Five Classic Spenser Mysteries (66 page)

“Any place he hangs out?”

Cimoli shook his head and shrugged. “Beats me,” he said.

“Friends? People who knew him?”

“Christ, I don’t know. I barely knew the guy. I seen him in a couple contests I had to judge—it’s hokey, but it’s good PR for the club—and you hear talk, but I don’t know the guy myself. Why?”

“He’s my weight-lifting idol. I want to find him so he can autograph this picture.”

“Yeah, me too,” Cimoli said. “Well, look, if I hear anything I’ll give you a buzz, okay? Still in the same crummy dump?”

“I have not relocated my office,” I said. “Better check the boys in the pool. Don’t want them exhausting themselves first time out.”

“Yeah, I better. They tend to get short of wind just climbing in.”

When I got back out on the street, the bright day had turned dark. The city and the sky were the same shade of gray, and they seemed to merge so that there was no horizon. Vicki Harroway? Goddamn.

I drove back up onto the expressway, around Storrow Drive, off at Arlington Street, and parked in a tow zone by the Ritz a block from Boylston Street. The gray sky was spitting a little rain now, just enough to mist on my windows. Enough to make me turn the collar up on my sport coat as I headed up Newbury Street.

Halfway up the block, past the Ritz, on the same side was a five-story brick building with a windowed, five-story, pentagonal bay and a canopied entry. The bay window on the third floor said Race’s Faces across it in black script outlined with gold.

I took the open-mesh black iron elevator up. It let me out right in the waiting room. Gold burlap wallpaper, gold love seat, gold glass-topped coffee table, gold wall-to-wall carpet, and a blond receptionist with centerfold boobs, in a lime-green chiffon dress, sitting at a lime-green plastic desk. On the walls were black and white photographs of women with lots of fancy-focus blurring and light glinting on their hair. To the right of the receptionist was a lime-green door with a blacks-lettered gold-trimmed script sign that said Studio.

The receptionist pointed her chest at me and said, “May I help you?”

“Yes, you may,” I said, “but it would involve wrinkling your dress.”

“Did you wish to make an appointment with Mr. Witherspoon, sir?”

“Doesn’t he mind wrinkling his dress?”

She said, “I beg your pardon.”

I said, “Never mind. I would, in fact, like to see Mr. Witherspoon.”

“Did you have an appointment?”

“No, but if you’d tell him Spenser is here, I bet he’d see me.

“What is it you wish to see him about?”

“I’m posing for the centerfold in the December
Jack and Jill
and wondered if Race would be willing to handle the photography.”

She picked up the phone and pressed the intercom button. “Mr. Witherspoon? I’m sorry to bother you, but there’s a man here who says his name is Spenser. He said something about posing for some pictures in
Jack and Jill
. I’m not familiar with it. Yes sir.” She hung up and said to me, “Mr. Witherspoon says to come in. He’s right through that door.”

“Jack and Jill
,” I said, “is a magazine that celebrates the heterosexual experience.” She looked at me without expression and said, “Why don’t you shove
Jack and Jill
magazine up your ass.”

“Class will out,” I said and went into the Studio.

It was white: floor, ceiling, walls, rugs, except one wall which was covered in uninterrupted black velvet. Opposite the door the room bellied out into the pentagonal bay I’d seen from the street. There were black velvet drapes gathered at each side of the windows. On a Victorian-looking black sofa a very thin girl reclined with her head propped on one elbow and a rose in her teeth. She was wearing a billowy diaphanous white gown, very red lipstick, and nail polish. Her black hair was very long and very straight. Surrounding her was a cluster of light poles and bounce lighting. Extension cords tangled around the floor near the sofa. Around her moved a graceful man with a Hasselblad camera.

Race Witherspoon was six feet tall, slim, tanned, and entirely bald. I never did know whether he was naturally bald or if he shaved his head. His eyebrows were black and symmetrical, and a blue shadow of closely shaved beard darkened his jaw and cheeks. He had on tight black velvet pants that rode low on his hips and tucked into white leather cowboy boots. His shirt was white silk, open almost to his belt. The sleeves were belled. His tanned chest was as tight-skinned and hairless as his head, and a big silver medallion hung on a silver chain against his sternum. Susan had an outfit like it. But Race’s was more daring. He moved fluidly around the model with the Hasselblad, snapping pictures and cranking the film ahead.

“I’ll be with you in a minute, old Spenser, my friend.” He spoke while he shot. He wore a large onyx ring on his right index finger, and a black silk kerchief was knotted around his throat. Outside the bright bath of the photography lights, the room was dim, and the misting rain that had begun while I walked up Newbury Street had become a hard rain that rattled on the windows. I sat on the edge of an ebony free-form structure which I took to be a desk.

“All right, Denise, take a break while I talk to the man.”

The model got up off the couch without any visible effort, like a snake leaving a rock, and slunk off through a door behind the velvet hangings on the far wall. Witherspoon walked over to me and put the camera down beside me on the desk.

“What is it I can do for you, Chickie?” he said.

“I’ve come for one last try, Race,” I said. “I’ve got to know. What is your name, really?”

“Why do you doubt me?”

I shook my head. “No one is named Race Witherspoon.”

“Someone is named anything.”

I took out my photo of Vic Harroway and handed it to Witherspoon.

“I’d like to locate this guy, Race. Know him?”

“Hmm, fine-looking figure of a man. What makes you think I might know him?”

“I heard he was gay.”

“Well, for crissake, Spenser. I don’t know every queer in the country. It’s one thing to come out of the damned closet. It’s quite another to run a gay data bank.”

“You know him, Race?”

“I’ve seen him about. What’s your interest? Want me to fix you up; maybe you could go dancing at Nutting’s on the Charles?”

“Naw, he’d want to lead. I think I’ll just stay home and wash my hair and listen to my old Phil Brito albums. What do you know about Harroway?”

“Not much, but I want to know the rap on him before I say anything. I owe you some stuff, but, you know, I don’t owe you everything I am.”

“Yeah,” I said. “You don’t. Okay, there’s a missing boy, about fifteen. I saw him with Harroway. I want the kid back, and I would like to ask Harroway about a murder.”

Witherspoon’s thick eyebrows raised evenly. “Heavy,” he said. “Very heavy. A fifteen-year-old kid, huh? Harroway was always a damned baby-raper, anyway.”

“He’s got no record,” I said.

“I know. I didn’t mean literally. He’s the kind of guy who likes young kids. If he were straight, he’d be queer for virgins, you know.”

“He is gay, then?”

“Oh hell, yes.”

“Where’s he hang out?”

“I see him at a gay bar over in Bay Village, The Odds’
End. Isn’t that precious? I don’t go there much. It attracts a kinkier crowd than I like.”

“Know what he does for a living?”

“No. I thought he lifted weights all the time. I know he was fired from a health club a year or so ago, and as far as I know he never got another job. He’s around with a lot of bread, though. Fancy restaurants, clothes, new car. That kind of thing.”

“Think he might kill someone?”

“He’s a mean bitch, you know. He’s a fag that doesn’t like fags. He likes to shove people around. One of those I’m-gay-but-I’m-no-fairy types.”

“Anything else you know that could help? Friends, lovers, anything?”

Witherspoon shook his head. “No, I don’t know him all that well, only seen him around. He’s not my type.”

“Okay,” I said. “Thank you.”

“Now, on the other hand,” Witherspoon said, “you are.

“Not with someone who won’t give his real name,” I said.

“Well, how about Denise then?”

“Not till you feed her,” I said. “Your secretary, however, is another matter”

Witherspoon gave me a big smile. “Sorry, old Spenser, she’s hot for Denise.”

I said, “I think I’ll go look for Harroway before I find myself mating with a floor lamp,” and I left.

The Odds’ End was on a side street off Broadway in the Bay Village section of Boston. The neighborhood was restored red-brick three-story town houses with neat front steps and an occasional pane of stained glass in the windows. The bar itself had a big fake lantern with Schlitz written on it hanging over the entrance and the name The Odds’ End in nineteenth-century lettering across the big glass front.

I got a crumpled-up white poplin rain hat with a red and white band out of the glove compartment and put it on. I put on my sunglasses and tipped the rain hat forward over my eyes. Harroway had seen me only once, and then briefly; I didn’t think he’d recognize me. I looked at myself in the rearview mirror and adjusted the hat down a little. Rakish. I turned up the collar on my tweed jacket. Irresistible. I got out of the car and went into The Odds’ End.

It was dark inside, and it seemed darker with sunglasses. There was a bar along the left wall, tables in the middle, a jukebox, high-backed booths along the right wall, and an assortment of what looked like Aubrey Beardsley drawings framed above the booths and on either side of the jukebox.

A thin black man in pointed patent leather shoes and a green corduroy dungaree suit was nursing a brandy glass at the near end of the bar. His hair was patterned in dozens of
small braids tight against his scalp. He looked at me as I came in, then went back to his brandy. On the bar in front of him was an open package of Eve cigarettes.

I sat at the far end of the bar, and the bartender moved down toward me. He was middle-sized and square with curly black hair cut close and a long strong nose. There were acne scars on his cheeks. He had on a blue oxford button-down shirt with the collar open and the cuffs rolled back. His hands were square and strong-looking. The nails were clean.

“Yes, sir,” he said, looking at a point about two inches left of my face.

“Got draft beer?” I said.

“Miller’s and Lowenbrau.”

“Miller’s is okay.”

He put a cardboard coaster on the bar in front of me and a half-pint schooner on the coaster.

“I might be here awhile,” I said. “Want to run a tab on me?”

“On the house,” he said.

I widened my eyes and raised my eyebrows.

“I haven’t seen you before, and I know most of the guys from Station Four. You from Vice?”

“Oh,” I said, “that’s why it’s free.”

“Sure, I spotted you the minute you walked in,” he said.

Spenser, man of a thousand faces, master of disguise. “I’m not a cop,” I said. “I just came in to kill a rainy afternoon. Honest.”

The bartender put a tray of crackers and a crock of orange cheese in front of me.

“Yeah, sure, whatever you say, man,” he said. “I’ll run a tab on you if you want.”

“Please,” I said. “Actually, I’m kind of flattered that you thought I was a cop. Do I look tough to you?”

“Sure,” he said, “tough,” and moved down the bar to wait on a new customer. Maybe I should have worn my jade earrings.

The new customer probably wasn’t a cop. He did have earrings. But they weren’t jade. They were big gold rings. He was a middle-aged white man with gray hair pulled up into a topknot. He had on a red and gold figured dashiki that was too big for him and woven leather sandals. His fingernails were an inch beyond the ends of his fingers. He had come in at a sort of shuffling quickstep, his head still, his eyes looking left and right, like a kid about to soap a window. He was at the bar about halfway between the black guy at one end and me at the other.

“I’ll have a glass of port, Tom,” he said to the bartender in a soft raspy mumble.

“Got the bread, Ahmed?”

Ahmed reached inside the dashiki and came out with a handful of silver. It clattered loudly on the bar.

The bartender put a pony of wine on the bar in front of him and slid ninety cents out of the small pile of change. Ahmed chugalugged it and put the glass down on the bar. Tom filled it again, took the rest of the change, and moved away. Ahmed nursed the second one. He looked from me to the black guy in the green corduroy. Then he moved down near me.

“Hi,” he whispered. He sounded like Rod McKuen doing the Godfather.

“Where’d you leave your spear?” I said.

“My spear?”

Close up Ahmed smelled stale, and the long fingernails were dirty.

“My, you’re a big one,” he said. “What’s your name?”

“Bulldog Turner,” I said.

“Hey, that’s kind of a cute name, Bulldog.” He squeezed my left bicep. “I bet you’re awfully strong.”

The bartender stood polishing shot glasses, watching us with no expression of any kind.

“But oh so gentle,” I said.

“You gotta quarter for the jukebox?” He was rubbing his flat hand up and down the back of my arm. Close up there was a gray stubble of beard showing, maybe two days’ worth. I gave him a quarter. “I’ll be right back,” he said and scuttled across to the jukebox. He played an old Platters record, “My Prayer,” and hurried back to his stool beside me. He never straightened fully up. There was a hunched quality to him, like a dog that’s just wet on the rug. He drank the rest of his wine.

“Wanna buy me a drink?” he asked. His breath was sour.

“Ahmed,” I said, “I’ll buy you two drinks if you’ll take them down the other end of the bar. I think you’re a fantastic looker, but I’m spoken for.”

Ahmed hissed at me, “Mother sucker,” and scooted down the bar.

I motioned the bartender “Give him two drinks, on me,” I said.

It was five more draft beers and two passes later that Harroway showed. It was about four thirty now, and The Odds’ End had filled up. The jukebox was playing “Boogie-Woogie Bugle Boy of Company B,” and two guys were doing the Funky Chicken in a small open area in front of it.