Robert B Parker - Spenser 21 - Walking Shadow

by Walking Shadow(lit)

  The rain was slower than it had been last time I was in Port City, but it was steady and it made the fall morning dark. The light from the restaurant window reflected on the wet pavement. A Port City police car cruised slowly past, its headlights on, its wipers going.

  The door of the Happy Haddock opened, bringing with it the rain-dampened smell off the harbor, and Jocelyn Colby came in wearing a belted tan raincoat and carrying a green-and-white umbrella. She closed the umbrella and put it against the wall and walked to our table.

  "Thank God," she said.

  "I saw you through the window. I need to talk."

  I gestured at the empty chair. She looked uneasily at Hawk and sat. I introduced them.

  "Coffee," I said.

  "No. Yes. Black. Thank you."

  I got up and got us three cups and brought it back. One of the old men at the counter poked the other one and they both stared at Jocelyn. The kid behind the counter went back to reading The Want Advertiser. Probably looking for a deal on moustache wax.

  "What's new," I said when I sat down.

  Jocelyn looked sideways at Hawk.

  "May I speak freely?" she said.

  "Sure."

  "I... it's about the case."

  I nodded. She hesitated.

  "You can talk in front of Hawk," I said.

  "He's too dumb to remember what you said."

  "Lucky thing too," Hawk said, "Cause I a bad blabbermouth."

  Jocelyn couldn't tell if she were being kidded. Her glance shifted back and forth.

  "Hawk's with me," I said.

  "You can talk to us."

  Jocelyn held her coffee mug in both hands, took a swallow, held the mug against her lower lip, and looked at me over the rim.

  "I'm being followed," she said.

  Jocelyn waited, allowing the impact of her statement to achieve all it was going to.

  "Lot of that going around," Hawk said.

  "Tell me about it," I said.

  "He's medium height and slender," Jocelyn said.

  "Black coat and a black slouch hat pulled low."

  "When did he start shadowing you?" I said.

  "Two nights ago."

  "And why not go to the cops?"

  "Well... I mean, Jimmy said you were here because someone was stalking someone. And then I was hurrying along the street and I saw you..."

  "Sure," I said.

  "And I have such a kind face."

  "Yes," she said.

  "You do."

  "So what would you like?" I said.

  "Like? I... Well, I guess I thought you'd want to look into it.

  I don't know exactly, but... in truth, I guess I thought you might want to, ah, protect me."

  "Are you saying you want to hire me?"

  "Hire?"

  "Yeah. I do this for a living. Or I used to, before I came down here."

  "Well... of course, I... I don't have any money."

  "Lot of that going around too," Hawk said.

  He was looking out at the street. Suddenly he put out his left arm and swept Jocelyn off her chair and onto the floor. I dove on top of her and Hawk hit the floor beside us, the big.44 Magnum gleaming in his hand. Above our heads the plate glass window shattered and the bubbling chatter of an automatic weapon came with it. Glass fell on us. Jocelyn was screaming. Then there was stillness. I realized my gun was out too. I looked around the restaurant. It was as if the film had stopped. The kid reading his Want Advertiser, the old woman at the grill, the two geezers at the counter, were all frozen in silence and slow time. None of them seemed to be hurt. Hawk was up. He never seemed to get up or down; it was as if he just reincarnated in one position or the other.

  I started to get up and found that Jocelyn was clinging to me in an embrace that seemed as much passion as fear.

  "Stay down on the floor," I said and shrugged loose from her and stood and looked carefully out the window. The street was empty. The rain was blowing in through the space where the window had been.

  "Uzi," I said.

  "Un huh. Maroon Buick station wagon, maybe 1990, '91.

  Coming slow, window down on the passenger side. Why somebody driving in the rain with the window down? Then he stuck the gun barrel out."

  "Too soon," I said.

  Hawk nodded.

  "Shoulda come down the street at a normal speed, windows up," he said.

  "Shooter shoulda been in back. They should have pulled into the curb like they were parking. Driver shoulda hit the rear-window button and the shooter shoulda opened up as it went down. We be dead now."

  "Well, maybe they're young, and from another country," I said.

  "Was that a machine gun?" the kid behind the counter said.

  "Assault rifle," one of the geezers said.

  "I'll bet it was one of them damned assault rifles."

  The old woman had gone in the back room without a word. I put my gun away and reached down a hand to Jocelyn Colby. She took it and stood up, and kept hold of my hand. The old woman came out of the back room.

  "Police coming," she said.

  "

  "Course they really going to do it right," Hawk said.

  "Shoulda walked in and opened up."

  He put the Magnum away under his coat. He looked out at the empty street and shook his head.

  "Drive-bys are sloppy," he said.

  The old woman had a push broom and was carefully sweeping the broken glass into a pile in the middle of the room. She moved implacably and slow, as if movement had always hurt her and she had always moved anyway. Jocelyn continued to cling to my hand, standing very close to me.

  "Were they trying to kill me?" Jocelyn said.

  Hawk grinned without comment.

  "Maybe not," I said.

  "Maybe they were trying to kill me."

  CHAPTER 15

  A close-up company was power-screwing plywood panels over the shattered window. The crime scene people were through digging slugs out of the woodwork and had departed. Everyone else had made a statement and gone home, except the old lady who was in the back room making phone calls. DeSpain sat on one of the stools, his elbows resting on the counter behind him.

  "So what were you two guys doing up here?"

  "Drinking coffee," I said.

  "Eating donuts."

  "Just like real coppers," DeSpain said.

  "You still working on the murder?"

  "Yeah."

  "What's Hawk doing here?"

  "Helping," Hawk said.

  "Helping what?"

  "Helping the investigation."

  "Hawk." DeSpain looked tired.

  "You don't fucking investigate."

  Hawk smiled.

  "What you talking to the broad about?" DeSpain said.

  "The murder. I'm trying to talk with everybody about the murder."

  "Counter kid says she came in after you."

  "Sure," I said.

  "She knew I wanted to talk with her, saw us here, came in."

  DeSpain nodded.

  "And Hawk was here in case she got outta hand. Who you figure fired thirty rounds or so through the window at you?"

  "What makes it us?" I said.

  "Who else was sitting in the window. You hadn't hit the deck, you'd have been dead."

  "And nobody else with a scratch," I said.

  DeSpain grinned.

  "And they didn't hit the deck," he said.

  "Sort of suggestive?" I said.

  "So," DeSpain said, "say they were after you. Who might they have been?"

  I spread my hands.

  "Everyone loves us," I said.

  DeSpain looked around the room, the back wall pocked with bullet holes, the window nearly boarded up.

  "Some more than others," he said.

  "Ain't that always the way," I said.

  "You got anything to say," DeSpain said to Hawk.

  Hawk smiled his friendly smile.

  "No," he said.

  We all sat. The last pi
ece of plywood went in. The place was quiet.

  "Who you got in Port City," I said, "might do this?"

  "It's a funny city," DeSpain said.

  "Population about 125,000.

  You got about 20,000 WASPs live up on the hill, worry about new Beaujolais and civil rights in The Horn of Africa. Along the waterfront you got some 20,000 Portagies, worry about George's Bank and fava beans. In between, at the bottom of the hill, on the flats inland, you got about 60,000 Chinamen. Sort of a Chink sandwich, between the Yankees and the Portagies. Chinks are worried mostly about staying alive."

  "How come so many Chinese?" I said.

  "When the mills were here it was mostly French Canuck labor.

  When the mills pulled out, the Canucks left. The Yankees kept looking for a place to put money. The Portagies kept fishing. They needed fish-processing plants, and they needed cheap labor to make it work."

  "Where there's a will, there's a way," I said.

  "You got any thoughts on who did the shooting?"

  "Probably not the Yankees," DeSpain said.

  "They're not against it, but they'd hire it done."

  "Who would they hire?" I said.

  DeSpain looked at me and his lips curled back in what he probably thought was a smile.

  "Didn't we get confused here?" he said.

  "I think I'm supposed to ask you questions."

  "Just trying to be helpful," I said.

  "Yeah," DeSpain said.

  "Both of you. I'm lucky I don't have to go it alone."

  Hawk and I both smiled politely.

  "Well, unfortunately, I guess you'll be around," DeSpain said.

  "I might want to talk with you some more."

  "Anytime," I said.

  We were all silent again.

  "You too, Hawk," DeSpain said after a moment.

  "Anytime," Hawk said.

  The old lady came out of the back.

  "You wanna lock up now, Evangelista?" DeSpain said.

  She shook her head.

  "Insurance man coming," she said.

  "Okay," DeSpain said.

  He stood up, a big, solid, healthy-looking guy, with a big friendly face. And eyes like blue basalt.

  "Anything comes to mind," he said, "you'll call."

  "In a heartbeat," I said.

  DeSpain looked at Hawk, opened his mouth, and closed it. He shook his head.

  "Of course not," he said and went on out the door. Hawk and I went out after him. DeSpain got in a waiting car and drove away.

  Hawk and I walked to my car parked by the theater.

  "You didn't say nothing about Mr. and Mrs. Wu," Hawk said.

  "I know," I said.

  "DeSpain bothers me."

  "Always had the reputation he cut it kind of fine," Hawk said.

  "Yeah."

  The rain dripped off the bill of my Chicago White Sox cap. I brushed it away. The smell of the rain mixed with the salt smell of the harbor, freshening it, making Port City downtown seem cleaner than it was.

  "DeSpain told me the FBI couldn't match Sampson's prints."

  "The guy got shot."

  "Yeah. But Susan told me he'd gone to school on the GI Bill.

  Which would mean he was a veteran."

  "Which would mean they'd have his prints in Washington."

  "Maybe Susan's wrong," Hawk said.

  "Maybe."

  "Maybe Sampson lied to her."

  "Maybe."

  Hawk grinned.

  "Or maybe DeSpain lying to you."

  "Maybe," I said.

  "I figure I'll just keep still until I find out what the sides are up here."

  "Never got in no trouble keeping still," Hawk said.

  A nine-passenger van rolled by, its headlights on, its wipers working, splashing water from the gutter onto the sidewalk. In the van were nine Chinese men, waiters probably, going to work.

  "Me either."

  Hawk was wearing something that looked like a black silk raincoat. The rain beaded up on it in translucent drops before it serpentined down the fabric. He wore no hat, and if he minded the rain on his skull, he didn't show it. On the other hand, except for amusement and not amusement, he never showed anything.

  "What we going to do about the lovely Jocelyn?"

  "You think she's being followed?"

  "No."

  "I don't either," I said.

  "Why don't we believe her?"

  "Instinct, babe. We been doing this kind of thing a long time."

  "What if we're wrong."

  "I'm not usually wrong."

  "That's because you're closer to the jungle than I am. But maybe we better be sure."

  Hawk shrugged.

  "You want me to shadow her?"

  "For a while."

  "I bet I be the only one," Hawk said.

  I shrugged.

  "Besides," Hawk said.

  "They never had no jungles in Ireland.

  Your ancestors just paint themselves blue and run around in the peat bogs."

  "Well, it was a damned nice blue," I said.

  CHAPTER 16

  A cop I knew named Lee Farrell was working with me in Concord, and when we got the back stairwell down, and the rubble cleaned away, we noticed that the beams supporting the open perimeter of the now st airless well rested, at either end, on nothing at all. As far as we could tell, they were held up by the floor they were supposed to be supporting. This seemed to me an unsound architectural device, so Lee and I went down to Concord Lumber and bought a couple of ten-foot two-by-eights that were long enough to reach the cross members, and scabbed them onto the unsupported beams with ten-penny nails. Then I climbed down off the step ladder and we went out to have lunch with Susan on a picnic table she'd bought and had delivered, under one of the trees she'd pruned. It was October and bright blue, with a background of leaf color, and no wind. There were enough leaves underfoot to help with the autumnal feeling, but the weather was warm, and the sky was cloudless.

  "Before you sit down," Susan said, "get me that blue tablecloth out of the car."

  I got the tablecloth and started to spread it on the picnic table, and Susan thought that I was not doing a good job and took it over.

  She got the cloth situated on, and put a purple glass vase with wild flowers in it at one end of the table.

  "Isn't that pretty?" Susan said.

  "Lee found it in one of those closets you ripped out in the dining room."

  "Who picked the flowers?" I said.

  "Lee," Susan said.

  "There's a whole sea of them down there."

  She nodded toward the stream at the foot of the property, where the woods began.

  I looked at Farrell. He shrugged.

  "I'm gay," he said.

  "Whaddya want?"

  "What next," I said.

  "A lavender gun?"

  Susan put a large takeout bag on the table and began to distribute food.

  "Turkey, lettuce, tomato with sweet mustard on fresh whole wheat bread," she said.

  "There's a nice little sandwich shop in town. And some bread and butter pickles, and some spring water.

  Does anyone want beer? Or some wine?"

  "Rip-out guys don't do wine," I said.

  Farrell grinned.

  "Whoops," he said.

  I settled for spring water, hoping not to sever a limb with the Sawzall, and Lee did the same. Susan had a Diet Coke, warm.

  Farrell stared at it.

  "Diet Coke? Warm?"