The girl finished her Twinkie as we reached her and washed it down with the rest of the Coke.
“Good morning,” I said.
She looked at me without expression, inhaled most of her filter tip cigarette, and without taking it from her mouth, let the smoke out through her nose. Then she yelled, “Vic.”
The screen door behind her scraped open—one hinge was loose—and out he came. Susan Silverman put her hand on my arm.
“You were right,” I said. “He is unusual, isn’t he?”
Vic Harroway was perhaps five ten, three inches shorter than I, and twenty pounds heavier Say, 215. He was a body builder, but a body builder gone mad. He embodied every excess of body building that an adolescent fantasy could concoct. His hair was a bright cheap blond, cut straight across the forehead in a Julius Caesar shag. The muscles in his neck and chest were so swollen his skin looked as if it would burst over them. There were stretch marks pale against his dark tan where the deltoid muscles drape over the shoulder and stretch marks over his biceps and in the rigid valley between his pectoral muscles. His abdominal muscles looked like cobblestones. The white shorts were slit up the side to accommodate his thigh muscles. They too showed stretch marks. My stomach contracted at the amount of effort he’d expended, the number of weights he’d lifted to get himself in this state.
He said, “What do you turds want?” Down home hospitality.
I said, “We’re looking for Walden Pond, you glib devil you.”
“Well there ain’t no Walden Pond around here, so screw.”
“I just love the way your eyes snap when you’re angry,” I said.
“If you came out here looking for trouble, you’re gonna find it, Jack. Take your slut and get your ass out of here, or I’ll bend you into an earring.”
I looked at Susan Silverman. “Slut?” I said.
Harroway said, “That’s right. You don’t like it? You want to make something out of it?” He jumped lightly off the steps and landed in front of me, maybe four feet away, slightly crouched. I could feel Susan Silverman lean back, but she didn’t step back. A point for her. A point for me too, because as Harroway landed I brought my gun out, and as he went into his crouch he found himself staring into its barrel. I held it straight out in front of me, level with his face.
“Let’s not be angry with each other, Vic. Let us reason together,” I said.
“What the hell is this? What do you want?”
“I am looking for a boy named Kevin Bartlett. I came out here to ask if you’d seen him.”
“I don’t know anybody named Kevin Bartlett.”
“How about the young lady,” I asked, still looking at Harroway. “Do you know Kevin Bartlett?”
“No.” I heard a match strike and smelled the cigarette smoke as she lit up. Imperturbable.
The generator in the garage whined on. The dog had found a bone and was crunching on it vigorously. There was color on Harroway’s cheekbones; he looked as if he had a fever. I was stymied. I wanted to search the place, but I didn’t want to turn my back on Harroway. I didn’t want to have to herd him and the girl around with me. I didn’t want Susan out of my sight. I was trespassing, which bothered me a bit. And I had no reason not to believe them. I didn’t know who might be in the house or behind it or in the garage.
“If at first you don’t succeed,” I said to Susan Silverman, “the hell with it. Come on.”
We backed down the sidewalk to her car and got in. Harroway never took his eyes off me as we went. Susan U-turned on the lawn, and we drove away. Another point for Susan. She didn’t spin gravel getting out of there.
She didn’t say anything, but I noticed her knuckles were white on the steering wheel. When we got back to Main Street, she pulled over to the side of the road and stopped.
“I feel sick,” she said. She kept her hands on the wheel and stared straight ahead. She was shivering as if it were cold. “My God, what a revolting creature he was. My God! Like a … like a rhinoceros or something. A kind of impenetrable brutality.”
I put a hand on her shoulder and didn’t say anything.
We sat maybe two minutes that way. Then she put the car in gear again. “I’m okay,” she said.
“I’ll say.”
“What do you think?” she said. “Did you learn anything?”
I shrugged. “I learned where that place is and what Vic Harroway is like. I don’t know if Kevin is there or not.”
“It seemed like an unpleasant experience for nothing,” she said.
“Well, that’s my line of work. I go look at things and see what happens. If they were lying, maybe they will do some things because I went there today. Maybe they will make a mistake. The worst thing in any case is when nothing is happening. It’s like playing tennis: you just keep returning the ball until somebody makes a mistake. Then you see.”
She shook her head. “What if you hadn’t had a gun?”
“I usually have a gun.”
“But, my God, if you hadn’t, or you hadn’t reached it in time?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “It depends on how good Harroway really is. He looks good. But guys that look like that often don’t have to fight. Who’s going to start up with them? There’s a lot to being strong, but there’s a lot to knowing how. Maybe someday we’ll find out if Harroway knows how.”
She looked at me and frowned. “You want to, don’t you? You want to fight him. You want to see if you can beat him.”
“I didn’t like that ‘slut’ remark.”
“Jesus Christ,” she said. “You adolescent, you. Do you think it matters to me if someone like Vic Harroway calls me a slut? Next thing you’ll challenge him to a duel.” She wheeled the car into the high school parking lot and braked sharply.
I grinned at her boyishly, or maybe adolescently.
She put her hand on my forearm. “Don’t mess with him, Spenser,” she said. “You looked …” she searched for a word, “frail beside him.”
“Well, anyway,” I said, “I’m sorry you had to go. If I’d known, I’d have left you home.”
She smiled at me, her even white teeth bright in her tan face. “Spenser,” she said, “you are a goddamned fool.”
“You think so too, huh?” I said and got out.
11
That afternoon I was in the ID section of the Boston Police Department trying to find out if Vic Harroway had a record. If he did, the Boston cops didn’t know about it. Neither did I.
It was almost five o’clock when I left police headquarters on Berkeley Street and drove to my office. The commuters were out, and the traffic was heavy. It took me fifteen minutes, and my office wasn’t worth it. It was stale and hot when I unlocked the door. The mail had accumulated in a pile under the mail slot in the door. I stepped over it and went across the room to open the window. A spider had spun a symmetrical web across one corner of the window recess. I was careful not to disturb it. Every man needs a pet. I picked up the mail and sat at my desk to read it. Mostly bills and junk mail. No letter announcing my election to the Hawkshaw Hall of Fame. No invitation to play tennis with Bobby Riggs in the Astrodome. There was a note on pale violet stationery from a girl named Brenda Loring suggesting a weekend in Provincetown in the late fall when the tourists had gone home. I put that aside to answer later.
I called my answering service. They reported five calls from Margery Bartlett during the afternoon. I said thank you, hung up, and dialed the Bartlett number.
“Where on earth have you been?” Margery Bartlett said when I told her who I was. “I’ve been trying to get you all afternoon.”
“I was up to the Boston Athenaeum browsing through the collected works of Faith Baldwin,” I said.
“Well, we need you out here, right away. My life has been threatened.”
“Cops there?”
“Yes, there’s a patrolman here now. But we want you here right away. Someone has threatened my life. Threatened to kill me. You get right out here, Spenser, right aw
ay.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said, “right away.”
I hung up, looked at my watch—five twenty—got up, closed the window, and headed for Smithfield. It was six fifteen when I got there. A Smithfield police cruiser was parked facing the street in the driveway. Paul Marsh, the patrolman I’d met before, was sitting in it, his head tipped back against the headrest, his cap tilted forward. The barrel end of a pump-action shotgun showed through the windshield held upright by a clip lock on the dashboard. I could hear the soft rush of open air on the police radio in the car as I stopped at the open side window near the driver.
“What’s happening?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Phone call. Mrs. Bartlett answered and was threatened. Something about evening the score. I didn’t talk to her. Trask did. He knows the details. I don’t. This was my day off.”
“You eaten?”
“No, but one of the guys’ll bring me down something in a while.”
“I’ll be here if you want to shoot out and get something.”
Marsh shook his head again. “Naw, Trask would have my ass. I think he’s hot for Mrs. Bartlett.”
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll go in and see what she can tell me. Her husband home?”
“Nope. He’s still working. I guess. Just her and her daugther and the lawyer, Maguire.”
They were in the kitchen. Maguire, small, neat, and worried, let me in. Marge Bartlett in a green crepe pants suit and white shirt with ruffled cuffs was standing against the kitchen counter turning a highball glass in her hands. She was very carefully made-up. At the kitchen table was the same young girl I’d seen going for a swim on my first visit. The Bartletts’ daughter, I assumed. She was eating a macaroni and cheese TV dinner and drinking a can of Tab. Her bones were small, her face was delicate and impassive. Her black hair was long and straight. She was wearing a faded yellow sweat shirt that said Make Love Not War in black letters across the front. The Lab sat on the floor by her chair and watched every mouthful as it moved from the foil container to her mouth.
Marge Bartlett said, “Spenser, where the hell were you?”
“You already asked me that,” I said.
Maguire said, “Glad you got here, Spenser.”
Marge Bartlett said, “They threatened me. They said they’d …” She glanced at her daughter. “Dolly, why don’t you finish your supper and go watch TV in the den?”
“Oh, Ma … I know what they said. I heard you talking about it with Mr. Trask this afternoon.” She drank some Tab.
“Well you shouldn’t have. You shouldn’t be hearing that sort of thing.”
“Oh, Ma.”
“What exactly happened, Mrs. Bartlett?” I asked.
“They called about noon,” she said.
“Did you record it?”
Maguire said, “No. They took the recorder off this morning about three hours before the call.”
“Okay,” I said, “what did they say? Be careful and get it as exact as possible.”
Dolly said, “Ma, is there any dessert?”
“I don’t know. Look in the cupboard and don’t interrupt.” She turned toward me. “The call came about noon. I was in the study running over my lines. I’m playing Desdemona in a production of Othello we’re putting on in town. And the phone rang and I answered it. Hoping it might be about Kevin, and a girl’s voice said, ‘We got Kevin, now we’re going to even it up with you. We’re going to shoot you in the …’ and she used a dirty word. It refers to the female sex area. Do you know which one I mean? It starts with c.” She glanced at her daughter.
“Yeah, I know the word. Anything else?”
“No. She just said that and hung up. Why would she say that?”
I shrugged. Dolly Bartlett got a package of Nutter Butter cookies from the cabinet and another Tab from the refrigerator and sat back down at the table.
“And you didn’t recognize the voice?”
“No.”
Maguire poured a stiff shot into the glass, added ice and soda, and gave it to Marge Bartlett.
“When you say girl’s voice, how old a girl?”
“Oh, a girl. You know, not a woman, a teenager.”
Dolly Bartlett said, “Ma, why don’t you ever get Coke. I hate Tab.”
“Dolly, damn it, will you not interrupt me? Don’t you realize that I’m under great stress? You might have a little consideration. The Tab has almost no calories. Don’t you care that I’m in danger? Great danger?” Tears began to form, and her lower lip began to quiver: “Oh, goddamn you,” she said and hustled out of the room without spilling her drink.
Maguire said, “Aw, Marge, c’mon,” rolled his eyeballs at me, and hustled out after her. Dolly Bartlett continued to eat her Nutter Butter cookies.
“My name is Spenser,” I said. “I gather you’re Dolly.”
“Yes,” she said. “My name is really Delilah. Isn’t that a dumb name?”
“Yeah,” I said, “Delilah is kind of dumb.”
“Want a cookie?”
I took one. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. Want any Tab?”
“No, thank you.” The cookie tasted like a peanut-flavored matchbook.
“She lied to you, you know,” Dolly said.
“Your mother?”
“Yes.”
“How do you know?”
“I listened upstairs on the other phone. I do it all the time. If you pick it up before she does, she never notices. She’s really dumb.”
“What did the girl really say when she called?”
“She said they were going to punish my mother for screwing her ass off all over town,” Dolly said. She offered Punkin a Nutter Butter cookie. He sniffed it and refused. My respect for him increased. “Then the girl said that about shooting her down there. Isn’t that gross?”
“Gross,” I said.
“Don’t tell my mother I told you.”
“I won’t. Did the girl say anything else?”
“No.”
“Do you think what she said about your mother was true?” That was a nice touch; grill the kid about her mother’s sex habits. Nice line of work you’re in, Spenser.
“Oh sure. Everybody knows about my mother except maybe Daddy. She screws with everybody. She screws with Mr. Trask, I know.”
I wanted to know who else but couldn’t bring myself to ask. Instead I said, “Does it bother you?”
“Yeah, of course, but,” she shrugged, “you get used to it, you know?”
“I guess you would, wouldn’t you.”
“Used to drive Kevin crazy, though. I don’t know if he ever got used to it like I did.”
“It’s harder for boys to get used to, maybe,” I said. It wasn’t too easy for me to get used to. Maybe I should become a florist.
She shrugged again.
Her mother came back into the kitchen, her eyes puffy, with fresh makeup around them. Earl Maguire came with her. Was she screwing with him? Screwing with Mr. Trask? Christ.
Marge Bartlett said, “Dolly, go in the den and watch TV, please, darling. Mommy is upset. It will be better for you to go in there now.” She kissed her daughter on top of her head. Dolly picked up the package of cookies. “Come on, Punkin,” she said, and the dog followed her out of the kitchen.
“Well, Mr. Spenser, I see you’ve met my Dolly. Did you and she have a nice talk?”
“Yep.”
“Good. Chief Trask has left a patrolman here to guard the house. But I’d feel much safer if you’d stay too.”
Earl Maguire said, “We’d expect to pay you extra, of course. Mrs. Bartlett has already talked to her husband, and Rog has authorized payment to you.”
“What can I do the cops can’t?”
“You can stay close to me,” Mrs. Bartlett said. “You can go with me when I shop and go to parties and play rehearsal and things. You can be right here in the house.”
“We’d be employing you as a bodyguard,” Maguire said.
“While I’
m guarding your body, I can’t be looking for your kid,” I said.
“Just for a little while,” she said. “Please? For me?”
“Okay. I’ll have to go home and pack a suitcase. You’ll be all right with Marsh here. Just stay close till I come back. This may just be a crank call, you know. Kidnappings and disappearances bring out a lot of crank calls.”
12
One of the good parts of living alone is when you move out no one minds. It’s also one of the bad parts. I went home, packed, and was back at the Bartletts’ in an hour and a half.
Roger Bartlett was home from work, and he installed me in a bedroom on the second floor. It was a big pleasant room, paneled in pine planking stained an ice-blue. The ceiling was beamed in a crisscross pattern; there was a wide-board floor and a big closet with folding louvered doors and a bureau built in behind them. There was a double bed with a Hitchcock headboard and a patchwork quilt, a pine Governor Winthrop desk, and a wooden rocker with arms and a rush seat that had been done in an antique-blue and stenciled in gold. There was a blue and red braided rug on the floor, and the drapes on the windows were a red and blue print featuring Revolutionary War scenes. Very nice.
“You eat supper yet?” Roger Bartlett asked.
“No.”
“Me either. Come on down and we’ll rustle up a litle grub. Gotta eat to live, right?” I nodded.
“Gotta eat to live,” he repeated and headed downstairs.
A portable TV on the kitchen counter was showing a ball game. The Sox were playing the Angels, and neither was a contender. It was nearly the end of the season, and the announcers and the crowd noise reflected that fact. There is nothing quite like the sound of a pointless ball game late in the season. It is a very nostalgic sound. Sunday afternoon, early fall, car radio, beach traffic.
Bartlett handed me a can of beer, and I sipped it looking at the ball game. Order and pattern, discernible goals strenuously sought within rigidly defined rules. A lot of pressure and a lot of grace, but no tragedy. The Summer Game.
“What do you think about this stuff, Spenser? What’s going on?” Bartlett was cutting slices of breast meat from a roast turkey. “I mean, where’s my kid? Why does someone want to kill my wife? What the hell have I ever done to anybody?”
Five Classic Spenser Mysteries Page 47