Five Classic Spenser Mysteries (89 page)

About ten feet in back of the tree was a big old blue spruce whose bottom boughs skirted out six or eight feet around the bottom. I inched backward under them and lay still. Nothing moved. I was feeling dizzier, and the first twitches of hurt were cutting through the numbness in my side. The slush was cold, and underneath the tree the earth had started to thaw and turn to mud. Inching backward for ten feet had scraped a lot of it up under my coat.

I wondered if I’d die here. Face down under a spruce tree in the mud trying to keep a double murderer from getting shot by two hired thugs. I felt like I wanted to throw up. The noise would locate me. I swallowed it back. More silence while I fought the nausea and the cold.

After what seemed to be the duration of the Christian epoch, I saw him. He had circled the tree where I’d first hidden and stepped out so that had I still been there he’d have been behind me. He was good; it took him maybe a second to realize I wasn’t there and where I probably was. He spun and I put three shots into his chest, holding the gun in both hands to keep it steady. His gun bounced out of his hand and plopped softly into the slush. He fell more slowly sideways and joined it. I crawled out from under
the tree and over to him. I felt in his neck for the big pulse. There wasn’t any. I crawled on over to his buddy. Same thing. I got up and looked around for Hayden. I didn’t see him, and getting up was an error. My head spun and I sat down backward. The jar of it set the pain in my side to moving.

“Hayden,” I yelled. No sound.

“Hayden, you dumb sonova bitch, it’s Spenser. You’re all right. They’re dead. Come on out.”

I got hunched over on one hip and put my gun back in the holster. Then I got both hands onto the trunk of a sapling and pulled myself up.

“Hayden!”

He appeared from behind the bushes. His glasses were gone, and his wet lank hair was plastered down over his small skull.

“They were going to kill me,” he said. “They were going to kill me. They … they had no right …”

Hayden looked at me blankly. His eyes were red and swollen and his face, without glasses, looked naked.

“They were supposed to kill you,” he said.

“Yeah, we’ll talk about that, but gimme a hand.”

The numbness was about gone now, and the blood was a warm and sticky layer over the pain.

“We were allies. We were working together. And they were going to kill me.”

He backed away from me, up toward the road. I let go of the tree and took a step toward him. He backed up faster.

“They were supposed to kill you.”

I took another step toward him and fell down. He was now backing up so fast he was running. Like a cornerback trying to stay with a wide receiver.

“Hayden!” I yelled.

He turned and ran up toward his car. Sonova bitch. At least he didn’t kick me when I fell. I heard his car start but I didn’t see him pull away. I was busy with other things. Two more tries convinced me that I’d have trouble walking up the hill, so I crawled. It was getting harder as the dizziness and the nausea progressed.

I don’t know how long it took me to get up that hill to the street. Every few feet I had to rest, and the last hundred feet or so I had to drag myself along on my stomach. I pulled myself over the curb and rested with my cheek in the gutter of the road and the rain drumming on my back. The pain drummed even harder in my side, and there was a kind of counterpoint throb in my head. Then, suddenly, there was a big red-faced MDC cop standing over me in the glare of headlights and the steady pulse of the blue light. I didn’t know how long I’d been out or where I was exactly.

“Just lay there, Jack. Don’t move around.”

“I’m not drunk,” I said.

“I can tell that, Jack. The left side of your coat is soaked with blood.”

“I’m not drunk,” I said again. It seemed very important to keep saying it. At the same time I knew he knew I wasn’t drunk. He’d just said that he knew that. “I’m not,” I said. The cop nodded. His face was red and healthy looking. He had a thick lower lip and a fine gray stubble on his chin. His partner brought the folding stretcher and they inched me onto it.

“Jesus Christ,” I said.

Then I was looking up at the funny big light that diffuses
the glare and the tubes and apparatus and a woman in a white coat, and I realized my coat and shirt were off. “I been shot,” I said.

“That was my diagnosis too.” She was bending over and looking at my side closely.

“Bullet went right through, banged off a rib, probably cracked it—I don’t think it’s broken—and went on out. Tore up the latissimus dorsi a bit, caused a lot of blood loss and some shock. You’ll live. This will sting.” She swabbed something on the wound.

“Jesus Christ,” I said.

A nurse wheeled me on the table down to have the rib X-rayed. Then she wheeled me back. The same ruddy-faced MDC cop that had picked me up was sitting on one of the other treatment tables in the cubicle off the emergency room. His partner leaned against the door jamb. He was skinny with pimples.

“I’ll need a statement,” ruddy-face said.

“Yeah, I imagine. Look, you know Quirk, homicide commander?”

He nodded.

“Call him, tell him I’m here and need to see him. He’ll come down and I’ll give the statement to both of you. You been through my wallet yet?”

“Yep.”

“Okay, you know my name and my line of work. It’s important that Quirk gets what I have to say. A guy might get killed, and he’s the key to a couple of murders.”

The doctor returned with my X rays and pushed past Pimples into the room. “As I said, rib cracked. I’ll tape it and bandage the wound, then we’ll put you to bed. In two or three days you’ll be back on your feet.”

Ruddy-face said to his partner, “Go call the lieutenant, Pooler.”

Pooler said, “How come he gets special treatment? I say we get his statement and let Quirk know through channels.”

“That’s what you say, huh.” Ruddy-face took out a big wooden kitchen match and stuck it in his mouth and chewed on it.

“Yeah, how come because the guy’s got a private license we have to kiss his ass. Quirk’ll get to his statement when he’s ready.”

Ruddy-face took the match out of his mouth and examined the chewed end.

“You be sure and call the lieutenant by his last name when you see him, Pooler. He’ll like that. Makes him feel he’s popular with the men.”

“Jesus Christ …”

Ruddy-face got a very hard sound into his voice. “Goddammit, Pooler, will you call the lieutenant? This guy got shot, two other people got killed. Lieutenant’s going to see him anyway. If he knows him maybe he’ll want to see him sooner. Why would this guy make up the story? ’Cause he’s queer for the lieutenant? If the guy’s right and we don’t call we’ll be directing traffic in South Dorchester Christmas morning.”

Pooler went. The doctor was busy wrapping my rib cage and ignored them both.

“Where am I?” I asked her. “Boston City?”

“Yep.”

When the doctor got through a nurse wheeled me up to a ward bed. The ruddy-faced cop came with me. His partner stayed down to wait for Quirk. The ward was half-empty and depressing.

“It’ll be full by morning,” the nurse said. She cranked up the bed and she and the cop slid me onto it.

“Doctor says give you a shot to help you sleep,” she said.

“Not yet,” I said. “Wait until I’ve talked with the cops.”

Ruddy-face nodded at her that he agreed.

“Okay,” she said to ruddy-face. “Tell the floor nurse when you’re through and we’ll come in and give him his shot then.” She left. Ruddy-face sat down beside the bed.

“How you feel?” he asked.

“Like I been kicked in the side by a giraffe,” I said.

He fumbled inside his coat and brought out a pint of Old Overholt.

“Want a shot before the nurse gets back?” he said.

I took the bottle.

“Crank me up,” I said. He raised the head end of the bed so I was half-sitting, and I inhaled half his bottle.

I handed him back the bottle. He wiped the top off with his hand in an unconscious gesture of long practice, and took a long pull. He handed it back to me.

“Finish it,” he said. “I got another one in the car.”

The liquor burned hot in my stomach, and the pain was a little duller. Quirk arrived; Belson was with him. Quirk looked at the bottle and then at ruddy-face. I put the bottle down empty on the night stand away from ruddy-face.

“Where’d he get the bottle, Kenneally?”

Ruddy-face shrugged. “Musta had it with him, Lieutenant. How ya doing, Frank?”

Quirk said, “I’ll bet.” Belson nodded at ruddy-face.

“Okay”—Quirk turned to me—“lemme have it.”

Belson had a notebook out. Ruddy-face got up and moved to the end of the ward, where he broke out a new match and began to chew on it.

“I’m fine, thanks, Lieutenant. Just a little old bullet wound.”

“Yeah, good, let’s hear it all. There’s two carcasses downstairs right now that the MDC people brought in from Jamaica Pond. I want to hear.”

I told him. He listened without interruption. When I got through he turned to Belson. “You see the two, Frank?”

“Yeah. One of them is a gofer for Joe Broz, Sully Roselli. I don’t know the other one. His driver’s license says Albert J. Brooks. Mean anything to you?”

Quirk shook his head and looked at me. I shook mine too.

“CID is looking into him,” Belson said.

“Right, now see what you can do about getting a leash on Hayden. Pick up and hold.”

“Yates will be disappointed,” I said.

“Can’t be helped,” Quirk said. “Hayden’s a witness to attempted murder and two homicides. Got to bring him in.”

Quirk looked back at me thoughtfully.

“Two of them in the dark,” he said. “Not bad.”

He nodded at Belson and they left. As they went out Quirk said to Kenneally, “Tell the nurse we’re through. And don’t give him any more booze.”

By the time the nurse got there I was halfway under again and barely felt the needle jab.

I woke up in bright daylight, confused, to the sound of a monotonous deep cough from the other end of the room. I shifted in the bed and felt the pain in my side and remembered where I was. The coughing went on down the ward. I creaked myself around on the bed, dropped my legs over the side, and got myself sitting up. All the beds were full. I had a hospital johnny and an adhesive sash around my torso. Very natty. I stood up. My legs felt spongy, and I braced myself with one hand against the bed. Steady. I walked the length of the bed. Not bad. I walked back to the head. Better. I U-turned, back toward the foot. Then I started down the length of the ward. Slow, shaky, but halfway down I didn’t have to hold on. An old man with no teeth mumbled to me from one of the beds.

“You get hell if they catch you out of bed,” he said.

“Watch,” I said.

I kept going. All the way to the end of the ward, then back, then down the ward again. I was feeling balanced and ambulatory when the floor nurse came in. She had a cheerful Irish face and a broad beam. She looked at me as if I’d messed on the floor.

“Oh, no,” she said. “Right back in the bed, there. We’re not supposed to be strolling around. Come on.”

“Cookie,” I said, “we are doing more than strolling.
We are getting the hell out of here as soon as we can find our pants.”

“Nonsense, I want you to hop right back in that bed. This minute.” She clapped her hands sharply for emphasis.

“Don’t do that,” I said. “I may faint, and you’ll have to give me mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.” I kept on walking.

She glanced at the name card at the foot of my empty bed. “Mr. Spenser, must I call the resident?”

In the middle of the ward was a large double door. I pushed it open. It was a walk-in closet with baskets on shelves. My clothes were in one of them. I put on my pants, still soggy with the mud half-dried on them.

“Mr. Spenser.” She stood in semiparalysis in the doorway. I dropped the johnny and slipped my jacket on over the bandaged body. Shirt and underwear were so blood-soaked and mud-drenched that I didn’t bother. I jammed my feet into my loafers. They had been my favorites, tassles over the instep. One tassle was now missing and there were two inches of mud caked all over them. My gun and wallet were missing. I’d worry about that later.

I pushed past the nurse, whose face had turned very red.

“Don’t fret, cookie,” I said. “You’ve done what you could, but I’ve got stuff I have to do and promises to keep. And for a guy with my virility what’s a bullet wound or so?”

I kept going. She came behind me and at the desk outside by the elevator a second nurse joined her in protest. I ignored them and went down the elevator.

When I got outside onto Harrison Ave it was a very nice day—sunny, pleasant—and it occurred to me that I didn’t have a car or money or a ride home. I didn’t have my watch either, but it was early. There was little traffic on
the streets. I turned back toward the hospital and my Irish nurse came out.

“Mr. Spenser, you’re not in condition to walk out like this. You’ve lost blood; you’ve suffered shock.”

“Listen to me now, lovey,” I said. “You’re probably right. But I’m leaving anyway. And we both know you can’t prevent it. But what you can do is lend me cab fare home.”

She looked at me, startled for a minute, and then laughed.

“Okay,” she said. “You deserve something for sheer balls. Let me get my purse.” I waited, and she was back in a minute with a five-dollar bill.

“I’ll return it,” I said.

She just shook her head.

I walked over to Mass Avenue and waited till a cab cruised by. When I got in the cabby said, “You got money?”

I showed him the five. He nodded. I gave him the address and we went home.

When he let me out I gave him the five and told him to keep it.

I got a look at my reflection in the glass door of my apartment building and I knew why he’d asked me for money first. My coat was black with mud, blood, and rain. The same for my pants. My ankles showed naked above the mud-crusted shoes. I had a forty-six-hour beard stubble and a big bruise on my forehead I must have gotten when I crawled over the curbstone the night before.