Crimson Joy

by Robert B. Parker

  "You dirty little pig, "she said. He could remember the feeling, the tightness in his stomach, as she dragged him by the hair back to his room and slammed the door. He heard the knob rattle, and when he tried to open it he couldn't. She had tied it shut. He still needed to go to the bathroom and he sat on the floor by the door, needing to go and filled with dread and something else he didn't understand, and cried.

  "Momma, momma, momma."

  CHAPTER 5

  I was in my office thinking about whether to go out for a second cup of coffee when Hawk came in without knocking and sat in my client chair and put his Air Jordans on the edge of my desk. He was wearing starched jeans and a double-breasted leather jacket that looked like it had been made from the hide of an Arabian armadillo. He had two coffees in a paper sack. Well, why not. I wouldn't want to offend him.

  "Tony Marcus called me today," Hawk said. "Wanted to know if you and me would have lunch with him."

  "Lunch?" I said. "With Tony Marcus? What's on for tonight, dinner and dancing with Imelda Marcos?"

  "Tony say he can help you with the Red Rose thing."

  "Why?"

  Hawk shrugged. "Don't like it that some guy's killing black women."

  "Tony's become an activist?"

  "Tony been making his living from black women all his life," Hawk said.

  "Maybe he don't like seeing the pool depleted."

  "So why send you?"

  "Tony think you don't like him. Think maybe he send one of his own, ah, employees, you might whack him."

  "Okay, where we eating?" I said.

  "Tony likes the Legal Seafood in Park Square."

  "Me too," I said. "What time?"

  "Noon."

  "You think Tony knows something?"

  Hawk shook his head. "Think he wants to see if you know something."

  "Gonna be a quiet lunch," I said.

  Legal served the best seafood in the city and they didn't make you dress up to eat it. Marcus was there when Hawk and I arrived, sitting at a table with a smooth-faced blond woman who wore lavender lipstick and her hair pulled back on one side. Marcus had a fat neck and a big mustache and a short black Afro touched with gray, and he looked sort of soft.

  The look was deceptive. He had forced himself on the Irish and Italian mob in Boston and taken away the black community. Nothing much happened in Roxbury and along Blue Hill Avenue that Tony didn't get some of.

  Black Boston was pretty much his and there wasn't anything that the white mobs and the cops and the new Jamaicans had been able to do about it. He nodded at the two empty chairs and Hawk and I sat.

  "Bloody Marys are good here," Tony said. He had one in front of him.

  The blonde had a glass of white wine. The waitress stood beside us.

  "Something from the bar?" she said.

  I ordered a Sam Adams beer. Hawk ordered a bottle of Cristal champagne.

  "Jesus Christ, Hawk," Marcus said.

  Hawk smiled without humor or meaning.

  "You working with Quirk on this Red Rose thing?" Marcus said. "What do you know that's not in the papers?"

  "Nothing," I said. "How bout yourself?"

  Marcus shook his head without speaking. The waitress brought my beer and Hawk's champagne and more drinks for Marcus and the blonde. She opened the champagne, poured some for Hawk, and put the rest in a bucket near him. He smiled at her and seemed flustered. "Do you need a little time with the menus?" she said.

  Hawk nodded and smiled again, and she flushed slightly and hustled away.

  "Woman's fallen in love with me," Hawk said.

  "Who can blame her," I said. The blonde looked puzzled.

  "I don't like it that some honkie fruitcake is going around this city wasting black women," Tony said.

  I raised one fist and held it for a moment, above my head. Hawk murmured, "Right on, bro," and drank some champagne.

  Marcus shook his head. "I don't expect any understanding from a white guy," he said. "But you, Hawk?"

  Hawk put his glass down and leaned slightly forward toward Marcus.

  "Tony," he said, "I ain't black, he ain't white, and you, probably, ain't human. You want to look good down around Grove Hall, that's your business. But don't waste a lot of time with the black brother bullshit."

  The waitress came for our order. I ordered Cajun fried squid. Marcus ordered red snapper for himself and the blonde. Hawk ordered scallops.

  When the waitress left, Marcus smiled a little bit. He said, "You never been too sentimental, Hawk."

  Hawk poured himself a little more champagne.

  "So it doesn't matter none what my reasons are," Marcus said. "All I'm saying is, if I can help on this thing, I will. I got a lotta contacts, a lotta resources."

  "What makes you so sure the killer's white?" I said.

  "What they said in the papers," Marcus said. He finished his Bloody Mary and gestured toward the waitress for another one and a white wine for the blonde. The waitress looked at me. I shook my head. She departed.

  "Tony, I don't like you," I said.

  Marcus shrugged. He didn't seem disheartened.

  "But I'll take any help I can get. The problem is, I don't even know enough to ask an intelligent question. The best guess is that it's a white guy and he's nuts. The stuff you were reading in the Globe is as much as I know either. All I can say is, if you hear anything, let me know. And if you catch the guy…" I shrugged.

  "We catch the guy, we going to kill him," Marcus said.

  "Okay by me," I said. "You clipped people for lots worse reasons."

  The food came. As always at Legal, it came as it was prepared, so my squid and Hawk's scallops came before the red snapper.

  "Go ahead, eat," Marcus said.

  "You think he's really a cop?" Marcus said.

  "Yes," I said.

  "Maybe you should let it be known that Tony Marcus is interested in this case. Might make him think twice." I looked at Hawk. He smiled happily and ate a scallop.

  "The guy who's doing this hasn't thought once," I said. "It's got nothing to do with thinking. He's probably doing it because he needs to. He isn't going to be frightened off."

  "Might make the papers, though," Hawk said, almost to himself.

  "Black Crime Lord volunteers to help trap Red Rose Killer."

  "Good PR," I said. "Federal strike force got a tap on you or something?"

  The red snapper arrived. Marcus took a bite; nodded to himself.

  "Whatever," he said, "just remember Tony Marcus is available with the full resources of the organization."

  "Your whores are scared," I said.

  Marcus frowned.

  "That's what it is. Your whores aren't willing to take a chance with a white hunter anymore because it might be old Red Rose."

  Marcus grinned, genuinely, and kept chewing on his redfish.

  "It's hurting business," Hawk said.

  "Worst thing happen on the street since AIDS," Marcus said.

  "Good to find a real reason," I said.

  "Maybe there's more than one real reason," Marcus said.

  Hawk and I were finished eating. Hawk took the champagne bottle out of the ice bucket. It was still half full. He put it back. Both of us stood up.

  "I hear anything, Tony, I'll let you know," I said. "And vice versa."

  Marcus nodded and put out his hand. I didn't shake it. Neither did Hawk.

  "Finish the champagne, Tony," Hawk said. "Goes good with six Bloody Marys."

  We turned and walked away. I heard Marcus mutter to the blonde, "The fucking odd couple."

  I looked back. Tony was watching us leave and the blonde was pouring Hawk's champagne into her empty wineglass and smiling automatically.

  CHAPTER 6

  On Wednesday morning I got an audio tape in the mail. There was no return address on the package, and nothing on the label of the tape. I went over to the office stereo and took out my Ben Webster tape and put in the new one. Over the kind of speakers that Ben Webster
deserved I heard a man's voice speaking in a harsh whisper.

  Spenser, how are you? I'm the guy you're all looking for. I'm the guy doing those colored girls. You think you can find me? I don't think so. I don't think you're good enough. I think if you ever come up against me you're going to be up against something you can't handle. And maybe while you're looking for me, I'll be looking for you. And I know who you are.

  The whisper was probably to disguise his voice. The phrasing was that of a man reading something he'd written out earlier. There was no background noise, no telltale sounds of a clock chiming on the coast of Bohemia or the whinny of a zebra that lived only in the Tasmanian central plain.

  I played the tape again. It sounded just the same. I rewound it and played it again. After the fifth run-through I acceded to the fact that there wasn't anything to hear that I hadn't heard the first time. I called Quirk to tell him what I had, and he said Belson would come by and get it.

  Which he did.

  When he was gone I added up what I knew about the Red Rose killer. It came out to approximately nothing. Whatever had made him write Quirk had made him send me the tape. Or maybe it had. Or maybe there was an entirely other reason. Or maybe it wasn't really him. Maybe it was a crank. Or maybe Quirk's letter was from a crank. Or maybe both.

  I'd learned over the years how to react when I ran into a mystery wrapped in an enigma. I locked the office and went down to the Harbor Health Club.

  When I started working out there the Harbor Health Club was a working gym for fighters on the waterfront. The waterfront was run-down and warehousey, and Henry Cimoli, who ran the place, wore sweatshirts and Keds. Now the waterfront glistened with urban renaissance and the Harbor Health Club glistened with shiny leotards and Henry had on white satin sweats and Reeboks. A picture window looked out on the harbor and rows of Nautilus and high-tech Kaiser Cams, sparkling with chrome, lined the wall opposite. The Kaisers used compressed air for resistance and enabled you to do bench presses sitting up. There was probably a clear advantage to doing bench presses sitting up, and I hadn't the smarts to figure out what it was. I mused on this while I did I5 reps at 250. I was trying for more reps and less weight as the sweet bird of youth began to flutter. Across from the weight room, an aerobics class was under way in the exercise room. I mused on this while I rested between sets on the bench press. I mused that I had never seen a woman who looked good in leotards, with the possible exception of Gelsey Kirkland.

  Susan wore sweats and a T-shirt when she worked out. I mused that most men when they started working with weights tried to lift too much and cheated, and that most women did the exercise exactly as they should but didn't try hard. I mused that the Red Rose killer had threatened me, maybe, and wondered why. He hadn't threatened Quirk. He'd asked Quirk, in effect, for help. But me he'd challenged. Me he'd threatened. I mused that this was an interesting insight into Red Rose, but I also mused that I had no idea what it meant. Henry came into the weight room with a woman in full uniform. She wore a lavender leotard, with matching Nikes, and sloppy socks in a darker lavender. Over the leotard she wore a white sort of G-string that looked rather like a diaper. She had on white wristbands and a white headband, and a lavender ribbon tied in her hair. She had managed, somehow, to achieve a condition simultaneously thin and flabby. I was fascinated, and while I did my second set of bench presses sitting up I speculated on how you could be thin and flabby at the same time, and decided that as your body mustered up the energy to add an ounce of weight it was so spent having done so that the ounce turned instantly to flab. Henry smiled kindly and nodded at the machine for hamstrings. The woman got on backwards. Henry smiled even more kindly and got her turned around.

  "Heels under here," Henry said. "Now curl the legs up slowly."

  "What do you mean curl?" the woman said.

  "Try to touch your, ah, backside with your heel," Henry said.

  Henry had removed his glistening white warm-up jacket and his little upper body in its tight T-shirt looked like a clenched fist.

  "I can't," the woman said. "It's too heavy."

  "It's as light as it goes, ma'am," Henry said, and smiled kindly some more. "Maybe you could try a little harder."

  "It hurts," she said.

  "Well" Henry laughed kindly "like they say, ma'am, no pain, no gain."

  "I don't understand what that means," she said.

  I knew Henry knew I was there. But he wouldn't look at me.

  "Here," Henry said, "I'll help you. Now, curl your legs up, I'll give a push. There."

  "Is that enough?" she said.

  "No," Henry said. "Usually we like people to start with eight repetitions and work up to twelve and then add some resistance."

  "Eight what?"

  "Do it eight times."

  "I've already done it once."

  "Right, only seven more."

  "I can't do seven more."

  "I'll give you a start," Henry said.

  Henry curled the machine up, bringing the woman's legs up to within maybe a foot of her thin, flaccid butt.

  "Ow," she said.

  Henry looked at the front desk. There was a trim young woman in white sweats there. Henry jabbed his finger at her and thumbed toward himself. She came over.

  "There," Henry said to the woman. "I've got you started; Janie will take you through the rest of the machines." The woman said, "I don't want to do all those machines today." Janie said, "It'll be fun once you get started, you'll see." She glanced at Henry. There was no kindness in her glance. I was on the lat machine, and as Henry and Janie exchanged their glances I turned around and did a handstand on the seat of the lat pull down machine, so that I was effectively on it upside down.

  "Excuse me, Mr. Cimoli," I said. "Am I doing this right?"

  Henry turned and stared at me for a moment with no change of expression.

  "Why, yes, sir," Henry said, and smiled kindly. "You're doing just fine." He stepped nearer to me and said more softly, but just as kindly, "Now, why don't you pull the weight down with your dick," and moved off toward the front desk.

  I finished up on the weights and put in an hour in the boxing room. It was Henry's last gesture to his roots. He kept a speed bag and heavy bag and a couple of jump ropes in a small room that could have been used for Jacuzzi space. I did ten 3-minute rounds, alternating on the heavy bag and, every third round, the speed bag, and then skipped rope for fifteen minutes. I tried to time the speed bag stuff for when a young woman walked by on her way from aerobics. I could still make the speed bag dance.

  When I got through with the jump rope I was blowing my breath and soaked with sweat. I felt like a squeezed out sponge. When I was fighting I used to be good in the late rounds. The other guy was getting arm-weary and I was still full of starch.

  I was out of the shower and getting dressed when Henry came in.

  "Used to be simple," Henry said. "I'd train hard and then when I was ready, I'd go in the ring and Willie Pep or Sandy Saddler would ring my chimes for me, and I'd go home and in a few days I'd start training again."

  "That woman didn't seem to have the killer instinct about training," I said.

  "Half the people who come in here are like that. They want to feel great and look great and not pop a sweat. That woman was bad. But the worst are the guys who always thought jocks were vulgar, you know? And then they get a physical and the doctor says they need exercise. So they come down here wearing black socks and white tennis shoes and say things like'this machine is rather intimidating," and you got to practically put their fucking hands on the handles for them. They don't come down and scope things out a little. They don't look at the machine and notice there's probably only one way it can work. They don't watch other people work out for a few minutes and see how they do it. They come in and get on the fucking equipment upside down and flap their fucking arms like a fucking cocka doodle fucking do until you go over and say, "Perhaps it would work better if you did it this way."

  "

 
I was dressed by the time Henry got through and was buttoning up my shirt.

  "Feel better?" I said.

  Henry grinned. "On the other hand, I haven't had any stitches in my lip lately."

  "Good point," I said.

  It was a very fine spring day as I walked back to my office, across the Common. I was wearing chinos and white Reeboks and my leather jacket and a white shirt with a wide lavender stripe, which was as daring as I got. I felt strong and clean, like I always did after I worked out; and this evening, before dinner, two beers would taste exactly the way they should.

  Be nice to know why the Red Rose killer had threatened me.

  CHAPTER 7

  I was in Quirk's office at 9:40 on a Thursday morning, trying to figure out why Red Rose had threatened me.

  "Maybe it's a variation on "Catch me before I do it again."

  " Quirk said. "Maybe sort of a challenge to get us working harder."

  "You heard the tape," I said. "Is that what it sounds like to you?"

  "No," Quirk said. "It sounds like he feels hostile toward you."

  Quirk had his coat off and hanging neatly on a hanger from his coat rack. His cuffs were turned back on his white shirt. He was wearing a pink silk tie at half-mast and his starched collar was open. As he talked he leaned back in his swivel chair and locked his hands behind his head. His biceps swelled against the sleeves of his shirt.

  "Why would he be hostile toward you?" Quirk said.

  "Why would anyone?" I said.

  Quirk grunted.

  "Maybe he knows you," he said.

  "And doesn't like me," I said.

  "Hard as it is to believe," Quirk said.

  "Well," I said, "the man is a psychopath."

  "Cops who know and dislike you are not as scarce as hen's teeth," Quirk said.

  "Course maybe he's not a cop and maybe he doesn't know me and maybe something else is going on," I said. "Susan keeps reminding me that we're not dealing with two plus two here."