Looking for Rachel Wallace (8 page)

Two men in business suits and one uniformed guard came into the cafeteria and walked over to Rachel’s table. I slid along behind and listened in. It looked like my business. It was.

“We invited her here,” Dorothy was saying.

One of the business suits said, “You’re not authorized to do that.” He looked like Clark Kent. Three-piece suit with a small gray herringbone in it. Glasses, square face. His hair was short, his face was clean shaved. His shoes were shined. His tie was knotted small but asserted by a simple pin. He was on the way up.

“Who are you?” Rachel said.

“Timmons,” he said. “Director of employee relations.” He spoke very fast. “This is Mr. Boucher, our security coordinator.” Nobody introduced the uniformed guard; he wasn’t on the way up. Boucher was sort of plumpish and had a thick mustache. The guard didn’t have a gun, but the loop of a leather strap stuck out of his right hip pocket.

“And why are you asking me to leave?” Rachel was saying.

“Because you are in violation of company policy.”

“How so?”

“No soliciting is allowed on the premises,” Timmons said. I wondered if he was nervous or if he always spoke that fast. I drifted around behind Rachel’s chair and folded my arms and looked at Timmons.

“And what exactly am I supposed to be soliciting?” Rachel said.

Timmons didn’t like me standing there, and he didn’t quite know what to do about it. He looked at me and looked away quickly and then he looked at Boucher and back at me and then at Rachel. He started to speak to Rachel and stopped and looked at me again.

“Who are you?” he said.

“I’m the tooth fairy,” I said.

“The what?”

“The tooth fairy,” I said. “I loosen teeth.”

Timmons’s mouth opened and shut. Boucher said, “We don’t need any smart answers, mister.”

I said, “You wouldn’t understand any.”

Rachel said, “Mr. Spenser is with me.”

“Well,” Boucher said, “you’ll both have to leave or we’ll have you removed.”

“How many security people you got?” I said to Boucher.

“That’s no concern of yours,” Boucher said. Very tough.

“Yeah, but it could be a concern of yours. It will take an awful lot of people like you to remove us.”

The uniformed guard looked uncomfortable. He probably knew his limitations, or maybe he just didn’t like the company he was keeping.

“Spenser,” Rachel said, “I don’t want any of that. We will resist, but we will resist passively.”

The dining room was very quiet except for the yellow walls. Timmons spoke again—probably encouraged by the mention of passive resistance.

“Will you leave quietly?” he said.

“No,” Rachel said, “I will not.”

“Then you leave us no choice,” Boucher said. He turned to the uniformed guard. “Spag,” he said, “take her out.”

“You can’t do that,” Dorothy said.

“You should wait and discuss this with your supervisor,” Timmons said, “because I certainly will.”

Spag stepped forward and said softly, “Come on, miss.”

Rachel didn’t move.

Boucher said, “Take her, Spag.”

Spag took her arm, gently. “Come on, miss, you gotta go,” he said. He kept a check on me with frequent side-shifting glances. He was probably fifty and no more than 170 pounds, some of it waistline. He had receding brown hair and tattoos on both forearms. He pulled lightly at Rachel’s arm. She went limp.

Boucher said, “God damn it, Spag, yank her out of that chair. She’s trespassing. You have the right.”

Spag let go of Rachel’s arm and straightened up. “No,” he said. “I guess not.”

Timmons said, “Jesus Christ.”

Boucher said to him, “All right, we’ll do it. Brett, you take one arm.” He stepped forward and took Rachel under the left arm. Timmons took her right arm, and they dragged her out of the chair. She went limp on them, and they weren’t ready for it. They couldn’t hold her dead weight, and she slipped to the floor, her legs spread, her skirt hitched halfway up her thigh. She pulled it down.

I said to Spag, “I am going to make a move here. Are you in or out?”

Spag looked at Rachel on the floor and at Timmons and Boucher. “Out,” he said. “I used to do honest work.”

Boucher was behind Rachel now and had both his arms under hers. I said to him, “Let her go.”

Rachel said, “Spenser, I told you we were going to be passive.”

Boucher said, “You stay out of this, or you’ll be in serious trouble.”

I said, “Let go of her, or I’ll hit you while you’re bent over.”

Timmons said, “Hey,” but it wasn’t loud.

Boucher let Rachel go and stood up. Everyone in the dining room was standing and watching. There was a lot on the line for Boucher. I felt sorry for him. Most of the onlookers were young women. I reached my hand down to Rachel. She took it and got up.

“God damn you,” she said. I turned toward her and Boucher took a jump at me. He wasn’t big, but he was slow. I dropped my shoulder and caught him in the chest. He grunted. I straightened up, and he staggered backwards and bumped into Timmons.

I said, “If you annoy me, I will knock you right over that serving counter.” I pointed my finger at him.

Rachel said, “You stupid bastard,” and slapped me across the face. Boucher made another jump. I hit him a stiff jab in the nose and then crossed with my right, and he went back into the serving line and knocked down maybe fifty plates off the counter and slid down to the floor. “Into is almost as good as over,” I said. Timmons was stuck. He had to do something. He took a swing at me; I pulled my head back, slapped his arm on past me with my right hand. It half turned him. I got his collar in my left hand and the seat of his pants in my right and ran him three steps over to the serving counter, braced my feet, arched my back a little, and heaved him up and over it. One of his arms went in the gravy. Mashed potatoes smeared his chest, and he went over the counter rolling and landed on his side on the floor behind it.

The young girl with the tight clothes said, “All
right
, foxy,” and started to clap. Most of the women in the cafeteria joined in. I went back to Rachel. “Come on,” I said. “Someone must have called the cops. We’d best walk out with dignity. Don’t slap me again till we’re outside.”

“You dumb son of a bitch,” Rachel said. We were walking along Boylston Street back to the Ritz. “Don’t you realize that it would have been infinitely more productive to allow them to drag me out in full view of all those women?”

“Productive of what?”

“Of an elevated consciousness on the part of all those women who were standing there watching the management of that company dramatize its sexism.”

“What kind of a bodyguard stands around and lets two B-school twerps like those drag out the body he’s supposed to be guarding?”

“An intelligent one. One who understands his job. You’re employed to keep me alive, not to exercise your Arthurian fantasies.” We turned left on Arlington. Across the street a short gray-haired man wearing two topcoats vomited on the base of the statue of William Ellery Channing.

“Back there you embodied everything I hate,” Rachel said. “Everything I have tried to prevent. Everything I have denounced—machismo, violence, that preening male arrogance that compels a man to defend any woman he’s with, regardless of her wishes and regardless of her need.”

“Don’t beat around the bush,” I said. “Come right out and say you disapprove of my conduct.”

“It demeaned me. It assumed I was helpless and dependent, and needed a big strong man to look out for me. It reiterated that image to all those young women who broke into mindless applause when it was over.”

We were in front of the Ritz. The doorman smiled at us—probably pleased that I didn’t have my car.

“Maybe that’s so,” I said. “Or maybe that’s a lot of theory which has little to do with practice. I don’t care very much about theory or the long-range consequences to the class struggle, or whatever. I can’t deal with that. I work close up. Right then I couldn’t let them drag you out while I stood around.”

“Of course from your viewpoint you’d be dishonored. I’m just the occasion for your behavior, not the reason. The reason is pride—you didn’t do that for me, and don’t try to kid yourself.”

The doorman’s smile was getting a little forced.

“I’d do it again,” I said.

“I’m sure you would,” Rachel said, “but you’ll have to do it with someone else. You and I are terminated. I don’t want you around me. Whatever your motives, they are not mine, and I’ll not violate my life’s convictions just to keep your pride intact.”

She turned and walked into the Ritz. I looked at the doorman. He was looking at the Public Garden. “The hell of it is,” I said to him, “I think she was probably right.”

“That makes it much worse,” he said.

I walked back along Arlington and back up Boylston for a block to Berkeley Street. I had several choices. I could go down to the Dockside Saloon and drink all their beer, or I could drive up to Smithfield and wait till Susan came home from school and tell her I flunked Women’s Lib. Or I could do something useful. I opted for useful and turned up Berkeley.

Boston Police Headquarters was a block and a half up Berkeley Street on the right, nestled in the shadows of big insurance companies—probably made the cops feel safe. Martin Quirk’s office at the end of the Homicide squadroom was just as it always was. The room was neat and spare. The only thing on the desk was a phone and a plastic cube with pictures of his family in it.

Quirk was on the phone when I appeared in his doorway. He was tilted back in his chair, his feet on the desk, the phone hunched against his ear with his shoulder. He pointed at the straight chair beside his desk, and I sat down.

“Physical evidence,” Quirk said into the phone. “What have you got for physical evidence?” He listened. His tweed jacket hung on the back of his chair. His white shirt was crisp and starchy. The cuffs were turned under once over his thick wrists. He was wearing over the ankle cordovan shoes with brass buckles. The shoes shined with fresh polish. The gray slacks were sharply creased. The black knit tie was knotted and in place. His thick black hair was cut short with no sign of gray.

“Yeah, I know,” he said into the phone. “But we got no choice. Get it.” He hung up and looked at me. “Don’t you ever wear a tie?” he said.

“Just the other day,” I said. “Dinner at the Ritz.”

“Well you ought to do it more often. You look like a goddamned overage hippie.”

“You’re jealous of my youthful image,” I said. “Just because you’re a bureaucrat and have to dress up like Calvin Coolidge doesn’t mean I have to. It’s the difference between you and me.”

“There’s other differences,” Quirk said. “What do you want?”

“I want to know what you know about threats on the life of Rachel Wallace.”

“Why?”

“Until about a half hour ago I was her bodyguard.”

“And?”

“And she fired me for being too masculine.”

“Better than the other way around, I guess,” Quirk said.

“But I figured since I’d been hired by the day I might as well use the rest of it to see what I could find out from you.”

“There isn’t much to tell. She reported the threats. We looked into it. Nothing much surfaced. I had Belson ask around on the street. Nobody knew anything.”

“You have any opinion on how serious the threats are?”

Quirk shrugged. “If I had to guess, I’d guess they could be. Belson couldn’t find any professional involvement. She names a lot of names and makes a lot of embarrassing charges about local businesses and government figures, but that’s all they are—embarrassing. Nobody’s going to go to jail or end his career, or whatever.”

“Which means,” I said, “if the threats are real, they are probably from some coconut, or group of coconuts, that are anti-feminist or anti-gay, or both.”

“That would be my guess,” Quirk said. “The busing issue in this town has solidified and organized all the redneck crazies. So any radical issue comes along, there’s half a dozen little fringe outfits available to oppose it. A lot of them don’t have anything to do now that busing is getting to be routine. For crissake they took the state cops out of South Boston High this year.”

“Educational reform,” I said. “One comes to expect such innovation in the Athens of America.”

Quirk grunted and locked his hands behind his head as he leaned back further in his chair. The muscles in his upper arm swelled against the shirt sleeve.

“So who’s looking after her now?” he said.

“Nobody that I know of. That’s why I’m interested in the reality of the threats.”

“You know how it is,” Quirk said. “We got no facts. How can we? Anonymous phonecalls don’t lead anywhere. If I had to guess, I guess there might be some real danger.”

“Yeah, me too,” I said. “What bothers you?”

“Well, the threat to harm her if the book wasn’t suppressed. I mean, there were already copies of the damned thing around in galleys or whatever they are. The damage had been done.”

“Why doesn’t that make you feel easier?” I said. “Why isn’t it just a crank call, or a series of crank calls?”

“How would a crank caller even know about the book? Or her? I’m not saying it’s sure. I mean it could be some numb-nuts in the publishing company, or at the printer, or anywhere that they might see the book. But it feels worse than that. It has a nice, steady hostile feel of organized opposition.”

“Balls,” I said.

“You don’t agree,” Quirk said.

“No. I do. That’s what bothers me. It feels real to me, too. Like people who want that book suppressed not because it tells secrets, but because it argues something they don’t want to hear.”

Quirk nodded. “Right. It’s not a matter of keeping a secret. If we’re right, and we’re both guessing, it’s opposition to her opinion and her expression of it. But we are both guessing.”

“Yeah, but we’re good guessers,” I said. “We have some experience in the field.”

Quirk shrugged. “We’ll see,” he said.

“Also, somebody made what looked like a professional try at her a couple nights ago.”

“Good how promptly you reported it to the authorities,” Quirk said.