Stardust

by Robert B. Parker

  “We were intimate for several years. Then she stopped seeing me.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. I had done her several favors. Perhaps once they were accomplished she felt no further need of me.”

  “Tell me about the favors,” I said. My cup was empty. I put it down on the coffee table. Automatically Rojack picked up a small napkin from the coffee service tray and put it under my saucer.

  “Some were merely routine: reservations at a restaurant, tickets for a sold-out event, a drunken driving charge—I have a good deal of influence.”

  “Congratulations. Were there any favors that weren’t routine?”

  Rojack leaned back thoughtfully and gazed out at his trees and horses. He looked healthy and very satisfied. He was talking about himself, and he took it seriously.

  “I suppose one must define routine,” Rojack said.

  I waited.

  “There was a somewhat salacious piece of gossip that I was able to keep out of the papers.”

  I waited.

  “It involved a young driver on the show and Jill in an elevator.”

  I nodded encouragingly. There was no need to prod him. He liked talking about the things he could fix. He’d tell me all there was. Maybe more.

  “And there was a young man whom she’d known before she went to Hollywood.”

  Rojack said Hollywood the way a lot of people did, as if it were a place where one might actually run into Carole Lombard on any corner. As if it were glamorous. The sun had edged up to its low winter zenith as we’d sat talking, and now it shone directly in on the atrium from above and reflected in whitely from the unlittered snow. Everything shone with great clarity.

  “Apparently this young man had been calling Jill, trying to see her, and Jill wanted nothing to do with him. But he persisted until Jill spoke to me about it, and I sent Randall to ask him to stop.”

  “And he stopped?” I said.

  “Randall can be very convincing,” Rojack said.

  Leaning on the archway, Randall looked as pleased with himself as Rojack did. He was one of those rawboned, square-shouldered Yankee types with long muscles and big knuckley hands—all angles and planes, as if he’d been designed to go with the house.

  “What’s this guy’s name?” I said.

  Rojack looked at Randall.

  “Pomeroy,” Randall said. “Wilfred Pomeroy.”

  “Where’s he live?”

  “Place out in Western Mass., Waymark, one of those Berkshire hill towns.”

  “Waymark?”

  “Un huh.”

  “What was Jill’s connection to him?”

  Rojack pursed his lips for a moment. “Pelvic,” he said.

  I nodded.

  “So,” I said, “why were you after her this morning?”

  Rojack picked up his coffee cup, saw that it was empty, gestured toward Randall with it. Randall came over, took it, filled it, put it back. During which time I watched the red roan horse browse beneath the soft snow.

  Rojack took a sip of coffee. He held the cup in both hands, like people do in coffee commercials, and then they say ahhh! He didn’t say ahhh! He stared for a moment into the cup and then he raised his eyes.

  “We agree,” he said, “that Jill has many failings.”

  I nodded. At the end of the pasture, the red roan browsed too close to a chestnut with a red mane. The chestnut stretched out its neck and took a nip at the roan. The roan shied, kicked at the chestnut, and moved away. The peaceable kingdom.

  “But what you probably don’t see is the Jill that is so . . .” He searched thoughtfully for the right adjective. He spoke as if every word were being reported to an eager world. “Compelling,” he said. “When she is intimate with you she is totally intimate, she is completely yours and her . . .” Again he examined a choice of several words, turning them over the way a housewife buys fruit. “Her aura is so enveloping . . . it’s quite hypnotic.”

  “So when she dumps you it’s hard to believe,” I said.

  “And harder still to accept,” Rojack said.

  “You tried calling, and stopping by, and such.”

  “Without success,” Rojack said.

  “So you thought you’d get her early, and you brought Randall along to help you reason with her.”

  “I always bring Randall along, everywhere,” Rojack said.

  “You been calling her anonymously, sending scary messages?”

  “No. I’ve called her, yes; but she knew it was me, and she always hung up on me. The calls were not . . . criminal. I have written her, but again, there was nothing of an harassing nature.”

  He actually said “an harassing.”

  “You haven’t threatened her?”

  “No.”

  “Dirty tricks of any kind?”

  “Spenser, I am a man who does not find any need to resort to dirty tricks.”

  “Too important for stuff like that,” I said.

  “Quite simply,” Rojack said, “yes.”

  We sat wordlessly for a moment or two in the sun-flooded glass room.

  “Anything else you can tell me about Jill?” I said.

  Rojack shook his head.

  “Sort of funny,” I said. “She got you to chase Wilfred away. Now she’s got me to chase you away.”

  “I don’t plan to be chased away, Spenser. I am not a man who is used to being dumped, as you put it.”

  Again the sunny silence. I shrugged. And stood.

  “You seem very physical, Spenser. Do you work out?”

  “Some,” I said.

  “Perhaps I can show you our gym, before you go. Perhaps,” Rojack smiled, a formal gesture of self-deprecation, as sincere as a congressman’s handshake, “I can impress you.”

  “Sure,” I said.

  Rojack stood and let me out of the atrium. Randall followed.

  11

  THE gym was better than the Harbor Health Club, except Henry Cimoli wasn’t there. It had a full Nautilus setup, a complete set of York barbells, some parallel bars, some rings, a treadmill, a stair climber, jump ropes, a heavy bag, a speed bag. There was a lap pool off the gym part, and a sauna and steam and massage setup between the two. The walls of the gym were mirrored. The floor was done in some sort of resilient rubber padding. There were fluorescent lights recessed in a textured ceiling, and there were skylights through which the bright blue sky glistened.

  “Zowie,” I said.

  “Randall,” Rojack said, “perhaps you’d like to show Spenser how some of the equipment works.”

  “I know how it works,” I said.

  Nobody paid any attention. Randall shucked off his warm-up jacket and stepped out of his canvas shoes. His bare feet were white and bony with long toes and a tuft of hair on each instep. There were many distended veins in his pale arms, and the knobby muscles knotted and slacked as he moved.

  He jumped off the ground, caught the rings that hung straight down from the ceiling, and proceeded to do a series of gymnastic loops and frolics on them that were pretty impressive for a guy who looked to be about six feet four. He dismounted with a somersault and launched an all-out karate attack on the heavy bag, spinning in midair to kick it, whirling balletically to drive home an elbow or a sharp-knuckled fist. His movements were sometimes too quick to follow and the heavy bag pitched and shivered as he hit it, kicked it, slashed it, and butted it, all at what appeared to be the speed of sound. For the coup de grace he leaped into the air, scissor-kicked the bag with both feet and went into a backward somersault as he landed on his back, rolling to his feet in one continuous motion. He was breathing hard and his pale angular body was glistening with sweat as he stood erect, almost at attention, still wearing his rimless glasses, his flat blue eyes fixe
d on me. Rojack looked at him like the father of an Eagle Scout.

  “That kind of thing happen to you often?” I said.

  Rojack said, “We both felt it important that you understand about Randall, that you recognize clearly that this morning was merely a very lucky misjudgment on Randall’s part . . . lucky, that is, for you.”

  Randall was so thrilled by his performance that his face was fluorescent with excitement.

  “Is he going to do anything else?” I said. “Juggle four steak knives while whistling ‘Malaguena’? Something like that?”

  Randall’s breath was still coming a little short. “You like to . . . show us . . . what you . . . can do on the bag?”

  I looked at Rojack.

  “Be my guest,” he said. I think the sound in his voice was mockery.

  “Go ahead . . . big shot,” Randall said.

  I shrugged, reached under my left shoulder, pulled my gun and put a bullet into the middle of the body bag. The sound of the shot was shockingly loud in the silent gym. The body bag jumped. I put the gun back under my arm, smiled in a friendly way at Rojack and Randall, and walked out. As I headed through the house to the front door, the smell of the pistol shot lingered gently after me.

  12

  THE next day was Saturday and Jill wasn’t working so Susan and I took her to sightsee. Susan was a little annoyed that she had to share her weekend with Jill Joyce, and when I thoughtfully pointed out to her that I wouldn’t be stuck guarding Jill’s body in the first place if it weren’t for Susan, she didn’t seem any happier.

  I was in the lobby when hotel security brought her down. She was wearing a pink cashmere workout suit, and white, high-topped, leather aerobic shoes with pink and white laces. She carried her black mink over her arm, her copper-blond hair glistened as if fresh from a hundred brush strokes, and her face looked as fresh and innocent as Daisy Duck’s. She hit the security guy with a smile so radiant that he’d probably have thrown himself on his sword, if she’d asked. If he’d had a sword.

  “Well, my incredible hulk,” she said. “Where will you take me today?”

  “Wherever you want to go,” I said. “Within reason.”

  Jill linked her arm through mine. “Lead on, Macbeth,” she said.

  We went out to where Susan was waiting in the Cherokee. The windows were tinted and Jill didn’t know that Susan was there until I opened the back door for Jill and she stopped and shook her head.

  “I’ll ride up front,” she said.

  “Front’s taken,” I said.

  The side window went down and Susan smiled out at Jill.

  “You remember Susan Silverman,” I said.

  “I didn’t know she’d be here,” Jill said to me.

  “We try to spend most weekends together,” I said. “When we can.”

  “Spenser’s Boston tour has become legendary,” Susan said. “I think you’ll enjoy it.”

  “You’ve been hired to protect me,” Jill said to me.

  “I know. Susan’s going to work free,” I said.

  “Hop in, Jill.” Susan was jollier than two yule logs.

  I held the back door open, and after a short pause Jill got in. I went around, got behind the wheel, and off we went. Jill sat stiffly upright in the backseat. Susan shifted around so that she could see both Jill and me when she spoke.

  “Have you gotten to see much of Boston since you’ve been here, Jill?” Susan asked.

  “No.”

  “What a shame. It really is a lovely city.”

  “You try to get out when you’re working sixteen hours a day every day, and some lunatic is threatening your life,” Jill said.

  “That must be very trying,” Susan said. Her voice was sympathetic, but to the accomplished listener, and I’d been listening closely to Susan since 1974, there was humor and maybe the edge of something else in there.

  “You got that right, sister.”

  We went along the river and pulled off on Charles Street. I found a convenient No-Parking-Here-To-Corner opening and pulled in near the recycled Universalist Meeting House.

  “Charles Street,” I said.

  “We did a scene down here, somewhere, in an old firehouse,” Jill said.

  It was still warm. The brick sidewalks on Charles Street were wet with the puddled snow melt, and every eave dripped. There were Christmas trees being sold on the corner of Chestnut Street, and a Salvation Army Santa rang his bell in front of Toscano Restaurant.

  “ ’Tis the season to be jolly,” I said.

  “So,” Jill said, “it’s Susan, isn’t it?”

  Susan nodded.

  “Aren’t you on the show in some way or other?”

  “Yes,” Susan said with a big sunny smile. “I’m the technical consultant.”

  We were walking toward the Common. The crowds on Charles Street were in the spirit of the season. People were angry and sullen and tired as they shoved past each other carrying shopping bags. Sweaty in their winter clothing, they packed into the small trendy shops and bumped each other with their packages.

  “What’s that mean?” Jill said.

  Susan was wearing a black leather jacket and black jeans. The jeans were tucked into some low-heeled soft leather cobalt boots that wrinkled fashionably around her ankles. Next to her Jill Joyce looked maybe just a trifle silly.

  “I’m a psychotherapist,” Susan said, “and I offer suggestions to make the show more authentic.”

  “You’re a shrink?”

  “Un huh.”

  “You’re a doctor?”

  “I have a Ph.D. in psychology.”

  We reached the corner of Beacon Street.

  “Up to the left,” I said, “is the State House. That’s the Common there, and on the other side of Charles is the Public Garden.”

  The trees on the Common were strung with Christmas lights. It was bright with them at night, though it was hard to see now. The Common was snow covered, and full of people crisscrossing its walks in bright clothing. At a distance they looked cheery. The white snow and the dark trees made a bright contrast to the predominant red brick tones of Beacon Hill that rose along our side of the Common and slanted down Park Street behind it. The steeple of the Park Street Church gestured over the rise of the Common, against the blue winter sky. Two hundred years ago they’d hidden gunpowder in its cellar.

  “I want a drink,” Jill said.

  “I can see why,” I said. “It’s nearly three hours since breakfast.”

  “I don’t give a fuck what time it is,” Jill said. “When I feel like a drink I feel like a drink.”

  “Want some lunch with that?” I said.

  “Maybe I do, maybe I don’t,” Jill said.

  We walked across the Public Garden to the new Four Seasons Hotel and sat at a table near the bar. Jill had a glass of white wine. Susan and I had club soda. Jill drank a gulp of white wine, took out a cigarette and leaned toward me. I didn’t have a match and there weren’t any on the table. I shrugged and spread my hands.

  Jill said, “We’ll get some from the waitress.”

  The waitress spotted our dilemma and brought over a book of matches before I could ask her. I took them and lit Jill’s cigarette. Jill took a long drag, exhaled, swallowed some more wine. The bar was nearly empty at twenty to noon. It was sprawling and low with many sofas and little tables. The lighting was dim. There were times when a quiet bar early in the day is nearly perfect. Jill finished her wine.

  “Get me another,” she said.

  “No. I perform heroic feats if you are threatened. But I don’t fetch things.”

  “You get me one,” she said and pointed her chin at Susan.

  “I’ll see if I can get the waitress,” Susan said pleasantly.

  Again the wa
itress was alert. She had nothing else to do. And she was over with Jill’s second wine almost at once.

  “So.” Jill had a third of her second glass inside her. She sprawled back in her chair and rested her head and looked along her nose at me. “You don’t fetch things.”

  I shook my head.

  “You usually bring your girlfriend along when you’re protecting someone?”

  “If she’ll come,” I said.

  Jill got that crafty, you-have-fallen-in-my-trap look that drunks get at the right point in their drinking.

  “So if someone tries to kill us, who will you protect first?” she said.

  “Susan,” I said.

  Jill started to speak and stopped and stared at me.

  “You son of a bitch,” she said, finally, and drank the rest of her wine. The waitress knew she had a live one and was right there for the refill.

  “The point is it isn’t likely to work out that way,” I said. “I don’t think someone will try to kill us. If there’s trouble, it will be directed at you. Susan will get out of the way, and I’ll explode into action.”

  “But you’d save her first, ahead of me?”

  “Yeah.”

  Jill twirled her wineglass slowly by the stem. Now that she had some in her, and more available, she could afford to take it slow. Her eyes were fixed on me. Susan sat quietly, listening, interested as she always was about everything. Two couples with plaid pants and cameras came into the bar and sat at the far side from us. One of the women looked over and whispered to her husband and they stared over. Then the other two stared. One of the men nodded. The other man said something and all four of them laughed. One of the women slapped her husband’s hand as she laughed.

  Jill twirled her wineglass a little.

  “Well,” she said finally, “I guess I know where I stand.”

  I saw something change in Susan’s face.

  “Jill,” she said, “this whole conversation is inane.”

  “Excuse me?” Jill said.

  “You’re not worrying about who he’ll protect. You’re mad because you thought you’d have him to yourself today and instead, I showed up and spoiled it.”