Mortal Stakes

by Robert B. Parker

  There’s no escape Doerr.

  With the top down I drove my eight-year-old Chevy across the bridge into City Square. Charlestown is a section of Boston. Bunker Hill is there, and Old Ironsides, but the dominant quality of Charlestown is the convergence of elevated transportation. The Mystic River Bridge, Route 93, and the Fitzgerald Expressway all interchange in Charlestown.

  Through the maze run the tracks of the elevated MBTA. Steel and concrete stanchions have flourished in the City Square area as nowhere else. If the British wanted to attack Bunker Hill now, they wouldn’t be able to find it.

  From City Square I drove out Main Street under the elevated tracks. Doerr was maybe a half mile out from City Square toward Everett. Parking in that area of Charlestown was no problem. Most of the stores along that stretch of Main Street are boarded up. And urban renewal had not yet brought economic renewal. My car looked just right in the neighborhood.

  Doerr’s Funeral Parlor was a two-story brick house with a slate roof. It was wedged in between an unoccupied grocery store with plywood nailed over the windows and a discount shoe store called Ronny’s Rejects. Across the street a vacant lot, not yet renewed, supported a flourishing crop of chicory and Queen Anne’s lace. Nature never betrayed the heart that loved her.

  I brushed my hand over the gun on my hip for security and rang the bell at the front door. Inside, it made a very gentle chime. Full of solicitude. The door was opened almost at once by a plump man with a perfectly bald head. Striped pants, white shirt, dark coat, black tie. The undertaker’s undertaker.

  “May I help you,” he said. Soft. Solicitous. May I take your wallet, may I have all your money? Leave everything to us.

  “Yes,” I said. “I’d like to speak with Mr. Doerr.” Mr.

  Doerr? He had me talking like him. I felt the scared feeling in my stomach.

  “Concerning what, sir?”

  I gave Baldy my card, the one with just my name on it, and said, “Tell Doerr I’d like to continue the discussion we began the other night.” Dropping the “Mr.” made me feel more aggressive.

  “Certainly, sir, won’t you sit down for a moment?”

  I sat in a straight-back chair with a velvet seat, and the bald man left the room. I thought he might genuflect before he left but he didn’t, just left with a dignified and reverent nod. It didn’t help my stomach. Getting the hell out would have helped my stomach but would have done little for my self-image. Doerr probably wasn’t that tough anyway. And Big Wally looked out of shape. Course you don’t have to be in really great shape to squeeze off, say, two rounds from a ninemillimeter Walther.

  The building was absolutely silent and had a churchy smell. The entry hall where I sat was papered in a dim beige with palm fronds on it. Very understated and elderly. The rug on the floor was Oriental, with dull maroon the dominant color, and the ceiling fixture was wreathed in molded plaster fruit.

  The bald man came back. “This way, please, sir,” he said, and stood aside to let me precede him through the door.

  Well, Spenser, I said, it’s your funeral. Sometimes I’m uncontrollably droll.

  Doerr’s office was on the second floor front and looked out at the elevated tracks. Just right if you wanted to make eye contact with commuters. Apparently Doerr didn’t because he sat behind a mahogany desk with his back to the window.

  His desk was cluttered with manila file folders. There were two phones, and a big vase of snapdragons flourished on a small stand beside the window.

  “What do you want?” Doerr said.

  I sat in one of the two straight chairs in front of the desk. Doerr didn’t waste a lot of bread on decor.

  “Why don’t you get right to the point, Frank?” I said.

  “Don’t hide behind evasive pleasantries.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I want to answer some of the questions you asked me the other day.”

  “Why?”

  “Openness and candor,” I said. “The very hallmark of my profession.”

  Doerr was sitting straight, hands resting on the arms of his swivel chair. He looked at me without expression. Without comment. A train clattered by outside the window, headed for Sullivan Square. Doerr ignored it.

  “Okay,” I said. “You asked me what I was doing out at the ball park besides playing pepper.”

  Doerr continued to look at me.

  “I was hired to see if someone was going into the tank out there.”

  Doerr said, “And?”

  “And someone is.”

  “Who?”

  “I think we both know.”

  “Why do you think that?”

  “Several things, including the fact you came calling with your gunslinger right after I was out there.”

  “So?”

  “So you heard from someone. I know who’s dumping the games, I know who’s blackmailing him into it, and I know what shylock the blackmailer owes. And that brings us right back here to you. Okay if I call you Shy for short? We get on so well and all.”

  “Names, Spenser. I’m not interested in a lot of bullshit about who you know and what anonymous whosis is doing what. Gimme a name and maybe I’m interested.”

  “Marty Rabb, Bucky Maynard, and you, Blue Eyes.”

  “Those are serious allegations, you got proof?”

  “Serious allegations.” I whistled. “That’s very good for a guy whose lips move when he reads the funnies.”

  “Look, you piece of turd, don’t get smart with me. I can have you blown away before you can scratch your ass. You understand? Now gimme what you got or you’re going to get hurt.”

  “That’s better,” I said, “that’s the old glib Frankie.

  Yeah, I got some proof, and I can get some more. What I haven’t got for proof yet is the tie between you and Maynard, but I can get it. I’ll bet Maynard might begin to ooze under pressure.”

  “Saying you’re right, saying that’s the way it is, and you can get some proof out of Maynard. Why don’t I just waste Maynard or, maybe better, waste you?”

  “You won’t waste Maynard, because I’ll bet you don’t know what he’s got on Rabb and I’ll bet even more that he’s got it stashed somewhere so if something happens to him, you’ll never know. You won’t waste me because I’m so goddamned lovable. And because there’s a homicide cop named Quirk that knows I’m here. Besides, I’m not sure you got the manpower.”

  “You’re doing a lot of guessing.”

  As far as you could tell from Doerr’s face, I might have been in there arranging a low-budget funeral. And maybe I was.

  “I’m licensed to,” I said. “The state of Massachusetts says I’m permitted to make guesses and investigate them.”

  “So what do you want?”

  “I want it to stop. I want Maynard to give me the item he’s using for blackmail, and I want everyone to leave the Rabbs alone.”

  “Or what?”

  “I don’t suppose you’d accept ’or else.”‘ “I’m getting sick of you, Spenser. I’m sick of the way you look, and the way you dress, and the way you get your hair cut, and the way you keep shoving your face into my work. I’m sick of you being alive and making wise remarks.

  You understand what I’m saying to you, turd?”

  “What’s wrong with the way I dress?”

  “Shut up.” Doerr’s face had gotten a little red under the health club tan. He swung his chair sideways and stared out the window. And he had begun to fiddle with a pencil.

  Tapping it against his thigh until it had slid through his fingers and then reversing it and tapping it again. Tap-tap-tap.

  Reverse. Tap-tap-tap. Reverse. Lead end. Erasure end. Taptap-tap. Another train went by, almost empty, heading this time from Everett Station toward City Square. I slid my gun out of the hip holster and held it between my legs under my thighs with my hands clasped over it so it looked like I was leaning forward in concealed anxiety. I had no trouble at all simulating the anxiety.

  Doerr swung h
is chair back around, still holding the pencil. He pointed it at me.

  “Okay,” he said. “I’m going to let you walk out of here.

  But before you go, I’m going to give you an idea of what happens when I get sick of someone.”

  There must have been a button under the desk that he could hit with his knee, or maybe the room was bugged. Either way a door to the left of the desk opened and Wally Hogg came in. He had on another flowered shirt, hanging outside the double knit pants, and the same wraparound sunglasses.

  In his right hand was one of those rubber truncheons that French cops use for riot control. He reminded me of one of the nasty trolls that used to lurk under bridges.

  “Wally,” Doerr said, looking at me while he said it, “show him what hurts.”

  Wally came around the desk. “You want it sitting down or standing up,” he said. “It don’t make no difference to me.”

  He stood directly in front of me, looking down as I leaned over in even greater anxiety. I brought the gun up from between my thighs, thumbed the hammer back while I was doing that, and put the muzzle against the underside of his jaw, behind the jawbone, where it’s soft. And I pressed up a little.

  “Wally,” I said, “have you ever thought of renting out as a goblin for Halloween parties?”

  Wally’s body was between Doerr and me, and Doerr couldn’t see the gun. “What the hell are you waiting for, Wally? I want to hear him yelling.”

  I stood up and Wally inched back. The pressure of the gun muzzle made him rise slightly on the balls of his feet.

  “Overconfidence,” I said. “Overconfidence again, Frankie. That’s twice you said ugly things to me and then couldn’t back them up. Now I am thinking about whether I should shoot Wally in the tongue or not. Put the baton in my left hand, porklet,” I said to Wally. He did. Our faces were about an inch apart, and his was as blank as it had been when he’d walked into the room. Without looking, I tossed it into the corner behind me.

  “Of course, you could try me, Frank. You could rummage around in your desk maybe and come up with a weapon and have a go at me. Pretty good odds, Frankie. I have to shoot the Hog first before I can get you. Why not? It’s quicker than scaring me to death.” I kept the pressure of the gun barrel up under Wally’s chin and looked past his shoulder at Doerr. Doerr had his hands, palms down, on the desk in front of him. His face was quite red and his lips were trembling.

  But he didn’t move. He stared at me and the lines from his nostrils to the corners of his mouth were deep and there was a very small tic in his left eyelid. With my left hand I patted Wally down and found the P.38 in its shoulder holster under his belt. All the time I watched Doerr. His mouth was open maybe an inch, and a small bubble of saliva had formed in the right-hand corner. I could see the tip of his tongue and it seemed to tremble, like the tic in his eye and in counterpoint to the movement of his lips. It was kind of interesting. But I was getting sick of standing that close to Wally.

  “Turn around, Wall,” I said. “Rest your hands on the desk and back away with your feet apart till all your weight is on your arms. You probably know the routine.” I stepped away from him around the desk closer to Doerr, and Wally did as he was told.

  “Okay, Frank,” I said. “So much for what hurts. Are you going to climb down from Marty Rabb’s back, or am I going to have to take you off?”

  Doerr’s mouth had opened wider and his tongue was quivering against his lower lip much more violently than it had been. The small bubble had popped and a small trickle of saliva had replaced it. His head had dropped, and as he began to look at me, he had to roll his eyes up toward his eyebrows.

  His mouth was moving too, but he wasn’t making any noise.

  “How about it, Frank? I like standing around watching you drool, but I got things to do.”

  Doerr opened his middle drawer and came out with a gun. I slammed my gun down on the back of his wrist, and it cracked against the edge of the desk. The gun rattled across the desk top and fell on the floor. Wally Hogg raised his head and I turned the gun at him. Doerr doubled up over his hand and made a repetitive grunting noise. Rocking back and forth in the swivel chair, grunting and drooling and making a sound that was very much like crying.

  “Am I to interpret this as a rejection, Frank?”

  He kept rocking and moaning and crying. “Aw balls,” I said. I picked up Doerr’s little automatic and stuck it in my pocket and said to Wally, “If you try to stop me, I’ll kill you,” and walked out the door. No one was downstairs. No one let me out. No one pursued me as I drove off.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  THERE’S A BIRD I read about that lives around rhinos and feeds on the insects that the rhinos stir up when they walk. I’d always figured that my work was like that. If the rhinos were moving, things would happen. This time, though, the rhino had started to cry and I wasn’t too sure how to deal with that.

  I had a feeling, though, how Doerr would deal with that once he stopped crying. I didn’t like the feeling. Maybe the technique only worked with real birds and real rhinos. Maybe I was doing more harm than good. Maybe I should get back on the cops and do what the watch commander said. I could get rid of a lot of maybes that way. I drove out Main Street, past the candy factory and around the circle at Sullivan Square, and back in toward Boston on Rutherford Ave. The sweet smell from the factory masked the smoke that billowed out of the skyscraper chimneys at the Edison plant across the Mystic River. Past the community college I turned right over the Prison Point Bridge, which had been torn down and rebuilt and called the Somebody T. Gilmore Bridge. The traffic reporters called it the Gilmore Bridge, but I remembered when it led to the old prison in Charlestown, where the walls were red brick like the rest of the city, and on execution nights people used to gather in the streets to watch the lights dim when they turned on the current in the chair. Now state prison was in Walpole and electrocutions were accidental. Ah sweet bird of youth.

  It was before lunchtime still and traffic was light. In five minutes I was at my office and sliding into a handy tow zone to park. I bought a copy of the Globe at a cigar store and went up to my office to read it. The Sox had an off day today and opened at home against Cleveland tomorrow. Marty Rabb had beaten Oakland 2 to 0 yesterday on the coast, and the team had flown into Logan this morning early.

  I called Harold Erskine and got Bucky Maynard’s home address. It was what I thought it would be.

  “Why do you want to know?” Erskine asked.

  “Because it’s there,” I said.

  “I don’t want you screwing around with Maynard.

  That’s the surest way to have this whole thing blow wide open.”

  “Don’t worry, I am a model of circumspection.”

  “Yeah,” Erskine said, “sure. You find out anything yet?”

  “Nothing I can report on yet. I need to put some things together.”

  “Well, for crissake, what have you found out? Is Marty or isn’t he?”

  “It’s not that simple, Mr. Erskine. You’ll have to give me a little more time.”

  “How much more? You’re costing me a hundred a day.

  What do your expenses look like?”

  “High,” I said. “I been to Illinois and New York City and spent a hundred and nineteen bucks buying dinner for a witness.”

  “Jesus Galloping Christ, Spenser. I got a goddamned budget to work with, and I don’t want you appearing in it.

  How the Christ am I going to bury that kind of dough? Goddamn it, I want you to check with me before you go spending my money like that.”

  “I don’t work that way, Mr. Erskine, but I think I won’t run up much more expense money.” I needed to stay on this thing. I couldn’t afford to get fired and shut off from the Sox. Also I needed the money. My charger needed feed and my armor needed polish. “I’m closing in on the truth.”

  “Yeah, well, close in on it quick,” Erskine said, and hung up.

  The old phrasemaker, Closing In on the Truth.
I should have been a poet. If I went back on the cops, I wouldn’t need to worry about charger feed and armor polish.

  Harbor Towers is new, a complex of highrise apartments that looks out over Boston Bay. It represents a substantial monument to the renaissance of the waterfront, and the smell of new concrete still lingers in the lobbies. The central artery cuts them off from the rest of the city, penning them against the ocean, and they form a small peninsula of recent affluence where once the wharves rotted.

  I parked in the permanent shade under the artery, on Atlantic Ave, near Maynard’s apartment. It was hot enough for the asphalt to soften and the air conditioning in the lobby felt nice. I gave my name to the houseman, who called it up, then nodded at me. “Top floor, sir, number eight.” The elevator was lined with mirrors and I was trying to see how I looked in profile when we got to the top floor and the doors opened. I looked quickly ahead, but no one was there. It’s always embarrassing to get caught admiring yourself. Number 8 was opposite the elevator and Lester Floyd opened it on my first ring.

  He had on white denim shorts, white sandals, a white headband, and sunglasses with big white plastic frames and black lenses. His upper body was as smooth and shiny as a snake’s, tight-muscled and flexible. Instead of a belt, there was what looked like a black silk scarf passed through the belt loops and knotted over his left hip. He was chewing bubble gum. He held the door open and nodded his head toward the living room. I went in. He shut the door behind me. The living room looked to be thirty feet long, with the far wall a bank of glass that opened onto a balcony. Beyond the balcony, the Atlantic, blue and steady and more than my eye could fully register. Lester slid open one of the glass doors, went out, slid it shut behind him, settled down on a chaise made from filigreed white iron, rubbed some lotion on his chest, and chewed his gum at the sun. Mr. Warm.