Perish Twice

by Robert B. Parker

  Actually I would feel quite good about Elizabeth in jail.

  “Where is here?”

  “The Coach House in Sudbury.”

  “On the Post Road?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay. It’ll take me about forty-five minutes.”

  “Just come as fast as you can.”

  “Sure,” I said.

  Driving out Route 20 I thought of that line from Robert Frost: Home is where when you have to go there, they have to take you in. It was as close as I could get to explaining why I didn’t say the hell with Elizabeth. I didn’t even like Elizabeth. And I was missing my night class on Low Country Realism.

  I found myself stuck behind someone who was going just faster than a dead stop and I didn’t get there until nearly 8:30. The Coach House is one of those suburban restaurants that pretends to offer an authentic eighteenth-century dining experience. It was sided in dark-stained board and batten. It had a wood shingle roof, or, at least, a roof shingled in something that looked like wood. It had a porte cochere out front, and leaded windows. The menu featured stuff like pot roast and shepherd’s pie, and beer served in pewter tankards. The waitresses wore long dresses and aprons.

  The dining room had a bar near the door, and oak tables around the room. At about half of them people were dining. At one of them Hal Reagan was sitting grimly with Nancy Simpson. Both had their coats on. Neither was saying anything to the other. At the end of the bar nearest the door was Elizabeth wearing a long black coat with a fur collar over pink sweats and white running shoes. Her purse sat on the bar beside her. As soon as I came in, I could tell that she was drunk. Her eyes had that soft look around them that they always developed. On the bar in front of her was a low ball glass of something clear with ice in it. I went straight to the bar and picked up her purse and took her car keys out and pocketed them.

  “Sunny? What the hell…?”

  I put her purse on the bar.

  “I’m going to give them a ride home, then I’ll come back and get you,” I said.

  “Tha’ bastard called you,” she said.

  “Yep. It was me or the cops.”

  “Let him walk, the son’va bitch. Let his whore walk.”

  “Hal,” I said. “Come on. I’ll drive you home.”

  “What about my car?”

  “Police will find it someplace. Let’s go.”

  “How am I going to get to work in the morning?”

  Hal said.

  He was on his feet now, standing behind me, so that I was a buffer between him and Elizabeth.

  “Borrow hers,” I said and nodded at Nancy, who stood behind him double-buffered.

  “And how is she supposed to get around?”

  “Hal. Life’s imperfect. Sometimes stopgap measures are all there are.”

  “So she gets away with this.”

  “Goddamn it, Hal. You called me. I didn’t call you. Either do what I say or I’ll go home, and you can work this out among the three of you.”

  “No. You can drive us home.”

  “Thank you. Elizabeth, stay here. I’ll be back for you.

  “She’s drunk,” I said to the bartender. “Don’t give her another drink.” He shrugged.

  “You can’t drive them,” Elizabeth said.

  “Sit still,” I said.

  Elizabeth slid off the stool and stood in the doorway.

  “You’re not goin’ anywhere,” she said.

  As soon as she got off her stool, the bartender quietly picked up her drink and threw it away. I stepped close to my sister and wrapped my arms around her and pinned her arms to her sides. Then I pushed her against the doorjamb.

  “Green Subaru wagon,” I said. “Parked in the no-parking zone right out front. It’s not locked. I’ll be there in a second.”

  Elizabeth said, “Le’ go of me, you bitch.”

  I held her against the doorjamb as Hal and Nancy scooted past us. Elizabeth kicked me in the ankle, but since she was wearing sneakers it didn’t hurt as much as it might have.

  “Whore,” Elizabeth shouted.

  “Listen,” I said.

  “Fucking whore!”

  I banged her against the doorjamb.

  “Listen to me, or I’ll hit you.”

  “Hit me?”

  “You are making a perfect asshole of yourself,” I said. “You’re too drunk to drive yourself home. Shut up and sit here and wait for me to come get you.”

  “I don’t care,” she said. “I don’t care about anything.”

  She looked out the doorway where Hal and Nancy had gone. She said “whoremonger” loudly.

  I pulled out all the stops.

  “You do what I say or I’ll call Daddy.”

  Her head snapped around.

  “You’re not going to tell on me?”

  Bingo!

  “Not if you do what I say.”

  “I don’t want Daddy to know.”

  “Sit there,” I said and turned her toward the bar stool and let her go. It took her two tries to get her butt back up on the stool. The bartender promptly put her bill on the bar before her. I turned and headed for my car.

  The ride to Weston was Gothic.

  “Go to Nancy’s place,” Hal said when I got in the car.

  “Okay,” I said. “You notify the local police that your car is stolen. It’ll turn up someplace and they’ll call you. I assume you have spare keys.”

  “Yes.”

  No other words were spoken until I let them out in Weston.

  Hal said, “Thank you.”

  I said, “Sure,” and headed back to Sudbury.

  When I walked back into the Coach House, there was no sign of Elizabeth.

  “She walked out,” the bartender said. “Left a thirty-two-dollar bar tab.”

  I gave him a credit card. He imprinted it and gave me the charge slip. I overtipped him, and signed it.

  “Sorry for the trouble,” I said.

  “No problem,” he said.

  I found Elizabeth walking along the Post Road about twenty minutes later. I pulled up beside her and opened the window on her side and said, “Get in.” She shook her head.

  I said, “Elizabeth, get in the goddamned car or I will get out and throw you in.”

  She walked maybe two more steps. I eased the car alongside her again.

  “In,” I said.

  She opened the passenger door and got in. She was crying.

  “I’m cold,” she said.

  I rolled up the window on the passenger side.

  “Heat,” she said, “I need heat.”

  “Heater’s on,” I said. “You’ll be warm in a minute.”

  We rode in silence, Elizabeth staring straight ahead at the center stripe unspooling in the headlights. Finally I spoke.

  “If you were cold, why didn’t you button up your coat?” I said.

  She kept staring at the road.

  “What’s the difference,” she said.

  “Maybe you wanted to be cold.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “Maybe it was who you are at the moment—out in the cold.”

  “What?”

  One had to go slowly with Elizabeth.

  “The way people act is often, ah, symbolic of how they feel.”

  I knew symbolic was risky.

  “I feel just fine.”

  “No you don’t,” I said. “You feel rejected and embarrassed and humiliated and unloved and unlovely and frightened and alone and God knows what else, just as I would in your position.”

  “As soon as he saw me come in, the bastard, he got right up and left. You should have seen his face when he came back in because h
is car was missing.”

  A car came up on us from the opposite direction. Its headlights illuminated us for a moment and then it passed and we were in the dark again following the narrow channel of my headlights.

  “And what did you get out of all that?” I said.

  “I showed the sonofabitch.”

  “What did you show him?”

  “I showed him he can’t cheat on me and get away with it.”

  “Elizabeth. He does cheat on you. In your definition he is cheating on you as we speak. He’s home in bed with another woman. You’re walking along the highway in the cold half gassed and freezing your ass.”

  She began to cry.

  “And crying,” I said.

  “What do you want me to do?” she said between sobs. “Just let him walk over me?”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t be thinking of it in terms of who walks over who,” I said. “Maybe you shouldn’t be deciding things in terms of its impact on him.”

  “What?”

  “Maybe you should be thinking about your best interest,” I said.

  “Sure. And my best interest is to be alone and nearly forty with no money and no job and no skills and no husband.”

  “Have you been enjoying life lately?” I said.

  “You know it’s been hell for me.”

  “So if being married and having your husband support you is hell, what have you got to lose by trying another approach?”

  She cried for a little while without speaking, but finally she said, “I can’t. I don’t know how.”

  “I can put you in touch with people who will help you.”

  “You mean a shrink.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m not having some crazy Jew poking into my private life.”

  I breathed for a while. Elizabeth cried.

  “I know these are hard times. Everybody’s pretty nutty when the relationship goes south. But when the nuttiness subsides, you will have to grow up and begin to think about things the way grown-ups do. I can’t force you to look out for yourself. And I can’t look out for you. All I’m asking now is that you try not to make any significant decisions while you’re crazy. Just try to hold on to yourself. We’re not so close. But you’re my sister. I’ll help you any way I can.”

  We turned onto Elizabeth’s street in silence. I parked in front of her house.

  “You want me to come in?” I said.

  She shook her head.

  “You won’t tell Daddy,” she said.

  I sighed.

  “No,” I said. “I won’t tell Daddy.”

  She nodded and got out and walked to her house and went in.

  CHAPTER

  34

  THE DAY STARTED out with a dark threat of rain. I wore my efficient-looking silver trench coat. Before I left, I got two one-hundred-dollar bills from my bank. Hundreds are very effective for bribing people. I found Jermaine Lister on Columbus Ave, near the corner of Mass Ave, leaning on the right front fender of the biggest Mercedes made. The car was silver-colored and had tinted windows. Jermaine was wearing a belted Harris tweed overcoat and a dark brown scally cap. There were several whores in a group talking with him when I showed up, rounding the corner from Mass Avenue where I’d parked my Subaru. The whores looked at me balefully.

  “Jermaine Lister?” I said.

  He nodded once.

  “Sunny Randall.”

  He nodded again.

  “Tony Marcus sent me to see you.”

  Nod.

  “Did you know a woman named Gretchen Crane?”

  “White broad?”

  “Yes.”

  “Sure. Tony sent her along to me just like he did you.”

  “What was her interest?”

  “She wanted to find out all about pros-ti-tu-tion,”

  Jermaine said.

  “Why?”

  “Maybe thinking about a career,” Jermaine said and winked at the whores. They giggled. “You want to find out ’bout it? You’d make a lot more money than Gretchen.”

  “Oh golly,” I said. “What kinds of questions did she ask?”

  “Don’t know. I turned her over to my, ah, staff.”

  Jermaine winked at the whores again. They giggled again.

  “Any of your staff here?” I said.

  The tallest of the girls looked at Jermaine.

  “Nope,” Jermaine said.

  “Where can I find someone who talked with Gretchen?”

  “Don’t really know,” Jermaine said. “You ladies of the evening know?”

  They giggled again. No one admitted knowing. Jermaine’s beeper went off. He checked it.

  “’Scuse me,” he said and took out a cell phone and dialed. He listened, then he said, “This is J,” and listened again. He looked at me while he listened, then moved away so I couldn’t hear him and said a couple of words and clicked off the cell phone.

  “Can’t never get away from business,” he said. “Where were we?”

  “You were telling me how you sent Gretchen to talk with some hookers but you don’t know which ones?”

  “This here is a fluid business,” Jermaine said. “Ladies come. They go. These ladies went. Can’t help you.”

  “Gee, Tony said you might.”

  “I’m trying,” Jermaine said. “But I don’t know nothing.”

  “Well thanks for trying,” I said.

  “Sho’ nuff,” Jermaine said.

  The whores giggled. I went back up Mass Ave.

  I was parked far enough up Mass Ave toward Huntington that I was out of their sight when I got in the car. I pulled away from the curb and went down Huntington to Copley Place, turned right onto Dartmouth and right again on Columbus and parked at a hydrant with a view of the Mass Ave corner. Jermaine’s car was there for maybe an hour before it pulled away and cruised on down Columbus to visit some of his other retail sites. I took my hundred-dollar bill from my purse, and folded it long so you could see the denomination. Then I got out and walked up to the same corner I’d been on, where the same whores were still clustered.

  I had my folded hundred in my hand. A small part of my brain was wondering why everyone, me included, folded a bill before duking somebody.

  “Could I buy a few minutes of your time?” I said to the tall whore who’d exchanged a glance with Jermaine.

  “I don’t do women,” she said.

  “Me either,” I said. “Just a cup of coffee and a little chitchat.”

  The tall whore looked at the $100.

  “Sure,” she said. “Got to stay ’round here though. I’m waiting for somebody.”

  “Okay.” I leaned on the wall beside her, tapping the folded bill on my thigh.

  “Shoo,” the tall whore said to the aimless little gathering of other whores. “I got to talk with this lady.”

  They moved away. They seemed restless, and a little tense, as if there were something to come.

  “My name is Sunny,” I said.

  “Jewell,” the tall whore said.

  She wasn’t looking at me. She was restless, looking at the street. She seemed edgy. Was she worried about Jermaine? If so, why wouldn’t she get off the street out of sight? She swallowed nervously, and it hit me.

  “Are you waiting for dope?” I said.

  “You ain’t no cop, are you?”

  “No.”

  “Man’s supposed to be here with some by now.”

  “How often do you need it?”

  “Two, three times a day.”

  “Get high?”

  “Hell no. Just need it to feel okay, you know, so’s not to feel like shit. He tole me he be here by now.”

  “He’ll probably come soon
. The white woman I was asking about. You talked to her, didn’t you?”

  “Why you think that?”

  “Woman’s intuition,” I said.

  The rain had begun. We moved as tight as we could against the wall. I smiled winsomely and held up the hundred. She took it and put it away, her eyes scanning the street as she did. On the corner a few yards away one of the other whores produced a big golf umbrella, which she must have stashed somewhere, and she and two other girls clustered under it. The umbrella was brightly striped in reds and yellows and greens. Like an odd flower in the gloom.

  “She tell me she doing research,” Jewell said. “She want to see what it was like on the street.”

  “Why did Jermaine let her talk with you?”

  “Same reason he don’t chase you off,” Jewell said.

  “Tony Marcus?”

  “Un huh.”

  “She say why she’s doing research?” I said.

  “Say she work for some woman’s company. Say they trying to find out about consent.”

  “Consent,” I said.

  “Un huh.”

  Jewell looked carefully at every man who passed on either side of the street. The other whores did likewise. They weren’t looking for customers. They were waiting for Godot. The rain was steady. It was warm for the season, but cold for standing around in the rain. The building wasn’t doing much of a job of protecting.

  “Let’s sit in my car,” I said. “You can still see.”

  “Where’s your car?”

  “There, at the hydrant.”

  “Okay,” she said. “You can get us some coffee in the drugstore first. Double cream, lotta sugar.”

  I said okay and went in and got us two large regular coffees. One with extra cream and four sugars. I came out and gave one to Jewell.

  “Orlean,” she shouted at the group of women under the umbrella. “I be sitting in her car, right there. He come, you holler for me.”

  Orlean said, “I will.”

  “You be sure you do, girl.”

  “I be sure.”

  We got in my car. I started it up, put the heater on low, turned the wipers on so Jewell would have a clear view of the corner.

  “What kinda car is this?” Jewell said.

  “Subaru.”

  “I ever get a car gonna be a convertible.”

  “I had one once,” I said. “But your hair blows badly, and I have a dog, and I have to worry about her jumping out.”