”My name’s Sylvia,“ he said. ”You looking for me?“
”I am if you’re running the Bristol Security investigation.“
”Yeah.“
”Can we go someplace and talk?“
Sylvia nodded toward the stairs past the desk and I followed him to the second floor. We went through a door marked ROBBERY and into a room that overlooked Second Street. There were six desks butted together in groups of two, each with a push-button phone and a light maple swivel chair. In the far corner an office had been partitioned off. On the door was a sign that read SGT. CRUZ. At one of the desks a skinny cop with scraggly blond hair sat with his feet up talking on the phone. He was wearing a black T-shirt, and on his right forearm he had a tattoo of a thunderbird and the words fighting 45TH. A cigarette burned on the edge of the desk, a long ash forming. Sylvia grabbed a straight chair from beside one of the other desks and dragged it over beside his. ”Sit,“ he said. I sat and he slid into his swivel chair and tilted it back, his small feet resting on the base of the chair. He wasn’t wearing socks. A big floor fan in the far corner moved hot air back and forth across the desk tops as it scanned the room.
On Sylvia’s desk was a paper coffee cup, empty, and part of a peanut butter sandwich on white bread. ”Okay,“ Sylvia said. ”Shoot.“
”You know who King Powers is?“ I said.
”Yeah.“
”I can give you the people who did the Bristol Security and I can give you Powers, but there’s got to be a trade.“
”Powers don’t do banks.“
”I know. I can give him to you for something else, and I can give you the bank people and I can tie them together, but I gotta have something back from you.“
”What do you want?“
”I want two people who are in this, left out of this.“
”One of them you?“
”No, I don’t do banks either.“
”Let me see something that tells me what you do do.“
I showed him my license. He looked at it, handed it back. ”Boston, huh. You know a guy named Abel Markum up there, works out of Robbery?“
”Nope.“
”Who do you know?“
”I know a homicide lieutenant named Quirk. A dick named Frank Belson. Guy in Robbery named Herschel Patton. And I have a friend that’s a school-crossing guard in Billerica named…“
Sylvia cut me off. ”Okay, okay, I done business with Patton.“ He took some grape-flavored sugarless bubble gum from his shirt pocket and put two pieces in his mouth. He didn’t offer any to me. ”You know, if you’re in possession of evidence of the commission of a felony that you have no legal right to withhold that evidence.“
”Can I have a piece of bubble gum?“
Sylvia reached into his pocket, took out the pack and tossed it on the desk in front of me. There were three pieces left. I took one.
”Take at least two,“ Sylvia said. ”You can’t work up a bubble with one. Stuffs lousy.“
I took another piece, peeled off the paper and chewed it. Sylvia was right. It was lousy.
”Remember when Double Bubble used to put out the nice lump of pink bubble gum and it was all you needed to get a good bubble?“
”Times change,“ Sylvia said. ”Withholding information of a felony is illegal.“
I blew a small purple bubble. ”Yeah, I know. You want to talk about trade?“
”How about we slap you in a cell for a while as an accessory to a felony?“
I worked on the bubble gum. It wasn’t elastic enough. I could only produce a small bubble, maybe as big as a Ping-Pong ball, before it broke with a sharp little snap.
”How about while you’re in the cell we interrogate you a while. We got some guys down here can interrogate the shit out of a person. You know?“
”This stuff sticks to your teeth,“ I said.
”Not if you don’t have any,“ Sylvia said.
”Why the hell would someone make gum that sticks to your teeth,“ I said. ”Christ, you can’t trust anyone.“
”You don’t like it, spit it out. I don’t make you chew it.“
”It’s better than nothing,“ I said.
”You gonna talk to me about the Bristol Security job?“
”I’m gonna talk to you about a trade.“
”Goddamnit, Spenser, you can’t come waltzing in here and tell me what kind of deal you’ll make with me. I don’t know what kind of crap you get away with up in Boston, but down here I tell you what kind of deal there is.“
”Very good,“ I said. ”One look at my license and you remembered my name. I didn’t even see your lips move when you looked at it either.“
”Don’t smart-ass with me, Johnny, or you’ll be looking very close at the floor. Understand what I’m saying to you?“
”Aw come on, Sylvia, stop terrifying me. When I get panicky I tend to violence and there’s only two of you in the room.“ The scraggly haired cop with the tattoo had hung up the phone and drifted over to listen.
”Want me to open the window, Jackie,“ he said. ”Then if he gets mean we can scream for help?“
”Or jump,“ Sylvia said. ”It’s two floors but it would be better than trying to deal with an anirnal like this.“
I said, ”You guys want to talk trade yet, or are you working up a nightclub act?“
”How do I know you can deliver,“ Sylvia said.
”If I don’t what have you lost. You’re no worse off than you are now.“
”No entrapment,“ scraggly hair said. ”At least nothing that looks like entrapment in court. We been burned on that a couple of times.“
”No sweat,“ I said.
”How bad are the people you want left out?“
”They are no harm to anybody but themselves,“ I said. ”They ran after the wrong promise and got into things they couldn’t control.“
”The bank guard that got killed,“ Sylvia said, ”I knew him. Used to be in the department here, you know.“
”I know,“ I said. ”My people didn’t want it to happen.“
”Homicide during the commission of a felony is murder one.“
”I know that too,“ I said. ”And I know that these people are a good swap for what I can give you. Somebody’s got to go down for the bank guard.“
Sylvia interrupted. ”Fitzgerald, his name was. Everybody called him Fitzy.“
”Like I say, somebody has to go down for that. And somebody will. I just want to save a couple of goddamned fools.“
Scraggly hair looked at Sylvia. ”So far we got zip on the thing, Jackie. Air.“
”You got a plan,“ Sylvia said. I nodded.
”There’s no guarantee. Whatever you got, I’m going to have to check you out first.“
”I know that.“
”Okay, tell me.“
”I thought you’d never ask,“ I said.
Chapter 20
Scraggly hair’s name turned out to be McDermott. He and Jackie Sylvia listened without comment while I laid it out and when I was through Sylvia said, ”Okay, we’ll think about it. Where can I reach you?“
”Dunfey’s in Hyannis. Or my service if I’m not there. I check with the service every day.“ I gave him the number.
”We’ll get back to you.“
On the drive back to Hyannis the grape bubble gum got harder and harder to chew. I gave up in Wareham and spit it out the window in front of the hospital. The muscles at my jaw hinges were sore, and I felt slightly nauseous. When I pulled into the parking lot at Dunfey’s it was suppertime and the nausea had given way to hunger.
Susan was back from her antiquing foray and had a Tiffany style glass lampshade for which she’d paid $125. We went down to the dining room, had two vodka gimlets each, parslied rack of lamb and blackberry cheesecake. After dinner we had some cassis and then went down to the ballroom and danced all the slow numbers until midnight. We brought a bottle of champagne back to the room and drank it and went to bed and didn’t sleep until nearly three.
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It was ten-forty when I woke up. Susan was still asleep, her back to me, the covers up tight around her neck. I picked up the phone and ordered breakfast, softly. ”Don’t knock,“ I said. ”Just leave it outside the door. My friend is still asleep.“
I showered and shaved and with a towel around my waist opened the door and brought in the cart. I drank coffee and ate from a basket of assorted muffins while I dressed. Susan woke up as I was slipping my gun into the hip holster. I clipped the holster on to my belt. She lay on her back with her hands behind her head and watched me. I slipped on my summer blazer with the brass buttons and adjusted my shirt collar so it rolled out nicely over the lapels. Seductive.
”You going to see Hawk and what’s’isname?“ Susan said.
”Powers,“ I said. ”Yeah. Me and Harv Shepard.“
She continued to look at me.
”Want some coffee?“ I said.
She shook her head. ”Not yet.“
I ate a corn muffin.
”Are you scared? Susan asked.
“I don’t know. I don’t think much about it. I don’t see anything very scary happening today.”
“Do you like it?”
“Yeah. I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t like it.”
“I mean this particularly. I know you like the work. But do you like this? You are going to frame a very dangerous man. That should scare you, or excite you or something.”
“I’m not going to frame him. I’m going to entrap him, in fact.”
“You know what I mean. If it doesn’t work right he’ll kill you.”
“No, he’ll have it done.”
“Don’t do that. Don’t pick up the less important part of what I’m saying. You know what I’m after. What kind of man does the kinds of things you do? What kind of man gets up in the morning and showers and shaves and checks the cartridges in his gun?”
“Couldn’t we talk over the transports of delight in which we soared last evening?”
“Do you laugh at everything?”
“No, but we’re spending too much time on this kind of talk. The kind of man I am is not a suitable topic, you know. It’s not what one talks about.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s not.”
“The code? A man doesn’t succumb to self-analysis? It’s weak? It’s womanish?”
“It’s pointless. What I am is what I do. Finding the right words for it is no improvement. It isn’t important whether I’m scared or excited. It’s important whether or not I do it. It doesn’t matter to Shepard why. It matters to Shepard if.”
“You’re wrong. It matters more than that. It matters why.”
“Maybe it matters mostly how.”
“My, aren’t we epigrammatic. Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn. Repartee.”
“He spells his name differently,” I said.
Susan turned over on her side, her back to me, and was quiet. I had some more coffee. The murmurous rush of the air conditioner seemed quite loud. I’d asked for the New Bedford Standard Times with breakfast, and in the quiet, I picked it up and turned to the classified section. My ad was there under personals. “Sisters, call me at 555-1434, Pam.” I looked at the sports page and finished my coffee. It was ten after twelve. I folded the paper and put it on the room service cart.
“Gotta go, Suze,” I said.
She nodded without turning over.
I got up, put on my sunglasses and opened the door. “Spenser,” she said, “I don’t want us to be mad at each other.”
“Me either,” I said. I still had hold of the doorknob.
“Come back when you can,” she said. “I miss you when you’re gone.”
“Me too,” I said. I left the door open and went back and kissed her on the cheekbone, up near the temple. She rolled over on her back and looked up at me. Her eyes were wet. “Bye-bye,” I said.
“Bye-bye.”
I went out and closed the door and headed for Harv Shepard’s place with my stomach feeling odd.
I don’t know if I was scared or not, but Shepard was so scared his face didn’t fit. The skin was stretched much too tight over the bones and he swallowed a lot, and loudly, as we drove out Main Street to the Holiday Inn.
“You don’t need to know what I’m up to,” I said. “I think you’ll do better if you don’t. Just take it that I’ve got something working that might get you out of this.”
“Why can’t you tell me?”
“Because it requires some deception and I don’t think you’re up to it.”
“You’re probably right,” he said.
Hawk had a room on the second floor, overlooking the pool. He answered the door when we knocked, and Shepard and I went in. There was assorted booze on the bureau to the right, and a thin guy with horn-rimmed glasses reading the Wall Street Journal on one of the beds. King Powers was sitting at a round table with an open ledger in front of him, his hands folded on the edge of the table. Stagey bastard.
“What is that you have with you,” Powers said in a flat Rudy Vallee voice.
“We’re friends,” I said. “We go everywhere together.”
Powers was a tall, soft-looking man with pale skin and reddish hair trimmed long like a Dutch boy, and augmented with fuzzy mutton-chop sideburns. His wardrobe looked like Robert Hall Mod. Maroon-checked doubleknit leisure suit, white belt, white shoes, white silk shirt with the collar out over the lapels. A turquoise arrowhead was fastened around his neck on a leather thong and stuck straight out, like a gesture of derision.
“I didn’t tell you to bring no friends,” Powers said to Shepard.
“You’ll be glad he did,” I said. “I got a package for you that will put a lot of change in your purse.”
“I don’t use no goddamned purse,” Powers said.
“Oh,” I said. “I’m sorry. I thought that was your mistress on the bed.”
Behind me Hawk murmured. “Hot damn” to himself. The guy on the bed looked up from his Wall Street Journal and frowned.
Powers said, “Hawk, get him the fuck out of here.”
Hawk said. “This is Spenser. I told you about him. He likes to kid around but he don’t mean harm. Leastwise he don’t always mean harm.”
“Hawk, you hear me. I told you move him out.”
“He talking money, King. Maybe you should listen.”
“You working for me, Hawk? You do what you’re told.”
“Naw, I only do what I want. I never do what I’m told. Same with old Spenser here. You yell your ass off at him, if you want, but he ain’t going to do a goddamned thing he don’t want to do. You and Macey listen to him. He talking about money, he probably ain’t bullshitting. You don’t like what you hear. Then I’ll move him out.”
“Aw right, aw right. Let’s hear it, for crissake. Spit it out.” Powers’ pale face was a little red and he was looking at me hard. Macey, on the bed, had sat up, and put his feet on the floor. He still held the Journal in his left hand, his forefinger keeping the place.
“Okay, King. First. Harv can’t pay up, at this time.”
“Then his ass is grass and I’m a fucking lawnmower,” Powers said.
“Trendy,” I said.
“Huh?”
“Trendy as a bastard, that slick maroon and white combo. And to top it off you talk so good. You’re just an altogether with-it guy.”
“You keep fucking around with me, Spenser, and you’re going to wish you never did.”
“Whyn’t you get to the part about the bread, Spenser,” Hawk said. “In the purse. Whyn’t you talk on that.”
“I got a buyer with about a hundred thousand dollars who is looking for some guns. I will trade you the buyer for Shepard.”
“What makes you think I can get guns?”
“King, for a hundred thousand skins you could get a dancing aardvark.” He smiled. His lips were puffy and when he smiled the inside of his upper lip turned out. And his gums showed above his top teeth.
“Yeah, maybe I could,” h
e said. “But Shepard’s into me for a lot of fucking dough.” He ran his eyes down the ledger page in front of him. “Thirty big ones. I took a lot of risk with that dough, just on a handshake, you know? It ain’t easy to trade that off.”
“Okay,” I said. “See you, we’ll take it elsewhere,” I said. “Come on, Harv.”
Powers said, “You’re choice, but your pal better have the payment on him now, or we’re going to be awful mad.”
“The payment’s in the offer. You turned it down, you got no bitch.” I turned to go. Hawk was between us and the door. His hands resting delicately on his hips.
“Hawk,” Powers said. “Shepard don’t leave.”
“Hundred thousand’s a lotta vegetable matter, King,” Hawk said.
“Hawk’s right, Mr. Powers.” Macey on the bed had dropped his Journal and brought out a neat-looking little.25 automatic with a pearl handle and nickel plating. Probably matched his cuff links.
“What’s in it for you, Spencer?” Powers said.
“Thirty percent,” I said. “You can use it to pay off Shepard’s loan.”
Powers was quiet. We all were. It was like a stop frame in instant replay.
Hawk at ease in front of the door. Shepard with his skin squeezing tight on his body, Macey with his cute gun. Powers sitting at the table, thinking.
The window was behind him and the light coming in framed him like a back-lit photograph. The little tendrils of fuzz in the double-knit were silhouetted and clear along his coat sleeves and the tops of the shoulders. The mutton-chop sideburns where the whiskers individuated at the outer edge were more gold than copper against the light.
“Who’s your customer?” King said. Hawk whistled shave-and-a-haircut-two-bits between his teeth. Softly.
“If I told you that I probably wouldn’t be needed as go-between, would I?”
Powers turned his lip up again and giggled. Then he turned to the thin guy. “Macey,” he said, “I got some golf to play. Set this thing up.” He looked at me. “This better be straight,” he said. “If it ain’t you are going to be pushing up your fucking daisies. You unnerstand? Fucking daisies you’ll be pushing up.” He got up and walked past me toward the door.
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