Sudden Mischief

by Robert B. Parker

  "Ginsberg."

  "I guess she's not trying to pass," I said.

  Susan didn't comment. She ate a clam instead.

  "Any other family," I said.

  "He has children," Susan said, "from other marriages. I don't know anything about them."

  We finished our supper. I got out and emptied the clam cartons and other debris into the trash barrel. The rain seemed a little harder now, and the wet smell of it mingled with the strong smell of the salt marsh. I stood for a minute and smelled it, and felt the rain, and looked at the swamp water, its obsidian surface dappled by the rain. Then I took a deep breath and got back in the car.

  "Obviously none of my business," I said. "And obviously a sore spot, but if you knew what he was, why did you marry him?"

  Susan didn't reply for a while. I could see her imposing control on herself. I knew her so well I could think along with her. Hard questions were part of what she did every day. If she could regularly ask them, she ought to be able to answer one or two. And even though the question was out of line, she had opened the door to all of this by inviting me in that evening when we sat in the Bristol Lounge listening to music and liking each other. She imposed patience upon herself and it showed in the tone of her answer.

  "Of course I didn't know his failures when I married him," she said. "He seemed a great catch. Football player. Big man on campus. Money in the family. I learned of his shortcomings during our marriage and finally they were enough to cause our divorce."

  "How about me?" I said.

  "Excuse me?"

  "What was there about me that made you love me, besides my reputation as a world-class lover?"

  "I didn't know that about you," she said.

  "But you soon learned, didn't you, my proud beauty."

  "Oh my," she said.

  "But besides that?"

  "I've never thought about it," she said.

  "Aren't you in the think-about-it business?" I said.

  "About other people," she said softly.

  I waited. This was risky. But the whole thing was risky. If I was going to help her get through this, I needed her to think about herself. She was smart as hell, and she was tough as hell, and if she thought about herself in this context for a while good things would emerge… Maybe. The rain came down hard on the roof of the car. A station wagon with fake wood sides pulled in beside us and a man and woman and three children piled out and scooted through the rain for Farnham's. Far out at the edge of the salt marsh I could see the running lines of a power boat as it edged along toward where Hog Island would have been had the day been sunny and clear. I waited. Me and Carl Rogers.

  "You were, are, the most dangerous person I've ever known," she said.

  "'That was it?"

  "I don't know. That's what seems to bubble up when I think about you. I'd never met anyone like you. You were obviously a good man, and you were nice, and I found you attractive, but you were so dangerous," she said.

  "So it wasn't just my open Irish punim."

  "No."

  "Did you know that when you, ah, consummated our relationship?"

  "I knew it the second time around."

  "After Russell," I said.

  "No, after Dr. Hilliard."

  "The San Francisco shrink."

  "Yes. It was Russell's attraction too."

  "I turned out not to be dangerous enough?" I said.

  She shook her head.

  "Not that," she said.

  "What?"

  She shook her head again and didn't speak.

  "You want to stop talking about this?"

  "Yes."

  So we did.

  On the drive home, she seemed to go quite deep inside herself. I sang all the lyrics to "Lush Life" for her and she didn't even ask me to stop.

  chapter twenty-six

  I TALKED WITH Nancy Ginsberg at ten in the morning in the living room of her semi-colonial home which attached via the garage to another semi-colonial home with which it shared a one-acre lot in a development called Bailey's Field in Bedford. The room was bright. The colors were quiet and coordinated. The pieces of furniture went together calmly. There was a piano in one corner of the room and a large color photograph of the children, two boys and a girl, sat on top of it. There was a fireplace on the back wall, faced in gray blue slate. It was clean and new and looked as if no flame had ever soiled it.

  Nancy was appropriate to the living room. She had on a pink cashmere sweater, a single strand of pearls, a gray wool skirt, and low heels. Her hair was dark and medium long. Her makeup was understated, except around the eyes where there was a lot of bluish shadow. Her figure was good. Her nail polish matched her lipstick. She wore a very large diamond ring and a wedding band encrusted with diamonds. She served coffee in small cups on a red lacquered Japanese tray. The cups were decorated with Japanese landscape art.

  "Most of my cups have advertising slogans on them," I said.

  She smiled.

  "You must be single," she said.

  She was sitting very straight on the forward edge of the sofa with her legs crossed and her hands folded in her lap. The coffee was on a low table in front of her. I liked her knees.

  "Sort of," I said. "I'm with Susan, ah, Hirsch. But I buy my own cups."

  "Susan Hirsch? Brad's first wife?"

  "Uh huh."

  "Is that how you know Brad."

  "I suppose it is," I said. "He was facing a lawsuit and Susan asked me to help him out."

  "You're not an attorney?"

  I had told her on the phone that I was a detective.

  "No," I said.

  "What sort of trouble is Brad in now?" she said.

  "Well, the ah, precipitating occasion was a lawsuit alleging sexual harassment."

  Nancy Ginsberg smiled and shook her head.

  "Why am I not surprised," she said.

  "He have a history of sexual harassment?" I said.

  "No, not really. He's just so unaware. He probably doesn't know what sexual harassment is."

  "Have you seen him recently?" I said.

  "No."

  "Do you and he get along?"

  "Oh we get along. He's my big brother and I have always had a kid-sister crush on him. But…"

  "But?"

  "Well, we've had to sort of cut him off," she said. "Joel likes him. Everybody likes him…"

  "Joel is your husband?"

  "Yes."

  "And everybody likes Brad, but…?"

  "But nobody can afford him. He always needs money. We gave him money, thinking maybe if we bailed him out once…" She shook her head. "Finally we had to say no."

  "How did Brad take it?"

  "It was awful. Brad pleaded with Joel…" She paused, thinking about the scene. "But we've got three kids to educate," she said. "We had to say no more."

  "When was this?"

  "Oh last year sometime, maybe longer, maybe a year and a half."

  "And you've not seen him since?"

  "No."

  "Do you know why he needed the money?"

  "Well, alimony, I know; and child support."

  "Doesn't his business do well?"

  "He always says it is. But then when he wants to borrow money he will say the money is in some bank in a foreign country and he can't get it out, or all his cash is tied up temporarily in some huge event he's doing and he'll pay us back as soon as the event happens."

  "He ever pay you back?"

  "No."

  "You know where he might be now?"

  "No, why, is he missing?"

  "Yes."

  "Well, my God, how long?"

  "Several days, now," I said. "His office is closed. He's not in his apartment."

  I decided not to mention that he was a suspect in a murder investigation. Apparently, she had missed the second-section story in the Globe, or the twenty-second Action News brief on Channel 3.They worried mostly about crabgrass out here.

  "Do you think he's all right?" she said.
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  "He may have just gone off for a few days R and R," I said. "You have any idea where he might go if he wanted to get away for a while?"

  "Not really," she said. "I don't know too much about Brad's personal life."

  "No summer home, or ski condo or anything like that?"

  "Not that I know of. Brad was always on the verge of bankruptcy," Nancy said. "I don't think he could afford anything like that."

  "Know anyone named Buffy?" I said.

  "Buffy Haley," she said. "Was Brad's second wife. He had two children with her."

  "Know where she is now?"

  "Not really. When they divorced she got the house in Winchester, but I don't know if she stayed."

  "Carla Quagliozzi?"

  Nancy smiled a little. "Third wife."

  "Know about her?"

  "No. She wasn't around long. I think she was pregnant when they married. I don't know where she is."

  "Ever hear of an organization called Civil Streets?"

  "No."

  "Know anyone named Jeanette Ronan?"

  "No."

  I tried the rest of the names in the harassment suit.

  "No."

  "Did you ever go to any of the events Brad put on?"

  "No. Joel hates stuff like that. He gets home at night he wants a drink, dinner, and a ball game."

  "Who wouldn't?" I said. "So you didn't attend Galapalooza, last January."

  "No. I never even heard of it. Galapalooza?"

  "Galapalooza," I said. "If you were Brad and you needed for whatever reason to get away, where would you go?"

  She gave it some thought. I drank my coffee and admired her knees some more. The coffee wasn't very good. The knees were.

  "I have no way to know where," she said. "But it would involve a woman. Brad liked… well, now that I start to say it, I'm not so sure… I was going to say he liked women. He certainly needed women. He had great luck attracting them. Have you met him?"

  "Yes."

  "Then you see how handsome and charming he is."

  "More so even than myself," I said.

  "Perhaps you're too modest," she said. "But he had a terrible time hanging on to them. Carla was, as far as I know, his last marriage, but there are certainly a lot of girlfriends. I'd look for him with a woman."

  "How'd he feel about Susan?" I said.

  "He always said she was the one he should have stayed with. Is the question just curiosity?"

  "Probably," I said. "I'm involved because he came to her with a tale of woe. But when I spoke to him, he denied any trouble."

  "You're a man," Nancy said.

  "Yes, I am."

  "He couldn't admit to another man that he was in trouble, or that he was anything but an All Ivy League success."

  "You're saying he could get Susan to ask me to help but he couldn't admit to me that he needed help?"

  "Yes."

  "Wow."

  "You know he changed his name?" she said.

  "Yes."

  "A lot of it is my father's fault," she said. "He thought that being a success in America was to join the Yankees, to be everything Brad pretends to be."

  "You didn't change your name," I said.

  "Well, actually, of course, I did."

  "Yeah. To Ginsberg. A fine old Yankee name."

  "I see your point," she said. "No, Joel and I are Jewish. We have no desire to be thought otherwise."

  "So how'd you escape your father's dream," I said.

  "Well, I was a girl," she said, "… and I got some help."

  "A sound decision in both cases."

  "I didn't decide to be a girl, Mr. Spenser."

  "Well, I'm glad it worked out that way," I said. "You'd have been wasted as a boy."

  She colored slightly and smiled.

  "Well," she said. "Well; I guess, thank you."

  I smiled, my low-wattage smile. I had promised Susan exclusivity, and I didn't want Nancy to fling herself into my arms.

  "Anything else you can tell me about your brother?" I said.

  "He's not a bad man," she said. "He's just… my father screwed his head up."

  "You had the same father," I said, "and you did something about it."

  "I know," she said.

  chapter twenty-seven

  I WAS SITTING IN my office with a pad of lined yellow paper trying to find a pattern in the matter of Brad Sterling aka Silverman. Susan always said that the paper was a really ugly color, even after I had explained to her that all detectives used yellow paper with blue lines on it. It was how you knew you were a detective. But even though I was using the correct paper, I was getting nowhere, and slowly, which was another way to know you were a detective. The phone rang. I answered.

  "This is Mattie Clayman," the caller said. "From AIDS Place."

  "Yes," I said. "I remember."

  "I just wanted to thank you."

  "I like the impulse, but what for."

  "I'm used to being bullshitted," she said. "I didn't believe you when you said you'd find out what happened to our money."

  "From Galapalooza," I said.

  "Right."

  "I haven't found out yet," I said.

  "Maybe not, but you've started the ball rolling. The guy came by yesterday from the AG's office."

  "What guy?"

  "Guy from the Public Charities Division, said he was looking into funds distribution from Galapalooza. I assumed you'd sent him."

  "What was his name?" I said.

  "Didn't say his name."

  "What did he look like?" I said.

  "Look like? Hell, I don't know. Tall guy, thin. Real good clothes. You know him?"

  "I might," I said. "What'd you tell him."

  "Same thing I told you."

  "What'd he say?"

  "Nothing really, just listened, thanked me for my time. I figured you had something to do with him showing up."

  "Maybe I did," I said.

  When Mattie Clayman hung up, I called the AG's office and asked for Public Charities. It took a little while, but they had no record of anybody from their office going to see anyone at AIDS Place.

  "You're sure?" I said.

  There was a pause while the woman on the phone thought about being sure.

  "We are a government agency," she said finally.

  "Which sort of means you are not sure of anything," I said.

  "Maybe."

  After she was off the phone I sat for a while and looked at my yellow pad. There were probably fifty thousand tall thin guys with good clothes in the metropolitan area. On the other hand, one of them was, in fact, Richard Gavin. The phone was working for me, even better than the yellow pad. I picked it up again and dialed Rita Fiore. May as well go with the hot hand.

  "What do you know about Richard Gavin," I said when Rita answered.

  "Just a minute," she said. "What about Hi-Rita-how-ya-doin'-beautiful-let's-have-a-drink-real-soon?"

  "That too," I said. "What about Gavin?"

  "Got his own farm. It says Gavin and somebody, but it's just him. Partner went a long time ago. I guess he liked the name."

  "And?"

  "And what do you want to know? He's primarily criminal law. His reputation is not very good."

  "Not very good why?" I said. "Competence or honesty?"

  "The latter," Rita said. "He's a very clever lawyer."

  "Know any of his clients?"

  "Not currently. When I was a prosecutor, he used to represent a lot of mob people on the South Shore. Now I am a mainstream corporate type. Yesterday I found myself looking at a Brooks Brothers catalog for women."

  "Maybe Hawk and I should come over for an intervention."

  "You're too faithful," she said. "But Hawk can come over and intervene anytime he wants."

  "This guy Gavin got anything to do with Francis Ronan?" I said.

  "Nothing I know about," Rita said. "I mean, he may have argued a case before him. Most of us have if we do a lot of trial work."

  "You know
him personally?"

  "To say hello. I've never been out with him."

  "Puts him in a select group," I said.

  "Yeah," Rita said, "you and him."

  "That's only because I'm taken," I said.

  "Small consolation," Rita said. "How is the thing going with Ronan?"

  "Slowly," I said.

  "Didn't I read someplace that they found a dead person in Brad Whatsis' office?"

  "Yes."

  "Things do get vexious, don't they?"

  "Rita," I said, "you have no idea."

  "Tell me about it over a drink," she said.

  "Where?"

  "Boston Harbor Hotel. It's an easy walk for me."

  "Five o'clock," I said.

  I hung up and called Quirk. "You find Sterling yet?"

  "No we haven't," Quirk said. "But thanks for asking."

  "You got an identification on the body in the office?" I said.

  "Name's Cony Brown. Long record in Rhode Island: mostly assault and extortion. Been charged twice in Rhode Island with murder, no convictions. Indicted and tried here in 1994 for assault. Case dismissed."

  "Let me guess," I said. "The witnesses didn't show up."

  "Close enough," Quirk said. "The plaintiff recanted."

  "Who was the plaintiff?"

  "Insurance broker named Rentzel, since deceased."

  "Natural causes?"

  "Heart attack."

  "What's Providence say about Cony?"

  "A shooter," Quirk said. "Freelance. Gets along with the Italians, but basically a contract guy."

  "Any regular connection up here?"

  "Nobody knows one."

  "You didn't come across a blue disk anywhere in the office, did you?"

  "What do you know about a blue disk?"

  "Same thing you do," I said. "It was mentioned on Sterling's hard disk."

  "How'd you happen to come into possession of information from Sterling's computer?" Quirk said.

  "I forgot."

  "Sometimes maybe you get too cute," Quirk said.

  "What do you mean `maybe'?"

  "And sometimes maybe you do it too often," Quirk said.

  "Are you keeping track?"

  "Yeah," Quirk said. "I am."

  He hung up without saying if he'd found the blue disk.

  chapter twenty-eight

  I WAS HAVING very little success following the Galapalooza trail. Which was why I decided to revisit sexual harassment. Which is why I was sitting at my desk, studying the several nude pictures of Jeanette Ronan that I'd taken from Sterling's apartment, looking for clues. The fact that there were no clues didn't make looking a waste of time. The existence of the pictures was a clue; so was the existence of the letters. Both raised a serious question about the validity of a sexual harassment charge. You could certainly harass someone with whom you'd been intimate. But the pictures, and the letters, some dated after the alleged harassment, would make it hard as hell to win a court case. Even if the complaint were legitimate, a lot of women wouldn't want to take it to court and have the pictures and the letters surface. Jeanette knew about the pictures. Did she really think he wouldn't keep them? Or did she have some reason to believe he wouldn't use them? Why wouldn't he use them? One good approach would be to ask her. I got the phone and called her number. She answered. I said my name. She hung up.