Small Vices

by Robert B. Parker

  "He could have dropped the clothes off in a Dumpster somewhere."

  "Why take them at all?" Hawk said.

  "I can't imagine," I said. "Ellis has spent half his life in the criminal justice system. He'd know better than to be caught with stuff like that."

  "He'd leave them right where they fell," Hawk said.

  "Sure, unless there was something about them that would incriminate him."

  "Like what?" Hawk said.

  "If she fought him enough to draw blood."

  "But she didn't."

  "According to the coroner's report there was no blood under her fingernails," I said. "No fend-off bruises on her arms. In fact, there's no sign of her putting up any resistance."

  "And Ellis didn't have a mark on him," Hawk said.

  "Maybe he took her to his home and undressed her there."

  "And then killed her and drove all the way back out to Pemberton with her dead in the car? Or drove her out naked in the car and killed her there?"

  "Don't make any sense," Hawk said.

  "No, it doesn't."

  "So who would take the clothes?" Hawk said.

  "Someone who didn't know what they were doing and panicked."

  "Don't sound like my man Ellis," Hawk said.

  "No, it doesn't."

  We were quiet. The scallops and coleslaw were gone. There was about one glass each left of the wine. Hawk picked up the bottle.

  "Don't keep so good once it's opened," he said.

  "I know," I said.

  "Better finish it up," Hawk said.

  "We'd be fools not to," I said.

  Hawk poured out the wine, and we sat in the quiet office and looked out at the bright morning and finished it.

  Chapter 23

  THE MAROON CHEVY wagon that had picked up Beer Keg and his crew was registered to Bruce Parisi at an address in Arlington, near the Winchester line. I called Rita Fiore. "Can you find out if a guy named Bruce Parisi, currently living on Hutchinson Road in Arlington, has a record."

  "Sure."

  "And, if he does, and I'll bet he does, get me whatever you can on him."

  "Sure, I'll call you back."

  "No, I'm in the car," I said. "It's easier if I call you."

  "Well, a car phone?"

  "Modern crime fighter," I said.

  It was a bright, windy day at the rim of the Mystic lakes. I turned left off Mystic Street and onto Hutchinson Avenue and drove across the slope of a pretty good-sized hill parked a little downhill from the house and across the street. It was a white colonial with green shutters and a screened porch on the side. It sat further uphill from the road. A long hot top driveway ran up past the screen porch and widened into a turn-around in front of a two-car garage set back of the house. The Chevy wagon was in the turn-around.

  I sat with the motor idling and scanned the dial for music. My favorite, Music America, had been taken off the local public radio station by the airheads who ran it. I listened occasionally to one or another of the college stations, but they tended to play fusion, and the DJs were usually painful. I hit the scan button and watched it go around the dial without finding anything I wanted to hear. While I sat with the scanner scanning, the front door opened and a man came down the front steps looking like he was going to a reception at the British Consulate in a blue Chesterfield overcoat and a gray homburg hat. He got in the Chevy wagon, backed down the long driveway, and headed out past me toward Mystic Street. I let him turn the corner and U-turned and drifted along behind him. I could afford to lay back and let him get ahead of me. If I lost him, I knew where he lived. When you have that luxury, tailing is a breeze. We went along Mystic Street, turned onto Medford Street, and went through West Medford into Medford Square. He went down an alley between two buildings. I pulled up across from the alley entrance next to a "No Standing" sign and waited. In a minute or two he came out of the alley and went into a store front. The sign in the front window said "Parisi Enterprises." I picked up my car phone and called Rita Fiore.

  "I'm sitting outside Bruce Parisi's office in Medford Square," I said. "What do you have on him."

  "Been arrested three times," Rita said. "Loan sharking twice, once for strong arm stuff: he contracted some goons to help break a strike."

  "Where's Eugene Debs when you need him," I said.

  "There's something might be interesting, though. Last time he was busted, two years ago for loan sharking, the arresting officer was a State Detective named Miller."

  "Tommy Miller?"

  "Yes," Rita said. "Wasn't he the man who arrested Ellis Alves?"

  "Yes," I said. "He was."

  "Is it interesting?"

  "Yes, it is."

  "You want to tell me what you're doing?"

  "If I knew, I would. But I don't, so please don't embarrass me by asking."

  "Fine," Rita said. "Have a nice day."

  We hung up. My car wouldn't last ten minutes where I was. I swung it across the street and down the alley behind Parisi Enterprises. There were three parking spaces back there. A sign on the back of the building said "Reserved for Parisi Enterprises. All Others Will Be Towed." There was a car in each space. I parked directly behind the maroon Chevy. I didn't want Parisi leaving before I did anyway. I took my.38 out and looked to see that there were bullets in all the proper places. I knew there would be, but it did no harm to be careful. And I'd seen Clint Eastwood do it once in the movies. Then I put the gun back on my hip, got out of the car, and strolled up the alley to the front of the building.

  Parisi Enterprises didn't have a lot of overhead. The office was furnished with two gray metal desks, a gray metal table, and two swivel chairs. There was an empty pizza box on the table, and several days' worth of the Boston Herald scattered on one of the desks. The other desk held a big television set on which a talk show host was examining the issue of cross dressing with a bunch of guys in drag. Parisi had folded his coat on the empty swivel chair and put his gray homburg on top of it. He was seated behind the newspaper-littered desk talking on the phone. His hair was black and combed back in a big Ricky Ricardo pompadour that gleamed with hair spray. That he had been able to wear a hat without messing his do was a tribute to the holding power of whatever he sprayed on it. He didn't look too tall, but he was fat enough to make up for it. Under his several chins he wore a white spread collar attached to a blue striped shirt. His tie was blue silk, and his blue double breasted suit must have cost him better than a grand because it almost fit him. He crooked the phone in his shoulder when I came

  "Wait a minute," he said into the phone, "a guy came in."

  He spoke to me. "Whaddya want?" he said.

  "You Bruce Parisi?" I said.

  "You a cop?" he said.

  "No."

  "Then take a hike," he said. "I'm on the phone."

  "Hang it up," I said.

  "Fuck you, pal."

  I walked over to the wall and yanked the phone wire from the phone jack. Parisi looked as if he couldn't believe what he had just seen.

  "What are you, fucking crazy, you walk in here to my office and fuck with me?"

  He let the phone fall from his shoulder as he stood and his hand reached toward his hip. I hit him with all the left hook I had handy and knocked him backwards over the swivel chair and into the wall behind it. The swivel chair skittered on its casters like something alive, the seat spinning and crashing into the desk as Parisi slid down the wall and landed on the floor, with one foot bent under him and the other tangled in the chair. I got a hold of his big pompadour and dragged him to his feet and slammed him face first against the wall. On his hip was a Berretta.380 in a black leather holster, the skimpy kind of holster that allows the gun barrel to stick through. I took the Berretta out of the holster and dropped it in the pocket of my coat and stepped away from him. He didn't move. He stood with his face pressed against the wall, his hands at his sides.

  "Gimme a day, two at the most, I'm working on a thing. I'll have the money by tomorrow," he
said.

  "I'm not here about money," I said.

  "What do you want?" he said into the wall.

  "I want to know why four stiffs came to my office and threatened me if I didn't drop the Ellis Alves case."

  "I don't know," he said. "Why should I know."

  I stepped in close to him and dug a left into his kidneys. He gasped and sagged a little against the wall.

  "You sent them," I said.

  "I don't even know who you are," he said.

  "My name's Spenser. You know a guy named Tommy Miller?"

  "Yeah."

  "You sending the sluggers to my office got anything to do with him?"

  "I don't know what you're…"

  I hit him again in the same kidney. He made a kind of a yelp and his knees sagged. He turned toward me and slid his back down the wall until he was sitting on the floor, his fat legs splayed out in front of him.There was blood on the corner of his mouth. It took him a couple of tries to speak.

  "Yeah. Tommy said he wanted you roughed up. I owed him a favor. I sent out some guys."

  "Why'd you owe him a favor?"

  "He, ah, he helped me out when I got nabbed."

  "How?"

  "Got rid of some stuff."

  "Evidence?"

  "Yeah."

  "What are friends for," I said.

  "No harm done," Parisi mumbled. "Nobody roughed you up. We was only going to scare you."

  "If you scare me again," I said, "I will come back and kick your teeth out."

  "No trouble," Parisi said. "No trouble."

  "Sure," I said and walked out.

  Chapter 24

  SUSAN GAVE A speech to a conference of professional women at the Hotel Meridien. I stood, slightly restless, in the back and listened, and afterwards we went to the august, high-ceilinged bar on the second floor for a drink. Maybe two. "Podium magic," I said to Susan and raised my beer glass toward her in salute.

  "Did you think I was good?"

  "Wouldn't the term `podium magic' imply that?" I said.

  She smiled.

  "Okay, I'll be more direct. Say more about how wonderful I was."

  "You were profound, witty, graceful…"

  "And stunning," Susan said.

  "Isn't appraising a woman's appearance a sexist indiscretion?" I said.

  "Absolutely," Susan said. "Do I look especially stunning in this dress?"

  The dress was black and simple with a short skirt. She did look stunning in it, but it wasn't the dress. She still harbored the illusion that what she wore made a large difference in how she looked. I had years ago given up explaining to her that whatever she wore she was beautiful, and clothes generally benefited from being on her.

  "Especially," I said.

  Susan was having a martini, straight up, with olives. I was drinking Rolling Rock beer.

  "If we had a child it wouldn't have to be icky like Erika," Susan said.

  "Not to us," I said.

  "I mean, she's had an odd and difficult childhood. No father, and Elayna is a dear friend, but she's a little flappy."

  "Boy," I said, "sometimes I have trouble following you when you lapse into professional jargon."

  "We might be very good parents."

  "Because?"

  "Because we're pretty good at everything else, why would we be bad at parenting?"

  We were sitting on a little sofa with a small table in front of us. There were two chairs on the other side of the table, but four people would have been a squeeze. I ate several nuts from the bowl in front of me. Susan speared one of her olives on a toothpick.

  "Well, what I think is this," I said. "You have kids when you're, say, twenty-five and you spend the next eighteen or twenty years doing little else but bringing them up. And finally you get them old enough and they are out on their own, and you let out the breath you've been holding for two decades and you look around and you're, say, forty-five. You still have a lot of time left to obsess about each other or baseball, or your job, or triple espresso-whatever it is that gets your attention."

  "But because we've started late, when you and I reach that point…"

  "Children are best had early," I said. "So that you can enjoy them in their adulthood and yours."

  "Perhaps we wouldn't have to be so totally involved," Susan said.

  I looked at her without saying anything. After a moment she smiled and nodded.

  "Of course we would," she said.

  A tall man in dark clothes slipped into one of the two vacant chairs at our cocktail table. He was wearing a charcoal suit, a dark gray shirt, and a gray silk tie. His charcoal hair was longish and brushed back on the sides. It was gray. His face was sort of gray sallow, as if he spent a lot of time indoors. His eyebrows were gray and peaked in the center over each eye, which made him seem quizzical. He had a small emerald in his right ear. His hands were strong looking, with long fingers. His nails were manicured and freshly so. They gleamed dully in the bar light. His eyes were dark and his stare seemed bottomless. If I had been a dog, the hair would have risen along my backbone. I could feel Susan's thigh tense against mine.

  "I have something to tell you," he said.

  His voice was soft and hoarse as if there were something wrong with his vocal cords. But it carried and I could hear him clearly. There was a kind of purr to it, like the low sound of a diesel engine.

  "I thought you might," I said.

  "I heard you were a tough guy," he said. "I heard they sent a local guy and you took him like he was a head of cabbage."

  "Actually they sent four cabbages," I said.

  He paid no attention. His deep empty eyes held on me. "Don't let it go to your head," he said. "I ain't a local guy."

  He paused and looked carefully at Susan and nodded to himself as if he approved. Then he swung his gaze back at me.

  "Drop the Ellis Alves case."

  There was no point talking to him. I didn't speak. It didn't bother him as far as I could see. I held his look. That didn't bother him either. He worried about me like he worried about interstellar dust.

  After a moment he stood, looked at Susan, looked back at me.

  "You both been told," he said.

  He turned and walked away. Not slow, not fast, just walking as if he had someplace to go and had decided to go there. I was aware of my heartbeat, and of the fact that I was breathing faster than I had reason to. The muscles in my back were tight, and I realized I was flexing my hands on the table top. Susan looked at me and rested her hand on my thigh.

  "My God," Susan said.

  "Yeah," I said.

  "Is he as scary dangerous as he made me feel?"

  "I would guess that he is," I said.

  "Did you feel it?"

  "Yeah."

  "I hated him looking at me," she said.

  "Yeah."

  "Are you scared?"

  "I suppose so," I said. "I don't spend much time thinking about it. I been scared before."

  "What are you going to do?"

  "First I'm going to see to it that you're safe."

  "You think he might attack me?"

  "You plan for what the enemy can do, not what you think he will do," I said.

  Neither of us commented on the look he'd given her. It had been meant for me to see, and I'd seen it. She was too alert not to have seen it, too. And much too smart not to know what it meant. Susan nodded partly to me, partly to herself.

  "He frightened me. I won't fight you on the protection."

  "We're both safe until I make another move on the Alves case," I said.

  "You can be so sure?"

  "What makes him deadly is he says what he means, and he means what he says. It would be his trademark. He warned me off the case. If I'm off, he takes his money and goes home. If I'm not, he kills me."

  "Do you know who this man is?"

  "Not specifically," I said.

  "But you know people like him," Susan said.

  "Yeah."

  Susan th
ought about that for a few moments.

  "He's like Hawk," Susan said.

  "Yeah, he is," I said.

  We were quiet. Susan stared off through the doorway where the charcoal gray man had exited. She was slowly turning her barely sipped drink in a small circle on the table top. Then quite suddenly she looked back at me.

  "And he's like you," she said.

  "Maybe some," I said.

  Chapter 25

  SUSAN HAD A home and office in a gray Victorian house on Linnaean Street in Cambridge that had been built in 1867. Her office and waiting room were off the entrance hall to the right on the first floor. Her home was a flight up. Across the entry hall opposite the office and waiting room, to the left as you came in the front door, was a room and bath which Susan called the study. It served as a spare room, a guest room, and a place to gather for professional purposes if the gathering were too big for her office. Though she never really used it, she had, naturally, furnished and decorated it within an inch of its life. Hawk and I were in there. Hawk put his big gym bag on the floor and looked around. There were thick drapes and an oriental rug, and some ornate furniture and several oil paintings of American landscapes. The fireplace had a big brass fender. Hawk took a shaving kit out of the gym bag and took it into the bathroom.

  He paused. The bathroom floor was tiled in some sort of thick, rust-colored tile, and the bath fixtures were Victorian, including an old-fashioned shower ring and a claw and ball Victorian tub. The walls had been painted a tone of the tile and glazed with a thin-over coat that had been dragged. There was an oval gilt-framed mirror over the pedestal sink.

  "Place is so elegant," Hawk said, "I be ashamed to take out my shabby equipment in here."

  "Or anywhere," I said.

  Hawk put the shaving kit on the rim of the sink and came back into the study. The door was open and we could see Susan's waiting-room door across the hall. It was ajar. Beyond it, the door to her office was closed. She was with a patient. Late nights did not change that. Foul weather did not change that. Head colds did not change that. Playoff games or the arrival of Michael Jackson or implied death threats did not change that. Five days a week, Susan saw patients.