Early Autumn (15 page)

“Oh, lucky me,” Susan said.

“I did not want to talk about how you’re in a funk because I’m paying more attention to him than to you,” I said.

“Perhaps what you want to talk about isn’t terribly important,” she said.

“Yes, it is. What we have to say to each other is always important, because we love each other and we belong to each other. And will forever.”

“Including what you refer to as my funk?”

“Yes.”

She was silent.

“Don’t be ordinary, Suze,” I said. “We’re not ordinary. No one else is like us.”

She sat with her hands folded on the edge of the tabletop, looking at them. A small wisp of steam drifted up past her face from her coffee cup, a fleck of cinnamon sugar marred her lower lip near the corner of her mouth.

The kitchen clock ticked. I could hear a dog bark somewhere outside.

Susan put one hand out toward me and turned it slowly palm up. I took it and held it.

“There’s no such thing as a bad boy,” she said. “Though you do test the hypothesis.”

I held her hand still and said, “First the kid wants to be a ballet dancer.”

“And?”

“And I have no idea how he should go about that.”

“And you think I do?”

“No, but I think you can find out.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be the detective?”

“Yeah, but I’ve got other things to find out. Can you get a handle on ballet instruction for me?”

She said, “If you’ll let go of my hand I’ll make some more coffee.”

I did. She did. I said, “Can you?”

She said, “Yes.”

I raised my coffee cup at her and said, “Good hunting.” I sipped some coffee.

She said, “Assuming you can keep him despite the best efforts of both parents and the law, which rarely awards children to strangers over the wishes of the parents. But assuming that you can keep him, are you prepared to support him through college? Are you prepared to share your apartment with him? Go to P.T.A. meetings? Maybe be a Boy Scout leader?”

“No.”

“No to which?”

“No to all of the above,” I said.

“So?”

“So, we need a plan.”

“I would say so,” Susan said.

“First, I’m not sure how much the parents will want to get tangled up in legal action at the moment. Neither one wants the kid. They only wanted him to annoy each other. If they had to get into a court action to get him away from me, I’d try to prove them unfit and I might dig up things that would embarrass them. I don’t know. They may each, or both, get so mad that I wouldn’t give the kid up that they’ll go to court, or the old man may call out his leg breakers again. Although I would think after the first two debacles they might be getting discouraged.”

“Even parents who dislike their children resent giving them up,” Susan said. “The children are possessions. In some cases the parents’ only possession. I don’t think they’ll give him up.”

“They don’t want him,” I said.

“That’s not the point,” Susan said. “It’s a shock to
the most fundamental human condition. The sense that no one can tell me what to do with my child. I see it over and over in parents at school. Kids who are physically abused by parents who were abused when they were children. Yet the parents will fight like animals to keep the kid from being taken away. It’s got to do with identity.”

I nodded. “So you think they’ll try to get him back.”

“Absolutely.”

“That’ll complicate things.”

“And the courts will give him back. They may not be good parents, but they aren’t physically abusive. You haven’t got a case.”

“I know,” I said.

“If they go to the courts. As you say, the father seems to have access to leg breakers.”

“Yeah. I think about that. I wonder why.”

“Why what?”

“Why he has access to leg breakers. Your average suburban real estate broker doesn’t hang out with a guy like Buddy Hartman. He wouldn’t know what rock to look under.”

“So?”

“So what kind of work has Mel Giacomin been involved in that he would know Buddy Hartman?”

“Maybe he sold him real estate, or insurance.”

I shook my head. “No. Nothing Buddy’s involved in is legitimate. Buddy’d find a way to steal his insurance.”

“What are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking if I can get something on Mel, and maybe something on Patty too, I’d have some leverage to bargain with on the kid.”

Susan smiled at me for the first time in some days. “Mr. Chips,” she said. “Are you speaking of blackmail?”

“The very word,” I said.

I picked Paul up at the Harbour Health Club.

“He benched one-oh-five today on the Universal,” Henry said.

“Not bad,” I said.

Paul nodded. “The Universal is easier,” he said.

“One-oh-five is one-oh-five,” I said.

We walked up to the Faneuil Hall Market area and ate in Quincy Market, moving among the food stalls and collecting a large selection of food and sitting in the rotunda to eat

“I have a plan,” I said.

Paul ate part of a taco. He nodded.

“I am going to try to find out things about your parents that will let me blackmail them.”

Paul swallowed. “Blackmail?”

“Not for money. Or at least not for money for me. I want to have some leverage so that I can get them off your back and off mine and maybe get you their support in what you want.”

“How can you do that?”

“Well, your father knows some ugly people. I thought I might look into how come.”

“Will he go to jail?”

“Would you mind if he did?”

Paul shook his head.

“Do you feel anything for him?” I said.

“I don’t like him” Paul said.

“’Course it’s not that simple,” I said. “You’re bound to care something about his opinions, his expectations. You couldn’t avoid it.”

“I don’t like him,” Paul said.

“It’s something we’ll need to talk about, probably with Susan. But we don’t have to do it right now.” I ate some avocado-and-cheese sandwich. Paul started on his lobster roll.

“You want to help me look into this?” I said.

“About my father?”

“Yes. And your mother. We may find out things that you won’t like to know.”

“I don’t care.”

“If you help?”

“No. I don’t care if I hear things about my mother and father.”

“Okay. Well do it. But remember, you probably will care. It probably will hurt. It’s okay for it to hurt. It’s very sensible that it should hurt.”

“I don’t like them,” Paul said. He finished off his lobster roll.

“All right,” I said. “Let’s get to it.”

I was parked in a slot behind the Customs House Tower by a sign that said U.S. GOVT. EMPLOYEES ONLY. As we walked to the car Paul was a few steps ahead. He’d gotten taller since I’d had him. And he was starting to fill out. He wore jeans and a dark blue T-shirt that said ADIDAS on it. His shoes were green Nikes with a blue swoosh. The hint of definition showed in his triceps at the back of his arms. And there was, I thought, a small broadening of his back as the
latissimus dorsi
developed. He walked
straighter and there was some spring. He had a lot of color, reddish more than tan, as he was fair-skinned.

“You look good,” I said as we got into the car.

He didn’t say anything. I drove down Atlantic Avenue, across the Charlestown Bridge, and pulled up near a bar off City Square, not far from the Navy Yard. The front of the bar was done in imitation fieldstone. There was a plate glass window to the left of the doorway. In it a neon sign said PABST BLUE RIBBON. Across the window behind the neon was a dirty chintz curtain. Paul and I went in. Bar along the right, tables and chairs to the left. A color TV on a high shelf braced with two-by-fours. The Sox game was on. They were playing Milwaukee. I slid onto a barstool and nodded Paul onto the one next to me. The bartender came down the bar. He had white hair and tattoos on both forearms.

“Kid ain’t supposed to sit at the bar,” he said.

“He’s a midget,” I said, “and he wants a Coke. I’ll have a draft.”

The bartender shrugged and moved down the bar. He poured some Coke from a quart bottle into a glass, drew a small draft beer from the tap, and set them in front of us.

“I don’t care,” he said. “But it’s a state law, you know.”

I put a five-dollar bill on the bar. “Buddy Hartman around,” I said.

“I don’t know him,” the bartender said.

“Sure you do,” I said. “He hangs out here. He hangs out here and he hangs out at Farrell’s on Rutherford Avenue.”

“So?”

“So I want to give him some business.” I put another five on top of the first one without looking at it.
Like I’d seen Bogie do once in a movie. The bartender took the top five, rang it up, brought me the change. He put it on the bar on top of the first five.

“He don’t usually come in here till about three,” he said. “Sleeps late. And he comes in here and has a fried egg sandwich, ya know.” It was two twenty-five.

“We’ll wait,” I said.

“Sure, but the kid can’t sit at the bar. Whyn’t you take that table over there.”

I nodded and Paul and I went to a table in the back of the bar near the door to the washroom. I left the change on the bar. The bartender pocketed it.

Paul paid no attention to the ball game, but he looked at the barroom carefully.

At two fifty Buddy Hartman strolled in, smoking a cigarette and carrying a folded newspaper. He sat on a barstool. The bartender came down the bar and said, “Guy looking for you over there. Says he’s got some business.”

Hartman nodded. He said, “Gimme a fried egg sandwich and a draft, will ya, Bernie?” Then he looked casually over toward me. The cigarette in his mouth drooped and sent smoke up past his left eye. He squinted his left eye against it. Then he recognized me.

He spun off the stool and headed for the door.

I said to Paul, “Come on,” and went out of the barroom after him. Buddy was cutting across the expressway entry ramps, heading for Main Street.

“Watch the traffic,” I said to Paul, and shifted up a gear as we crossed the ramps. Paul stayed behind me. We were both running easily. We were up to five miles a day in Maine, and I knew we’d catch Buddy all right. He was ahead, near the big pseudo-Gothic church, running erratically. He wouldn’t last long.
He didn’t I caught him by the church steps with Paul close behind me. I got hold of his collar and yanked him backward and slammed his face first up against the church wall to the left of the steps. I patted him down quickly. If he had a weapon he had it well concealed.

Buddy was gasping. I let him go. He turned, coughed, and spit. His chest heaved.

“Dynamite shape, Bud,” I said. “Like to see a man keep himself fit.”

Buddy spit again. “Whaddya want?” he said.

“I came over to train with you, Bud. Learn some of your physical conditioning secrets.”

Buddy stuck a cigarette in his mouth and lit it. He inhaled, coughed, inhaled again. “Don’t fuck around with me, man. Whaddya want?”

He was in the angle between the church steps and the church wall. I had him penned so he couldn’t run. His eyes kept moving past me to either side.

“I want to know how you happen to know Mel Giacomin,” I said.

“Who?”

I slapped him across the face with my left hand. The cigarette flew out of his mouth in a flurry of sparks.

He said, “Hey, come on.”

I said, “How do you know Mel Giacomin?”

“I seen him around, you know. I just ran into him around.”

I slapped him with my right hand. His head rocked back against the wall. Buddy said, “Jesus Christ Come on. Stop it”

“How do you know Mel Giacomin?” I said.

“He’s a friend of a guy I know.”

“Who’s the guy?”

Buddy shook his head.

“I’m going to close my fist,” I said.

“I can’t tell you. He’ll kill me,” Buddy said.

I hit him a left hook in the side, under the last rib. He grunted and twisted.

“Him later. Me now,” I said. “Whose friend is he?”

“Gimme a break,” Buddy said.

I feinted another left hook and hit him in the stomach. He started to slide down the wall. I caught him and pulled him upright. He looked past me, but there was no one there. If anyone saw us, they were not getting involved.

“Who?”

“Cotton.”

“Harry Cotton?”

Buddy nodded.

“How’s he know Cotton?” I said.

“I don’t know. Harry just told me he was a friend and wanted a favor. I don’t know nothing else, honest to God.”

“You doing much work for Harry?”

“Some.”

“Torch?”

Buddy shook his head and flinched. “Nothing queer, Spenser, just errands.” He covered his middle with his arms.

“I won’t tell Harry you mentioned his name to me,” I said. “I wouldn’t think you’d want to either.”

“I won’t say nothing,” Buddy said. “If he finds out, he’ll have somebody burn me. Honest to God he will. You know Harry.”

“Yeah. He still got that car lot on Commonwealth?”

Buddy nodded.

I turned and made a come-along gesture to Paul.
We walked down Main Street toward our car. Paul looked back once to see where Buddy was, but I didn’t bother.

In the car I said to Paul, “How do you feel about that scene?”

“It scared me.”

“I don’t blame you. If you’re not used to it, it’s disturbing,” I said. “In fact it’s sort of disturbing even if you are used to it.”

Paul was looking out the window.

“You change your mind,” I said. “You want to stay with Susan for a while till I get this straightened out?”

“No. I want to go with you.”

“Susan wouldn’t mind,” I said.

“Yes, she would,” Paul said.

I didn’t say anything. We went out Rutherford Avenue, across the Prison Point Bridge, and out onto Memorial Drive on the Cambridge side of the river. There were joggers on the riverbank and racing shells on the river, and a rich mix of students and old people walking along the drive. Past the Hyatt Regency I went around the circle and up onto the BU Bridge.

“Where we going?” Paul said.

“To see Harry Cotton,” I said.

“He’s the man Buddy said.”

“Yes. He’s a bad man.”