Five Classic Spenser Mysteries (91 page)

I turned back from the door and leaned against it with my arms folded. My side didn’t seem to hurt quite as much if I stood that way.

“What about the girl?” I asked.

She shook her head.

“Look, Mrs. Hayden, you’re in a box. You’ve got trouble you can’t handle. There are people trying to kill your husband, the cops can’t help because your husband is involved in a criminal act, you don’t know what to do, and you just had hysterics to prove it. I’m all you’ve got. That may not make you happy, but there isn’t any way around it. Asking your husband to go one-on-one with Joe Broz is like putting a guppy in the piranha pool. If we don’t find him before Broz does, he’ll be eaten alive.”

Maybe it was the “we.” Maybe it was my impeccable logic. Maybe it was desperation. But she said, “I’ll take you to him.”

Like that. No preamble.

I said, “Okay.”

She went to the hall closet and put on a red quilted ski parka with a hood and brown knitted woolen gloves with imitation leather palms. She stepped out of the sandals and stuck her bare feet into green rubber boots with yellow laces. They were all laced and ready to go. She put on a white and brown knitted ski cap with a yellow tassle on the top and we went.

In my car I said, “Where?”

She said, “Boston, the Copley Plaza.” And she didn’t say another thing all the way back into town.

The Copley Plaza fronts on Copley Square, as do the Boston Public Library and Trinity Church. In the center of the square is a sunken brick piazza where in the summer a fountain plays. It is very nice there and a classy area to hide out in. The hotel itself is high ceilinged and deep carpeted. At four each afternoon they serve tea in the lobby. And if you want a drink you can go to the Merry-Go-Round Room and sit at a bar that revolves slowly. There is a good deal of gilt and there are a good many Grecian Revival columns, and the bellboys are very dignified in green uniforms with gold piping. I always felt I should lower my voice in the Copley Plaza, although my line of work didn’t take me there with any regularity.

We went in the elevator, got off with another couple at the fourth floor, and walked down a corridor rather elegantly papered in pale beige. She knocked on the door of 411. The other couple passed us and went around the corner. They looked as if they might be on a honeymoon, or maybe they just worked in the same office and were on their lunch hour. Mrs. Hayden knocked again twice and then twice more. Christ, a secret code. Made you wish Ian Fleming had taken up music or something.

The door opened an inch on the chain. Hayden’s voice emerged.

“What is it, Judy?” Judy? The name was bad; Mrs. Hayden wasn’t a Judy. A Ruth, maybe, or an Elsie, but Judy?

“Let us in, Lowell.”

“What’s he doing here? Has he forced you, Judy? I told you never to bring anyone—”

Judy’s voice got sharper. “Let us in, Lowell.” And then more gently, “It’s all right.”

The door closed. The chain came off, and it opened again. In we went. It was a nice room with a big double bed, unmade now, and a window that looked out onto Dartmouth Street. The television was tuned to a game show.
The Boston Globe
was scattered around the room.

Hayden shut the door, put the chain lock back on, and put the bed between me and him.

“What do you want?” he said.

The game show host introduced their defending champion, “Mrs. Tyler Moorehouse from Grand Island, Nebraska.” The audience cheered. I reached over and shut it off.

I said, “You owe me a favor.”

Judy Hayden went over around the bed and stood beside her husband. She was at least three inches taller.

“I don’t owe you anything, Spenser. You just stay away from me.”

He was a consistent sonova bitch.

“If I hadn’t happened along last night, Hayden, you would now be enriching the soil in the area of Jamaica Pond. And if you don’t help me now, that time will come again.”

“They were supposed to kill you.” He seemed to be repeating some kind of litany—by rote, as if, like ritual, the repetition of it, if done just right, would save him.

“They are not going to kill me, Hayden. They are going
to kill you. Here’s why. They want this case closed and forgotten. I keep nosing around in it, and it is you that I’ve nosed up into the light. If they kill me that’ll cause some more nosing around, by other people who know I’m nosing around you. You’re the key, Hayden. You’re the one who knows the stuff that Broz doesn’t want known. If they kill me you are still the one who knows and you are still around and someone, like say a homicide cop named Quirk, might take hold of you and begin to shake you until what you know falls out. But”—Mrs. Hayden had put an arm around her husband’s shoulder, maternal—“but if they kill you there isn’t anyone around who knows what Broz doesn’t want known and Quirk and I can shake each other till we turn to butter and no information is going to fall out because we don’t have it. How’s that sound to you?”

Hayden just looked at me. I plowed ahead.

“I figure that you and Powell were involved in pushing dope at the university. Maybe for money, maybe because you wanted to turn on the sons of the middle class, maybe because you’re a screwball and Tim Leary is your idol. Why doesn’t matter so much for now; you can tell us that later. Broz supplied you. For him the university was a nice new market for some goods he had on hand, and as long as you could deliver the market he could use you. But you and Powell had to get fancy. You stole that manuscript and held it for ransom. That was dumb, because that got the university police and me involved. No big threat, maybe, but there’s no advantage to having legal types sniffing around. But what was dumber was that you and Powell had a falling out. About what, I don’t know. You can tell me that, too. But it was you he was arguing with on the phone, and it was you who set him up for the mob hit. It
had to be you because you’re the only one around who could have supplied Terry Orchard’s gun. You got it through Cathy Connelly.”

Judy Hayden’s arm tightened around Hayden’s shoulder. He seemed to be resisting her, pulling against the arm pressure, like maybe he didn’t want to be hugged as much as she wanted to hug him.

“She’d been Terry’s roommate, and she knew about the gun. She was also your girl friend, and it had to be she who told you about it. So it was done and you were clean and all was well and then I showed up. And I talked to you about it, and you panicked. You must have called Broz the minute I left your office that day bcause he sent his people out to talk to me right after that. And the manuscript was returned the next day. But I kept it up and you panicked worse. Cathy Connelly could tie you to the murder. What if you broke up? What if your wife heard about her and blew the whistle on your girl friend and your girl friend talked for spite? She was the only one who knew about you and Broz. Other people maybe could tie you to SCACE, but the worst that would mean is a no decision at tenure time. The university wasn’t pressing charges on the Godwulf Manuscript. If you could get rid of Cathy Connelly, you and Broz could recruit a new pusher to replace Dennis Powell and things would be going just as swell and nice as they had before. So you went and killed her. That was maybe the dumbest thing of all, because it’s not your line of work and you did a terrible job. If Broz hadn’t put a lot of pressure on someone you’d be sitting around in a small room at Walpole right now. And when I kept after you and you called Broz about it again, Broz must have had enough. So you thought he’d kill me, but he thought he’d kill you. And he will. You got one chance and that is to take away
his reason. Tell me, tell the cops, maybe we can get Broz, but whether or not we do we can keep him from getting you … I think.”

“She helped me,” he said.

Judy Hayden said, “Lowell …” in a choked voice.

“It was her idea to kill Cathy. She went with me; she held Cathy when I hit her on the head. She said to make it look as if Cathy drowned in the tub.”

Her arm dropped away from his shoulder and hung straight down by her side. She didn’t look at him, or me.

Hayden went on with no animation, like a recording. “I don’t use drugs, but many people need them to liberate their consciousness, to elevate their perceptions and free them from the bondage of American hypocrisy. A drug culture is the first step to an open society. I was the man who got them from Joseph Broz. Dennis supplied them to the community. He didn’t know where I got them, and I didn’t know where he sold them. It was just right.” He had a dreamy little half smile on his face now as he talked, and his eyes were concentrating on a point somewhere left of my shoulder.

“Then he spoiled it. He complained about the quality. Said the heroin was cut too much. I said I’d speak to my supplier. Joseph Broz said that the quality was fine and was going to remain the way it was. Dennis threatened to tell the police on me. He threatened to bring down everything we’d worked for, everything that SCACE stood for. Simply because he wanted the heroin stronger. He sacrificed his every ideal. He betrayed the movement. He had to be executed. Miss Connelly and I discussed it and she suggested the gun. I discussed it with a representative of Joseph Broz and he said if we would give him the gun, he would manage the rest. Miss Connelly went there to visit
and took the gun. It is too bad Miss Orchard has to suffer; she is a member of the movement and we bear her no ill will.”

He paused. Still looking past my shoulder. The smile was a full smile now and his eyes were shiny. In a minute he’d start addressing me as “my fellow Americans.”

The smile faded. “So now you know,” he said.

“Will you tell it all to the police?” I said.

He shook his head. “I’ll die without speaking,” he said. Ronald Colman, Major André, Nathan Hale, the Christian martyrs.

“You’re not going to die,” I said. “The death penalty is not legal at the moment. You will merely go to jail, unless you don’t tell the cops. Then you will die without speaking like you almost did last night. Remember last night. You didn’t seem so eager for silent martyrdom last night.”

Judy Hayden put her hand on his shoulder. “Tell them, Lowell,” she said. He shrugged his shoulder away from her touch. “I’ve told him, and that’s all I’m telling anyone. You brought him here. I wouldn’t have had to tell him anything if you’d not brought him here. I trusted you and you betrayed me too. Can I trust no one? You’ve never cared about the movement. Dennis never cared about the movement. Cathy never cared about the movement.”

“I care about you,” she said. She was standing very stiff and very still. The palms of her hands appeared to press hard against her thighs.

“I am the movement,” he said, and the dreamy smile was back and the eyes positively glistened. He was listening to the sound of a different drummer all right, and it was playing “God Save the King.”

No one said anything. I didn’t want to look at Mrs.
Hayden. In the silence I heard a click like a key turning in the lock. I turned toward the door behind me, but I was wrong. It was the connecting door to the next room. It swung open suddenly and Phil stepped through it. In his hand was a gun with a silencer. He pointed it at me, and said in his rusty voice, “Time’s up.”

Phil closed the door.

“The couple in the elevator with us,” I said. Phil nodded.

“You had Mrs. Hayden staked out,” I said. Phil nodded again.

“I am a horse’s ass,” I said.

“We used five people,” Phil said. “It’s hard to spot.”

The gun in his hand was an Army issue .45 automatic. It fired a slug about the size of a baseball and at close range would knock down a sex-crazed rhinoceros. Most people didn’t use them because they were big and clumsy and uncomfortable to wear and they jumped in your hand a lot when you fired. In Phil’s hand it looked natural and just right.

Hayden said, “Thank God you’re here.”

Phil made a movement with his lower jaw that might have been a smile. “Get over beside Spenser,” he said. Hayden stared at him.

Phil’s voice grated without inflection. “Move.”

Hayden moved. Mrs. Hayden moved with him. Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. What the hell made me think of that?

“Take your gun out with two fingers of your left hand, Spenser, and drop it on the floor.”

I did as he said. Since the gun was on my right hip I had to twist my body some, and that made my side hurt more. In a little while it wouldn’t matter.

I felt shaky, like I’d had too much coffee, and apprehension tingled along my arms. I fumbled the gun out and dropped it on the floor.

“Kick it under the bed,” Phil said. Every time he talked you wanted to clear your throat. I kicked the gun.

“You can’t harm me,” Hayden said. “If you do and Joseph Broz hears of it, you will be in very serious trouble.”

Jesus, Alice in Wonderland. I was studying Phil. He was a puzzle, and that opaque white walleye didn’t help any. It was hard to tell what he was looking at. He was dressed as he had been before—the coat buttoned up the neck, the pink-tinted glasses. I watched his hand on the gun; maybe at the instant I saw the finger tighten on the trigger, I could jump him. The hammer wasn’t back. Phil probably always carried a round in the chamber. That would give me an extra hundredth of a second. I wished my side weren’t sore and bandaged. I felt weak, and diving across the bed and taking the gun away from Phil was not the kind of work that the weak do well. It wasn’t a very big chance, but standing still while he shot me in the face was an even smaller chance. He’d shoot me first, figuring I’d be the one to give him trouble.

Hayden kept talking in a singsong voice that rose in pitch as he spoke. “Do you have any idea whom you’re dealing with? Do you know how many people are in the movement? If anything happens to me they’ll never rest till I’m avenged. They’ll track you down and harry you out, however well hidden you may think you are. And Joseph Broz will be very angry with you.”

Phil seemed interested. He’d probably never seen anything like Hayden before.

“And you know how angry Joseph Broz can be. I’m on your side. I want to change all of this. I want a world where you won’t have to work outside the law. I’m not your enemy. Shoot them. He’s your enemy and she is, too, she betrayed me. She led him here. She led you here. Kill her. Don’t kill me. Please don’t. Please don’t.”