Spenser 11 - Valediction, page 11
They came on the railroad tracks. I saw the weed movement and then they were through the opening. First through was Shotgun, nearest me, and half a step behind Shotgun’s left was a guy wearing aviator glasses and carrying a long-barreled revolver. I swung the chain down on the wrist that held the shotgun. The fat guy made a gasp, the shotgun fired upward and to the left and fell from his hand. I was shielded from the guy with the glasses by the fat man, who dropped to his knees, pressing his right hand against his chest and groping for the shotgun with his left. As the fat man dropped I hit his buddy across the face with my chain flail. His glasses broke and some of the glass got in his eyes. Blood appeared and he dropped the handgun and put both hands to his face. I shook the chain in a short circle to keep it out and away from him and then drove it down against the back of the fat man’s neck. He had gotten the shotgun but was having trouble pumping a round up with his right hand numb and maybe broken. The second time the chain hit him he pitched forward and lay still on top of the gun, the barrel sticking out past his shoulder. His partner ran. With one hand still pressed against his right eye, he sprinted for the pedestrian walkway across the locks. I worried the shotgun out from under the fat man, pumped a round up. Shot the fat man as he lay, and went after his partner, working the pump lever as I ran. The partner was hurt and it slowed him. Pain will do that, even if it’s pain elsewhere. The iron walkway zigzags across the locks. Over each lock it is actually on the dam doors that open and shut to let boats through and a sign says that the locks are subject to opening without warning.
By the time we were across the first lock I had closed the gap between us. The walkway was wet with rain and he had on leather-soled shoes. Blood ran down his face, he was running with one eye closed and his hand pressed against the eye. I was five feet behind him when we reached the second lock.
“Freeze,” I said, “or I will blow the top half of you off.”
He could tell from my voice that I was right behind him. He stopped and put his left hand in the air. His right still pressed against his eye.
“My eye,” he said. “There’s something bad wrong with my eye.”
“Turn around,” I said.
He turned, his face was bloody. And the rain drenching down on it made the blood pink and somehow worse looking than if it had been just blood.
“I want you to go tell Mickey Paultz that you couldn’t do it. That he sent five guys and it wasn’t anywhere near enough. You hear me, scumbag? Tell him next time he better come himself.”
“I’m going to lose my fucking eye,” he said.
“I hope so,” I said. “Now, be sure to tell Mickey what I said.”
He stood silently, holding his eye, one hand looking silly sticking up in the air.
“Beat it,” I said.
Still he stood, staring at me with one eye. I threw the shotgun in a soft spinning arc into the river. “Beat it,” I said. “Or I will throw you in after it.”
“My fucking eye,” he said. And turned. And ran toward the Boston side.
I trailed after him at a more sedate pace, feeling the beginning fatigue of passion expended and a slowing of the adrenaline pump.
“You didn’t kill her on me this time,” I said aloud. “Not this time.”
Beyond the locks was a parking lot, and beyond that North Station. I went around to the front of North Station and caught a cab back to Assembly Square. I looked like I’d been wrestling alligators and losing. The cabbie didn’t appear to notice. A lot of North Station fares looked like that.
CHAPTER 33
Linda stood against the wall outside the pub at the Assembly Square Shopping Mall. She had dried out in the time she’d waited and her hair was curlier than usual where it had been rain-soaked. She stood motionless as I approached, and when she saw me her eyes widened but she made no other sign.
“How you doing, babe,” I said. “You in town long?”
She stared at me and shook her head.
“Come here often?” I said.
“What happened?” she said, her voice soft.
“I thwarted them,” I said.
Her soft voice was insistent and there was some color on her cheeks. It wasn’t the flush of health, it was two red spots, unnatural and hot looking. “What happened, goddamn you?”
“There were five of them, I think I killed four. One I sent back to his boss with a message.”
“You just killed four people? Just now? And then you come here and joke with me? ‘You in town long?’ Jesus Christ.”
“They were trying to kill me.”
“What was that stuff about losing me too,” she said.
I felt very tired, it was hard to concentrate. “I don’t know,” I said. “What stuff?”
“You said you didn’t want to lose me too. Were you talking about Susan?”
I remembered. I remembered other things. Feelings I’d had. I remembered on the locks in the dark rain with the wind off the harbor pulling my words away, You didn’t kill her on me this time.
“I was thinking of a woman in Los Angeles,” I said. “I let her get killed.”
“Well, I’m not she,” Linda said.
“I know. I’ll call a cab and get us out of here.”
“And then what?” Linda said.
“Cook a couple of steaks,” I said. “Drink a little wine? Your place or mine?”
Linda shook her head. “Not tonight. I…I can’t tonight. I have never…I’m exhausted and I need to be alone and to think. I can’t just eat and drink and…I can’t do anything after something like this.”
I nodded. “Okay,” I said. “Let me get us home anyway.”
I found a phone booth in the mall and called a cab, and Linda and I went and waited for it at the main mall entrance, inside, out of the rain. We didn’t talk and Linda, normally the most touching of people, kept her hands buried in her pockets and stood a foot away.
The cab dropped us off at Linda’s condo. I got out with her. She said, “I can go up all right alone. You better keep the cab.”
“No,” I said. “I want to see that you get home safely.”
She shrugged and we went in. I stood beside her when she unlocked the door. She switched on the light. No one lurked within.
She put her hand on my chest and kissed me lightly on the mouth.
“Good night,” she said. “I’m sorry, it’s just…well, you should understand. I’ve never…”
“I know,” I said. “I’ll call you soon.”
“Yes,” she said. “I hope…I don’t know. This was awful.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry this part had to spill over. I’m sorry it had to splash on you.”
“It’s not your fault,” Linda said. “But I’m sorry, too, that I had to see it, and to know this part of you.”
“Part of the package,” I said. “Part of the deal.”
She nodded, her eyes still very wide and the pupils enormous. “You are a very fine man,” she said. And closed the door.
CHAPTER 34
I got five hours sleep.
The doorbell rang at 7:30 in the morning, a steady ring, like someone had placed his thumb against it and leaned. I put on a bathrobe and pressed the buzz-in button for downstairs and opened my door and went to the kitchen. I put the water on to boil and got out the coffee and the coffee maker. I had the coffee measured into the pot when Belson came in my open apartment door. There was another cop with him that I didn’t know.
I put three coffee cups on the counter.
“You look really adorable in the fucking robe, Chickie,” Belson said.
“Either of you guys take cream or sugar?”
Belson shook his head. The other cop said, “Just black.”
Belson said, “This is Carmine Lizotti.”
I nodded at the cop. He said, “How ya doing?”
Belson said, “You wanna guess why we come by this morning?” He looked like he’d been up for some time. His thin face was clean shaven with the faint blue glow of a heavy beard under his tan. He had on a seersucker suit and a straw hat with a wide blue band, and his black loafers gleamed with polish. Lizotti was heavier and a little shorter with a wedge-shaped nose and a prominent chin. He had on a coarse weave summerweight blue blazer with his white shirt collar spread out over the lapels. He smoked a filter-tipped cigarette, holding the filter tip between his teeth when he talked.
“I’m guessing you found a 1980 Subaru hatchback with the left side torn off in the weed yard under Route 93 off City Square in Charlestown. And you checked the registration and found it was mine.”
“Car’s totaled,” Lizotti said, his cigarette bobbing up and down in his teeth. “You oughta be driving an American car anyway.”
“Serves me right,” I said.
I poured the hot water over the coffee and pressed the plunger down on the pot, squeezing the grounds to the bottom.
“French roast,” I said. “That mean you won’t drink it?”
“Subaru wasn’t the only thing totaled in there,” Belson said.
I got some cream out of the refrigerator, and a box of sugar out of the cupboard.
“Hope you don’t require formal service,” I said.
I put a couple of teaspoons on the counter near the cups.
“I got some whole wheat cinnamon and raisin bagels here,” I said. “And some all natural cream cheese. No gum or other additives.”
“Sure,” Belson said. “We’d be fools not to.”
Lizotti said, “For crissake, Frank, who is this guy, Julia fucking Child?”
“He’s elegant, Liz. Everything just so. An elegant guy.”
I put three bagels into the oven to heat, and took a block of cream cheese out of the refrigerator and unwrapped it and put it on a saucer. I got three butter knives out and put them beside the saucer.
“Got to let the coffee steep a little,” I said. “And nobody likes a cold bagel.”
“We found four fucking stiffs in there,” Lizotti said.
“Three shot with a thirty-eight, one with a shotgun,” I said.
“Probably,” Belson said. “M.E. hasn’t got a report yet.”
I poured coffee into the three cups, and added some cream from the carton and sugar from the box. The box has one of those little metal fold-out pouring spouts. I stirred my coffee and sipped some.
“Water-decaffeinated,” I said. “Mocha almond. You can get it at Bread and Circus in Cambridge.”
Belson added sugar, no cream. Lizotti ignored his.
Lizotti said, “You admitting you did it?”
“Yep.”
I put my coffee down, went to the bedroom, and got my gun. I brought it back into the kitchen, still in its clip-on holster, with the strap snapped. Lizotti’s hand moved under his coat as I came back in. Belson shook his head.
“The weapon in question,” I said, and gave it to Belson. He removed it from the holster, opened the cylinder, shook out the fresh load I’d put in before I went to bed, snapped shut the cylinder, and handed me back the holster and the five rounds. He dropped the gun in his coat pocket.
Lizotti said, “Been fired recently?”
I said, “Yes.”
Lizotti said, “Give it a sniff, Frank.”
Belson grinned at me and had a little more coffee.
“For crissake, Liz. The guy already confessed.”
“The slugs you dig out of those guys will match the ones you test-fire from my gun,” I said.
“How about the shotgun?” Lizotti said.
“It’s in the river by the new locks,” I said.
“It belonged to Fat Willie Vance,” Belson said. “Spenser took it away from him and shot him with it.”
I nodded.
Lizotti said to Belson, “How come you’re so sure?”
“How I got to be sergeant,” Belson said. “Intuition.”
“That’s who that was,” I said. “It was kind of dark and I was rushed. I didn’t even recognize him. Willie always uses a shotgun,” I said to Lizotti.
“Used,” Belson said.
“Yes.”
“It was Willie’s crew,” Belson said. “I figure someone hired him to hit you, and they were overmatched. What I don’t know is who.”
“Quirk knows,” I said.
Belson looked at Lizotti. “Okay,” he said. “Get dressed. We’ll go downtown and talk with Marty and you’ll give us a statement, in which you’ll claim self-defense, and we’ll see what we think.”
I took the bagels out of the oven one at a time, juggling them to keep from burning my hands, and tossed them on the counter.
“Eat up,” I said. “While I shower. Save me a bagel.”
“You put four of them down by yourself?” Lizotti said.
“Yeah,” I said. “Not bad for a guy who’d wear a maroon velour robe, huh?”
I showered and dressed and ate my bagel on the way downtown. Lizotti didn’t join us in Quirk’s office. Just Quirk, Belson, and little old moi. Three hours later I took a cab home, free for the moment, maybe forever, carless, but licensed still to pursue my trade. The cops had kept my gun, but I had another one. All in all it had worked out much better for me than it had for Fat Willie. As far as I knew it was his only shotgun.
CHAPTER 35
Sherry Spellman and I took the elevator down from Vince Haller’s office and went out onto Staniford Street in the heat of August.
“Haller will help you in any way you need,” I said.
She nodded.
“You understand the trust?”
She nodded.
“And that he’s trust officer?”
“Yes.”
“He’ll help you with organization, with your tax situation. He’ll help arrange credit until the trust starts to generate income.”
“I understand,” she said.
“And you can call me anytime.” We turned left at Cambridge Street.
“I know,” she said. She put her hand on my arm and stopped me. “I want to say thank you. But I want to say more than that and I don’t know how.”
I leaned over and kissed her on the forehead. “My pleasure,” I said. “The next step is Tommy.”
She stepped away and widened her eyes at me.
“I got into this thing because Tommy Banks asked me to find you. He’s the only client I’ve had since we began. I think you two should talk.”
“I don’t know what to say to him.”
“Maybe we can plan that out a little too. But you owe him the chance to talk.”
“Yes,” she said.
“Do you love him?” I said.
“Yes.”
“Do you want to live with him again?”
“I don’t know. I won’t go back to dancing and all of that.”
“What’s ‘all of that’?” I said.
“All of that discipline, that control, it…it submerges me. I am not just a dancer and Tommy a choreographer. I’m a puppet.”
“So how could you be with him?”
“Maybe if he came with me.”
“Join the church? Give up dancing?”
She frowned. “No,” she said. “That wouldn’t be fair. He could still be a dancer if I could be in my church.”
“Any other men in your life?”
“There are men in the church I care about, but we never…”
I nodded. “Okay. Want to go to the studio?”
“Tommy’s studio? No.” She shook her head vigorously. “No.”
“Okay,” I said. “Neutral ground. My office.”
She nodded. We walked down across the Common to my office. When we went in I looked automatically across the street at Linda’s office. She was there but her back was to the window. I stared at her for a moment, feeling something very much like need tugging at my stomach. Then I sat down in my chair and called Tommy Banks.
He arrived a half hour later, his face tight, his movements constricted, like a man walking over a slippery spot on a winter street. Sherry stood when he came in. They looked silently at each other and then she stepped to him and kissed him lightly. He put his arms around her, but she stiffened and leaned her hips away from him. He knew it at once and took his arms away quickly. They stood back from each other, hurt showing in Banks’s face.
“Same old passionate Sher,” he said. It had the sound of an ancient refrain. She shook her head slowly from side to side.
“Tommy,” she said.
“You ready to come back,” he said.
She looked at me. I remained silent.
“Tommy, I can’t come back and be a dancer.”
“God won’t approve?” he said.
“Isn’t there another way for us to be together?”
“You want me to move up in your fucking commune?” Tommy said. “Mumble beads all day or whatever you do?”
“That’s not what we do,” she said.
“Does it have to be either or?” I said. Having done such a swell job on my own love life, maybe I could start spreading it around.
“What do you mean?” Banks said.
“She does church work, you dance, but you share each other’s evenings or whatever.”
“She’s a dancer,” Banks said, “so am I. I won’t let her throw her life away on some fucking superstition.”
“It’s my life, Tommy.”
Banks turned toward her and his intensity trembled in the room.
“Your life is my life. I’m you and you’re me. There’s no my-life-your-life with us.”
