Pale Kings and Princes

by Robert B. Parker

  Susan's car was not ideal for unobtrusive surveillance, being bright red and shaped like a carrot, but if Esteva or anyone else saw me they didn't seem to care. Nobody came up and told me to scram.

  I had a thermos of coffee, with sugar and cream. I was sure that not drinking it black was the first step toward quitting. I also had several sandwiches (tuna on pumpernickel, turkey on whole wheat, lettuce and rnayo) that I'd made up the night before after shopping Mel's Wheaton Market where I'd found the pumpernickel in the imported food section. The sun was bright and the greenhouse effect was ample to warm the car with the motor off. I had gotten Wally to fill my thermos without having to actually lay hands on him. Another tribute to the power of a winning personality. I sipped some coffee, took a bite of a sandwich. The sound of my munching broke the silence. It was the most excitement I'd had since Tuesday. Across the river a figure came out of the warehouse and walked toward one of the trucks parked against the chain link fence in back of the yard. He was carrying an overnight bag. I put my coffee cup down on the plastic top of the transmission hump, balanced the sandwich on the top of the dashboard, and picked the binoculars up off the passenger seat.

  The person with the overnight bag was Brett Rogers.

  It was the first time I'd seen him at the warehouse since I'd been sitting up there looking at it. He opened the door of a big tractor rig, tossed the overnight bag in, climbed in after it, and in a moment I saw a puff of smoke from the exhaust pipe that stuck up above the cab.

  Why the overnight bag?

  The trailerless tractor pulled slowly out of the yard and turned right along the river. I started up the car and put it in gear and headed down across the Main Street bridge, cloverleafed under the bridge onto Mechanic Street, and drifted along behind the kid. I didn't have much expectation but following him was something to do. Three days of sitting had produced nothing. If I followed Brett Rogers around for a while and that produced nothing, what had I lost.

  We headed south a ways, along the river, and picked up the Mass. Pike at the Wheaton toll station. We went east on the Mass. Pike. On the Pike it was easy to stay back a ways and still keep an eye on the big tractor ahead of me. Lots of cars went the whole distance on the Pike, so it wasn't worrisome to see the same car behind you periodically. It's a pleasant ride on the Pike, the hills west of Worcester roll easily, and the gleaming winter sun made everything look pristine. There was little to see but the forest, and every time I drove the Pike I thought of William Pynchon and that gang heading west through these hills to settle Springfield.

  East of Worcester we turned off and headed north on Route 495. Route 495 had been built circling Boston on about a forty-mile radius in the hopes it would be like Route 128, which circled Boston on about a ten-mile radius and had turned into the yellow brick road. There weren't as many hi-tech establishments along Route 495 yet, but no one had given up hope and opportunities for land development were advertised on community-sponsored billboards all along the highway. There were some plants going up, but you could still see cows along 495.

  The highway ends its circumference near the New Hampshire border, where it joins Route 95 in Salisbury, on the coast. Brett's tractor lumbered north on 95. I'd drunk all my coffee and eaten all my sandwiches by then and the early winter evening sun was starting down. South of where we were, Route 95 went through Smithfield where Susan had lived until last year. I felt a little homesick. I hadn't seen her in six days. Lucky I was tough as a junkyard badger or I'd be missing her badly.

  Brett stopped for coffee and a men's room on the Maine Turnpike between Portsmouth and Portland. I used the men's room while he bought coffee and bought coffee while he used the men's room. He had no reason to recognize me. I'd looked at him in the library and again on his way to Emmy Esteva's. But he'd had no reason to look either time at me.

  Then we were on the road again, northbound. Brett had bought a couple of cheeseburgers to go, but I settled for coffee. I'd sampled the road food in Maine and preferred hunger.

  It was a little short of eight when we pulled into the parking lot of a Holiday Inn just off the highway. There were a couple of other chain motels next to each other across the street.

  Brett climbed down out of his tractor, pulled his overnight bag after him and went into the motel. I parked down the line of cars and turned off my lights and left the motor running and the heat on. Actually in Susan's car you didn't put the heat on, you set the digital thermostat to whatever temperature you wish and the thing cycles on and off automatically. I had it set at seventy-two.

  Brett had parked in the early evening and taken his overnight bag and gone into a motel. According to my collection of Dick Tracy Crime Stoppers, this was a clue that meant he planned to sleep there. What it was not a clue to was when he would wake up and pull out. I shut off the motor. If I checked into the motel and went to bed and woke up and found Brett gone I would feel inadequate, and the feeling would accurately mirror reality. I turned up the collar on my leather jacket, zipped it up close around the neck, and eased down in the driver's seat. If I fell asleep, the sound of the big diesel tractor starting up would wake me, and I wasn't good at sleeping in cars and on airplanes.

  Around midnight I started the car again and let the heater run for a while and when it was warm I shut it off again. If I ran the motor all night I'd be low on gas when we started off and I'd run out before Brett had to stop, or I might. I figured he still had a ways to go, or he'd have gone there before he stopped for the night. Unless this was the last place to stay before we plunged off into the wilds someplace. Maine is not teeming with motels.

  Around 2:00 AM, I felt somewhat like a wire coat hanger. There are not that many positions to assume while trying to sleep in a carrot-shaped sports car. I started the engine to let things warm up again and got out and stretched.

  There was a light in the motel lobby and there were high cold stars and there was nothing else but the collection of silent cars and trucks. Once as I stood in the harsh cold a vehicle whooshed by on the turnpike back of the motel. I got back in the car.

  Dawn came late, around six o'clock the first hint of it in the black sky thinning toward gray, and then the beginnings of visibility before there was any touch of color in the eastern sky. The motel kitchen was kicking into action. I could smell coffee. At six-thirty Brett came out of the motel and headed for his tractor. I cranked Susan's car over and was a little ways behind him when we rolled out of the parking lot and back up onto the Maine Pike and away from the smell of coffee.

  Chapter 18

  We went off the Maine Pike near Brunswick and wound along the Maine coast on Route 1 through towns like Damariscotta and Waldoboro past Rockland and Camden to Belfast.

  Belfast is on the side of a hill that slants down to an active waterfront on Penobscot Bay. It was a Maine town, a lot of white houses with low foundations. Barns and carriage houses still frequent, the smell of the ocean, a stillness that was not simply of the winter but seemed to emanate from the permanent condition of quiet and slow time.

  Brett's tractor headed down the sloping main drag toward the wharf and pulled in next to a warehouse done in weathered vertical boards. The name, PENOBSCOT SEAFOOD, INC., was spelled out in white wooden letters mounted across the front. Brett got out and went in through the front door. I parked on a slant in toward the curb in front of a hardware store maybe a hundred yards up the hill and walked down toward the wharf.

  The wind off the water was had, and the footing was slippery from frozen spray. There was old snow mounded against the side of the fish warehouse and piled in dirty embankments around the parking area where five or six refrigerator trailers were parked. The smell of fish was strong and the smell, too, of coal oil that must have come from a heater in the warehouse office. I edged into the doorway of a store that advertised rainbow ice cream. It wasn't much of a day for rainbow ice cream and there was no traffic in the doorway. The sky was low and gray and heavy and spit snow in insignificant spatters that made
people put their windshield wipers on intermittently. I felt a little sick from hunger and lack of sleep and I was getting a headache because I hadn't had coffee for nearly twentyfour hours. I was shivering: A hot shower would be good, and a stack of corn cakes with maple syrup and two cups of good coffee then into bed for twelve hours and then have dinner with Susan. It was about four hours to Susan's condo where all of this was available and more. My feet were cold. My Avia aerobic shoes were gorgeous and comfy but were not designed for standing in doorways in the snow on the coast of Maine in the winter. Brett came out of the fishhouse with a tall thin guy wearing a tan down vest over a red woolen shirt. Brett got into the cab of his tractor and the guy in the down vest walked over to a refrigerator trailer and waited. The tractor started up and Brett ground it into reverse. The guy in the vest gestured him back and Brett backed the truck up and locked in with the trailer. There was no lettering on the trailer. The guy in the vest came up to the tractor and stood on the running board talking for a moment through the open window with Brett. Then he stepped down and headed back into the warehouse and Brett turned the big trailer tractor up the main drag again and crawled on out of Belfast. I went to the car, got it going, and crawled along behind him. The snow was spitting a little faster as we went, fast enough for me to move the wipers from Int to Lo.

  Brett didn't go home the way he came. He took Route 3 to Augusta and picked up the Maine Pike southbound. I tooled edgily along behind him. The snow was intensifying and Susan's car, while splendid for exceeding the speed of sound on a dry highway, was harder to manage on a slick surface. The drive had so much torque that the wheels tended to spin any time you accelerated. Fortunately, Brett must have been nervous in the snow because he stayed down under sixty and I was able to slither along behind him without spinning off into a ditch.

  A little after noon, Brett pulled the rig off into the parking lot of the rest stop on the turnpike south of Portland and parked it back of the restaurant. I came in after him and parked Susan's car in close to the restaurant and locked it and put the keys in my pocket. Brett had already gone in, his head ducking into the snow that was coming harder as the day developed. I walked over to the truck. It was locked. I went around back to the trailer. It was locked. The trailer had Maine plates on it. I went back around to the driver's side of the cab, shielded by the cab from the restaurant, and sat on the running board, and hunched my shoulders, and put my hands in my jacket pockets, and shivered.

  In fifteen minutes Brett came back. He was carrying a takeout order in a Styrofoam carton. When he came around the front of the truck and saw me sitting on the running board, he stopped. He was a fat kid dressed in gray sweatpants and work boots half laced and a black and orange Wheaton High School football jacket.

  "Excuse me," he said, as if a guy sitting on the side of his truck in a Maine snowstorm was the usual stuff.

  "Sure," I said, and stood up and stepped aside.

  He climbed up on the running board clumsily, carrying the takeout in one hand and swinging up by holding the outside mirror strut. Standing on the running board he fumbled the keys out of his jacket pocket and opened the cab. I took my gun off my right hip and pointed it at him and said, "Take me to Havana."

  The kid looked at me and saw the gun and his eyes widened.

  He said, "Huh?"

  I said, "You're being hijacked. Get down, and give me the keys."

  "What'd you say about Havana?" he said.

  "A joke, kid, just climb down and give me the keys."

  The kid climbed down slowly, holding the keys in his left hand, and the takeout in his right hand made it harder and he had to jump off the running board. He landed heavily and staggered a step and the takeout carton pulled loose from his grip and spilled into the snow. It looked like cheeseburgers again, with a side of fries.

  Brett stared at me, still holding the tornloose cover of the Styrofoam takeout and the keys. I put out my left hand. He gave me the keys.

  I said, "You can go on back into the restaurant and order up some more and take your time eating it."

  "I ain't got no more money," he said.

  I put the keys in my pants pocket, took out my wallet with my left hand, extracted a five-dollar bill with my teeth, put the wallet back in my pants pocket, took the five from my teeth and handed it to Brett.

  "Go on," I said.

  He took the five and stared at me. We both had to squint to keep the snow out of our eyes. I jerked my head toward the restaurant. "Go on," I said again.

  He nodded and turned slowly and began to walk slowly toward the restaurant.

  I climbed into the truck and put the keys in the ignition and started it up. The kid was still walking with his head down, slowly and more slowly. I put the clutch in and shifted and let the clutch out and the truck lurched forward. It had been a while since I had driven a truck. Through the snow I could see that the kid had stopped and turned and was looking after me. It was hard to see and I couldn't tell for sure. But he might have been crying.

  I got the truck into some gear where we weren't struggling and cruised south in the right lane. If this cargo was clean then there was no reason why Brett shouldn't call the cops. In which case I was going to be doing some heavy explaining to the Maine State Police in a little while. On the other hand, why was a guy who dealt in produce picking up a load from a fish dealer in an unmarked refrigerator truck. And why hadn't the refrigerator truck been hooked up to a power source so the refrigeration would run and the fish wouldn't spoil. I didn't believe that they were conserving power by letting the winter weather do the job. On the other hand, if you were importing cocaine a coastal town with a fish distribution point wouldn't be a bad place to bring it in.

  It was about four in the afternoon when I hit Route 128 north of Boston and humped the big tractor trailer off of 128 and down a ramp and through an underpass and up into the vast parking area of the Northshore Shopping Center in Peabody. I parked out of the way, partly to be inconspicuous and partly because I wasn't too confident I could parallel-park a ten-wheeler. The snow was mixed with rain down here. I climbed down and walked over to the shopping center. I cut through Herman's sporting goods and went into the Sears store. I bought a big pry bar and a hammer with a steel shank, a new padlock and a flashlight. Then I went back out to my truck. In ten minutes I had the lock off and I was inside. There were cases of mackerel, most of which didn't smell that good. I pried them open and rummaged around and found under the mackerel, packed neatly in clear plastic bags, about three hundred kilos of cocaine.

  No wonder no one had called the cops.

  Chapter 19

  I called Susan from a pay phone in the shopping mall. Her voice sounded sleepy.

  "I'm at the Northshore Shopping Center," I said. "I need you to come and get me."

  "Where's my car," she said.

  "On the Maine Turnpike," I said. "Safe in a parking lot behind the Burger King."

  "The Maine Turnpike?"

  "We'll go into it later, it's perfectly safe."

  "And you're at the Northshore Shopping Center?"

  "Yes, near the movie theater, in a big trailer truck."

  "A trailer truck."

  "Yes."

  "Jesus Christ," she said.

  "I knew you wouldn't mind," I said.

  "I'll be there in about an hour," she said. Susan exaggerated a bit, it was actually an hour and thirty-five minutes before she showed up, but time has never been Susan's master and, as always, she was worth the wait. She had rented the sportiest thing she could find, which was, in this case, a red Mustang convertible with a white roof, which looked a little forlorn as it pulled up through the dark winter night. When she got out and walked toward me through the headlights of her car, she was wearing gray boots, and jeans, and a silver fox fur coat. Her hair was in perfect place and her makeup was elegant. I had always suspected that were she routed out of bed at 3:00 A.M. by the secret police she'd find a way to do her hair and put on her makeup before they ha
uled her away. I climbed down from the cab and put my arms out and she leaned in against my chest and put her arms around me and kissed me. I had the feeling I always had, every time, the feeling of breathing deep and clear, and a lot of the sleepless tension in my back and shoulders eased.

  "I may someday faint from contentment," I said with my face against her hair.

  "Um hum," she said.

  "Will you give me mouth-to-mouth," I said.

  "I'm doing that now," she said, and kissed me again. "Preventive medicine," she said with her mouth still against mine. "Now what's up?"

  Standing as we were, arms around each other, I told her.

  "Three hundred kilos of cocaine?" she said when I was through. "We're rich!"

  "Even if we keep a little for your nose," I said. "Current street price in Boston is a hundred dollars a gram, a hundred and twenty if it hasn't been stepped on too heavy."

  "That's enough for a new car," Susan said.

  "Un huh."

  "What are we going to do with it?"

  "I don't know exactly," I said.

  "Are we going to turn it over to the police?"

  "Not right now," I said.

  "Why not?"

  "I think we're going to hold it hostage," I said.

  "Is that law-abiding?"

  "No."

  Susan moved her head against my chin. "I thought it wasn't," she said.

  We unloaded the bags of cocaine from the truck and put them in the trunk of the Mustang.

  "It would make a nice headline," Susan said. "Cambridge therapist collared in drug bust."

  "Claim you were my love slave," I said. "Any jury would buy it."

  Susan closed the trunk. "What about the truck?" she said.

  "We'll leave it, eventually someone will wonder what it's doing here, quite soon if the weather warms."