Perish Twice

by Robert B. Parker

  “Do you think Lawrence hired someone to kill you?” I said.

  “He was capable of anything.”

  “In his rage,” I said, “and apparently the owner of a loaded handgun, wouldn’t he have been more likely to do it himself?”

  “I don’t know. I know he was not normal.”

  “Do you think, having hired a killer, and having the killer get the wrong woman, Lawrence would have put a gun in his mouth and blown the top of his head off?”

  She shivered, her hands still tented in front of her.

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  She dropped her head and pressed her tented hands against her forehead. The movement looked a little rehearsed to me.

  “God, if only I hadn’t. I’m so ashamed. I hate that part of me. It’s like an itch that has to be scratched.”

  She raised her head and looked at me. That movement, too, looked practiced.

  “What must you think of me?” she said.

  “What if Lawrence didn’t hire somebody to kill you,” I said.

  “He confessed to doing that,” she said.

  “Just for a fresh perspective. What if somebody wanted to kill Gretchen. Who might that be?”

  “That’s absurd. No one would want to kill Gretchen. It was obviously somebody wanting to kill me.”

  “Would you mind if I browsed through her files, see what she was doing professionally?”

  “Can we keep my relationship to Lawrence between us?”

  Give something. Get something.

  “I have no current need to share it with anyone,” I said.

  “I think you are wasting your time, but you are free to investigate Gretchen to your heart’s content,” Mary Lou said.

  CHAPTER

  26

  I SAT IN Gretchen Crane’s cubicle for most of the day. Somehow the absence of human occupancy made even so sterile an environment as this tiny office seem emptier than was reasonable. Stillness seemed to have permeated it. I went systematically through her file cabinet. I nosed about in her computer. There were lists of names of women who’d been ill treated in one way or another, cataloged by the nature of the mistreatment: Domestic Abuse. Workplace Harassment. Folders like that. There were lists of laws, cataloged by state, that seemed in one way or another repressive to women. There were the names of public figures, noting their position on various women’s issues, and lists of legislators and their voting record on legislation relating to women. There was a collection of sexist jokes. There was a large folder of stuff on prostitution as the embodiment of sexism, where the whores were little more than chattel. There was a plan for a prostitutes’ union, with a note: See Home File. There were clippings of newspaper and magazine pieces, apparently sexist in content.

  The massive collection of stuff was beginning, by late afternoon, to make me paranoid. I knew sexism existed, and I knew, since she was the company researcher, that it was one of Gretchen Crane’s jobs to collect evidence of it. But if I felt paranoid after an afternoon of reading, how must she have felt? How must Mary Lou feel, when she wasn’t scratching her itch? I knew a lot of sexists, which often played to my advantage because men would underestimate me. I also knew a lot of men who were not sexist. I knew several men for whom a woman was, and had been most of their life, their best friend, their partner, their counselor, and the center of their existence. Richie was like that in many ways. Too much so, maybe. Maybe he and I could have used a little sexism. And I remembered Mary Lou’s reaction to my Rosie when she’d first met her. Blatant dogism.

  There was another thing. I had found a host of stuff about sexism. I had found absolutely nothing about Gretchen. There was nothing personal in her files. There were no pictures on her desk. No indication that she had any life beyond the encapsulated life she lived in this cubicle, where she researched the bad things that happened to women. Was her life in fact so barren, or was she just one who compartmentalized?

  I went into Mary Lou’s office and asked her.

  “Other than in the workplace,” Mary Lou said, “I know nothing about Gretchen. She was, I believe, married once, but that ended before she began work here.”

  “Home address?”

  She gave it to me.

  “How about the ex-husband? Know his name?”

  “No.”

  “Could it be Crane?”

  “I doubt that someone as enlightened as Gretchen would keep her ex-husband’s name.”

  “Probably not. You wouldn’t know where he lives, would you?”

  “No. And I still can’t understand why you are interested.”

  “I don’t think Lawrence Reeves killed himself,” I said. “That thought calls all in doubt.”

  “And why do you have this peculiar skepticism, again?”

  “He didn’t have ammunition for the gun that killed him. I’ve never heard of anyone buying a gun without buying a box of ammunition. But say he did, the gun was loaded, would he have run out and bought six bullets? There’s no record of a gun permit, which would be necessary to buy a gun, or ammunition, in this state. He wasn’t the kind of man who’d own a gun. He wasn’t the kind of man who would know how to hire a hit man, and, I’m sorry, I don’t think he was the kind of man to kill himself.”

  “You don’t know him well enough to make these judgments,” Mary Lou said.

  “Absolutely,” I said. “Nor do I know him well enough to decide that he would own a gun and know a hit man and kill himself. But they are judgments that have to be made; either he did it, or he didn’t, and there’s enough that’s bothersome about the hypothesis that he did, to make me at least consider that he didn’t.”

  “Well, I won’t begrudge you your logic.”

  “Thanks. And if that holds, it follows that maybe somebody else killed Gretchen, and maybe intended to. In which case perhaps the answer lies in her life, not yours.”

  “And why aren’t the police thinking this way?”

  “Because they have approximately skady-eight other cases to think about, and if one closes itself neatly, they don’t have time to bother it.”

  “But you do.”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I think you are entirely wrong,” Mary Lou said. “But I admire your thirst for justice.”

  “Or whatever,” I said.

  “Or whatever.”

  CHAPTER

  27

  GRETCHEN LIVED IN an apartment complex off of Route 28 in Stoneham. I told the super that I was from Gretchen’s office and needed to see if there was any work of hers that she had taken home and that needed to be returned. He nodded sympathetically and let me into Gretchen’s apartment.

  “This will take a while,” I said.

  “Sure,” he said. “Just pull the door shut when you leave. It locks automatically.”

  “I will.”

  I looked around. More than in her office, the silence of her apartment was heavy. It was as if it were pressing in on me. The walls of the three-room apartment were painted white. Nothing hung on them: no paintings, no imported tapestries, no movie posters, no photographs of anyone, no mirrors, except for the one on the medicine cabinet door in the bathroom.

  The place was furnished in early monastic. The living room had a beige-colored couch with maple arms, a square table painted white with four white straight chairs set around it, and a personal computer on the table in front of one of the chairs, with a printer underneath the table. The bedroom contained a single bed, made up with white linens and an army blanket, and on the wall opposite, a cheap pine bureau painted white.

  The bathroom was white tile, a white toilet, a white stand-alone sink, a white tub with a white shower curtain, and a white medicine cabinet with the mirrored door. Gretchen had not been a flamboyant girl. In the medicine cabinet she kept a toothb
rush and a tube of toothpaste, rolled up carefully from the bottom. There was a bottle of rubbing alcohol in there as well, and a package of gum stimulators. Her closet had three of what my grandmother had called housedresses, and there was a shoe rack on the floor with one pair of thick-soled walking shoes on it. Her bureau had some Tampax, five white tee shirts, several pairs of thin white socks, two pairs of jeans, and some functional underwear. There was far too much room for more in both her closet and her bureau. Between us Gretchen and I probably averaged out about right.

  Her refrigerator had a half a loaf of seven-grain bread, and a quart of milk that had turned sour. In the freezer were several frozen vegetarian dinners, and a package of frozen soy-based imitation hamburgers. There was no booze in the house. There was in fact nothing in the house that suggested a life lived with exhilaration.

  I went back into the living room and sat at her table and turned on her computer. I was not the queen of cyberspace, but I had the same kind of computer she did and I had mastered rudiments like turning it on. I looked around in her hard drive for a while and found very little. A shopping list, a bank-by-mail setup that required a password, an AOL connection, password again, a folder marked Addresses, Contacts, etc., and a folder marked Mail. I opened the mail folder and read copies of letters she had sent. They told me nothing, except that Gretchen had a sister living in Toronto. I tried Addresses, Contacts, etc. This seemed a catchall. Mary Lou Goddard’s address and phone were in there, work and office; and a number of other people who I assumed were colleagues. Many of them had the same office address as Mary Lou. There was nothing special about any of the addresses except one name and number that I knew: Sgt. Robert Franco, who was a vice detective. The number was Boston Police Headquarters. The name went with the rest of her addresses like schmaltz herring on a cupcake. I sat for a while looking at the name. Was I confronted with a clue? I reached under the table and switched on Gretchen’s printer and ran off her one-page list of addresses. Then I shut everything off, put the list in my purse, and left. The door shut behind me and locked automatically.

  CHAPTER

  28

  I MET BOBBY Franco for coffee in a diner on Mass Avenue near the corner of Magazine Street in Roxbury. He was a little round guy, not much taller than I am, kind of cute, with a bald head and a thin moustache and a nice smile. When I came in he stood up from where he was sitting at the counter.

  “Sunny Randall,” he said.

  He was wearing small sunglasses, jeans, work boots, and a gray sweatshirt under a red VFW baseball jacket, the sweatshirt hood hanging out over the collar. Vice cops take pride in dressing down.

  I sat on a stool at the counter beside him and ordered tea.

  “Have some pie with that,” Bobby said.

  “Pie?” I said. “Are you out of your mind? If I sat here and ate pie with you, my jeans would be too tight when I stood up.”

  “I was hoping,” Bobby said.

  “Sure you were, you’re the most married guy I ever knew.”

  “Doesn’t mean I don’t notice,” Bobby said.

  My tea arrived and fresh coffee for Bobby.

  “The reason I called,” I said, “was that I have your name on a list of addresses I took from the apartment of Gretchen Crane, who was recently shot to death.”

  “Crane?”

  “Yes, Gretchen Crane. Worked for a company called Great Strides. She was shot to death a week or so ago. Homicide has concluded it was a case of mistaken identity.”

  “You don’t think so?”

  “I don’t know. The best part about their theory is that it clears a couple of cases at once.”

  “Command staff always admires that,” Bobby said.

  “I don’t care about command staff anymore,” I said.

  “That’s nice. How is it out there in private practice?”

  “No command staff,” I said.

  “Not much of a pension either.”

  “Nothing’s perfect,” I said. “Do you know Gretchen Crane?”

  “Yeah. Odd woman.”

  “Probably,” I said. “Why does she have your name and number?”

  “I think she got it from some writer at the Globe,” Bobby said. “She called and made an appointment and came out to Roxbury to see me. You know her?”

  “The only time I ever saw her she was dead.”

  “Hard to really know someone you meet that way,” Bobby said.

  In front of us, the counterwoman put a slab of pie on a plate and carried it down to the other end of the diner and gave it to a thick black man.

  “Is that cherry pie?” Bobby said to the counterwoman.

  “Sure.”

  “I better have some,” Bobby said.

  “Sure.”

  She put the pie on a plate and put it in front of Bobby with a fork. He took a bite.

  “By God,” he said, “it is cherry.”

  “I’m happy for you,” I said. “Gretchen Crane.”

  “Very serious woman.” Bobby sipped a little coffee. “Wanted my views on prostitution.”

  “Why?”

  “Some kind of a research project.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I let her ride with me, couple days. Introduced her around. She wanted to know if there was any kind of, how did she say, vertical integration in prostitution.”

  “Vertical integration?”

  “Yeah. I thought it was a position, but she said no. She said she was interested in who ran prostitution. She’s talking chain of command.”

  “That assumes more organization than I ever knew about,” I said.

  “It does,” Bobby said. “She says she heard the top guy is Tony Marcus. And I say, far as I know.”

  “And?”

  “And she says she has an appointment with him. And I said he was no one for a woman like her to be chatting with. She said I was guilty of sexism, and wouldn’t have said that if she were a man.”

  “Which you would have.”

  “Yeah, of course. Tony Marcus is no one to be chatting with, male or female, unless you’re a cop.”

  “I agree.”

  “Do I seem sexist to you, Sweet Cakes?”

  “Deeply,” I said.

  “Anyway, I gave Tony a jingle, said she was coming by, just to make sure.”

  “Is he still in the same place?”

  “Yep, Buddy’s Fox, in the South End.”

  “I know where it is.”

  “You going to talk with him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Want me to come along?” Bobby said.

  “I appreciate the offer, you sexist bastard, but no thank you.”

  “You going to pay for the pie and coffee?” Bobby said.

  “That’s man’s work,” I said.

  CHAPTER

  29

  JULIE SAT AT my kitchen counter, in the late afternoon, her face pinched, her eyes puffy, and drank a bourbon and water.

  “I wish I smoked,” she said.

  “Trying for every vice?” I said.

  “What’s that mean?”

  “You’re drinking a lot.”

  “So what?”

  “Just a little light banter,” I said. “You look miserable.”

  “I am.”

  “What can I do?”

  “You can come with me while I get an abortion.”

  “You’re pregnant?”

  Julie drank some bourbon. Rosie raised her head from my bed where she was sleeping at the other end of the loft. She looked for signs of food associated with the clinking of ice in a glass, saw that there was none, and put her head back down.

  “That would probably be the basis for an abortion,” she said.

  “D
umb response,” I said. “Sorry.”

  “It’s okay. I don’t know what the smart response would have been.”

  “Maybe a quiet nod.”

  “Maybe.”

  We sat in silence.

  “Can I have another splash?” Julie said.

  I got up and got her more bourbon.

  “How about Michael?” I said.

  “He doesn’t know.”

  “Is it his?”

  Julie drank some more.

  “No.”

  “Do we know whose it is?”

  “Probably Robert.”

  “Does he know?”

  “No.”

  “Do you think he should?” I said.

  “There’s probably a time for us to talk about what I’m doing with my life,” Julie said. “But right now I don’t need you to be Jiminy Cricket, Sunny. I am going to get an abortion and I’m terrified to go alone.”

  “Of course,” I said. “I’ll go with you.”

  On my bed, Rosie made a couple of small dog sounds in her sleep. Julie looked into her glass for a moment before she drank.

  “I never thought I’d become this,” she said. “I always thought I’d marry a nice man and raise my children and work part-time helping people solve their problems, and sink into a happy routine with the man I loved. Maybe travel a little when the kids were grown.”

  “I never thought I’d be divorced,” I said.

  “Life does it to you, doesn’t it,” Julie said.

  “I’m not sure it’s life’s fault,” I said.

  “Oh for God’s sake, Sunny, have a drink, and wallow with me.”

  I got myself a glass of white wine, and sat back down beside Julie at the counter.

  “That’s better,” Julie said. “The thing is I like Michael. I probably love him a little.”

  “Probably?”

  “Probably.”

  “I think love is pretty certain.”