Playmates

by Robert B. Parker

  “How you get him to do that?” Dwayne said.

  “Told him you’d testify against him on the gambling.”

  Dwayne stared at me. “I’d never squeal on nobody, man.”

  “He’d have killed you if we let him,” I said.

  “Don’t matter about him,” Dwayne said. “Matters ’bout me.”

  “You won’t be a squealer even if the guy deserves to be squealed on,” I said.

  Dwayne thought about that for a minute, then nodded slowly.

  “Man’s what he is, not what other people are,” he said.

  “Sure,” I said. “But you won’t have to testify, so long as Bobby thinks you will.”

  “Ought to know I wouldn’t,” Dwayne said. “Dwayne Woodcock don’t do no squealing.”

  “Fortunately, Bobby Deegan does,” I said.

  “Don’t believe Bobby’ll do that,” Dwayne said.

  “Did you believe he’d have somebody try to kill you?” I said.

  “Don’t have to be Bobby,” Dwayne said.

  Chantel made an angry little tsh sound, and Dwayne glanced at her. He didn’t speak. But after he’d looked at Chantel for a moment he began to barely nod his head.

  “Who else know we here?” Dwayne said.

  “Just Hawk and me,” I said.

  “You going to tell?” Dwayne said.

  “No,” I said. “But you don’t need to hide. Deegan’s going to be wrapped up. You can play ball.”

  Dwayne shook his head.

  “We going to stay here for a while,” he said. “See what happens. See if it’s like you say.”

  “Coach Dunham will want to talk,” I said.

  “Things be like you say,” Dwayne said, “I call him in a while.”

  “There’s another piece of the deal,” I said.

  Dwayne waited.

  “You learn to read,” I said.

  “Nobody tell Dwayne Woodcock what he do and don’t do.”

  I nodded my head at Hawk. “Man saved your life awhile ago,” I said.

  Dwayne looked over at Hawk and nodded his head sharply once.

  “You owe him,” I said.

  “Can’t read,” Hawk said, “you gonna be a dumb fuck all your life, excuse me, Chantel, and whitey gonna yank you around.”

  “He’s right,” Chantel said in a flat voice.

  “Nobody call Dwayne Woodcock a dumb fuck,” Dwayne said. He started to get up.

  “Sit down, Dwayne,” Hawk said. “We went to all this trouble to save your ass, I don’t want to have to shoot you now.”

  Dwayne was on his feet staring at Hawk. Hawk remained as still on the door jamb as he had. The old guy kept painting. For all he cared we could have been on television.

  Chantel said, “Dwayne, the man saved your life and mine. You know you got to learn to read. Both of them saved your life.”

  Dwayne stood for a long moment without speaking, then he sat back down.

  “College will be able to arrange for a reading specialist,” I said. “Coach Dunham can get that going.”

  Dwayne nodded.

  “I want your word on it,” I said.

  Dwayne stared at me. I waited. Chantel banged her elbow into his upper arm.

  “Dwayne,” she said, making it two long syllables.

  Dwayne still stared. Then he said, “You got it.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  I looked at the painting the old guy was working on. It was mountains with a valley and a lake in the valley.

  “White Mountains,” he said. “New Hampshire.”

  “Un huh,” I said and headed for the door. In the Jaguar, driving back up Blue Hill Ave., Hawk said, “Grateful motherfucker.”

  “Maybe he is,” I said, “but can’t show it.”

  “Or maybe he ain’t,” Hawk said.

  36

  SUSAN and I were having dinner at a place called Rarities in the Charles Hotel in Cambridge.

  Outside the bank of picture windows Charles Square was beginning to look autumnal, and the first pumpkins and cornstalks were clustered around the display base of the Charles Square sign. Harvard students were back; parents, visiting, were lounging around the hotel lobby looking a little startled that they had kids in college.

  “They convicted Deegan’s friends today,” I said.

  She was reading the menu closely, peering through the crimson-rimmed twelve-dollar half glasses that she bought in Neiman Marcus.

  “Bobby Deegan? Dwayne Woodcock’s friend?” she said.

  “Yeah, Bobby sang them all right into the state penal institution at Ossining.”

  “And Bobby?”

  “Disappeared into the witness protection program.”

  “Do those work?” Susan said.

  “They work if the guys after you have limited resources, and they work if the guy in the program isn’t a dope. But most of them are dopes. They can’t stay away from it. They knock over a crap game or they show up in Vegas on a gambling junket and someone recognizes them, or they get in a fight and someone hears about them.”

  “Do you think it will for Bobby Deegan?”

  The waiter came solicitously by and took our order.

  “Deegan’s smart,” I said, “but he’s been a wiseguy his whole life. He’s never held a job, except being a crook. They’ll set him up with new identity, papers, some money, a house. And they’ll place him in a job. Selling real estate, say, or being a short order cook; that kind of thing. And he’ll go to work every day and after a while his boss will tell him to do something and Bobby won’t want to and they’ll come to words and Bobby will pop him on the nose and quit and pretty soon he’s back into being a crook, and after a while somebody will recognize him, or he’ll get busted, or whatever. If it’s the mob after you, then you’re in trouble, because they’ve got time and money and connections and no passion. Killing you is a wise management decision for them. Passion cools, except you and me, Hotpants, but wise business decisions by the mob are forever. His friends may forget about who put them away, or they may not.”

  The waiter brought Susan some sweetbreads with grilled fruit. For me he brought oysters.

  “Hotpants?” Susan said.

  “Yeah, that’s why the oysters,” I said.

  Susan ate a very small bite of sweetbread.

  “How is Dwayne?” she said.

  “Fine,” I said. “Surly, arrogant, uncommunicative, and the holder of a two-point-five-million contract over three years.”

  “Is Chantel with him?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Good,” Susan said. “Can he read?”

  “Some,” I said. “Chantel says he got to about third grade level over the summer.”

  “That’s very good progress,” Susan said. “It’s only been, what, five months?”

  “Yes.”

  I slurped an oyster and gestured with my wine list at the waiter.

  “Gewürztraminer,” I said. “The Trimbach.”

  He smiled approvingly and hustled off after the wine. Waiters smile approvingly if you order cough syrup. I finished my oysters. The waiter served the wine. Susan finished her sweetbreads. We each took a sip of wine. Around us the soft sound of conversation, the gentle noise of steaks being cut and soup being spooned. The light was soft and the encroaching September evening darkened the view through the windows.

  “You can’t stand Dwayne, can you?” Susan said.

  “No,” I said, “who could? Even Hawk doesn’t like him and Hawk doesn’t have feelings about anybody.”

  “Except you,” Susan said.

  “And you,” I said.

  “Chantel loves him,” Susan said.

  “Love’s different,” I said. “It doesn’t alter ‘where it alteration finds.’”

  “I know,” Susan said.

  The waiter appeared with barbecued duck for Susan, venison for me.

  “And yet you just stuck at it and wouldn’t let Dwayne destroy himself even though they tried to kill you,
and it was hard, and there was no reason to care about him.”

  “You think I shouldn’t have?” I said.

  “No, I think you should have. But, God, he’s obnoxious.”

  “You have obnoxious patients,” I said.

  Susan smiled. “I’ll say,” she said.

  “Dwayne is one of the best that ever lived at what he does,” I said.

  “Which is playing basketball,” Susan said.

  “Yes. Not brain surgery, but something.”

  “And?” Susan said.

  “And I like Chantel,” I said.

  Susan smiled, and her smile widened as she looked at me. Then she picked up her wine glass and raised it toward me a little and held it for a moment.

  “Is this a good omen?” I said.

  “If I were you,” she said, “I’d have more oysters.”

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  Loudon Tripp, wearing a seersucker suit and a Harvard tie, sat in my office on a very nice day in September and told me he’d looked into my background and might hire me.

  “Oh boy,” I said.

  “You’ve had some college,” Tripp said. He was maybe fifty, a tall angular man with a red face. He held a typewritten sheet of paper in his hand, reading it through half glasses.

  “No harm to it,” I said. “I thought I was going to do something else.”

  “I went to Harvard. You played football in college.”

  I nodded. He didn’t care if I nodded or not. But I liked to.

  “You were a prizefighter.”

  Nod.

  “You fought in Korea. Were you an officer?”

  “No.”

  “Too bad. After that you were a policeman.”

  Nod.

  “This presents a small problem; you were dismissed. Could you comment, please, on that.”

  “I am trustworthy, loyal, and helpful. But I struggle with obedient.”

  Tripp smiled faintly. “I’m not looking for a boy scout,” he said.

  “Next best thing,” I said.

  “Well,” Tripp said, “Lieutenant Quirk said you could be annoying, but you were not undependable.”

  “He’s always admired me,” I said.

  “Obviously you are independent,” Tripp said. “I understand that. I’ve had my moments. ‘He who would be a man must be a non-conformist.’”

  I nodded encouragingly.

  “Do you know who said that?” Tripp asked.

  I nodded again.

  Tripp waited a moment.

  Finally he said, “Well, who?”

  “Emerson.”

  “Very good,” Tripp said.

  “Will this be on the final?” I said.

  Tripp leaned his head toward me in a gesture of apology.

  “Sorry, I guess that seemed pretentious. It’s just that I am trying to get a sense of you.”

  I shrugged.

  “They had no way of judging a man,” I said, “except as he handled an axe.”

  Tripp frowned for a moment. And twitched his shoulders as if to get rid of a horsefly.

  “So,” he paused. “I guess you’ll do.”

  I tried to look pleased.

  He stared past me out the window for a moment, and took in a slow breath and let it out.

  “Are you familiar,” he said, “with Olivia Nelson?”

  “The woman who was murdered a couple of months back,” I said. “Right in Louisburg Square.”

  He nodded.

  “She used her birth name,” he said. “She was my wife.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “Yes.”

  We were quiet for a moment while we considered the sullen fact.

  “The police have exhausted all of their options,” Tripp said. “They have concluded it was probably an act of random violence, and the killer, having left no clues, will very likely not be caught until, or if, he strikes again.”

  “You disagree?” I said.

  “I want him hunted down,” Tripp said stiffly, “and punished.”

  “And you want me to do that?”

  “Yes … Lieutenant Quirk suggested you, when I expressed concern about the official lack of progress.”

  “So you and I are clear,” I said, “I will hunt him down for you. But punishment is not what I do.”

  “I believe in the system,” Tripp said. “If you can find him, I am sure the courts will punish him.”

  I said, “Un huh.”

  “You are skeptical of the courts?” Tripp said.

  “I’m skeptical of most things,” I said. “Is there anyone assigned to the case, now?”

  “Yes, a young detective.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Farrell. Detective Farrell. I can’t say I’m entirely happy with him.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, he’s young. I was hoping for a more senior man.”

  I nodded. There was more, I could tell.

  “And there’s something, a little, I don’t know. He doesn’t seem like a typical police detective.”

  I waited. Tripp didn’t elaborate. Since I figured I’d meet Farrell anyway, I didn’t press. I could decide for myself how typical he was.

  “Do you have any theories on the murder?” I said.

  “None. I can’t imagine who would wish to kill Olivia. Perhaps it is a madman.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I’ll talk to the cops, first. So at least I’ll know what they know.”

  “You’ll take the case, then?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  We talked a little about my fee, and the prospects of a retainer. He had no objections to a retainer. Me either.

  “The only thing you need to understand,” I said, “is that once I start I go where it takes me. Which may mean I ask you lots of questions. And your friends and relatives lots of questions. People sometimes get restive about me invading their privacy. You have to understand at the start that invading your privacy, and the privacy of people you know, is what you’re hiring me to do.”

  “I understand,” Tripp said. “If you go too far, I’ll let you know.”

  “You can let me know,” I said. “But it won’t change anything. I do what I do. And I keep doing it until I’m finished.”

  “You will be working for me, Mr. Spenser.”

  “Yes, and you can pay me, and you can expect that I’ll work on your problem and that I won’t cheat you and that I won’t lie to you. But you can’t tell me what to do, and if you’re not willing to accept that, we can’t do business.”

  Tripp didn’t like it. But he got out his checkbook and put it on the edge of my desk and dug a real fountain pen out of his inside coat pocket.

  “When I need surgery,” he said, “I don’t, I guess, tell the surgeon how to operate.”

  “Nice analogy,” I said.

  He nodded, and wrote me out a check in a stately, flowing Palmer-method hand. It was a fine big check. A check you could deposit proudly, which, after Tripp left, I did.

  “He hit her with a framing hammer,” Quirk said. “The kind with the long wooden handle that gives you leverage so you can drive a sixteen-penny nail with two strokes. Hit her at least five times.”

  Quirk was wearing a gray silk tweed jacket with a faint lavender chalk line, a blue Oxford button-down shirt, and a lavender knit tie. There was a dark blue display handkerchief in his jacket pocket. As he talked, he straightened the stuff on his desk, making sure everything was square and properly spaced. There wasn’t much: a phone, a legal-sized lined yellow pad, a translucent Bic pen with a black top, and a big plastic cube with pictures of his wife, his children, and a golden retriever. He was careful to have the cube exactly centered along the back rim of his desk. He wasn’t thinking about what he was doing. It was what he did w
hile he thought about something else.

  “He left it at the crime scene.”

  “Or she,” I said.

  Quirk realigned his pictures an eighth of an inch. His hands were big and thick, the nails manicured. They looked like the hands of a tough surgeon.

  “Ah, yes,” Quirk said. “Liberation. It could have been a woman. But if it was, it was a strong one. He, or she, must have held the hammer down at the end and taken a full swing, like you would drive a nail. Most of the bones in her head were broken.”

  “Only the head?”

  “Yeah,” Quirk said. “That bothered me too. If some fruitcake runs amok with a framing hammer and assaults a random victim, why was his aim so good? Head only. Except where he seems to have missed once and badly bruised her left shoulder.”

  “Seems more like premeditation,” I said. “If you’re going to murder somebody with a hammer, you don’t waste time hitting them in the body.”

  “I know,” Quirk said. His hands were perfectly still now, one resting on top of the other. “It bothered us too. But things always do in a homicide. You know that. There’s always stuff you can’t account for, stuff that doesn’t fit exactly. Homicide cases aren’t neat, even the neat ones.”

  “You think this is a neat one?”

  “In one sense,” Quirk said. He looked at the pictures on the plastic cube while he talked. He was not so much weary as calm. He’d seen too much, and it had left him with that cop calm that some of them get—not without feeling, really, but without excitement.

  “We have an explanation for it that works. It’s not lying around loose—except that we don’t have the perpetrator.”

  “Perpetrator,” I said admiringly.

  “I been watching a lot of those reality cop shows,” Quirk said.

  “Her husband wants the guy caught,” I said.

  “Sure he does,” Quirk said. “Me too.”

  “You can’t find a motive,” I said.

  Quirk shook his head.

  “This broad is Mary Poppins, for crissake. Mother of the year, wife of the decade, loyal friend, good citizen, great human being, dedicated teacher, accomplished cook, and probably great in the sack.”

  “Never is heard a discouraging word,” I said.

  “None,” Quirk said. “Nobody had a reason to kill her.”