Now and Then s-35

by Robert B. Parker

“I don’t admire this current government either,” Susan said.

  “Who does?” I said.

  “Possibly eleven people somewhere back in the hills,” Susan said. “But I remain unconvinced that Last Hope is the answer.”

  “What’d you think of him?” I said. “As him.”

  “We didn’t see him,” Susan said. “We saw his public persona. All we know is that he’s capable of assuming that persona.”

  “On the tapes he was in his seduction persona,” I said. Susan sipped her martini.

  “Did it resemble his public one?” she said.

  “Less oratorical,” I said.

  “What does the FBI fi le say?”

  I drank some scotch.

  “Last Hope advertises itself as helping people in trouble with the government,” I said. “According to the Feds, they claim to counsel the victims of government oppression on how to fi ght back and to provide access to lawyers, investigators, and CPAs.”

  “And do they do that?”

  “Feds don’t seem to think they do much of it.”

  “How many people in the organization.”

  “Feds don’t know.”

  “Who fi nances them,” Susan said.

  “Feds don’t know.”

  “Shouldn’t they know more than they seem to?”

  “They don’t think Last Hope amounts to much,” I said. “Or at least they didn’t, until one of their agents got killed.”

  “And you?” Susan said. “You think they amount to much?”

  “I don’t know if they’re in a position to bring our government to its knees,” I said. “But I think Alderson killed two people.”

  “And you want him to answer for it,” Susan said.

  “I do,” I said.

  “You barely knew these people,” Susan said.

  “I knew them enough,” I said.

  The waiter brought salmon for Susan, and gnocchi for me. I had another scotch.

  “And you withheld information,” Susan said, “that might prove useful to the police and the FBI.”

  “For the moment,” I said.

  “Because you want to catch him yourself,” Susan said.

  “Yes.”

  She nodded.

  “That’s not unlike you,” Susan said. “In any case.”

  I nodded.

  “But you seem unusually intense about this one,” she said.

  “I’m an intense guy,” I said.

  “That’s just it,” she said. “You’re not, at least not so it shows.”

  We were quiet for a moment. Susan waited.

  “You think I identify with Doherty?” I said.

  “Maybe,” Susan said.

  “Because you were with another man once?”

  “There are parallels,” Susan said.

  “It was a long time ago,” I said.

  “That’s right,” Susan said.

  25.

  I am capable of patience, but I don’t enjoy it. And I had been standing by, open-shuttered and passive, for about as long as I could stand. I figured that Epstein probably had Alderson’s office bugged by now, and maybe his home. Being a professional detective, I had already detected that Alderson’s duties at Concord, aside from the two public lectures, appeared to be a three-hour graduate seminar called “An Alternative to Tyranny,” on Wednesday afternoons.

  I hung around outside the seminar room until class ended. The ten or twelve students, mostly female, gathered around Alderson, talking excitedly with him. I waited. Alderson looked at his watch and shook his head, and the students came out and dispersed except for one woman, who looked to be in her forties. She continued to talk animatedly with Alderson for a couple of minutes before he patted her hand and nodded and indicated his watch.

  She took the hand he had patted her with and held it in both of hers for a moment. Then she let go and he stood and they came out together. She was maybe forty-five, with blond highlights. She dressed well for a student, even an old one. She wore a wedding ring. And she was as shapely as Jordan had been. I wondered if her husband was privy to government secrets.

  “Tonight?” she said.

  “Won’t be like any night,” Alderson said and smiled. The woman’s face flushed. She giggled. She made a gesture as if she was going to take his hand, thought better of it, and touched his cheek briefly before she turned and headed down the hall.

  Alderson headed down the corridor toward his office. I walked with him. He looked at me sidelong for a moment, decided he didn’t know me, and strode on.

  “Professor Alderson,” I said.

  He turned his head this time to look at me.

  “Yes?”

  “I have some audiotapes,” I said, “that I think you should hear.”

  “Audiotapes?”

  I gave him my card.

  “Come see me,” I said.

  “What kind of audiotapes.”

  “They’re personal in nature,” I said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Jordan Richmond,” I said.

  “Jordan Richmond,” he said.

  “And you,” I said.

  He stopped and looked at me without any expression.

  “Original recording.”

  His look didn’t waver. His expression didn’t change. It was as if somewhere inside there a valve had clicked shut.

  “Come see me,” I said again and walked away. “Bring cash.”

  When I got to the elevator he was still standing expressionless looking after me. No affect. If I weren’t so valiant it would have been a little unsettling.

  26.

  The next morning, I got to my office early. The door seemed intact. No sign of jimmying. No hint that anyone had worked on the lock. There was no point in Alderson rushing this. I probably hadn’t told anyone, if I was looking for cash. And if they just popped me first chance they got, they might not find the tapes and they’d be right where they had been before they popped me, so the sensible thing was for Alderson to play along.

  I took my gun out and held it at my side while I unlocked the door and pushed it open. Nothing stirred. I waited. Nothing. I raised my gun and followed it into the room in a crouch. The room was empty.

  I left my office door open, and put my gun back on my hip, and made coffee. I sat at my desk and opened the right-hand top drawer, where I kept a stainless-steel Smith & Wesson .357

  Magnum. There were six rounds in the cylinder. If seven guys showed up, I could throw the gun at the last one. I took the little tape recorder from my middle drawer and put it on my desk near my left hand. Then I opened the paper.

  I was reading today’s Calvin and Hobbes. Get it while it lasts. I liked the idea of rerunning stuff. Today Calvin and Hobbes, maybe someday Alley Oop? I had no fully developed plan for this venture. I had simply gotten tired of waiting and decided to poke a stick in the hive. I was being careful, but until Alderson could account for the tape, he probably wouldn’t be dangerous. He might eventually decide that the best approach was simply to make me tell him what I knew. But that wouldn’t come until he knew more than he knew now. For all he knew now, I was bait, and when he made a run at me a thousand FBI agents would jump out of the woodwork and say booga booga. I read Calvin and Hobbes, and Tank McNamara, and Arlo and Janis. I was studying Doonesbury when Alderson came into my office alone. He closed the office door behind him and came to the desk carrying my business card in his left hand.

  “Mr. Spenser,” he said.

  I folded the paper and put it down.

  “Mr. Alderson.”

  He was wearing a gray Harris tweed jacket with a black turtleneck sweater and tan corduroy pants. A long red scarf was draped around his neck. I thought the scarf made himlook like a horse’s ass, but he seemed pleased with it. He was looking at me closely. Probably wondering why I didn’t have a scarf. Then he tucked my card in his breast pocket and slowly looked around the room, at each wall, the fl oor and the ceiling. When he was through he studied my desk from where h
e stood. If he saw the gun in the open drawer, he didn’t react. He sat down.

  “Are you an agent of the United States government?” he said.

  “No.”

  “Of any government?”

  “No.”

  “Are you taping, or in any way recording, this conversation?” he said.

  “No.”

  “What is the purpose of this meeting?” he said.

  “I’m hoping to blackmail you,” I said.

  He tipped his head back, as if stretching the front of his neck, and held it that way for a moment. Then he lowered his head and allowed me to see that his face had no expression.

  “That’s rather bold,” he said.

  I smiled modestly. He waited. I sat. A silence ensued. After a time, Alderson said, “Upon what basis are you planning to blackmail me?”

  “I have an audiotape of you,” I said. “Before, during, and after sexual congress with the recently deceased wife of a recently deceased FBI agent.”

  “Sexual congress is neither illegal nor rare,” Alderson said. 109

  “But the postcoital chitchat suggests that you may be involved in, ah, antigovernment activity.”

  “Who wouldn’t oppose this government?” Alderson said.

  “Matter of degree and method,” I said.

  Alderson gave me his blank dignified stare again, while he thought about things.

  “Posit, as an hypothesis,” Alderson said after a time, “that such a tape existed, how would I know you had it?”

  With my left hand, I pushed the play button on the tape recorder.

  “Shall we have a drink while we talk about what you know?”

  Alderson’s voice said.

  “Let me get my body covered,” Jordan’s voice said.

  “I like your body the way it is,” Perry said. “Stay here. I’ll get us a drink and we can talk in bed.”

  “Perfect,” Jordan said. “I’ll tell you what I’ve learned from Dennis.”

  I shut off the recorder. Alderson pursed his lips slightly.

  “Posit a second hypothesis,” he said after a while. “That it was actually my voice on that tape, and that I wanted to acquire it, how much would it cost me?”

  “Fifty thousand dollars,” I said.

  “What is to prevent someone from simply taking the tape from you?” Alderson said.

  “Me,” I said.

  “You fancy yourself a tough guy?” Alderson said.

  “Known fact,” I said.

  “And should one pay your price, how would one know one wasn’t getting one copy of many?”

  “One would not know,” I said.

  Alderson pursed his lips some more.

  “You are arrogant,” he said.

  “Confi dent,” I said.

  Alderson mulled for a time.

  “May I have time to consider this?” he said.

  “Sure,” I said. “Week from today, in the afternoon, I turn everything I got over to the special agent in charge, Boston offi ce, FBI.”

  Alderson stood and looked down at me for a while with his eyes empty. Then he turned and left without speaking again.

  27.

  An hour after Alderson left, Epstein arrived.

  “Alderson came to visit you,” he said.

  “He did.”

  “You made contact with him at the college yesterday,” Epstein said. “And this morning he was here for about forty minutes.”

  “Your guys are pretty good,” I said. “I didn’t make them yesterday, and I was looking for them.”

  “We have our moments,” Epstein said. “What’s the story?”

  “Off the record,” I said.

  “Off what record?” Epstein said. “You been watching television again. I didn’t send a couple agents down to bring you in. I came here alone. In your office.”

  “I need your word,” I said, “that we’ll do it my way.”

  “No,” Epstein said.

  “Don’t equivocate,” I said.

  “I can’t give you my word blind,” Epstein said. “I can’t let you decide what’s bureau business. Maybe I never could, but the rules have changed since nine-eleven.”

  I nodded. Epstein didn’t say anything. I didn’t say anything. We had gotten to the bridge we were going to cross when we got to it. And we both knew it. The muffled sound of traffic drifted up from Boylston Street. The sound of someone in high heels walking briskly came from the corridor outside my office.

  “You asked me to trust you,” Epstein said. “I can’t do that. But what I can do is ask you to trust me.”

  I waited.

  “Bureau business comes first,” Epstein said. “That stipulated, I’ll cut you as much slack as I can.”

  My office refrigerator cycled on quietly. Susan had decided I needed a refrigerator. It was a small one, next to the file cabinet. I kept milk in it, for coffee, and beer, for emergencies. I opened my middle drawer and took out the tape recorder. I had rewound it to the beginning when Alderson left. Now I had only to punch the play button. Which I did. Epstein listened to the whole tape without saying anything. When it was through he said, “Got a dupe?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I’ll take that one,” Epstein said.

  I took the tape out of the recorder and handed it to him.

  “Okay,” Epstein said. “Talk to me.”

  I got us each some coffee, sat in my chair, put my feet up, and took a sip.

  “I edited that tape down to the stuff Doherty had to hear to know she was cheating,” I said.

  “Why not play the whole thing?”

  “He was going to have enough trouble hearing her cheat,” I said. “I didn’t want to make him sit through it all.”

  “And?” Epstein said.

  “The next day she came here and begged me for the tape.”

  “So Doherty confronted her.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Played her the tape.”

  “I assume so.”

  “That must have been pretty,” Epstein said. “So why’d she want it?”

  “Wondered the same thing,” I said. “She offered money. She offered sex. A combination of both. Whatever I wanted. She said if she didn’t get the tapes it would ruin her life.”

  “Doherty know there was more on the tape than you gave him?” Epstein said.

  “Yes.”

  “So she probably remembered that when they weren’t talking blow jobs,” Epstein said, “they were saying things that might draw attention to Alderson.”

  “I would guess,” I said. “The day she came to see me, that evening she went to Alderson’s condo with an overnight bag. She was in there maybe an hour and came out with the bag and checked into the hotel next door.”

  “She probably told him about the tapes,” Epstein said.

  “Probably.”

  Epstein drank a little of his coffee.

  “And,” he said, “she probably expected to move in with him now that her husband had kicked her out.”

  “Probably.”

  “And he said no.”

  “And they had a fi ght,” I said. “And he gave her the boot.”

  Epstein got up, carrying his coffee, and began to walk around my offi ce.

  “She may not have told him about you,” Epstein said.

  “If she had,” I said, “someone would have come after me.”

  “True,” Epstein said. “And no one has.”

  “Once he got mad,” I said, “she probably didn’t want him to know that it was even worse than he thought.”

  “Dennis was FBI,” Epstein said. “He’d know how. Alderson probably thought Dennis did the bugging.”

  “Yes.”

  “And the next morning after she told him this she was killed, and that same day, probably, her husband was killed.”

  “Sounds like Alderson,” I said. “Doesn’t it?”

  Epstein was nodding as he walked.

  “And when they searched his house and found
the tape they thought they’d got it all?”

  “She probably minimized the damage when she told him about the tape,” I said.

  “Seems a lot of trouble,” Epstein said, “kill two people just to avoid being mentioned in a divorce proceeding.”

  “I guess he valued his privacy.”

  “You have a tail on the woman the day she was killed?”

  Epstein said.

  “Yes.”

  “And it was your guy plugged the shooter.”

  “Yes.”

  Epstein walked past my desk into the little bay behind me, and looked down at the street and sipped his coffee. Neither of us spoke.

  Then Epstein said, “Lotta nice-looking women walk by here.”

  “They do?” I said.

  Epstein turned from the window and smiled.

  “So,” he said. “You got a theory of the case?”

  “I do,” I said.

  “How ’bout that,” Epstein said.

  “I think that Alderson believed that he could insulate himself from any investigation by killing the only two people who knew anything. Jordan, because they were lovers. Doherty, because he’d heard the tape.”

  “Uh-huh,” Epstein said. “Except the tape Doherty heard didn’t have anything actually incriminating, unless we still prosecute for adultery.”

  “But Alderson didn’t know that,” I said. “Until he listened, by which time both Jordan Richmond and Dennis Doherty were dead.”

  Epstein nodded slowly, paused to drink some coffee, and nodded some more.

  “So he tries to make it look like Doherty killed her when he learned of the affair,” Epstein said. “And then, crazed with grief, he killed himself.”

  “But would the cops know of the affair?”

  “We learned that she and Alderson were an item when we began investigating her death,” Epstein said. “Lotta people knew.”

  “And,” I said, “when you got to him he could say, I’m sorry it turned out this way, but we are, after all, men of the world.”

  “But your guy tailing Jordan ruins it by putting one into the shooter’s head. Nice shot, or a lucky one, hit him under the right eye.”

  “It wasn’t luck,” I said. “Too bad, though. If he hadn’t been so good, the guy might not be dead and we might have an ID.”

  Epstein fi nished his coffee.

  “Too bad,” Epstein said.