Valediction

by Robert B. Parker

"He's going to kill you," Hawk said.

  "Count the money," I said.

  "It'll be right," Hawk said. "No point shortchanging you now."

  "I know, but count it anyway. Don't want to embarrass myself at the bank." Hawk put the shotgun on the floor, took the briefcase, opened it, and started counting.

  I drove straight to the branch of the First National Bank near Haller's office. It was in Charles River Park Plaza on Cambridge Street. I parked. Hawk closed up the briefcase.

  "Look like three hundred fifty thou to me. In big bills."

  We went in and deposited it to the Reorganized Church of the Redemption Trust account. It took a while but bankers will, finally, still accept cash.

  Back in the car Hawk said to me, "Now what?"

  "Now," I said. "We double-cross Paultz."

  CHAPTER 29

  The Reverend Bullard Winston and I sat in a conference room in State Police Headquarters at 1010 Commonwealth Avenue and talked about Mickey Paultz. With us was a large mean AFT cop named Riordan, a state cop named Devane from the state organized crime squad, a scruffy narcotics cop from Quiney named McMahon, an assistant prosecutor from the Norfolk County D.A.'s office named Rita Fiori, and Martin Quirk.

  Ms. Fiori said, "I'm not clear what interest Boston homicide has in this affair, Lieutenant Quirk."

  "Unofficial," Quirk said. He jerked his head at me. "I know Spenser and he asked me to set up this meeting."

  Ms. Fiori crossed her legs. She had elegant legs. "Then I think our first order of business is to establish jurisdiction." Her tailored suit fit well around the hips.

  Riordan sighed. McMahon, the Quincy cop said, "Rita went to Harvard."

  Rita smiled at him. "And one of the things I learned there, Artie, is that a case needs someone in charge of it . . . and it shouldn't be some asshole narc."

  Winston sat in something like a trance as the discussion of who was in charge roiled around us. He was pale, his shoulders slumped, his breathing was shallow. He sat motionless for the full half-hour of discussion that finally resolved in Devane, the statie, being acclaimed case coordinator. When it had been settled Devane looked at me.

  "Okay," he said. "Let's hear from you." Devane had a neat mustache and looked a little like Wayne Newton.

  I said, "My associate, Reverend Winston here, will give you a full statement detailing the way Mickey Paultz laundered money through the Reorganized Church of the Redemption."

  McMahon murmured, "Saints preserve us."

  "And I will produce the names of two witnesses who will, if granted immunity, testify under oath that Mickey Paultz sold them heroin in wholesale amounts clearly intended for resale."

  Devane said, "Who are the witnesses?"

  "First the immunity," I said.

  "We can't do that without even knowing who they are," Fiori said.

  "That's the deal," I said.

  "Where'd you come up with these witnesses?" Devane said.

  Beside me Winston remained motionless, looking at the floor. A vein pulsed in his right temple. Otherwise he might have been dead. I shook my head.

  Quirk said, "Off the record."

  I looked at Devane. He nodded.

  "Joe Broz," I said. "Broz gave them to me."

  "Broz?"

  "Yes, Vinnie Morris actually, but you know when Vinnie talks, it's Joe's voice."

  Devane nodded again.

  "Can we trust them?" Fiori said.

  "We can trust them to say what Vinnie told me they'd say."

  "Are we suborning perjury here?" Fiori said.

  "Probably," I said.

  Fiori smiled at me. Her teeth were even and white, her hair was reddish-brown and fell thickly to her shoulders. Her eyes were enormous and blue and innocent. "But in a good cause," she said.

  "Yes, ma'am."

  "What's Broz get out of this?" Devane said. I shook my head.

  Quirk said, "He eliminates a competitor."

  Devane said, "And maybe replaces him."

  Quirk shrugged. "One creep at a time," he said.

  They were quiet then, Riordan sprawled in his chair, his frame too big for it, his legs stretched out in front of him, his arms folded over his chest. Rita Fiori bit her lower lip, and looked at Devane. He looked at Riordan, Riordan nodded. Fiori nodded.

  Devane said, "Okay, immunity."

  I took an envelope out of my coat pocket and handed it to Devane.

  "Names," I said. "They'll come in with their attorney whenever you want. His name's there too."

  Devane opened the envelope, looked at the names. Passed the envelope around. "Anybody know them?" he said.

  McMahon said, "I do. Both of them."

  Fiori looked at Winston. "Hadn't we ought to get a statement from the Reverend Winston?" she said.

  Devane pushed a tape recorder across the conference table closer to Winston. "We'll tape what you say," he said. "And transcribe it and give you a copy of the typescript. Do you wish an attorney present? You have that right."

  Winston looked at me. I shook my head. Winston said, "No." His voice sounded dry and out of use. He cleared his throat.

  "You understand," Devane said, "that you are not receiving immunity."

  "Yes."

  "Although the judge will know of your help here."

  I handed Winston a Xerox copy of his earlier statement. Devane pushed the button on the tape recorder. Winston began to talk, referring to the earlier statement, but supplementing and enlarging, his voice growing stronger as he talked, as if the catharsis of confession had begun to quicken his spirit.

  CHAPTER 30

  It was Saturday afternoon, and an early August monsoon was upon us. A cool hard rain slanted by a strong summer wind was pounding down at an angle and had been since Friday night. Linda and I drove out to Assembly Square to see Return of the Jedi at the movie complex there. There were eight theaters in the complex showing the same eight movies that every other theater complex in the Northeast was showing. The supply of product must be down in Los Angeles.

  "It's going to be a very cute movie," Linda said. She was wearing high-heeled boots, tight jeans, and a tan raincape with the hood thrown back. The rain was coming straight into my windshield and the wipers were sweeping not drops but sheets of water off the glass. I was wearing a trench coat and my dark brown low-crowned cowboy hat. With the coat collar turned up I felt very much like Dashiell Harnmett on the outside. Underneath I had jeans and sneakers and a black T-shirt that said SLC DANCE in purple letters. "Cute," I said.

  "The first two were adorable," Linda said. "I should think a romantic like you would like them."

  "No horses," I said. "I don't like a movie without horses."

  The parking lot had been temporarily diminished by construction and it was crowded. I found a slot at the far end of the lot.

  "Want me to drop you at the door before I park?" I said.

  "No, I kind of like the rain," Linda said.

  "Me too."

  Susan would have wanted to be dropped.

  Inside, Linda bought some popcorn and we sat and watched the movie. It took about two hours.

  In the lobby, as we shuffled out with the crowd, Linda said, "Now, wasn't that cute?"

  "How about silly," I said. "That's almost like cute."

  "It was pretty silly, I guess."

  "Horses," I said. "Horses would have saved it."

  It was still raining like it used to in Korea when we went out. On a nice day it would still have been light, but here at 5:15 with the overcast and the rain, cars were snapping on their headlights as we pulled out of the lot. Beyond where my car was parked another car had parked, illegally, half out into the street. Inconsiderate bastard. No need to park in the street. Plenty of spaces open around the lot, now that several of the movies had let out.

  Linda took my hand and tapped it lightly against her thigh as we walked. "It's a kind of comic book, isn't it?" she said.

  "Yeah, or a pulp magazine."

  Why would s
omebody park like that next to my car? It was live-parked, the wipers were going. The car on the other side of me had the wipers going too.

  "Absolutely fearless heroes," Linda said. "Absolutely hideous villains. Monstrous tortures. But no sex."

  Why would a car be live-parked on either side of mine? Why would two cars sit with the motors running in a theater parking lot at a shopping mall on a rainy Saturday.

  I stopped.

  Linda said, "What is it?"

  "Something's wrong," I said.

  The two cars sat there, boxing mine. The wipers going. The theater neon splashed brightly on the shiny asphalt. The taillights of cars were bright and their headlights made glistening sweeps as they pulled out and backed up and shifted into first and pulled away. Home for maybe a supper of baked beans and corn bread. Get ready to go out on Saturday night.

  I edged Linda sideways between two parked cars. We stood still. Linda had her hood up, but the wisps of hair that stuck out in front were plastered to her forehead. The rain ran in a small drizzle off the brim of my hat when I tipped my head forward. The two cars didn't budge.

  Linda hunched her shoulders impatiently and squeezed my hand. "What are we doing?" she said.

  "There's a car parked on either side of mine, with the motors running. It's making me nervous."

  "Why . . ."

  I shook my head. "Come on," I said. We went down the row of parked cars and swung out wide around the perimeter of the parking lot. The exodus from the afternoon show was over, the influx for the early evening show had arrived and parked and gone inside. There was little movement in the lot. We crossed the street and moved behind the cars parked on that side, moving along the near end of the shopping mall, parallel to where my car was parked and bookended. We stopped behind a Dodge van with the spare tire mounted on a swingaway rack, and some racy stripes swooshed along its side.

  "You think those men are after us?" Linda was whispering.

  "No," I said. "Me. I think that Mickey Paultz is trying to hit me."

  "Shouldn't we call the police?"

  "Yes."

  I stared at the cars beside mine. Looking through the rain-splattered windows of the van.

  "But we're not going to," Linda said.

  "Not yet," I said.

  "What are we going to do?"

  "We'll wait awhile," I said. "See what they do."

  Linda tugged her cape tighter around her, the hood over her head, and pressed against the van. "I'm scared," she said. "I'm so scared I can barely stand up."

  "I'm sorry," I said. "But I want to keep you with me."

  "Because why?" she whispered.

  I shook my head. I remembered another rainy day. In Los Angeles. When I had blundered through an oil field. Looking for Candy Sloan.

  Linda's voice became more insistent, and her whisper was louder. "Because why?" she said.

  "I'm not going to lose you too," I said.

  "My Jesus Christ," Linda whispered. "They don't want me."

  I looked at her in the semidark with her cape clutched to her and the hood tightened around her small face. She was shaking.

  "Yes," I said. "They're not after you." The car on the outside of mine was a light blue Buick sedan with four doors. As we watched, it slipped into gear and moved away from my car and down the aisle toward the theater.

  "He's impatient," I said. "He's going to look."

  The Buick went down the aisle, turned at the end, and moved slowly up the next aisle. The other car stayed where it was beside mine. It had a maroon vinyl roof and looked like a Mercury or a Ford.

  "Okay," I said. "In a minute I'm going for the car. As soon as I do, you head for the mall. Get in there and mingle. These guys don't want you and don't even know what you look like. Once you're away from me you'll be safe."

  "Will you come back for me?"

  "Yes, I'll meet you in the bar in the mall, Dapper Dan's it's called. If I'm not there by closing, call the cops. Boston Homicide, ask for Sergeant Belson or Lieutenant Quirk. Talk to either of them and explain what happened. If neither is there, talk to whoever you get."

  She nodded. "Sergeant Belson, or Lieutenant Quirk, okay?"

  She nodded again.

  The Buick was at the near end of the next lane. It turned and headed back down the next one. Crouching as low as I could, my gun in my right hand, the car keys in my teeth, I sprinted across the open road toward my car. I yanked the door open and I was in. And the key was in the ignition. I turned the key and tromped on the accelerator. It started. The window of the inside car started down. I fired at it, shattering my own window on the passenger side. I floored the Subaru and screeched, wheels spinning on the wet pavement, out of the slot and toward the street. A bullet punched through the side window and out through the windshield, sending spiderweb cracks out in a flared radius.

  I stuck the gun into my pocket and using both hands headed along the edge of the parked cars, staying close to them for cover, and rammed a right turn and floored it for Mystic Avenue. Behind me the Buick and the other car roared after me. It looked like a Ford.

  There was a red light at Mystic Avenue and a Chevy wagon stopped at it. I swung inside it and ran the light, turning right onto Mystic Avenue with the rain driving straight at me. The chase cars behind me parted, one went outside, one went inside the Chevy as they, too, ran the light. There were two more red lights at the complicated intersections of Routes 28 and 93 and Mystic Avenue. I ducked past an oncoming Volvo and heard brakes scream behind me as the two chase cars avoided it. It gave me a fifty-foot longer lead. I U-turned under the sign that said not to under Route 93 and headed back in toward Charlestown. At Somerville Lumber I went up the ramp onto 93 with the Subaru going as fast as it would in every gear. Four cylinders were not many. The car fishtailed on the slippery pavement, but I held its nose in and never let up on the gas. I turned my headlights on. There was maybe a mile of straightaway and the two chase cars were closing the gap with their big engines. Not good. I swung off at the Sullivan Square exit and plunged down into Charlestown. The Buick was hard behind me, coming on my right. The ramp was potholed and the Subaru bounced like an eccentric pony as we careened down the ramp by the Hood milk plant. On the straightaway that ran toward Bunker Hill College the Buick was right up on my tail on the inside and the Ford, if it was a Ford, was only a yard or two back on my left. As we came up on the college I veered left and into the tunnel that led toward City Square. The Buick couldn't make it and screeched past on the surface above me. The Ford went into the tunnel with me at about seventy and when we came back up thirty yards farther on, the Buick was running the light on the surface road but farther back. Ahead was City Square. Ahead also was a traffic jam that backed up from the Charlestown Bridge and the light at the Boston end. I swung up onto the margin of the road; my speed dropped to fifty. I yanked the four-wheel-drive lever up and the car trembled as it went in. To the right was a rotted chain link fence, ahead I knew there was a gate, and a driveway that led into the sand and gravel business located under the elevated structure of Route 93. The fields around it were head-high with weeds, and scrap, and abandoned municipal maintenance buildings. I was gaining on the chase cars. They were skidding and spinning their big wheels in the muddy roadside, lurching half sideways as they came on. I got to the gate. It was open. I wrenched the Subaru into a skidding turn and rammed on into the mud driveway and across it and in among the weeds that were higher than the car. Among the weeds was a pile of steel girders left over from the demolition of the elevated railroad that used to run into City Square. The Subaru hit them with the left headlight and bumper and fender and tore them loose and canted up on one side as the four-wheel drive kept shoving. The car stalled with one wheel two feet off the ground and the whole left front quarter shredded.

  I rolled out with my gun in my right hand and headed through the weeds toward the new Charles River Dam.

  The two chase cars churned into the drive through the gate and skidded to a halt behind the
now lifeless Subaru, their headlights sweeping the tops of the weeds as they stopped.

  I lay flat in the weeds, facing back toward the pursuit, soaked from the parking lot and now the drenched weeds and the mud.

  Saturday night is the loneliest night of the week.

  CHAPTER 31

  The headlights went off, except the one remaining on my car. It slanted up like a searchlight. I heard car doors open and close. Then my headlight went out and it was nearly dark. There was no attempt at stealth. They knew I knew they were there. How many? Four at least, two in each car. Maybe more. There were traffic sounds all around. Behind me to the right, City Square; about me, Route 93; behind me and to my left, the Charlestown Bridge.

  I heard the pump slide back on a shotgun as someone jacked a shell up into the chamber. I knew what it was. It doesn't sound like anything else. Linda was in the shopping mall by now, out of the rain, walking among the shoppers, scared but safe. I wouldn't lose her. They wouldn't kill her on me.

  The matter at hand was to see if I could keep them from killing me. I was snuggled into the mud among the weed roots, smelling the harsh weedy smell. I was soaked through, trench coat and all. Still lying in the mud, I shrugged out of the trench coat. It was doing me no good and it slowed me down. Lightcolored as it was, it also improved my visibility. The cowboy hat had long since gone. I didn't remember it falling off. They didn't make them like they used to. Tom Mix never lost his.

  Around among the weeds were a number of piles of steel girders, of the kind that had done in the Subaru. I worked backward on my belly toward the pile nearest me, and edged behind it and rose to a crouch. I could see the pursuit moving the weeds as they came on. Mostly I couldn't see them, just the wave of the high vegetation. They seemed to have fanned out and were coming in four, or whatever, abreast.

  Behind me maybe ten yards was a dirt road that looped sloppily around along the water to my left, and led eventually past where the bad guys were moving, to the sand and gravel yard five hundred yards beyond. It was hedged with the weeds and I could see only a brief patch of it. I thumbed back the hammer on my gun. It was short.38, not good for much range. I rested my forearm on the top of the steel pile and aimed at the movement on the farthest right, and watched. With my left hand I had to wipe the rain from my eyes. Without losing sight of my target I was trying to keep a peripheral sense of where the others were. They didn't know where I was, so they moved very slowly. But it would not be pleasant if I was staring at the right side of the pursuit and someone from the left side came up and shot me in the head.