Sixkill

by Robert B. Parker

  "Who with?" Zebulon said.

  "None of your business," Bob said.

  He smiled, though, when he said it. And Zebulon could tell he was kind of proud about it. Zebulon thought for a while.

  "My mother was your daughter," he said, quite suddenly.

  "Yes," Bob said.

  "You must have been sad when she died," Zebulon said.

  "Yes," Bob said.

  "I never thought of that," Zebulon said.

  "No reason to," Bob said.

  "You know my father?" Zebulon said.

  "Yes."

  "You like him?" Zebulon said.

  "No," Bob said.

  "I didn't like him so much, either, I guess."

  "No need to," Bob said.

  "You're supposed to love your father," Zebulon said.

  "If he'll let you," Bob said.

  "And how come they named me Zebulon?"

  "After Zebulon Pike," Bob said.

  "Who's he?"

  "Famous explorer," Bob said. "Discovered Pikes Peak."

  "Where's Pikes Peak?"

  "Colorado," Bob said.

  "Famous white explorer?"

  "Yes."

  "So how come they named me after some white person?"

  "Don't know," Bob said.

  "How come not a famous Cree person?"

  "I don't know," Bob said.

  "How come they drank all the time?"

  "Don't know," Bob said.

  "Why'd my father run off?"

  "Don't know."

  "How come you don't know anything?"

  "Know we're here," Bob said. "Know we got to deal with that, and not a lot of stuff we got no way to deal with."

  "Least your white-person name is easy to say."

  "Easier than Zebulon," Bob said.

  7

  "WELL," RITA SAID as we drove back to Boston, "that went well."

  "Can't say I've ever seen you take offense before," I said.

  "Can't remember it myself," Rita said. "What did he do to offend you?"

  "Asked me if I'd had sex with you."

  "And you were ashamed to admit you hadn't?" Rita said.

  "No, it was the way he asked," I said.

  "Yes," Rita said. "There's such contempt."

  "He'll be tough to defend," I said.

  Rita nodded.

  "Everyone on the jury will hate him," I said.

  "I'd probably try to avoid a jury trial," Rita said.

  "We could dump him," I said.

  "Nothing would please me more, but we won't," Rita said.

  "Neither one of us?"

  "Neither one," Rita said. "You know it and I know it."

  "I might," I said.

  "Nope," Rita said. "It's ego. We both think we're the best there is at what we do."

  "Well, yeah," I said.

  "And we both want to know what happened in that hotel room."

  "True," I said.

  "It's what we do," Rita said. "Plus, you have this gallop-tothe-rescue fixation."

  "Like I was telling you," I said. "I would never dump Jumbo."

  "I admire that in you," Rita said. "But since we have both called him an asshole and stomped out of the room, how are we going to go about this?"

  "How about Zebulon Sixkill?" I said.

  "I don't like talking to him," Rita said. "He scares the hell out of me."

  "Was he around that night?" I said.

  "I assume so," Rita said. "He always is. They had a twobedroom suite in the hotel. Before the studio tried to hide him out here."

  "You know he was there?"

  "Says he was in the living room," Rita said. "Watching television."

  "Maybe I'll talk to him," I said.

  "How you going to get him alone?"

  "Maybe I won't," I said. "Maybe I'll have to talk with him in front of Jumbo."

  "Won't Jumbo tell him to throw you out again?"

  "Might," I said.

  "Doesn't Zebulon Sixkill scare the hell out of you?" Rita said.

  "He does," I said. "But I'll try to work around it."

  "Actually, it was a silly question," Rita said. "We both know you're not afraid of him."

  "No?" I said.

  "You should be," she said. "But you're not."

  "Why do you suppose that is?" I said.

  "Because you're heroic?" Rita said.

  "That would be my thinking," I said.

  8

  I SPLIT A PIZZA with Matthew Lopata in the atrium at the Holyoke Center, across from Harvard Yard. He was a seriouslooking twenty-two-year-old mid-sized kid with dark hair cut short.

  "My parents think me going to Harvard is like I got elected God," he said.

  "You doing okay?"

  "Yeah, sure," he said. "Pretty much everybody does okay, if they get in, unless they drink themselves to death."

  "You graduate this year?" I said.

  "Actually," Matthew said, "I graduated last year."

  "Cum laude?" I said. Just to be saying something.

  "Of course," he said. "You know what percentage of last year's class graduated cum laude?"

  "Ninety-something," I said.

  He looked a little surprised.

  "That's right," he said.

  "Must be the combination of highly intelligent students with great teachers," I said.

  "Sure it is," Matthew said.

  "You're in grad school now?" I said.

  "Yeah," he said. "Economics."

  "Ouch," I said.

  "I know," he said. "I know, the dismal science."

  He took a bite of pepperoni pizza from the narrow end of a slice.

  "So how's school?" I said.

  "Everybody thinks Harvard is so hard. It's no harder than anyplace else. All you got to do is study."

  "Which you do," I said.

  "Enough to get by," he said.

  "It engages you," I said.

  "Yeah," he said. "Economics is pretty interesting. I mean, the whole deal with money. Money is something we've made up, you know, because barter is clumsy. . . . It's smoke and mirrors."

  "I've always suspected as much," I said. "Can we talk about your sister?"

  He was quiet for a moment, looking down at the pizza. Then, without looking up, he nodded.

  "Good," I said. "Tell me about her."

  "Like what?" he said.

  "You decide, anything comes to mind."

  "She was a good kid when she was little," Matthew said. "Hell, she was always a good kid, but she was an awful mess, too."

  He was still looking at the pizza.

  "How so?" I said.

  "My parents," he said, and shook his head. "My old man treated her like she was the carnival queen and captain of the cheerleading squad. My mother . . ." He raised his eyes from the pizza and looked at me as the conversation began to engage him. "My mother treated her like she was an ugly little slut that would fuck every guy she met."

  "Which one did she buy into?" I said.

  "Both," Matthew said.

  It was a rainy day in Harvard Square, so the foot traffic through the atrium from Mass Ave to Mount Auburn Street was heavier than it might have been if the sun were out. A lot of people were carrying umbrellas, which most of them furled inside. I had always thought that Cambridge, in the vicinity of Harvard, might have had the most umbrellas per capita of any place in the world. People used them when it snowed. In my childhood, in Laramie, Wyoming, we used to think people who carried umbrellas were sissies. It was almost certainly a hasty generalization, but I had never encountered a hard argument against it.

  "She promiscuous?" I said. "If the word still has meaning."

  "Some," Matthew said. "And she was, ah, you know, bubbly and cute."

  "Vivacious," I said.

  "Yeah," Matthew said. "Vivacious. Worked hard as hell at it."

  "She wanted to be popular?"

  "More than anything."

  "Maybe valued for what she was?"

  "If she ever knew," Matt
hew said. "They really messed her up."

  "Your parents?" I said.

  "Yeah."

  "You don't seem," I said, "at first glance, really messed up."

  "I was a boy," he said.

  "Different standards," I said.

  "Yes," he said. "I'm two years older. I got good grades in school. When she came along, they expected that she wouldn't."

  "And she didn't disappoint them."

  "I guess not," Matthew said. "I played sports in high school. She didn't make cheerleader."

  I nodded.

  "I'm sorry to have to ask," I said. "But have any thoughts about what happened to her?"

  "She probably went with him," he said. "She was impressed with movie stars."

  "Even fat, piggy ones?" I said.

  "It never seemed to matter," Matthew said. "If someone was interested in her, or she thought he was . . ."

  "Was she interested in, ah, atypical sex?"

  "Kinky stuff, you mean? I don't know how old you are, but most girls nowadays do most things."

  "I'm sorry to press," I said. "But I meant things that most girls don't do nowadays."

  "Stuff that might have killed her, you mean?"

  "Yeah."

  "Like, you know, strangulation stuff?"

  "She appears to have died of asphyxiation," I said.

  Matthew shook his head and looked back down at his pizza. He took a slice of pepperoni off the pizza and ate it.

  "We talked some about sex," he said. "But not about that kind of stuff. You saying she coulda done it herself?"

  "Or asked Jumbo Nelson to do it with her."

  "He did it," Matthew said. "Didn't he? Everyone says he did."

  "Don't know exactly what happened," I said. "But I will."

  "Who you working for," Matthew said.

  "The law firm that represents Nelson," I said.

  "So you're trying to get the fucker off," Matthew said.

  "Nope, that's the law firm's job. I'm just trying to find out what happened."

  "And if you find out that he did it?"

  "I'll tell the law firm," I said.

  "And if they get him off anyway?"

  "That's how the system works," I said.

  "Well, the system sucks," Matthew said.

  "Often," I said.

  "So you're willing to let him get away with killing my sister?" Matthew said.

  "I'll make that call when I have to," I said.

  "Meaning?"

  "Meaning it's a hard call to make. The law says if you can't convict him, then he doesn't get punished."

  "And what do you say?"

  "Maybe he didn't kill her. Maybe he did but it was an accident. Maybe he did it. I'll decide what to do about it when I know what happened."

  "If you knew he did it, and told, would you get in trouble with the law firm?" Matthew said.

  "Might."

  "What firm is it?"

  "Cone, Oakes, and Baldwin," I said.

  "Would it matter if they were mad at you?"

  "Be unlikely to hire me again," I said.

  "Could they blackball you?" he said. "You know, tell other law firms?"

  "Possible," I said.

  "So it wouldn't be a good idea for you to tell," he said.

  "It would not enhance my earning potential," I said.

  Matthew was silent for a time. The pizza was mostly uneaten. The wet people came and went in the atrium. At the open ends, I could see the rain falling hard.

  Then he said, "So you won't."

  "Might," I said.

  He repressed a scornful snort. And nodded knowingly and stood up.

  "Thanks for the pizza," he said.

  9

  SUSAN HAD OCCASIONAL designer paroxysms in my office. Some were good. Some I didn't mind because she liked them. Occasionally an idea was inspired. The couch was inspired. Susan and I used it every now and again when we were alone in the office and going to my place or hers just seemed a long delay in our plans. Also, when Pearl was visiting she spent much of her time on it. Another winner was the small refrigerator with an ice maker, which she had set up just in back of the file cabinet where the coffeepot sat. She said it was important in case a valuable client wanted a drink. That hadn't worked out as fully as she had thought it might. But late in the day, I could sit with my chair swiveled and look out my office window, and sip scotch and soda in a tall glass with a lot of ice.

  Which was what I was doing. It was nearly dark, and the rain was falling straight down, and quite a bit of it. I liked rain. I liked to listen to it. I liked to watch it. I liked to be out in it, if I was dressed for the occasion. And inside, with a drink, out of the weather, was good for feeling secure and domestic. I sat and thought, as I liked to do, about Susan and me and our time together. It always seemed to me that being with her was enough, and that everything else, good or bad, was just background noise. The rain flattened out on my window, and some of the drops coalesced into a small rivulet that ran down the glass. My drink was drunk. I swiveled around to make another one, and Martin Quirk came through my door.

  "I'm off duty," Quirk said. "I can have a couple of drinks."

  He took off his raincoat and shook it out, and hung it up. He took off his old-timey-cop snap-brim fedora and put it on the corner of my desk. While he was doing this, I made two drinks and handed him his.

  "Soda?" I said.

  Quirk shook his head.

  "Rocks is good," he said. "Gimme an update."

  "Scotch is Dewar's," I said." I bought it . . ."

  "Jumbo Nelson," Quirk said.

  "Ahh," I said. "That."

  "That," Quirk said, and drank some scotch.

  I told him about my visit with Jumbo and with the Lopatas, including Matthew. He listened without comment.

  "So except for pissing people off," he said when I was done, "you're nowhere."

  "Exactly," I said.

  Quirk nodded.

  "Well," he said. "You're not there alone."

  "Whaddya know about Zebulon Sixkill," I said.

  "Cree Indian," Quirk said. "Single. No kids. Played football at Cal Wesleyan. Worked as a bouncer. Met Jumbo while he was bouncing in a club in L.A., and Jumbo hired him. Arrested a couple times for simple assault. No other record."

  "Where'd he grow up?" I said.

  "Reservation in Montana," Quirk said.

  "He any good?" I said.

  "No idea," Quirk said. "He looks good."

  "He does," I said. "Rita tells me he was in the living room of a hotel suite while Dawn Lopata was dying in the bedroom."

  "Yep," Quirk said. "Heard no evil, saw no evil."

  "You believe him?" I said.

  Quirk shrugged.

  "I assume he's sat outside a few bedrooms while Jumbo was in there," Quirk said. "He probably didn't hear anything he hadn't heard before."

  "He won't talk to you," I said.

  "No," Quirk said.

  We sat with our scotch and didn't say anything. The rain made a quiet chatter on the windowpanes.

  "Raining," Quirk said.

  "Yep."

  Quirk's glass was empty. He held it out to me. I made us two more. And sat and we drank some.

  "You gonna talk to him?" Quirk said.

  "Yes."

  "How you gonna go about that," Quirk said. "You go out to Wellesley, and Jumbo will have him throw you out again."

  "Thought I might visit him on the set," I said.

  "While Jumbo's on camera," Quirk said.

  I nodded.

  "Might work," Quirk said. "Unless Zebulon bounces you on his own."

  "Maybe he can't," I said.

  "Maybe," Quirk said.

  He tossed back the rest of his scotch, put on his hat and coat, and left.

  10

  IN THE MORNING, after breakfast, I called the Film Bureau and they told me that Jumbo Nelson's movie was shooting all day today at the Park Street Station on Boston Common.

  "What's the name of the mov
ie?" I said.

  "Working title is Oink."

  "Perfect," I said.

  So, showered, shaved, and splashed with a bouquet of aftershave, I put on jeans and sneakers, a gray T-shirt, a .38 revolver, a leather jacket and a tweed scally cap, and headed out to confront Zebulon Sixkill. I was so clean and sweet-smelling that I decided to up my fee.

  It was April 2, and it wasn't raining, but it looked like it would, as I walked across the Public Garden and across Charles Street and through the Common. At the intersection of Park and Tremont Streets, across from the Park Street Church, a block from the State House, the Park Street Station area looked like the staging site for the invasion of Normandy. There were equipment trucks, lights, trailers, honey wagons, mobile homes, a craft-services truck, some cars, extras, grips, best boys, script girls, assistant directors, production assistants, a detail cop, and a mare's nest of cables. Some spectators had gathered behind the barriers, and as I walked down into that scene, a limousine pulled up onto the corner of Tremont Street, and Jumbo Nelson, dressed like a street person, got out and walked slowly into the subway. A director yelled, "Cut!" Jumbo came back out. Got back into the limo. Shepherded by the detail cop, it backed up out of sight. Somebody held up a clacker board in front of the camera.

  "Scene eighteen, take two," she said.

  Somebody else, probably an assistant director, said something that sounded like "Speed?"