Playmates (14 page)

"Sure," I said. "See if you can keep him alive till the campus cops get there."

When Hawk was gone I called Frank Belson. "I need the make and plate number of a car registered to Madelaine Roth," I said.

"And you think I'm a registry inspector," Belson said.

"I figure you wanted to be, but flunked the test," I said.

"Only way to flunk that one is to die near the beginning of it," Belson said. "How do you spell Madelaine?"

I told him.

"Call you back," he said, "unless there's a crime or something, and I get distracted."

He hung up. I sat and waited. In fifteen minutes Belson called back.

"1988 Saab 900, silver gray, Mass. vanity plate says MAD," Belson said.

"Anything else I can do for you before I go back to crime busting?"

"No," I said, "that's fine. I'll remember you at Christmas."

Belson hung up. I went down to get my car and drive to Taft.

I got back to Taft around three in the afternoon and began cruising the faculty and staff parking lot near the administration building. It didn't take long. I found the silver Saab with the MAD license plate in the second row three cars in, right behind the administrative building. There was a green triangular parking sticker on the right window near the door edge. I parked my car in sight of the parking area in an area marked Visitors and waited. It was not a complicated intellectual process and I was able to handle it. The campus police did not open fire on me. A cruiser moved by me once and the cop looked at me with neither interest nor recognition. At 4:37 Madelaine came out of the administrative building wearing a full pleated skirt in sort of a pale violet plaid, high lavender boots, and a gray trench coat with the collar up and the belt knotted rather than buckled. She carried a big straw bag and a smaller purse of gray leather and she walked very briskly.

When she pulled out of the parking lot I cruised along behind her. We drove east, picked up Route 16 into Newton, turned left on Commonwealth and ended up at a series of condominium townhouses just up the road from the big Marriott where the Totem Pole used to be. I kept going past and watched her park and walk to her door. She went in. I U-turned 100 yards down and drove back and parked across the street in the parking lot of a complex of garden apartments where I could watch her door. Which I did until eleven forty-five and went home. She didn't come out, no one went in.

I did this for three nights, picking her up at work and following her home. One night she stopped at the Star Market in Newtonville, another night she stopped at a liquor store on the way home. That's all. She didn't see anyone or do anything. I figured that if she and Deegan were a matched pair sooner or later he'd come to her house or she'd go to his. I figured he wouldn't show up at the University, so that left my days free to sit around and think about becoming an abbot.

The fourth night was Friday, and I scored. I had been sitting in the apartment parking lot for maybe forty-five minutes when a cab pulled up and Deegan got out with an overnight bag in his hand. He went to the door and it opened and he stood for a moment with his arms wide and Madelaine came out and jumped against him and wrapped her legs around his waist. They kissed for a considerable time and then Deegan carried her into the house, still holding the overnight bag dangling kind of awkwardly from his left hand behind her back and slapping against her buttocks as Deegan walked. The door slammed shut behind them. Deegan had probably kicked it shut with his heel.

I speculated on what might happen next. Whatever it was did not involve coming back out. At ten thirty I gave up and went home to bed. Deegan was going to stay the weekend. That seemed pretty clear. Probably had been back to New York to see his wife and count his money and, maybe, bring in a hitter from the Big Apple to deal with me. So I had access to him, I was pretty sure, for the next two days. If only it were pretty clear what I was going to do with him. It seemed time to consult with Susan and, perhaps, Hawk.

Susan was in pajamas when I arrived. But I wasn't fooled. Her hair wasn't up. She was waiting for me.

"Hey," she said, "how's it going?"

"Bobby Deegan just showed up at Madelaine's house and she ran over and jumped in his arms and wrapped her legs around his waist."

Susan smiled. Her face softened. "Hey, how's it going," she said.

"Yeah," I said. "We'd probably hurt ourselves doing that."

Susan went to the refrigerator and took out a low glass pitcher with a glass stirrer in it. It contained a pale chartreuse-colored fluid. "Gimlets," she said.

"Gimlets?"

"Yes, I decided we ought to have something that was our drink," she said.

"And you chose gimlets?"

"Yes, the color is so lovely." I nodded.

"And we only drink them with each other, and we keep our pitcher and our two gimlet glasses by themselves and we don't drink anything else out of them." Susan's eyes were bright.

"I'll get a matched set for my place too," I said.

"Yes," she said.

"That's very romantic," I said.

"I thought so," Susan said.

"Wouldn't it be just as easy to jump into my arms and wrap your legs around my waist?" Susan poured out a gimlet over ice and handed it to me.

"Drink the goddamn gimlet," she said.

"Right," I said, "it wouldn't be easier at all."

Susan leaned against me and I put my arms around her and one thing led to another and we left the gimlets half drunk on her kitchen counter.

Around midnight we were quiet. I lay on my back with my right arm outstretched. She had her head against my shoulder.

"Madelaine and Deegan are the keys to this," I said.

"Is that what we're going to do now? Talk about your case?"

I nodded.

"Then it must be they who prevent Dwayne from testifying," Susan said. "Unless you've missed a great deal, and you usually don't, there's no one else that could be."

"Yeah, but what have we got on him and how do I find out?"

"Without exposing Dwayne," she said.

"Sure, that's the goddamned kink in the rope. Otherwise I just give what I've got to Taft and let them take it to the D.A. and you and I can go to Chicago and have dinner at Le Perroquet."

"And a gimlet first?"

"The whole ball of wax," I said.

"Is that what we've been involved in tonight?" Susan said.

"Yes, tonight was the whole ball of wax," I said.

"And you call me romantic," Susan murmured.

"Shucks," I said. We were quiet.

"Is there a way to bring them together?" Susan said.

"Dwayne, Madelaine and Deegan?" I said.

"Yes."

I shrugged. "Probably," I said, "though you've got to understand about Dwayne. If he's recalcitrant, it's heavy work."

"I know," Susan said, "I know. You've mentioned that he's big, but you and Hawk can probably reason with him."

"Say we get them together, what have we got then?"

Susan shook her head. "No way to know," she said. "Certainly no less than you've got right now."

"Very true," I said.

"And perhaps we'll have some insight into the relationship that we don't have now."

"We?"

"Yes," Susan said. "It's somewhat my line of work. Perhaps I might be able to add a useful observation."

"Perhaps you might," I said.

IN the morning Susan called Chantel for me. I didn't want Dwayne to answer and recognize my voice and hang up.

"Chantel?" Susan said. Pause.

"Mr. Spenser calling, just a moment."

We were still in bed and Susan handed the phone across her body to me.

"Chantel," I said.

Her voice was sleepy. "What you want?"

"Can you talk?"

"Not much," she said.

"Okay, listen then."

"Un huh."

"I want Dwayne to see Bobby Deegan and Madelaine Roth at an address in Newton I'm going to give you."

"I don't understand that, Ma'am." The "Ma'am" must have been diversionary.

"I'll be there, and Hawk, and my friend Dr. Silverman, the woman who just spoke to you."

"Un huh."

"So you've got to get him there under whatever pretext. What's a good time today?"

"Today?" Chantel sounded confused.

"Yes. This morning would be good. In an hour, say."

"We ain't even up yet," Chantel said.

"We need to do this quickly, Chantel. Can you get him there?"

"Yes," she said. "Two hours."

"Okay." I gave her the address and hung up. "Kid's okay," I said to Susan. "No argument, no maybe. Just yes."

"And Hawk will meet us there?" Susan said.

"He's there now," I said. "I called him before you were awake."

"You awoke from an evening of rapture thinking business?"

"First I thought about the rapture," I said. Susan nodded.

"Hawk will make sure that Madelaine and her boyfriend don't leave," Susan said.

"Yes."

"Wise," Susan said, "though it came rather hard upon the heels of rapture."

"I'll make breakfast," I said, "and you can start getting ready."

"If I start getting ready now, I won't be able to hurry."

"I know," I said.

"I like to be in a hurry," Susan said.

"Puzzling, but true," I said. I got up and put on my Darth Vader robe. Susan slipped out of bed and walked naked toward the bathroom. "Except when I take a bath," Susan said. "I like long slow baths."

"Among other things," I said.

Susan looked at me the way she does, sort of sideways. She took her robe from a hanger in her closet and slipped it on. Susan was never naked except when there was occasion for it. She always looked a little relieved when she got into her robe.

I headed for the kitchen.

Susan and I had sweet potato pancakes and two cups of coffee each. Decaffeinated. No problem. I didn't miss real coffee at all. We cleaned up the dishes afterward and then Susan said, "My God, look at the time," and began to speed around her condo. I went into the bathroom and took a shower and came out and found a neutral corner in her bedroom and dressed and put my new Browning on my hip, slid past her into the living room and stayed out of the way until she was ready.

At nine fifteen we were on the Mass. Pike to Newton. We got off at West Newton and headed west on Washington to Commonwealth Ave. and west on Commonwealth to Madelaine's condo.

"I still say it would have been shorter," Susan was saying, "to go straight out to 128 and come back in."

"No hurry," I said. It was seventy-three degrees and sunny, an atypical late March day in Boston.

"Easy for you to say."

Hawk's jag was parked in the apartment lot across the street from Madelaine's. I pulled in beside it and Hawk got out of his car and climbed in my back seat.

"They there," he said. "Deegan came out and took the paper off the front stoop about half hour ago."

"How are you, cutie," Susan said.

"Formidable," Hawk said.

Susan leaned back over the front seat, and Hawk leaned forward, and they kissed.

"The basketball star coming?" Hawk said.

"His girlfriend says she'll have him here at ten," I said.

"And when he get here, what is it we going to do, again?"

"We're going to bring him in and observe his interaction with Madelaine Roth and Bobby Deegan," I said.

"Interaction," Hawk said.

"They must be the people Dwayne's loyal to," Susan said. "Maybe we can get some sense of how or why."

"Besides, I can't think of anything else to do," I said.

"Could put them both in the river," Hawk said.

"Come on," I said. "Up here the river's almost swimmable again. Aren't you opposed to pollution?"

"We've done it before," Hawk said.

"The reasons were better," I said, "than any we've got now."

Hawk shrugged and leaned back against the seat.

"There need to be some reasons, Hawk," Susan said.

"Worried about reasons all my life, I be a long time dead by now," Hawk said.

"Yes," Susan said, "that's probably true." Hawk grinned in the back seat.

"Don't make much difference to me, sweet potato," he said. "Kill them, interact with them, tell them about God. Whatever works. Or make you happy."

"How sweet," Susan said.

"There's Dwayne and Chantel," I said. Across the street a bright red Trans Am slowed in front of Madelaine's condo and then swung into the lot in front and into an empty parking space. Susan and Hawk and I got out of the car and crossed Commonwealth and joined them. Chantel was in the driver's seat.

Dwayne, looking a bit cramped, was in the passenger seat.

The car windows were down. Dwayne looked out at me and turned toward his girlfriend. "What's he doing here, Chantel?"

"He's going to help us," she said.

"I don't want to have nothing to do with him," Dwayne said. "Let's get out of here." Chantel shook her head and took the keys and stepped out of the car.

"Goddamn it, Chantel," Dwayne said. "Get your ass in here and drive this thing away."

"He's going to help us," Chantel said.

"That honkie motherfucker?" Dwayne said. "He the one got me benched."

"Honkie motherfucker," Hawk said. "He does know you."

"He'll help us," Chantel said.

"He'll help shit. Dwayne say get in here and drive, you fucking well better listen to Dwayne."

Chantel threw the keys into the car. "You want to go. You drive it away. This man going to help us, if you'd just let him, dope."

Dwayne's shoulders hunched, and his head sank. He seemed to shrink in on himself so that he looked like a huge black Richard Nixon, looking out under his eyebrows.

Chantel stepped around the car to the open window. "Okay," she said. "Okay." She patted Dwayne's face. "Okay. I'm not mad. I love you, and I want you to be helped."

Dwayne's head was hanging. He stared at the floorboards.

"You're not a dope, Dwayne. I just mad when I said that."

Dwayne nodded without looking up. "Let these people help us," Chantel said. "I trust them."

Dwayne nodded a little and slowly got out of the car and straightened up. He didn't say anything, but he looked at me with a blank implacable gaze that didn't seem to mean anything, though it was clearly not friendly.