Five Classic Spenser Mysteries

by Robert B. Parker

  “Yes,” Linda Rabb said without any expression, “I did too. Did you see me in the movie?”

  “Yeah.”

  She was looking past me out the window. “Did you enjoy it?”

  “I think you’re very pretty.”

  She kept staring out the window. There wasn’t anything to see except the dome of the Christian Science Mother Church. I was quiet.

  “What do you want?” she said finally.

  “I don’t know yet. I told you what I know; now I’ll tell you what I think. I think the client you married was Marty. I think someone got hold of Suburban Fancy that knows you and is blackmailing you and Marty, and that Marty is modifying some of the games he pitches so that whoever is blackmailing you can bet right and make a bundle.”

  Again silence and the stare. I thought about moving in front of the window to intercept it.

  “If I hadn’t made the film,” she said. “It was just a break, in a way, from turning tricks with strangers. I mean there was every kind of sex in it, but it was just acting. It was always just acting, but in the movie it was supposed to be acting and the guy was acting and there were people you knew around. You didn’t have to go alone to a strange hotel room and make conversation with someone you didn’t know and wonder if he might be freaky, you know? I mean, some of them are freaky. Christ, you don’t know.” She shifted her stare from the window to me. I wanted to look out the window.

  “One film,” she said. “One goddamned film for good money under first-class conditions and no S and M or group sex, and right after that I met Marty.”

  “In New York?”

  “Yes, they were in town to play the Yankees, and one of the other players set it up. Mrs. Utley sent three of us over to the hotel. It was Marty’s first time with a whore.” The word came out harsh and her stare was heavy on me. “He was always very straight.”

  More silence.

  “He was a little drunk and laughing and making suggestive remarks, but as soon as we were alone, he got embarrassed. I had to lead him through it. And afterward we had some food sent up and ate a late supper and watched an old movie on TV. I still remember it. It was a Jimmy Stewart western called Broken Arrow. He kissed me good-bye when I left, and he was embarrassed to death to pay me.”

  “And you saw him again?”

  “Yes, I called him at his hotel the next day. It was raining and the game with the Yankees was canceled. So we went to the Museum of Natural History.”

  “Yes.”

  “How about the other two players that night? Didn’t they recognize you?”

  “No, I had on a blond wig and different makeup. They didn’t pay much attention to me anyway. Nobody looks at a whore. When I met Marty the next day, he didn’t even recognize me at first.”

  “When did you get married?”

  “When we said, except that we changed it. Marty and I worked out the story about me being from Arlington Heights and meeting in Chicago and all. I’d been to Chicago a couple of times and knew my way around okay if anyone wanted to ask about it. And Marty and I went out there before we were married and went to Comiskey Park, or whatever it’s now, and around Chicago so my sound okay.”

  “Where’d you get Arlington

  “Picked it out on a map.”

  We looked at each other. I could hear the faint hum of the refrigerator in the kitchen. And somewhere down the corridor a door opened and closed.

  “That goddamned movie,” she said. “When the letter came, I wanted to confess, but Marty wouldn’t let me.”

  “What letter?”

  “The first blackmail letter.”

  “Do you know who sent it?”

  “No.”

  “I assume you don’t have it.”

  “No.”

  “What did it say?”

  “It said—I can remember it almost exactly—it was to Marty and it said, ‘I have a copy of a movie called Suburban Fancy. If you don’t lose your next ball game, I’ll release it to the media.’ ”

  “That’s all?”

  “That’s all. No name or return address or anything.”

  “And did he?”

  Linda Rabb looked blank. “Did he what?”

  “Did Marty lose his next game?”

  “Yes, he hung a curve in the seventh inning with the bases loaded against the Tigers, on purpose. I woke up in the middle of the night, that night, and he wasn’t in bed, he was out in the living room, looking out the window and crying.”

  Her face was very white, and her eyes were puffy.

  “And you wanted to confess it again.”

  “Yes. But he said no. And I said, ‘It will kill you to throw games.’ And he said a man looked out for his wife and his kid, and I said, ‘But it will kill you.’ And he wouldn’t talk about it again. He said it was done and maybe there wouldn’t be another letter, but we both knew there would.”

  “And there was.”

  She nodded.

  “And they kept coming?”

  She nodded.

  “And Marty kept doing what they said to do?”

  She nodded again.

  “How often?” I said.

  “The letters? Not often. Marty gets about thirty-five starts a year. There were maybe five or six letters last year, three so far this year.”

  “Smart,” I said. “Didn’t get greedy. Do you have any idea who it is?”

  “No.”

  “It’s a hell of a hustle,” I said. “Blackmail is dangerous if the victim knows you or at the point when the money is exchanged. This is perfect. There is no money exchanged. You render a service, and he gets the money elsewhere. He never has to reveal himself. There are probably one hundred thousand people who’ve seen that film, and you can’t know who they are. He mails his instructions, bets his money, and who’s to know?”

  “Yes.”

  “And furthermore, the act of payment is itself a blackmailable offense so that the more you comply with his requests, the more he’s got to blackmail you for.”

  “I know that too,” she said. “If there was a hint of gambling influence, Marty would be out of baseball forever.”

  “If you look at it by itself, it’s almost beautiful.”

  “I’ve never looked at it by itself.”

  “Yeah, I guess not.” I said, “Is it killing Marty?”

  “A little, I think. He says you get used to anything—maybe he’s right.”

  “How are you?”

  “It’s not me that has to cheat at my job.”

  “It’s you that has to feel guilty about it,” I said. “He can say he’s doing it for you. What do you say?”

  Tears formed in her eyes and began to run down her face. “I say it’s what he gets for marrying a whore.”

  “See what I mean?” I said. “Wouldn’t you rather be him?”

  She didn’t answer me. She sat still with her hands clenched in her lap, and the tears ran down her face without sound.

  I got up and walked around the living room with my hands in my hip pockets. I’d found out what I was supposed to find out, and I’d earned the pay I’d hired on at.

  “Did you call your husband?” I said.

  She shook her head. “He’s pitching today,” she said, and her voice was steady but without inflection. “I don’t like to bother him on the days he’s pitching. I don’t want to break his concentration. He should be thinking about the Oakland hitters.”

  “Mrs. Rabb, it’s not a goddamned religion,” I said. “He’s not out there in Oakland building a temple to the Lord or a stairway to paradise. He’s throwing a ball and the other guys are trying to hit it. Kids do it every day in schoolyards all over the land.”

  “It’s Marty’s religion,” she said. “It’s what he does.”

  “How about you?”

  “We’re part of it too, me and the boy—the game and the family. It’s all he cares about. That’s why it’s killing him because he has to screw us or screw the game. Which is like screwing himself.” />
  I should be gone. I should be in Harold Erskine’s office, laying it all out for him and getting a bonus and maybe a plaque: OFFICIAL MAJOR LEAGUE PRIVATE EYE. Gumshoe of the stars. But I knew I wasn’t going to be gone. I knew that I was here, and I probably knew it back in Redford, Illinois, when I went to her house and met her mom and dad.

  “I’m going to get you out of this,” I said.

  She didn’t look at me.

  “I know who’s blackmailing you.”

  This time she looked.

  19

  I told her what I knew and what I thought.

  “Maybe you can scare him off,” she said. “Maybe when he realizes you know who he is, he’ll stop.”

  “If he’s wearing Frank Doerr’s harness, I’d say no.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he’s got to be more scared of Frank Doerr than I can make him of me.”

  “Are you sure he’s working for Frank What’s’isname?”

  “I’m not sure of anything. I’m guessing. Right after I started looking around the ball club, Doerr came to my office with one of his gunbearers and told me I might become an endangered species if I kept at it. That’s suggestive, but it ain’t definitive.”

  “Can you find out?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Marty makes a lot of money. We could pay you. How much do you charge?”

  “My normal retainer is two corn muffins and a black coffee. I bill the rest upon completion.”

  “I’m serious. We can pay a lot.”

  “Like Jack Webb would say, you already have, ma’am.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “But I don’t want you to start until we get Marty’s approval.”

  “Un-unh. Your retainer doesn’t buy that. I’m still also working for Erskine, and I’m still looking into the situation. I’m now looking with an eye to getting you unhooked, but you can’t call me off.”

  “But you won’t say anything about us?” Her eyes were wide and her face was pale and tight again and she was scared.

  “No,” I said.

  “Not unless Marty says okay.”

  “Not until I’ve checked with you and Marty.”

  “That’s not quite the same thing,” she said.

  “I know.”

  “But, Spenser, it’s our life. It’s us you’re frigging around with.”

  “I know that too. I’ll be as careful as I can be.”

  “Then, damn it, you have got to promise.”

  “No. I won’t promise because I may not be able to deliver. Or maybe it will turn out different. Maybe I’ll have to blow the whistle on you for reasons I can’t see yet. But if I do, I’ll tell you first.”

  “But you won’t promise.”

  “I can’t promise.”

  “Why not, goddamn you?”

  “I already told you.”

  She shook her head once, as if there were a horsefly on it. “That’s bullshit,” she said. “I want a better reason than that for you to ruin us.”

  “I can’t give you a better reason. I care about promises, and I don’t want to make one I can’t be sure I’ll keep. It’s important to me.”

  “Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit.” She was leaning forward, and her nostrils seemed to flare wider as she did.

  “My game has rules too, Mrs. Rabb.”

  “You sound like Marty,” she said.

  I didn’t say anything.

  She was looking at the Christian Science dome again. “Children,” she said to it. “Goddamned adolescent children.”

  My stomach felt a little funny, and I was uncomfortable as hell.

  “Mrs. Rabb,” I said, “I will try to help. And I am good at this. I’ll try.”

  She kept looking at the dome. “You and Marty and all the goddamned game-playing children. You’re all good at all the games.” She turned around and looked at me. “Screw,” she said, and jerked her head at the door.

  I couldn’t think of much to say to that, so I screwed. She slammed the door behind me, and I went down in the elevator feeling like a horse’s ass and not sure why.

  It was almost three o’clock. There was a public phone outside the drugstore next to the apartment building entrance. I went in and called Martin Quirk.

  “Spenser,” he said. “Thank God you called. I’ve got this murder took place in a locked room. It’s got us all stumped and the chief said; ‘Quirk,’ he said, ‘only one man can solve this.’ ”

  “Can I buy you lunch or a drink or something?”

  “Lunch? A drink? Christ, you must be in deep trouble.”

  I did not feel jolly. “Yes or no,” I said. “If I wanted humor, I’d have called Dial-A-Joke.”

  “Yeah, okay. I’ll meet you at the Red Coach on Stanhope Street.”

  I hung up. There was a parking ticket neatly tucked under the wiper blade on the driver’s side. The string looped around the base. A conscientious meter maid. A lot of them just jam it under the wiper without looping the string, and sometimes on the passenger side where you can’t even see it. It was nice to see samples of professional pride. I put the ticket in a public trash receptacle attached to a lamppost.

  I drove down Boylston Street past the Prudential Center and the new public library wing and through Copley Square. The fountain in the square was in full spray, and college kids and construction workers mingled on the wall around it, eating lunch, drinking beer, taking the sun. A lot of them were shirtless. Beyond the fountain was the Copley Plaza with two enormous gilded lions flanking the entrance. And at the Clarendon Street end of the square, Trinity Church gleamed, recently sandblasted, its brown stones fresh-looking, its spires reflecting brightly in the windows of the Hancock Building. A quart of beer, I thought, and a cutlet sub. Shirt off, catch some rays, maybe strike up a conversation with a coed. Would you believe, my dear, I could be your father? Oh, you would.

  I turned right on Clarendon and left onto Stanhope, where I parked in a loading zone. Stanhope Street is barely more than an alley and tucked into it between an electrical supply store and a garage is the Red Coach Grill, looking very old world with red tile roof and leaded windows. It was right back of police headquarters, and a lot of cops hung out there. Also a lot of insurance types and ad men. Despite that, it wasn’t a bad place. Quiet lighting, oaken beams, and such. Quirk was at the bar. He looked like I always figured a cop ought to. Bigger than I am and thick. Short, thick black hair, thick hands and fingers, thick neck, thick features, a pockmarked face, and dressed like he’d just come from a summit meeting. Today he had on a light gray three-piece suit with a pale red plaid pattern, a white shirt, and a silk-finish wide red tie. His shoes were patent leather loafers with a gold trim. I slipped onto a barstool beside him.

  “You gotta be on the take,” I said. “Fuzz don’t get paid enough to dress like that.”

  “They do if they don’t do anything else. I haven’t been on vacation in fifteen years. What are you spending your dough on?”

  “Lunch for cops,” I said. “Want to sit in a booth?”

  Quirk picked up his drink, and we sat down across from the bar in one of the high-backed walnut booths that run parallel to the bar front to back and separate it from the dining room.

  I ordered a bourbon on the rocks from the waitress. “Shot of bitters and a twist,” I said, “and another for my date.” The waitress was young with a short skirt and very short blond hair. Quirk and I watched her lean over the bar to pick up the drinks.

  “You are a dirty lecherous old man,” I said. “I may speak to the vice squad about you.”

  “What were you doing, looking for clues?”

  “Just checking for concealed weapons, Lieutenant.”

  She brought the drinks. Quirk had Scotch and soda.

  We drank. I took a lot of mine in the first swallow. Quirk said, “I thought you were a beer drinker.”

  “Yeah, but I got a bad taste I want to get rid of and the bourbon is quicker.” />
  “You must be used to a bad taste in your line of business.”

  I finished the drink and nodded at the waitress. She looked at Quirk. He shook his head. “I’ll nurse this,” he said.

  “I thought you guys weren’t supposed to drink on duty,” I said.

  “That’s right,” he said. “What do you want?”

  “I just thought maybe we could rap a little about law enforcement theory and prison reform, and swap detective techniques, stuff like that.”

  “Spenser, I got eighteen unsolved homicides in my left-hand desk drawer at this moment. You want to knock off the bullshit and get to it.”

  “Frank Doerr,” I said. “I want to know about him.”

  “Why?”

  “I think he owns some paper on a guy who is squeezing a client.”

  “And the guy is squeezing the client because of the paper?”

  “Yes.”

  “Doerr’s probably free-lance. Got his own organization, operates around the fringe of the mob’s territory. Gambling, mostly, used to be a gambler. Vegas, Reno, Cuba in the old days. Does loan sharking too. Successful, but I hear he’s a little crazy, things don’t go right, he gets bananas and starts shooting everybody. And he’s too greedy. He’s going to bite off too big a piece of somebody else’s pie and the company will have him dusted. He’s looking flashy now, but he’s not going to last.”

  “Where do I find him?”

  “If you’re screwing around in this operation, he’ll find you.”

  “But say I want to find him before he does, where?”

  “I don’t know, exactly. Runs a funeral parlor, somewhere in Charlestown. I get back to the station I’ll check for you.”

  “Has he got a handle I can shake him with?”

  “You? Scare him off? You try scaring Doerr and they’ll be tying a tag on your big toe down at Boston City.”

  “Well, what’s he like best? Women? Booze? Performing seals? There must be a way to him.”

  “Money,” Quirk said. “He likes money. Far as I know he doesn’t like anything else.”

  “How do you know he doesn’t like me?” I said.

  “I surmise it,” Quirk said. “You met him?”

  “Once.”