Five Classic Spenser Mysteries (57 page)

We went in. The television was on top of a rolltop desk. The actress was saying to the talk show hostess, “Sylvia, I never pay any attention to the critics.” On the writing surface of the desk were a big wedge of cheese and a salami on the white butcher’s paper in which they’d been wrapped. There was also a half-empty quart bottle of Pickwick ale, an open pocketknife, and a jar of pickled sweet peppers. The fat man belched as he waved us to a seat. Or waved Healy to a seat. There was only a straight-backed chair by the desk and a sprung swivel chair with a torn cushion on it. The fat man sat in the swivel chair, Healy took the straight chair, and I stood. “The critics I care about, Sylvia, are those people out there. If I can make them happy, I feel that I’m …” Healy reached over and shut off the television.

“What’s up?” the fat man said.

“My name is Healy. I’m a detective lieutenant with the Massachusetts State Police. I want to have this man spend the next two days here as if he were an employee, and I don’t want to tell you why.”

A dirty white cat jumped up on the desk and began to chew on a scrap of salami. The fat man ignored it and cut a piece of cheese off the wedge. He speared it with the jackknife and popped it into his mouth. With the other hand he fished a pickled pepper out of the jar and ate it. Then he drank most of the rest of the ale from the bottle, belched
again, and said, “Well, for crissake, Lieutenant, I got a right to know what’s happening. I mean, for crying out loud, I don’t want to screw up my business, you know. I got a right.”

Healy said, “You gotta right to discuss with the building inspector the code violations he and I are going to spot in this manure bin if you give me any trouble.”

The fat man blinked a minute at Healy and then said, “Yeah, sure, okay. Look, always glad to help out. I was just curious, you know. I don’t want no trouble. Be glad to have this fellow around.”

Healy said, “Thank you. He’ll be here tomorrow morning dressed for work, and he’ll hang around here for the next couple of days. I don’t want you to say anything about this to anyone. It is a matter of life and death, and if anyone starts talking about this, it could be fatal. Kind of fatal for you too. Got me?”

“You can trust me, Lieutenant. I won’t say nothing to nobody. Don’t worry about it.” He looked at me. “You’re welcome to stay around all you want. My name’s Vinnie. What’s yours?”

“Nick Charles,” I said. He grabbed my hand.

“Good to meet you, Nick. Anything you need, just holler. Want a piece of cheese or salami, anything?”

“No, thanks.” Vinnie looked at Healy. Healy shook his head.

“Remember, Vinnie, keep your mouth shut about this. It matters.”

“Right, Lieutenant. Mum’s the word. Wild horses …”

“Yeah, okay. Just remember.” Healy left. I followed.

I spent two days hanging around the riding stable and learned only that horses are not smart. Vinnie spent most of his time in with the TV and the Pickwick. And assorted kids, more girls than boys, in scraggly Levi’s jeans and scuffed riding boots and white T-shirts which hung outside the jeans fed the horses and exercised them in the oozy ring and occasionally rented one to someone, usually a kid, who would ride it off into the bridle trail. I looked good in a plaid shirt with the sleeves cut off and a pair of jeans and high-laced tan work shoes. I had a gun stuck in the waistband under the shirt, and it dug into my stomach all day. For a prop I had a big wooden rake, and I spent the days moving horse manure around with it while I whistled “Home on the Range.”

Pickup day was beautiful, eighty-two degrees, mild breeze, cloudless sunshine. A day for looking at a ball game or walking along with a girl and a jug of apple wine or casting for a smallmouth black bass where an elm tree hung out over the Ipswich River. That kind of a day. A day for collecting ransom, I supposed, if that was your style. I straightened up and stretched and looked around. Healy should have everyone in place by now. I saw nothing. The hill behind the stable culminated in a water tower; up in a
tree near it there was supposed to be a guy with glasses and a walkie-talkie. I looked for sun flash on the lenses. I didn’t see any. Healy would see that there was no lens flash. Just as he’d see that the two guys in Palm Beach suits he had in the window booth of the restaurant wouldn’t be oiling their blackjacks. I looked at my watch—quarter to twelve. Marge Bartlett was supposed to arrive at noon. High noon the letter had said. I wondered if there was a low noon. No one would make an appointment for it if there was.

I went back to the manure. In the woods behind the riding ring cicadas droned steadily in pleasant monotony. Now and then in the stable a horse would snort, or rattle a hoof against the stall. Several sea gulls were doing a good business in the garbage container back of the restaurant. I checked the parking lot again out of the corner of my eye. Marge Bartlett was there. Just getting out of her red Mustang. She went to the edge of the driveway carrying the green canvas book bag full of money and stood. She was dressed for a bullfight. Tight gold toreador pants with a row of buttons along the wide flare. A ruffled red shirt, a bronze-colored leather vest that reached to her thighs and closed with two big leather thongs across the stomach, high-heeled bronze boots with lacings, a bronze wide-brimmed vaquero hat, bronze leather gloves. I’d always wondered what to wear to a ransom payment. Traffic went by. Usually cars, now and then a truck downshifting as it came up the hill beyond the curve. Occasionally a motorcycle loud and whining. Noisy bastards. My hands were sweaty on the rake handle. My neck and shoulder muscles felt tight. I kept shrugging my shoulders, but they didn’t loosen. I stood the rake against the stable and went and sat on a bale of straw against the wall. I’d brought lunch in a paper bag so I could be sitting and eating and looking when the pickup was made. A big refrigerator truck lumbered by on the highway. Marge Bartlett stood rigid and still, looking straight ahead
with the bag held at her side. The sea gulls rustled away at the garbage. Somewhere in the woods a dog barked. Down the highway another motorcycle snarled. It appeared around the curve. A big one, three-fifty probably, high-rise handlebars, rearview mirror, small front wheel, sissy bar behind. My favorite kind. It swung into the parking lot, and without stopping the rider took the bag from Marge Bartlett, took one turn around the mirror support with the straps, and headed straight across the parking lot toward the stable.

Bridle path, I thought as he went by me. The license plates were covered. I got one flash of Levi’s jeans and engineer’s boots and field jacket and red plastic helmet with blue plastic face shield, and he was behind the riding ring into the bridle path and gone in the woods. I could hear the roar of the bike dwindle, and then I couldn’t hear it, and all there was was the drone of the cicadas. And the traffic. Bridle path. Sonova bitch. A lot of per diem shot to hell.

Marge Bartlett got back in her Mustang and drove away. I threw my sandwich at the sea gulls, and they flared up and then came down on it and tore it apart. I stood up and took the rake from against the wall and broke the handle across my knee and dropped the two parts on the ground and started for my car. Then I stopped and took a ten-dollar bill out of my wallet and went back and folded it around one of the rake tines and left it there. Vinnie didn’t look as if he could afford my temper tantrum. With the profits he’d shown in the two days I’d spent there, he couldn’t buy a pocket comb.

Healy and Trask were sitting in the front seat of Trask’s cruiser in the parking lot of the Catholic church four blocks from the stable. There was a map spread out against the dashboard in front of them. I pulled up beside them and shut off the engine.

“Your man in the tree spot them?” I asked.

“Nope, lost him as soon as he went into the woods. The trees overhang the trail.”

Trask said, “The goddamned trail splits and runs off in all different directions. There’s no real way to tell where it comes out. Some of the people riding have made new trails. He could have come out in Lynn, in Saugus, in Smithfield past the roadblock. He’s gone.”

Healy’s face was stiff and the bones showed. He said, “Two days, two goddamned days looking at that place, looking at that goddamned bridle path sign, listening to motorcycles going by on Route 1. Two days. And we stood there with our thumb in our butt. For crissake, Spenser, you were there, you saw people riding into that path; why the hell didn’t you put it together? You’re supposed to be a goddamned hotshot.”

“I’m not a big intellect like you state dicks. I was overextended raking the manure.”

Healy took the map of the woods he’d been looking at and began to wad it into a ball, packing it in his thin freckled hands the way we used to make snowballs when I was a kid. The radio in Trask’s car crackled, and the dispatcher said something I couldn’t understand. Trask responded.

“This is Trask.”

Again the radio in its crackly mechanical voice. And Trask. “Roger, out.” Jiminy, just like in the movies. “Aren’t you supposed to say ‘Ten Four’?” I said.

Trask turned his big red face at me. “Look, you screwed this thing up, and you feel like a horse’s ass now. Don’t take it out on me.” He looked at Healy. “Did you get that on the radio?” Healy nodded. I said, “What was it?”

“The Bartletts got a phone call from the kidnappers telling them where to get the kid.” He put the car in gear and backed out of the parking lot. I followed. Maybe they’ll give him back, I thought. Maybe.

The call had come perhaps ten minutes after the money had been picked up. The little slick-haired cop had recorded it, and he played it back for Trask and Healy and me. Roger Bartlett said, “Hello.” There was a brief scrap of music and a voice said, “Howdy all you kidnapping freaks,” in the affected southern drawl that is required of everyone who is under thirty and cool. “This is your old buddy the kidnapper speaking, and we gotta big treat for you all out there in kidnap land. The big prizewinners in our pay-the-ransom contest are Mr. and Mrs. Roger Bartlett of Smithfield.” The music came up again and then faded, and several male voices sang a jingle:

Then the music came up and faded out with some giggles behind it. Roger Bartlett said to us, “He’s gotta be behind one of the schools. There’s six: the four elementary, the junior high, the high school …” Trask said, “What about Our Lady’s?” And Bartlett said, “Right, the Catholic
school,” and Healy said, “How about kindergartens? How many private kindergartens in town?”

Trask looked at Bartlett; Bartlett shook his head. Trask shrugged and said, “Hell, I don’t know.”

Healy said, “Okay, Trask, run it down; get your people checking behind and around all the schools in town. And don’t miss anything like a dog school or a driving school. These are odd people.”

Trask went out to his car and got on the radio. Bartlett went with him. I said to Healy, “What in Christ have we got here?”

Healy shook his head. “I don’t know. I don’t remember anything like this anywhere. Do you realize the trouble they went to, to rig up that tape recording?”

“Yeah,” I said, “and it’s not just to conceal voices. There’s something else going on. Something personal in this thing. The ransom note, this call—there’s something wrong.”

Margery Bartlett came in with Earl Maguire. “What’s wrong?” she said. “Is something wrong? Have you found Kevin?”

“Nothing’s wrong, ma’am,” Healy said. “Spenser was talking about something else. Chief Trask is directing the search for Kevin now. I’m sure there will be good news soon.”

But Healy didn’t believe it and I knew he didn’t and he knew I knew. He looked very steadily at me after he’d said it. I looked away. Maguire said, “Sit down, Marge, no sense tiring yourself.” She sat at the kitchen table. Maguire sat opposite her Healy looked out the back door at Trask. I leaned against the counter The big Lab that I’d seen my first visit wandered into the kitchen and lapped water noisily from his dish.

Marge Bartlett said, “Punkin, you naughty dog, don’t be
so noisy.” Punkin? The dog was big enough to pull a beer wagon. He stopped drinking and flopped down on his side in the middle of the floor. No one said anything. The dog heaved a big sigh, and his stomach rolled.

Marge Bartlett said again, “Punkin! You should be ashamed.” He paid her no attention. “I apologize for my dog,” she said. “But dogs are good. They don’t demand much of you; they just love you for what you are. Just accept you. I’m doing a sculpture of Punkin in clay. I want to capture that trusting and undemanding quality.”

I saw Healy’s shoulders straighten, heard Trask’s car door slam, and Trask pushed into the kitchen with Roger Bartlett.

Trask said to Healy, “Junior high school, come on.” Healy went. I went after them. Trask already had the car in gear as I jumped into the backseat. He spun gravel out of the driveway, and the siren was whoop-whooping by the time he was in third gear.

It was maybe three minutes to the junior high school. Trask wrenched the cruiser into the big semicircular driveway in front of it with a screech of rubber and brakes and spun off that and onto the hot-top parking surface to the left of the school and on around behind it. He loved the noise and the siren. I bet he’d been dying to do that since the case began. There were maybe two dozen cars parked against the back of the two-story brick building. Most of them were small cars, suitable for junior high school teachers. On the end of the second row of cars was an old Cadillac hearse. The back door was open, and a group of kids stood around it, held back by two prowl car cops in short sleeves and sunglasses. The patrol car, blue light still turning, was parked beside the hearse. In the school windows most of the other kids were leaning out and some were yelling. The teachers were not having much luck with
them. Most weren’t trying but craned out the windows with the kids.

Trask jammed on the brakes and was out of the car while it was still lurching. He left the door open behind him and strode to the hearse. Healy got out, closed his door, and followed. I sat in the backseat a minute and looked at the hearse. I felt a little sick. I didn’t want to look inside. I wanted to go home. There was a case of Amstel beer home in the refrigerator I wanted to go home and drink it. I got out of the car and followed Healy.