Valediction

by Robert B. Parker

  "Subaru wasn't the only thing totaled in there," Belson said.

  I got some cream out of the refrigerator, and a box of sugar out of the cupboard. "Hope you don't require formal service," I said.

  I put a couple of teaspoons on the counter near the cups.

  "I got some whole wheat cinnamon and raisin bagels here," I said. "And some all natural cream cheese. No gum or other additives."

  "Sure," Belson said. "We'd be fools not to."

  Lizotti said, "For crissake, Frank, who is this guy, Julia fucking Child?"

  "He's elegant, Liz. Everything just so. An elegant guy."

  I put three bagels into the oven to heat, and took a block of cream cheese out of the refrigerator and unwrapped it and put it on a saucer. I got three butter knives out and put them beside the saucer.

  "Got to let the coffee steep a little," I said. "And nobody likes a cold bagel."

  "We found four fucking stiffs in there," Lizotti said.

  "Three shot with a thirty-eight, one with a shotgun," I said.

  "Probably," Belson said. "M.E. hasn't got a report yet."

  I poured coffee into the three cups, and added some cream from the carton and sugar from the box. The box has one of those little metal fold-out pouring spouts. I stirred my coffee and sipped some.

  "Water-decaffeinated," I said. "Mocha almond. You can get it at Bread and Circus in Cambridge."

  Belson added sugar, no cream. Lizotti ignored his.

  Lizotti said, "You admitting you did it?"

  "Yep."

  I put my coffee down, went to the bedroom, and got my gun. I brought it back into the kitchen, still in its clip-on holster, with the strap snapped. Lizotti's hand moved under his coat as I came back in. Belson shook his head.

  "The weapon in question," I said, and gave it to Belson. He removed it from the holster, opened the cylinder, shook out the fresh load I'd put in before I went to bed, snapped shut the cylinder, and handed me back the holster and the five rounds. He dropped the gun in his coat pocket.

  Lizotti said, "Been fired recently?"

  I said, "Yes."

  Lizotti said, "Give it a sniff, Frank."

  Belson grinned at me and had a little more coffee.

  "For crissake, Liz. The guy already confessed."

  "The slugs you dig out of those guys will match the ones you test-fire from my gun," I said.

  "How about the shotgun?" Lizotti said.

  "It's in the river by the new locks," I said.

  "It belonged to Fat Willie Vance," Belson said. "Spenser took it away from him and shot him with it."

  I nodded.

  Lizotti said to Belson, "How come you're so sure?"

  "How I got to be sergeant," Belson said. "Intuition."

  "That's who that was," I said. "It was kind of dark and I was rushed. I didn't even recognize him. Willie always uses a shotgun," I said to Lizotti.

  "Used," Belson said.

  "Yes."

  "It was Willie's crew," Belson said. "I figure someone hired him to hit you, and they were overmatched. What I don't know is who."

  "Quirk knows," I said.

  Belson looked at Lizotti.

  "Okay," he said.

  "Get dressed. We'll go downtown and talk with Marty and you'll give us a statement, in which you'll claim self-defense, and we'll see what we think."

  i took the bagels out of the oven one at a time, juggling them to keep from burning my hands, and tossed them on the counter.

  "Eat up," I said. "While I shower. Save me a bagel."

  "You put four of them down by yourself?" Lizotti said.

  "Yeah," I said. "Not bad for a guy who'd wear a maroon velour robe, huh?"

  I showered and dressed and ate my bagel on the way downtown. Lizotti didn't join us in Quirk's office. Just Quirk, Belson, and little old moi. Three hours later I took a cab home, free for the moment, maybe forever, carless, but licensed still to pursue my trade. The cops had kept my gun, but I had another one. All in all it had worked out much better for me than it had for Fat Willie. As far as I knew it was his only shotgun.

  CHAPTER 35

  Sherry Spellman and I took the elevator down from Vince Haller's office and went out onto Staniford Street in the heat of August.

  "Haller will help you in any way you need," I said.

  She nodded.

  "You understand the trust?"

  She nodded.

  "And that he's trust officer?"

  "Yes."

  "He'll help you with organization, with your tax situation. He'll help arrange credit until the trust starts to generate income."

  "I understand," she said.

  "And you can call me anytime." We turned left at Cambridge Street.

  "I know," she said. She put her hand on my arm and stopped me. "I want to say thank you. But I want to say more than that and I don't know how."

  I leaned over and kissed her on the forehead. "My pleasure," I said. "The next step is Tommy."

  She stepped away and widened her eyes at me.

  "I got into this thing because Tommy Banks asked me to find you. He's the only client I've had since we began. I think you two should talk."

  "I don't know what to say to him."

  "Maybe we can plan that out a little. But you owe him the chance to talk."

  "Yes," she said.

  "Do you love him?" I said.

  "Yes."

  "Do you want to live with him again?"

  "I don't know. I won't go back to dancing and all of that."

  "What's `all of that'?" I said.

  "All of that discipline, that control, it . . . it submerges me. I am not just a dancer and Tommy a choreographer. I'm a puppet."

  "So how could you be with him?"

  "Maybe if he came with me." She frowned. "No," she said. "That wouldn't be fair. He could still be a dancer if I could be in my church."

  "Any other men in your life?"

  "There are men in the church I care about, but we never . . ."

  I nodded. "Okay. Want to go to the studio?"

  "Tommy's studio? No." She shook her head vigorously. "No."

  "Okay," I said. "Neutral ground. My office." She nodded.

  We walked down across the Common to my office. When we went in I looked automatically across the street at Linda's office. She was there but her back was to the window. I stared at her for a moment, feeling something very much like need tugging at my stomach. Then I sat down in my chair and called Tommy Banks.

  He arrived a half hour later, his face tight, his movements constricted, like a man walking over a slippery spot on a winter street. Sherry stood when he came in. They looked silently at each other and then she stepped to him and kissed him lightly. He put his arms around her, but she stiffened and leaned her hips away from him. He knew it at once and took his arms away quickly. They stood back from each other, hurt showing in Banks's face.

  "Same old passionate Sher," he said. It had the sound of an ancient refrain. She shook her head slowly from side to side.

  "Tommy," she said.

  "You ready to come back," he said.

  She looked at me. I remained silent. "Tommy, I can't come back and be a dancer."

  "God won't approve?" he said.

  "Isn't there another way for us to be together?"

  "You want me to move up in your fucking commune?" Tommy said. "Mumble beads all day or whatever you do?"

  "That's not what we do," she said.

  "Does it have to be either or?" I said.

  Having done such a swell job on my own love life, maybe I could start spreading it around.

  "What do you mean?" Banks said.

  "She does church work, you dance, but you share each other's evenings or whatever."

  "She's a dancer," Banks said, "so am I. I won't let her throw her life away on some fucking superstition."

  "It's my life, Tommy."

  Banks turned toward her and his intensity trembled in the room.

  "Your life i
s my life. I'm you and you're me. There's no my-life-your-life with us."

  "Tommy," she said, and her voice was pressed and despairing, "I can't be with you all the time. But we could be together some, often, but not always. I'm not a dancer anymore, Tommy. You can't choreograph me anymore."

  Banks's breath was heaving. He opened his mouth and closed it and the tears began to run down his face. At his sides his hands clenched into white-knuckled fists.

  "Separate people can still love," Sherry said.

  "Them," Banks gasped. "Them or me."

  "Don't," Sherry said. "Don't do that, Tommy."

  They stood silently two feet apart. I felt the knot tighten inside me as I sat. I looked out my window. Linda wasn't there. I turned back, feeling a little sick.

  "Them," Banks said as if he were spitting. He turned and walked out of the office, leaving the door open, and I heard his footsteps recede down the corridor. Sherry turned toward me and we looked at each other silently. She sat suddenly in my client chair and her body sagged and she put her face in her hands and cried. After a while I got up and went over and stood behind her and rubbed her shoulders a little and tried to think of something to say.

  CHAPTER 36

  I was at my apartment eating bean soup with Paul when Susan called. Her voice was small. "Hello," she said.

  "Hello."

  "How are you?"

  "Still here," I said. "How about yourself?"

  "I'm as far from you as I can get," she said.

  "Not true," I said. "You could get a job in Hong Kong."

  "I don't mean it that way," she said. "I mean I can't give you up. I can't altogether leave you."

  "Can you come back?"

  "No."

  "Getting any pressure from your guy friend?"

  "Yes."

  "He wants to move in?"

  "Yes."

  "You can't do that either."

  "No," she said. I had never heard her voice so small, so wounded. For the first time since she left I felt her pain too.

  "So you have two men in your life," I said, "and you can't give yourself completely to either one."

  "Six years ago," she said, "on a beach on Cape Cod you asked me to marry you, and I said no. I said that you wouldn't fit in my world or me in yours and we were better as we were."

  "I remember."

  "That wasn't it," she said. "It was simply that I couldn't."

  "And you still can't."

  "Yes," she said. "I thought maybe it was just you, your intensity, your force. It has always scared me even when it attracted me."

  "And . . ."

  "But it's me too. I couldn't live with my husband. I can't live with my friend either."

  "Even though you love him."

  The line was quiet. "I love you too."

  "When I came back from L.A.," I said, "I had just failed more completely than I ever have. I betrayed you by making love to Candy Sloan. . . ."

  "You had the right," Susan said. "That wasn't betrayal."

  "Yeah, I told Candy that, too, but it was. I disapproved of me for it. And then I let them kill her."

  "She got herself killed," Susan said.

  "And I started getting scared that I wasn't everything. And I started needing you to make me complete, and that was when things started going to hell."

  "I can't complete you," Susan said. "More important, you can't complete me. I have to do that myself."

  "I know."

  "Everything you've achieved you've achieved through strength, through force, through will. This you can't force. This you have to permit."

  "It's your line of work," I said.

  "Yes," Susan said. "Physician heal thyself, huh?"

  I nodded.

  Susan said, "Are you still there?"

  "Yes."

  "It will take a while," Susan said, "but we will resolve this."

  "Yes."

  Susan said, "I don't know how it will resolve, but I know this. I know in my bones that I love you, and that I cannot conceive of a life without you."

  "Me too," I said.

  "I will call you again soon," Susan said. Her voice was barely there.

  "Yes," I said. "Good-bye."

  "Good-bye."

  I hung up.

  Paul came into the living room and said, "Are you all right?"

  "No, I'm not all right," I said. "But I won't die."

  Paul's face was hard. "You've got to get off of this," he said. "If not for yourself, for me. You're losing Susan, I'm losing Susan and you."

  "Goddamn it," I said, "you get as much as I have left. This is all there is of me now, there isn't any more. You won't lose me, but this is all you can fucking well have of me right now."

  Paul's face was hurt and angry. "It's not selfishness," he said, "you've got to get off of Susan. There is a life ahead for you. Even if you don't lose her, you've got to get off of her. You are, for crissake, obsessive."

  I felt my anger flare. And I looked at Paul's determined face and saw that there were tears in his eyes.

  "I'm sorry," I said. "I'm doing what I can. There will be more of me in a while. This thing will resolve."

  Paul nodded.

  "Now I have to go to work," I said.

  "Don't be careless," Paul said.

  "I won't be," I said. "I want to be around to see how this turns out."

  CHAPTER 37

  "It's like early congregationalism," Sherry said. We were sitting in the dining hall at the Middleton headquarters drinking coffee at a table where the morning yellow sun made a pleasing yellow splash on the space between us. "We meet once a week on Tuesday evenings right here and decide on church business. I'm council chairman."

  There were two or three kitchen workers gearing up for lunch, but otherwise there was no one else in the room. My new approach to cutting back on coffee was to drink it with a lot of milk and sugar. After a while it would be easy to wean myself altogether, more milk and less coffee each time, and eventually I'd have it done. The coffee mugs were the old thick white china ones they used to use in diners. I got up and went to a coffee urn and refilled mine, added a lot of milk and some sugar, and went back to the table. The smell of stew and coffee enriched the room.

  "And the money?"

  "The money is being handled by the trust department at Mr. Hallers's bank and they issue us a check for the interest every month. They said it would be about two thousand a month."

  "That be enough?"

  "I think so. We are quite self-sufficient and we are going to work on that. This compound is paid for. We raise most of our vegetables and eggs. We're going to preserve fruits and vegetables this year. We can't give people a stipend really, anymore, but they can supplement by working outside and we're considering how to make money."

  Sherry had filled out a little. She had a lot of color from working outdoors, and she seemed firmer to me.

  "What about Reverend Winston?" she said.

  "He's agreed to supply evidence against Paultz," I said. "When the warrants are all in place they will bust Mickey and indict him and Winston will testify and they'll put Paultz away."

  "What will happen to him?" Sherry said.

  "Winston? I suspect he'll get a suspended sentence, and then maybe they'll give him a new identity and he'll disappear in some witness protection program."

  "Because Mickey Paultz will try to have him killed?"

  "Yes. We've got Winston covered now so Paultz can't get at him. And Paultz thinks he's bought silence with the church donation. But when Winston testifies . . ."

  Sherry nodded. She was resting her chin on her clenched right fist and I was struck by the bizarre conjunction of Mickey Paultz and this religious little kid.

  "I hope he'll be all right," Sherry said. "Where is he?"

  "He's covered," I said.

  "Do you know anything about Tommy?" she said.

  I shook my head. "Paul says he's canceled rehearsals and they are a week and a half away from a performance."
/>   "My God," she said.

  "Not his style?"

  "Oh, Lord, no. Nothing came before performance. Nothing."

  The sunlight had moved slightly and now touched her hands where they lay motionless beside her coffee cup on the table. The brightness made her skin seem faintly translucent. And her unadorned hands seemed very vulnerable.

  "I hope he hasn't done anything to himself," she said. She was studying the sunlight on her hands.

  "Most people don't," I said.

  "Would you find out if he's all right?" she said.

  She had pulled her hair back from her face and caught it with some kind of pin at the nape of her neck. She wore no makeup. Her face as she looked at me seemed almost devoid of experience, as if it had begun just this morning. Her eyes were very pale blue.

  "Sure," I said. "I'll take a look."

  "We . . . I can't pay you."

  "What are friends for," I said.

  She reached one of her hands toward me through the splash of sun and took my hand. And held it.

  "You are a friend," she said. "I didn't know there were people like you. I've never met anyone like you."

  "I am a dandy," I said.

  She reached her other hand across and patted the top of my hand.

  "Yes," she said. "You are. You do what you say you'll do. You care about people. You aren't mean. You're strong. You're a very wonderful man."

  "And I have a winsome smile," I said. "Don't forget that."

  She kept patting my hand. "I pray for you each day," she said.

  "It can't hurt," I said.

  CHAPTER 38

  Looking for Tommy Banks didn't seem too complicated. I'd check his apartment and if he wasn't there I'd check the dance studio, and if he wasn't there I'd think about it. My heart wasn't in it. But if the rigid little bastard had in fact killed himself, Sherry was going to pull the guilt of it right up over her ears.

  The phone rang. I answered. It was Devane, the statie.

  "Somebody blew Mickey Paultz away," he said.

  "Who?"

  "Don't know."

  "Why?"

  "Same answer. He was sitting in his car on the third floor of the parking garage at Quincy Market. Somebody put two bullets in his head from the passenger side, probably sitting next to him. Twenty-two-automatic shell casings were on the ear floor. And that's all there is."