Small Vices

by Robert B. Parker

  Chapter 53

  THE CHANCES OF a black man being elected DA in Suffolk County were comparable to discovering that the pope is a Buddhist. But there he was, Owen Brooks, the son of a New York City cop, a graduate of Harvard Law School, neat, well dressed, pleasant, and as easy to fool as a Lebanese rug merchant.

  We were in Pemberton Square in Brooks's office: Brooks, Quirk, Donald, Dina, and Cьnt Stapleton, a guy named Frank Farantino from New York who represented Donald Stapleton, and me.

  Brooks did the introductions. When he finished, Farantino said, "Why is Spenser here?"

  "Mr. Spenser is here at my request," Brooks said. "Since he has been both the primary investigator in this case, and one of its victims, I thought it might serve us all to listen to him, before we get into court and this thing turns into a hairball."

  "Is this a formal procedure?" Farantino said.

  "Oh, of course not," Brooks said. His smile was wide and gracious. "Nothing's on the record here, I just thought we might get some sense of where the truth lies if we talked a little before we started grinding the gears of justice."

  Quirk sat in the back row of chairs, against the wall of the office, next to the door. Clint sat rigidly between his parents. He was stiffly upright. His face was blank. Don was regal in his bearing. Dina rested her hand on her son's forearm. Farantino was to the left of Don. I was to the right of Dina.

  "Spenser, you want to hold forth?"

  "Here's what I think happened," I said.

  "Think?" Farantino said. "We're here to see what he thinks?"

  Brooks made a placating gesture with his right hand. "He can prove enough of it to require us to pay attention," Brooks said.

  "Clint Stapleton killed Melissa Henderson," I said. "I don't know why. But he concocted a story about a black man kidnapping her and he got his cousin Hunt McMartin and his cousin's wife Glenda to say they saw the kidnapping. When a State cop named Tommy Miller came in on the case, he took one sniff and it smelled bad. It would have smelled bad to any cop. But Miller also knew that Stapleton had dough and that his father had more money than Courtney Love, and Miller saw a chance to get some of it. So he supported Clint's story and even supplied a fall guy, guy named Ellis Alves. Maybe he busted him once for something else. Maybe he just pulled him up off the known offenders file. We look hard, we'll find a connection. And it all works, and Alves goes to Cedar Junction and everybody else gets back to being a yuppie."

  Nobody said anything. From his place by the door, Quirk's eyes moved from person to person in the room. Otherwise he was as motionless as everyone else.

  "But because Alves's lawyer won't quite quit on the thing, I get brought in and I start to poke around and pretty soon people are having to lie to me, and the lies are the kind that won't hold if I keep on looking, and I keep on looking and Miller tries to scare me off and that doesn't work out, and it implicates Miller so somebody killed him before he can say anything, and Clint's father hires a guy to kill me. We have that guy, he probably killed Miller, he tried to kill me, and he'll testify that Don Stapleton hired him."

  "In exchange for what?" Farantino said.

  "We've made no deals with him," Brooks said.

  "So he's looking at major time," Farantino said.

  "I would think so," Brooks said without expression. "If Spenser testifies against him."

  Farantino looked at me very quickly. "Why wouldn't you testify," he said.

  I shrugged and shook my head.

  Farantino looked back at Brooks just as quickly.

  "What's your case against Rugar."

  "Eyewitness," Brooks said. "Rugar shot Spenser and Spenser saw him do it."

  Farantino's head swiveled back at me. "You sonova bitch," he said. "You have a deal with him, don't you?"

  I shrugged again.

  Don Stapleton said, "What's going on, Frank?"

  "You see how cute they are?" Farantino said. "The DA's got no deal with him, but unless Spenser testifies against Rugar they've got no case. So Spenser makes the deal. Rugar gives them you, and Spenser won't testify. So they may as well give him immunity and use him to try and get you."

  "And he goes free?"

  "He goes free."

  All three of the Stapletons stared at me.

  I said to Clint, "Why'd you kill her? Did you mean to or did something happen?"

  Farantino said, "Don't answer that."

  He turned toward Brooks.

  "That's an entirely inappropriate question and you damned well know it, Owen."

  Brooks nodded vigorously. "Entirely," he said.

  "It was an accident," Clint Stapleton said softly.

  Don Stapleton said, "Shut up, Clint."

  "We were having fun, it was rough but she liked rough, and there's a thing you do, you know where you choke someone while having sex and it makes them come…"

  Dina Stapleton put her hand over her son's mouth. Don Stapleton said, "Clint, that's enough, not another word out of you. I mean it."

  Clint gently turned his head away from his mother's hand.

  "Great White Bwana," he said without looking at his father. "You think you can fix this?"

  Don Stapleton was on his feet. "You goddamned fool, I can if you'll keep your mouth shut."

  Clint shook his head staring at the floor between his feet.

  "Get fucking real," he said.

  "Don't you speak to me like that," Don said.

  Dina began to cry softly, her hands clasped in her lap, her head down. Farantino was on his feet now, beside Don.

  "Everybody just shut up," he said.

  "Well, Melissa loved that, we'd done it before, but this time we both got too excited and… she died."

  It had been said. There was no way to reel the words back in. They hung there in the room, surprisingly inornate after all that had been done to keep them from being said.

  Clint was trying not to cry, and failing. His mother cried beside him, her shoulders slumped hopelessly. His father, still on his feet, was white faced, and the lines at the corners of his mouth seemed very deep.

  "And I got scared and left her body and called my dad." Clint's voice was soft and flat and the emptiness in it was uncomfortable to hear. "My dad," he said, "the Great White Fixer. He fixed it good, didn't he."

  "Clint, you're my son," Don said. "I was doing what I had to do."

  "You been fixing it all my life," Clint said in his effectless voice. "Fix the pickininny. Well, you fixed it good this time, Bwana."

  There was a rehearsed quality to Clint's speech as if it were a part he'd learned, the fragment of a long argument with his father that had unspooled silently in his head since he was small.

  Farantino said, "You simply have to stop talking, both of you. You simply have to be quiet." He looked at Brooks, who was listening and watching. "This is informal," Farantino said. "This is off the record. You can't use this."

  Brooks smiled at him politely.

  "Goddamn you," Don said to his son. The tension trembled in his voice.

  "He already has," Clint said and the words seemed clogged as he started to cry hard and turned toward his mother and pressed his face against her chest and sobbed.

  Dina put her arms around him and closed her eyes. She cried with him, the tears squeezing out under the closed eyelids. I glanced back at Quirk. He was expressionless. I looked at Brooks. His face was as empty as Quirk's. I wondered what mine looked like. I felt like a child molester.

  "You hired Rugar to kill Spenser, didn't you?" Brooks said quietly to Don Stapleton.

  Farantino said, "Don!"

  Don said, "Yes," in a voice so soft it was almost inaudible.

  "And Miller," Brooks said, "to cover your tracks."

  "Yes."

  I was looking at Clint when his father confessed. The dead look left his eyes. For a moment he looked triumphant.

  "I think we need a stenographer," Brooks said and picked up the phone.

  Chapter 54

  WHEN THEY LET
Ellis out, Hawk picked him up and brought him to my office. I had just finished endorsing the check from Cone, Oakes, and was slipping it into the deposit envelope when they came in.

  "What are you going to do now?" I said to Ellis.

  He was as tight and watchful and arrogant as he had been before, but now that he was out he was more talkative.

  "You been in the place four years, what you do?"

  "Whatever it was would involve a woman," I said.

  "You got that right," he said.

  "Try to make it voluntary," I said.

  "You got no call talking to me that way," Alves said. "ah'm an innocent man."

  "You didn't do Melissa Henderson," I said. "That's not the same as being innocent."

  "You get me in here to talk shit?" Alves said.

  "You need some money?" I said.

  "'Course I need money," he said. "You think being inside a high-paying fucking job?"

  I took two hundred dollars out of my wallet and gave it to him. It left me with seven, until I deposited the check, but the bank was close by. Ellis took the money and counted it and folded it over and slipped it into the pocket of his pale blue sweat pants.

  "Ah' in supposed to say thank you?"

  "We know you an asshole, Ellis," Hawk said. "You don't have to keep proving it every time you open your mouth."

  "I just figure Whitey owe me something, and he making a down payment," Alves said.

  Hawk looked at me and grinned. "Way to go, Whitey."

  I nodded modestly.

  "You got a job anywhere?" I said.

  "No reason for you to be asking me about no job," Alves said. "It got nothing to do with you."

  "Know a guy runs a trucking service out of Mattapan," I said.

  "Don't need no help from you," Alves said.

  "You did yesterday," Hawk said.

  "I'm supposed to be grateful?" Alves said. "I'm in for four years on something I didn't do, that some honky rich kid done, and they let me out and ah'm supposed to say thank you?"

  "Actually it was a nigger rich kid," Hawk said. "And they didn't let you out, Spenser got you out."

  "And he got paid for it too, didn't he? Who gonna pay me for my four years?"

  "Actually," I said, "two hundred is probably about what four years of your time is worth. You want that trucker job give me a call."

  "Don't you be sitting 'round waiting," Alves said.

  He turned toward the door and hesitated fractionally while he looked at Hawk, saw no objection, and walked out of my office.

  "Glad he didn't get all sicky sweet with gratitude," Hawk said.

  "Yeah," I said. "It's always so embarrassing."

  "He be back inside in six months," Hawk said.

  "I hope so," I said.

  We were quiet for a moment…

  "I probably wouldn't have made it back without you," I said to Hawk.

  "Probably not," Hawk said.

  I picked up the deposit envelope and looked at it.

  "What do you think he'll do with the two hundred?" I said.

  "Depends," Hawk said. "If he don't have a gun, he'll buy one. If he does, he'll spend it on a bottle of booze and a woman."

  "Nice to know he's got priorities," I said.

  "Good to know what they are, too," Hawk said.

  I nodded and looked at the deposit envelope again. It was a lot of money.

  "I might have made it back alone," I said.

  Hawk smiled his charming heartless smile.

  "Maybe," he said.

  Chapter 55

  RUGAR'S TESTIMONY CONVICTED Don Stapleton. Clint's confession was supported by Hunt McMartin and the lissome Glenda. He too was convicted. Both convictions were being appealed when they let Rugar out. Brooks told me when he was getting out, and I met him on the steps of the new Suffolk County jail. The first snow of the season had begun to fall, it was only a degree or two away from rain, and it fell like rain, straight down, and small.

  "You kept your word," Rugar said.

  He was wearing a gray tweed overcoat with a black velvet collar. He turned the collar up as he stood in the falling snow. He was still gray. I wondered if his color was connected to some internal coldness, like a gray reptile.

  "You kept yours," I said.

  We walked down the steps together, carefully, because they had already become slippery, and turned right toward North Station and the new Fleet Center.

  "The nigger get out?" Rugar said.

  "Yes."

  "They tell me Stapleton's got that appellate specialist from Harvard," he said, "working on the convictions."

  "They've got a lot of money."

  "Probably have enough," Rugar said. "You have enough and the law makes a lot less difference."

  Time in jail had made no difference to him. He still spoke with the voice-under harmonic of some internal force.

  "So young," I said, "yet so cynical."

  "If there's a retrial, I won't be around to testify," Rugar said.

  I shrugged.

  "I do what I can," I said. "Alves is out of jail."

  "You like him?" Rugar said.

  "No," I said.

  Rugar nodded slowly. "Work is work," he said.

  "You ought to know."

  Rugar made a motion with his mouth which he probably thought was a smile.

  "Yes, liking or not liking has never had much to do with my work either," he said.

  We were on Causeway Street now. There were cabs lined up in front of North Station. Rugar signaled to one and waited while it pulled forward to him.

  As he waited he turned and looked at me. "You won this time."

  "Yep."

  "There may never be a next time."

  "Yep."

  "But if there is," he said, "I plan to win."

  He stared at me. His eyes had no animation in them. It was like looking at the underside of two bottle caps.

  "I like a cheery optimism," I said. "It's good to get up each morning as if your hair were on fire."

  Rugar continued to look, the way you might survey a project you might someday undertake. He stood stock still while he looked. But the low throb of deadliness seemed somehow alive between us, as if his gray corporeal self was an insignificant replication of the near Satanic energy that was his real self. Then the cab pulled up and he turned toward it.

  "Rugar," I said.

  He turned half bent to step in the cab and looked back at me.

  "I took you once," I said. "I'll take you again."

  Rugar's expression didn't change. For all I know he didn't hear me. He turned back to the cab and stepped in and shut the door. He said something to the driver and the cab pulled away in the steady straight-down snowfall. I watched it until it was out of sight.

  Not killing him may have been an error.

  Chapter 56

  SUSAN AND I were standing with Pearl on the sidewalk of the Larz Anderson Bridge, leaning on the parapet, looking down at the river on a late afternoon in early winter, while the homebound traffic edged toward Harvard Square. The light that lingered after sunset colored the atmosphere blue, and the snow along the river looked whiter than I knew it to be. A couple of hundred yards downstream, the Weeks Footbridge was a graceful arch over the current.

  "A year," Susan said, staring down at the slick black surface of the water. Between us, Pearl reared up on her hind legs and put her forepaws on the parapet and stared downriver, too. I didn't wonder what she was thinking. It was aimless, and I was glad I didn't know. It was one of the things about the link between people and dogs that I liked. Neither would ever fully know the other. Maybe it was true of the link between people and people, too.

  "Why was the relationship between Clint and Melissa such a secret? Was it Clint being black?"

  "Yes."

  "How awful."

  "Yes."

  "How awful for her parents," Susan said. "How awful for the Stapleton family."

  "Yeah."

  "They had everything, m
oney, position, each other. The girl was lovely and successful, wasn't she?"

  "So they tell me."

  "The boy was handsome and accomplished."

  "And he didn't mean to kill her," I said. "Just a little exotic sex."

  "And it destroys his whole family, the father, the son-the mother must be devastated…"

  "To save a career criminal who'll be back in jail in no time," I said.

  "And a professional killer goes free to accomplish it."

  "Yeah."

  "You don't even need his testimony, now," Susan said. "The Stapletons confessed."

  "Yep."

  "But he goes free anyway."

  "A deal's a deal," I said. "We needed the threat of his testimony to get the confessions."

  "And the Stapletons go to jail while two career criminals go free."

  "Couldn't have said it better myself."

  "They are both guilty of things," Susan said. "But the people going free are probably guilty of more things."

  "Almost certainly."

  "And the father was trying to save his son."

  "Yep."

  "Doesn't seem right, does it."

  "No."

  "On the other hand, you can't make it seem righter by letting the Stapletons go."

  "Probably not," I said.

  "Do you think the boy confessed to get his father?" Susan said.

  "Yes," I said. "There was something ugly there. I don't know what it was, but it had to do with race."

  "Sometimes interracial adoptions are very painful. The parents get caught up in a racism they didn't know they had. Fearful that the child will be black, which is to say had they work too hard to make him be good, which is to say white."

  "Pygmalion," I said.

  "Something like that. It fosters dreadful resentments within a family."

  "Something did that here," I said. "On the other hand, they are very rich. They are appealing the convictions…"

  I shrugged.

  "I'm not criticizing you, in all of this," Susan said.

  "I know you're not," I said. "The confusion of guilt and innocence just looks a little starker in this case and it interests you."