Mortal Stakes

by Robert B. Parker

  ”Yes.“

  ”I can’t see anything else to do but keep on the way we have been,“ Rabb said.

  ”If you can stand it,“ I said.

  ”You can stand what you can’t change,“ Rabb said.

  ”You got a better idea?“

  ”You could blow the whistle.“

  Linda Rabb had finished with her Kleenex and was looking at us again.

  ”Yes,“ she said.

  ”No,“ Rabb said.

  ”Marty,“ she said.

  ”No.“

  ”Marty,“ she said again, ”we can’t stand it. I can’t stand it. I can’t stand the guilt and watching how you feel every time you lose a game so they can make money.“

  ”I don’t always have to lose,“ he said. ”Sometimes I give up a run or two for the inning pools.“

  ”Don’t quibble, Marty. You’re in a funk for a week after every letter. You have lived too long believing in do-or-die for dear old Siwash. It’s killing you and it’s killing me.“

  ”I’m not having your name blabbed all over the country. You want your kid to hear that kind of talk about his mother. Maybe we should show him the movie.“

  ”It will pass, Marty. He’s only three.“

  ”And it’ll make nice talk in the bullpen, you know. You want me to listen to those bastards laughing in the dugout when I go out to pitch? Or maybe that doesn’t matter either because if it gets out that I been dumping games I won’t be pitching anyway. You want that?“

  ”No, but I don’t want this either, Marty.“

  ”Yeah, well maybe you should have thought of that when you were spreading your legs in New York.“

  I felt a jangle of shock in my solar plexus. Linda Rabb never flinched. She looked at her husband steadily. The silence hung between them. It was Rabb who broke it. ”Jesus, honey, I’m sorry,“ he said and put his arms around her. She didn’t pull away, but her body was as stiff and remote as a wire coat hanger and her eyes were focused on something far beyond the room as he held her.

  ”Jesus,“ he said again, ”Jesus Christ, what is going to happen to us? What are we going to do?“

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  WHAT WOULD YOU DO if you didn’t play ball? I said.

  ”Coach.“

  ”And if you didn’t coach?“

  ”Scout, maybe.“

  ”And if you couldn’t scout and couldn’t coach? If you were out of baseball altogether?“

  Rabb was looking at his thumbnails again. ”I don’t know,“ he said.

  ”What did you major in in college?“

  ”Phys ed.“

  ”Well, what would you like to do?“

  ”Play ball and then coach.“

  ”I mean, if you couldn’t play ball.“ Rabb stared harder at his thumbnails. Linda Rabb looked at the coffee table. Neither one spoke.

  ”Mrs. Rabb?“

  She shook her head.

  ”How sure are you that if this all comes out you’ll be suspended?“ I said to Rabb.

  ”Sure,“ he said. ”I threw some games. If the commissioner’s office finds out, I’m finished for life.“

  ”What if I confessed,“ Linda Rabb said. ”If I told everyone about my past and no one said anything about the gambling part. I could say Marty didn’t even know about me.“

  ”They could still blackmail me with the fact I dumped the games,“ Rabb said.

  ”Not necessarily,“ I said. ”If I could find a way to get Doerr out of it, we might be able to bargain with Maynard. If Maynard told about you, he’d have to tell about himself. He’d be out of work too. With Maynard you’d have a standoff.“

  ”Doesn’t matter,“ Rabb said. He looked up from his thumbnails. ”I won’t let her.“ Linda Rabb was looking at me too.

  ”Could you get Doerr out of it, Spenser?“

  ”I don’t know, Mrs. Rabb. If I can’t, we’re stuck. I guess I’ll have to.“

  ”She’s not saying anything about it. What the hell kind of a man do you think I am?“

  ”How can you?“ Linda Rabb said, and I realized we weren’t paying attention to Marty.

  ”I don’t know,“ I said.

  ”If you can, I’ll do it,“ she said.

  ”No,“ Rabb said.

  ”Marty, if he can arrange it, I’ll do it. It’s for me too. I can’t stand watching you pulled apart like this. You love two things, us and baseball, and you have to hurt one to help the other. I can’t stand knowing that it’s my fault, and I can’t stand the tension and the fear and the uncertainty. If Spenser can do something about the other man, I will confess and we’ll be free.“

  Rabb looked at me. ”I’m warning you, Spenser.“

  ”Grow up, Marty,“ I said. ”The world’s not all that clean. You do what you can, not what you oughta. You’re involved in stuff that gets people dead. If you can get out of it with some snickers in the bullpen and some embarrassment for your wife, you call that good. You don’t call it perfect. You call it better than it was.“

  Rabb was shaking his head. Linda Rabb was still looking at me. She nodded. I noticed that her body was still stiff and angular, but there was color in her face. Rabb said, ”I…“ and shook his head again.

  I said, ”We don’t need to argue now. Let me see what I can do about Doerr. Maybe I can’t do anything about him.

  Maybe he’ll do something about me. But I’ll take a look.“

  ”Don’t do anything without checking here,“ Rabb said.

  I nodded. Linda Rabb got up and opened the door for me. I got up and walked out. No one said be careful, or win this one for the Gipper, or it counts not if you win or lose but how you play the game. In fact, no one said anything, and all I heard as I left was the door closing behind me.

  Outside on Mass Ave I looked at my watch: 1:30. I went home.

  In my kitchen I opened a can of beer. I was having trouble getting Amstel these days and was drinking domestic stuff. Didn’t make a hell of a lot of difference, though. The worst beer I ever had was wonderful. The apartment was very quiet. The hum of the air conditioner made it seem quieter. Doerr was the key. If I could take him out of this, I could reason with Maynard. All I had to do was figure out what to do about Doerr. I finished the beer. I didn’t know what to do about Doerr. I applied one of Spenser’s Rules: When in doubt, cook something and eat it. I took off my shirt, opened another can of beer, and studied the refrigerator.

  Spareribs. Yeah. I doused them with Liquid Smoke and put them in the oven. Low. I had eaten once in a restaurant in Minneapolis, Charlie’s something-or-other, and had barbecued spareribs with Charlie’s own sauce. Since then I’d been trying to duplicate it. I didn’t have it right yet, but I’d been getting close. This time I tried starting with chili sauce instead of ketchup. What did Doerr like? I’d been through that: money. What was he afraid of? Pain? Maybe. He hadn’t liked me whacking his hand. I put a little less brown sugar in with the chili sauce this time. But maybe he hadn’t liked me standing up to him. He was a weird guy and his reaction might be more complicated than just crying because his hand hurt. Two cloves of garlic this time. But first another beer, helps neutralize the garlic fumes. Either way I had got to him today. So what? I squeezed a couple of lemons and added the juice to my sauce. The smell of the spareribs was beginning to fill the kitchen. Even with the air conditioner on, the oven made the kitchen warm and sweat trickled down my bare chest.

  Getting to Doerr and getting him to do what I wanted were different things. I had a feeling that right now if I saw him, I’d have to kill him. I never met a guy before who actually foamed at the mouth. If I killed him, I’d have to kill the Hog. Maybe a little red wine. I hadn’t tried that before. I put in about half a cupful. Or would I? If Doerr were dead, the Hog might wither away like an uprooted weed. Best if I never found out. One dash of Tabasco? Why not? I opened another beer. If I were dead, I’d shrivel up like an uprooted weed. I put the sauce on to cook and began to consider what else to have. Maybe I could call Wally and Fr
ank over and cook at them until they agreed to terms. Way to a man’s heart and all that.

  There was zucchini squash in the vegetable drawer, and I sliced it up and shook it in flour and set it aside while I made a beer batter. It always hurt me to pour beer into a bowl of flour, but the results were good. That’s me. Mr. Results. Lemme see, what was I going to do about Frankie Doerr? The barbecue sauce began to bubble, and I turned the gas down to simmer. I put two dashes of Tabasco into the beer batter and stirred it and put it aside so the yeast in the beer would work on the flour.

  I looked in the freezer. Last Sunday Susan Silverman and I had made bread all afternoon at her house while we watched the ball game and drank Rhine wine. She had mixed and I had kneaded and at the end of the day we had twelve loaves, baked and wrapped in foil. I’d brought home six that night and put them in the freezer. There were four left. I took one out and put it in the oven, still in the foil. Maybe old Suze would have an idea about what to do with Frankie Doerr, or how to get my barbecue sauce to taste like Charlie’s or whether I was drinking too much lately. I looked at my watch: 3:30. She’d be home from school. I called her and let it ring ten times and she didn’t answer, so I hung up. Brenda Loring? No. I wanted to talk about things I had trouble talking about. Brenda was for fun and wisecracks and she did a terrific picnic, but she wasn’t much better than I was at talking about hard things.

  The spareribs were done and the bread was hot. I dipped my sliced zucchini in the beer batter and fried it in a little olive oil. I’d eaten alone before. Why didn’t I like it better this time?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  I ATE AND DRANK and thought about my problem for the rest of the afternoon and went to bed early and woke up early. When I woke up, I knew what I was going to do. I didn’t know how yet, but I knew what.

  It was drizzly rainy along the Charles. I ran along the esplanade with my mind on other things, and it took a lot longer to do my three miles. It always does if you don’t concentrate. I was on the curb by Arlington Street, looking to dash across Storrow Drive and head home, when a black Ford with a little antenna on the roof pulled alongside and Frank Belson stuck his head out the window on the passenger side and said, ”Get in.“

  I got in the back seat and we pulled away. ”Drive around for a while, Billy,“ Belson said to the other cop, and we headed west toward Allston.

  Belson was leaning forward, trying to light a cigar butt with the lighter from the dashboard. When he got it going, he shifted around, put his left arm on the back of the front seat, and looked at me.

  ”I got a snitch tells me that Frank Doerr’s going to blow you up.“

  ”Frank personally?“

  ”That’s what the snitch says. Says you roughed Frank up yesterday and he took it personally.“ Belson was thin, with tight skin and a dark beard shaved close. ”Marty thought you oughta know.“

  We stayed left where the river curved and drove out Soldiers Field Road, past the ‘BZ radio tower.

  ”I thought Wally Hogg did that kind of work for Doerr.“

  ”He does,“ Belson said. ”But this one he’s gonna do himself.“

  ”If he can,“ I said.

  ”That ain’t to say he might not have Wally around to hold you still,“ Belson said.

  Billy U-turned over the safety island and headed back in toward town. He was young and stylish with a thick blond mustache and a haircut that hid his ears. Belson’s sideburns were trimmed at the temple.

  ”Reliable snitch?“

  Belson nodded. ”Always solid in the past.“

  ”How much you pay him for this stuff?“

  ”C-note,“ Belson said.

  ”I’m flattered,“ I said.

  Belson shrugged. ”Company money,“ he said.

  We were passing Harvard Stadium. ”You or Quirk got any thoughts about what I should do next?“

  Belson shook his head.

  ”How about hiding?“ Billy said. ”Doerr will probably die in the next ten, twenty years.“

  ”You think he’s that tough?“

  Billy shrugged. Belson said, ”It’s not tough so much.

  It’s crazy. Doerr’s crazy. Things don’t work out, he wants to kill everybody. I hear he cut one guy up with a machete. I mean, cut him up. Dis-goddamn-membered him. Crazy.“

  ”You don’t think a dozen roses and a note of apology would do it, huh?“

  Billy snorted. Belson didn’t bother. We passed the Kenmore exit.

  I said to Billy, ”You know where I live?“

  He nodded.

  Belson said, ”You got a piece on you?“

  ”Not when I’m running,“ I said.

  ”Then don’t run,“ Belson said. ”If I was Doerr, I coulda aced you right there at the curb when we picked you up.“

  I remembered my lecture to Lester about professionals. I had no comment. We swung off at Arlington and then right on Marlborough. Billy pulled up in front of my apartment.

  ”You’re going up a one-way street,“ I said to Billy.

  ”Geez, I hope there’s no cops around,“ Billy said.

  I got out. ”Thanks,“ I said to Belson.

  He got out too. ”I’ll walk up to your place with you.“

  ”With me? Frank, you old softy.“

  ”Quirk told me to get you inside safe. After that you’re on your own. We don’t run a babysitting service. Not even for you, baby.“

  When I unlocked my apartment door, I noticed that Belson unbuttoned his coat. We went in. I looked around. The place was empty. Belson buttoned his coat.

  ”Watch your ass,“ he said and left.

  From my front window I looked down while Belson got in the car and Billy U-turned and drove off. Now I knew what and was getting an idea of how. I took my gun from the bureau drawer and checked the load and brought it with me to the bathroom. I put it on the toilet seat while I took a shower and put it on the bed while I dressed. Then I stuck the holster in my hip pocket and clipped it to my belt. I was wearing broken-in jeans and white sneakers with a racing stripe and my black polo shirt with a beaver on the left breast. I wasn’t up in the alligator bracket yet. I put on a seersucker jacket, my aviator sunglasses, and checked myself in the hall mirror.

  Battle dress.

  I unlocked the front hall closet and got out a 12-gauge Iver Johnson pump gun and a box of double-aught shells.

  Then I went out. In the hall I put the shotgun down and closed a toothpick between the jamb and the hinge side of the door, a couple of inches up from the ground. I snapped it off so only the edge was visible at the crack of the door. It would be good to know if someone had gone in.

  I picked up the shotgun and went out to my car. On the way down I passed another tenant. ”Hunting season so early?“ he said.

  ”Yeah.“

  Outside I locked the shotgun and the box of shells in the trunk of my car, got in, put the top down, and headed for the North Shore. I knew what and how, now I had to find where.

  I drove Route 93 out of Boston through Somerville and Medford. Along the Mystic River across from Wellington Circle, reeds and head-high marsh grass still grew in an atmosphere made garish with neon and thick exhaust fumes. Past Medford Square, I turned off 93 and took the Lynn Fells Parkway east, looking at the woods and not seeing what I was looking for. Medford gave way to Melrose. I turned off the Fellsway and drove up around Spot Pond, past the MDC Zoo in Stoneham, and back into Melrose. Still nothing that looked right to me. I drove through Melrose, past red clay tennis courts by the lake, past the high school and the Christian Science Church. Just before I got to Route 1, I turned off into Breakhart Reservation. Past the MDC skating rink the road narrows to a single lane and becomes one way. I’d been there on a picnic once with Susan Silverman, and I knew that the road looped through the woods and returned here, one way all the way. There were saddle trails, and lakes, and picnic areas scattered through thick woods.

  Thirty yards into the reservation I found the place. I pulled off the narrow hot to
p road, the bushes scraping my car fenders and crunching under the tires, and got out. A small hill sloped up from the road, and scooped out of the side of it was a hollow the size of a basketball court and the shape of a free-form pool. About in the middle was a flatplaned granite slab, higher than a man’s head at one end that tapered into the ground in a shape vaguely like a shark fin.

  The sides of the gully were yellow clay, streaked with erosion troughs, scattered with small white pines. The sides sloped steeply up to the somewhat gentler slope of the hill, which was thick with white pine and clustered birch saplings and bunches of sumac. I walked into the hollow and stood by the slab of granite. The high end was a foot above my head.

  There was a high hum of locust in the hot, still woods and the sound of birds. A squirrel shot down the trunk of a birch tree and up the trunk of a maple without pausing. I took my coat off and draped it over the rock. Then I scrambled up the slope of the gully and looked down. I walked around the rim of the hollow, looking at the woods and at the sun and down into the hollow. It would do. I looked at my watch: 2:00.

  I went back down, put my coat on again, got in my car, and drove on around the loop and out of the reservation.

  There was a small shopping center next to the exit road and I parked my car in among a batch of others in front of a Purity Supreme Supermarket. There was a pay phone in the supermarket, and I used it to call Frank Doerr.

  He wasn’t in, but the solicitous soft-voiced guy that answered said he’d take a message.

  ”Okay,“ I said, ”my name is Spenser. S-p-e-n-s-e-r, like the English poet. You know who I am?“

  ”Yeah, I know.“ No more solicitude.

  ”Tell Frank if he wants to talk to me, he should drive up to the Breakhart Reservation in Saugus. Come in by the skating rink entrance, drive thirty yards down the road. Park and walk into the little gully that’s there. He’ll know it.

  There’s a big rock like a shark fin in the middle of the gully.

  You got that?“

  ”Yeah, but why should he want to see you? Frank wants to see someone he calls them into the office. He don’t go riding around in the freaking woods.“