Mortal Stakes

by Robert B. Parker

  She nodded.

  “And Marty kept doing what they said to do?”

  She nodded again.

  “How often?” I said.

  “The letters? Not often. Marty gets about thirty-five starts a year. There were maybe five or six letters last year, three so far this year.”

  “Smart,” I said. “Didn’t get greedy. Do you have any idea who it is?”

  “No.”

  “It’s a hell of a hustle,” I said. “Blackmail is dangerous if the victim knows you or at the point when the money is exchanged. This is perfect. There is no money exchanged. You render a service, and he gets the money elsewhere. He never has to reveal himself. There are probably one hundred thousand people who’ve seen that film, and you can’t know who they are. He mails his instructions, bets his money, and who’s to know?”

  “Yes.”

  “And furthermore, the act of payment is itself a blackmailable offense so that the more you comply with his requests, the more he’s got to blackmail you for.”

  “I know that too,” she said. “If there was a hint of gambling influence, Marty would be out of baseball forever.”

  “If you look at it by itself, it’s almost beautiful.”

  “I’ve never looked at it by itself.”

  “Yeah, I guess not.” I said, “Is it killing Marty?”

  “A little, I think. He says you get used to anything-maybe he’s right.”

  “How are you?”

  “It’s not me that has to cheat at my job.”

  “It’s you that has to feel guilty about it,” I said. “He can say he’s doing it for you. What do you say?”

  Tears formed in her eyes and began to run down her face. “I say it’s what he gets for marrying a whore.”

  “See what I mean?” I said. “Wouldn’t you rather be him?”

  She didn’t answer me. She sat still with her hands clenched in her lap, and the tears ran down her face without sound.

  I got up and walked around the living room with my hands in my hip pockets. I’d found out what I was supposed to find out, and I’d earned the pay I’d hired on at.

  “Did you call your husband?” I said.

  She shook her head. “He’s pitching today,” she said, and her voice was steady but without inflection. “I don’t like to bother him on the days he’s pitching. I don’t want to break his concentration. He should be thinking about the Oakland hitters.”

  “Mrs. Rabb, it’s not a goddamned religion,” I said.

  “He’s not out there in Oakland building a temple to the Lord or a stairway to paradise. He’s throwing a ball and the other guys are trying to hit it. Kids do it every day in schoolyards all over the land.”

  “It’s Marty’s religion,” she said. “It’s what he does.”

  “How about you?”

  “We’re part of it too, me and the boy—the game and the family. It’s all he cares about. That’s why it’s killing him because he has to screw us or screw the game. Which is like screwing himself.”

  I should be gone. I should be in Harold Erskine’s office, laying it all out for him and getting a bonus and maybe a plaque: OFFICIAL MAJOR LEAGUE PRIVATE EYE. Gumshoe of the stars. But I knew I wasn’t going to be gone. I knew that I was here, and I probably knew it back in Redford, Illinois, when I went to her house and met her mom and dad.

  “I’m going to get you out of this,” I said.

  She didn’t look at me.

  “I know who’s blackmailing you.”

  This time she looked.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  I TOLD HER what I knew and what I thought.

  “Maybe you can scare him off,” she said. “Maybe when he realizes you know who he is, he’ll stop.”

  “If he’s wearing Frank Doerr’s harness, I’d say no.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he’s got to be more scared of Frank Doerr than I can make him of me.”

  “Are you sure he’s working for Frank What’s‘isname?”

  “I’m not sure of anything. I’m guessing. Right after I started looking around the ball club, Doerr came to my office with one of his gunbearers and told me I might become an endangered species if I kept at it. That’s suggestive, but it ain’t definitive.”

  “Can you find out?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Marty makes a lot of money. We could pay you. How much do you charge?”

  “My normal retainer is two corn muffins and a black coffee. I bill the rest upon completion.”

  “I’m serious. We can pay a lot.”

  “Like Jack Webb would say, you already have, ma’am.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “But I don’t want you to start until we get Marty’s approval.”

  “Un-unh. Your retainer doesn’t buy that. I’m still also working for Erskine, and I’m still looking into the situation.

  I’m now looking with an eye to getting you unhooked, but you can’t call me off.”

  “But you won’t say anything about us?” Her eyes were wide and her face was pale and tight again and she was scared.

  “No,” I said.

  “Not unless Marty says okay.”

  “Not until I’ve checked with you and Marty.”

  “That’s not quite the same thing,” she said.

  “I know.”

  “But, Spenser, it’s our life. It’s us you’re frigging around with.”

  “I know that too. I’ll be as careful as I can be.”

  “Then, damn it, you have got to promise.”

  “No. I won’t promise because I may not be able to deliver. Or maybe it will turn out different. Maybe I’ll have to blow the whistle on you for reasons I can’t see yet. But if I do, I’ll tell you first.”

  “But you won’t promise.”

  “I can’t promise.”

  “Why not, goddamn you?”

  “I already told you.”

  She shook her head once, as if there were a horsefly on it. “That’s bullshit,” she said. “I want a better reason than that for you to ruin us.”

  “I can’t give you a better reason. I care about promises, and I don’t want to make one I can’t be sure I’ll keep. It’s important to me.”

  “Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit.” She was leaning forward, and her nostrils seemed to flare wider as she did.

  “My game has rules too, Mrs. Rabb.”

  “You sound like Marty,” she said.

  I didn’t say anything.

  She was looking at the Christian Science dome again.

  “Children,” she said to it. “Goddamned adolescent children.’‘ My stomach felt a little funny, and I was uncomfortable as hell.

  ”Mrs. Rabb,“ I said, ”I will try to help. And I am good at this. I’ll try.“

  She kept looking at the dome. ”You and Marty and all the goddamned game-playing children. You’re all good at all the games.“ She turned around and looked at me. ”Screw,“ she said, and jerked her head at the door.

  I couldn’t think of much to say to that, so I screwed.

  She slammed the door behind me, and I went down in the elevator feeling like a horse’s ass and not sure why.

  It was almost three o’clock. There was a public phone outside the drugstore next to the apartment building entrance. I went in and called Martin Quirk.

  ”Spenser,“ he said. ”Thank God you called. I’ve got this murder took place in a locked room. It’s got us all stumped and the chief said; ’Quirk,‘ he said, ’only one man can solve this.“‘ ”Can I buy you lunch or a drink or something?“

  ”Lunch? A drink? Christ, you must be in deep trouble.“

  I did not feel jolly. ”Yes or no,“ I said. ”If I wanted humor, I’d have called Dial-A-Joke.“

  ”Yeah, okay. I’ll meet you at the Red Coach on Stanhope Street.“

  I hung up. There was a parking ticket neatly tucked under the wiper blade on the driver’s side. The string looped around the b
ase. A conscientious meter maid. A lot of them just jam it under the wiper without looping the string, and sometimes on the passenger side where you can’t even see it.

  It was nice to see samples of professional pride. I put the ticket in a public trash receptacle attached to a lamppost.

  I drove down Boylston Street past the Prudential Center and the new public library wing and through Copley Square. The fountain in the square was in full spray, and college kids and construction workers mingled on the wall around it, eating lunch, drinking beer, taking the sun. A lot of them were shirtless. Beyond the fountain was the Copley Plaza with two enormous gilded lions flanking the entrance.

  And at the Clarendon Street end of the square, Trinity Church gleamed, recently sandblasted, its brown stones fresh-looking, its spires reflecting brightly in the windows of the Hancock Building. A quart of beer, I thought, and a cutlet sub. Shirt off, catch some rays, maybe strike up a conversation with a coed. Would you believe, my dear, I could be your father? Oh, you would.

  I turned right on Clarendon and left onto Stanhope, where I parked in a loading zone. Stanhope Street is barely more than an alley and tucked into it between an electrical supply store and a garage is the Red Coach Grill, looking very old world with red tile roof and leaded windows. It was right back of police headquarters, and a lot of cops hung out there.

  Also a lot of insurance types and ad men. Despite that, it wasn’t a bad place. Quiet lighting, oaken beams, and such.

  Quirk was at the bar. He looked like I always figured a cop ought to. Bigger than I am and thick. Short, thick black hair, thick hands and fingers, thick neck, thick features, a pockmarked face, and dressed like he’d just come from a summit meeting. Today he had on a light gray three-piece suit with a pale red plaid pattern, a white shirt, and a silk-finish wide red tie. His shoes were patent leather loafers with a gold trim.

  I slipped onto a barstool beside him.

  ”You gotta be on the take,“ I said. ”Fuzz don’t get paid enough to dress like that.“

  ”They do if they don’t do anything else. I haven’t been on vacation in fifteen years. What are you spending your dough on?“

  ”Lunch for cops,“ I said. ”Want to sit in a booth?“

  Quirk picked up his drink, and we sat down across from the bar in one of the high-backed walnut booths that run parallel to the bar front to back and separate it from the dining room.

  I ordered a bourbon on the rocks from the waitress.

  ”Shot of bitters and a twist,“ I said, ”and another for my date.“ The waitress was young with a short skirt and very short blond hair. Quirk and I watched her lean over the bar to pick up the drinks.

  ”You are a dirty lecherous old man,“ I said. ”I may speak to the vice squad about you.“

  ”What were you doing, looking for clues?“

  ”Just checking for concealed weapons, Lieutenant.“

  She brought the drinks. Quirk had Scotch and soda.

  We drank. I took a lot of mine in the first swallow.

  Quirk said, ”I thought you were a beer drinker.“

  ”Yeah, but I got a bad taste I want to get rid of and the bourbon is quicker.“

  ”You must be used to a bad taste in your line of business.“

  I finished the drink and nodded at the waitress. She looked at Quirk. He shook his head. ”I’ll nurse this,“ he said.

  ”I thought you guys weren’t supposed to drink on duty,“ I said.

  ”That’s right,“ he said. ”What do you want?“

  ”I just thought maybe we could rap a little about law enforcement theory and prison reform, and swap detective techniques, stuff like that.“

  ”Spenser, I got eighteen unsolved homicides in my lefthand desk drawer at this moment. You want to knock off the bullshit and get to it.“

  ”Frank Doerr,“ I said. ”I want to know about him.“

  ”Why?“

  ”I think he owns some paper on a guy who is squeezing a client.“

  ”And the guy is squeezing the client because of the paper?“

  ”Yes.“

  ”Doerr’s probably free-lance. Got his own organization, operates around the fringe of the mob’s territory. Gambling, mostly, used to be a gambler. Vegas, Reno, Cuba in the old days. Does loan sharking too. Successful, but I hear he’s a little crazy, things don’t go right, he gets bananas and starts shooting everybody. And he’s too greedy. He’s going to bite off too big a piece of somebody else’s pie and the company will have him dusted. He’s looking flashy now, but he’s not going to last.“

  ”Where do I find him?“

  ”If you’re screwing around in this operation, he’ll find you.“

  ”But say I want to find him before he does, where?“

  ”I don’t know, exactly. Runs a funeral parlor, somewhere in Charlestown. I get back to the station I’ll check for you.“

  ”Has he got a handle I can shake him with?“

  ”You? Scare him off? You try scaring Doerr and they’ll be tying a tag on your big toe down at Boston City.“

  ”Well, what’s he like best? Women? Booze? Performing seals? There must be a way to him.“

  ”Money,“ Quirk said. ”He likes money. Far as I know he doesn’t like anything else.“

  ”How do you know he doesn’t like me?“ I said.

  ”I surmise it,“ Quirk said. ”You met him?“

  ”Once.“

  ”Who was with him?“

  ”Wally Hogg.“

  Quirk shook his head. ”Get out of this, Spenser. You’re in with people that will waste you like a popsicle on a warm day.“ The waitress brought us another round. She was wearing fishnet stockings. Could it be Ms. Right? I drank some bourbon.

  ”I wish I could get out of this, Marty. I can’t.“

  ”You’re in trouble yourself?“ Quirk asked.

  ”No, but I gotta do this, and it’s not making anyone too happy “Wally Hogg,” Quirk said, “will kill anyone Doerr tells him to. He doesn’t like it or not like it. Slow or fast, one or a hundred, whatever. Doerr points him and he goes bang. He’s a piece with feet.”

  “Well, if he goes bang at me,” I said, “he’ll be Wally Sausage.”

  “You’re not as good as you think you are, Spenser. But neither is Captain Marvel. I’ve seen people worse than you, and maybe you got a chance. But sober. Don’t go up against any of Doerr’s group half-gassed. Go bright and early in the morning after eight hours’ sleep and a good breakfast.” He stirred the ice in his new drink. I noticed he hadn’t finished the old one.

  “Slow,” I said. “Always knew you were a slow drinker.”

  I reached over and picked up his old drink and finished it. “I can drink you right out of your orthopedic shoes, Quirk.”

  “Christ, this thing really is bugging you, isn’t it?”

  Quirk said. He stood up. “I’m going back to work before you start to slobber.”

  “Quirk,” I said.

  He stopped and looked at me.

  “Thanks for not asking for names.”

  “I knew you wouldn’t tell me,” Quirk said. “And watch your ass on this, Spenser. There must be someone who’d miss you.”

  I gave him a thumbs-up gesture, like in the old RAF movies, and he walked off. I drank Quirk’s new drink and gestured to the waitress. There’ll always be an England.

  By five thirty in the afternoon I was sitting at the desk in my office, drinking bourbon from the bottle neck. Brenda Loring had a date, Susan Silverman didn’t answer her phone.

  The afternoon sun slanted in at my window and made the room hot. I had the sash up, but there wasn’t much breeze and the sweat was collecting where my back pressed against the chair.

  Maybe I should get out of this thing. Maybe it bothered me too much. Why? I’d been told to screw before. Why did this time bother me? “Goddamned adolescent children.”

  I’d heard worse than that before. “Goddamned game-playing children.” I’d heard worse than that too. I drank
some bourbon. My nose felt sort of numb and the surface of my face felt insulated. Dumb broad. Promises. Shit, I can’t promise what I don’t know. World ain’t that simple, for crissake. I said I’d try.

  What the hell she want, for crissake? By God, I would get her out of it. I held the bottle up toward the window and looked at how much was left. Half. Good. Even if I finished it, there was another one in the file cabinet. Warm feeling having another one in the file cabinet. I winked at the file cabinet and grinned with one side of my mouth like Clark Gable used to.

  He never did it at file cabinets, though, far as I could remember. I drank some more and rinsed it around in my mouth.

  Maybe my teeth will get drunk. I giggled. Goddamned sure Clark Gable never giggled. Drink up, teeth. Hot damn. She was right, though, it was a kind of game. I mean, you played ball or something and whatever you did there had to be some kind of rules for it, for crissake. Otherwise you ended up getting bombed and winking at file cabinets. And your teeth got drunk. I giggled again. I was going to have Frank Doerr’s ass.

  But sober, Quirk was right, sober, and in shape. “I’m coming, Doerr, you sonovabitch.” Tongue wasn’t drunk yet. I could still talk. Have a drink, tongue, baby. I drank. “Only where love and need are one,” I said out loud. My voice sounded even stranger. Detached and over in the other corner of the room.

  “And the work is play for goddamned mortal stakes/Is the deed ever really done.” My throat felt hot, and I inhaled a lot of air to cool it. “Mortal goddamned stakes,” I said. “You got that, Linda Rabb/Donna Burlington, baby?” I had unclipped my holster, and it lay with my.38 detective special in it on the desk beside the bourbon bottle. I drank a little more bourbon, put down the bottle, picked up the gun still in its holster, and pointed it at one of the Vermeer prints, the one of the Dutch girl with a milk pitcher. “How do you like them goddamned games, Frank?” Then I made a plonking sound with my tongue.

  It was quiet then for a while. I sipped a little. And listened to the street sounds a little and then I heard someone snoring and it was me.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  THE NEXT DAY it took me five miles of jogging and an hour and a half in the weight room to get the swelling out of my tongue and my vital signs functioning. I had breakfast in a diner, nothing could be finer, took two aspirin, and set out after Frank Doerr. A funeral parlor in Charlestown, Quirk had said. I brought all my sleuthing wiles to bear on the problem of how to locate it and looked in the Yellow Pages. Elementary, my dear Holmes. There it was, under “Funeral Directors”: Francis X. Doerr, 228 Main Street, Charlestown.