Mortal Stakes (19 page)

”What the hell is the shotgun for, Spenser?“ Doerr said.

”Protection,“ I said. ”You know how it is out in the woods. You might run into a rampaging squirrel or something.“

I could feel Wally Hogg’s presence up there to my left, thirty yards away. I could feel it along the rib cage and in my armpits and behind the knees. He wasn’t moving around. I could hear him if he did; he wasn’t that agile and he wasn’t dressed for it. You can’t sneak around in high-heeled shoes unless you take them off. I listened very hard and didn’t hear him.

”I hear you have been bad-mouthing me, Frankie.“

”What do you mean?“

”I mean you been saying you were going to blow me up.“

Still no sound from Wally. I was about five feet from the shelter of the rock.

”Who told you that?“

I wished I hadn’t thought about Wally taking his shoes off.

”Never mind who told me that. Say it ain’t so, Frankie.“

”Look, shit-for-brains. I didn’t come out here into the freaking woods to talk shit with a shit-for-brains like you.

You got something to say to me or not?“

”You haven’t got the balls, Frankie.“

Doerr’s face was red. ”To blow you up? A shit-forbrains pimple like you? I’ll blow you up anytime I goddamned feel like it.“

”You had the chance yesterday in your office, Frankie, and I took your piece away from you and made you cry.“

Doerr’s voice was getting hoarse. The level of it dropped. ”You got me out here to talk shit at me or you got something to say?“

I was listening with all I had for Wally. So hard I could barely hear what Doerr was saying.

”I got you out here to tell you that you’re a gutless, slobbering freak that couldn’t handle an aggressive camp fire girl without hiring someone to help you.“ I was splitting my concentration, looking at Doerr as hard as I was listening for Wally, and the strain made the sweat run down my face. I almost grunted with the effort.

Doerr’s voice was so hoarse and constricted he could barely talk. ”Don’t you dare talk to me that way,“ he said.

And the oddly quaint phrase squeezed out like dust through a clogged filter.

”You gonna cry again, Frankie? What is it? Did your momma toilet-train you funny? Is that why you’re such a goddamned freak-o?“

Doerr’s face was scarlet and the carotid arteries stood out in his neck. His mouth moved, but nothing came out.

Then he went for his gun. I knew he would sometime.

I brought the pump up level and shot him. The gun flew from his hand and clattered against the shark-fin rock and Doerr went over backwards. I didn’t see him land; I dove for the rock and heard Wally’s first burst of fire spatter the ground behind me. I landed on my right shoulder, rolled over and up on my feet. Wally’s second burst hit the rock and sang off in several directions. I brought the shotgun down over the slope end of the rock where it was about shoulder-high and fanned five rounds into the woods in Wally Hogg’s area as fast as I could pump.

I was back down behind the rock, feeding my extra rounds into the magazine, when I heard him fall. I looked and he came rolling through the brush down the side of the gully and came to a stop at the bottom, face up, the front of him already wet with blood. Leaves and twigs and dirt had stuck to the wetness as he rolled. I looked at Doerr. At ten feet the shotgun charge had taken most of his middle. I looked away.

A thick and sour fluid rose in my throat and I choked it down.

They were both dead. That’s the thing about a shotgun. At close range you don’t have to go around checking pulses after.

I sat down and leaned back against the rock. I hadn’t planned to, and I didn’t want someone to find me there. But I sat down anyway because I had to. My legs had gotten weak.

I was taking deep breaths, yet I didn’t seem to be getting enough oxygen. My body was soaking wet and in the early evening I was feeling cold. I shivered. The sour fluid came back and this time I couldn’t keep it down. I threw up with my head between my knees and the two stiffs paying no attention.

Beautiful.

IT WAS QUARTER TO SEVEN. I had the shotgun back in the duffel bag and the duffel bag back in the trunk of my car and my car on the overpass where the Fellsway meets Route 1. I drove north on 1 toward Smithfield. On the way I stopped and bought a quart of Wild Turkey bourbon. Turning off Route 1

toward Smithfield Center, I twisted the top off, took a mouthful, rinsed my mouth, spit out the window, and drank about four ounces from the bottle. My stomach jumped when the booze hit it, but then it steadied and held. I was coming back.

I drove past the old common, with its white church and meetinghouse, and turned left down Main Street. I’d been up here a year or so back on a case and since then had learned my way around the town pretty well. At least I knew the way to Susan Silverman’s house. She lived 100 yards up from the common in a small weathered shingle Cape with blue window boxes filled with red petunias. Her car was in the driveway.

She was home. It hadn’t occurred to me until now that she might not be.

I walked up the brick path to her front door. On either side of the path were strawberry plants, white blossoms, green fruit, and some occasional flashes of ripe red. A sprinkler arced slowly back and forth. The front door was open and I could hear music which sounded very much like Stan Kenton. ”Artistry in Rhythm.“ Goddamn.

I rang her bell and leaned against the doorjamb, holding my bottle of Wild Turkey by the neck and letting it hang against my thigh. I was very tired. She came to the door.

Every time I saw her I felt the same click in my solar plexus I’d felt the first time I saw her. This time was no different.

She had on faded Levi cutoffs and a dark blue ribbed halter top. She was wearing octagonal horn-rimmed glasses and carried a book in her right hand, her forefinger keeping the place.

I said, ”What are you reading?“

She said, ”Erikson’s biography of Gandhi.“

I said, ”I’ve always liked Leif’s work.“

She looked at the bourbon bottle, four ounces gone, and opened the door. I went in.

”You don’t look good,“ she said.

”You guidance types don’t miss a trick, do you?“

”Would it help if I kissed you?“

”Yeah, but not yet. I been throwing up. I need a shower. Then maybe we could sit down and talk and I’ll drink the Wild Turkey.“

”You know where,“ she said. I put the bourbon down on the coffee table in the living room and headed down the little hall to the bathroom. In the linen closet beside the bathroom was a shaving kit of mine with a toothbrush and other necessaries. I got it out and went into the bathroom. I brushed and showered and rinsed my mouth under the shower and soaped and scrubbed and shampooed and lathered and rinsed and washed for about a half an hour.

Out, out, damned spot.

When I got through, I toweled off and put on some tennis shorts I’d left there and went looking for Susan. The stereo was off, and she was on the back porch with my Wild Turkey, a bucket of ice, a glass, a sliced lemon, and a bottle of bitters.

I sat in a blue wicker armchair and took a long pull from the neck of the bottle.

”Were you bitten by a snake?“ Susan said.

I shook my head. Beyond the screen porch the land sloped down in rough terraces to a stream. On the terraces were shade plants. Coleus, patient Lucy, ajuga, and a lot of vincas. Beyond the stream were trees that thickened into woods.

”Would you like something to eat?“

I shook my head again. ”No,“ I said. ”Thank you.“

”Drinking bourbon instead of beer, and declining a snack. It’s bad, isn’t it?“

I nodded. ”I think so,“ I said.

”Would you like to talk about it?“

”Yeah,“ I said, ”but I don’t quite know what to say.“

I put some ice in the glass, added bitters and a squeeze of lemon, and filled the glass with bourbon. ”You better drink a little,“ I said. ”I’ll be easier to take if you’re a little drunk too.“

She nodded her head. ”Yes, I was thinking that,“ she said. ”I’ll get another glass.“ She did, and I made her a drink.

In front of the house some kids were playing street hockey and their voices drifted back faintly. Birds still sang here and there in the woods, but it was beginning to get dark and the songs were fewer.

”How long ago did you get divorced?“ I asked.

”Five years.“

”Was it bad?“

”Yes.“

”Is it bad now?“

”No. I don’t think about it too much now. I don’t feel bad about myself anymore. And I don’t miss him at all anymore. You have some part in all of that.“

”Mr. Fixit,“ I said. My drink was gone and I made another.

said.

”How does someone who ingests as much as you do get those muscle ridges in his stomach?“ Susan said.

”God chose to make me beautiful instead of good,“ I ”How many sit-ups do you do a week?“

”Around a zillion,“ I said. I stretched my legs out in front of me and slid lower in the chair. It had gotten dark outside and some fireflies showed in the evening. The kids out front had gone in, and all I could hear was the sound of the stream and very faintly the sound of traffic on 128.

”There is a knife blade in the grass,“ I said. ”And a tiger lies just outside the fire.“

”My God, Spenser, that’s bathetic. Either tell me about what hurts or don’t. But for crissake, don’t sit here and quote bad verse at me.“

”Oh damn,“ I said. ”I was just going to swing into Hamlet.“

”You do and I’ll call the cops.“

”Okay,“ I said. ”You’re right. But bathetic? That’s hard, Suze.“

She made herself another drink. We drank. There was no light on the porch, just that which spilled out from the kitchen.

”I killed two guys earlier this evening,“ I said.

”Have you ever done that before?“

”Yeah,“ I said. ”But I set these guys up.“

”You mean you murdered them?“

”No, not exactly. Or… I don’t know. Maybe.“

She was quiet. Her face a pale blur in the semidarkness. She was sitting on the edge of a chaise opposite me. Her knees crossed, her chin on her fist, her elbow on her knee. I drank more bourbon.

”Spenser,“ she said, ”I have known you for only a year or so. But I have known you very intensely. You are a good man. You are perhaps the best man I’ve ever known. If you killed two men, you did it because it had to be done. I know you. I believe that.“

I put my drink on the floor and got up from the chair and stood over her. She raised her face toward me and I put one hand on each side of it and bent over and looked at her close. She had a very strong face, dark and intelligent, full of kinetic suggestion, with faint laugh lines at the corners of her mouth. She was still wearing her glasses, and her big dark eyes looked bigger through the lenses.

”Jesus Christ,“ I said.

She put her hands over mine and we stayed that way for a long time.

Finally she said, ”Sit.“

I sat and she leaned back on the chaise and pulled me down beside her and put my head against her breast. ”Would you like to make love?“ she said.

I was breathing in big low inhales. ”No,“ I said. ”Not now, let’s just lie here and be still.“

Her right arm was around me and she reached up and patted my cheek with her left hand. The stream murmured and after a while I fell asleep.

IT WAS A HOT, windy Tuesday when I finished breakfast with Susan and drove back into Boston. I stopped on the way to look at the papers. The Herald American had it, page one, below the fold: GANGLAND FIGURE GUNNED DOWN. Doerr and Wally Hogg had been found after midnight by two kids who’d slipped in there to neck. State and MDC police had no comment as yet.

Under the expressway, street grit was blowing about in the postcommuter lull as I pulled up and parked in front of Harbor Towers. I went through the routine with the houseman again and went up in the elevator. Bucky Maynard let me in. He was informal in a Boston Red Sox T-shirt stretched over his belly.

”What do you want, Spenser?“ Informal didn’t mean friendly. Lester leaned against the wall by the patio doors with his arms folded across his bare chest. He was wearing dark blue sweat pants and light blue track shoes with dark blue stripes. He blew a huge pink bubble and glared at me around it.

”It’s hard to look tough blowing bubbles, Lester,“ I said. ”You ever think about a pacifier?“

”Ah asked what you want, Spenser.“ Maynard still had his hand on the door.

I handed him the paper. ”Below the fold,“ I said, ”right side.“

He looked at it, read the lead paragraph, and handed it to Lester.

”So?“

”So, maybe your troubles are over.“

”Maybe they are,“ Maynard said.

”So are Marty Rabb’s troubles over too?“

”Troubles?“

”Yeah, maybe you’ll stop sucking on him now that Frank Doerr’s not going to suck on you anymore.“

”Spenser, y’all aren’t making any sense. Ah’m not doing anything to Marty Rabb. Ah don’t know, for a fact, what you are talking of.“

”You’re going to recoup your losses,“ I said. ”You mean, stupid sonovabitch.“

”No reason to stand there shaking your head, Spenser.

Ah’m the one should be offended.“

”Doerr bled Rabb through you, and you never got any blood. Now he’s dead, you want yours.“

”Ah think you ought to leave now, Spenser. You’re becoming abusive.“

Lester popped his bubble gum and tittered. There were newspapers on the coffee table, the Globe and the Herald American. They’d known before I got here, and Maynard had already figured out that he had the money machine now.

”Don’t you want to know why I think you’re stupid?“ I said.

”No, ah don’t.“

”Because you were off the hook, clean. And you won’t take the break.“

”Move out,“ Lester said. ”And just keep in mind, Spenser, if anybody was blackmailing Rabb, they could get him for throwing games just as much as for marrying a whore.“

”Never mind, Lester,“ Maynard said sharply. ”We don’t know anything about it and Spenser is on his way out.“

”I’d be glad to make him go faster, Buck.“

”He’s on his way, Lester. Aren’t you, Spenser?“