Small Vices s-24

by Robert B. Parker

  "No."

  She stared at me some more.

  "Well," she said. "Goddamn. You are a funny guy."

  "Yeah," I said. "Everyone always says it just that way, too."

  Chapter 15

  IT HAD STARTED to get dark as I walked across the leafy campus. It was a nice fall evening with just enough coolness to make my jacket feel useful. The campus was empty, and I was woefully out of place on it. I had a momentary vision of myself, a middle-aged man with a broken nose and a thick neck and a gun on his hip walking alone, remote below the darkened sky.

  The Phi Gam house was a big brick house of Georgian design. The front door led into a foyer. To the right was a living room. To the left was something that appeared to be a library. Straight ahead a stairway ascended to the next floor. There were half a dozen young women in the living room. The library was empty. All of the young women turned and looked at me when I came in.

  I said, "Hello."

  Several of them said, "Hi."

  One of them said, "Are you looking for somebody?"

  They all had the quality of voice kids that age use when they're talking to somebody's parent. I walked into the living room and sat on the arm of a couch. There was a big television set on one wall. The girls were watching Hard Copy.

  "My name is Spenser," I said. "I'm a detective and I'd like to talk with you about Melissa Henderson."

  One of them said, "Melissa?"

  "Yes, did you know her?"

  "Sure, she lived here."

  The girl doing the talking had on a black tee-shirt and gray sweatpants. She was dark haired, dark skinned, wore no shoes, and her toenails were painted red.

  A pale blond woman said, "How do we know you're a detective?"

  The dark girl said, "What the hell else would he be, Kim? Coming in here asking about Melissa?"

  Kim was sticking to her guns.

  "I think he should show us some identification," she said. "You know what Mrs. Cameron said."

  Several of the girls groaned. Kim was apparently the sole law-and-order candidate in the group.

  "Mrs. Cameron?" I said.

  The dark girl said, "She's the housemother. She gave us all a big talk about how we had to be careful about people coming around after Melissa was killed."

  "Why?"

  "People would be poking around, she said, making trouble."

  "What kind of people?" I said.

  Another girl spoke.

  "Like you," she said and we all laughed except Kim, who was looking severe. Severe is not easy for a twenty-year-old kid.

  I said, "Don't hurt my feelings, now. But what's wrong with me?"

  "Not a thing," the dark-haired girl answered. "I don't think Mrs. Cameron knows why we're supposed to be careful. She's just doing what Old Lady Corcoran told her."

  "Old Lady Corcoran being?"

  "The dean."

  "Oh, her," I said.

  And we all laughed again, except Kim.

  "So what was Melissa like?" I said.

  "Crazy," the other girl said. She had on a man's white shirt and blue cotton gym shorts. There were two big pink rollers in her hair.

  "Crazy how?"

  Kim got up suddenly and walked out of the room. I suspected that my moments were numbered.

  "All ways," Pink Rollers said. "Anything you wanted to try, she was ready."

  Talking about the woman they had known made them all remember what had happened to her and they were suddenly silent.

  "Was she rebellious?" I said.

  "Hell, yes," Dark Hair said. "She'd try anything if someone told her not to."

  "She have a boyfriend?"

  "I think so."

  "Know his name?"

  "No. Melissa used to call him the Prince. She was kind of cozy about him. She never brought him around."

  "He a college guy?"

  Nobody knew.

  "Might he have gone to Taft?"

  Nobody knew.

  "Anyone she was unusually close to, a roommate, somebody that might know?"

  Nobody knew of such a person. Melissa had roomed alone. She had lots of friends, several among those present. But no especial one friend.

  "Tell me more about Crazy," I said.

  Behind me a woman said, "Just what is going on here?"

  I turned halfway and looked over my shoulder at a woman in her late sixties with silver hair and rimless glasses. She had on a dark flowered dress with a white collar and modest high heels and a string of pearls. She was a housemother if I ever saw one.

  I said, "Mrs. Cameron, I presume."

  "I'm the housemother here. Off-campus visitors require my permission."

  "You sure know how to make a guy feel welcome," I said.

  "I'll have to ask you to go."

  "How do you know I'm not somebody's professor come down to help them with their paper on Provenqal poetry?"

  "Please leave."

  "Or somebody's dad. How would you feel coming in here and kicking out somebody's dad who just stopped by to see how you were spending his thirty thousand a year."

  "I know who you are. You are not welcome."

  I looked at the young women.

  "I think Kim has ratted us out," I said. They all laughed.

  "Oh, come on, Mrs. Cameron," Pink Rollers said. "We like him. We invited him to stay."

  "Take that up with Dean Corcoran, Marsha," Mrs. Cameron said.

  She turned to me. Very firm.

  "Will you leave or must I call the police."

  "He is the police," Dark Hair said.

  "He is not. He is a private detective. He's been told already that he's not welcome on campus."

  Pink Rollers said, "Hey. A private eye?"

  I said, "Here's looking at you, kid."

  "Whoa, is that cool or what. A private eye."

  Mrs. Cameron turned without a word and walked out of the room.

  "Cops will be here soon," I said.

  "The campus cops?" Dark Hair said mockingly. "What are you gonna do?"

  "I'll probably go quietly," I said. "I don't think I'll shoot it out with them."

  "Oh, damn," Pink Rollers said and we all laughed.

  I took several cards from my shirt pocket and handed them around.

  "If any of you, ah, undergraduate women have anything to add about Melissa, or think of something later, or want to have a nice lunch paid for by me…"

  "You can call us girls," Dark Hair said. "Kim's the only one that's really PC."

  The familiar pulsating glow of a blue light showed through the front window and a minute later the front door opened and Chief Livingston came in with two patrolmen. Mrs. Cameron greeted him at the door.

  "I ordered him to leave as soon as I discovered he was here," she said. "He basically defied me."

  "He probably does that a lot," Livingston said. "Come on, Mr. Spenser, time to go."

  "What charge?"

  "What charge? Oh, Jesus Christ, excuse me, ladies, it is against college regulations for anyone to visit a domicile without permission of the resident supervisor."

  "Oh, that charge," I said.

  Livingston grinned, and jerked his head toward the door. I got up from the arm of the couch where I'd been sitting and walked to the door and turned. I'd been so successful with my Bogart impression that I tried Arnold Schwarzenegger.

  "Ah'll be baack," I said.

  None of them knew what the hell I was doing. But they liked me. They all waved and hollered "good-bye" as I went out the door with the cops.

  Chapter 16

  HAWK CAME IN to my office in the morning with some coffee and a bag of donuts.

  "Coffee from Starbuck's," he said. "High-grown Kenya, bright and sweet with a hint of black currant."

  "They sell donuts?"

  "Naw, Starbuck's too ritzy for donuts," Hawk said. "Donuts are Dunkin'."

  "With a hint of deep fat," I said.

  We divided up the coffee and donuts. Hawk took his coffee and one of the don
uts and went and looked down from my window at the corner of Berkeley and Boylston. He was wearing starched jeans and high top Nikes, and a blue denim shirt under a black leather field jacket. He had on a pair of Oakley sun glasses with cerulean blue reflective lenses.

  "You think my new shades are cool?" Hawk said.

  "Cold," I said. "Can you see, wearing them indoors?"

  "No. But they too cool to take off."

  I drank some Kenya coffee. "Bright and sweet," I said.

  "Told you," Hawk said.

  "You come up with anything that clears Ellis Alves?" I said.

  "No. You adopt a kid yet?"

  "No."

  "You been annoying somebody though," Hawk said.

  "That's sort of my job description," I said. "You wanna give me a list?"

  "Ain't got the time to cover them all, but somebody's looking to have you killed."

  "Moi?"

  "Vinnie called me. Said one of the guys works for Gino told him there was a guy looking to have you killed."

  "He want Vinnie to do it?"

  "Don't know," Hawk said. "That's all Vinnie told me. He's full time with Gino now. He wouldn't be freelancing anyway."

  "How much they paying," I said.

  "Now that's ego," Hawk said.

  "Well, how would I feel if somebody was offering five hundred bucks?"

  "Be embarrassing, wouldn't it," Hawk said.

  He was still looking down at the street. It was a dandy fall morning, and a lot of people were hurrying around in the Back Bay like they had important things to do.

  "Lotta nice looking women walk past your office," Hawk said.

  "Hoping to catch a glimpse of me."

  Hawk turned and came back and sat down in one of my client chairs. His jacket was open. I could see the butt of a gun under his left arm. I could see myself in his reflective glasses.

  "You working on anything but Ellis Alves?" he said.

  "Nope."

  "So you probably stirring something up that somebody don't want stirred up," Hawk said.

  "Unless it's someone I've offended previously and they're just getting around to it."

  "Ellis Alves case makes more sense," Hawk said.

  "Yes."

  "So if it is, it mean maybe there is something wrong with the way Alves went to jail."

  "Vinnie didn't give you any idea who wants this done?" I said.

  "I don't think he knows," Hawk said. "He does, I don't think he'll say. Remember Vinnie ain't one of the good guys. He's pretty far off his range already. Hell, he wouldn't even call you direct. He called me."

  "Good to know Vinnie's got standards," I said.

  "Why we like him," Hawk said.

  "Yeah."

  I finished a donut and washed it down with the coffee. It was good coffee. Too bad they didn't sell donuts. It meant I was going to have to stop twice every time I shopped for two of the basic food groups. Life kept getting more complicated. Assuming that I had stirred up somebody from long ago wasn't useful. It was possible, but it didn't take me anywhere. I'd been doing this for a long time. There were too many possibilities. Assuming I'd touched a tender spot in the Ellis Alves thing was a more productive assumption.

  "Could be someone I talked to," I said. "Could be somebody who heard I was looking into it and wanted to, ah, forestall me."

  "Not everybody know how to organize a murder contract," Hawk said.

  "No. But a lot of people in this deal have money. If there's enough money, there's somebody got a connection with someone that can talk to a guy."

  "True," Hawk said. "We could go find the guy that told Vinnie and ask him what he knows."

  "He too will not wish to tell me," I said.

  "We can reason with him until he do," Hawk said.

  "Make Vinnie look bad," I said.

  "Yeah, it would."

  "He's expecting us not to do that."

  "Good to know you got standards, too," Hawk said.

  "The contractor is going to find a taker," I said. "If he's offering decent money."

  "Plus, I believe there a lot of people willing to do it for nothing," Hawk said.

  "So maybe what we do is go about our business and let him take a run at us, and when he does we catch him and question him closely."

  "What's this `we,' white eyes?"

  "You can't let me get killed," I said. "Nobody else likes you."

  Hawk grinned. He swallowed his last bite of donut and finished his coffee. He dropped the paper cup in the wastebasket and went to the sink in the corner and washed his hands and face carefully. He dried himself on a white towel that hung beside the sink. The towel said "Holiday Inn" on it, in green letters. It was one of my favorites. I had picked it up in Jackson, Mississippi, once when I was driving back from Texas, with Pearl the Wonder Dog. Whenever Susan came in she replaced the Holiday Inn towel with a small pink one that had a pale pink fringe, and a pink and green rosebud embroidered in one corner. As soon as she left, I put out the Holiday Inn towel again.

  "I'll be interested to see who they get to do it," Hawk said. "And how good he is."

  "Me too," I said.

  Chapter 17

  A DARK-HAIRED WOMAN named Elayna Hurley, who was a single mother and had been in graduate school with Susan, came over to Susan's house on a Sunday afternoon while I was watching football and Susan was reading a book by Frederick Crews debunking her profession. Elayna brought her nine-year-old daughter with her. The daughter's name was Erika.

  Pearl had chosen football over Frederick Crews and was sprawled on the couch beside me. I was warmed by her affection, but, in fact, had planned to sprawl on the couch myself. When they came in, Pearl sat bolt upright and eyed Erika the way a robin eyes a worm. Susan took their coats and took them into the bedroom and laid them on the bed. Erika came straight over and stood in front of me and put her hands on her hips like Shirley Temple.

  She wore a maroon velvet Laura Ashley dress with a little lace collar. She had much too much blond curly hair, and she was kind of chunky. Susan returned from the bedroom.

  "Who are you?" Erika said to me. I told her.

  "How come you let your dog sit on the couch?"

  "She likes it on the couch," I said.

  Pearl looked at Erika balefully. Erika leaned very close to Pearl and blew in her face. Pearl shook her head. The hair on her back rose, and I quickly put a hand on her collar. Erika laughed loudly.

  "Erika, honey," Elayna said. "Don't bother the dog."

  "I want a dog," she said.

  "I know, honey, but you know Mommy's allergic."

  "You always say that."

  "Well," Elayna smiled lovingly, "it's always true. Come over here and sit by me and maybe Susan can find us some cookies."

  Erika flounced back over to the couch and sat beside her mother and stared at Pearl.

  "What kind of cookies?" she said.

  "Actually," Susan said, "you know the kind of homemaker I am. There aren't any cookies."

  "Oh, that's fine," Elayna said. "Erika doesn't really need one."

  "I want a cookie," Erika said. "You said I could have one."

  "Well, I guess I was wrong, Erika."

  "You said."

  "I have some V8 juice," Susan said with a smile that would have beguiled Jesse Helms.

  "I hate V8 juice," Erika said.

  "Some mango yogurt?" Susan said.

  "I want some cookies. My mother said I could have some cookies."

  Beside me Pearl was still sitting upright. The hair was still up on her back. She growled very low, almost to herself. I draped my left arm over her shoulders and patted her.

  "You got that right," I said to Pearl.

  Susan flashed a glance at me almost too quick to be registered. I smiled at her.

  "Would you like to watch TV in Susan's bedroom?" Elayna said.

  "How come I can't watch out here?"

  "Well, this is where the grown-ups will be, sweetheart, and we want to talk without TV."
>
  "He's watching TV," Erika said.

  I picked up the clicker and turned off the set.

  Elayna said, "Come on into Susan's bedroom, Erika, and watch TV I'll bet we can find a real good movie for you."

  "Can that dog come in and watch with me?"

  "No," I said.

  Again Susan gave me the glance.

  "Come on, Erika," Susan said. "We'll go in and find you a movie."

  "Why can't that dog come?" Erika said.

  "She's not really used to children," Susan said.

  "Does he bite?" Erika said.

  "No, no. She's just not used to children," Susan said.

  "Mom, is he going to bite me?"

  "No, of course not, she's a very nice dog. Come on, we'll go into Susan's bedroom and turn on the TV."

  Susan and Elayna and Erika all headed for the bedroom.

  "He looks like he wants to bite me," Erika said.

  "She," I said.

  "Bad dog," Erika said and stomped into Susan's bedroom.

  They spent awhile finding a dandy TV program for Erika to watch. My guess was that their efforts would not be worth the result. When they were gone, Pearl settled back down into her sprawl, but she kept an eye on the bedroom. Finally they came out and half closed the bedroom door.

  "Don't close the door," Erika said from the bedroom.

  "No, Erika. We won't," her mother said. "We'll leave it just like this."

  "You know I don't like the door closed."

  "I know, Erika."

  "Can I get you some wine or something?" Susan said.

  "A little white wine would be nice," Elayna said.

  Susan went to get it.

  "How's the game?" Elayna said to me.

  "Patriots are getting hosed," I said.

  "Oh."

  "Poor Erika, she loves animals. She wants a dog so bad and I can't have one in the house."

  "You're allergic?" I said.

  "Can't be in the same room with one. My eyes water and itch. I begin to sneeze. My throat closes up. It's hideous."

  I glanced at Pearl. Susan came back in with a bottle of white, and a bottle of red, three glasses, and a corkscrew. She set it all down on the table in front of me.

  "Man's work," she said.

  I opened the wine. Susan had red. Elayna had white. I declined.

  "Well, isn't she a princess," Susan said.

  "Erika?" Elayna said. "I suppose every parent thinks her kid is special, but she really is a darling."