Spencer 06 - Looking for Rachel Wallace

by Robert B. Parker

  “Don’t change the subject for him,” Rachel Wallace said. “Let him answer.”

  She spoke a little sharply for my taste. But if there was anything sure on this earth, it was that Susan could take care of herself. She was hard to overpower.

  “Actually,” she said, “I was changing the subject for me. You’d be surprised at how many times I’ve heard this conversation.”

  “You mean we are boring you.”

  Susan smiled at her. “A tweak,” she said.

  “I bore a lot of people,” Rachel said. “I don’t mind. I’m willing to be boring to find out what I wish to know.”

  The waitress brought me veal Giorgio. I ate a bite.

  “What is it you want to know?”

  “Why you engage in things that are violent and dangerous.”

  I sipped half a glass of beer. I took another bite of veal. “Well,” I said, “the violence is a kind of side-effect, I think. I have always wanted to live life on my own terms. And I have always tried to do what I can do. I am good at certain kinds of things; I have tried to go in that direction.”

  “The answer doesn’t satisfy me.” Rachel said.

  “It doesn’t have to. It satisfies me.”

  “What he won’t say,” Susan said, “and what he may not even admit to himself is that he’d like to be Sir Gawain. He was born five hundred years too late. If you understand that, you understand most of what you are asking.”

  “Six hundred years,” I said.

  5

  WE GOT THROUGH the rest of dinner. Susan asked Rachel about her books and her work, and that got her off me and onto something she liked much better. Susan is good at that. After dinner I had to drive Rachel back to the Ritz. I said goodbye to Susan in the bank parking lot behind Rosalie’s where we’d parked.

  “Don’t be mean to her,” Susan said softly. “She’s scared to death, and she’s badly ill at ease with you and with her fear.”

  “I don’t blame her for being scared,” I said. “But it’s not my fault.”

  From the front seat of my car Rachel said, “Spenser, I have work to do.”

  “Jesus Christ,” I said to Susan.

  “She’s scared,” Susan said. “It makes her bitchy. Think how you’d feel if she were your only protection.”

  I gave Susan a pat on the fanny, decided a kiss would be hokey, and opened the door for her before she climbed into her MG. I was delighted. She’d gotten rid of the Nova. She was not Chevy. She was sports car.

  Through the open window Susan said, “You held the door just to spite her.”

  “Yeah, baby, but I’m going home with her.”

  Susan slid into gear and wheeled the sports car out of the lot. I got in beside Rachel and started up my car.

  “For heaven’s sake, what year is this car?” Rachel said.

  “1968,” I said. “I’d buy a new one, but they don’t make convertibles anymore.” Maybe I should get a sports car. Was I old Chevy?

  “Susan is a very attractive person,” Rachel said.

  “That’s true,” I said.

  “It makes me think better of you that she likes you.”

  “That gets me by in a lot of places,” I said.

  “Your affection for each other shows.”

  I nodded.

  “It is not my kind of love, but I can respond to it in others. You are lucky to have a relationship as vital as that.”

  “That’s true, too,” I said.

  “You don’t like me.”

  I shrugged.

  “You don’t,” she said.

  “It’s irrelevant,” I said.

  “You don’t like me, and you don’t like what I stand for.”

  “What is it you stand for?” I said.

  “The right of every woman to be what she will be. To shape her life in conformity to her own impulse, not to bend her will to the whims of men.”

  I said, “Wow.”

  “Do you realize I bear my father’s name?”

  “I didn’t know that,” I said.

  “I had no choice,” she said. “It was assigned me.”

  “That’s true of me, too,” I said.

  She looked at me.

  “It was assigned me. Spenser. I had no choice. I couldn’t say I’d rather be named Spade. Samuel Spade. That would have been a terrific name, but no. I had to get a name like an English poet. You know what Spenser wrote?”

  “The Faerie Queen?”

  “Yeah. So what are you bitching about?”

  We were out of Marblehead now and driving on Route 1A through Swampscott.

  “It’s not the same,” she said.

  “Why isn’t it?”

  “Because I’m a woman and was given a man’s name.”

  “Whatever name would have been without your consent. Your mother’s, your father’s, and if you’d taken your mother’s name, wouldn’t that merely have been your grandfather’s?”

  There was a blue Buick Electra in front of me. It began to slow down as we passed the drive-in theater on the Lynnway. Behind me a Dodge swung out into the left lane and pulled up beside me.

  “Get on the floor,” I said.

  She said, “What—” and I put my right hand behind her neck and pushed her down toward the floor. With my left hand I yanked the steering wheel hard over and went inside the Buick. My right wheels went up on the curb. The Buick pulled right to crowd me, and I floored the Chevy and dragged my bumper along his entire righthand side and spun off the curb in front of him with a strong smell of skun robber behind me. I went up over the General Edwards Bridge with the accelerator to the floor and my elbow on the horn, and with the Buick and the Dodge behind me. I had my elbow on the horn because I had my gun in my hand.

  The Lynnway was too bright and too busy, and it was too early in the evening. The Buick swung off into Point of Pines, and the Dodge went with it. I swerved into the passing lane to avoid a car and swerved back to the right to avoid another and began to slow down.

  Rachel Wallace crouched, half fetal, toward the floor on the passenger’s side. I put the gun down on the seat beside me. “One of the advantages of driving a 1968 Chevy,” I said, “is you don’t care all that much about an occasional dent.”

  “May I sit up?” she said. Her voice was strong.

  “Yeah.”

  She squirmed back up onto the seat.

  “Was that necessary?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Was there someone really chasing us?”

  “Yeah.”

  “If there was, you handled it well. My reactions would not have been as quick.”

  I said, “Thank you.”

  “I’m not complimenting you. I’m merely observing a fact. Did you get their license numbers?”

  “Yes, 469AAG, and D60240, both Mass. But it won’t do us any good unless they are bad amateurs, and the way they boxed me in on the road before I noticed, they aren’t amateurs.”

  “You think you should have noticed them sooner?”

  “Yeah. I was too busy arguing patristic nomenclature with you. I should never have had to hit the curb like that.”

  “Then partly it is my fault for distracting you.”

  “It’s not your line of work. It is mine. You don’t know better. I do.”

  “Well,” she said, “no harm done. We got away.”

  “If the guy in front of us in the Buick was just a mohair better, we wouldn’t have.”

  “He would have cut you off?”

  I nodded. “And the Dodge would have blasted us.”

  “Actually would he not have blasted you? I was on the floor, and you were much closer anyway.”

  I shrugged. “It wouldn’t have mattered. If you survived the crash they’d have waited and blasted you.”

  “You seem, so, so at ease with all of this.”

  “I’m not. It scares me.”

  “Perhaps. It scares me, too. But you seem to expect it. There’s no moral outrage. You’re not appalled. Or offende
d. Or … aghast. I don’t know. You make this seem so commonplace.”

  “Aghast is irrelevant, too. It’s useless. Or expressing it is useless. On the other hand I’m not one of the guys in the other car.”

  We went past the dog track and around Bell Circle. There was no one noticeable in the rearview mirror.

  “Then you do what you do in part from moral outrage.”

  I looked at her and shook my head. “I do what I do because I’m comfortable doing it.”

  “My God,” she said, “you’re a stubborn man.”

  “Some consider it a virtue in my work,” I said.

  She looked at the gun lying on the seat.

  “Oughtn’t you to put that away?”

  “I think I’ll leave it there till we get to the Ritz.”

  “I’ve never touched a gun in my life.”

  “They’re a well-made apparatus,” I said. “If they’re good. Very precise.”

  “Is this good?”

  “Yes. It’s a very nice gun.”

  “No gun is nice,” she said.

  “If those gentlemen from the Lynnway return,” I said, “you may come to like it better.”

  She shook her head. “It’s come to that. Sometimes I feel sick thinking about it.”

  “What?”

  “In this country—the land of the free and all that shit—I need a man with a gun to protect me simply because I am what I am.”

  “That’s fairly sickening,” I said.

  6

  I PICKED RACHEL WALLACE up at her door at eight thirty the next morning, and we went down to breakfast in the Ritz Café. I was wearing my bodyguard outfit—jeans, T-shirt, corduroy Levi jacket, and a daring new pair of Pumas: royal-blue suede with a bold gold stripe. Smith and Wesson 38 Police Special in a shoulder holster.

  Rachel Wallace said, “Well, we are somewhat less formal this morning, aren’t we? If you’re dressed that way tonight, they won’t let you in the dining room.”

  “Work clothes,” I said. “I can move well in them.”

  She nodded and ate an egg. She wore a quiet gray dress with a paisley scarf at her throat. “You expect to have to move?”

  “Probably not,” I said. “But like they say at the Pentagon, you have to plan for the enemy’s capacity, not his intentions.”

  She signed the check. “Come along,” she said. She picked up her briefcase from under the table, and we walked out through the lobby. She got her coat from the check room, a pale tan trenchcoat. It had cost money. I made no effort to hold it for her. She ignored me while she put it on. I looked at the lobby. There were people, but they looked like they belonged there. No one had a Gatling gun. At least no one had one visible. In fact I’d have been the only one I would have been suspicious of if I hadn’t known me so well, and so fondly.

  A young woman in a green tweed suit and a brown beret came toward us from the Arlington Street entrance.

  “Ms. Wallace. Hi. I’ve got a car waiting.”

  “Do you know her?” I said.

  “Yes,” Rachel said. “Linda Smith.”

  “I mean by sight,” I said. “Not just by hearing of her or getting mail from her.”

  “Yes, we’ve met several times before.”

  “Okay.”

  We went out onto Arlington Street. I went first. The street was normal 9:00 AM busy. There was a tan Volvo sedan parked at the yellow curb with the motor running and the doorman standing with his hand on the passenger door. When he saw Linda Smith, he opened the passenger door. I looked inside the car and then stepped aside. Rachel Wallace got in; the doorman closed the door. I got in the back, and Linda Smith got in the driver’s seat.

  As we pulled into traffic Rachel said, “Have you met Mr. Spenser, Linda?”

  “No, I haven’t Nice to meet you, Mr. Spenser.”

  “Nice to meet you, Ms. Smith,” I said. Rachel would like the Ms.

  “Spenser is looking after me on the tour,” Rachel said.

  “Yes, I know. John told me.” She glanced at me in the rearview mirror. “I don’t think I’ve ever met a bodyguard before.”

  “We’re just regular folks,” I said. “If you cut us, do we not bleed?”

  “Literary, too,” Linda Smith said.

  “When are we supposed to be in Belmont?”

  “Ten o’clock,” Linda said. “Belmont Public Library.”

  “What for?” I said.

  “Ms. Wallace is speaking there. They have a Friends of the Library series.”

  “Nice liberal town you picked.”

  “Never mind, Spenser,” Rachel Wallace said. Her voice was brusque. “I told them I’d speak wherever I could and to whom I could. I have a message to deliver, and I’m not interested in persuading those who already agree with me.”

  I nodded.

  “If there’s trouble, all right. That’s what you’re being paid for.”

  I nodded.

  We got to the Belmont Library at a quarter to ten. There were ten men and women walking up and down in front of the library with placards on poles made of strapping.

  A Belmont Police cruiser was parked across the street, two cops sitting in it quietly.

  “Park behind the cops,” I said.

  Linda swung in behind the cruiser, and I got out. “Stay in the car a second,” I said.

  “I will not cower in here in front of a few pickets.”

  “Then look menacing while you sit there. This is what I’m paid for. I just want to talk to the cops.”

  I walked over to the cruiser. The cop at the wheel had a young wise-guy face. He looked like he’d tell you to stick it, at the first chance he got. And laugh. He was chewing a toothpick, the kind they put through a club sandwich. It still had the little cellophane frill on the end he wasn’t chewing.

  I bent down and said through the open window, “I’m escorting this morning’s library speaker. Am I likely to have any trouble from the pickets?”

  He looked at me for ten or twelve seconds, worrying the toothpick with his tongue.

  “You do, and we’ll take care of it,” he said. “You think we’re down here waiting to pick up a copy of Gone with the Wind?”

  “I figured you more for picture books,” I said.

  He laughed. “How about that, Benny?” he said to his partner. “A hot shit. Haven’t had one today.” His partner was slouched in the seat with his hat tipped over his eyes. He didn’t say anything or move. “Who’s the speaker you’re escorting?”

  “Rachel Wallace,” I said.

  “Never heard of her.”

  “I’ll try to keep that from her,” I said. “I’m going to take her in now.”

  “Good show,” he said. “Shouldn’t be any trouble for a hot shit like you.”

  I went back to the car and opened the door for Rachel Wallace.

  “What did you do?” she said as she got out.

  “Annoyed another cop,” I said. “That’s three hundred sixty-one this year, and October’s not over yet.”

  “Did they say who the pickets were?”

  I shook my head. We started across the street, Linda Smith on one side of Rachel and me on the other. Linda Smith’s face looked tight and colorless; Rachel’s was expressionless.

  Someone among the pickets said, “There she is.” They all turned and closed together more tightly as we walked toward them. Linda looked at me, then back at the cops. We kept walking.

  “We don’t want you here!” a woman shouted at us.

  Someone else yelled, “Dyke!”

  I said, “Is he talking to me?”

  Rachel Wallace said, “No.”

  A heavy-featured woman with shoulder-length gray hair was carrying a placard that said, A Gay America is a Communist Goal. A stylish woman in a tailored suit carried a sign that read, Gay’s Can’t Reproduce. They Have to Convert.

  I said, “I bet she wanted to say proselytize; but no one knew how to spell it.”

  No one laughed; I was getting used to that. As we app
roached the group they joined arms in front of us, blocking the entrance. In the center of the line was a large man with a square jaw and thick brown hair. Looked like he’d been a tight end perhaps, at Harvard. He wore a dark suit and a pale gray silk tie. His cheeks were rosy, and his eye was clear. Probably still active in his alumni association. A splendid figure of a man, the rock upon which the picket line was anchored. Surely a foe of atheism, Communism, and faggotry. Almost certainly a perfect asshole.

  Rachel Wallace walked directly up to him and said, “Excuse me, please.”

  There was no shouting now. It was quiet. Square Jaw shook his head, slowly, dramatically.

  Rachel said, “You are interfering with my right of free speech and free assembly, a right granted me by the Constitution.”

  Nobody budged. I looked back at the cops. The wise-guy kid was out of the squad car now, leaning against the door on the passenger side, his arms crossed, his black leather belt sagging with ammunition, Mace, handcuffs, nightstick, gun, come-along, and a collection of keys on a ring. He probably wanted to walk over and let us through, but his gunbelt was too heavy.

  I said to Rachel, “Would you like me to create an egress for you?”

  “How do you propose to do it,” she said.

  “I thought I would knock this matinee idol on his kiester, and we could walk in over him.”

  “It might be a mistake to try, fellow,” he said. His voice was full of money, like Daisy Buchanan.

  “No,” I said. “It would not be a mistake.”

  Rachel said, “Spenser.” Her voice was sharp. “I don’t stand for that,” she said. “I won’t resort to it.”

  I shrugged and looked over at the young cop. His partner appeared not to have moved. He was still sitting in the squad car with his hat over his eyes. Maybe it was an economy move; maybe the partner was really an inflatable dummy. The young cop grinned at me.

  “Our civil rights are in the process of violation over here!” I yelled at him. “You have any plans for dealing with that?”

  He pushed himself away from the car and swaggered over. His half-chewed toothpick bobbed in his mouth as he worked it back and forth with his tongue. The handle of his service revolver thumped against his leg. On his uniform blouse were several military service ribbons. Vietnam, I figured. There was a Purple Heart ribbon and a service ribbon with battle stars and another ribbon that might have been the Silver Star.