Robert B Parker - Spenser 21 - Walking Shadow

by Walking Shadow(lit)

  "An historic framework is not useless," I said.

  "Certainly not," Christopholous said.

  "But Leonard would argue that you must first tear down the jerry-rigged facade, before you can begin to build a sound framework. Leonard O annoys everyone: secular humanists, fundamentalist Christians, conservatives, liberals, libertarians, blacks, whites, women, men, Jews, homosexuals, heterosexuals, bisexuals, Hari Krishnas, the AMA, you name it."

  "Leonard's the playwright?" I said.

  "Yes."

  "Is that O?" I said, "as in say can you see?" or as in 'story of '?"

  "The latter."

  "Is it his real name?" I said.

  "I doubt it."

  "I'll need to talk with him."

  "That should be interesting," Christopholous said.

  CHAPTER 7

  I sat in DeSpain's office in the back corner of the squad room in the neat, square, one-story, red-brick Port City Police Station.

  DeSpain had his coat off and his gun unholstered and lying on the desk next to the phone.

  "Damn thing gets me in the ribs every time I lean back," he said.

  "Trouble with the nines," I said.

  "They're not comfy."

  DeSpain shrugged the way a horse does when a fly lands on him.

  "You got something on the Sampson killing, or you just in to chew the fat?"

  "I was hoping you had something."

  "Here's everything I got," DeSpain said.

  "Killer was probably male. There's no agreement on what he was wearing, except that it was black. Had on some kind of a black mask with eye holes cut into it. He came in during the play and stood at the top of the aisle maybe ten minutes. People figured he was part of the play. The piece might have been a target gun, though to tell you the truth none of the eyewitnesses know a handgun from their pee pee.

  What everybody agrees is, he fired one shot and put the gun away, and walked out. Nobody saw where he went. ME took a.22 long out."

  DeSpain picked up his gun and aimed it over my shoulder.

  "Bingo," he said.

  "Through his heart."

  "Maybe the guy's a shooter," I said.

  "Sort of showing off with the.22."

  "There was a fad a while back like that," DeSpain said.

  "Mob guys were using.22s."

  "Or maybe it's the only gun he could get his hands on."

  "And it was a lucky shot," DeSpain said.

  "What do you know about the victim?"

  "What is this, Travelers' fucking Aid?" DeSpain said.

  "Hey, I'm telling you all I know," I said.

  "You haven't told me shit," DeSpain said.

  "True, but it's all I know."

  DeSpain shook his head and turned the gun on his desk in a slow circle with his finger through the trigger guard.

  "Don't know much more than you do. Studied acting in New York. Was in some plays I never heard of in places I never heard of. Got a job up here. Kept to himself. Stayed out of trouble. Sound like we're closing in?"

  "Prints?"

  "No record of him ever being fingerprinted."

  "So what do you think?" I said.

  "I think neither one of us knows shit," DeSpain said. He kept the gun turning slowly.

  "Well," I said.

  "It was about something?"

  "Usually is," DeSpain said.

  "Yeah, but this more than most," I said.

  "I mean, if you just want the guy dead you don't dress up in a black costume and shoot him dead on stage in a crowded theater."

  "Wouldn't be how I'd do it," DeSpain said.

  "That's right. But somebody wanted to make a point."

  "And did," DeSpain said. He grinned a big, wolfish grin.

  "Except we don't know what the point was."

  "He was there for a while," I said.

  "What was he waiting for?"

  "Maybe for Sampson to come to the front," DeSpain said.

  "Get a clear shot."

  "Or maybe for Sampson to say the lines he was saying so that the killing would have meaning."

  "To whom?"

  "I don't know."

  "Me either," DeSpain said. He stopped twirling the gun and drummed lightly on it with a forefinger the size of a sap.

  "But it might have to do with love," I said.

  "It's what he was singing about when he got shot."

  "Lucky in love," DeSpain said.

  "So you've been thinking about it too," I said.

  "Some," DeSpain said.

  "So maybe it would mean something to a lover," I said.

  "

  "Cept he didn't have one," DeSpain said.

  "That you know about," I said.

  "You know about one?"

  "No."

  DeSpain did his wolfish smile again, pulling his lips away from his teeth with no hint of warmth or humor. He had big teeth, with prominent canines.

  "Maybe it was a fruitcake," he said.

  "Thinks he's a Ninja assassin. Buys a ticket. Walks in the front door, puts on his mask, works up his courage, does the deed."

  "And that's why he stood there for however many minutes, working up his courage," I said.

  "Sure. Ain't so easy for some people."

  "You got a whacko file?" I said.

  "Sure."

  "Anybody fill the bill?"

  "Not till we get desperate," DeSpain said.

  "Then you make do," I said.

  "I've squeezed a lot of square pegs into a lot of round holes," DeSpain said.

  "Just need to shove sort of hard."

  DeSpain had picked up the handgun and was now twirling it by the trigger guard around his forefinger, like a movie cowboy.

  "You been a cop," he said.

  "Can I see the file?" I said.

  Still playing with the handgun DeSpain reached over to the computer on the side table behind his desk and turned it on with his left hand. When the screen brightened, he tapped the keys for a minute. A list of names formed on the screen.

  "Want a printout?" he said.

  "Or you want to read it off the screen?"

  "Printout," I said.

  DeSpain turned on the printer, hit a couple of keys, and the list began to print.

  "Couple years," DeSpain said, "these things'll violate a suspect's civil rights for you. Won't have to lift a finger."

  The paper eased out of the printer and DeSpain picked it up and handed it to me. He pointed at the list with the muzzle of the gun.

  "Ding dongs are hard to keep track of," he said.

  "List may need an update."

  I nodded.

  "You learn anything, you'll dash right on in here and tell me about it," DeSpain said.

  "Sure. Who's working the case?"

  "Me," DeSpain said.

  "Keeping your hand in?" I said.

  "Sure."

  "I find something, I'll let you know," I said.

  "

  "Predate it," DeSpain said. He scratched a spot behind his ear with the muzzle of the gun.

  "We're fighting crime up here day and night," he said.

  "Day and fucking night."

  "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty," I said.

  DeSpain's wolfish grin flashed again. It was almost a reflex.

  There was no humor in the grin, or in the eyes that were as hard and flat as two stones.

  "Yeah," he said.

  "It is, isn't it."

  CHAPTER 8

  We were in front of a three-hundred-year-old farmhouse set on twelve acres about three miles from the center of Concord, waiting for the real-estate lady. The house didn't look its age, but it didn't look my age either. The foundation plantings were overgrown, the paint was peeling, some of the windowsills had shriveled and warped. The land rolled gently down toward a stream and merged with thickly forested wetlands, where the deciduous trees were already beginning to turn. From most places on the property you could see no other human sign.

  P
earl the Wonder Dog raced around in steadily widening circles, her nose to the ground, her short tail erect. After every full circle she would come to stand in front of Susan with her mouth open, and stare up at her for a moment. Susan would pat her, and Pearl would dash off in another circle.

  A single blue jay curved in past some pine trees and settled on the lawn and cocked his head and listened for worms. He heard none and went up again, circling closer to us before he settled on the limb of a red maple. Like most birds he seemed never completely at rest, moving his head, fluttering his wings, making brief, abrupt hops on his tree limb for no reason that I could see. On the other hand, he may have thought me sluggish, leaning against the car in the last glimmer of sunlight beside this striking woman.

  Probably at least thirteen ways of looking at a blue jay.

  "This is the house," Susan said.

  "Perfect," I said.

  "Having established that we cannot live together, we should buy a house in the country together."

  "We have also established that we can spend weekends together," Susan said.

  "That's because you always distract me with endless sexual invention," I said.

  "Doesn't seem endless to me," Susan said.

  "Ever since I sold the Maine place I've thought we should buy a weekend place out of the city, with some land we could fence, so the baby could run around and point birds."

  "Pearl's instincts run more to pointing Oreo cookies, I think."

  Susan ignored me.

  "And this is the place. It's run down so we can buy it cheap.

  Then you'll fix it up, and we'll come here with Pearl on autumn weekends and roast chestnuts and have a nice time."

  When she was really intense about something she paid very little attention to anything else. Except, usually, me.

  "We always have a nice time," I said.

  "Yes. We do," Susan said.

  "Are you making any progress in Port City?"

  "Sure. Hawk's watching Christopholous and no one's following him," I said.

  "I had a nice talk with DeSpain."

  "Does he know anything?"

  "No. He gave me the psycho list, but there's nothing on it that helps."

  "Is he any good?" Susan said.

  "DeSpain. Yeah. He's a good cop. Very tough cop."

  "Too tough?"

  "Some people thought so," I said.

  "Tougher than you?"

  "Never a horse that couldn't be rode, little lady. Never a rider that couldn't be throwed."

  "Good heavens," Susan said.

  "Does that mean he might be?"

  "Means maybe we'll find out some day," I said.

  "What do you know about Rikki Wu?"

  "Rikki?"

  "Yeah. It's not much, but so far she's the only one who's objected to my looking into the murder."

  "Oh, well, yes, I suppose so. It's hard to take Rikki seriously."

  "Somebody does," I said.

  "If she pawned the jewelry she was wearing the other night, she could buy this house."

  "Her husband, Lonnie Wu, is very wealthy, and Rikki is totally indulged. A Chinese American Princess. It has left her with a feeling of near total entitlement."

  "Perhaps we should introduce her to Pearl," I said.

  "A Canine American Princess," Susan said.

  "Rikki gives large sums of money to the theater."

  "And now she's on the board," I said.

  "Can you arrange for me to have lunch with her?"

  "I'm not sure she'd be willing to see you."

  "Mention to her about me being hunk city."

  "I'll ask her to lunch with both of us, and then I'll have a crisis with a patient and you can convey my apologies."

  "Okay," I said.

  "But I think hunk city would have worked just as well."

  "Rikki's too self-centered to be flirtatious," Susan said.

  "Shows what you know," I said.

  "You seriously think..." Susan started, but Pearl started barking and jumping around, and the real-estate lady pulled up in her maroon Volvo station wagon. When the real-estate lady got out, Pearl dashed up to her and rammed her head between the real estate lady's thighs.

  "How embarrassing," Susan said.

  The real-estate lady smiled and patted Pearl. She didn't mind at all. She knew Pearl's owner was a live one.

  "House needs a lot of work," I said.

  "We prefer the term 'great potential,"

  " the real-estate lady said.

  "I bet you do," I said.

  "In this price range. In a lower price range we would prefer the term 'handyman's special,"

  " she said.

  "You like this kind of work," Susan said to me.

  "At my own pace," I said.

  "Of course," Susan said and smiled at me.

  I smiled back. I didn't believe her for a moment, but her smile was worth any servitude. Which is how I found myself, an hour later, the co-owner of a very large house, with a jumbo mortgage, on a street where other home owners raised cows and rode horses and drove Volvo station wagons.

  If I weren't so heroic, I would have been nervous.

  CHAPTER 9

  I felt like a college recruiter. All day I had been sitting in the back row of the empty theater interviewing people about Craig Sampson. I had begun at eight in the morning with Leonard O, himself, in to audition for Craig Sampson's replacement. The first thing I noticed was that Leonard had no beard. It wasn't that he was clean-shaven; he appeared never to have needed a shave. His blond hair was shoulder-length and lank. He had a small voice like the bleat of a goat, and he chewed gum very rapidly. I trow he were a gelding or a mare.

  We shook hands. His eyes seemed not to register me, and his handshake was a limp squeeze with the tips of his fingers.

  "I don't have much time," he said.

  "I have a full day of listening to actors botch my lines."

  He didn't look at me when he spoke. His gaze flitted without apparent purpose.

  "I'm looking into Sampson's murder," I said.

  "Murder is the bloodiest of the creative arts," he said.

  "I kind of figured it was a destructive art," I said.

  "The death of the individual may be destructive," O said.

  "But the act itself, its conception and performance, may be quite artful."

  "Encores are hard."

  O was scornful.

  "Like so many people you conceive of art in the narrowest possible terms," he said.

  "Museum art."

  "I love that Norman Rockwell, don't you?" I said.

  "Don't be ridiculous," O said.

  "Any reasons you can think of why someone would kill Craig Sampson?" I said.

  O's gaze nickered past me. His eyes were never still, and he never looked at me except in passing.

  "Of course, dozens of reasons: unrequited love, passion, jealousy, vengeance, lust expressed through violence, political zeal, money, greed..."

  O shrugged as if to indicate that he had but scratched the surface.

  "Pride, lust, envy, anger, covetousness, gluttony, and sloth," I said.

  "I thought of those too. Anything less general?"

  "I knew him only as an actor in my play. He was inadequate.

  But all the other candidates were even more so."

  "What was his greatest failing?" I said.

  "Passion. He mouthed the words like a player piano. He did not feel the emotive rhythms that stirred beneath the language."