“Yeah,” I said. “Don’t you ever come across somebody like that in your business?”
“People who are what they seem to be,” Susan said, “generally don’t seek psychotherapy.”
“Good point,” I said. “But as far as I can see, this is one of those instances when the cigar is just a cigar.”
“Maybe you should talk to Clarice Richardson again,” Susan said.
“Because she’s smart enough to understand what she may have experienced,” I said.
“Yes.”
Susan was between patients. I was sitting in her office, across the desk from her. I was silent for a little while. I eyed the couch against the wall to my right.
“Anybody actually lie down on that thing?” I said.
“I believe you and I have,” Susan said.
“I mean for therapy.”
“You and I have,” Susan said.
“Not that kind of therapy,” I said.
“Yes,” Susan said. “It is kind of a cliché, but some people find it very helpful.”
I nodded. Neither of us spoke for a little while.
Then I said, “I can’t do it by phone.”
“No need,” Susan said. “I’m sure she’ll see you.”
“Care for another trip to Hartland?” I said.
“No,” Susan said.
“Two hours out, two hours back,” I said.
“An easy day trip,” Susan said.
“What about the naked frolic in the Hartland motel?”
“Nothing to stop you,” Susan said.
“By myself?”
“Whatever floats your boat . . . snookums.”
Chapter32
CLARICE RICHARDSON CAME around her desk and shook my hand when I entered her office.
“Come in,” she said. “Sit down. I’m glad to see you.”
I looked around.
“No campus cop this time,” I said.
“You’ve charmed me into submission,” she said.
“Happens all the time,” I said.
“I assume you are still chasing Goran,” she said.
“I’m trying to figure him out,” I said.
Clarice smiled.
“You, too,” she said.
“You mentioned when we talked last that when you were intimate, he seemed very strong.”
“Yes,” she said.
She smiled and looked away from me out at the now wintry landscape of her college.
“I attributed it to passion,” she said.
“Susan suggested that it hints of sadism,” I said.
“And she thought you should ask me about that?”
“She thinks you’re the only one intelligent enough to understand your experience.”
Clarice nodded.
“But not intelligent enough to have avoided it.”
“Nobody gets out of here alive,” I said.
She nodded.
“I didn’t think of it at the time, but perhaps there was something . . . I’m not sure sadistic is exactly right . . . but vengeful, perhaps.”
I nodded.
“Can you give me an example?” I said.
She blushed.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“I made this bed, so to speak. If I have to lie in it, I have to lie in it.”
I might not have chosen that metaphor. But maybe if I felt guilty . . .
“He would say things,” she said. “When he was . . . in me, he would say things like ‘Got you now, don’t I?’ ”
“Say it often?” I said.
“Things like that,” she said.
“You think he had some animosity toward women?” I said.
“I never felt it,” she said. “But in the circumstance, I was not at my most analytic, I fear.”
“None of us is,” I said. “Why do you suppose he had an affair with you?”
Clarice smiled.
“He found me attractive?” she said.
“Almost certainly,” I said.
“And available,” Clarice said.
“Were you wearing your wedding ring?” I said.
“I was,” Clarice said.
“Even though you were, ah, trolling?”
“Maybe I was ambivalent,” she said. “Maybe I didn’t want to admit to myself I was trolling. Maybe I didn’t want to look like an old maid.”
“Fat chance,” I said.
She smiled faintly.
“Thank you,” she said.
“So he knew you were married,” I said.
“But not to wealth,” she said.
“Maybe the wealth was an afterthought.”
She nodded.
“The thing is,” Clarice said, “in an odd way, Eric and I owe this man a great deal. If I had not been with him, and if he had not tried to blackmail me, I don’t think either Eric or I would have found the strength to get help with our problems . . . nor to solve them.”
“But you did,” I said.
“Yes.”
I stood.
“I won’t bother you again,” I said.
And I left.
Chapter33
I TALKED WITH SUSAN on the phone for nearly an hour before we hung up. It was dark outside. My apartment was nearly still. There was a fire going, and the hiss of the logs supplied the only sound. I sat at my kitchen counter with a scotch and soda in a tall glass, with a lot of ice.
Was I involved in this thing because it resonated with me and Susan a long time ago? It had happened to me before. I didn’t think I was, but I had learned enough to know that motivation, including my own, was often murky.
I sipped my scotch and looked at the fire.
One of my problems was trying to figure out which side I was on. I wasn’t even sure how I wanted things to turn out. I had some sympathy for the women in the case, more for some than for others. I kind of liked Gary. The cuckolded husbands deserved some sympathy, but maybe some blame, or at least some of them.
I drank the rest of my scotch and made another drink.
I wasn’t exactly sure what real crime had been committed. I didn’t want Regina and Clifford Hartley’s complicated but functioning marriage to be destroyed. I thought it would be a shame if Nancy went on through life thinking her sexuality was a sickness. Abigail was a drunk. Beth was . . . I didn’t know what Beth was, but it wasn’t good.
But there was something wrong with the whole setup. Everything kept turning out not to be quite what it started out seeming to be. There was a lot of bottled-up stuff lying around, and Boo and Zel were rattling around like loose ball bearings. So why did I care? One reason was that no one else had hired me to do anything, and I like to work. It might have had to do with me being stubborn.
I drank some scotch. It was clarifying. People always claimed it was a bad sign if you started drinking alone. I always thought to sit quietly and alone and drink a little now and then was valuable. Especially if you have a fire to look at. What was it Churchill said? “I have taken more from alcohol than alcohol has ever taken from me.” Something like that. Good enough for Winnie, I thought, good enough for me.
I took my glass to my front window and looked down at Marl-borough Street. The lights in the brick and brownstone buildings seemed very homey. Outside it was dark and cold. Inside was light and warmth. There were people living there together, some of them happily, some not.
Sometimes I thought that Susan was the only thing in life that I cared about. But I knew that if it were actually so, it would destroy us. We both needed to work. We had to do things. Making moon eyes at Susan was not a sufficient career. It was cases like the one I was on that reminded me now and then that I could care about other things.
There was more sex in this case than I’d seen in a while, but none of it seemed connected to love. I realized as I looked out my window at the still city street that one of the things I was looking for in this mess was something grounded in love. Maybe the Hartleys, in their odd and bearded marriage, might be driven by love
. Maybe not. Clarice Richardson’s reformation and triumph might have been grounded in love. But it could have been grounded in guilt, and survival . . . and courage.
“Good for you, Clarice,” I said. “Either way.”
As I drank my final scotch, I decided that I had two things to do next. One, I had to defuse Chet Jackson, and second, I had to find out a little more about Gary Eisenhower, aka Goran Pappas. Having a plan made me feel decisive, or maybe it was the three scotches.
I washed my empty glass and put it away. I put a steak on the kitchen grill. In a sauté pan, I cooked onions, peppers, mushrooms, and a handful of frozen corn with olive oil, rosemary, and a splash of sherry. I had some herbed biscuits left from Sunday when Susan and I had breakfast. I warmed them in the oven and when everything was ready, I ate.
And drank some beer.
Chapter34
THE FIRST TWO PEOPLE I saw when I went into Buddy Fox’s were Ty-Bop and Junior. Ty-Bop was a skinny kid, strung out on something. He did the gun work. Junior was the size of Des Moines but meaner. He did the muscle work.
“Junior,” I said. “How’s it going with Weight Watchers?”
“You looking to see Tony?” Junior said.
Ty-Bop stared at me as he jittered against the back wall of the restaurant, listening to his iPod. He showed no sign of recognition, although he’d seen me probably a hundred times. His eyes were empty. His face was empty. He shot at what Tony told him to shoot at and, as best as I could tell, had no other interests except controlled substances and whatever music he was listening to. I don’t think I’d ever heard him speak. But he could shoot. He might have been as good as Vinnie, maybe even Chollo, who was the best I’d ever seen.
“Wait here,” Junior said.
He went past the bar and down a hall. Ty-Bop looked at me blankly. I grinned at him.
“How are things, Ty-Bop?” I said.
He jived a little and his head might have moved, but it was probably to the music.
“Listening to a different drummer?” I said.
Ty-Bop’s expression didn’t change.
“Good,” I said. “I like an upbeat approach.”
The room showed little sign that the South End had undergone considerable social change in the last twenty years. I was still the only white face in the room. Junior returned and jerked his head at me. I gave Ty-Bop a friendly thumbs-up and followed Junior past the bar. He was so big he could barely fit into the hallway, and both of us were too much. He stepped aside and gestured for me to walk past him.
“You know the door,” he said.
“Like my own,” I said, and walked on down the hall.
Tony’s office was small and without much in the way of ostentation. Tony was in there with Arnold, who was his driver. Arnold didn’t shoot as well as Ty-Bop or muscle as well as Junior. But he was a nice combination of both skills, and he had a little class. He was handsome as hell. And dressed great.
“Arnold,” I said.
“Spenser.”
Arnold was sitting on a straight chair, turned around so he could rest his forearms on the chair back. Tony was behind his desk. A little soft around the neck and jawline. But very dignified-looking, with a scatter of gray in his short hair, and none in his carefully trimmed mustache. As always, he was dressed up. Dark suit, white shirt, maroon silk tie and pocket hankie. He was smoking a long, thin cigar.
“Tony,” I said. “Do you color your mustache?”
Tony Marcus smiled.
“Actually, motherfucker,” he said, “I color my whole body. In real life, I’m a honkie.”
“Nope,” I said. “No white guy can say ‘motherfucker’ like you do.”
Tony nodded.
“Whaddya want?” he said.
“Need a favor,” I said.
“Oh, good,” Tony said. “Been hoping some wiseass snow cone would come in and ask for a favor.”
“You want me to pat him down?” Arnold said to Tony.
“No need,” Tony said.
“He’s got a gun,” Arnold said. “I can tell the way his coat hangs.”
Tony looked at Arnold.
“You done work with him, you think we need to worry ’bout the gun?”
“No.”
“Okay,” Tony said, and turned to me, and raised his eyebrows.
“Know a guy named Chet Jackson?” I said.
“Who wants to know?” Tony said.
“That would be me,” I said. “I look like some kind of bicycle messenger?”
“Why do you want to know?”
“He’s a danger to someone I sort of represent,” I said.
“And you can’t stop him?”
“Not without killing somebody,” I said.
“So?” Tony said.
“Not my style,” I said.
“So have Hawk do it for you,” Tony said.
“Also not my style.”
“But it your style to come ask me,” Tony said. “A simple African-American trying to get along in a flounder-belly world?”
“Exactly,” I said.
Tony smiled.
“I know Chet Jackson,” he said.
“You have any clout with him?”
“I might,” Tony said. “Pretty much got clout wherever I need it.”
“So much for the simple African-American,” I said.
Tony smiled again.
“You knew that was bullshit when you heard it,” he said. “I don’t know if I owe you anything or not. But you done me some favors.”
“Cast your bread upon the waters,” I said.
“Sure,” Tony said. “Tell me a story.”
I told him as much as he needed to know. Tony listened without interrupting while he smoked his cigar. When I was done, he put the cigar out in a big glass ashtray on his desk and leaned back in his chair.
“What the fuck,” he said, “are you doing mixed up in crap like that?”
“I ask myself that from time to time,” I said. “But I’m a romantic, Tony. You know that.”
“Whatever that means,” he said.
We sat. Tony got out a new cigar and trimmed it and lit it, and got it going evenly, turning the cigar barrel slowly in the flame of Arnold’s lighter.
“So how you want to do this?” he said.
Chapter35
ACCORDING TO his police folder, Goran Pappas had graduated in the top quarter of his Richdale High School class and gone on to Wickton College on a basketball scholarship.
Wickton was a small liberal-arts college just across the New Hampshire line, south of Jaffrey. I spent the next day there and worked my way slowly through a host of reticent academics to arrive late in the day in the office of the director of counseling services. According to the plaque on her desk, her name was Mary Brown, Ph.D.
“Dr. Brown,” I said. “My name is Spenser. I’m a detective. I’ve been wandering your campus all day and am in desperate need of counseling.”
She was a sturdy woman with gray hair and rimless glasses. “I can see why you would,” she said. “Please sit down.”
I did.
“I’m trying to learn about a man who attended this college. Everyone who would know agrees he did. But no one will tell me much about him.”
“Because they don’t know much?” she said.
“Because they don’t know, or think it’s confidential, or don’t like detectives.”
“Surely that couldn’t be it,” she said.
“I was being self-effacing,” I said.
“I have been here for more than thirty years,” she said. “Perhaps I can help. What is the man’s name?”
“Goran Pappas,” I said.
She was quiet for a moment. The rimless glasses were strong, and they seemed to enlarge her eyes as she looked at me through them.
“I remember him,” she said.
“What can you tell me?” I said.
She smiled.
“What can you tell me?” she said.
“About a
nything you want to know,” I said.
“Then do so,” she said.
I told her everything I thought she’d want to hear, omitting only the names, except for Goran. When I was through she sat for a time, frowning.
“My goodness,” she said. “And what is it you are trying to accomplish?”
“To right the unrightable wrong, I suppose,” I said.
“I understand the allusion,” she said. “But specifically, what do you hope to accomplish?”
“I feel a little silly saying it. But . . . right now everything is coming out badly for pretty much everyone involved, except maybe the college president. . . . I’d like to make everything come out okay.”
She looked at me silently through the distorting rimless lenses for a time and then reached up and tilted them lower on her nose and looked over them at me.
“My God,” she said.
I shrugged and gave her my sheepish smile. She seemed stable enough to risk the sheepish smile. Less stable women were known to undress when I did the sheepish smile. I was right. She remained calm.
“How can I check on you?” she said.
“If I could borrow a sheet of paper,” I said.
She gave me one. And I wrote down the names and phone numbers and recited them as I wrote.
“Captain Healy, homicide commander, Mass state cops,” I said. “Martin Quirk, homicide commander, Boston police. FBI man named Epstein, AIC in Boston.”
“AIC?”
“Agent-in-charge,” I said. “And Susan Silverman, Ph.D., who’s a psychotherapist in Cambridge.”
I handed her the paper.
“In the interest of full disclosure,” I said. “Dr. Silverman is my honey bun.”
“ ‘Honey bun,’ ” Mary said.
“Girl of my dreams,” I said.
“I’ll get back to you, Mr. Spenser,” Mary said.
Chapter36
I WASN’T SURE WHO HAD TOLD what lies to accomplish it. But we were all assembled when Hawk brought Gary Eisenhower into Chet Jackson’s office. Chet was at his desk. Tony was in a chair across from Chet, with Junior and Ty-Bop leaning against the wall in the back of the room; Beth sat on the couch near him. Zel and Boo leaned on the wall near Chet, looking at Junior and Ty-Bop. I stood near the door.
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