Spare Change

by Robert B. Parker

  “Is that a purebred?” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “What is she?” he said.

  “A miniature English bull terrier.”

  “Wow,” he said. “Are they supposed to have no forehead like that?”

  My tone was as icy as I could make it.

  “She’s an outstanding representative of the breed,” I said.

  “I’m sure,” the man said, and walked on, dialing his cell phone.

  “Dolt,” I said.

  My father seemed amused. Past the Design Center, we turned and started back toward my loft.

  “What do you think of the man Elizabeth is going to marry?” I said. “I haven’t met him.”

  “She loves him, I love him,” my father said.

  “Yeah, yeah,” I said. “But if you knew him without any involvement of Elizabeth, what would you think?”

  “I’d think he was a self-absorbed Brattle Street jerkoff,” my father said.

  I smiled.

  “Come on, Daddy, tell me what you really think.”

  “Too much education,” my father said, “too little experience. Knows everything about nothing.”

  “Elizabeth has not always loved either wisely or well,” I said.

  “She thinks she needs a man to be whole,” my father said.

  I stared at him.

  “She does,” I said. “You think about stuff like that?”

  My father smiled at me.

  “Only when I’m with you,” he said.

  27

  It was a woman again. Near Jamaica Pond. The cops did their dragnet as quickly as they could, but the Jamaica way is much more uncontained than the Public Garden, and they dragnetted substantially fewer people. Bob Johnson wasn’t one of them.

  “Two women in a row,” I said. “Does that mean anything to any of us?”

  “He’s done that before,” Quirk said. “He’s done three men in a row. I wouldn’t put too much weight on it.”

  “Coins?” I said.

  “The usual,” Quirk said. “Three, on the grass beside her head.”

  We were in his office with my father and Frank Belson.

  “What kind of weapon?” my father said.

  “Thirty-eight,” Quirk said. “No cartridge casings at the scene.”

  “Do you know where Bob Johnson was during the time of the shooting,” I said.

  “No,” Quirk said.

  “Don’t you have a tail on him?” I said.

  “He shakes it whenever he feels like it,” Quirk said. “Which is often. He shook it the night of this murder.”

  “How many men?” my father said.

  “One.”

  “No wonder,” my father said.

  Quirk nodded.

  “I know as well as you do that it takes at least four to do a decent surveillance,” he said. “Four men times three shifts is twelve men. I don’t have twelve men.”

  “Even for this case?” I said.

  Quirk shook his head again.

  “Not for a guy against whom we do not have a single scrap of evidence,” Quirk said.

  “He’s the one,” I said.

  “You know that,” Quirk said. “But nobody else knows it. There’s other police work being done in the city. The best I can do is one man per shift. I’m lucky to get that. It’s a testimony to my respect for you, Sunny.”

  “And he knows he’s being tailed,” my father said.

  “Sure,” Quirk said. “He likes it. It’s fun for him. Hide-and-seek.”

  “And you lose contact with him regularly?” I said.

  “Most days.”

  “Smart,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Quirk said. “We were out of contact during the time of this murder, but we were out of contact twenty other times, when there was no murder.”

  “If it’s him,” Belson said.

  “And you can’t requisition more surveillance,” my father said.

  Quirk shook his head and continued to shake it as he spoke.

  He said, “You haven’t been retired that long, Phil.”

  My father nodded.

  “Yeah,” he said. He mimicked an official voice. “‘Excuse me, Commissioner, but one of the women working on the case has an intuition that it’s Johnson.’”

  “And maybe, a little bit, yours and mine,” Quirk said.

  “Mine too,” Belson said. “But we may be wrong.”

  “So why does he keep shaking the tail?” I said.

  “Fun,” Belson said. “Same reason he was so lively when we brought him in to interview. He may be a freak. He may be getting his rocks off being suspected of a crime. He may be excited playing cops and robbers. Doesn’t mean he did it.”

  “Case like this brings out a lot of whack jobs,” my father said.

  “He’s the one,” I said.

  “We don’t have one other goddamned thing on him, Sunny,” Quirk said. “So even if I think you’re right, there’s nothing I can do about it.”

  “There may even be a copycat at work,” Belson said. “For all we know, more than one.”

  We were quiet. “Maybe I should talk to him,” I said.

  “No,” my father said.

  “Daddy, we’ve already had this argument and I won it,” I said. “He’s no more dangerous to me than he would be to any of you.”

  “I want to be there,” my father said.

  “No,” I said. “I’m what winds his watch. You being there would be counterproductive. Any of you.”

  “If she’s right and he’s the one,” Quirk said, “she’s also right about this. She needs to see him alone.”

  “In a public place,” my father said.

  “I don’t want him to kill me, Daddy. I’ll meet him at Spike’s.”

  “Spike?” Quirk said.

  “Sunny’s pal. Runs a restaurant. Claims he’s the world’s toughest queer.”

  “Is he right?” Quirk said.

  “I think so,” my father said.

  “Good choice,” Quirk said. “We could wire you.”

  “No,” I said. “He’ll expect that.”

  “You’re pretty sure about this guy,” Belson said.

  “I am,” I said.

  “You’re sure he’ll meet you?” Belson said.

  “Absolutely,” I said.

  “Do not,” my father said slowly, “be alone with him.”

  “I won’t,” I said.

  “And make sure Spike is in the room when you sit with this guy.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  “I know how you are,” my father said. “I shouldn’t have brought you in on this.”

  I smiled at him, sitting beside me, and patted his forearm.

  “Too late,” I said.

  28

  I met Julie at workday’s end, for a drink at Noir in the Charles Hotel, which was only a couple of blocks from the little office where she did counseling. Julie had a glass of chardonnay. I had a sauvignon blanc.

  “Originally I sort of knew him because I had his wife in therapy,” Julie said. “Then I met them one day, in the Chestnut Hill Mall, outside Bloomie’s, and she introduced me to him, and there it was, you know, ‘the heavenly jingle when two tingles intermingle’?”

  “Your patient’s husband?” I said.

  “You play it as it lays,” Julie said. “He called me a couple of days later and invited me to lunch.”

  “And you went.”

  “Sure. You feel that buzz, you don’t let it pass. Besides, knowing him, I might be able to help her.”

  “By fucking her husband?” I said.

  Julie laughed.

 
“Don’t be coarse,” Julie said.

  “I’m not the one being coarse,” I said.

  “And why are you so sure we’re having sex?”

  “Crazy guess,” I said.

  Julie laughed.

  “You know me so well,” she said.

  “I do,” I said. “But poaching a patient’s husband may be a new low.”

  “It may really be good for our therapy,” Julie said. “And she’ll never know.”

  I nodded and didn’t say anything. I was pretty sure Dr. Silverman would question Julie’s therapeutic analysis. I was also pretty sure that Julie wasn’t motivated by the therapeutic considerations.

  “And…” Julie paused and drank some wine. “He might be the one.”

  “The one?”

  “The one,” she said. “I mean, when we’re together…it’s electric. When we make love…I think sometimes I’m going to faint…honest to God. My head swims.”

  “So you don’t think love is an amalgam of pathology, rationalization, and fantasy?” I said.

  “A rose by any other name,” Julie said.

  “Really?” I said.

  “This might be the real thing,” she said.

  I thought that she’d probably had the real thing with Michael, but was nowhere near ready for it. She hadn’t become more ready since their divorce.

  “What does he say about his wife?” I asked.

  “She’s a decent woman, he says. Okay mother. But she’s inhibited, and he finds her kind of boring.”

  “Sexually inhibited,” I said.

  “Yes,” Julie said.

  She sounded startled by my question, as if there were no other kind of inhibition.

  “And you’re not,” I said.

  Julie laughed and drank some wine.

  “You want details?” she said.

  “No.”

  29

  When Spike still thought he might have a career in show business, and had two suits for partners at his restaurant, they called the place something cute that I can’t even remember now. When Spike retired from show business (or vice versa), he bought out the two partners, and the place was now named Spike’s. It was probably a bar that served food more than a restaurant, but Spike always called it a restaurant.

  By design Spike was behind the bar when I met Bob Johnson there. I was in a flossy version of my basic outfit: designer jeans, a white T-shirt, a dark jacket, and a matching shoulder bag with a gun in it. Bob came in, wearing a blue-flowered sport shirt and a Panama planter’s hat.

  “Sunny Randall,” Bob said. “This is a treat.”

  “Thanks for coming,” I said.

  “Oh, no,” he said, “my pleasure.”

  “Will you have a drink?”

  “Splendid idea,” he said.

  Spike came around the bar and walked to the table. He weighed maybe 265, and there was very little shape to it, and not much definition. That was illusory. I had seen him in action. He was as strong as a grizzly bear, with the same quickness and ferocity.

  “My waitstaff is a little busy,” he said. “May I get you folks something?”

  The waitstaff had been warned not to recognize me, but I knew that Spike wanted a closeup of Bob. Bob ordered a Tanqueray and tonic. I had a glass of sauvignon blanc.

  “So is it this case you’re working on?” Bob said after Spike went to get the drinks. “Or is it my irresistible self?”

  “Hard to say,” I answered. “Some of both, I suppose. It just felt, when we talked at the police station, that there was a connection.”

  “My God,” he said. “I felt that, too.”

  Spike came back with the drinks.

  “Enjoy,” he said.

  He went back behind the bar and appeared to pay us no further heed.

  “Huge man,” Bob said.

  I nodded.

  “I wonder if it’s fat or muscle,” he said.

  I shrugged.

  “He the regular bartender?” Bob said.

  “I think he’s the owner,” I said.

  Bob nodded.

  “Filling in,” Bob said.

  He sipped his drink.

  “Good stuff,” he said. “You come in here much?”

  “Now and then,” I said. “It’s kind of convenient to where I live.”

  He nodded and looked around the room. There was a bowl of peanuts on the table, and he took a small handful and popped one peanut into his mouth.

  “Doing a nice business,” he said.

  I was determined to let him lead the conversation, and I was prepared to make small talk with him until he did.

  “Yes,” I said. “It’s nearly always busy when I’m here.”

  “Do you know the owner?” he said.

  “Not really,” I said. “I’ve seen him in here. But I don’t know him in any meaningful sense.”

  Bob looked at Spike for a while. Spike bothered him. He had very good instincts. He was like a dog sniffing around a new place. He ate a few peanuts. After a while he shifted his look to me.

  “So,” he said, “Sunny, you want to talk with me about the case?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “Well,” he said. “I think first you have to accept the fact that this guy is no ordinary criminal.”

  “I know,” I said. “I know.”

  He smiled.

  “Got you buffaloed, hasn’t it,” he said.

  I nodded.

  He leaned back a little and stretched his legs out to the side. He was wearing white slacks and a pair of sandals. He’d obviously had a pedicure. He turned his glass for a moment on the tabletop, then picked it up and finished the drink. When he put the glass down, Spike, also by prearrangement, walked from the bar.

  “May I get you another?” Spike said.

  “Be a fool to say no,” Bob answered.

  Spike went back to the bar and started on Bob’s second drink. If Bob got a little drunk, it couldn’t hurt.

  “Got everybody buffaloed, hasn’t he,” Bob said. “Your father, everybody.”

  “He certainly has,” I said.

  Spike came back with Bob’s drink, set it down in front of Bob, and went back to the bar.

  “Our problem,” I said, “among many, is that we can’t figure out a motive or even a pattern.”

  “Doesn’t mean there isn’t one,” Bob said.

  “A motive, or a pattern?” I said.

  “Both,” Bob said. “Nothing sane happens without motive or pattern.”

  “And you think this guy is sane?” I said.

  “Of course,” he said.

  “How could somebody like the Spare Change Killer be sane?”

  Bob smiled.

  “Because you don’t understand the crimes, you decide they are insane,” Bob said. “Was Bundy insane? Or Richard Speck? If they were, how could they be guilty?”

  “But why would somebody want to go kill a bunch of people he doesn’t even know?”

  “Why indeed?” Bob said. “That would be the question, wouldn’t it.”

  The space between us was thick with sexual tension. There was something voyeuristic going on, as if we were talking in a sexual code that I couldn’t translate.

  “You have any theories?” I said.

  “Hell, Sunny,” Bob said. “I’m full of theories. How ’bout you? You’re the detective.”

  “I’m interested in yours,” I said. “You seem such a perceptive man.”

  His sexual excitement hadn’t waned. It hovered like incense between us. He smiled modestly.

  “Well, this true-crime stuff fascinates me,” he said. “I suppose if I weren’t so nosy, I wouldn’t have gotten rounded up in the P
ublic Garden that day.”

  “Curiosity is natural,” I said.

  “That’s right,” he said. “And if I hadn’t been nosy, we wouldn’t be sitting here now.”

  He picked up another small handful of peanuts and shook them loosely in his hand, the way you might shake dice, before he ate one. He drank some of his gin and tonic.

  “So,” he said. “Theories.”

  “Theories,” I said.

  “Maybe he does it because he likes it.”

  “Killing strangers?”

  “Maybe it makes him feel good,” Bob said.

  “Exercising that kind of power?” I said.

  “Could be,” Bob said.

  He was much less relaxed now. His posture was unchanged, but there was a rigidity to it that was not comfortable.

  “Hey, Sunny,” he said. “Let’s you and me blow this place, go to my place maybe, or yours. Get a little relaxed.”

  He smiled. It was a charming smile, but there was a tightness to it that I had not seen before.

  “Not tonight, Bob,” I said. “I’ve got an early day tomorrow.”

  “Too bad,” Bob said.

  “There’ll be other times,” I said. “You’re quite fascinating…as you well know.”

  He grinned. The tightness had lessened. He took his wallet out.

  “No,” I said. “I invited you, remember?”

  He paid no attention. He took a twenty from his wallet and dropped it on the table.

  “You get the next one,” he said.

  “Okay,” I said. “I had a very nice time, Bob.”

  Bob gave me a little thumbs-up gesture and left the restaurant. I sat still and looked into my nearly empty wineglass. Spike came to the table.

  Without looking up, I said, “Keep playing the game.”

  Spike took the empty glass and the twenty, and walked back behind the bar. He poured me a second glass of wine and brought it back to me, and walked away. I sipped my wine and waited. Bob came back into the restaurant and walked to the table.

  “Still here,” he said.

  “Still,” I said.

  “I seem to have misplaced my cell phone,” he said. “Did I leave it here by any chance?”

  “I haven’t seen it,” I said, and made a show of looking around and under the table.