“Mr. Victor’s room, please,” he said.
Holy Christ, I thought, something’s happening. I might actually find out if I keep sitting long enough and don’t run my mouth.
Mr. Confidence went the same way Harroway and escort had gone, and ten minutes later Harroway appeared. He went across the lobby and into the dining room. Got himself a table, ordered a drink, and looked at the menu. I went back to the cigar counter, bought two Baby Ruths, sat down again, and munched them behind my newspaper. By the time Harroway had finished his steak, I had read the obituaries, the office equipment for sale classified, the ads for Arizona real estate, and was going back to the funnies for a second run-through on my favorite, “Broom Hilda.”
Harroway had pie and two cups of coffee. I looked at my watch—nine fifteen. We’d been there an hour and forty-five minutes. I read “Broom Hilda” again. Harroway had a brandy. At nine forty-five the girl came on down the corridor and joined Harroway. He paid the bill, and they got up and left. I let them. As soon as they were out the door, I headed down the corridor toward Room 112. I figured the Confidence Man would wait a bit before he left, and if I could catch him there in the room, I might get a handle on the case, or I might get a free introductory trial offer on a confidence course. One never knows.
The door was locked. I knocked. There was no answer. I knocked again, trying to get that Motel Manager sound in it, firm but friendly. A voice said, “Who is it?” The voice was not confident.
I said, “It’s me, Vic.”
The lock turned and the door opened a crack. I put my shoulder into it, and in we went. He said, “Hey.” I shut the door behind me. The force of my charge made him back into the bed and sit on it. He said, “What do you want?” with absolutely no confidence at all.
I said, “Don’t you remember me? We met at the Bartletts’ party.”
He opened his mouth and closed it. He remembered. “You’re the detective,” he said.
“Right, and I’m detecting at this very moment.” He was wearing jockey shorts and black socks. The bed he sat on was rumpled. There were lipstick smears on the sheet. On the dresser beside the color TV were two empty bottles of Taylor pink champagne and two empty glasses, one with a lipstick half moon on the rim. “You have just shacked up,” I said. “And I have caught you.”
“What are you talking about? You’re crazy. You get out of my room right now.”
“Aw, come on, sir. What is your name, by the way?”
“I’m not telling you. I don’t have to tell you anything.” His pants were draped over the back of a leatherette chair. I reached over and took his wallet out of the pocket. He said “Hey” again but stayed on the bed. I was out of his weight class anyway, but it is always hard to feel tough in your underwear. I found his driver’s license: Fraser W. Robinson. I put the license back in the wallet and the wallet back in the pants.
“Now, Fraser, let us talk. I was sitting in the lobby when Harroway checked in with the jailbait. I was there when you came in and he came out. And I am here now. And I’ve got you. But I’ll make a trade.”
Fraser Robinson was looking at the door and at the window and at the four corners of the room, and nowhere did he see a way out.
“What kind of trade?”
“You tell me a lot of stuff about Harroway and the girl and the commune. And I tell no one anything about Harroway the girl and the commune and you. How’s that for swaps?”
“What if I just call the manager and have you arrested for breaking into my room?”
“It’s not your room. It’s Mr. Victor’s room. And I’d have to arrest you on suspicion of violating the Mann Act, possible statutory rape, contributing to the delinquency of a minor child, and resisting arrest. In fact, I think you’d probably get hurt resisting arrest.”
“Look, if you want dough, I could get you some. I mean I haven’t got much on me but …”
“Uh, uh,” I said. “I want information.” I took my gun out, flipped open the cylinder, checked the load, and flipped it shut. “You going to resist arrest,” I said, “or are you going to tell me things?” I looked at him hard, as I’d seen Lee Marvin do in the movies.
“What do you want to know?” he said.
I put the gun back. “I want to know what Harroway is running over there. This setup was obviously arranged and obviously routine. Harroway’s got a movable whorehouse going, and I want to know details and I want to know what else he has going.”
“He’s got everything else,” Robinson said.
“Tell me.”
“Drugs, dirty movies, sex shows, gang bangs, still photos, fetish stuff—you know, like if chains turn you on or leather bras and stuff.”
“What kind of drugs?”
“I don’t know. Everything, I guess. I’m not into drugs. I heard he didn’t deal heroin. One of the girls was talking about Quads, but I don’t really know.”
“Where’s he get the drugs?”
“I don’t know. I told you I’m not into drugs.”
“Yeah, that’s right.” I looked at the empty bottles. “You’re into New York State champagne. I forgot. How did you get in touch with Harroway?”
“Doctor Croft. Gave me a little card with the phone number. Said if I was looking for anything, to call and say what I wanted.”
“How’d he happen to do that?”
“I was having some trouble with my wife, you know. I mean she wasn’t interested much in sex, and I thought maybe I was doing something wrong; you know, technique. So I went to Doctor Croft, and he said maybe I could find a release if I wanted to and it would make our marriage better and he gave me this card. Here, gimme my pants. It’s still in my wallet.” Robinson dug it out. A calling card cheaply printed with only a phone number.
Wise old Doc Croft. Save your marriage, son; get out and screw a groupie. “Your wife ever go to Doc Croft?” I said.
“No, why?”
“Never mind. Okay, what’s the connection between Croft and Harroway?”
“I don’t know. Neither one of them ever mentioned it. Croft never said another word about it after that time he gave me the card. I never brought it up to him. I mean, it’s not the kind of thing you want to talk about, you know. I mean, how your wife is frigid and you have to go to others.” He’d found the basis for his actions as he talked. It was all his wife’s doing anyway, the bitch.
“How much does it cost?” I said.
“A hundred for a regular shack. That’s all night, if you want, but I can’t stay out all night. I mean, my wife won’t even go to bed till I come home, you know? If you want something special, the price goes up from there.”
The telling was building its own momentum, as if he’d had no one to tell about all this till now. He was getting excited. “Like sometimes I go for a nineteen-fifties’ look, like little prim broads with high necks and wide skirts, sort of cute and high-class like, like ah, oh, you know, some of those broads on TV in the fifties, like …”
“Dorothy Collins,” I said.
“Yeah, yeah, like her, and June Allyson in that movie about the ball player with one leg, like that. Well anyway. For a hundred and a half I get a chick like that, you know, dressed up and everything.”
“Isn’t that something,” I said.
“And they’ll cater parties too. You know, stag parties. Like I was at one down the Legion Hall one night they had five broads and a goat. And reefers for anyone that wanted them and a lot of other stuff I don’t know about. Jesus, you should see the equipment on that goat.”
“Sorry I missed it,” I said. “Where’s Harroway get the girls?”
“I don’t know, but they’re all young, and they live with him out somewhere on a farm or something. You know like Charles Manson, a commune or whatever. And I guess they’ll do anything he says.”
“Okay, Fraser,” I said, “you’re off the hook. But I know who you are and where you live and what your hobbies are. I’ll keep in touch.”
“Look, I told you wh
atever you wanted, right? I mean you got no reason to bring me into anything, have you? I mean if Harroway ever found out I told …”
“Mum’s the word, Fraser. Put on your pants.” I looked at the empty champagne bottles. “A hundred and a half,” I said, “and you get domestic champagne.” I went out and closed the door.
In the lobby I looked at my watch—ten fifteen; I was missing the Tuesday night movie again. Then it hit me. Tuesday night I was supposed to be having dinner with Susan Silverman, with maybe a surprise treat afterward. I was two hours and fifteen minutes late.
I called her from a pay phone. “Susan,” I said, “I’m being held captive by the West Peabody Republican Women’s Club which wishes to exploit me sexually. If I overpower my captors and escape, is it too late?”
There was silence. Then she said, “Almost,” and hung up.
As I left the phone booth I saw Fraser Robinson walk out of the lobby and toward the parking lot. Five girls, I thought, and a goat? Jesus Christ.
22
I stopped to buy a bottle of Dom Perignon and still made it to Susan Silverman’s by ten thirty-five. Susan let me in without comment. I held the wine out to her. “They were out of Annie Greenspring,” I said.
She took it. “Thank you,” she said. She had on a chocolate satin shirt with an oversized collar and copper-colored pants. “Do you want some now?”
“Yes.”
“Then come out in the kitchen and open it. I have trouble with champagne corks.”
The house was a small Cape with some Early American antiques around. A small dining room ran between the living room and the kitchen. There was a miniature harvest table set for two with white china and crystal wineglasses. Gulp!
The kitchen was walnut-paneled and rust-carpeted with a wagon wheel ceiling fixture hanging over a chopping-block table. She put the champagne on the table and got two glasses out of the cabinet. I twisted the cork out, poured, and handed her a glass.
“I’m sorry as hell, Susan,” I said.
“Where were you?”
“Mostly sitting in the lobby at the Hideaway Inn reading ‘Broom Hilda’ and eating a Baby Ruth.”
She picked up the champagne bottle and said, “Come on. We may as well sit by what’s left of the fire.” I followed her into the living room. She sat in a black Boston rocker with walnut arms, and I sat on the couch. There was a cheese ball and some rye crackers on the coffee table, and I sampled them. The cheese ball had pineapple and green pepper in it and chopped walnuts on the outside.
“This is even better than a Baby Ruth,” I said.
“That’s nice,” she said.
I picked up the champagne bottle from where she’d set it on the coffee table. “Want some more?” I said. “No, thank you,” she said. I poured some in my glass and leaned back. The fire hissed softly, and a log shifted with a little shower of sparks. The living room was papered in royal blue, with the woodwork white and a big print of Guernica over the fireplace.
“Look, Suze,” I said. “I work funny hours. I get into places and onto things that I can’t stop, and I can’t call and I gotta be late. There’s no way out of that, you know?”
“I know,” she said. “I knew all the two and one half hours I was walking around here worrying about you and calling you a bastard.”
“Is the dinner ruined?” I said.
“No, I made a cassoulet. It probably improves with age.”
“That’s good.”
She was looking at me now, quite hard. “Spenser, what the hell happened to you? What were you doing?”
I told her. Halfway through she got up and poured herself some more champagne and refilled my glass. When I finished she said, “But where’s Kevin?”
“I don’t know. I figure that Harroway’s got him stashed somewhere else. In Boston, maybe. He must have gotten nervous after we were out to his house.”
“And Harroway’s running a whole, what, vice ring? Right here in town? How can he get away with it? I mean, this isn’t a big town. How can the police not know?”
“Maybe they do know.”
“You mean bribery?”
“Maybe, or maybe Harroway has friends in high places. Remember Doctor Croft was the one who shilled old Fraser Robinson onto Vicki’s scam.”
“But to corrupt the police …”
“Cops are public employees, like teachers and guidance counselors. They tend to give a community what it wants, not always what it should have. I mean, if you happen to go for an evening out with five broads and a goat, and you are a man of some influence, maybe the cops won’t prevent it. Maybe they’ll try to contain it and keep everybody happy.”
The bottle of Dom Perignon was empty. Susan said, “I bought some too,” and went to the kitchen to get it. I got another log out of the hammered-brass wood bucket on the hearth and settled it on top of the fire. Susan returned with the champagne. Mumm. Good. I was more than a domestic champagne date. Next time, she’d said. Tuesday, at my house. Hot-diggity. She sat down on the couch beside me and handed me the bottle. I twisted the cork out and poured.
“I always thought you had to pop it and make a mark in the ceiling and spill some on the rug,” she said.
“That’s for tourists,” I said.
“Where are you now, Spenser? What do you make of everything?”
“Well, I know that Kevin is with Vic voluntarily. I know Vic is a homosexual.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I haven’t proved it, but I know it. I heard it from people I trust. I don’t need to prove it.”
“That’s an advantage you have on the police, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, one. Okay, so Harroway’s gay and Kevin’s staying with him. You told me that Kevin had unresolved sexual identity problems …”
“I said he might have …”
“Right, he might have sexual identity problems, so the relationship between them might be romantic. Agree?”
“Spenser, you can’t just say things like that; there’s so much more that goes into that kind of diagnosis. I’m not qualified …”
“I know, I’m hypothesizing. I don’t have the luxury of waiting to be sure.”
“I guess you don’t, do you?”
“I figure Vic and Kevin are living together, and he finds in Harroway a combination of qualities he misses in his parents. I figure the kid ran off with Harroway and then afterward, out of hatred or perversity or boyish exuberance, they decided to put on the straights and make some money to boot. So they rigged the kidnapping, and they sent the notes and made the phone calls and shipped the guinea pig after it died. Then they went, maybe to get some things of Kevin’s, maybe to steal the old man’s booze, maybe to play a new trick, and broke into the house. Actually Kevin probably had a key. And Earl Maguire caught them and they panicked, or Harroway did, and he killed Maguire. You saw Harroway; you can imagine how he could hit someone too hard, and if he did he could make it permanent.”
“But what do you suppose Doctor Croft has to do with all this?”
“Maybe nothing, maybe just doing a favor for his buddy, Fraser Robinson. Maybe he’s no more than a satisfied customer. Or maybe he’s a convenient source of drugs. An M.D. has a better shot than most people at getting hold of narcotics. I can’t see the mob doing business with the likes of Harroway.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Well, I was thinking of putting my hand on your leg and quoting a few lines from Baudelaire.”
“No, dummy, I mean what are you going to do about Vic Harroway and Doctor Croft and Kevin?”
“One thing I’ll do right now. Where’s your phone?”
“In the kitchen.”
I got up and called Boston Homicide. “Lieutenant Quirk, please.” Susan came out with me and looked at the cassoulet in the oven.
“Who’s calling?”
“My name’s Spenser.”
“One moment.” The line went dead and then a voice came on.
“Spenser
, Frank Belson. Quirk’s home asleep.”
“I need a favor, Frank.”
“Oh, good, me and the Lieutenant spent most of today hanging around thinking what could we do to be nice to you. And now you call. Hey, what a treat.”
“I want to know anything you can find out about a medical doctor named Raymond Croft, present address …” I thumbed through the Smithfield phone book on the shelf below the phone, “Eighteen Crestview Road, Smithfield, Mass. Specializing in internal medicine. I don’t know his previous address. Call me here when you can tell me something.” I gave him Susan’s number. “If I’m not here leave a message.”
“You’re sure you don’t want me to hand-carry it out there?”
“Maybe I can do you a favor sometime, Frank.”
“Oh, yeah, you could do everybody a favor sometime, Spenser.”
The conversation wasn’t going my way, so I let it go and hung up. “How’s the cassoulet?” I said.
“On warm,” she said. “It’ll keep. I think we need more wine.”
“Yes,” I said, “I believe we do.”
We went back into the living room and sat on the couch and drank some more. My head felt expanded, and I felt very clever and adorable.
“Darling,” I said, leaning toward Susan, “je vous aime beaucoup, je ne sais pas what to do.”
“Ah, Spenser, you romantic fool,” she said and looked at me over the rim of her champagne glass while she drank. “Are you really a detective, or are you perhaps a poet after all?”
“Enough with the love talk,” I said, “off with the clothes.”
She put the champagne glass down and looked at me full face and said, “Be serious, now, please. Just for now.” My throat got tight, and I swallowed audibly.
“I am serious,” I said.
She smiled. “I know you are. It’s funny, isn’t it? Two sophisticated adult people who want to make love with each other, and we don’t know how to make the transition to the bedroom. I haven’t felt this awkward since college.”
Five Classic Spenser Mysteries Page 53