“Sit down,” I said. “My treat this morning.” I poured her coffee.
She sat and sipped at the coffee.
I said, “This is awkward, but it doesn’t have to be too awkward. I’m flattered that you offered. You should not consider it a negative on you that I declined.”
She sipped more coffee, shook her head slightly, didn’t talk.
“Look,” I said. “You’ve been through a lousy divorce. For sixteen years or more you’ve been a housewife and now all of a sudden there’s no man in the house. You’re a little lost. And then I move in. You start cooking for me. Putting flowers on the table. Pretty soon you’re a housewife again. This morning had to happen. You had to prove your housewifery, you know? It would have been a kind of confirmation. And it would have confirmed a status that I don’t want, and you don’t really want. I’m committed to another woman. I’m committed to protecting your son. Screwing his mom, pleasant as that would be, is not productive.”
“Why not?” She looked up when she said it and straight at me.
“For one thing it might eventually raise the question of whether I was being paid for protecting Paul or screwing you, of being your husband substitute.”
“Gigolo?”
“You ought to stop doing that. Classifying things under some kind of neat title. You’re a whore, I’m a gigolo, that sort of thing.”
“Well, what was I if I wasn’t a whore?”
“A good-looking woman, with a need to be loved, expressing that need. It’s not your fault that you expressed it to the wrong guy.”
“Well. I’m sorry for it. It was embarrassing. I was like some uneducated ginzo.”
“I don’t know that the lower classes do that sort of thing much more often than we upper-class types. But it wasn’t simply embarrassing. It was also in some ways very nice. I mean I’m very glad to have seen you with your clothes off. That’s a pleasure.”
“I need men,” she said.
I nodded. “That’s where the bucks are,” I said.
“That’s still true,” she said. “But it’s more than that.”
I nodded again.
“Women are so goddamned boring,” she said. She stretched out the or in boring.
“Sometime I’ll put you in touch with a woman I know named Rachel Wallace,” I said.
“The writer?”
“Yeah.”
“You know her? The feminist writer? Well, that’s all right in theory. But we both know the reality.”
“Which is?”
“That we get a lot further batting our eyes and wiggling our butts.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Look where it got you.”
With a quick sweep of her right hand she knocked the half-full cup of coffee and its saucer off the table and onto the floor. In the same motion she got up out of her chair and left the kitchen. I heard her go up the short stairs to her bedroom and slam the door. She never did try my potato-and-onion omelet. I threw it away.
CHAPTER 10
It was two days after the peignoir that they came for the kid. It was in the evening. After supper. Patty Giacomin answered the doorbell and they came in, pushing her backward as they came. Paul was in his room watching television. I was reading A Distant Mirror, chapter seven. I stood up.
There were two of them and neither was Mel Giacomin. The one doing the shoving was short and dumpy and barrel-bodied. He was wearing the ugliest wig I’ve ever seen. It looked like an auburn Dynel ski cap that he’d pulled down over his ears. His partner was taller and not as bulky. He had a boot camp crew cut and a navy watch cap rolled up so that it looked like a sloppy yarmulke.
The short one said, “Where’s the kid?”
The tall one looked at me and said, “Spenser. Nobody told me about you in this.”
I said, “How are you, Buddy?”
The short one said, “Who’s he?”
Buddy said, “He’s a private cop. Name’s Spenser. You working, Spenser?”
I said, “Yes.”
“They didn’t tell me you’d be here.”
“Mel didn’t know, Buddy. It’s not Mel’s fault.”
“I didn’t say anything about no Mel,” Buddy said.
“Aw, come on, Buddy, don’t be a jerk. Who the hell else would send you for the kid?”
The short one said, “Never mind all the crap. Parade the fucking kid out here.”
I said to Buddy, “Who’s your friend with his head in a bag?”
Buddy made a very small smile.
The short one said, “What the hell’s that remark supposed to mean, douchebag?”
“It means you look like you’re wearing an Astroturf bathing cap for a rug. Funniest looking rug I’ve ever seen.”
“Keep running your mouth, douchebag, and we’ll see how funny you are.”
Buddy said, “Be cool, Harold.” To me he said, “We come to take the kid back to his old man. We didn’t know you’d be here, but that don’t change the plan.”
I said, “No.”
“No, we can’t take him back? Or no, it don’t change the plan,” Buddy said.
“No, you can’t take him back,” I said.
Harold pulled a black woven leather sap from his hip pocket and tapped it gently against the palm of his hand.
“I’ll enjoy this,” he said. And I hit him a stiff left jab on his nose, turning my body sideways as I threw the punch to get all of me into it and to make a smaller target. The blood spurted out of Harold’s nose and he staggered three steps backward, flailing his arms for balance. The blackjack hit a table lamp and smashed it. Harold got his balance. He held one hand against the blood coming from his nose and shook his head once as if there were a fly in his ear.
Buddy shrugged a little sadly. Harold came back at me and I hit him the same jab, same place, a little harder. It sat him down. Blood was all over his face and shirt.
“Jesus Christ, Buddy,” he said. “Jump in. He can’t take two of us.”
“Yeah, he can,” Buddy said. Harold started to get up. His legs were wobbly. Buddy said, “Leave it alone, Harold. He’ll kill you if you try again.”
Harold was on his feet, trying to keep his nose from bleeding. He still held the blackjack in his right hand, but he didn’t seem to remember that. He looked confused.
I said, “That’s what you brought for muscle, Buddy?”
Buddy shrugged. “He’d have been all right for the broad,” he said. “He does good with barbers and car salesmen that get a little behind on the vig.” Buddy spread his hands.
“How come Mel didn’t come himself?”
“I don’t know no Mel.”
“Come on, Buddy. You want to discuss unlawful entry and assault with the Lexington cops?”
“What are they going to do, beat the shit out of me with a Minuteman?”
“Jail is jail is jail, babe. Don’t matter who put you there. How long since you and Harold summered at Walpole?”
“How about we just walk out of here,” Harold said. His voice was thick. He had a handkerchief wadded against his nose.
I reached around and took my gun out of its hip holster. I showed it to both of them. I smiled.
Buddy said, “So we know Mel. We thought we’d do him a favor. He heard that his old lady had hired some private cop to be a bodyguard. We figured we come get the kid for him. We didn’t know it was you. We figured it would be some stiff that used to be a bank guard. Hell, we didn’t even bring a piece.”
“How you happen to know Mel, Buddy?”
Buddy shrugged again. “Seen him around, you know. Just trying to do him a favor.”
“What did he pay you?”
“A C each.”
“Big league,” I said.
“See you again,” Buddy said. “Come on, Harold. We’re walking.”
Harold looked at the gun. He looked at Buddy. Buddy said, “Come on,” and turned toward the front door. Harold looked at me again. Then he turned after Buddy.
Patty said, “Spenser
.”
I shook my head and put the gun away. “Tell Mel that if he keeps sending people down to annoy us I’m going to get mad,” I said. Buddy nodded and went down the three stairs to the front hall. Harold followed him.
“The next people he sends won’t walk out,” I said.
Buddy paused and looked back. “You never were a shooter,” he said. “It’s what’s wrong with you.” Then he went out the front door and Harold went after him. I heard it close behind them.
Patty Giacomin stood where she’d stood throughout. “Why did you let them go?” she said.
“We had a deal,” I said. “If they told me what I asked I wouldn’t turn them in.”
“You didn’t say that,” she said.
“Yeah, but Buddy and I both knew it.”
“How do you know him? Who are they?”
“I don’t know Harold. Buddy I’ve run into over the years. He works on the docks, and he grifts. He unloads ships when there’s work. When there isn’t, he steals. He’s an errand boy. You want your warehouse burned for insurance, you give Buddy a couple of bucks and he torches it. You want a Mercedes sedan, you pay Buddy and he steals you one. Some grocery clerk owes you money and he won’t pay and Buddy goes over and collects. Nothing heavy. Nothing complicated.”
“He belongs in jail,” Patty said.
“Yeah, I suppose so. He’s been there. He’ll be there again. He’s not that bad a guy.”
“Well, I think he’s pretty bad,” she said. “He broke into my house, manhandled me, tried to kidnap my son. I think he is very bad.”
“Yeah, I suppose you would. But that’s because you don’t know any people who are in fact very bad.”
“And you do?”
“Oh, my, yes,” I said.
“Well, I’m glad I don’t. I hope Paul didn’t see this.”
“Oh, he saw it,” I said. I nodded at the stairs. In the shadows of the upper hall, three stairs up from the living room, Paul was standing looking down.
“Paul,” she said. “How long have you been there?”
He didn’t say anything.
I said, “Since Buddy and Harold came in.”
“Don’t be scared, Paul,” she said. “It’s okay, Mr. Spenser has made them go away. He won’t let them bother us.”
Paul came down the stairs and stood on the middle step.
“How come you didn’t shoot them?” he said.
“I didn’t need to,” I said.
“Were you scared to?”
Patty Giacomin said, “Paul.”
“Were you?”
“No.”
“The guy said that there was something wrong with you. That you weren’t a shooter.”
“True.”
“What’d he mean?”
Patty said, “Paul, that’s enough. I mean it. You’re being very rude.”
I shook my head. “No. This all revolves around him. He has a right to ask questions.”
“What did he mean?” Paul said.
“He meant that if I was quicker to kill people, my threat would work better.”
“Would it?”
“Probably.”
“Why don’t you?”
“Something to do with the sanctity of life. That kind of stuff.”
“Have you ever killed someone?”
Patty said, “Paull”
“Yes.”
“So?”
“I had to. I don’t if I don’t have to. Nothing’s absolute.”
“What do you mean?” He stepped down to the living room level into the light.
“I mean you make rules for yourself and know that you’ll have to break them because they won’t always work.”
Patty said, “I don’t know what either one of you is talking about, but I want you to stop. I don’t want any more talking about killing and I don’t want to talk about either of those men again. I mean it. I want it stopped.” She clapped her hands when she said the last sentence. Paul looked at her as if she were a cockroach and turned and went back up to his room.
“I think I need a drink,” Patty said. “Could you put one together for me?”
“Sure,” I said. “What’ll it be?”
CHAPTER 12
The next time they tried, it was meaner. Patty Giacomin was food shopping when I went to pick up Paul at school. When I came back into the house with Paul, the phone was ringing. Paul answered and then handed it to me.
“It’s for you,” he said.
I took the phone and Paul lingered in the doorway between the kitchen and the living room to see who it was. It was a voice I didn’t know.
It said, “Spenser?”
I said, “Yeah.”
It said, “There’s someone here wants to talk with you.”
I said, “Okay.” Repartee is my game.
There was a shuffling at the other end, then Patty Giacomin’s voice came on. It sounded shaky.
“Spenser. That man Buddy and some other men have me. They said if you don’t give Paul to them they won’t let me go.”
I said, “Okay, put Buddy on. We’ll work something out.”
She said, “Spenser.…” and then Buddy’s voice came on.
“You there?”
I said, “Yeah.”
Buddy said, “Here’s the plan. You bring the kid to the Boston end of the Mass. Ave. Bridge. We’ll bring Momma to the Cambridge end. When we see you start the kid we’ll start Momma the other way. Get the idea?”
“Yeah. Shall we do it now?”
“One hour. We’ll be there in one hour.”
“Okay.”
“Spenser?”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t fuck this up. I got people with me that ain’t Harold, you understand?”
“Yeah.”
Buddy hung up.
I broke the connection and dialed information.
“Harbour Health Club in Boston,” I said to the operator. I looked at my watch. Two twenty-five. The operator gave me the number. I punched it out on the push-button phone. It rang. A woman answered.
I said, “Henry Cimoli, please.”
The woman said, “One minute.” She sounded like she was chewing gum.
Henry said, “Hello.”
I said, “Spenser. I need Hawk. You know where he is?”
Henry said, “I’m looking at him.” Sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good.
I said, “Put him on.”
In a moment Hawk said, “Umm,” into the phone.
I said, “You know Buddy Hartman?”
Hawk said, “Umm-hmm.”
I said, “He and several others have a woman. They want to exchange her for a boy that I have. At three twenty-five they are going to be at the Cambridge end of the Mass. Ave. Bridge. I’m going to be at the Boston end. We’re going to start them together. When they meet, halfway across, I want you to discourage Buddy and his pals while I drive out onto the bridge and pick up both of them, the woman and the kid.”
Hawk said, “It’s five minutes’ work, but I gotta drive there and go home again. Cost you a deuce.”
“Yeah, I haven’t got time to haggle fee with you. I’m on my way.”
“I be there,” Hawk said. We hung up.
Paul was staring at me.
I said, “Come on, we gotta go get your mother.”
“You going to give me to them?”
“No.”
“What if they try to shoot me?”
“They won’t. Come on. We’ll talk in the car.”
In the car I said, “You heard what I said on the phone to Hawk?”
Paul said, “Who’s Hawk?”
“Friend of mine, doesn’t matter. You heard what I said?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. I can’t believe we’re talking a lot of danger here. But here’s what I want you to do. When I tell you to go, you start walking along the Mass. Ave. Bridge toward Cambridge.”
“Where’s the Mass. Ave. Bridge?”
“Acro
ss the Charles, by MIT. You’ll see. When your mother reaches you, say to her, ‘Lie flat on the ground, Spenser’s coming,’ and then you drop flat down on the pavement. If she doesn’t get down, tell her to. I’ll drive out onto the bridge and I’ll get out of the car. Tell her to get in the driver’s side. You get in the other side.”
“What about that Buddy?”
“Hawk will look after him till I get there.”
“But what if he doesn’t?”
I smiled. “You say that because you don’t know Hawk. Hawk will take care of the Cambridge end.” I wrote Susan’s address on a piece of paper. “Have your mother drive you there.”
The kid was nervous. He yawned repeatedly. I could hear him swallow. His face looked tight and without color. “What if she’s not there?” he said.
“No reason she shouldn’t be,” I said.
“What if this doesn’t work?”
“I’ll make it work,” I said. “I’m good at this. Trust me.”
“What would they do if they got me?”
“Take you to your father. You wouldn’t be any worse off than now. Relax. You got nothing to lose here. Your father wouldn’t hurt you.”
“He might,” Paul said. “He doesn’t like me. He just wants to get even with my mother.”
I said, “Look, kid, there’s just so much value to thinking about things you can’t control. It’s time to stop now. You’ve had a tough life and it doesn’t seem to be looking up. It’s time to start growing up. It’s time to stop talking and start being ready. You know?”
“Ready for what?”
“For whatever comes along. Your way out of a lousy family life is to grow up early and you may as well start now.”
“What am I supposed to do?”
“What I tell you. And do it with as little whining as you can. That would be a start.”
“But I’m scared,” Paul said. There was outrage in his voice.
“That’s a normal condition,” I said. “But it doesn’t change anything.”
He was silent. We passed Mount Auburn Hospital and crossed the Charles onto Soldier’s Field Road. To the right Harvard Stadium looked like it was supposed to, round and looming with arches and ivy on the walls. The Harvard athletic plant sprawled for acres around it. Soldier’s Field Road became Storrow Drive and I went off Storrow by BU, and made the complicated loop turn till I was heading inbound on Commonwealth. At Mass. Ave. there was an underpass. I stayed to the right of it and turned onto Mass. Ave. and drove past the up ramp from Storrow and parked on the bridge with my emergency lights blinking. It was three twenty. Beside me Paul’s stomach rolled. He belched softly.
Five Classic Spenser Mysteries Page 29