I had the general layout in my head. I’d spent most of my time in front of yesterday’s fire looking at Julie’s diagrams. The stairway to the attic was down the hall in a small back bedroom. The house was quiet. Faintly somewhere I could hear television. There was a smell of violet sachet and mothballs in the small bedroom. The door to the stairs was where it should have been. It was a green wooden door made of narrow vertical boards with a small bead along one edge. It was closed. There was a padlock on it.
Behind me I heard no hue and cry. The maid would be returning now to say that Mr. English didn’t know a Joseph E. McCarthy, or that the one he knew wasn’t likely to be calling here. I took my small pry bar from my belt. The padlock hasp wasn’t very new, and neither was the door. The maid would look and not see me and be puzzled and would look outside and perhaps around downstairs a little before she reported to English that Mr. McCarthy had left. I wedged the blade of the pry bar under the hasp and pulled the whole thing out of the wood, screws and all. It probably wasn’t much louder than the clap of Creation. It just seemed so because I was tense. The door opened in, and the stairs went up at a right angle, very steep, very narrow treads and high risers. I closed the door and went up the stairs with hand and feet touching like a hungry monkey. Upstairs the attic was pitch-black. I got out my flashlight and snapped it on and held it in my teeth to keep my hands free. I had the pry bar in my right hand.
The attic was rough and unfinished except for what appeared to be two rooms, one at each gabled end. All the windows had plywood over them. I took one quick look and noticed the plywood was screwed in, not nailed. Someone had wanted it to be hard to remove. I tried one door at the near end of the attic. It was locked. I went and tried the other. It opened, and I went in holding the pry bar like a weapon. Except for an old metal frame bed and a big steamer trunk and three cardboard boxes it was empty. The windows were covered with plywood.
If Rachel was up here, she was back in the other room at the gable end. And she was here—I could feel her. I could feel my insides clench with the certainty that she was behind that other door. I went back to it. There was a padlock, this one new, with a new hasp. I listened. No sound from the room. Downstairs I could hear footsteps. I rammed the pry bar in under the hasp and wrenched the thing loose. The adrenaline was pumping, and I popped the whole thing off and ten feet across the attic floor with one lunge. There was saliva on my chin from holding the flashlight. I took the light in my hand and shoved into the room. It stunk. I swept the flashlight around. On an iron-frame bed with a gray blanket around her, half-raised, was Rachel Wallace, and she looked just awful. Her hair was a mess, and she had no makeup, and her eyes were swollen. I reversed the flashlight and shone it on my face.
“It’s Spenser,” I said.
“Oh, my God,” she said. Her voice was hoarse.
The lights went on suddenly. There must have been a downstairs switch, and I’d missed it. The whole attic was bright. I snicked off the flashlight and put it in my pocket and took out my gun and said, “Get under the bed.”
Rachel rolled onto the floor and under the bed. Her feet were bare. I heard footsteps coming up the stairs, and then they stopped. They’d spotted the ruptured door. It sounded like three sets of footsteps. I looked up. The light in this room came from a bare bulb that hung from a zinc fixture in the ceiling. I reached up with the pry bar and smashed the bulb. The room was dark except for the light from beyond the door.
Outside, a woman’s voice said, “Who is in there?” It was an old voice but not quavery and not weak. I didn’t say anything. Rachel made no sound.
The voice said, “You are in trespass in there. I want you out. There are two armed men out here. You have no chance.”
I got down on the floor and snaked along toward the door.
In the light at the head of the stairs was Mingo with a double-barreled shotgun and English with an automatic pistol. Between them and slightly forward was a woman who looked like a man, and an ugly, mean man at that. She was maybe five eight and heavy, with a square massive face and short gray hair. Her eyebrows came straight across with almost no arch and met over the bridge of her nose. They were black.
“Give yourself up,” she said. There was no uncertainty in her voice and certainly no fear. She was used to people doing what she said.
From the dark I said, “It’s over, Momma. People know I’m here. They know I was looking for Rachel Wallace. And I found her. Throw down the weapons, and I’ll bring her out and take her home. Then I’ll call the cops. You’ll have that much time to run.”
“Run?” Momma said. “We want you out of there and we’ll have you out now. You and that atrocious queer.” Mingo had brought the shotgun to the ready and was looking into the room.
I said “Last chance,” and rolled right, over once, and came up with my gun raised and steadied with my left hand. Mingo fired one barrel toward where I had been, and I shot him under the right eye. He fell backwards down the stairs. English began to shoot into the room—vaguely, I guess in the direction of my muzzle flash, but panicky and without much time to aim. He squeezed off four rounds into the dark room and I shot him, twice, carefully. One bullet caught him in the forehead and the second in the throat. He made no sound and fell forward. He was probably dead before he landed. I saw Momma start to bend, and I thought she might keel over, but then I realized she was going for the gun, and I lunged to my feet and jumped three jumps and kicked it away from her, and yanked her to her feet by the back of her collar. There was a little bubble of saliva at the corner of her mouth, and she began to gouge at my eyes with her fingers. I held her at arm’s length—my arms were longer than hers—and looked down at Mingo in a tangle at the foot of the stairs. He was dead. He had the look. You see it enough, you know.
I said, “Mrs. English, they’re dead. Both of them. Your son is dead.”
She spat at me and dug her fingernails into my wrist and tried to bite my arm. I said, “Mrs. English, I’m going to hit you.”
She bit my arm. It didn’t hurt, because she was trying to bite through my coat, but it made me mad. I put my gun away, and I slapped her hard across the face. She began to scream at me. No words, just scream and claw and bite and I hit her with my right fist, hard. She fell down and began to snivel, her face buried in her son’s dead back. I picked up English’s gun and stuck it in my pocket and went down the stairs and got Mingo’s shotgun and jacked the remaining shell out and put that in my pocket and went back up the stairs.
Rachel was standing in the doorway of the room, looking at the carnage and squinting in the light. She had the gray blanket wrapped around her and held with both hands closed at the neck.
I walked over to her and said, “Okay, Jane Eyre, I got you.”
Tears began to run down her face, and I put my arms around her, and she cried. And I cried. In between crying I said, “I got you. I got you.”
She didn’t say anything.
30
THE FIRST COPS to show were cruiser people—three cars’ worth despite the snow emergency—and one of them was Foley, the young cop with the ribbons and the wise-guy face. They came up the attic stairs with guns drawn, directed by the frightened maid who’d called them. He was first. He knew who Rachel was the first look he took.
“Son of a bitch,” he said. “You found her.”
His partner with the belly squatted down beside English and felt his neck. Then he and another prowlie half-lifted, half-helped Momma English off her son’s body. While the prowlie held her, the pot-bellied cop got down on his hands and knees and listened to English’s chest. He looked at the young cop and shook his head.
“Gonzo,” he said. “So’s the horse at the bottom.” He nodded at Mingo, still sprawled at the foot of the attic stairs. They must have had to climb over him. “Two in the head,” he said. He stood up and looked at me. I still had my arms around Rachel. “What the hell you crying for?” he said. “Think how these guys feel.”
Foley spun aroun
d. “Shut up,” he said. “I know why he’s crying. You don’t. Close your fucking mouth up.”
The older cop shook his head and didn’t say anything.
Foley said to me, “You ace these two guys?”
I nodded.
Foley said, “Chief will want to talk with you about all this. Her, too.”
“Not now,” I said, “now I’m taking her home.”
Foley looked at me for maybe thirty seconds. “Yeah,” he said. “Take her out of here.”
The cop with the belly said, “For crissake, the chief will fry our ass. This clown blasts two guys, one of them Lawrence English, and he walks while we stand around. Foley, we got two stiffs here.”
I said to Foley, “I need a ride.”
He nodded. “Come on.”
His partner said, “Foley, are you fucking crazy?”
Foley put his face close to the older cop’s face. “Benny,” he said, “you’re okay. You’re not a bad cop. But you don’t know how to act, and you’re too old to learn.”
“Chief will have your badge for this and mine for letting you do it.”
Foley said, “Ain’t your fault, Benny. You couldn’t stop me.”
Mom English said, “If you let that murderer escape and allow that corrupt degenerate to go with him, I’ll have every one of your badges.”
There were four other cops besides Foley and Benny. One of them had gone downstairs to call in. One was supporting Mrs. English. The other two stood uncertainly. One of them had his gun out, although it hung at his side and he’d probably forgotten he had it in his hand.
“They murdered my son,” she said. Her voice was flat and heavy. “She has vomited filth and corruption long enough. She has to be stopped. We would have stopped her if he hadn’t interfered. And you must. She is a putrefaction, a cancerous foul sore.” The voice stayed flat but a trickle of saliva came from the left corner of her mouth. She breathed heavily through her nose. “She has debauched and destroyed innocent women and lured them into unspeakable acts.” Her nose began to run a little.
I said, “Foley, we’re going.”
He nodded and pushed past Benny. We followed. Rachel still had the blanket around her.
Momma shrieked at us, “She stole my daughter.”
One of the other cops said, “Jesus Christ, Fole.”
Foley looked at him, and his eyes were hot. Then he went down the attic stairs, and Rachel and I went with him. In the front hall on the first floor the two maids stood, silent and fidgety. The cop on the phone was talking to someone at headquarters and as we went past he glanced up and widened his eyes.
“Where the hell you going?” he said.
Foley shook his head.
“Chief says he’s on his way, Fole.”
We kept going. On the porch I picked Rachel up—she was still in her bare feet—and carried her through the floundering waist-deep snow. The cruisers were there in front with the blue lights rotating.
Foley said, “First one.”
We got in—Foley in front, me and Rachel in back. He hit the siren, and we pulled out.
“Where?” Foley said.
“Boston,” I said. “Marlborough Street, Arlington Street end.”
Foley left the siren wailing all the way, and with no traffic but cops and plows we made it in fifteen minutes. He pulled into Marlborough Street from Arlington and went up it the wrong way two doors to my apartment.
“You ain’t here when we want you,” Foley said, “and I’ll be working next week in a carwash.”
I got out with Rachel. I had been holding her all the way.
I looked at Foley and nodded once.
“Yeah,” he said.
He spun the wheels pulling away, slammed the car into snowbanks on both sides of the street making a U-turn, and spun the wheels some more as he skidded out into Arlington.
I carried Rachel up to my front door and leaned on my bell till Susan said, “Who is it?” over the intercom.
I said, “Me,” never at a loss for repartee.
She buzzed and I pushed and in we went. I called the elevator with my elbow and punched my floor with the same elbow and banged on my door with the toe of my boot. Susan opened it. She saw Rachel.
“Oh,” she said. “Isn’t that good!”
We went in and I put Rachel down on the couch.
I said, “Would you like a drink?”
She said, “Yes, very much.”
“Bourbon, okay?”
“Yes, on the rocks, please.”
She still had her gray blanket tightly wrapped around her. I went out in the kitchen and got a bottle of Wild Turkey and three glasses and a bucket of ice and came back out. I poured each of us a drink. Susan had kept the fire going and it went well with the Wild Turkey. Each of us drank.
“You need a doctor?” I said.
“No,” she said. “I don’t think so. I was not abused in that sense.”
“Would you like to talk about it?” Susan said.
“Yes,” Rachel said, “I think I would. I shall talk about it and probably write about it. But right now I should very much like to bathe and put on clean clothes, and then perhaps eat something.” She drank some bourbon. “I’ve not,” she said, “been eating particularly well lately.” She smiled slightly.
“Sure,” I said. “Spenser’s the name, cooking’s the game.”
I started to get up. “No,” she said. “Stay here a minute, both of you, while I finish this drink.”
And so we sat—me and Rachel on the couch, Susan in the wing chair—and sipped the bourbon and looked at the fire. There was no traffic noise and it was quiet except for the hiss of the fire and the tick of the old steeple clock with wooden works that my father had given me years ago.
Rachel finished her drink. “I would like another,” she said, “to take into the bath with me.”
I mixed it for her.
She said, “Thank you.”
Susan said, “If you want to give me your old clothes, I can put them through the wash for you. Lancelot here has all the latest conveniences.”
Rachel shook her head. “No,” she said. “I haven’t any clothes. They took them. I have only the blanket.”
Susan said, “Well, I’ve got some things you can wear.”
Rachel smiled. “Thank you,” she said.
Susan showed Rachel to the bathroom door. “There are clean towels,” Susan said. “While he was out I was being domestic.”
Rachel went in and closed the door. I heard the water begin to run in the tub. Susan walked over to me on the couch.
“How are you?” she said.
“Okay,” I said.
“Was it bad?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Was it English?”
I nodded. She rubbed my head—the way you tousle a dog.
“What was that old song?” she said. “ ‘Joltin’ Joe DiMaggio, we want you on our side.’ ”
“Yeah, except around here we used to sing, ‘Who’s better than his brother Joe? Dominic DiMaggio.’ ”
She rubbed my head again, “Well, anyway,” she said. “I want you on my side, cutie.”
“You’re just saying that,” I said, “because DiMaggio’s not around.”
“That’s true,” she said.
31
WHILE RACHEL WAS in the bath I made red beans and rice. Susan put out the rest of the cornbread and I chopped green peppers and scallions. When Rachel finally came to dinner, she had put on some of Susan’s makeup and a pair of Susan’s jeans and a sweat shirt of mine that was considerably big. The sleeves were rolled up and made a bulky ring around her arms above the elbow. Her hair had been washed and blown dry and looked very straight.
I said, “You want some more bourbon?”
She said yes.
I gave her some more, with ice, and she sat at the table in the dining area and sipped it. I served the beans and rice with the chopped vegetables and some canned chopped tomato on top and put out a dish
of grated cheddar cheese. Susan and I drank beer with the meal. Rachel stayed with the bourbon. Like the martinis she’d been drinking when we met first, the bourbon seemed to have no effect.
There was very little talk for the first few minutes. Rachel ate rapidly. When she had nearly finished, she said, “Julie is that woman’s daughter, did you know that?”
“Yes,” I said.
“They took me because of her, you know.”
“I thought they might have.”
“They wanted to punish me for corrupting their girl child. They wanted to separate us. They wanted to be sure no one would ever see Julie with me. The idea that her daughter could be a lesbian was more than she could think. I think she thought that if I weren’t there, Julie would revert to her normal self.”
She said normal with a lot of bite in it.
“It wasn’t anything to do with your books?” Susan said.
“Maybe it was, too,” Rachel said. “Especially the man. I think he was more comfortable with the kidnaping if it was for a cause. He called it a political act.”
“And what did they plan to do with you?” I said.
“I don’t know. I don’t think they knew. I think the one that actually took me, the big one that works for them …”
“Mingo,” I said. “Mingo Mulready.”
“I think he wanted to kill me.”
“Sure,” I said. “You’d make a damaging witness if you survived.”
Rachel nodded. “And they didn’t conceal their identities. I saw them all, and they told me they were Julie’s people.”
“Did they treat you badly?” Susan said.
Rachel looked down at her plate. It was empty.
I said, “Would you like more?”
She shook her head. “No. It’s very good, but I’m full, thank you.”
“More bourbon?” I said.
“You know, that’s the thing you’ve said to me most, since I got here? You must have great faith in its restorative powers.”
Spencer 06 - Looking for Rachel Wallace Page 16