Pale Kings and Princes s-14

by Robert B. Parker

  I stepped into her living room, Hawk followed me and closed the door.

  "There are people next door," she said.

  "Yikes," Hawk said.

  Juanita kept glancing at Hawk and glancing away. The flush on her face remained. "Shall we sit?" I said.

  Juanita stared at me. "Yes," she said. "Of course. We can sit."

  I sat on a tweed chair with wooden arms that rocked on springs against a solid wooden base. It was ugly but it was uncomfortable.

  Juanita stood in the archway that led to the dining room. Hawk leaned against the door; the shotgun in his right hand hanging down against his leg, pointing at the floor.

  "What kind of gun is that?" Juanita said.

  "Smith and Wesson," Hawk said. "Shotgun. Pump operated, twelve-gauge. Loaded with number four shot."

  "One of the things I could never figure out," I said to Juanita, "is if you were so fond of Felipe Esteva, why you told me his wife was sleeping with Valdez. It would point me right at Esteva."

  Juanita took a pack of cigarettes from the top of a low deal bookcase and lit one. "And another thing I couldn't figure out is when I asked you if you were sleeping with Valdez and you looked at me like you'd just swallowed a golf ball, and bolted, leaving me forlorn outside the ladies' room."

  "You want coffee?" Juanita said. "I got instant."

  "No, thank you," I said. "I try to stick to one cup a day."

  Hawk shook his head.

  We were quiet then. Next door dimly I could hear a television set.

  "Now I find out that Bailey Rogers was sleeping with Emmy Esteva."

  Juanita took in a deep Iungful of smoke and held it. Then she let it trickle out through her nose. She didn't speak.

  "And I find out that you knew it." Juanita's face was still flushed.

  "Because his wife came to you for therapy and she discussed it with you, and she told you about his affair with Emmy and she told you how he was in Esteva's pocket," I said.

  Juanita dragged on the cigarette again. It had a long, hot-looking coal formed at the burning end. She seemed to have shrunk in on herself, but her eyes were still very wide and dark.

  "So?" Juanita's voice seemed to come from a deep shaft of silence.

  "So now your patient has a dead husband and a dead child, and the Wheaton cops are planning to shoot me. It's time for the secrets to be told."

  Juanita looked slowly around the room. She hugged herself, her left hand clamped onto her right elbow, the cigarette in her forefingers an inch from her mouth but apparently forgotten, its smoke wisping up toward the dingy ceiling. She looked at Hawk and then at me and again at Hawk.

  Hawk said, "Who you tell, Juanita?"

  His voice was soft but it wasn't tentative. Juanita looked at me.

  "You tell Esteva?" I said.

  The cigarette burned her fingers, she jumped and dropped it and stepped on it on the bare floor.

  "You told Esteva the cop was bopping his wife," Hawk said.

  "And Esteva killed him," I said.

  "So it sorta makes it like you killed him," Hawk said.

  Juanita was shaking her head, less in denial of the accusations than in denial that the accusations were happening.

  "You told Esteva," I said again.

  Outside the snow had stopped, for the moment at least. No flakes drifted against the windowpanes in Juanita's shabby living room.

  Juanita took another cigarette from her pack and lit it. She inhaled, exhaled, looked at the tip of the cigarette, put the spent match in the ashtray.

  "Not first," she said.

  "Who'd you tell first?" She hugged herself tighter, clamping her right elbow against her side with her left hand.

  "Eric," she said. I could barely hear her. "Valdez?"

  "Yes."

  I waited.

  "We were . . . we were close," she said. "And he was always asking me if I knew anything that could get him a handle on the cocaine thing."

  I could hear her breath as she paused. Her breath was louder than her voice. The color in her face was deeper. Her eyes seemed unfocused. Her breathing was short.

  "And?" I said.

  "And I told him what Caroline had told me." She said it in a rush.

  "That he was taking Esteva's money and sleeping with Esteva's wife," I said.

  "Yes."

  "And Valdez? He was sleeping with Emmy?"

  "No."

  "You told me he was."

  "It wasn't true," she said.

  "So why you say it," Hawk said. She shook her head again and looked at the floor.

  "Ethics," I said. "She didn't want to tell me what she knew from a patient she was counseling, but she wanted me to know that Emmy was sleeping around, so maybe I'd look into it and connect her to Bailey."

  "And she didn't tell you 'bout Bailey 'cause of the client patient thing," Hawk said.

  "Right. She told me she thought he'd done it because he was a bigot and a bully."

  "But she tell Valdez, and fuck client privilege," Hawk said.

  "That was love," I said.

  "Hot dog!" Hawk said.

  "And it got him killed," I said.

  Juanita turned away, leaning against the jamb of the archway, staring into the unpeopled dining room.

  "It's why I told you that Bailey Rogers killed him," she said with her back to us. "I knew Eric had approached him with the information."

  "Blackmail," I said.

  She nodded, still staring into the dining room. "And Bailey must have killed him."

  "Had to," Hawk said.

  Juanita nodded again. "Eric was young," she said. "He wanted to be a hero. He wanted a Pulitzer."

  Hawk didn't say anything. Neither did I. Juanita's shoulders hunched. The murmur of the next-door television was all there was to hear.

  "So you pointed at Bailey and hoped I'd catch him without you getting involved."

  "Yes," her disembodied voice echoed back from the empty room she faced.

  "And I didn't catch him," I said.

  Juanita didn't say anything. Her back was motionless. The smoke from her cigarette wavered in the air above her head. We waited. Stillness.

  Hawk walked softly across the room and past her into the dining room and turned and said gently into her face, "And?"

  She swung slowly away from him, rolling slowly toward me with her back against the arch frame. Her eyes were wide and unfocused and her face seemed almost dreamy, as if she wasn't paying much attention to Hawk or me or the intermittent snowfall.

  "And I went to Felipe Esteva," she said. "And I told him."

  Chapter 33

  When we went back to Caroline's, we brought Juanita with us. She wasn't exactly bad. But she sure as hell wasn't a force for good, and I wanted her where I could see her. She had no objection. She seemed emotionally dehydrated. When we went in, she wouldn't look at Caroline. She didn't really look at Susan either when I introduced them. Probably shouldn't have said Dr. Silverman.

  We were all seated in a funereal circle in the living room. It had started to snow again, a little harder. I thought about Scotch with soda and ice in a tall glass. I thought about another one.

  I said, "Okay, we know, but we probably can't prove it, that Bailey killed Eric Valdez because Valdez tried to blackmail Bailey about his affair with Emmy Esteva, and his ties to the coke business. And we know, and might be able to prove, that Esteva killed Bailey after Juanita told him that he was having an affair with Mrs. Esteva. And then he killed Brett to cover his tracks."

  "Because you could connect Brett to the cocaine business," Susan said.

  "Yes, and I'll bet somebody in the police lab leaked it to him that we were testing the gun that Brett had gotten from him."

  "I don't understand that," Caroline said. "Why would he give Brett the gun that killed his own father?"

  "This wasn't a business killing," Hawk said. "Have the kid get rid of the gun killed his old man."

  "Implicates the kid, too," I said.

&nbs
p; "We'll ask him about it," Hawk said.

  "Can you make a case out of what you've got?" Susan said.

  "You mean a legal case," I said. "I don't know. If Juanita and Caroline tell the state cops all they know, I think we'll get their attention. Juanita tells Esteva about Bailey and Emmy, and shortly thereafter Bailey is shot. There's probable cause there, I think."

  "Will I have to testify," Juanita said.

  "Everybody will," I said. "Me too."

  "Almost everybody," Hawk said.

  "Almost," I said.

  "And it will all come out," Caroline said. "Bailey and the woman, Brett, everything." I nodded.

  "I will be destroyed in my profession," Juanita said.

  I nodded again.

  "And Spenser," Susan said to her, "whom the police are going to kill?"

  "I can't," Juanita said. "It's all I have." Nobody spoke.

  "I'm not attractive. And I'm desperately obsessive about men, and I grew up the only Hispanic in an Anglo school district. Juanita Omelet."

  I thought about a pitcher of margaritas and a thick glass with salt on the rim: two thick glasses and me and Susan having nachos in L.A. at Lucy's El Adobe out on Melrose Ave. where it would be sunny.

  "And now I have two college degrees. I am a professional. I have an office at the hospital. I can't not be that anymore. I would die."

  "I don't want anyone to know about Bailey," Caroline said.

  I looked at Susan and then at Hawk. "Swell," I said.

  "You are not obligated to respect their wishes," Susan said.

  "True," I said.

  "We needing a plan," Hawk said.

  "I'll say."

  "How you feel 'bout whacking them out," Hawk said.

  "The idea has merit," I said. "Let us consider it."

  There was a pause. Hawk and I both looked at the women.

  "Want us to go in the kitchen and boil water?" Susan said.

  I grinned at her. "Nope. We'll step out there. Care to join us?"

  Susan shook her head. "I don't care to know," she said.

  "Wise," I said, "as well as winsome. When this is over will you get drunk with me?" "Yes," Susan said.

  Chapter 34

  We had a plan, but it took a little time. Juanita went home, Caroline stayed home. Susan and Hawk and I went back to Boston, in Hawk's car.

  "Shoulda got me a cap," Hawk said. "And practiced up saying yassah and opening the car door."

  "Leather puttees," Susan said. "I think you'd be simply scrumptious in leather puttees."

  "Yasum," Hawk said.

  "Are you worried about Juanita?" Susan said to me.

  "No," I said.

  "She's unstable as hell," Susan said. "She could go straight to Esteva."

  "Doesn't matter. Our plan will work either way."

  " 'Less of course old Cesar shoot us both in the head when we show up," Hawk said.

  "We should avoid that," I said.

  "Felice probably the gunny anyway," Hawk said. "Cesar look more hands-on."

  "You care to share your plan," Susan said. "It doesn't sound fail-safe."

  "Still needs some polishing," I said. "Do you think you can get Caroline a job in Boston?"

  "I'm going to talk to a man I know at Widener Library. It would be good, I think, to get her out of Wheaton."

  "Maybe she care to try my famous African beef injection," Hawk said.

  "Oh, oink," Susan said.

  "Yasum," Hawk said.

  The snow had stopped and the night sky was clear and black with no moon but a lot of stars. Hawk dropped Susan and me off in front of my place on Marlborough Street about two hours before dawn.

  "Be back at noon," Hawk said. "With the van."

  "Rent it," I said. "We got enough problems without driving a hot truck."

  Hawk smiled and drove away and Susan and I stumbled up to my apartment and fell on the bed and went to sleep without undressing.

  Showered and shaved and smelling like an early lilac, I made two phone calls before I left Susan eating whole wheat biscuits and drinking coffee at my kitchen counter when Hawk showed up in a yellow rental van at noon.

  "The sour-cherry jam," I said, "is unusually good with those."

  "Take care of yourself," she said. "I'll be back," I said.

  "I'll be here," she said.

  "There is, you know, also a therapy featuring Irish beef . . ."

  "I'm familiar," Susan said, "with the treatment."

  "Perhaps when I get back ... "

  "Certainly," Susan said.

  I got the sour-cherry jam from the refrigerator and put it next to her on the counter. And leaned over and kissed her on the mouth. It was a long kiss and when it broke, Susan put her hand lightly on my cheek and we looked at one another for maybe twenty seconds. I smiled. She smiled and I went to the door. I stopped there for a moment and looked back at her. There was nothing to say. So I turned and went.

  Despite all the sputtering and fluttering, the snow had amounted to very little. The sun was hard and clear.

  "Blizzard coming," Hawk said.

  "You feel it in your old bones," I said.

  "No, the weather nitwit told me this morning on the tube. We in some kind of hiatus in the storm," Hawk said. "Gonna be snowing like hell this afternoon."

  "Hiatus," I said.

  We drove to the Harbor Health Club and Henry Cimoli helped us load the two hundred keys of coke into the van.

  "You guys having a big party?" Henry said.

  "Business." I said.

  "That's good. I was feeling left out, you know. Store the stuff in my gym and then don't invite me to the party?"

  "Give you a key for your trouble," Hawk said.

  "Not me," Henry said. "Willie Pep fucked up my nose as bad as I want it fucked up."

  It was still bright when we left Henry and went onto the Mass. Pike from the tunnel on the Southeast Expressway. Hawk was wearing a fur coat over a black turtleneck sweater, leather jeans, and black cowboy boots. We drove due west on the turnpike. By Worcester the sky had begun to darken.

  "Weather nitwit right," Hawk said.

  "If only he were brief," I said. Hawk nodded.

  "You know Esteva scragged Rogers," he said.

  I nodded.

  "And you know he dumped the kid too," Hawk said.

  "Yep."

  "But you can't prove it without making the women testify, and maybe not even then."

  "Be tough on Caroline," I said. "Be even worse on Juanita."

  "Juanita a twerp," Hawk said.

  "Good point," I said.

  "So you gonna set them up in a situation where you know they going to try and kill you, so you and me can kill them."

  "They don't have to try, in which case we nail them attempting to purchase cocaine."

  "If Lundquist goes along."

  "He'll be okay," I said.

  "You think Esteva going to let you get away with selling him back his own blow?" Hawk said.

  "No," I said.

  "So you figure he gonna try and we gonna out-quick him."

  "Yes."

  "Wouldn't it be easier just to drive to his place and out-quick him when he's not looking?"

  "Yes, but I can't."

  "I know you can't. What I don't know," Hawk said, "is why you can't."

  "Remember those guys in Maine got busted because they were shooting bears in cages?" I said.

  "Didn't get bit by the bear," Hawk said.

  "Would you do it?" I said.

  "No," Hawk said.

  I didn't say anything.

  "The analogy sucks," Hawk said.

  Ahead of us the sky was very dark and I could see the line where the snow had started to fall again. We were driving straight into it. "Sure." I said.

  Chapter 35

  On Wheaton Road, a hundred yards from the turnpike exit, was a small gray building with a pitched roof. It sold hot dogs and coffee, according to the sign out front. Hawk pulled the van in and stopped next to a
n Oldsmobile Cutlass parked in front of the store. Lundquist got out of the Olds wearing a sheepskin jacket and jeans and Frye boots. He carried a shotgun. I opened the door and tipped my seatback forward and Lundquist got into the back of the van and sat on the floor.

  "I'm on my own time," Lundquist said. "If this doesn't go right that's all I'll have is my own time."

  I introduced Hawk.

  "Didn't you do some work once for Cliff Caracks in Worcester?" Lundquist said. Hawk smiled and didn't answer.

  "Yeah," Lundquist said. "You did, but we could never prove it."

  Hawk opened the door on his side and got out and took off his coat. He wore a big .44 magnum under his arm.

  "Hand me that bag," he said to Lundquist. "The small one."

  Lundquist handed him an Avia equipmentbag. Hawk took a Red Sox warm-up jacket out and put it on. He sat sideways on the driver's seat and took off the cowboy boots and put on a pair of white Reebok high-cut basketball shoes and laced them up. Then he put on a navy watch cap and took a pair of oversize leather mittens out of the bag and put them on the dashboard. He took out a .25-caliber palm-size automatic pistol and put it in his jacket pocket. Then he carefully put the fur coat on a hanger in the back of the van. He put the cowboy boots in the equipment bag, put the bag in the van and got back in, and closed the door.

  "The suit of lights," I said to Lundquist. Hawk put the van in gear and we were back out on Wheaton Road. It started to snow, a few flakes and then many. Almost at once we were in a dense, driving snowfall.

  "Hiatus is over," I said.

  "Good for cutting down on sniper fire," Hawk said.

  We went through town and out Route 9, past the Reservoir Court where my shirts and Susan's face and the rental Mustang were still hostage. In another five minutes I said, "Next right is Quabbin. Half mile in on the right is an overlook, pull in there and park."

  "If Esteva checks to see that you've got the coke, he'll spot me," Lundquist said.

  "He gonna whack us whether we got the coke or not," Hawk said. "He been fucking around long enough."

  "So he won't check," Lundquist said.

  "If he does," I said, "it'll mean he's not going to take us out."

  "He going to try," Hawk said.

  We took the turn into the Quabbin Reservation and drove slowly through the blinding charge of snow until we came to the overlook. Normally you could gaze out over the vast reservoir from here and maybe scarf a leftover Polish Platter sandwich and try to see an eagle. At the moment you could see about six inches.