“You want this?” he said. “Even up the business in the jail?”
“Thank you very much,” I said, and Quirk stepped behind me.
“All yours,” he said, and I snapped a straight left out onto Vest’s nose and drew blood. He put both hands to his face and took them away and stared for a moment at the blood on them. Noses bleed a lot. His partner moved toward me, in a low crouch, swaying gently, his hands up and close together. I turned slightly and drove my right foot in against his kneecap. His leg went out from under him and he fell over. Vest lunged toward the door and as he went past me, I hit him on the back of the head with my clubbed left forearm and he sprawled forward and banged his head on the door and slid to the ground. His partner was on his hands and knees now, scrambling toward the bed. I caught him and dragged him to his feet and turned my hip as he tried to knee me in the groin and took it on my thigh. I banged his nose with my forehead, and pushed him away and hit him left cross straight right, and he fell over on the bed and stayed there holding his nose, which had started to bleed as well. Vest was not unconscious on the floor, but he stayed there on his stomach with his face cradled in his arms.
“You guys are in trouble,” Quirk said, “at several levels.”
I glanced around the room. There was a wallet and a set of car keys on the night table beside the other twin bed.
“First of all, when you had enough help you were banging on a guy, with a billy.”
I walked over to the night table and picked up the wallet. Nobody moved.
“Now you are alone, without backup, in a hotel room with the same guy, and look what happens.”
I opened the wallet and looked at the driver’s license. It was a Washington, D.C., license, issued to Reilly O’Dell. The Partner’s picture was there, unsmiling. And a Georgetown address.
“That’s one level,” Quirk said. He ticked it off on his thumb. His voice was quiet, without anger, a little pedagogical, as if he were discussing evidence evaluation at the police academy, but tinged with sadness at the plight these men were in.
“Then there’s the fact that this asshole”-he nodded at Vest on the floor-“told me to butt out and go back to Boston, and he made fun of my accent, by pronouncing it Bahston.”
Quirk ticked that one off on his forefinger. “I am, of course, en-fucking-raged,” Quirk said. “Which is not good either, because I also can whup you to a frazzle.”
Quirk smiled briefly and without humor at both of them, and held up a third finger. In Reilly O’Dell’s wallet I found some business cards, with his name on them, and the name of his company, Stealth Security Consultants. I passed the license and one of the business cards to Quirk. Still holding his third finger up, in mid-count, he read them. And put them in his pocket.
“Third,” he said. “You guys were participating in the illegal arrest and interrogation of a man whose constitutional rights you have violated worse than Sherman violated Atlanta. Fortunately, I happened by, and seeing an illegal injustice in progress, made a citizen’s intervention. And now”-Quirk held up a fourth finger-“I discover that Mr. O’Dell, here, appears not even to be a police officer.”
I bent over Vest and took the wallet from Vest’s left hip pocket. I opened it and learned that his name was Edgar Grimes and that he too lived in Washington. And he too worked for Stealth Security Consultants. I gave his driver’s license and one of his business cards to Quirk.
“Dandy,” Quirk said. “Now, what the fuck is going on?”
Grimes had turned over on his back and sat on the floor, his back against the wall. His head was in his hands and he was rubbing his temples. The blood continued to run between his fingers and soak his shirt. O’Dell sat up stiffly on his bed not looking at anything. There was very little color in his face, and I could see his Adam’s apple move as he swallowed. His nose seeped only a trickle of blood.
I went to the bathroom, put cold water on a facecloth, wrung it out, and handed it to Grimes on the floor. He held it against his nose.
“You can’t stonewall,” Quirk said. “You’re down here representing somebody with enough clout to get the cooperation of the local Sheriff. Since you’re from DeeCee, it’s probably somebody in government. You’ve participated in a kidnapping. You’ve been caught by a policeman. We get the U.S. Attorney down here from Columbia with one phone call. We get the press down here with one other phone call. You people have fucked the duck, and your only chance to step out of it is to talk to me, frankly”-Quirk flashed the humorless smile again-“and openly.”
I could hear both breathing, and then O’Dell sighed.
“You got a good argument,” he said. We waited.
The late morning sun beamed in through the east-facing bedroom window, and highlighted the dust motes, which drifted in and out of sight as they passed through the sunlight. The motel room was generic. Combination desk, dresser with a television set. A straight chair, two queen-sized beds separated by a table. A phone on the table, a lamp on the wall above it. The walls were beige, the rug was tan, there was an inexpensively framed print on the wall of some Anjou pears in a rose medallion bowl. The closet was behind a louvered door, the bath was past it. There was a brown Naugahyde armchair by the window. On top of the television set was a cardboard stand-up, which described the fun to be had in their lounge.
Grimes continued to hold the cloth against his nose. O’Dell sat up straight. His face was pale and scared; his wide, loose mouth seemed hard to manage.
“You used to work for the government,” Quirk said. “Twenty years in, you took your pension and your contacts and set up in business for yourself.”
“Yes,” O’Dell said.
“And when you were a Fed,” Quirk said, “you mostly spent your time subpoenaing records.”
O’Dell started to protest and stopped and shrugged his high shoulders and nodded.
“You’re in with tough guys, now,” Quirk said.
O’Dell nodded. His hands were folded down at his paralleled thumbs, and he studied them, as if to make sure they were perfectly aligned.
“Your original question,” O’Dell said.
Quirk nodded. Grimes’s nose appeared to have stopped bleeding. But he continued to sit on the floor with his head in his hands.
“The thing is, we don’t know what the fuck is going on.”
“Tell me what you can,” Quirk said. His voice was quiet.
Grimes’s pale blond hair was thinning on top. With his head down, it showed the care with which he had combed his hair to hide that fact. The interchange with me had badly disarranged it, and, stiff with hair spray, the hair stood at random angles.
“We were told to come down here and try to get what he had found out about Olivia Nelson,” O’Dell said.
Quirk smiled.
He said, “Un huh?”
“That’s why we were kinda rough in the cell there,” O’Dell said. “We didn’t really know what to ask.”
Quirk smiled understandingly.
“And you had four guys to help you,” Quirk said.
O’Dell shrugged. “Who asked you to find this out?” Quirk said.
“Mal Chapin.”
“Short for Malcolm?” Quirk said.
“I guess.”
“And who is Mal Chapin?” Quirk said.
O’Dell looked surprised. In his circles, Mal Chapin was probably an important name. “Senator Stratton’s office.”
“He hired you?”
“Well, yeah. We’re, like, ah, friends of the office, you know?”
“And the office steers business your way,” Quirk said.
“Sure. That’s how DeeCee works.”
“Who arranged the deal with the Alton County Sheriff?”
“I don’t know. I assume it was Mal. He’s got a lot of clout with Party people around the country.”
“And when you found out what Spenser knew,” Quirk said, “what then?”
“We see if we can scare him off,” O’Dell said.
“That’ll be the day,” I said.
I sounded exactly like John Wayne. No one seemed to notice. Quirk looked at O’Dell for a long, silent moment. Then he took one of the business cards out of his pocket and went to the phone. He read the dialing instructions, and dialed.
“This is Lieutenant Martin Quirk,” he said. “Is Reilly O’Dell there?… How about Edgar Grimes?… I’m the Homicide Commander, Boston Police Department. Please describe O’Dell for me.”
He waited. Then he nodded. “How about Grimes?” he said. He waited some more.
Then he said, “No, Miss, that’s fine. Just routine police business. What is your name, Miss? Thank you. No, they are not involved in a homicide.”
He hung up. “Your secretary is worried about you,” he said.
Neither of them said anything.
“What is your secretary’s first name?” Quirk said to O’Dell.
“Molly,” O’Dell said.
“What’s her last name?” Quirk said to Grimes.
“Burgin,” Grimes said. He continued to hold his head in his hands and stare at the floor between his feet.
Quirk looked at me. “Got any questions?” I shook my head. “Okay,” Quirk said.
We went to the door. Quirk paused and turned back to O’Dell and Grimes. A bruise was beginning to form on Grimes’s forearm where Quirk had hacked the gun free.
“Have a nice day,” Quirk said.
And we turned and left the room. Nobody said good-bye.
chapter twenty-five
WHEN SUSAN AND I made love at her house, we had to shut Pearl the wonder dog out of the bedroom, because if we didn’t, Pearl would attempt tirelessly to insinuate herself between us. Neither of us much wanted to leap up afterwards and let her in.
It was Sunday morning. We lay under one of Susan’s linen sheets with Susan’s head on my chest in the dead quiet house, listening to the sound of our breathing. I had my arm around her, and under the sheet she was resting the flat of her open hand lightly on my stomach.
“Hard abs,” Susan said, “for a man of your years.
“Only one of many virtues,” I said.
There was a big old windup Seth Thomas clock on Susan’s bureau. It ticked solidly in the quiet.
“One of us has to get up and let the baby in,” Susan said.
“Yes.”
The sun was shining off and on through the treetops outside Susan’s bedroom window and the shadows it cast made small patterns on the far wall. They were inconstant patterns, disappearing when a cloud passed and reappearing with the sun.
“Hawk came by and took me to dinner while you were gone,” Susan said.
“Un huh.”
“Fact, he came by several times,” Susan said.
“He likes you,” I said.
“And I swear I saw him outside my office a couple of times when I would walk a patient to the door.”
“Okay, Quirk asked him to keep an eye on you when I got busted in South Carolina. He knew something was up and he didn’t know what. Still doesn’t.”
“And Martin thought I’d be in danger?”
“He didn’t know. He was being careful.”
“So Hawk was there every day?”
“Or somebody, during the night too.”
“Somebody?”
“Maybe Vinnie Morris, maybe Henry, maybe somebody I don’t know.”
“Maybe someone should have told me.”
“Someone should have, but I’m the only one who knows how tough you are. They didn’t want to scare you.”
“And you think it’s all right now?”
“Yeah. With Quirk involved, and the Federal Attorneys in Boston and Columbia. The cat’s out of the bag, whatever cat it is. No point in trying to chase me away.”
“So I don’t need a guard?”
“No.”
“Wasn’t Vinnie Morris with Joe Broz?” Susan said.
“Yeah, but he quit him a while back, after Pearl and I were in the woods.”
Susan nodded. We were quiet for another while. Susan moved the flat of her hand in small circles on my stomach.
“One of us has to get up and let the baby in,” Susan said.
“Yes.”
The mutable patterns on the far wall disappeared again, and I could hear a rhythmic spatter of rain against the window glass.
Susan said, “I’d do it, but I’m stark naked.”
“I am too,” I said.
“No, you’re just naked,” Susan said. “Men are used to walking around naked.”
“Do you think stark naked is nakeder than naked?” I said.
“Absolutely,” Susan said.
She tossed the sheet off of her. “See?” she said.
I gazed at her stark nakedness for a while. “Of course,” I said and got up and opened the bedroom door.
Pearl rose in one movement from the rug outside the door and was on the bed in my place, with her head on my pillow, by the time I had closed the door and gotten back to the bed. I nudged her over a little with my hip and got in and wrestled my share of the sheet over me, and the three of us lay there with Pearl between us, on her stomach, her head on the pillow, her tail thumping, attempting to look at both of us simultaneously.
“Postcoital languor,” I said.
“First,” Susan said, “you tell me about South Carolina, and then we’ll go out and have a nice brunch.”
So I told her.
“And the woman in Nairobi really is Olivia Nelson?” Susan said.
“Yeah, guy from the American Embassy went over and talked with her. She’s the real thing. Fingerprints all the way back to her time in the Peace Corps, passport, marriage certificate, all of that.”
“Does she have any idea who the woman was that was killed?”
“Says no.”
Pearl squirmed around between us until she got herself head down under the covers, and curled into an irregular ball, taking up much more than a third of the bed.
“What are you going to do now?” Susan said.
She had her hand stretched out above the bulge Pearl made in the sheet, and she was holding my hand, similarly stretched. The rain spattered sporadically on the windowpane, but didn’t settle into a nice, steady rhythm.
“Talk to Farrell, report to Tripp, see what Quirk finds out.”
“He’s still in South Carolina?”
“Yeah, and Belson’s going to go down. They’ll talk with Jumper Jack, and with Jefferson, and they’ll try to get a handle on Cheryl Anne Rankin.”
“I’m glad you came back.”
“Quirk and Belson will get further, they’re official,” I said.
“There was a time,” Susan said, “when you’d have felt obliged to stay there and have a staredown with the Sheriff’s Department.”
“I’m too mature for that,” I said.
“It’s nice to see,” Susan said.
“But I will go back if I need to.”
“Of course,” Susan said. “Too much growth too soon would not be healthy.”
“It’s not just to prove I’m tough. The case may require it. I can’t do what I do if I can be chased out of a place by someone.”
Susan said, “A man who knows about such things once told me, in effect, `Anyone can be chased out of anyplace.”‘
“Was this guy also a miracle worker in the sack?” I said.
“No,” she said.
chapter twenty-six
FARRELL AND I were in my office having some scotch from the office bottle. It was late afternoon, on Monday. Tripp was out of town. Senator Stratton’s office had not returned my call.
“What do you know about Stratton?” I said. “Anything I don’t?”
Farrell looked tired. He shook his head. “Just what I read in the papers, and if you’ve ever been involved in something the papers wrote up, you know better than to trust them.”
I nodded and dragged my phone closer and called Wayne Cosgrove at the Globe. He was in the office more now since they�
��d made him some sort of editor and he had a political column, with his picture at the top, that ran three days a week. When he answered, I punched up the speakerphone.
“You’re on speakerphone, Wayne, and there’s a cop with me named Lee Farrell but all of this is unofficial and won’t go any further.”
“You speaking for Farrell too?” Cosgrove said.
He had a Southern accent you could cut with a cotton hoe, although he’d left Mississippi at least thirty years ago, to come to Harvard on scholarship. I always assumed he kept the accent on purpose.
I looked at Farrell. He nodded. His eyes were red and seemed heavy, and his movements were slow.
“Yeah,” I said. “Farrell too.”
“Okay, pal, what do you need?”
“Talk to me about Senator Bob Stratton,” I said.
“Ahh, yes,” Cosgrove said. “Bobby Stratton. First off he’s a pretty good Senator. Good staff, good preparation, comes down pretty much on the right side of most issues-which is to say I agree with his politics. Got a lot of clout, especially inside the Beltway.”
“How about second off?” I said.
“Aside from being a pretty good Senator, he’s a fucking creep.”
“I hate it when the press is evasive,” I said.
“Yeah. He drinks too much. He’d fuck a snake if you’d hold it for him. I don’t think he steals, and I’m not even sure he’s mean. But he’s got too much. power, and he has no sense of, ah, of limitation. He can do whatever he wants because he wants to and it’s okay to do because he does it. He’s the kind of guy who gooses waitresses. You understand?”
“Money?” I said.
“Yeah, sure. They all got money. How they get elected.”
“Married?”
“To the girl on the wedding cake, two perfect children, a cocker spaniel, you know?”
“And a womanizer.”
“You bet,” Cosgrove said. “Far as I know, it’s trophy hunting. I don’t think he actually likes women at all.”
“You know of any connection between him and Olivia Nelson, the woman who got killed couple of months back in Louisburg Square?”
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