Robert B. Parker

by Wilderness

  She said, “Thank you.”

  “You come to any conclusion about what we were saying last night?”

  She looked at him over a triangle of toast. “Have you?”

  “No.”

  “Why don’t you talk with Chris?”

  “How can he help?”

  “He’s decisive,” she said, “and he seems to have some understanding of some male hang-up you may have, which I don’t seem to.”

  “Like honor?”

  She gestured with her toast and shrugged.

  “Talk to him.”

  “You want it done, don’t you? You want it done and you figure Chris will talk me into it.”

  “Whatever he did, Chris would do it and have it done,” she said.

  “Like that drunk last night, a couple of quiet words, the guy doesn’t respond and vap in the kidneys and out the door. You like that?”

  “I don’t like uncertainty. I don’t like having someone walking around who might, anytime, decide to degrade me or kill me. And I have no say in the matter.”

  “I won’t let him touch you again.”

  “So how will you stop it. Follow me everywhere with a gun? Hire bodyguards? There’s only one way to control this situation.”

  “So why don’t you do it? You’re the big fucking feminist. You want Karl shot why don’t you shoot him?”

  “While you’re doing what? Lifting weights and looking at yourself in the mirror? Home baking a cake? I’ve never fired a gun in my life. I’m tough but I’m not physically strong. You’re big and strong. Aren’t you?”

  He felt trapped and confused. He swayed his head back and forth, staring at the tabletop. “Why don’t you leave me the fuck alone,” he said. His voice was thick and shaky.

  “Why do you persist in seeing this as something I’m doing to you,” she said. “Why do you want to see yourself attacked.”

  “Don’t give me that encounter-group bullshit. Use your assertiveness jargon someplace else. I don’t want to see myself attacked. You are pushing and pushing. You want something done you don’t let up. You keep on and keep on. I’m not talking about it anymore. Now that’s it. You insensitive son of a bitch.”

  The lines at the corners of her eyes deepened and her perfectly made-up face darkened slightly. She looked at the kitchen clock.

  “Jesus Christ,” she said, “I’m late. Aaron, you’ve got to deal with this. We’ve got to be able to talk about it. I was involved in this problem myself. Remember?”

  He brought his open hand down hard on the table-top. Coffee spilled. “I said I wouldn’t talk about it. You want to keep grinding it into me? You want to keep reminding me what some guy did to my wife and I haven’t lifted a finger?” He raised his hand again, clenched it into a fist, and brought it back down on the table, twisting his shoulder and neck as if he were trying to hammer a hole through the table-top.

  “I gotta go,” Janet said. “I’m late. I gotta go. But I won’t give up. We’ve got to talk about this.”

  Newman hit the table again. His wife picked up her briefcase and her book bag, tan with a green design, and her purse and went out the kitchen door to her car.

  Newman sat at the kitchen table and stared at the Today show. He was breathing hard as if he’d run a distance. His sight blurred with tears. With his clenched fist he hit the table softly. Barely moving his fist, over and over.

  He was still sitting at the table at nine-thirty when Chris Hood walked across the backyard from his small white house to Newman’s big one. He came in the kitchen door without knocking.

  “Coffee?” he said.

  Newman said, “Instant,” and nodded at the jar on the counter. “Water’s probably still pretty hot.”

  Hood turned the gas flame on under the kettle, got a cup from the cabinet, and put a spoonful of instant coffee in it. He got two slices of oatmeal bread out of the second drawer to the right of the sink and put them in the toaster. When steam came from the kettle he made coffee, put margarine on his toast, and sat down at the table. He had on a blue T-shirt that said Adidas in white lettering across the front and he looked, as he moved and the small muscles played intricately beneath the skin, like a fine mechanism in perfect working order.

  “You want to talk?” Hood said.

  “About what?” Newman said.

  “About us killing this guy, Karl,” Hood said. “You got any jam?”

  “Refrigerator,” Newman said. Hood went to the refrigerator and took out a two-pound jar of strawberry preserves.

  “Good,” Hood said. “Smucker’s, they’re the best kind.”

  Newman nodded. “You and me?” he said.

  “Yes.” Hood put strawberry jam on his toast.

  “You and me go out and actually shoot this guy Karl?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Janet’s right,” Hood said. “Everything she said. It’s the only way to go.”

  “Maybe,” Newman said. “But why you?”

  Hood grinned. “What are friends for?”

  Newman shook his head. There was no humor in his voice. “Why?” he said.

  “It’s true,” Hood said. “I’m living alone. Jerry can manage the place for me if he has to. It’s the kind of thing I can do.”

  “Kill someone?”

  “Well, scuffle, fight, hit, handle trouble, you know.”

  Newman continued to look at Hood.

  “I’m good with my hands,” Hood said.

  Newman nodded. “Yeah, I know that, Chris, but”—Newman put his palms up—“kill someone? Someone you don’t even know?”

  “I know you. And Janet. And it’s what I can do.”

  “This is their business, you know. They’re professionals. What if they kill us instead?”

  “No point playing tennis with the net down,” Hood said. “It’s part of the fun.”

  “The threat of death.”

  “Sure. No fun if there wasn’t some strain to it. Not too much point in doing it.”

  “I thought you wanted to do it because it was a logical way to solve our problem.”

  Hood said, “No. I think you should do it for that reason. I’m willing to help for other reasons. And besides, I know you. It’ll eat your liver till you’ve done something.”

  “Or Janet will,” Newman said.

  Hood said nothing.

  “Okay,” Newman said. “Let’s do it.”

  8

  Newman looked at the gun rack in Chris Hood’s den. There was a lever-action Winchester .30/30, a semi-automatic M1 carbine with a fifteen-round clip, a five-shot 12-gauge Ithaca pump gun, a Ruger .44 magnum bushgun. In a locked case beneath the gun rack was a 9mm Walther P-38 automatic pistol, a hammerless Smith & Wesson .32 revolver with a nickel plating, an Army-issue Colt .45 automatic pistol, a bone-handled bowie knife with a nine-inch blade, and a skinning knife with a four-inch blade that folded into the handle. In a wall cabinet beside the gun rack there was ammunition for all the weapons. The guns were all clean and filmed with a fine glaze of oil. The stocks of the long guns were polished, the holsters of the handguns were soft leather well treated. In the dim quiet room with the air-conditioner humming its soft white sound, the guns seemed precise and orderly and full of promise. Newman felt still and calm looking at them.

  “Take the .32,” Hood said. “Five shots, small, easy to carry. Wear it on your belt and hang the shirt outside.”

  Newman took the handgun and aimed it at a knot-hole in the paneled wall. He slid it in and out of the soft leather holster. He slipped his belt through the holster slot and redid the belt. He let the tails of his tattersall shirt hang out over his belt. The gun was invisible. He pulled it and aimed at the knothole again.

  Hood took a box of shells from the cabinet and handed them to Newman.

  “It breaks here,” he said, taking the revolver from Newman and opening it. Newman fed five bright cartridges into the cylinder, closed the gun, and slipped it into his holster under his shirt.
/>   “What about a permit?” Newman said.

  Hood said, “I’ve got one.”

  Newman said, “But I haven’t. All I’ve got is an FID card. I can’t carry this on your permit.”

  Hood smiled. “We’re setting out to commit murder, Aaron. I wouldn’t sweat the unlicensed gun too much.”

  Newman nodded. Hood put on a shoulder holster and slipped the P-38 in it. He put an extra clip of ammunition in his hip pocket and the folding knife in his side pocket. He handed the carbine to Newman.

  “Remember how to fire this?”

  “Yes,” Newman said. “It’s one of the things you don’t forget. Like bike-riding.”

  “Or sex,” Hood said. He picked up the Winchester and a box of ammunition. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s get to it.”

  “I think Karl might catch on,” Newman said, “if he saw us walking up his driveway like this.”

  “We’ll stash the long guns in the car. I just figured we’d be better to have them handy.”

  “And you might want to put on something over the shoulder holster.”

  “Smart,” Hood said. “You writers are a smart breed.”

  They walked through Hood’s small immaculate kitchen. On a peg by the back door was a short-sleeved cotton safari jacket. Hood put it on. They put the carbine and Winchester, wrapped in a blanket, behind the back seat in Hood’s red and white 1976 Bronco.

  “You got the address?” Hood said.

  “473 Lynn Shore Drive. If it’s the same Adolph Karl. It was the only one in the phone book.”

  “Probably him.”

  “Would he be listed?”

  “Why not. Don’t thugs make phone calls?”

  Newman said, “Yes they do. Sometimes they make house calls.”

  They drove from Smithfield to Lynn and through Lynn to the road that ran along the ocean. Number 473 was a three-story brick house on the Lynn-Swampscott line. Around it was a strip of dry lawn no more than three feet wide. On either side the neighbors’ houses were close. There was a two-car garage and in the cement driveway that connected it to the street was parked a dark blue Lincoln with an orange vinyl top.

  “That’s the car,” Newman said. He felt the tension again in his solar plexus. He put his hand down on the butt of the gun under his shirt. “It must be the right place,” he said.

  Hood drove on past and turned left at a drugstore a block beyond Karl’s house. He parked.

  “Karl ever see you?”

  Newman shook his head.

  “How about the guys that laid it on Janet? They see you?”

  Newman shook his head again.

  “Then nobody in this group should know what you look like.”

  “True,” Newman said. His voice was hoarse.

  “So let’s stroll back and look at the building a bit.”

  They got out. Hood locked the car. They walked back a block along the seawall side of the street. Below them the beach was littered and beyond the beach waves rolled in from the open ocean. Across the harbor the turtle back of Nahant rose at the end of its causeway. Behind them a massive restaurant looked out over a cove where fishing boats rocked at tether.

  They leaned against the seawall and looked at Karl’s house. On the ocean side there was a sunporch, the windows closed by venetian blinds. Above the sunporch the house rose two more stories. The third story looked cramped beneath the slate mansard roof. The house actually fronted on a small side street. Four windows on the first floor, five on the second, two A-dormers through the slate roof on the third. There were venetian blinds in each of these windows.

  “Nice-looking house,” Hood said.

  “No land, though,” Newman said. “Right up against the neighbors.”

  “Yeah, you could reach out your window and into theirs.”

  “No place to sneak around and shoot through the windows.”

  “Even if there were,” Hood said, “the damned blinds are closed. You couldn’t see what to shoot at.”

  It was a bright summer day, but not hot. The wind off the ocean was steady and pleasant. Newman felt strong. He was conscious of the thickness of his arms and chest, the resiliency of his legs, the small, good weight of the gun under his shirt. He realized he wasn’t afraid. On the prowl, he thought. That’s what makes the difference. I’m not slinking around scared, wondering what he’s going to do. I’m after him. He should be scared. “Running makes you scared,” Newman said.

  Hood said, “What?”

  “It’s running makes you scared,” Newman said. “Now I’m chasing instead of running, I don’t feel scared.”

  “Yeah,” Hood said. He was looking at Karl’s house. “There’s no damned cover,” he said. “No buildings we could get in and shoot from, no place where we could be under cover and wait. We could shoot from the car, but it’s difficult driving and hard to get out of here. Traffic’s bad. There’s a cop up there on the corner. Probably usually is.”

  “The gun helps, too,” Newman said.

  “Helps what?” Hood said.

  “Not being scared. The gun makes you feel good. Like you can’t be overpowered.”

  “I wouldn’t count on can’t,” Hood said. “The gun makes it harder, but it doesn’t make you bulletproof, you know?”

  Newman nodded. “What do we do now?” he said.

  “I figure we watch,” Hood said. “We get a feel for how this guy functions. See if he goes to work or something. Get him outside the house we may have a better chance.”

  “We could go right up and knock on the door and when someone opened it in we go with the guns.” As he said it, Newman hoped Hood would disapprove. Newman didn’t like the idea as he said it.

  “Some things wrong with that, Aaron. We don’t know who or what’s in there. Guy like Karl may have some bodyguards. Also if there were other people there besides Karl, like his wife or kids or whatever, we’d probably have to kill them, or they’d be able to identify us to the cops, or Karl’s friends or whoever. Besides, a guy like Karl probably doesn’t just open the door when someone knocks. Even if we didn’t get hurt, if we tried it and didn’t get in, we’d make him suspicious. We don’t want him suspicious.”

  “That’s for sure,” Newman said.

  “We’ll split it up,” Hood said. “I’ll be in the car up the road. If Karl comes out and gets in the car, you turn and look out to sea. I’ll come down and pick you up.”

  “Okay. And if no one goes anyplace?”

  “Come supper time we go home,” Hood said. “What else can we do.”

  “And come back tomorrow?”

  “And come back tomorrow,” Hood said. “Unless you get bored and want to quit.”

  “I won’t quit,” Newman said. “Besides, as long as I’m watching him I know he’s not after me.”

  Hood nodded and walked up the street to where the car was parked.

  9

  At seven-twenty in the evening, Newman walked up along the seawall and got into Hood’s car, parked on the street in front of the drugstore.

  “That’s it,” he said. “If I stand there another five minutes my toenails will fall off.”

  Hood started the Bronco and they drove back past Karl’s house. It was as impervious and blank as it had been since they arrived.

  “Well, the first day wasn’t too thrilling,” Newman said.

  “One day it will be,” Hood said. “Things take time. You gotta be careful, and watch, and work out what you’re going to do, and know what you’re up against. Takes time.”

  “Umm.”

  At eight they pulled into Newman’s driveway. Janet’s maroon MG was there with the top up. “Never mess the hair,” Newman said.

  Hood smiled. The house seemed quiet. Newman felt the threat of its silence.

  “Come on in for a beer,” he said to Hood.

  “Sure.”

  They got out of the car and Newman put his hand on the butt of the gun under his shirt. Janet appeared in the doorway. Newman moved his hand away.


  “Where’ve you been,” she said. “I was getting worried.”

  Newman smiled. “I’ll tell you, when we get in. Come on, Chris.”

  They sat at the kitchen table and Newman got two beers from the refrigerator.

  “I’ll have a little wine, Aaron,” Janet said. He poured her a glass of white wine.

  “You hungry?” Newman said to Hood.

  “For sure,” Hood said.

  “There’s steaks in the freezer. You want one, Jan?”

  “Yes, I’d love one. A small one, maybe half.”

  “Yeah, you got a real fat problem,” Newman said. He drank half the beer at one pull on the can.

  “Well, what have you guys been doing?” Janet said.

  Newman put the three steaks, still frozen, in a fry pan on the stove and turned the gas on medium. He drank the other half of the beer and felt it move through him like sap through a tree. He grinned.

  “We been stalking our quarry,” he said. He opened his shirt so that Janet could see the nickel-plated .32 revolver at his belt.

  “Jesus Christ,” she said. “Is that a real gun?”

  Newman opened another beer. He held one toward Hood. Hood shook his head. “Yes, ma’am,” Newman said, “it’s real. And we have been circling in on old Adolph Karl.”

  The steaks began to sizzle in the pan.

  “Well tell me about it. Tell me everything you’ve done today. Are you in on this too, Chris?”

  Hood nodded. Newman began to slice mushrooms into the pan with the steaks. “We found out where he lived,” Newman said, “and we went and looked it over. We figure we can’t get him there so we’re waiting to see if he goes out, or goes to work or something like that. We need to get a place where we can hit him and get away clean. It may take some time.”

  Janet Newman smiled and raised her glass. “Okay,” she said. “Home from the hill is the hunter.”

  Newman smiled back at her. Hood sipped his beer. Newman turned the steaks in the pan with a pair of tongs.

  “How long do you think it will take?” Janet said.

  Hood shrugged. Newman said, “No way to tell. We’ll just have to stay on him and see.” He drank more beer and got another can. This time Hood had some too. Janet had another glass of wine. As he cooked, Newman could feel the swell of his biceps tightening his shirt as he bent his arm to move the mushrooms around in the pan. Janet set the table and put a plate of rolls out. Newman put the steaks on each of three plates. His movements seemed precise to him. Controlled. He added steak sauce to the mushrooms and let the sauce cook down a moment in the pan. Then he spooned a serving onto each plate with a spatula. He spilled none. Good at what I do, he thought.