Looking for Rachel Wallace

by Robert B. Parker

  The young girl with the tight clothes said, “All right, foxy,” and started to clap. Most of the women in the cafeteria joined in. I went back to Rachel. “Come on,” I said. “Someone must have called the cops. We’d best walk out with dignity. Don’t slap me again till we’re outside.”

  13

  “You dumb son of a bitch,” Rachel said. We were walking along Boylston Street back to the Ritz. “Don’t you realize that it would have been infinitely more productive to allow them to drag me out in full view of all those women?”

  “Productive of what?”

  “Of an elevated consciousness on the part of all those women who were standing there watching the management of that company dramatize its sexism.”

  “What kind of a bodyguard stands around and lets two B-school twerps like those drag out the body he’s supposed to be guarding?”

  “An intelligent one. One who understands his job. You’re employed to keep me alive, not to exercise your Arthurian fantasies.” We turned left on Arlington. Across the street a short gray-haired man wearing two topcoats vomited on the base of the statue of William Ellery Channing.

  “Back there you embodied everything I hate,” Rachel said. “Everything I have tried to prevent. Everything I have denounced—machismo, violence, that preening male arrogance that compels a man to defend any woman he’s with, regardless of her wishes and regardless of her need.”

  “Don’t beat around the bush,” I said. “Come right out and say you disapprove of my conduct.”

  “It demeaned me. It assumed I was helpless and dependent, and needed a big strong man to look out for me. It reiterated that image to all those young women who broke into mindless applause when it was over.”

  We were in front of the Ritz. The doorman smiled at us—probably pleased that I didn’t have my car.

  “Maybe that’s so,” I said. “Or maybe that’s a lot of theory which has little to do with practice. I don’t care very much about theory or the long-range consequences to the class struggle, or whatever. I can’t deal with that. I work close up. Right then I couldn’t let them drag you out while I stood around.”

  “Of course from your viewpoint you’d be dishonored. I’m just the occasion for your behavior, not the reason. The reason is pride—you didn’t do that for me, and don’t try to kid yourself.”

  The doorman’s smile was getting a little forced.

  “I’d do it again,” I said.

  “I’m sure you would,” Rachel said, “but you’ll have to do it with someone else. You and I are terminated. I don’t want you around me. Whatever your motives, they are not mine, and I’ll not violate my life’s convictions just to keep your pride intact.”

  She turned and walked into the Ritz. I looked at the doorman. He was looking at the Public Garden. “The hell of it is,” I said to him, “I think she was probably right.”

  “That makes it much worse,” he said.

  I walked back along Arlington and back up Boylston for a block to Berkeley Street. I had several choices. I could go down to the Dockside Saloon and drink all their beer, or I could drive up to Smithfield and wait till Susan came home from school and tell her I flunked Women’s Lib. Or I could do something useful. I opted for useful and turned up Berkeley.

  Boston Police Headquarters was a block and a half up Berkeley Street on the right, nestled in the shadows of big insurance companies—probably made the cops feel safe. Martin Quirk’s office at the end of the Homicide squadroom was just as it always was. The room was neat and spare. The only thing on the desk was a phone and a plastic cube with pictures of his family in it.

  Quirk was on the phone when I appeared in his doorway. He was tilted back in his chair, his feet on the desk, the phone hunched against his ear with his shoulder. He pointed at the straight chair beside his desk, and I sat down.

  “Physical evidence,” Quirk said into the phone. “What have you got for physical evidence?” He listened. His tweed jacket hung on the back of his chair. His white shirt was crisp and starchy. The cuffs were turned under once over his thick wrists. He was wearing over the ankle cordovan shoes with brass buckles. The shoes shined with fresh polish. The gray slacks were sharply creased. The black knit tie was knotted and in place. His thick black hair was cut short with no sign of gray.

  “Yeah, I know,” he said into the phone. “But we got no choice. Get it.” He hung up and looked at me. “Don’t you ever wear a tie?” he said.

  “Just the other day,” I said. “Dinner at the Ritz.”

  “Well you ought to do it more often. You look like a goddamned overage hippie.”

  “You’re jealous of my youthful image,” I said. “Just because you’re a bureaucrat and have to dress up like Calvin Coolidge doesn’t mean I have to. It’s the difference between you and me.”

  “There’s other differences,” Quirk said. “What do you want?”

  “I want to know what you know about threats on the life of Rachel Wallace.”

  “Why?”

  “Until about a half hour ago I was her bodyguard.”

  “And?”

  “And she fired me for being too masculine.”

  “Better than the other way around, I guess,” Quirk said.

  “But I figured since I’d been hired by the day I might as well use the rest of it to see what I could find out from you.”

  “There isn’t much to tell. She reported the threats. We looked into it. Nothing much surfaced. I had Belson ask around on the street. Nobody knew anything.”

  “You have any opinion on how serious the threats are?”

  Quirk shrugged. “If I had to guess, I’d guess they could be. Belson couldn’t find any professional involvement. She names a lot of names and makes a lot of embarrassing charges about local businesses and government figures, but that’s all they are—embarrassing. Nobody’s going to go to jail or end his career, or whatever.”

  “Which means,” I said, “if the threats are real, they are probably from some coconut, or group of coconuts, that are anti-feminist or anti-gay, or both.”

  “That would be my guess,” Quirk said. “The busing issue in this town has solidified and organized all the redneck crazies. So any radical issue comes along, there’s half a dozen little fringe outfits available to oppose it. A lot of them don’t have anything to do now that busing is getting to be routine. For crissake they took the state cops out of South Boston High this year.”

  “Educational reform,” I said. “One comes to expect such innovation in the Athens of America.”

  Quirk grunted and locked his hands behind his head as he leaned back further in his chair. The muscles in his upper arm swelled against the shirt sleeve.

  “So who’s looking after her now?” he said.

  “Nobody that I know of. That’s why I’m interested in the reality of the threats.”

  “You know how it is,” Quirk said. “We got no facts. How can we? Anonymous phonecalls don’t lead anywhere. If I had to guess, I guess there might be some real danger.”

  “Yeah, me too,” I said. “What bothers you?”

  “Well, the threat to harm her if the book wasn’t suppressed. I mean, there were already copies of the damned thing around in galleys or whatever they are. The damage had been done.”

  “Why doesn’t that make you feel easier?” I said. “Why isn’t it just a crank call, or a series of crank calls?”

  “How would a crank caller even know about the book? Or her? I’m not saying it’s sure. I mean it could be some numb-nuts in the publishing company, or at the printer, or anywhere that they might see the book. But it feels worse than that. It has a nice, steady hostile feel of organized opposition.”

  “Balls,” I said.

  “You don’t agree,” Quirk said.

  “No. I do. That’s what bothers me. It feels real to me, too. Like people who want that book suppressed not because it tells secrets, but because it argues something they don’t want to hear.”

  Quirk nodded. “R
ight. It’s not a matter of keeping a secret. If we’re right, and we’re both guessing, it’s opposition to her opinion and her expression of it. But we are both guessing.”

  “Yeah, but we’re good guessers,” I said. “We have some experience in the field.”

  Quirk shrugged. “We’ll see,” he said.

  “Also, somebody made what looked like a professional try at her a couple nights ago.”

  “Good how promptly you reported it to the authorities,” Quirk said.

  “I’m doing that now,” I said. “Listen.”

  He listened.

  I told him about the two-car incident on the Lynnway. I told him about the pickets in Belmont and the pie-throwers in Cambridge. I told him about the recent unpleasantness in the First Mutual cafeteria.

  “Don’t you freelance types have an exciting time of it?” Quirk said.

  “It makes the time pass,” I said.

  “The business on the Lynnway is the only thing that sounds serious,” Quirk said. “Gimme the license numbers.”

  I did.

  “Course they could be merely harassing you like the others.”

  “They seemed to know their way around.”

  “Shit, everybody knows his way around. They watch Baretta and Kojak. They know all about that stuff.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Could be. Could even be a pattern.”

  “Conspiracy?” Quirk raised both eyebrows.

  “Possible.”

  “But likely?”

  I shrugged. “There are stranger things in this world than in all your philosophies, Horatio.”

  “The only other guy I ever met as intellectual as you,” Quirk said, “was a child molester we put away in the late summer of 1967.”

  “Smart doesn’t mean good,” I said.

  “I’ve noted that,” Quirk said. “Anyway, I’m not ready to buy a conspiracy without more.”

  “Me either,” I said. “Can you do anything about keeping an eye on her?”

  “I’ll call Callahan over at the Ritz again. Tell him you’re off the thing, and he should be a little carefuller.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Yeah,” Quirk said, “that’s it. I need more people than I’ve got now. I can’t put a guard on her. If she makes a public appearance somewhere, maybe I can arrange to beef up her security a little. But we both know the score—I can’t protect her and neither can you, unless she wants us to. And even then”—he shrugged—“depends on how bad somebody wants her.”

  “But after someone does her in, you’ll swing into action. Then you’ll be able to spare a dozen men.”

  “Take a walk,” Quirk said. The lines from his nose to the corners of his mouth were deep. “I don’t need to get lectured about police work. I’m still here—I didn’t quit.”

  I stood up. “I apologize,” I said. “I feel very sour about things now. I’m blaming you.”

  Quirk nodded. “I get anything on those numbers, you want to know?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay.”

  I left.

  14

  Susan and I were at the raw bar in the middle of Quincy Market eating oysters and drinking beer, and arguing. Sort of.

  “So why didn’t you keep out of it?” Susan said. “Rachel had asked you to.”

  “And stand there and let them drag her out?”

  “Yes.” Susan slurped an oyster off the shell. They don’t offer forks at the raw bar. They just serve oysters or clams or shrimp, with beer in paper cups. There are bowls of oyster crackers and squeeze bottles of cocktail sauce. They named the place the Walrus and the Carpenter, but I like it anyway.

  “I couldn’t do that,” I said. Under the vaulted ceiling of the market, people swirled up and down the main aisle. A bearded man wearing a ski cap and a green turtleneck sweater eyed Susan and whispered something to the man with him. The man with him looked at Susan and nodded.

  They both smiled, and then they both caught me looking at them and looked away and moved on. I ordered another beer. Susan sipped a little of hers.

  “Why couldn’t you do that?” Susan said.

  “It violates something.”

  “What?”

  I shrugged. “My pride?”

  Susan nodded. “Now we’re getting somewhere. And while we’re at it, if somebody wants to admire my figure, why not let them? I am pleased. Would it be better if they didn’t?”

  “You mean those two clowns a minute ago?”

  “Yes. And a man who admires my ass isn’t necessarily a clown.”

  “I didn’t do anything,” I said.

  “You glared at them.”

  “Well, they scare easy.”

  “Would you have liked it better if they’d told me to start wearing a girdle?”

  I said, “Grrrrr.”

  “Exactly. So what are you glaring at them for?”

  “My pride?”

  “Now we’re getting somewhere.”

  “Didn’t we just have this conversation?”

  She smiled and gestured at the bartender for another beer. “Yes, but we haven’t finished it.”

  “So what should I have done when those two upwardly mobile assholes took hold of her?”

  “Stood by, made sure they didn’t hurt her. Been available if she called for help. Held the door as they went out.”

  “Jesus Christ,” I said.

  “Or you could have locked arms with her and gone limp when they touched you and made it that much harder.”

  “No,” I said. “I couldn’t do that. Maybe I could have stood by, or maybe if there were a next time I could. But I couldn’t lie down and let them drag me out.”

  “No. You couldn’t. But you didn’t have to deprive Rachel of a chance for a triumph.”

  “I didn’t think of it in just that way.”

  “Of course you didn’t—just as you don’t perceive it that way when we’re at a party and someone makes a pass at me and you’re at his shoulder with the look.”

  “Depriving you of the chance to deal with it successfully yourself.”

  “Of course,” she said. There was a small streak of cocktail sauce at one corner of her mouth. I reached over and wiped it away with my thumb. “I don’t normally need you to protect me. I got along quite well without you for quite some years. I fended off the people I wanted to fend off, all by myself.”

  “And if they don’t fend?”

  “I call you. You’re not far. I’ve not seen you ten feet from me at a party since we met.”

  I finished my beer. “Let’s walk up toward the Faneuil Hall end,” I said. It was nearly four thirty and the crowds were thin, for the market. “Maybe I’ll buy you a croissant.”

  “I’m not bitching about me,” she said. She put her arm through mine. Her head came a little above my shoulder. Her hair had a faint flowery smell. “I understand you, and I kind of like your proprietary impulses. Also I love you, and it changes one’s perspective sometimes.”

  “We could slip into that stairwell and make out,” I said.

  “Later. You promised a lot of walking and eating and drinking and looking at people.”

  “And after that?”

  “Who knows?” Susan said. “Maybe ecstasy.”

  “Let’s walk faster then.”

  Quincy Market is old and lovingly restored. It is vast and made of granite blocks. Along each side of the long center aisle there were stalls selling yogurt with fruit topping, kielbasy on a roll with sauerkraut, lobster rolls, submarine sandwiches, French bread, country pate, Greek salad, sweet and sour chicken, baklava, cookies, bagels, oysters, cheese, fresh fruit on a stick, ice cream, cheesecake, barbecued chicken, pizza, doughnuts, cookies, galantine of duck, roast beef sandwiches with chutney on fresh-baked bread, bean sprouts, dried peaches, jumbo cashews and other nuts. There are also butchershops, cheese stores, a place that sells custom-ground coffee, fruit stands, and a place that sells Korean ginseng root. Outside on either side are arcades with more stalls an
d terrace cafes, and in restored brick buildings parallel were clothing stores and specialty shops and restaurants. It claims to be the number-one tourist attraction in Boston, and it should be. If you were with a girl in the market area, it would be hard not to hold hands with her. Jugglers and strolling musicians moved around the area. The market is never empty, and in prime time it is nearly unmanageable. We stopped and bought two skewers of fresh fruit and melon, and ate them as we walked.

  “What you say makes sense, babe,” I said, “but it doesn’t feel right.”

  “I know,” she said. “It probably never will for you. You were brought up with a fierce sense of family. But you haven’t got a family, and so you transfer that great sea of protective impulse to clients, and me.”

  “Maybe not you, but usually clients need protection.”

  “Yes. That’s probably why you’re in business. You need people who need protection. Otherwise what would you do with the impulse?”

  I threw my empty skewer in a trash barrel. “Concentrate it all on you, chickie,” I said.

  Susan said, “Oh, God.”

  “I don’t think I’m going to change,” I said.

  “Oh, I hope you don’t. I love you. And I understand you, and you should stay as sweet as you are. But you can see why Rachel Wallace might have reservations about you.”

  “Yeah, except I’m so goddamned cute,” I said.

  “You certainly are that,” Susan said. “Want to split a yogurt?”

  15

  It was three weeks before Christinas, and it was snowing big sporadic flakes outside my office window when I found out that they’d taken Rachel Wallace.

  I was sitting with my feet up, drinking black coffee and eating a doughnut and waiting for a guy named Anthony Gonsalves to call me from Fall River when the phone rang. It wasn’t Gonsalves.

  A voice said, “Spenser? John Ticknor from Hamilton Black. Could you get over here right now? It appears Rachel Wallace has been kidnaped.”

  “Did you call the cops?” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “Okay, I’m on my way.”

  I hung up, put my fleece-lined jacket on over my black turtleneck and shoulder holster, and went. My office that year was on the corner of Mass. Ave. and Boylston Street, on the second floor, in a small three-sided turret over a smokeshop. My car was parked by a sign that said No Parking Bus Stop. I got in and drove straight down Boylston. The snow was melting as it hit the street but collecting on the margins of the road and on the sidewalks and building ledges.