Walking Shadow

by Robert B. Parker

  I saw his hand reach in and take the actor's arm and feel for the pulse in his wrist and hold it, feeling. Then some towels came into view and he said, "Stop for a minute."

  I did. He ripped down the front of the actor's shirt and wiped the chest with a folded hand towel. There was a small entry wound, directly over the heart. The flesh was puffed slightly around the edges of the puncture, from which the blood welled as fast as he could wipe it away.

  "Shit," he said, and folded the towel one more time and put it over the wound.

  "A rock and a hard place," the doctor said. He seemed to be talking to himself more than to us.

  "The chest pressure will increase the bleeding, but if his heart isn't started he's dead anyway."

  "Bullet should be right in his heart," I said, between breaths.

  "Given the location of the entry wound."

  "Probably," the doctor said.

  "Which makes it pretty much academic."

  He paused for a moment. Then he shrugged.

  "It's the best we can do," he said.

  "He's not going to start up," I said.

  "I know," the doctor said.

  But we kept at it for what seemed forever long after the actor was gone, long after anyone thought he wasn't.

  The ambulance arrived and the EMTs took over the futile effort.

  I stood up feeling a little dizzy, and realized that the theater was still full, and entirely silent. The cast ringed us in a motionless circle.

  Susan had come up on stage, and a nice-looking, black-haired woman wearing a big diamond and a wedding ring was standing by the orchestra pit, apparently waiting for the doctor. Two Port City cops had arrived. One cop was talking into his radio. Soon there'd be many cops.

  "Any chance?" Susan said.

  I shrugged.

  "He's got a hole in his heart," I said.

  Susan looked at the doctor. He nodded.

  "Not my specialty," he said.

  "I'm an orthopedic surgeon. But I'd say he was dead when he hit the floor."

  I looked at the tallish actress standing beside us in her ridiculous black makeup. Her face was vacant. The pupils of her eyes seemed big.

  "You okay?" I said.

  She shook her head. More cops arrived. Uniforms and lab guys and detectives. I recognized DeSpain.

  "I know you," he said.

  "Spenser," I said.

  "How are you, DeSpain."

  "You used to work out of the Middlesex DA's office."

  "Long time ago," I said.

  "I'm private now."

  DeSpain nodded.

  "You did some work up here five, six years ago," DeSpain said.

  He looked at the doctor.

  "Who's this," he said.

  "Steve Franklin," the doctor said.

  "I was in the audience I'm an MD."

  DeSpain nodded. He was a big blond guy with bright blue eyes that seemed to have no depth at all.

  "DeSpain," he said.

  "I'm Chief of Police here. He going to make it?"

  "I don't think so," the doctor said.

  DeSpain looked back at me.

  "So," DeSpain said.

  "Tell me about it."

  "Shot once," I said.

  "From the back of the theater. I didn't see the shooter. Probably a.22 from the sound and the entry hole, maybe a target gun. It was a hell of a shot. Right through the heart."

  "The killer may know something of anatomy," the doctor said.

  "Most people don't know exactly where the heart is."

  "A good shot that knows anatomy," DeSpain said as if to himself.

  "Hell, we've got the bastard cornered."

  We got out of there very late in the evening, and drove Christopholous home. He lived on the first floor of a two-family house next to a Chinese market, across the street from a fish-processing plant.

  "Can you help us on this?" Christopholous said when I parked out front.

  "The murder?"

  "Yes."

  "I can't catch your shadow at the same time," I said.

  "Do you think they're related?"

  "I hate coincidences," I said.

  "I… think the murder takes precedence," Christopholous said.

  "Would you like to know my rates?"

  "I thought… we don't have any money… I was hoping, as a friend of the theater…?"

  I looked at Susan.

  "My usual fee?" I said.

  "I'll double it," she said.

  "Okay," I said to Christopholous.

  "I'll watch you to your doorway. When you're inside, lock it. If someone wants in, be sure you know who you're opening it for."

  "You think I'm in danger?"

  "There's some around," I said.

  "What time do you leave your house in the morning?"

  "Nine o'clock, usually. I stop off and have coffee, and get to the theater around ten."

  "Someone will pick you up," I said, "and keep an eye on you and see if the shadow's around. Probably be a black man about my size but not as good-looking."

  Christopholous nodded. He hesitated, then shrugged and got out of the car. I watched him climb the front steps and go into his shabby house and close the door. In a minute, lights showed through some windows to the right of the doorway. I pulled away.

  On the ride home, Susan said, "Remind me again of your usual fee?"

  "Two nights of ecstasy."

  "So doubled would be four," Susan said.

  "Payable in thirty days?"

  "Normally, but doubling the amount includes halving the time."

  "So four nights of ecstasy in two weeks," Susan said.

  "That's the deal?"

  "Yes."

  We were quiet rolling through the empty darkness north of Boston. Susan giggled.

  "Sucker," she said.

  "You don't think I'm charging enough?" I said.

  "It's enough," Susan said, "but you'd have gotten it anyway."

  "I know."

  CHAPTER 4

  Most people having dinner Upstairs at the Pudding had never seen anyone who looked like Hawk. At 6' 2" he weighed 210 and had a 29-inch waist. He was monochromatic tonight. Black skin, black eyes, black suit, black shirt, black tie, black boots. His head was clean-shaven. "This place is so Cambridge," Susan said, "it gives me goose bumps."

  "Cambridge give you goose bumps?" I said to Hawk.

  "Hives," Hawk said.

  The main dining room had a thirty-foot ceiling, and the dark green walls were decorated with posters advertising Hasty Pudding Club productions dating back to the early nineteenth century. We sat at a table outside on the patio deck.

  "Think maybe I'm integrating the place?" Hawk said.

  "You're so sensitive," Susan said.

  "There was a Kenyan diplomat in here just last year."

  Hawk grinned.

  "Don't smile," I said.

  "Ruins the look."

  Susan was busily waving at people.

  "You're like the Mayor here," Hawk said.

  "And rightly so," Susan said.

  The waitress came and took our order.

  "Well, nobody following your Greek," Hawk said.

  "I been on his tail since you called me."

  "You think the shadow saw you?" Susan said.

  Hawk stared at Susan as if she'd spoken in tongues.

  "I beg your pardon," Susan said.

  "Sure," Hawk said.

  "Could mean the shadow heard about me."

  "Which would make him likely part of the theater company, or at least someone in Christopholous' circle," I said.

  "Un huh. Or the murder stirred everything up and scared him off," Hawk said.

  "Or?"

  "Or Christopholous made him up," Hawk said.

  "Or her," Susan said.

  Hawk and I both smiled, and nodded.

  A young couple with a baby stopped at our table.

  "This is my friend, Diane," Susan said.

  "And her husba
nd, Dennis. And their daughter, Lois Helen Alksninis."

  Hawk put his finger out and the baby grabbed it.

  "Name's bigger than the kid," Hawk said.

  "What kind of name is that?"

  "A hard one," Dennis said and Hawk grinned. Lois Helen let go of his finger. And they moved on to their table.

  "Did you speak to that policeman?" Susan said.

  "DeSpain? Yeah. I went over this morning."

  "DeSpain?" Hawk said.

  "State cop? Big blond guy, stone eyes?"

  "Yeah," I said.

  "Except now he's Chief in Port City."

  "Port City a tough town," Hawk said.

  "I know."

  "DeSpain a tough guy," Hawk said.

  "What a coincidence," I said.

  A lean, outdoors-looking man in a blue blazer passed us on his way to the door. He saw Hawk and nodded slightly. Hawk nodded back.

  "Who's that?" Susan said.

  "Hall Peterson," Hawk said.

  "Do some investments for me."

  "Investments, Hawk?" Susan said.

  "You never cease to amaze."

  "Never," Hawk said.

  "Victim's name was Craig Sampson," I said for Hawk's benefit.

  I looked at Susan.

  "What do we know about him?"

  "He was forty-one, forty-two," Susan said.

  "Single. Poor family. Never went to college. He went to acting school at night on the GI Bill, or whatever they call it now, and waited on table, and worked for a caterer, and for a home cleaning service, and painted apartments, and lived in hideous little one-room walkups downtown in New York, and all the other awful stuff you do if you want to be an actor, and finally he auditioned for the Port City Company last year and made it."

  "That's all?"

  "Doesn't seem like much, does it," Susan said.

  "Not going to be more," Hawk said.

  Susan nodded. Hawk and I were quiet. There were trees growing up around the patio dining room, and plants along the railing.

  There was no roof. The effect was of dining in a private treehouse in a lush garden, although we were twenty feet up from Harvard Square. Overhead, small lights strung along the beamed superstructure twinkled like captive stars, above them the darkness ascended infinitely. I looked at Susan across the table. Her eyes seemed as deep as space; and I felt, as I always did when I looked at her, as if I were staring at eternity. I half expected Peter Pan to cruise in and make me young again.

  "You want me to stay on the Greek?" Hawk said.

  "Christopholous, yes."

  "And if I see a shadow you want me to grab him.. he looked at Susan… "or her?"

  "It would be nice if we could chat with him… or her."

  "What you going to do?" Hawk said.

  "Susan and I are going to a reception and board meeting at the theater," I said.

  "What could be better," Hawk said.

  "How about getting whacked in the nose with a brick?" I said.

  "Well, yeah," Hawk said.

  "That would be better."

  Susan gazed up at the night sky.

  "One and a half billion males on the planet and I'm having dinner with Heckel and Jeckel," she said.

  The entrees arrived. Susan cut her tuna steak in two and put one half of it aside on her butter plate. Hawk watched her.

  "Trying to lose some weight?" Hawk said in a neutral voice.

  "Yes. I have three or four pounds of disgusting fat that I want to get rid of."

  Hawk said, "Un huh."

  "I know, maybe you can't see it, but it's there."

  Hawk looked at me.

  "I've missed it too," I said.

  "And I'm a trained detective."

  "Remember where we are," Susan said.

  "I could have you both arrested for sexual harassment."

  "I counter with the charge of racial insensitivity," Hawk said.

  "Yes," Susan said.

  "That would be appropriate. Then we join forces against our common oppressor."

  They both turned and gazed at me.

  "The white guy," I said.

  CHAPTER 5

  Susan and I met Christopholous in the conference room upstairs, where board members and invited guests milled thirstily around the open bar. "Please call me Jimmy," Christopholous said.

  "It's the English version of Demetrius. I try not to be too ethnic."

  "Christopholous kinda gives it away though," I said.

  He smiled.

  "Well, all one can do is one's best," he said.

  "Thank you for agreeing to meet with us. I've not seen your black man."

  "He's been there," I said.

  "Really? He's very elusive."

  "So's your shadow," I said.

  "There's been no sign of him."

  "Perhaps this terrible business has frightened him away," Christopholous said.

  "Susan, you look as radiant as you always do."

  "It's the board meeting," she said.

  "I get so excited."

  "Of course," he said and turned to an older woman in a flowered dress and took both her hands in his. Susan and I moved away.

  "Trying times, Dodie, trying times. You look radiant, anyway, as you always do."

  We were in a meeting room upstairs from the theater having cocktails and buffet. The room was crowded with board members, members of the acting company, directors, stage managers, set designers, important guests, like me, and assorted kids from the caterer in tuxedo shirts and cummerbunds moving adroitly through the jam, passing trays of hors d'oeuvres. I saw the tall actress, who had been next to Craig Sampson. I smiled at her. She nodded.

  "What's her name?" I said.

  "Jocelyn," Susan said.

  "Jocelyn Colby."

  I got a beer from the bar set on a table in front of the windows.

  Around the walls of the conference room were galleried posters of past theatrical productions: two swordsmen in Elizabethan dress; a partially dressed woman bound elegantly to a chair; the backlit outline of two people, heads close together, framed by a gigantic white moon; a white horse's head, nostrils distended, eyes wild, against a black background. The posters paraded in several rows along every wall. En masse they were diverse and yet the same; all had the theater poster look. I mused on what that was for a while until I had drunk my beer. Then I stopped thinking about the order and diversity of theatrical posters and, instead, thought about getting another beer. I decided in favor of it, and did.

  "Do they usually have the actors come to the board meetings?"

  I said with my new bottle of beer cold in my grip. I tried to hold it lightly so as not to warm it with my hand.

  "There's usually a few to shmooze the board members. Tonight is special though."

  "Because I'm here?"

  Susan smiled.

  "That's always special, don't you think?"

  A young woman with big hair came to stand directly in front of me. She had a chest in which she took obvious pride.

  "Susan," she said.

  "Is this him? I've got to meet him. Isn't he big?"

  Susan smiled and introduced us. The young woman's name was Deirdre Thompson.

  "Are you a member of the company?" I said.

  "Yes. But I'm thinking of going to L.A. after this season. Do you carry a gun?"

  "Force of habit," I said.

  "I don't really need it when Susan's with me."

  Deirdre looked back at Susan and pumped her fist.

  "Way to go, Susan," she said.

  "Hunk city."

  Then she turned away and moved off into the crowd, looking for a drink.

  "Do you think she has designs on me sexually," I said.

  "Almost certainly," Susan said.

  "Is it because I'm hunk city?"

  "It's because you're male."

  We moved through the pack, trying to find a space I would fit into. Along the way, Susan introduced me.

  "Myra and Bob Kraft Foxbor
o Stadium… Jane Burgess, she works out with me at Mt. Auburn… Rikki Wu, we had a drink at her restaurant Tuesday night."

  "My husband's restaurant," Rikki Wu said.

  "I really have no head for business."

  "And probably don't need one," I said, just to be saying something.

  "You're very kind," Rikki Wu said.

  "I'm delighted finally to meet the mysterious boyfriend."

  I smiled. Susan smiled. We moved on.

  "Is everyone underdressed but Rikki?" I said.

  "No," Susan said.

  "Here's Dan Foley."

  Susan introduced us.

  "You here alone?" I said.

  He shook his head.

  "Too bad," I said.

  "I was going to point you at Deirdre."

  Dan moved away, toward his wife. We reached the buffet table.

  There was shrimp cocktail, and black bean salad, chicken sate, cold sliced tenderloin, spring rolls, and lobster medallions with avocado.

  "Will I lose credibility with the board," I said, "if I slobber black bean salad on my tie?"

  "Absolutely."

  "On the other hand," I said, "maybe they'll be so excited to meet the mysterious boyfriend, they'll probably forgive me any indiscretion."

  "Probably."

  We ate. Or to be accurate, the board guzzled, I ate, and Susan nibbled. Finally when there was nothing left to guzzle, eat, or nibble, the members of the board gathered reluctantly around a big table in the boardroom, and the meeting started. The actors and others from the company stood against the walls.

  "Thank you all for coming," Christopholous said and waited a moment until the small talk subsided.

  "We had originally scheduled a presentation by the capital acquisition committee on our fall event."

  Everyone was quiet. In fact one guy with a bright red face looked as if he might be resting.

  "But in light of our horrible tragedy this week, I have taken the liberty of postponing that, and of asking all members of the theater family to come together tonight to discuss the tragedy. I know many of you met tonight's guest at the reception, but for those who didn't…" He gestured toward me somewhat theatrically, I thought. On the other hand, we were in a theater.

  "Mr. Spenser is a professional detective," Christopholous said.

  "And, in a sense, a part of the Port City family, being the very special friend of our wonderful events chairman, Dr. Susan Silverman."

  Susan glanced at me and said Shut up, soundlessly.

  "Mr. Spenser initially came to us via Susan, in regard to a stalking incident. He is a former police detective, now in private practice. And he has agreed to provide professional counsel in this dreadful business. Mr. Spenser, perhaps you could initiate the discussion."