to other corruption.”

  “Oh, yeah? Is it exciting?”

  “Well, I wouldn’t, ah, I wouldn’t say it was exciting, exactly. It is maybe better described as powerful.”

  “I was thinking of being a writer,” the kid said.

  Rachel’s smile was quite thin. “Oh, really?”

  “Where do you get your ideas?”

  “I think them up,” Rachel said. The smile was so thin it was hard to see.

  “Oh, yeah?” The girl picked up a copy of Rachel’s book and looked at it, and turned it over and looked at the back. She read the jacket flap for a minute, then put the book down.

  “This a novel?” the girl said.

  “No,” Rachel said.

  “It’s long as a novel.”

  “Yes,” Rachel said.

  “So why ain’t it a novel?”

  “It’s nonfiction.”

  “Oh.”

  The girl’s hair was leaf-brown and tied in two pigtails that lapped over her ears. She had braces on her teeth. She picked the book up again and flipped idly through the pages. There was silence.

  Rachel Wallace said, “Are you thinking of buying a copy?”

  The girl shook her head. “Naw,” she said, “I got no money anyway.”

  “Then put the book down and go somewhere else,” Rachel said.

  “Hey, I ain’t doing any harm,” the girl said.

  Rachel looked at her.

  “Oh, I’m through anyway,” the girl said and left the store.

  “You got some smooth way with the reading public,” I said.

  “Little twerp,” Rachel said. “Where do I get my ideas? Jesus Christ, where does she think I get them? Everyone asks me that. The question is inane.”

  “She probably doesn’t know any better,” I said.

  Rachel Wallace looked at me and said nothing. I didn’t have a sense that she thought me insightful.

  Two young men came in. One was small and thin with a crew cut and gold-rimmed glasses. He had on a short yellow slicker with a hood up and blue serge pants with cuffs that stopped perhaps two inches above the tops of his wing-tipped cordovan shoes. He had rubbers on over the shoes. The other one was much bigger. He had the look of a fat weightlifter. He couldn’t have been more than twenty-five, but he was starting to get bald. He wore a red-and-black plaid flannel shirt, a black down vest, and chino pants rolled up over laced work boots. The sleeves of his shirt were turned up.

  The small one carried a white cardboard pastry box. I edged a little closer to Rachel when they came in. They didn’t look bookstorish. As they stopped in front of Rachel’s table I put my hand inside my jacket on the butt of my gun. As the small one opened the pastry box I moved. He came out with a chocolate cream pie and had it halfway into throwing position when I hit him with my shoulder. He got it off, side-armed and weakly, and it hit Rachel in the chest. I had the gun out now, and when the fat one grabbed at me I hit him on the wrist with the barrel. The small one bowled over backwards and fell on the floor.

  I said, “Everybody freeze,” and pointed my gun at them. Always a snappy line.

  The fat one was clutching his wrist against his stomach. “It was only a freaking pie, man,” he said.

  The small one had scrunched up against the wall by the door. The wind was knocked out of him, and he was working on getting it back. I looked at Rachel. The pie had hit her on the left breast and slid down her dress to her lap, leaving a wide trail of chocolate and whipped cream.

  I said to the men, “Roll over on the floor, face down. Clasp your hands back of your head.”

  The little one did what I said. His breath was back. The fat one said, “Hey, man, I think you broke my freaking wrist.”

  “On the floor,” I said.

  He went down. I knelt behind them and searched them quickly with my left hand, keeping the gun clear in my right. They had no weapons.

  The bookstore manager and Linda Smith were busy with paper towels trying to wipe the chocolate cream off Rachel; customers gathered in a kind of hushed circle—not frightened, embarrassed rather. I stood up.

  Rachel’s face was flushed, and her eyes were bright. “Sweets for the sweet, my dear,” I said.

  “Call the police,” she said.

  “You want to prefer charges?” I said.

  “Absolutely,” she said. “I want these two boars charged with assault.”

  From the floor the fat one said, “Aw, lady, it was only a freaking pie.”

  “Shut up,” she said. “Shut your foul, stupid mouth now. You grunting ass. I will do everything I can to put you in jail for this.”

  I said, “Linda, could you call the buttons for us?”

  She nodded and went over to the telephone behind the counter.

  Rachel turned and looked at the five customers and two clerks in a small semicircle looking uncomfortable.

  “What are you people looking at?” she said. “Go about your business. Go on. Move.”

  They began to drift away. All five customers went out. The two clerks went back to arranging books on a display table downstairs.

  “I think this autographing is over,” Rachel said.

  “Yeah,” I said, “but the cops are coming. You gotta wait for them. They get grouchy as hell when you call them and screw.”

  Linda Smith hung up the phone. “They’ll be right along,” she said.

  And they were—a prowl car with two cops in uniform. They wanted to see my license and my gun permit, and they shook down both the assault suspects routinely and thoroughly. I didn’t bother to tell them I’d already done it; they’d have done it again anyway.

  “You want to prefer assault charges against these two, lady?” one of the prowlies said.

  “My name is Rachel Wallace. And I certainly do.”

  “Okay, Rachel,” the cop said. There was a fine network of red veins in each cheek. “We’ll take them in. Sergeant’s gonna like this one, Jerry. Assault with a pie.”

  They herded the two young men toward the door. The fat one said, “Geez, lady, it was just a freaking pie.”

  Rachel leaned toward him a little and said to him very carefully, “Eat a shit sandwich.”

  9

  We drove back to the Ritz in silence. The traffic wasn’t heavy yet, and Linda Smith didn’t have to concentrate on driving as much as she did. As we went over the Mass. Ave. Bridge I looked at the way the rain dimpled the surface of the river. The sweep of the Charles from the bridge down toward the basin was very fine from the Mass. Ave. Bridge—much better when you walked across it, but okay from a car. The red-brick city on Beacon Hill, the original one, was prominent from here, capped by the gold dome of the Bulfinch State House. The high-rises of the modern city were all around it, but from here they didn’t dominate. It was like looking back through the rain to the way it was, and maybe should have been.

  Linda Smith turned off Mass. Ave. and onto Commonwealth. “You don’t think I should have preferred* charges,” Rachel said to me.

  “Not my business to think about that,” I said.

  “But you disapprove.”

  I shrugged. “Tends to clog up the court system.”

  “Was I to let them walk away after insulting and degrading me?”

  “I could have kicked each one in the fanny,” I said.


  “That’s your solution to everything,” she said, and looked out the window.

  “No, but it’s a solution to some things. You want them punished. What do you think will happen to them. A night in jail and a fifty dollar fine, maybe. To get that done will involve two prowl-car cops, a desk sergeant, a judge, a prosecutor, a public defender, and probably more. It will cost the state about two thousand dollars, and you’ll probably have to spend the morning in court and so will the two arresting officers. I could have made them sorry a lot sooner for free.”

  She continued to stare out the window.

  “And,” I said, “it was only a freaking pie, lady.”

  She looked at me and almost smiled. “You were very quick,” she said.

  “I didn’t know it was going to be a pie.”

  “Would you have shot him?” she said. She wasn’t looking out the window now; she stared straight at me.

  “If I had to. I almost did before I saw it was a pie.”

  “What kind of a man would do that?”

  “Throw a pie at someone?”

  “No,” she said. “Shoot someone.”

  “You asked me that before,” I said. “I don’t have a better answer this time except to say, Isn’t it good you’ve got one? At the rate we’re going, you’ll be attacked by a horde of chauvinist cameldrivers before the week is out.”

  “You sound as if it were my fault. It is not. I do not cause trouble—I am beset by it because of my views.”

  Linda Smith pulled the car onto Arlington Street and into the open space in front of the Ritz. I said, “Stay in the car till I tell you.”

  I got out and looked both ways and into the lobby. The doorman hustled forward to open the door for Rachel. She looked at me. I nodded. She stepped out of the car and walked into the hotel.

  “We’ll have a drink in the bar,” she said.

  I nodded and followed her in. There were a couple of business types having Scotch on the rocks at a table by the window, and a college-age boy and girl sitting at another table, very dressed up and a little ill at ease. He had beer. She had a champagne cocktail. Or at least it looked like a champagne cocktail. I hoped it was.