Painted Ladies s-39

by Robert B. Parker

  “Not all,” Susan said. “You cook a nice breakfast, too.”

  She had on tight black jeans tucked into high cavalier boots, the kind where the top folds over. Her open-collared shirt was white, and over it she wore a small black sweater vest. It set off her black hair and big, dark eyes. She probably knew that.

  “Good sex and a nice breakfast,” I said. “An unbeatable combination.”

  Susan smiled.

  “I don’t recall anyone using the word ‘good,’ ” she said.

  “Seems to me,” I said, “you were singing different lyrics an hour ago.”

  She actually flushed a little bit.

  “Don’t be coarse,” she said.

  “Not even in self-defense?” I said.

  She grinned at me.

  “Well, maybe,” she said. “We were quite lively. Weren’t we.”

  “With good reason,” I said.

  I finished my orange juice and poured us both some coffee. Susan wasn’t anywhere near finishing her orange juice. But she might never finish it. Over the years I’d learned to proceed and let her sort it out.

  Pearl was asleep on her back on the couch, with her head lolling off. She was waiting, I knew, for actual food to be prepared and served, at which time she’d get off the couch and come over and haunt us.

  “I have a question,” Susan said. “And a comment.”

  “Is this one of those questions where you also know the answer, but you’d like to hear what I have to say?”

  “Yes,” Susan said. “But first the comment.”

  “Okay.”

  “It was very clever of you to turn the situation around the way you did.”

  “You mean opening the door and sitting tight?”

  “Yes. Up to that point, they had the power. They were waiting to ambush you. When you pushed the door open, you took the power from them. Now you were waiting to ambush them.”

  “Astounding, isn’t it,” I said.

  “Do you think of these things in the moment?” Susan said. “Or do you keep a little list?”

  “Like a quarterback with the plays on his wristband,” I said.

  “Whatever that means,” Susan said.

  “A sports metaphor,” I said. “Mostly I react. But in fact, in this case, I had done it before. I used that ploy a long time ago, in London. It sort of came back to me when Pearl gave me the heads-up.”

  “Why do you suppose she did that?” Susan said.

  “She loves me?”

  “She and I both,” Susan said. “But I’m serious. What made her growl like that? You say you’ve never heard her make that sound before.”

  “No. It did not sound like her.”

  “So why did she?”

  “A smell in the room that she hadn’t encountered?”

  “There must be a hundred smells,” Susan said. “Cleaning people. Clients. Why this smell?”

  “I don’t know.”

  We were quiet. Pearl shifted slightly into an even more comfortable position.

  “I’ve had dogs nearly all my life,” I said. “And most of them have been German shorthaired pointers named Pearl. I try not to romanticize them. But it is very clear to me that more goes on in there than we understand.”

  Susan nodded.

  “You think she somehow knew something was bad?” Susan said.

  “Very little is known about dogs,” I said.

  Susan nodded and looked at Pearl.

  “Well, whatever motivated her,” Susan said, “good dog!”

  Pearl opened her eyes and looked at Susan upside down, saw that nothing more consequential was coming her way, and closed her eyes again.

  “There was also a question?” I said.

  Susan emptied a packet of Splenda into her coffee and stirred it carefully.

  “When Pearl warned you,” she said, “and you went across the street and looked, and saw those two men waiting for you in your office . . .”

  “Yeah?”

  “Why didn’t you just call the police?”

  “ ‘Call the police,’ ”I said.

  “Yes.”

  I drank some coffee. Susan waited.

  “I never thought of it,” I said.

  “Literally?”

  “Literally,” I said.

  She nodded slowly.

  “And if you had thought of it,” she said, “you wouldn’t have done it, anyway, would you.”

  “No,” I said.

  “Because you clean things up yourself.”

  “Yes.”

  “Still your father’s son,” Susan said.

  “And my uncles’,” I said.

  She nodded.

  “Still chasing the bear,” she said.

  “You knew the answer before you asked the question,” I said.

  “But I kind of wondered if you did,” she said.

  “You know where I came from,” I said. “And you know what I do, and if I’m going to continue to do it, I can’t be someone who calls the cops when there’s trouble.”

  “Because it’s bad for business?” Susan said.

  “It is bad for business, and that’s a perfectly rational answer, but it’s not quite why,” I said.

  “Because it’s bad for you,” Susan said.

  “Bingo,” I said.

  “To do what you do, you have to know you can take care of business yourself,” Susan said.

  “Yes.”

  “You can get help from friends . . . Hawk, for instance,” Susan said. “But you’re still in it. And you’re in charge.”

  “More or less.”

  “You call the cops,” Susan said, “and you are expected to step aside and let them handle things.”

  “More than expected,” I said.

  “You’re a professional tough guy,” Susan said. “And professional tough guys don’t hand off.”

  “Wow,” I said. “A sports metaphor.”

  “I try,” Susan said. “I want to be just like you.”

  “I’d hate like hell to be sleeping with someone just like me,” I said.

  “Funny thing,” Susan said. “I’ve never minded.”

  “A puzzle,” I said.

  “Yes,” Susan said. “But there it is.”

  Susan’s juice glass was still nearly full. She ignored it and drank some coffee.

  “It meant you had to kill two men,” she said. “How does that feel.”

  “They would have killed me,” I said.

  “Yes, they would have,” Susan said. “But how do you feel?”

  “Several ways. I won; they lost.”

  “And?” she said.

  “Glad they didn’t kill me.”

  “Me, too,” she said.

  “And I do not like killing people,” I said.

  “But you do it,” she said.

  “And will again,” I said. “But I do not like it.”

  “You could get out of this business,” Susan said.

  “I could,” I said.

  “But you won’t,” she said.

  “No,” I said.

  “Because this is what you are and who you are,” she said. “And if you quit, you would like that even less.”

  “I’d still be with you,” I said.

  “I wouldn’t be enough,” she said.

  “If you asked me to change,” I said, “I’d change.”

  “I’ll never ask you,” she said.

  “You’d be enough.”

  “We’re each enough for you,” she said. “The rest is speculation.”

  “You’re a pretty smart broad,” I said.

  “I know,” Susan said. “You’re a pretty interesting guy.”

  “I know,” I said.

  “Maybe we are about more than good sex and a fine breakfast,” Susan said.

  “Maybe we are the two most interesting people in the world,” I said.

  “Probably,” she said.

  26

  I sat at my desk with a cup of coffee and a lined yellow pa
d. I was making a list of what I knew and questions I had about the death of Ashton Prince. I always liked making lists. It gave me the illusion of control.

  There was certainly some kind of connection among Prince and Missy Minor and, presumably, Winifred Minor. And obviously one between Prince and the museum. There was almost certainly a connection between Prince and the robbers that I didn’t see. There was no reason for them to show up for the ransom exchange already prepared to kill him, unless there was more going on than was so far evident. And somewhere along the way, as I wandered through the case, I had done something to make them want to kill me.

  We had a few leads: the two shooters now in the forensics lab, and the speculative relationship between Missy Minor and Ashton Prince. I wrote those down. I needed to learn more about Prince and the Minor women. I wrote that down. Digging into Prince would mean talking again with his wife. My heart sank. But I wrote it down. Detective work is not always pretty.

  My office door opened. I put my hand on the .357 Mag I kept in my open top right-hand drawer.

  Martin Quirk came in.

  “Don’t shoot,” he said. “I’m an officer of the law.”

  “Okay,” I said, and took my hand off the gun.

  Quirk tossed a manila envelope on my desk, poured himself a cup of coffee from the coffeemaker on top of my file cabinet, and took it to one of my client chairs, where he sat down and took a sip.

  “Whaddya doing?” he said.

  “Making a list,” I said.

  “Things to do with the Prince killing?”

  “Yep.”

  “Makes you feel like you know what to do,” Quirk said. “Don’t it.”

  “It’s a very orderly list,” I said.

  “Got any information in the list?” Quirk said.

  “No,” I said.

  “But it makes you feel like you’re making progress,” Quirk said.

  “Exactly.”

  “Copy of the forensics on the two guys you iced,” he said. “Take a look, tell me what you think.”

  I opened the envelope and browsed the report. Much of it I didn’t understand.

  “You understand all this stuff?” I said.

  “Some of it,” Quirk said.

  I read on. Quirk rose and got more coffee. When I finished reading, I put the report back in the envelope and got up and poured myself some coffee and sat back down and put my feet on the desk.

  “No ID,” I said.

  “Neither one,” Quirk said.

  “One guy was wearing shoes made in Holland,” I said.

  “That are not exported,” Quirk said.

  “So maybe he’s Dutch.”

  “Maybe,” Quirk said.

  “Both of them are circumcised,” I said.

  “So maybe they’re Jewish,” Quirk said.

  “Lotta goyim are circumcised,” I said.

  “Hell,” Quirk said. “I’m circumcised.”

  “I’m not sure I wanted to know that,” I said.

  “Irish Catholic mother,” Quirk said. “I think she was hoping they’d take the whole thing.”

  I grinned.

  “And both these guys got a number tattooed on their forearm.”

  “Death camp tattoo,” Quirk said. “From Auschwitz. Only camp that did it.”

  “But it’s the same number,” I said. “On both of them.”

  “I know.”

  “And,” I said, “neither one of these guys was anywhere near old enough to have been in Auschwitz.”

  “Both appear to be in their thirties.”

  “So they were born, like, thirty-five years after the Holocaust,” I said.

  “Correct,” Quirk said.

  “Maybe it’s a prison tattoo,” I said.

  “A letter and five numbers?” Quirk said. “And it wasn’t crude. It was professionally done.”

  “Maybe it’s not a prison tattoo,” I said.

  “It’s not,” Quirk said.

  We were quiet.

  “How ’bout an homage,” I said.

  “You mean like in memory of somebody who actually was in Auschwitz?” Quirk said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Possible,” Quirk said.

  “If it is, there may be an actual name attached to that number,” I said.

  “The death camps were liberated more than sixty-four years ago,” Quirk said.

  “Nazis woulda kept good records,” I said.

  “You think the efficient cocksuckers kept a record of the numbers and the names?” Quirk said. “And saved them?”

  “You know what they were like,” I said.

  Quirk nodded.

  “Okay,” Quirk said. “They kept records.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “So where do we find them?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  27

  I met Rosalind Wellington outside of a poetry-writing class at the Cambridge Center for Adult Education on Brattle Street.

  “Remember me?” I said.

  “You’re that man who was with my late husband when he died,” she said.

  “Spenser,” I said.

  “Yes,” she said. “I remember you.”

  “May I buy you a drink?” I said.

  She paused for a moment and then nodded.

  “Why?” she said.

  “See how you are, talk about your husband,” I said.

  “I guess we could go to the Harvest, next door,” she said.

  We sat at the bar. The Harvest was a bit elegant for the likes of me. I was probably the only guy in the place wearing a gun. I asked for beer. Rosalind ordered Pernod on the rocks. When it came, she took a considerable swallow of it.

  “So how are you?” I said.

  “Life is for the living,” she said. “I’ve never been one to indulge the past.”

  I nodded.

  “So you’re okay,” I said.

  “Loss is the price we pay for progress,” she said. “Only as we leave things behind do we move forward.”

  “Oh, absolutely,” I said. “I’m glad you are able to be so positive.”

  She had cleaned up her Pernod, and I nodded at the bartender to refill.

  “Life is neutral,” she said. “We can choose to make it positive or negative.”

  “Of course,” I said. “That’s very insightful.”

  “I’m a poet,” she said. “Life is my subject.”

  “And you’ve chosen to make it positive.”

  “I choose every day,” she said.

  Her second Pernod arrived. She seemed positive about that, too.

  “Was your husband as, what, philosophical as you are?”

  She sucked in a little Pernod.

  “My husband was greedy,” she said. “And self-serving and sexually addicted and very concerned with what others thought.”

  “Bad combination for a philosopher,” I said.

  “Covert and driven,” she said.

  “ ‘Covert’?” I said.

  She smiled sadly and swallowed some Pernod.

  “ ‘A life of quiet desperation,’ ” she said. “To borrow from Emerson.”

  I was pretty sure she was borrowing from Thoreau, but I felt my cause would be better served by not mentioning that.

  “How’s your poem coming?” I said.

  “I’m always working on poetry,” she said.

  “I was thinking of the one you were going to write about your husband’s death.”

  “It is still in the formative stage, but I know it will be free verse,” she said. “A long free-verse narrative of the soul’s journey through sorrow.”

  “I look forward to reading it,” I said.

  “My husband is so difficult to render artistically,” she said.

  “I’ll bet he is,” I said. “Tell me about him.”

  She fortified herself for the task by draining her second Pernod. I nodded again at the bartender. He brought her a fresh drink, and she nodded her thanks imperiously. I’d noticed t
hat certain lushes get imperious after a couple of pops, trying to prove, I suppose, that they aren’t lushes.

  “He was . . . He was a tapestry of pretense. Nothing about him was real. A . . . a pastiche of deceit.”

  “You love him?” I said.

  “I thought I did. What I loved was the mask, the costume of respectability he wore to cover himself.”

  “I’m fascinated,” I said. “Tell me about that.”

  She snorted, albeit imperiously.

  “Prince wasn’t even his name,” she said.

  “What was it?” I said.

  “Prinz,” she said. “Ascher Prinz. He was Jewish.”

  “Oy,” I said.

  She paid no attention. I didn’t feel bad about that. I was pretty sure she paid no attention to anyone.

  “He was ashamed of being Jewish,” she said. “He never spoke of it.”

  “Do you know why?” I said.

  “No, I don’t,” she said. “For me, all ethnicity is an enriching source of authenticity, without which one can hardly be a poet.”

  “Did he want to be a poet?” I said.

  She looked startled.

  “Excuse me?” she said.

  “Did Ashton want to be a poet?” I said.

  “God, no,” she said. “Why would you think that?”

  “Just a random thought,” I said.

  “There was no poetry in him,” she said.

  “Was there something in him?”

  “You mean artistically?” she said.

  I could see that she was trying to nurse her current Pernod, and it was stressing her.

  “Artistically, professionally, intellectually, romantically, whatever,” I said.

  “I . . . I really can’t say.”

  I nodded.

  “When did his family come to this country?” I said.

  “Ashton’s?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I don’t really know that, either,” she said, and gestured to the bartender. “I do know that his father was in a concentration camp. So it would be after World War Two, I guess.”

  “You know which camp?” I said.

  The Pernod came. She drank some. I could almost see her tension loosen.

  “Oh, I don’t know. He never talked about it, and they all sound the same to me, anyway.”

  “You poets are so sensitive,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Just being frivolous,” I said.

  “Oh,” she said.

  I could see that she was losing focus.

  “Tell me about his, ah, sexual addiction,” I said.

  She sort of grunted.