Stardust

by Robert B. Parker

I waited. The room was quiet except for the sound of Phillips’ breath coming noisily through his nose. He was very pale, the color of salt pork. His light hair was brush cut, and he was fat, the kind of puffed fat that seemed boneless, like an unbaked dinner roll.

  Finally he slid my wallet back toward me.

  “You carrying a gun?” he said.

  I opened my jacket and showed him the gun.

  “You got a license for that?”

  “You just looked at it,” I said.

  He didn’t have any reaction, just looked at me, and again, the tip of his tongue showed near the middle of his mouth.

  “I’m looking for a guy named Wilfred Pomeroy,” I said.

  Phillips nodded.

  “I’d like to question him about a murder in Boston.”

  Phillips nodded again.

  “Would you know where he is?” I said.

  “Who wants to know?” Phillips said.

  I looked carefully around the office.

  “Which of the people here,” I said, “would you guess?”

  “Hey, I asked you a question,” Phillips said.

  I took in a long breath.

  “I would like to know where Wilfred Pomeroy is, so I may go and ask him some questions about a murder that took place recently in the city of Boston.” I spoke very slowly.

  Phillips nodded again.

  “Where can I find him?” I said.

  “Who was murdered?” Phillips said.

  “Woman named Babe Loftus,” I said.

  “Sex murder?”

  “No.”

  Phillips was silent again. His tongue moved about on his lip. His forehead wrinkled again.

  “You think Wilfred did it?” he said.

  “Don’t know who did it,” I said. “I’d just like to talk with him.”

  “If you don’t know, why do you think it’s Wilfred?”

  I put my palms flat on Phillips’s desktop and leaned over it until I was about six inches away from him and stared into his eyes.

  “What the hell you doing?” Phillips said.

  “Looking to see if there’s anyone in there,” I said.

  “Hey, you got no business being a wise guy,” Phillips said. “I got a right to make sure you’re on the level.”

  “You sure yet?” I said.

  “Yeah, yeah, you seem okay to me.”

  I straightened up. “Good,” I said. “Can we go see Wilfred Pomeroy?”

  “Sure, yeah, we can. I’ll go with you. It’s my town, you know, I got to make sure everything is done right, you know. It’s my town.”

  “Dandy,” I said. “Where’s Wilfred?”

  “I’ll go along,” Phillips said. “Take you there.”

  He let his chair come forward, and using the movement as propulsion he came to his feet. He shook his pants down over the tops of his boots; they were two inches too short and the boots looked too big, like the feet of a cartoon character. As Phillips came around the desk I noticed he had a blackjack in a low pocket on his striped uniform pants, and a come-along in a black leather case on his cartridge-studded belt. He got a pale blue jacket off a hook on the wall and slipped into it. The jacket had a mouton collar dyed a darker blue. He put on his campaign hat and waddled over to the door. He held it open, I went out, and he came after me and locked it.

  “We’ll go in the cruiser,” he said.

  I went around and waited until he got in and unlocked my side. Then I got in with him.

  The cruiser fishtailed slightly on the snowy parking area as Phillips floored it in first, and we half skidded onto the plowed street, where the spinning rear wheels grabbed the dry pavement and sent the car squealing off west along the main street.

  “An LTD,” Phillips said. “Biggest engine they make.”

  I fumbled the safety belt around me and got it fastened.

  “No use running,” I said, “with you at the wheel.”

  “You can say that again, mister. You’d have to have a Corvette or something to get away from me.”

  We careened around a corner and up a short hill. The pavement stopped about twenty yards up the hill and the road became two ruts worn by oversized tires. The cruiser lurched and slithered as it went too fast for the road. There were trees on either side and a shambled stone wall on my side that slouched in disarray along the margin of the road among the leafless trees. Birches mostly, with an occasional maple.

  In a clearing, where the road ended in a rutted turnaround, there was what appeared to be an old school bus with a shack built off of it. The shack was made of plywood and covered with felt paper. The paper had been nailed on with roofing nails, and their silver galvanized heads spotted randomly over the black surface. Tears in the paper had been repaired by nailing scraps of felt over the tear with more roofing nails, so that the studded appearance was without order. A stovepipe protruded through the roof of the shack, and a rusting fifty-gallon barrel stood on its side on two sawhorses next to the shack. I could smell kerosene. A big television antenna was nailed high in a tree above the shack and a cable ran from it into the shack. A power line snaked among the trees and ran down a weathered board into the shack. The windows of the bus were hung with cloth that looked mostly like it was made from potato sacks. Three mongrel dogs, all with their tails arching up over their hindquarters, came toward the cruiser, barking without rancor.

  “This is Wilfred’s place,” Phillips said. “He done it himself.”

  “Handy,” I said.

  We walked across the snow-trampled, mud-mixed front lawn with the dogs roiling in a friendly fashion around our ankles. They were all about 35 pounds, tan blending to black. They were of parentage so mixed that they had regressed to basic Dog, nearly identical with mongrel dogs in China and Bolivia.

  Phillips banged on the door.

  “Hey, Wilfred,” he yelled, “it’s Chief Phillips.”

  The door opened slowly and stopped halfway.

  “What do you want?” someone said.

  Phillips shoved the door fully open.

  “Come on, come on, Wilfred. This is official business.”

  Phillips walked through the fully open door, and I followed him.

  Pomeroy was a sturdily built, middle-sized guy with a big guardsman mustache, and brown curly hair that fell in a kind of love curl over his forehead. He was wearing jeans and a maroon sweatshirt with a hood. UMASS was printed across the front of the sweatshirt, in big letters. The first thing that I noticed about the shack was that it was neat. The second thing I noticed was the huge poster of Jill Joyce that nearly filled the wall above the bed. It was a publicity poster for a previous show, and it showed Jill in a frilly apron looking delectably confused over a steamy pot.

  “Wilfred,” Phillips said, “this here is a guy named Spenser. He’s a detective, from Boston, and he wants to talk to you about some murder.”

  “I love your technique, Chief,” I said. “First put him at ease.”

  “I don’t know about no murder,” Pomeroy said.

  I put my hand out.

  Pomeroy took it without enthusiasm. He had one of those handshakes that die on contact. It was like shaking hands with a noodle. The three dogs had come in with us and repaired to various places of repose; one, presumably the alpha dog, was curled on the bed. The other two lay on the floor near the kerosene stove. Everything in the place was folded neatly, secured just right, dusted and aligned. The bed was covered with an Army blanket with hospital corners. Everywhere on the walls were pictures, mostly clipped from magazines, tacked to the exposed two-by-fours that framed the shack. The walls themselves were simply the uncovered kraft paper backing of fiberglass insulation. There were pictures of movie stars, of singers and television performers, famous politicians, athletes, write
rs, scientists, and business tycoons. There was a picture of Lee Iacocca clipped from a magazine cover, and one of Norman Mailer. I saw no famous detectives.

  Pomeroy’s table was an upended cable spool with oilcloth tacked to the top. The oilcloth was a red-checkered pattern and shone as if it had just been washed. Pomeroy moved behind the table.

  “What do you want?” he said again. His eyes were big and soft and eager for approval.

  “Just some questions,” I said. The kerosene stove was pouring out heat. “Mind if I take off my jacket?”

  He shook his head. I took off my leather jacket and hung it on a hook on the back of the door where his red plaid mackinaw hung. He looked at the gun under my arm without saying anything. Phillips went and pushed the dog out of the way and sat on the bed. He left his coat on. The dog gave a short sigh and moved to the foot of the bed and turned around twice and lay down again.

  “Nice poster of Jill Joyce,” I said. “She your favorite?”

  He nodded.

  “You know she’s in Boston now shooting her series.”

  He nodded again.

  “She didn’t get killed,” he said. “I’d a seen it on TV if she got killed.”

  “No,” I said, “she’s fine.”

  “You know her?” Pomeroy said.

  “Yes,” I said.

  We were quiet. One of the dogs sleeping by the stove got up and went over and sniffed at Phillips’ shoe. Phillips pushed it away with his foot. I saw Pomeroy’s eyes shift nervously.

  “Don’t be rude to the dog,” I said to Phillips. “Dog lives here and you don’t.”

  Phillips got two bright spots on his pale cheeks.

  “Who the hell you talking to?” he said. His hand brushed instinctively against his gun butt. I turned my head slowly and looked at him without saying anything.

  “I don’t like dogs,” he said.

  I looked at him for another moment, then turned back to Pomeroy.

  “Do you know her?” I said.

  “Jill?”

  “Yeah.”

  He shook his head slowly. “No. I’m a big fan of hers, but I don’t know her.”

  “I heard you did know her,” I said.

  Pomeroy looked past me nervously.

  “No, honest.”

  “I heard you knew her pretty well,” I said. “Guy named Randall says you knew her.”

  The big soft eyes got wider and less focused. His gaze moved around the room, looking for someplace to settle.

  “I haven’t been near her since he said.”

  “How’d you get to know her in the first place?” I said.

  Pomeroy shook his head.

  “Why not?” I said. “What’s not to talk about?”

  Pomeroy looked at Phillips. I nodded, lifted my jacket off the back of the door and shrugged it on, lifted his off and handed it to him.

  “You cover it here,” I said to Phillips. “Wilfred and I will take a walk.”

  “You need me to back you up?” Phillips said.

  “No, I’ll be okay,” I said.

  When the dogs saw Pomeroy put his jacket on, all three of them were at the door, mouths open, tongues lolling, tails wagging. I opened the door and they surged out ahead of us and stopped in the yard looking back.

  “Come on,” I said.

  Pomeroy went past me and I followed him and shut the door. The dogs moved out ahead of us in a businesslike way, sniffing along sinuous spoors, wagging their tails. The woods were empty at this time of year except for squirrels. The midday sun was warm in the southern sky and water dripped from the tree branches and made half-dollar-sized holes around the trees in the crust of the old snow. We followed the dogs along a path among the trees that had been pressed out by footfalls.

  “Phillips is a mean bastard,” Pomeroy said. He never looked at me as he spoke, and his speech was soft.

  I nodded. Pomeroy seemed to sense my agreement even though he didn’t appear to be looking at me.

  “These dogs are like my family,” he said.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “I don’t have anything else,” he said.

  “Yeah.”

  There seemed no purpose to the path we were on. It meandered through the second-growth forest. Under the evergreens, where the snow was thin, dark pine needles and matted leaves were slick with ice and snow melt. The dogs ranged ahead of us, sniffing intently at the ground, and swinging back in singly or together to look at us before they ranged away again. We came up a low rise and looked down into a shallow swale where groundwater stood, frozen and snow covered. The flat surface was crisscrossed with dog tracks, and among them, bird tracks, partridge maybe, or pheasant.

  We stopped and looked down at the swale. The trees and brush grew thickly right to its banks.

  “I was married to her once,” Pomeroy said.

  He was staring down into the swale. I didn’t say anything. It was as if he were a shattered cup, badly mended, with the shards of himself barely clinging together. I stayed very still. One of the dogs came back from ranging and sat on Pomeroy’s feet and looked down at the swale too.

  “You don’t believe me,” he said.

  “Yes,” I said, “I do.”

  “I used to tell people, but they never believed me. Most people think I’m a little off anyway.”

  He reached a hand down absently toward the dog. The dog lapped it industriously.

  “I probably am a little off,” he said.

  “Maybe nobody’s on,” I said. “Maybe there’s nothing to be off of.”

  He glanced at me for a moment. I nearly lost him. Then he shook his head and shrugged. Spenser the philosopher king.

  “Guy lives in the woods with three dogs,” he said. “Guy like that isn’t all with it, you know?”

  “When were you married?” I said.

  He paused a moment, a little startled, trying to remember what he’d been saying about marriage.

  “Nineteen sixty-eight,” he said. “I was in the Navy in San Diego, I met her in a bar.”

  “Love at first sight?”

  “For me.”

  “How about her?”

  “She was seventeen. She liked the uniform, maybe.”

  The other two dogs came out of the woods and circled along the rim of the swale and sat down near us, their tongues out, and looked at us.

  “How long did it last?” I said.

  “She ran away in a month. I never saw her again.”

  “Until?”

  “Until she came to Boston.”

  “So you did try to see her,” I said.

  He didn’t answer. The dog at his feet rose suddenly and made off with its nose to the ground. The two others followed. They went over the hill on the far side and out of sight and in a minute we could hear them yelping.

  “Rabbit,” Pomeroy said.

  I waited. The yelping faded, then stopped.

  “I wanted to see her. After all that time, I . . . the month I was with her was . . .” He shrugged, spread his hands. “It was my best month,” he said.

  The dogs trotted back, single file, and sat and looked at us again.

  “She wasn’t friendly,” I said.

  “No. She . . . what the hell. She’s a big star and I’m . . . look at me, you know?”

  I nodded.

  “But you persisted.”

  “Persisted,” he said, rolling the word around like a piece of strange candy. “I wanted to see her,” he said finally. “I’m not much, but I am married to her.”

  “Still?” I said.

  “I never divorced her. I never heard from her. Far as I know we’re still married.”

  “Was Jill Joyce her name then?”


  “No.” For the first time since I’d met him Pomeroy almost smiled. “It was Jillian Zabriskie.”

  “She born in San Diego?”

  He nodded. “I never met her parents,” he said, “but I’m pretty sure they were around there somewhere.”

  “Why’d she run off?”

  “She never said. One day I came home and she wasn’t there and she was never there again.”

  “You look for her?”

  “Sure. I told the police and stuff. Everyone who knew anything about her knew she was wild. Everyone assumed she run off with somebody.”

  “You think so?”

  “She always liked men,” he said.

  “What was the name of the bar?” I said.

  “Pancho Doyle’s,” he said. I knew he’d remember.

  “Still there?” I said.

  “I don’t know. After I got discharged I never went back to San Diego. I just come home here. I was a radar man when I got out. I went to Worcester Tech for a semester, gonna be an engineer, but . . .” He shrugged.

  “Honorable discharge?” I said.

  “They kicked me out,” he said. “I was drinking.”

  “Worcester Tech?”

  He nodded. “I was drinking more. I dropped out.”

  “Still drink?” I said.

  He shook his head. “AA,” he said. “Been sober five years in March.”

  “So you called Jill Joyce and she told you to take a hike, and you kept calling and finally a guy named Randall came to see you.”

  “He was very scary,” Pomeroy said. He was staring down at the ground in front of him.

  “What’d he say?”

  “He shoved me around a little, and he said I was to stay away from Jill Joyce or I’d be sorry. He was kicking my dogs too.”

  “For what it’s worth,” I said, “I kicked him in the balls a few days ago.”

  Pomeroy looked up at me, a little startled. “You did?”

  “Thought you might like to know that.”

  “I would. Ah, you . . . you must be pretty tough.”

  “I think so,” I said. “You ever threaten Jill Joyce?”

  “Me? No. I couldn’t . . .”

  “You know anyone named Babe Loftus?”

  He shook his head.