Rachel slid onto a bar stool, and I sat next to her and turned my back to the bar and surveyed the room. No one but us and the business types and the college kids. Rachel’s coat had a hood. She slid the hood off but kept the coat on to cover up the pie smear down the front of her dress.
“Beer, Spenser?”
“Yes, please.”
She ordered. Beer for me and a martini for her. For the Ritz Bar I was spectacularly underdressed. I thought the bartender paled a little when I came in, but he said nothing and tended the bar just as if I were not offensive to his sight.
A young woman came into the bar alone. She had on a long cream-colored wool skirt and heavy black boots, the kind that seem to have extra leather. Her blouse was white.
There was a black silk scarf at her neck, and she carried a gray leather coat over her arm. Very stylish. The skirt fit well, I noticed, especially around the hips. She looked around the room and spotted us at the bar and came directly to us. The kid can still attract them, I thought. Still got the old whammo.
The young woman reached us and said, “Rachel,” and put her hand out.
Rachel Wallace turned and looked at her and then smiled. She took the outstretched hand in both of hers. “Julie,” she said. “Julie Wells.” She leaned forward and Julie Wells put her face down and Rachel kissed her. “How lovely to see you,” she said. “Sit down.”
Julie slid onto the bar stool on the other side of Rachel.
“I heard you were in town again,” she said, “and I knew you’d be staying here, so I got through work early and came over. I called your room, and when there was no answer, I thought, well, knowing Rachel, chances are she’s in the bar.”
“Well, you do know me,” Rachel said. “Can you stay? Can you have dinner with me?”
“Sure,” Julie said, “I was hoping you’d ask.”
The bartender came over and looked questioningly at Julie. “I’ll have a Scotch sour on the rocks,” she said.
Rachel said, “I’ll have another martini. Spenser, another beer?”
I nodded. The bartender moved away. Julie looked at me. I smiled at her. “We’re on tour,” I said. “Rachel plays the hand organ, and I go around with a little cup and collect money.”
Julie said, “Oh, really,” and looked at Rachel.
“His name is Spenser,” Rachel said. “There have been some threats about my new book. The publisher thought I should have a bodyguard. He thinks he’s funny.”
“Nice to meet you,” Julie said.
“Nice to meet you, too,” I said. “Are you an old friend of Rachel’s?”
She and Rachel smiled at each other. “Sort of, I guess,” Julie said. “Would you say so, Rachel?”
“Yes,” Rachel said, “I would say that. I met Julie when I was up here doing the research for Tyranny, last year.”
“You a writer, Julie?”
She smiled at me, very warm. Zing went the strings of my heart. “No,” she said, “I wish I were. I’m a model.”
“What agency?”
“Carol Cobb. Do you know the modeling business?”
“No, I’m just a curious person.”
Rachel shook her head. “No, he’s not,” she said. “He’s screening you. And I don’t like it.” She looked at me. “I appreciate that you have to do your job, and that today may have made you unduly suspicious. But Julie Wells is a close personal friend of mine. We have nothing to fear from her. I’ll appreciate it if in the future you trust my judgment.”
“Your judgment’s not as good as mine,” I said. “I have no involvement. How close a personal friend can someone be that you met only last year?”
“Spenser, that’s enough,” Rachel said. There was force in her voice and her face.
Julie said, “Rachel, I don’t mind. Of course he has to be careful. I pray that he is. What are these threats? How serious are they?”
Rachel turned toward her. I sipped a little beer. “I’ve had phonecalls threatening me if Tyranny is published.”
“But if you’re on the promotion tour, it means it’s been published already.”
“In fact, yes, though technically publication date isn’t until October fifteenth. The book is already in a lot of bookstores.”
“Has anything happened?”
“There was an incident last night, and there have been protests. But I don’t think they’re related.”
“The incident last night was the real goods,” I said. “The other stuff was probably what it seemed.”
“What happened last night?” Julie said.
“Spenser contends that someone tried to run us off the road last night in Lynn.”
“Contends?” Julie said.
“Well, I was on the floor, and he swerved around a lot and then the car behind us was gone. I can’t speak for sure myself. And if I were convinced no one were after me, Spenser would be out of work.”
“Aw, you’d want me around anyway. All you chicks like a guy to look after you.”
She threw her drink at me. She threw like a girl; most of it landed on my shirt front.
“Now we’re both messy,” I said. “A his-and-hers outfit.”
The bartender slid down toward us. Julie put her hand on Rachel’s arm. The bartender said, “Is there something wrong, ma’am?”
Rachel was silent. Her breath blew in and out through her nose.
I said to the bartender, “No, it’s fine. She was kidding with me, and the drink slipped.”
The bartender looked at me as if I were serious, smiled as if he believed me, and moved off down the bar. In maybe thirty seconds he was back with a new martini for Rachel. “This is on the house, ma’am,” he said.
Julie said to me, “Why do you feel last night was serious?”
“It was professional,” I said. “They knew what they were doing. We were lucky to get out of it.”
“Rachel is hard sometimes,” Julie said. She was patting the back of Rachel’s left hand. “She doesn’t mean everything she says and does always. Sometimes she regrets them, even.”
“Me, too,” I said. I wonder if I should pat the other hand. My T-shirt was wet against my chest, but I didn’t touch it. It’s like getting hit with a pitch. You’re not supposed to rub.
Rachel said, “Julie and I will dine in our room tonight. I won’t need you until tomorrow at eight.”
“I better wait until Julie leaves,” I said.
They both looked at me. Then Rachel said, “That’s when she is going to leave.”
I said, “Oh.” Always the smooth comeback, even when I’ve been dumb. Of course they were very good friends.
“I’ll walk up with you and hang around in the hall till the waiter has come and gone.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Rachel said. She wouldn’t look at me.
“Yeah, it will,” I said. “I work at what I do, Rachel. I’m not going to let someone buzz you in the lobby just because you’re mad at me.”
She looked up at me. “I’m not mad at you,” she said. “I’m ashamed of the way I behaved a moment ago.”
Behind her Julie beamed at me. See? her smile said, See? She’s really very nice.
“Either way,” I said. “I’ll stick around and wait till you’ve locked up for the night. I won’t bother you—I’ll lurk in the hall.”
She nodded. “Perhaps that would be best,” she said.
We finished our drinks, Rachel signed the bar tab, and we headed for the elevators. I went first; they followed. When we got in the elevator, Julie and Rachel were holding hands. The skirt still fit Julie’s hips wonderfully. Was I a sexist? Was it ugly to think, What a waste? On Rachel’s floor I got out first. The corridor was empty. At her room I took the key from Rachel and opened the door. The room was dark and silent. I went in and turned on the lights. There was no one there and no one in the bathroom. Rachel and Julie came in.
I said, “Okay, I’ll say good night. I’ll be in the hall. When room service comes, open the door on the chain
first, and don’t let him in unless I’m there, too. I’ll come in with him.”
Rachel nodded. Julie said, “Nice to have met you, Spenser.”
I smiled at her and closed the door.
10
The corridor was silent and Ritz-y, with gold-patterned wallpaper. I wondered if they’d make love before they ordered dinner. I would. I hoped they wouldn’t. It had been a while since lunch and would be a long wait for dinner if it worked out wrong.
I leaned against the wall opposite their door. If they were making love, I didn’t want to hear. The concept of love between two women didn’t have much affect on me in the abstract. But if I imagined them at it, and speculated on exactly how they went about it, it seemed sort of too bad, demeaning. Actually maybe Susan and I weren’t all that slick in the actual doing ourselves. When you thought about it, maybe none of us were doing Swan Lake. “What’s right is what feels good afterwards,” I said out loud in the empty corridor. Hemingway said that. Smart man, Hemingway. Spent very little time hanging around hotel corridors with no supper.
Down the corridor to my left a tall thin man with a black mustache and a double-breasted gray pinstripe suit came out of his room and past me, heading for the elevator. There was a silver pin in his collar under the modest knot of his tie. His black shoes glistened with polish. Class. Even more class than a wet Adidas T-shirt. The hell with him. He probably did not have a Smith and Wesson .38 caliber revolver with a four-inch barrel. And I did. How’s that for class? I mumbled at his back as he went into the elevator.
About fifteen minutes later a housekeeper went bustling past me down the corridor and knocked on a door. No one answered, and the housekeeper let herself in with a key on a long chain. She was in for maybe a minute and came back past me and into the service elevator. She probably didn’t have a .38 either.
I amused myself by trying to see how many lyrics I could sing to songs written by Johnny Mercer. I was halfway through “Memphis in June” when a pleasant-looking gray-haired man with a large red nose got out of the elevator and walked down the corridor toward me. He had on gray slacks and a blue blazer. On the blazer pocket was a small name plate that said Asst. Mgr.
His blazer also hung funny over his right hip, the way it does when you are carrying a gun in a hip holster. He smiled as he approached me. I noticed that the blazer was unbuttoned and his left hand was in a half fist. He sort of tapped it against his thigh, knuckles toward me.
“Are you locked out of your room, sir?” he said with a big smile. He was a big guy and had a big stomach, but he didn’t look slow and he didn’t look soft. His teeth had been capped.
I said, “House man, right?”
“Callahan,” he said, “I’m the assistant night manager.”
“Spenser,” I said. “I’m going to take out my wallet and show you some ID.”
“You’re not registered here, Mr. Spenser.”
“No, I’m working. I’m looking out for Rachel Wallace, who is registered here.”
I handed him my license. He looked at it and looked at me. “Nice picture,” he said.
“Well, that’s my bad side,” I said.
“It’s full face,” he said.
“Yeah,” I said.
“Do I detect a weapon of some sort under your left arm, Mr. Spenser?”
“Yes. It makes us even—you got one on your right hip.”
He smiled again. His half-clenched left fist tapped against his thigh.
“I’m in kind of a puzzle, Mr. Spenser. If you really are guarding Miss Wallace, I can’t very well ask you to leave. On the other hand you could be lying. I guess we better ask her.”
“Not right now,” I said. “I think she’s busy.”
“ ‘Fraid we’ll have to anyway.”
“How do I know you’re really the house dick?”
“Assistant manager,” he said. “Says so right on my coat.”
“Anyone can get a coat. How do I know this isn’t a ploy to get her to open the door?”
He rolled his lower lip out. “Got a point there,” he said. “What we do is go down the end of the hall by the elevators and call on the house phone. You can see the whole corridor and I can see you that way.”
I nodded. We walked down to the phone side by side, watching each other and being careful. I was paying most attention to the half-dosed fist. For a man his size it was a small fist. At the phones he tucked the phone between his cheek and shoulder and dialed with his right hand. He knew the number without looking. She took a long while to answer.
“Sorry to bother you, Miss Wallace … Ms. Wallace … Yeah … Well, this is Callahan, the assistant manager. Do you have a man named Spenser providing personal security for you? … Unh-huh … Describe him to me, if you would … No, we just spotted him outside your room and thought we’d better check … Yes, ma’am. Yes, that’ll be fine. Thank you.” He hung up.
“Okay,” he said with a big friendly smile. “She validated you.” He put his left hand into the side pocket of his blazer and took it out.
“What did you have in your hand?” I said. “Roll of quarters?”
“Dimes,” he said. “Got a small hand.”
“Who whistled on me—the housekeeper.”
He nodded.
I said, “Are you looking out for Ms. Wallace special?”
“We’re a little special on her,” he said. “Got a call from a homicide dick said there’d been threats on her life.”
“Who called you—Quirk?”
“Yeah, know him?”
I nodded.
“Friend of his?”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” I said.
We walked back down the corridor toward Rachel’s room. “Good cop,” Callahan said.
I nodded. “Very tough,” I said.
“So I hear. I hear he’s as tough as there is in this town.”
“Top three,” I said. “Who else?”
“Guy named Hawk,” I said. “He ever shows up in your hotel, don’t try to take him with a roll of dimes.”
“Who’s the third?”
I smiled at him and ducked my head. “Aw, hell,” I said.
He did his big friendly smile again. “Well, good we don’t have to find that out,” he said. His voice was steady. He seemed able to repress his terror. “Not tonight anyway.” He nodded at me. “Have a good day,” he said, and moved off placidly down the corridor. I must have frightened him to death.
I went back to my Johnny Mercer lyrics. I was on the third verse of “Midnight Sun” when a room service waiter came off the elevator pushing a table. He stopped at Rachel’s door and knocked. He smiled at me as he waited. The door opened on the chain and a small vertical plane of Rachel Wallace’s face appeared.
I said, “It’s okay, Rachel. I’m here.” The waiter smiled at me again, as if I’d said something clever. The door closed and in a moment re-opened. The waiter went in, and I came in behind him. Rachel was in a dark-brown full-length robe with white piping. She wore no make-up. Julie Wells wasn’t in the room. The bathroom door was closed, and I could hear the shower going. Both beds were a little rumpled but still made.
The waiter opened up the table and began to lay out the supper. I leaned against the wall by the window and watched him. When he was through, Rachel Wallace signed the bill, added in a tip, and gave it back to him. He smiled—smiled at me—and went out.
Rachel looked at the table. There were flowers in the center.
“You can go for tonight, Spenser,” she said. “We’ll eat and go to bed. Be here at eight tomorrow.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “Where we going first?”
“We’re going out to Channel Four and do a talk show.”
Julie Wells came out of the bathroom. She had a small towel wrapped around her head and a large one wrapped around her body. It covered her but not by much. She said, “Hi, Spenser,” and smiled at me. Everyone smiled at me. Lovable. A real pussycat.
“Hello.” I didn’t b
elong there. There was something powerfully non-male in the room, and I felt its pressure. “Okay, Rachel. I’ll say good night. Don’t open the door. Don’t even open it to push that cart into the hall. I’ll be here at eight.”
They both smiled. Neither of them said anything. I went to the door at a normal pace. I did not run. “Don’t forget the chain,” I said. “And the deadbolt from inside.”
They both smiled at me and nodded. Julie Wells’s towel seemed to be shrinking. My mouth felt a little dry. “I’ll stay outside until I hear the bolt turn.”
Smile. Nod.
“Good night,” I said, and went out and closed the door. I heard the bolt slide and the chain go in. I went down in the elevator and out onto Arlington Street with my mouth still dry, feeling a bit unlovely.
11
I leaned against the cinder-block wall of studio two at Channel Four and watched Rachel Wallace prepare to promote her book and her cause. Off camera a half-dozen technician types in jeans and beards and sneakers hustled about doing technical things.
Rachel sat in a director’s chair at a low table. The interviewer was on the other side and on the table between them was a copy of Tyranny, standing upright and visible on a small display stand. Rachel sat calmly looking at the camera. The interviewer, a Styrofoam blonde with huge false eyelashes, was smoking a kingsized filter-tipped mentholated Salem cigarette as if they were about to tie her to the post and put on the blindfold. A technician pinned a small microphone to the lapel of Rachel’s gray flannel jacket and stepped out of the way. Another technician with a clipboard crouched beneath one of the cameras a foot and a half from the interviewer. He wore earphones.
“Ten seconds, Shirley,” he said. The interviewer nodded and snuffed her cigarette out in an ashtray on the floor behind her chair. A man next to me shifted in his folding chair and said, “Jesus Christ, I’m nervous.” He was scheduled to talk about raising quail after Rachel had finished. The technician squatting under the front camera pointed at the interviewer.
She smiled. “Hi,” she said to the camera. “I’m Shirley. And this is Contact. We have with us today feminist and lesbian activist Rachel Wallace. Rachel has written a new book, Tyranny, which takes the lid off of some of the ways government and business exploit women and especially gay women. We’ll be back to talk with Rachel about her book and these issues after this word.” A commercial for hair coloring came on the monitor overhead.
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