Five Classic Spenser Mysteries (85 page)

“She’s it. Captain Yates is taking personal charge of the case, and she’s the one.”

“Yates. That means you’re off it?”

“That’s right.”

“What else does it mean?”

“It doesn’t mean anything else.”

I poured two more shots of bourbon. Quirk’s hard face looked like he was concealing a toothache.

“Like hell it doesn’t mean anything else, Quirk. You didn’t make a special trip down here just to keep me informed on personnel shifts in the BPD. You don’t like her for it, and you know it. Why is Yates on it?”

“He didn’t say.”

I sipped some more of my bourbon. Quirk walked over and looked out my window.

“What a really swell view you’ve got, Spenser.”

I didn’t say anything. Quirk came back to my desk, picked up the bottle, and poured himself another drink.

“Okay,” he said. “I don’t like the kid for the murder.”

I said, “Me either.”

“I got nothing. Everything I’ve got says she’s guilty. Nice simple murder, nice simple solution. Why screw around with it?”

“That’s right,” I said. “Why screw around with it?”

“I’ve been on the force twenty-two years. You meet a lot of liars in twenty-two years. I don’t think she was lying.”

I said, “Me either.”

Quirk was walking around the room as he talked, looking at it like he looked at everything, seeing it all, and if he ever had to, he’d remember it all.

“You went to see Joe Broz yesterday.”

I nodded.

“Why?”

“So he could tell me to butt out of the Godwulf Manuscript–Terry Orchard affair.”

“What did you say?”

“I said we’ll see.”

“Did you know the manuscript is back?”

I raised one eyebrow, something I’d perfected after years of practice and a score of old Brian Donlevy movies. Quirk appeared not to notice.

“Broz suggested that was possible,” I said.

Quirk nodded. “Any idea why Broz wanted you to butt out?”

“No,” I said. “Any idea why Yates wanted you to butt out?”

“No, but there’s a lot of pressure from somewhere up the line.”

“And Yates is responding.”

Quirk’s face seemed to shut down. “I don’t know about what Yates is doing. I know he’s in charge of the case and I’m not. He’s the captain. He has the right to assign personnel.”

“Yeah, sure. I know Yates a little. One of the things he does best is respond to pressure from somewhere up the line.”

Quirk didn’t say anything.

“Look, Lieutenant,” I said, “does it seem odd to you that there are two guys looking into the Terry Orchard thing and both of us are told to butt out within the same day? Does that seem like any kind of coincidence to you?”

“Spenser, I am a cop. I have been a cop for twenty-two years, and I will keep on being one until they lock me out of the station house. One of the things that a cop has to have is discipline. He gets orders, he has to obey them—or the whole thing goes to hell. I don’t have to like what’s
happening, but I do it. And I don’t run around crying about it.”

“Words to live by,” I said. “It was the widely acclaimed Adolf Eichmann who popularized that ‘I obey orders’ routine, wasn’t it?”

“That’s a cheap shot, Spenser. You know goddamn well the cops are right more than they’re wrong. We’re not wiping out six million people. We’re trying to keep the germs from taking over the world. To do that you got to have order, and if someone gets burned now and then so someone gets burned. If every cop started deciding which order to obey and which one not, then the germs would win. If the germs win, all the goddamn bleeding hearts will get their ass shot.”

“Yeah, sure, the big picture. So some goddamn teen-aged kid gets fed to the fishes for something she didn’t do. So you know she didn’t do it and Joe Broz puts the squeeze on some politician who puts the squeeze on Captain Yates who takes you off the case. But you don’t cry. It’s good for society. Balls. Why don’t you take what you got to the States?”

“Because I haven’t got enough. The State cops would laugh and giggle if I came in with what I’ve got. And because, goddamn it, Spenser, because I can’t. I’m a cop. It’s what I do. I can’t.”

“I know,” I said. “But I can. And I’m going to. I’m going to have Broz and Yates, and you, too, if I have to, and whoever else has got his thumb in whatever pie this is.”

“Maybe you will,” Quirk said. “I hear you were a pretty good cop before you got fired. What’d you get fired for?”

“Insubordination. It’s one of my best things.”

“And maybe Broz will have you shot in the back of the head.”

I let that pass. We were silent.

“How much do I have to get for you before you go to the States?”

“I’m not asking you to get a damn thing for me,” Quirk said.

“Yeah, I know. If I got you proof. Not suspicion, proof. Then what happens?”

“Then the pressure will go away. Yates is impressed with proof.”

“I’ll bet,” I said.

More silence. Quirk didn’t seem to want to leave, but he didn’t have anything to say. Or at least he wasn’t saying it.

“What do you know about Cathy Connelly, Lieutenant?”

“We checked her out routinely. No record, no evidence of drugs. Roomed with Orchard before her boyfriend moved in. Now lives somewhere over on the Fenway.”

“Anybody interview her?”

“Couple of precinct boys in a radio car stopped by. She wasn’t home. We saw no reason to press it. Do you?”

“Those two hoods had Terry Orchard’s gun with them when they came to the apartment. How’d they get it?”

“If it’s true.”

“Of course, if it’s true. I think it’s true. Cathy Connelly seems like the best person to ask about how they got the gun. Terry doesn’t know, Powell is dead. Who’s left?”

“Why don’t you go ask her then?” Quirk said. “Thanks for the drink.”

He walked out leaving the door open behind him, and I listened to his footsteps going down the hall.

I went over to the university to call on Carl Tower. I hoped the campus cops weren’t under orders to shoot on sight. Whether they were, the secretary with the ripe thighs was not. She was friendly. She had on a pants suit today, black, with a large red valentine heart over the left breast. Red platform heels, red enamel pendant earrings. Bright red lipstick. She obviously remembered me. I was probably haunting her dreams.

She said, “May I help you?”

“Don’t pull that sweet talk on me,” I said.

“I beg your pardon.”

“I know what you’re thinking, and I’m sorry, but I’m on duty.”

“Of all the outer offices in all the towns in all the world,” she said, “you had to walk into mine.” There was no change in her expression.

I started to say something about, “If you want anything, just whistle,” but at that moment Carl Tower appeared at his office door and saw me. I was obviously not haunting his dreams.

“Spenser,” he said, “get the hell in my office.”

I took off my wristwatch and gave it to the secretary. “If I don’t come out alive,” I said, “I want you to have this.”

She giggled. I went into Tower’s office.

Tower picked up a tabloid-size newspaper from his desk and tossed it across at me. It was the university newspaper. Across the top was the headline
ADMINISTRATION AGENT SPIES ON STUDENT
, and in a smaller drop head,
PRIVATE EYE HIRED BY ADMINISTRATION QUESTIONS ENGLISH PROFESSOR
. I didn’t bother to read the story, though I noticed they spelled my name wrong in the lead paragraph.

“It’s with an
s,
not a
c,
” I said. “Like the English poet. S-p-e-n-s-e-r.”

Tower was biting down so hard on his back teeth that the muscles of his jaw bulged at the hinge.

“We won’t ask for a return on the retainer, Spenser,” he said. “But if you are on this campus again, ever, we’ll arrest you for trespassing and use every influence we have to have your license lifted.”

“I hear you got the manuscript back,” I said.

“That’s right. No thanks to you. Now beat it.”

“Who returned it?”

“It just showed up yesterday in a cardboard box, on the library steps.”

“Ever wonder why it came back?”

Tower stood up. “You’re through, Spenser. As of this minute. You are no longer in the employ of this university. You have no business here. You’re trespassing. Either you leave or I call some people to take you out of here.”

“How many you going to call?”

Tower’s face got quite red. He said, “You sonova bitch,” and put his hand on the phone.

I said, “Never mind. If I whipped your entire force it would embarrass both of us.”

On the way out I stopped by the secretary’s desk. She handed me back my watch.

“I’m glad you made it,” she said.

On the inside of the watch strap in red ink she had written “Brenda Loring, 555-3676.”

I looked up at her. “I am, too,” I said, and strapped the watch back on.

She went back to typing and I went back to leaving the university in disgrace. Administration agent, I thought as I went furtively down the corridor. Zowie!

Back to the Fenway to Cathy Connelly’s apartment. I rang the bell; no answer. I didn’t feel like swapping compliments with Charlie Charm the super, so I strolled around the building looking for an alternate solution. Behind the apartment was an asphalt courtyard with lines for parking spaces and a line of trash barrels, dented and bent, against the wall, behind low trapezoidal concrete barriers to keep the cars from denting and bending them more. Despite the ill-fitting covers on them, some of the trash had spilled out and littered the ground along the foundation. The cellar entrance door was open, but the screen door was closed and fastened with a hook and eye arrangement. It was plastic screening. I took out my jackknife and cut through the screen at the hook. I put my hand through and unhooked it. Tight security, I thought. Straight ahead and two steps down stretched the cellar. To my left rose the stairs. I went up them. Cathy Connelly was apartment 13. I guessed second floor, given the size of the building. I was wrong. It was third floor. Close observation is my business.

Down the corridor ran a frayed, faded rose runner. The doors were dark-veneer wood with the numbers in shiny silver decals asymmetrically pasted on. The knob on each door was fluted glass. The corridor was weakly lit by a bare bulb in a wall sconce at the end. In front of number
13 a faint apron of light spread out under the door. I looked at my watch; I knocked again. Same result. I put my ear against the door panel. The television was on, or the radio. I heard no other sound. That didn’t prove anything. Lots of people left the TV running when they went out. Some to discourage burglars. Some because they forgot to turn them off. Some so it wouldn’t seem so empty when they came home. I tried the knob. No soap. The door was locked. That was a problem about as serious as the screen door in the cellar. I kicked it open—which would probably irritate the super, since when I did, the jamb splintered. I stepped in and felt the muscles begin to tighten behind my shoulders. The apartment was hot and stuffy, and there was a smell I’d smelled before.

The real estate broker had probably described it as a studio apartment—which meant one room with kitchenette and bath. The bath was to my left, door slightly ajar. The kitchenette was directly before me, separated from the rest of the room by a plastic curtain. To my right were a day bed, the covers folded back as if someone were about to get in, an armchair with a faded pink and beige shawl draped over it as a slipcover, a bureau, a steamer trunk apparently used as a coffee table, and a wooden kitchen table, painted blue, which seemed to double as a desk. On it the television maundered in black and white. In front of the kitchen table was a straight chair. A woman’s white blouse and faded denim skirt were folded over the back of it, underwear and socks tangled on the seat. A saddle shoe lay on its side beneath the chair and another stood flat-footed under the table. There was no one in the room. There was no one behind the plastic curtain. I turned into the bathroom and found her.

She was in the tub, face down, her head under water, her body beginning to bloat. The smell was stronger in
here. I forced myself to look. There was a clotted tangle of blood in the hair at the back of one ear. I touched the water; it was room temperature. Her body was the same. I wanted to turn her over, but I couldn’t make myself do it. On the floor by the tub, looking as if she’d just stepped out of them, were a pair of flowered baby doll pajamas. She’d been there awhile. Couple of days, anyway. While I’d been ringing her bell and asking the super if he’d seen her, she’d been right here floating motionless in the tepid water. How do you do, Miss Connelly, my name is Spenser, very sorry I didn’t get to meet you sooner. Hell of a way to meet now. I looked at her for two, maybe three minutes, feeling the nausea bubble inside me. Nothing happened, so I began to look at the bathroom. It was crummy. Plastic tiles, worn linoleum buckling up from the floor. The sink was dirty and the faucet dripped steadily. There was no shower. Big patches of paint had peeled off the ceiling. I thought of a line from a poem: “Even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course/Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot.” I forget who wrote it.

There were no telltale cigar butts, no torn halves of claim checks, no traces of lint from an imported cashmere cloth sold only by J. Press. No footprints, no thumb prints, no clues. Just a drowned kid swelling with death in a shabby bathroom in a crummy apartment in a lousy building run by a grumpy janitor. And me.

I went back out into the living room. No phone. God is my copilot. I went out to the hall and down the stairs to the cellar. The super had an office partitioned off with chicken wire from the rest of the cellar. In it were a rolltop desk, an antique television set, and a swivel chair, in which sat the super. The smell of bad wine oozed out of the place. He looked at me with no sign of recognition or welcome.

I said, “I want to use your phone.”

He said, “There’s a pay phone at the drugstore across the street. I ain’t running no charity here.”

I said, “There is a dead person in room thirteen, and I am going to call the police and tell them. If you say anything to me but yes, sir, I will hit you at least six times in the face.”