The Hangman's Sonnet

by Reed Farrel Coleman

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I may have a line on him. Remember where you and me had our talk after Gino killed—after Gino died?”

  “Dennis’s?”

  “That place, right.”

  “What about it?”

  “Bolton walked in there the other day and left an address for one of my guys, a guy he did time with. My guy was out of town for the day and by the time he checked the address, Bolton had already split. He ain’t the brightest mutt in the world, but he’s smart enough to change his bed every night.”

  “You think he’s still in town?” Jesse asked, finishing his drink.

  “Sure. He reached out once. He’ll reach out again. When he does, you’ll hear about it.”

  “Thanks for the info and for the drink.”

  Vinnie laughed like a hyena laughed stalking prey. “Always glad to help the cops.”

  “I got some bad news for you. WBMB-FM was sold and the Teacher will be no more.”

  “Too bad. I love that drunk bastard. He brings me back to when I was a kid.”

  “I have trouble picturing you as a kid.”

  “Me too, Stone. That’s why I’ll miss Roscoe Niles.”

  “Remember when we talked about the missing Terry Jester tape?”

  “Sure. What about it?”

  “You mentioned a PI who worked the case. You got a name?”

  Vinnie laughed again. “Spenser. Know him?”

  “We met once. Wouldn’t say I know him.”

  “His office is on the corner of Berkeley and Boylston. Third floor. Need directions?”

  “Thanks. I’ll manage.”

  “Any particular reason you want to talk to him, Stone? Might help you pay back the favor.”

  “You’re a smart man, Vinnie. Why do you think I want to talk to Spenser?”

  Morris showed his white teeth to Jesse in a Cheshire Cat grin. Jesse wasn’t sure how Morris could possibly profit from knowledge of the tape’s reemergence, but Vinnie was clearly pleased. Mob guys, as Jesse was aware, were good at figuring angles that people on the straight couldn’t conceive of. That’s what Jesse was thinking about as he shook Morris’s hand good-bye.

  61

  Jesse wasn’t sure the PI would be in but thought stopping by his office was worth a shot. He might be able to get the same information from the man over the phone. The thing was, he always thought it was better to see a person’s face and body language. The phone robbed you of that. After he rapped on Spenser’s office door, Jesse heard a vaguely familiar voice telling him to come in.

  Spenser was at his desk, leaning back in his chair, his head turned to look out through the bowed window at nighttime Boston below. The office smelled of fresh-brewed coffee and of something else: dog. The source of the coffee aroma was obvious enough. A Mr. Coffee machine atop some metal filing cabinets burbled away, but there was no dog.

  “How you doing, Stone?” Spenser asked without turning to face him.

  “Vinnie Morris give you a heads-up?”

  “Either that or I’m going to take my mind-reading act on the road. Look at it down there. You think you know this city, but it’s never the same place two days in a row. How’s Paradise?”

  “Got two open murder cases. Other than that, it’s heaven.”

  “Sunny always said you had a strange sense of humor.”

  “Most people don’t credit me with having one at all.”

  Spenser turned his attention away from the street. He stood up and came around the desk, right hand extended.

  “You hear from Sunny lately?” Jesse asked, shaking Spenser’s hand.

  “I was going to ask you the same question. She had it bad for you, Stone.”

  “I had it bad for her, too. Sometimes that’s not enough.”

  “Vinnie told me about what happened to your fiancée. Sorry to hear it.”

  “Thanks.”

  Jesse studied Spenser’s face to see if he meant it and that it wasn’t just a thing the PI thought he should say. One look into Spenser’s eyes and Jesse knew he’d meant it. Spenser looked a little older than he had the first time they’d met, his hair a touch grayer. Jesse imagined the PI was thinking the same thing of him. Older or not, Spenser was an imposing man. His arms were thick and muscular, his grip like a metal press. And he moved his six-foot-two two hundred and twenty pounds like he was still in the ring. One look at his boxer’s nose and the scar tissue around his eyes would be warning enough for most people.

  “Coffee, Bushmills, water, or any combination thereof?” Spenser said, walking over to the coffee machine and pouring himself a cup.

  “Coffee with a little Irish.”

  “Have a seat.”

  A minute later Spenser was back behind his desk, Jesse across from him, both holding coffee mugs.

  Jesse raised his mug. “Sláinte.”

  Spenser decided it was time to skip the rest of the small talk and move on.

  “Vinnie also tells me you’re interested in one of my old cases.”

  “The Hangman’s Sonnet,” Jesse said as if that explained it all. Apparently, it did.

  Spenser laughed. “It was an insurance job, sort of.”

  “Sort of?”

  “There had been lawsuits and settlements decades before over the missing tape, but it stuck in the craw of the original insurance investigator, a guy I crossed paths with over the years, Joe Didio. He was retiring and that missing tape was the one case that ate at him and kept him up at night.”

  “There’s an old homicide from when I was in L.A. that haunts me. So what about the case?”

  “We all have them. Look, I’m happy to help, but why’s a man with two open murder cases in a seaside village north of here sitting in front of me discussing my old case, one that wasn’t right to begin with? And what’s with that envelope in the evidence bag. You going to the post office after this?”

  Jesse put the evidence bag on the desk and tossed Spenser a pair of latex gloves. “Be gentle.”

  “You sound like my first girlfriend,” he said, sliding the plastic sheet containing the poem out of the envelope. He took some time reading it. “I’m surprised it exists. It’s not terrible, but I’ll stick with Shakespeare. So is the tape going to finally surface?”

  “That’s my best guess,” Jesse said. “It explains the two open cases in Paradise.”

  “Somebody’s going to have a big payday.”

  “Seems to be the prevailing opinion. What did you mean when you said the case wasn’t right?”

  “You know how when a case ages, people talk because there’s not as much at stake anymore. On this, the statute of limitations had been expired more than fifteen years earlier, but I couldn’t find a thing. Only a few people connected to the case would even talk to me. The ones who did were on the periphery of things. Jester and his manager wouldn’t return my calls, wouldn’t answer the door when I knocked, and even tried to have me roughed up when I persisted.”

  “How’d that work out?”

  “Not so well for the tough guy. He had no defense for my uppercut. Broke his jaw. The owner of the recording studio gave me five minutes but had nothing to say and was still fuming over the whole incident. The A-and-R man from the record label had long since given up the music business for car sales. All he said was that the label had taken a big hit and had gotten a lot of people fired. The only person who really spoke to me was the recording engineer who did the sessions. A nasty piece of work, that one. Guy gave drug abuse a bad name. Him, I couldn’t get to shut up. All he did was go on and on about what prima donnas all the musicians were at the sessions and how he hated the business. Sour grapes.”

  “Did he mention any of the musicians by name?”

  Spenser nodded, sipped from his mug. “But when I tried to contact them, they either ignored my inquiries or denied a
ny involvement at all. Joni Mitchell’s rep even went so far as to send me her tour itinerary to prove she couldn’t have been at the sessions.”

  Jesse drank some, too. “Do you remember this engineer’s name?”

  “Not off the top of my head. I might have it in my notes, but those notes aren’t here. Sorry.”

  “What did you make of it in the end?”

  “The smoke surrounding the missing tape was made by a smoke machine and not a fire,” Spenser said. “If you get my meaning. There was a lot of hype, but nothing to hold on to. If this album was all it was cracked up to be, why has everyone run away from it? If people were proud of it, you’d think all these Rock and Roll Hall of Famers would be telling stories about how cool the sessions were and how honored they were to be a part of it. Seems to me just the opposite is true.”

  After a few minutes of them discussing the open murders in Paradise and Hump Bolton’s whereabouts, Jesse collected the sonnet and shook Spenser’s hand for a second time.

  “You hear from Sunny, let me know,” Spenser said. “I’ll do the same.”

  “Thanks for the help. You remember that engineer’s name, please give me a call.”

  “I’ll find it.”

  When Jesse was down on the street, he looked back up to where Spenser’s office was and wondered if he could live that kind of life after he retired. If he didn’t solve the two murders, he thought he might find out sooner than later.

  62

  Jesse felt spent as he drove back from Boston, his mind almost blank. He hadn’t thought of Diana, as he usually did when he made the drive, nor had he thought about Vinnie Morris. He hadn’t given a thought to Hump Bolton, the dragonfly ring, Kirk Curnutt, Maude Cain, Mayor Walker, or Nita Thompson. He wasn’t even thinking about the sonnet in the envelope on the seat next to him. The one thing that kept going through his mind was a single word Spenser had said: hype.

  Everyone else, from Stan White to Roscoe Niles to Vinnie Morris, had been so damned positive about the surfacing of the missing master tape, but not Spenser. Sure, he thought somebody was going to make a big payday out of it, though he was the only one who seemed skeptical of all the mythology surrounding the album. Jesse wasn’t sure the PI’s skepticism meant anything or would have any effect on the murder cases. Still, he couldn’t get the word hype out of his head.

  As he turned toward home, past the forlorn FOR SALE sign at the edge of the road, Jesse noticed a car parked near the front of his house. As he got closer, he saw that it was Tamara Elkin’s Jeep and that the ME seemed to be asleep in the driver’s seat. Even when Jesse’s headlights shone through her side window, she didn’t stir. Jesse’s heart pounded in his chest in spite of his attempts at being rational. Calm down. She’s fine. She’s just sleeping. Calm down. If you had your way, you’d be asleep, too. She’s just here to talk to you. Calm down. It was a waste of time. What had happened with Diana all came flooding back in.

  He slammed on his brakes and jumped out of his Explorer, unholstering his nine-millimeter as he approached Tamara’s Wrangler. He checked the vehicle for bullet holes or any other signs of violence. Finding none, he tapped the muzzle of his weapon against the driver’s-side window. Tamara stirred immediately and the sleepy look of confusion on her face was quickly replaced by a smile, but the smile was just as quickly replaced by something else. Maybe because he was so tired himself, Jesse couldn’t decipher the full meaning of Tamara’s expression. Whatever her look’s deeper meaning, Jesse could tell it wasn’t good.

  She rolled down her window. “Hi, Jesse. Sorry if I scared you.”

  “Have you been crying? Your mascara is—”

  “I’ll be in in a minute.”

  He knew better than to argue. “I know we’re not supposed to be drinking together, but you look like you could use a—”

  She didn’t let him finish. “Make it a double, one cube.”

  Jesse left the door opened behind him, kicked off his shoes, put the evidence bag containing the envelope down on the kitchen table, and headed straight to the bar. He waved a finger of hello at Ozzie Smith, then poured her drink. He hesitated, but also made one for himself, light on Black Label and heavy on soda. He made Tamara’s as she prescribed, a lot of scotch and more scotch with a single lonely ice cube.

  When Tamara came in, it was obvious to Jesse that she’d fixed her makeup in the car. The streaks of mascara were gone from her cheeks and her fresh coat of lipstick shone in the light, but the makeup could do nothing to hide her red-rimmed eyes. He thought about hugging her, but he knew enough to do this her way and handed her the drink instead. She didn’t even make a weak attempt at a toast or raise her glass except to drink. And drink she did. When she was done, Jesse took the glass from her.

  “Another?”

  “Less scotch, more ice, but yeah, another.”

  After polishing off half of her second Black Label, Tamara said, “Jesse, there’s something . . . We need to talk.”

  He took a small swallow of his drink, put the glass down, and sat on his leather sofa.

  “Okay, let’s talk.”

  “First,” she said, “I need a hug. I need to be held a little.”

  He pulled his right arm back, waving for her to come to him with his left hand. She sat down next to him and placed her head in his lap. Jesse ran his fingers through her impossible tangle of brown curls. It was very intimate, but there was nothing sexual about it.

  “I had a date when I was a kid,” he said, breaking the silence. “Was going pretty well, I thought. But when we were in her living room alone staring at each other, I reached out and stroked her hair. That did it. She made a face at me and she complained she wasn’t a golden retriever and didn’t feel like being petted.”

  Tamara laughed. It was a kind of shrill, manic laugh, not her usual deep laugh.

  “What is it?” he asked when she calmed down. “What’s wrong?”

  “I got offered a job with the Travis County Medical Examiner’s Office. Travis County. That’s Austin, Texas.”

  “When would you have to leave? Are you going to take it?”

  She sat up, stared him in the eyes. “Do you want me to—I mean, do you think I should? I’d start after Labor Day. It means I’d have to give notice now and leave next month.”

  “Is it a step up?”

  “Of course it is. You know why I took the job here, because of the mess in New York.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Uh-huh! Is that all you’re going to say?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  She punched him in the arm. “Damn you, Jesse Stone.”

  He smiled, then asked, “Why would you take it?”

  “The pay is higher. The taxes are lower. The weather’s better. It’d be more of a challenge. My folks are still down there and they’re not getting any younger.”

  “Sounds to me like you’ve made a pretty airtight case for taking the job.”

  She sat up, kissed him softly on the cheek, paused. “That’s why I’m here, stupid.”

  “How’s that?”

  “To let you talk me out of it,” she said. “Or to make me hesitate a little.”

  “Your decision, Doc.”

  “At least tell me you’ll miss me.”

  “You know I will. I miss you already.”

  “That’s better,” she said, resting her head on his shoulder. “Tell me more.”

  63

  Tamara was gone by the time he woke up. Soon she would be gone for good. Another woman out of his life forever. He didn’t want to think about that.

  It had all been a desperate evening, sad, but with some laughs, too. They hadn’t known each other all that long, yet they’d been through a lot together. In spite of their protestations about friendship and no commitments, they’d fallen a little bit in love with each other. How could they not? They were both such loner
s by nature and temperament, so willing to accept the limitations they each imposed on the relationship, there was an inevitability to love. Yet neither one of them would make the first move toward the bedroom. The time for that, if there had ever been one, had passed. Their love was built on friendship. It was an easy kind of love, short on expectations and long on comfort.

  In the shower, Jesse’s thoughts turned away from Tamara’s pending departure to the events of the previous day. He couldn’t get the sonnet out of his head. In death’s black-lined womb I seek her grace. The mirror has revealed my hangman’s face. And with the sonnet in play, it probably wouldn’t be long before word of the missing tape would become public. Once that happened, there would be no controlling what followed. There was no way to get ahead of, around, or over what was headed his way. Maybe, he thought, the best thing to do was to run straight for it.

  Jesse had lathered up half his face when the doorbell rang. His cell was on the vanity to his right. He checked it to make sure he hadn’t missed calls from the station while he was in the shower. The last thing he needed was for Molly and Alisha to show up at his door again. No calls. He wiped the shaving cream off his face, threw on his old Dodgers shorts, and headed down the stairs. Probably Tamara, he thought, reaching for the doorknob. Although he was confident she was going to take the job in Austin, she hadn’t said as much. She probably wanted to come over and get that on the record or give him another chance to talk her out of it. He hadn’t done a very good job of discouraging her last night.

  There was a woman standing on the other side of the door, but it wasn’t Tamara Elkin. Bella Lawton smiled her electric smile at Jesse, and while she had on more clothing than she’d worn the other day by the pool, she was no less attractive. She was dressed in a sheer midriff-baring blouse that left almost nothing for Jesse’s imagination to work with. She wore tight white shorts that were similarly stingy and open-toed shoes with chunky heels. Chunky or not, the heels somehow managed to exaggerate the perfect shape and flawless tan of her legs. And even from where he stood, Jesse could smell the raw scent of Bella’s perfume, all crushed herbs with undertones of patchouli and citrus.