Chance (18 page)

"He ain't in there," Hawk said, and put the bag on my desk while he took off his white leather trench coat and hung it on the rack.

"Anthony?"

"Yeah. Two women live there. And he ain't either one of them.

They go to work every morning, come back every evening. After they left this morning I went in and looked around. Women only, no sign of anyone else."

Hawk took a sandwich and a twenty-four-ounce can of Foster's lager from the bag, folded the bag flat, and used it as a place mat.

"What kind of sandwich?" I said.

"Lobster, basil mayo, on sourdough bread."

"And you plan to eat all of it," I said.

"Un huh."

Hawk took a bite, and popped the top of the beer can while he chewed.

"Fine," I said, "I'll just suck on this paper clip for a while."

"How you doing in Needham?" Hawk said.

"The husband's got a daughter by his first marriage. She visits on weekends."

"So we oh for two."

"At best," I said.

"Nice detective work though, found Anthony's love nest, found Bibi's high school chum."

"Makes you proud," I said.

"Doesn't it."

"Make a nice slogan," Hawk said.

"Missing? Don't want to be found? Call Spenser. Your secret is safe with us."

"You haven't found anybody either," I said.

"Yeah," Hawk said.

"But I got a lobster sandwich."

"Good point."

We were quiet while Hawk ate his sandwich, and drank his beer. When he was through he got up and washed his hands and face in the sink. Then he came back and sat down and put his feet up on my desk.

"So where are we," he said.

"I'm not sure," I said.

"But I don't think we got a paddle."

"Well," Hawk said.

"We know something."

"We know we don't know anything," I said.

"We listen to Fast Eddie Lee," Hawk said, "we know there seem to be a hostile takeover percolating."

"Okay, we know that."

"And it seem to have something to do with Anthony Meeker."

"But we don't know what," I said.

"Not yet," Hawk said.

"And we don't know where Anthony is," I said.

"Nor what scam he and Marty were trying to run, nor what was going on between Marty and Shirley, nor what went wrong between them, nor who is going to take over what hostilely, nor who killed Shirley Ventura, nor whether Marty is after Bibi, nor where Bibi is."

"Okay," Hawk said, "so we don't know everything."

"I suppose you could say that."

"You talk to Julius since we left Vegas?"

"No."

"So we could do that," Hawk said.

"Well, aren't you perky," I said.

"I be even perkier, I knew exactly what the hell we trying to do.

We looking for Bibi, or Anthony, or we trying to solve Shirley's murder, or we keeping tabs on the mob, or we trying to get even with Marty Anaheim for popping you in the kisser?"

"Yes," I said.

"Yes?"

"All of the above," I said.

"I don't like somebody getting killed when they are sort of my client. I don't want Marty to find Bibi and hurt her. I don't like losing Anthony. I don't like stuff going on and I can't figure it out. I'm trying to make sense out of this hairball."

"If there is a hostile takeover coming, we can sit tight and watch and after a while we'll find out," Hawk said.

"And maybe there'll be some fallout and we'll learn some other stuff."

"Maybe," Hawk said.

"And maybe Madonna will come into the office and moon us," I said.

"That ain't perky."

"Fuck perky."

"How's your wife?" I said.

"No good."

"Takes a while," I said.

Julius shook his head.

"She ain't going to get better," he said.

"I know a shrink."

"Shrinks are a bunch of fucking perverts," Julius said.

"Oh yeah," I said.

"I forgot that."

"You know anything about where that fucking Anthony is?"

"No," I said.

"But I'm still looking."

"You look all you want, long as you don't think I'm paying you."

"My own interest," I said.

"There's a hundred thousand out on him," Julius said.

"You find him, you kill him, you get the hundred grand. Just like anybody else."

"Very fair," I said.

"Did you know he and Marty Anaheim were running some kind of scam?"

"What kind of scam?"

"I don't know. Did you know your daughter and Marty were friends?"

Julius stared at me.

"Shirley?"

"Yeah."

He shook his head.

"Not with Marty Anaheim."

"You any idea what that might be about?"

"You know this?"

"I got it on good authority."

"Who?"

I shook my head.

"Any thoughts?" I said.

Julius slumped back in his chair and stared at me.

"You want some fruit?" he said.

He made a listless gesture at a big pink and blue and white bowl on the coffee table. There was a large Technicolor picture of Shirley on the table near the fruit.

"No thanks."

"Her mother couldn't have no more kids," Julius said, "after her. Her womb was tipped or something."

He was staring out the window at the guest house. His voice rumbled up out of him, as if his mind were elsewhere and his voice was on its own.

"I had a business to run. Her mother was supposed to raise her."

He paused. There must have been other people in the big ugly house but there was no sound. Nothing moved. The house felt as if it had been closed up for a long time.

"She never let her out. Not even for school. One of the fucking nuns come in every day and teach her, and my wife would sit there the whole time. When she finally had to go to high school, my wife takes her in the morning, picks her up in the afternoon. She never learned to drive a car. Hell, she can't… couldn't… even ride a bicycle. She might fall off, get hurt."

We were quiet. I could smell the ripening scent of the apples and pears in the bowl on the coffee table.

"How'd she meet Anthony," I said.

"She knew him from high school. He used to come around, bring some videocassettes and him and Shirley and my wife would watch movies in here."

"The three of them."

"Yeah. My wife had to make sure he wasn't showing her no bad movies. Make sure there was no sex going on. So they'd sit there and watch the movies and the thing is… it's a real funny thing, you feel like laughing… my wife gets to like this creep. The fucking head chicken gets to like the fucking fox. He's polite, you know, and he talks to my wife. Why not, what the fuck you going to talk to Shirley about. She's hardly ever been out of the fucking house. But my wife tells me he ain't a fucking hoodlum, except she don't say 'fucking," like the hoodlums work for me. And he's going to many Shirley and I'm going to give him a nice responsible job.

And I say, then he'll be a hoodlum. But my wife don't pay no fucking attention. She's good at not paying no fucking attention. So I put him to work. He's collecting money for me on all of the out of-turf accounts and paying off the people I gotta pay off to do business quiet in those places. I need somebody I can trust to do it."

"Why not pay off the people yourself?"

"Bookkeeping. I let Anthony collect, say, from bookies on Gino's turf and he pays Gino direct out of collections, and there's no money trail. Federal guys especially like to follow the money.

The less tracks back to me, the easier everything works."

"And the easier it is to skim," I said.

"Why you want a trustworthy guy doing it," Julius said.

"Like Anthony."

Julius nodded slowly.

"Just like him," he said.

"You had any interest in moving in on Tony Marcus's business while he's in jail?"

Julius shrugged.

"You think about it," he said.

"Tony's got some stiff named Tarone running his errands while he's in the place. Could knock him over easy."

"I met Tarone."

"I unnerstand Tony's problem," Julius said.

"You don't want no hotshot running things while you're away, 'cause when you come back it might be his."

"Tony's in no danger there," I said.

"Other hand, you don't want some candy ass running things, anyone can walk in and take it away from him."

"Not easy being a crime lord," I said.

Julius ignored me. He liked talking about business.

"Used to be when Broz was younger, you go see him, you talk, he sorta decides what's gonna happen, everybody gets along, everybody makes money. Now, it's like, you know, an open city. So, yeah, we been looking over his operation. Gino probably has too.

Fast Eddie Lee, I don't know. He ain't said. Fuckers never say much."

"Gotten to push and shove yet?"

"No, right now we're just appraising."

"Anthony have anything to do with the appraising?"

"Forget Anthony, I told you, there's a C-grand out on him. He don't matter anymore. He's already dead, he just don't know it yet."

"You think Shirley and Marty Anaheim might be connected to the appraising?"

"There ain't no Shirley and Marty Anaheim."

"I'm told there was."

"He's fucking lying," Julius said, his voice rumbling in his chest.

"Give me his name."

I shook my head again.

"I find out who's saying that," Julius rumbled, "I'll kill him.

Myself. Personally."

There didn't seem anywhere to go from there. I stood up.

"I'll go now," I said.

"I'm sorry about your daughter."

"Yeah," Julius said.

"And I hope your wife can find some consolation."

Julius nodded. His head was forward a little. He seemed to have sunk deeper into his chair.

"She ain't going to," he said.

"Ever wonder why she's in such a hurry?" I said.

"She's not going anywhere."

"She likes to hurry," Susan said.

We crossed Dartmouth Street. Ahead of us at the Exeter Street crossing a car pulled up and two men got out and began to walk toward us. Behind us I heard a car slow and stop on Dartmouth Street. I glanced back; a man got out of the passenger side and began walking behind us.

I said to Susan, "Kiss me good night, and take Pearl and go right across the street here as if you were going home. When you're behind the parked cars crouch down and get the hell away from here."

"What is it?"

"Trouble, I think."

I turned her toward me and kissed her as if there were nothing else to do in the world. As I kissed her I took my gun out from under my coat.

I murmured against her mouth, "When I let you go, move. Don't hurry, but don't linger. Wave to me as you cross the street."

Susan didn't say another word. When we stopped kissing, she touched me on the face once, briefly, and headed across Commonwealth Avenue in the middle of the block; as she and Pearl squeezed between two parked cars she gave me a happy wave.

When she reached the sidewalk, she turned and started back toward Arlington Street. The guys in front of me paid her no mind.

I pretended to look after her. The guy behind me was walking casually, looking around like a late-night tourist. I palmed my gun, so that in the darkness no one could see that I was carrying it. It was the easy-to-carry little Smith & Wesson.38 chambered for five rounds. I always left the chamber empty under the hammer, so I had four. Usually that was enough, and would have to be again.

After all, I had one more bullet than attackers. Though I would have, had I known the agenda, brought the Browning 9mm which had thirteen in the magazine. To my right was a bench. I stopped and put my right foot up on it and pretended to tie my shoe. The two ahead of me were about thirty feet away. The guy behind me was a little closer. I saw one of the guys ahead of me move his hand and caught the flash of a stainless-steel handgun in the light that fused out from the streetlamps. A blued finish is better for being sneaky. I stepped suddenly up onto the bench and went over it and landed in a crouch behind it. There was a shot from in front and a bullet whanged off the cement leg of the bench. Across the street a car alarm began its siren call. I cocked my gun, took a breath, let it out, and drilled the guy with the stainless-steel handgun right in the middle of the chest. He made a huff, not unlike Pearl's huff, and fell over on his back. Another bullet plowed into the bench, hitting the wooden seat this time, and splintering it. I cocked the.38, breathed out again, aimed for the middle of the mass which was coming at me on the run, and shot the guy behind me. He pitched forward, his momentum overcoming the impact of the slug, and sprawled toward the bench on his face. I whirled toward the third guy, who should have been on top of me. He wasn't. He was running back down the mall toward Exeter Street.

The car that had been idling on Dartmouth pulled away and disappeared toward the river, running a red light in the process. I stood, and turned sideways and shot at the running gunman. But the range was too great for the two-inch barrel. He opened the back door, dove in, and the car screamed away from the curb as the door closed behind him.

Behind me the car alarm was whooping and whining. I took some bullets from my coat pocket and reloaded while I looked for Susan. I saw her come out from behind a car with Pearl at the corner of Dartmouth Street. Pearl, gun-shy to the end, was trying to climb into Susan's lap. I put my gun away and knelt beside the man who'd followed me. He was a large man with a beard and a significant belly. He had no pulse. I moved to the front guy, beardless and skinny. He was dead too. I couldn't think much anymore, but I could still shoot.

"You hit?" Susan said.

I put my arm around her.

"No," I said.

"What's with the car alarm."

"I banged into every car along the street," Susan said.

"One was bound to have a motion alarm."

"Smart," I said.

"I have a Ph.D. from Harvard."

"You didn't say stupid stuff when I told you to move," I said.

"You'd be worried about me and Pearl," Susan said.

"I'd have been in the way."

Pearl weaseled her way in between us, and jumped up with her paws on my chest. I patted her head.

"They're dead?" Susan said. She didn't look at them.

"Yes."

"Who were they?" Susan said.

"I don't know."

In the distance, up Commonwealth Ave. from the Kenmore Square end, I could hear a siren above the racket of the car alarm.

There were lights on in many of the windows that had been dark.

"You should take Pearl and go back to my place, otherwise they'll want to talk with you too, and it'll take half the night, and Pearl won't like it."

"No, you'll need a witness."

"Good point," I said.

"I'm glad you're not dead."

"That's so sweet," I said.

The first patrol car swung up over the curb at Dartmouth Street and drove down the middle of the mall toward us. The headlights lit the scene harshly and I could see the blood spreading out on the sidewalk around both the men I'd killed.

The patrol cops got out on each side of the squad car with guns drawn, hatless, keeping the open doors between me and them.

Pearl barked at them. Susan shushed her. I put my hands on top of my head.

"Gun's on my right hip," I said.

"You want me to take it out, or you want to come get it."

"Stay just like you are," the cop on the passenger side said.

"And step away from the lady."

I did as I was told and the cop came out from behind the door with his gun leveled.

"Walk over here, put your hands on the roof."

I did as he told me. I backed away and spread my legs so that my weight rested on my hands and I couldn't move suddenly. The cop on the driver's side kept his gun on me over the roof, while his partner came and took my gun off my hip. He smelled it. Then he patted me down.

"Put your left hand behind your back," he said.

I did and he put a cuff on it.

"Now the other hand."

I had to straighten away from the car to do it. He finished cuffing me.

"You shoot them?" he said.

"Yes."

"With that thing?"

"Yeah."

When the cuffs were on his partner went to the two bodies and felt for pulses.

"They dead?" the first cop said.

"Yeah, both of them."

His partner was young and muscular with his uniform shirt tailored and his hair cut very short. I could hear more sirens in the distance, coming from both ends of Commonwealth and at least one coming down Dartmouth.

"Why'd you shoot them?" the first cop said.

"They tried to shoot me."

"You know who they are?"

"No."

"You see this, lady?"

"Yes," Susan said.

"I'm with him. We were walking Pearl when these two men and another one came at us and tried to kill him."

"Pearl's the dog?"

"Yes."

"Where's the other shooter?"

"He got away in a waiting car," Susan said.

The first cop stepped away from me. He was older than his partner with longish gray hair, wearing the kind of translucent eyeglasses that they used to issue in the army.

"Three guys come to shoot you, two of them get killed and the third one runs away," the older cop said.

"Don't usually happen that way."

"It was exciting," I said.

"I'll bet it was," he said.

"You got a permit for the piece?"

"Yes."

"ID?"

"Yes, in my wallet, left hip pocket."

He took out my wallet, found my licenses: gun, private, and driver's. He studied them. He looked at my ID picture in the car headlights and then looked at me carefully. Then he put everything back in my wallet and slipped the wallet into my back pocket. A second patrol car came down the mall from Exeter Street, a third one pulled in behind the first one from Dartmouth Street, and Frank Belson got out of an unmarked car parked on Dartmouth Street and walked up the mall toward us. The scene was now lit like an opera set. Belson spoke to the older of the first two cops.

"I was in the area. Whaddya got, Chick?"

"Guy shot two guys, claims self-defense, girlfriend's a witness."

Belson looked at me.

"Oh shit," he said.

Then he looked at Susan and Pearl and walked over and patted Pearl's head.

"Excuse my language," he said to Susan.

"I will not," she said.

"It's fucking disgusting."

Belson nodded and grinned at her and turned.

Chick said, "You know him, Frank?"

"Yeah."

"He's a private detective."

"I know. You can take the cuffs off."

"He shot two guys," Chick said.

"You got him under arrest?"

"No."

"You gonna arrest him?"

"I'll leave that up to you."

"Take off the cuffs."

Chick unlocked the cuffs, and put them back in their little case on his belt. I resisted the temptation to rub my wrists, too trite.

Susan and Pearl came over to stand beside me. I put an arm around her shoulder. Belson turned to the other detective who had walked down behind him.

"You better get Quirk," he said.

The dick nodded and headed back to the car. Belson turned toward Chick and his partner.

"You should probably have your hats on when Quirk gets here," he said.

Both cops obviously agreed. They headed for the squad car, and one of the late-arriving cops went back to the car for his hat too.

Belson turned, finally, to me, and folded his arms, took a big inhale and let it out.

"Okay," Belson said, "tell me about it."