Текст книги "Potshot"

Автор книги: Robert B. Parker

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 4 (всего у книги 14 страниц)

Chapter 13

I WENT INTO my hotel room very carefully, but Bebe hadn't returned. Maybe romance was dead. My hands were swollen from yesterday's fight. I iced them for awhile, then in the early evening, I went back out to visit Lou Buckman.

Buckman Outfitters was closed. There was a sign on the front door that read I'M AT THE STABLE. The sign was correct. When I drove over there, she was in the corral, washing one of the horses with a hose. I got out of the rental car. Being tough as nails, I did not stagger when I hit the heat.

"Hello," I said.

The horse's lead was tied to a fencepost. He stood placidly, his dark brown coat gleaming, while the water sluiced over him. When I spoke he raised his head and looked at me with thoughtful dark eyes, and then let his head drop again.

"Hi," Lou said.

I sat on the top rail of the fence. I didn't look right. I needed a big hat.

"I talked to The Preacher," I said.

"And punched out two of his men."

"Before that," I said. "I went up to the Dell and talked with him."

"To the Dell?"

"Yep. Preacher says he didn't kill your husband."

"Of course he didn't. He had it done."

"Says he didn't have it done, either," I said.

"Well of course he'd say that."

"I think if he'd done it, or had it done, he'd have let me know," I said.

Lou was scornful.

"Because he's so truthful?"

"Because he's so full of himself. He'd want me to know he could do whatever he pleased and get away with it."

"You know him so well, already?"

"I know people like him," I said. "They'd be inclined to let me know they'd done it and challenge me to do anything about it."

"Well, thank God I don't know anyone like that, and I don't believe it for a minute. Steve stood up to them. First they threatened. Steve wouldn't back down. And they killed him."

"We'll see," I said.

"Well who the hell else would it be," she said.

I shrugged. Lou turned the chestnut horse loose and got another one, a darker chestnut. She hooked the shank to the fence rail and sponged him down with soapy water from a bucket.

"Have they frightened you off?" she said. "Or paid you?"

"If they're paying me," I said, "I just recently bit the hand that feeds me."

"I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said that."

"I agree."

She finished sponging the horse and began to rinse him with the hose.

"It's just that everybody lets me down," she said. "I keep hoping and I keep being disappointed."

There was birdsong in the still heat. No whisper of wind. Only the sound of the water running and, now and then, the exhausted buzz of an especially intrepid insect.

"I spend too much time," she said, "thinking about things."

"The mayor and some people have hired me, too."

"To do what?"

"To sanitize the Dell."

"The Dell? You mean run them out?"

"Something like that."

"What about Steve?"

"If you're right, the tasks may be synergistic."

She laughed, though not very warmly.

"Synergistic," she said. "My God! You don't talk like someone who nearly killed two men this afternoon."

"Clean mind, sound body," I said. "I'm going to leave for awhile."

"Leave?"

"Yes, I… "

"You're running away. You're afraid that The Preacher will get you for this afternoon."

"I'll be back," I said.

"You won't be back," she said. "I don't even blame you. You can't face down the Dell by yourself."

"No," I said, "I can't. I'm going home to recruit some people."

She shook her head.

"I don't believe you," she said.

"Nothing I can do about that," I said.

"I won't pay you any more," she said. "You earned what I've paid you this afternoon. But no more."

"Sure," I said. "While I'm gone, maybe you can count more on the Potshot cops than you think you can."

"About as much," she said, "as I can count on you

Chapter 14

IT WAS MORNING, early. I was drinking coffee with the chief of the Potshot police in an unmarked airconditioned four-door black Ford Explorer, parked outside the bank on Main Street. There was a rifle and a shotgun on the back seat. Between us in the front seat was the inevitable computer rig.

"When I started with the Middlesex DA's office," I said, "there wasn't a cop in the country would have known what the hell that was."

"Modern crime fighting," Walker said.

"You been a cop before?" I said.

"Yep."

"Where?"

"Someplace else."

"So why'd you end up here?"

"I like it here."

"Sort of hot," I said.

"At least you don't have to shovel it," he said.

"Yeah, but it doesn't melt in the spring either."

"You get used to it," Walker said.

"You get used to it," I said.

Walker shrugged and drank some coffee.

"I hear that Roscoe and friends hired you," he said.

"You got somebody undercover at the Rotary Club?" I said.

"Small town," Walker said. "I heard they want you to clean up the Dell."

I didn't say anything.

"What about Steve Buckman?"

"I'm still working on that," I said.

"Two jobs at once," he said. "A real Boston rocket."

I shrugged modestly.

"How you planning to go about that?" Walker said.

"If I were going to try and take out The Preacher and his friends, why would I tell you?"

" 'Cause you might need my help?"

"How much of that should I expect if you're in The Preacher's pocket?"

Walker nodded. His khaki uniform shirt was pressed into sharp military creases. He wore big aviator glasses and a big walnut-handled Colt revolver on a tooled leather belt complete with cartridge loops, each loop attractively set off by a big brass cartridge with a copper-coated tip.

"Me telling you I'm not ain't going to convince you," he said.

"No it ain't," I said.

"I do what I can," he said. "I've got four guys, kids really, like the uniform and the chance to carry a piece. Preacher's got forty, none of them kids. I got to obey the law. Preacher can do what he wants. If I'm going to put him in jail, I need witnesses that will testify."

"Frustrating," I said.

Walker shrugged.

"Why not go someplace else?"

"Like I said, I like it here. You going up against the Dell alone?"

"Am I going to have trouble with you?" I said.

Walker drank some more coffee, and looked out through the tinted windshield at the heat shimmers rising from the asphalt.

"I don't want some kind of goddamned range war here," he said.

"Me either," I said. "Am I going to have trouble with you?"

"Not if you're legal," he said. "Maybe I'm not as crooked or scared as you think I am."

"You bought yourself a little credence yesterday," I said.

"Coulda been phony," he said. "Just trying to find out what you're up to."

"Coulda been," I said. "I'm going out of town for awhile. In case you want to keep an eye on Lou Buckman."

He looked very sharply at me, but he didn't say anything. He simply nodded. I didn't say anything either. According to the time and temperature display outside the bank it was 7:27 A.M. and 105 degrees. We finished our coffee in silence, and I got out of the car. I stood for a moment with the door open. There seemed to be something I should say, but I didn't know what it was. Neither did Walker.

Finally I said, "Good luck."

"You too," he said.

Chapter 15

IT SEEMED THE better part of valor not to take on the Dell by myself. And since I had smacked two Dellsters around in the public street, it seemed that if I stuck around I might have to. I had my bag packed. I had said my good-byes, such as they were, to Lou Buckman and Dean Walker. It seemed best not to say good-bye to Bebe Taylor. I had my gun unloaded and packed so I could check it through. If the Dell came for me now I'd have to kick them to death.

I checked out of the hotel. Got in my rental car. Turned up the air-conditioning and headed for the airport. For quite awhile I was on a two-lane highway, and everywhere I looked there was only desert.

A lot of the landscape was cactus and sage and scrub growth that looked brittle and sharp. It was a landscape in which no horse could gallop. It was a landscape through which a horse would pick his way, slowly, weaving in and out through the hostile vegetation. You just couldn't trust the movies.

After my initial foray, I concluded that all in Potshot was not as it seemed. There was something going on with Lou Buckman that I didn't get. There was a lot going on with Dean Walker I didn't get. And there was something about Potshot that I didn't get. More annoying, I didn't even get what it was I didn't get. It was just a sense that in almost all my dealings with almost everyone I'd talked with, there was another story being told that I couldn't hear.

I sort of trusted The Preacher. He appeared to be a vicious thug and I had no reason to think that he wasn't. It was nice to be able to count on somebody.

I finally reached the interstate and turned on. Another hour to the airport and less than five hours home. There was something exultant about being alone on the highway under the high, hot, empty sky two thousand miles from anything familiar, heading straight for the horizon. And the fact that Susan was eventually beyond that horizon made the feeling tangible as it flickered along the nerve tracks. There were few words in the language better than "going home." Home, of course, was Susan Silverman. It was good that she was in Boston, because I liked it there. But if she moved to Indianapolis, then that would be home. I could make a living. There was crime everywhere.

Chapter 16

SUSAN AND I had but recently engaged in some highly inventive home-from-the-hills-is-the-hunter activity, and were now lying together on our backs on top of the covers while the sweat dried on our naked bodies. Pearl the Wonder Dog was curled up at the foot of the bed in a state of mild irritation that she wasn't able to weasel her way in between us.

"So you turned tail and ran," Susan said. "I didn't know you were that sensible."

"The grave's a fine and private place," I said, "but none I think do there embrace."

"Do you mean that you didn't want to get killed," Susan said, "because if you did you couldn't boff me?"

"Exactly," I said.

"Whatever your reasons," Susan said, "I'm glad you're home."

"Me too."

"What are you going to do?"

"About Potshot?"

"Un-huh."

Susan had her head on my shoulder. My arm was around her.

"This is exactly the right moment," I said, "for me to light two cigarettes and hand one to you."

"Makes you regret not smoking for a moment," Susan said.

"Only for a moment," I said.

"So what's going to happen in Potshot?"

"I'll go back out," I said. "Push some more."

"Because you said you would."

"Well, yeah. And because if I don't do what I say I'll do, in a little while I'll be out of business. Because doing what I say I'll do is pretty much what I have to sell."

"I know."

"And, I don't like to get chased away."

"I know."

"Of course," I said, "I could give it up, and stand at stud."

"I wouldn't," Susan said.

"Just a thought," I said.

"Does Mary Lou Whatsis know you've left?"

"Yes."

"Does she know you're coming back?"

"I told her I would. But I'm not sure she believed me."

"The more fool she," Susan said. "Should we get up and prepare a postcoital supper?"

At the foot of the bed Pearl raised her head and looked at us.

"Which word do you think she understands?" I said. "Postcoital? Or supper?"

"She understands everything," Susan said.

"Well she can join us," I said.

"Are you ready?"

"Yes."

Neither of us moved.

"Are we going to leap up?" I said.

"Yes," Susan said.

We lay still.

Susan said, "It's time to jump out of this bed."

"Okay."

Neither of us moved.

"You seem to have succeeded primarily in discovering that you don't know what's going on."

"You could say that."

"So why are you home?"

"To show you a good time," I said.

"How sweet," she said. "Is that the only reason?"

"Almost," I said. "I also have to do some recruiting."

"Locally?"

"Some."

"Out of town?"

"Some."

"May I join you?"

"It would be my pleasure," I said.

"I know," Susan said.

She rolled over and put her arms around me vice versa, and we lay still for a few moments.

"What about your patients?" I said.

"It's August," she said. "Shrinks are closed in August."

"Of course," I said.

"But Pearl could be a problem," she said.

"Lee Farrell will take care of her," I said.

"Will he stay with her at home?"

"Yes."

"Will he try on my clothes while we're gone?"

"He might."

"Are we getting up now?" I said.

"Yes," Susan said.

"Here I go." We lay still.

"I'm hungry," Susan said.

"Me too."

"Lucky we're at your house, not mine," she said.

"Unless we were dying for a bowl of Cheerios," I said.

"I think there's Romaine lettuce, too," Susan said.

Neither of us moved. Susan rubbed her cheek against my chest. Pearl made a grumbling kind of sigh. She might have been snoring. There were no lights on in the room, and the lavender light had faded to black in the evening sky so that it was hard to see Susan. I propped myself up a little with the arm I had around her and turned on the bedside light and looked her.

"Are you staring at my nude bod?" Susan said.

"I certainly am," I said.

"Jewesses, no matter how seductive and comely, do not like to be seen naked in a bright light."

"I'll squint," I said.

We were quiet for a minute.

"How's it looking?" she said.

"I could tell you better if I weren't squinting."

"Well, just to answer my question, open wide."

I studied her for a moment.

"It appears to be everything a body should be," I said. "Including naked."

Susan looked a little embarrassed, as if even the word naked discomfited her.

"I'm cold," she said, and yanked the sheet up over herself. "What's for eats?"

"I could make pasta with clam sauce if I use canned clams," I said.

"That sounds nice."

"I could add peas, if I use frozen ones."

"I'll get up if you will," she said.

I took in a deep breath and slid my arm out from under her shoulders and swung my legs off the bed and stood up. Susan looked at me with only her eyes and forehead showing above the sheet. Then she giggled and pulled the sheet away and flashed me.

"Something to think about,", she said, "while you're cooking."

Chapter 17

I BEGAN WITH Hawk.

The Harbor Health Club began as a boxer's gym on the waterfront, before the waterfront went upscale. It was owned by Henry Cimoli who had once been a lightweight fighter. Hawk and I used to work out there a long time ago when we were fighters, before we too went upscale. There had been a ring with spit buckets, and heavy bags, and speed bags and an assortment of those little skeeter bags, which I had trouble hitting, and on which Hawk could play Ravel's Bolero.

Now the waterfront was chic and the Harbor Health Club was even chic-er. Henry strolled around in white satin sweats, with Henry embroidered in gold above the pocket, and asked people if they were having a good workout. The clientele had every imaginable piece of workout gear. Designer sweatbands, wristbands, fingerless leather gloves, brilliant leotards and the absolute latest in high-tech sneakers. Most of the people who came in were so fashionable that they didn't sweat. All the exercise equipment was gleaming with chrome and flashing lights. Ergonomically engineered.

But as a nod, perhaps to his youth, and maybe Hawk's and mine, Henry, in a small side room with a window on the harbor, kept one heavy bag, one speed bag, and one skeeter bag. No ring, no spit buckets.

Hawk wasn't in the boxing room. He was doing dips in the main part of the gym. People looked at him covertly. Hawk would notice this. He noticed everything. But he didn't show that he noticed. He never showed anything, except maybe a slightly pleasant menace.

"I got us a gig out west in the desert," I said.

"That usually means I get no money," Hawk said. "And somebody shoots at me, but I got to travel a long way."

He did the dips very strictly, going way down and back up to full extension slowly. The muscles moved ominously under his dark skin.

"Not this one," I said. "I have a big budget and I'm paying handsomely."

"But somebody is still likely to shoot at me," Hawk said.

The dips seemed effortless. His voice showed no strain. But there was a glisten of sweat on his face and arms.

"Well, yeah," I said.

"So what we got to do?"

"Find out who killed a guy. Rescue the town from a big gang of mountain trash."

Henry Cimoli wandered by. He seemed to be bursting, in a small way, out of his form-fitting white health-club suit.

"You guys want to go into the back room," Henry said. "You're scaring my clients."

"Clients?" I said.

"Gyms have customers," Henry said. "Health clubs have clients."

"Health clubs run by little guys dressed like Liberace?" Hawk said, moving his body up and down on the bars.

"I try to maintain a certain image," Henry said.

"You too little to have an image," Hawk said.

"You keep ragging on me," Henry said, "and I'll up your membership fees."

"Henry," I said. "We come here free."

"Well if the Deadly Night Shade here don't watch his mouth it'll be twice that."

"Racial invective," Hawk said.

"Whatever the fuck that is," Henry said.

A middle-aged woman sitting at a chest press machine in pink knit sweats called to Henry. He hustled over.

"Yes, m'am," he said, all smiles. "How can we help you?"

"Is this too much weight?" the woman said. Henry checked the air-pressure dial.

"How many reps can you do at this resistance?" Henry said.

"Oh, I can do a lot, but I don't want to get big and muscley."

Henry let his glance slide over at us for a moment. "That weight is fine, ma'am. Most women don't bulk up. They don't have the biology for it."

"Really?"

Henry nodded thoughtfully.

"Yes, m' am. Testosterone and all that."

"Really."

"You can use that weight, maybe even add some."

"Thank you," the woman said and began pumping the iron. Henry strolled back over to us.

"How much weight she have on there?" Hawk said.

"Ten pounds," Henry said.

His face remained perfectly blank. Behind us the woman did five reps and stopped and drank from her water bottle and toweled off the machine and moved on.

"Five reps," I said, "with ten pounds. You charge her for this."

"Does her no harm," Henry said.

The woman seemed to be confused by the lat pull setup and Henry hustled over to help her.

"This gang of mountain trash," Hawk said. "How big we talking?"

"Maybe thirty or forty?"

"Well at least be a fair fight," Hawk said. "You invite anybody else?"

"Not yet."

"Good to be first," Hawk said.

Chapter 18

GINO FISH DID business out of a storefront located in the basement of an old brownstone on Tremont Street in the South End, a couple of blocks from the ballet. The door was down three steps and next to a plateglass window on which was written in black letters DEVELOPMENT ASSOCIATES OF BOSTON.

I went in.

The walls were antique brick, unadorned. At a desk, with dark curly hair and wearing an earring, was a very good-looking young man. He was talking on the phone as I came in. Behind him a maroon velvet curtain separated the back room from the front.

I said, "Hello Stan."

When he looked up and saw me, he put his hand over the mouthpiece and spoke to me.

"Spenser, what a treat, you decide to jump the fence at last?"

"If I was going to, I'd jump it with you, cutie. Is Gino in?"

"Gino's almost always in," Stan said. "Vinnie's with him."

He nodded me toward the back room and went back to his phone conversation, which had something to do with seeing Tina Turner at The Fleet Center.

There were more brick walls in the back room, also unadorned. Gino was in the middle of the room, under a hanging lamp with a Tiffany shade, seated at the round antique table that he used as a desk, reading a brochure for Relais Chateaux worldwide. Vinnie was to his left, chair tilted against the wall, listening to his Walkman on his headphones.

I said, "Hello Gino."

Gino put a finger into the page he was reading, closed the catalog, and slowly looked up at me. He was bald, slim and leathery.

"Were you flirting with Stanley?" he said.

"Stanley was flirting with me," I said. "I'm in another program."

Vinnie saw me and nodded slightly and kept listening to his earphones.

"And what brings you to me," Gino said.

"I need to borrow Vinnie," I said.

"Really? Where's Hawk?"

"I've recruited him, too."

"For what?"

"I have a job out west that takes six or seven men. I wanted Vinnie to be one of them."

"A shooting job, I assume," Gino said.

He had long fingers, which he laced together and rested his chin on.

"That's why I want Vinnie," I said.

"I didn't imagine you were looking for a dog walker. Have you spoken to Vinnie about this?"

"No. I wanted to clear it with you first."

"Very respectful," Gino said. "And, if I may say so, very unlike you."

I grinned.

"Vinnie wouldn't do it without your say-so, anyway," I said.

Gino nodded.

"Vinnie," he said. "Are you listening to this?"

Vinnie said, "Sure."

"If I can spare you," Gino said, "do you have an interest?"

"Pay?" Vinnie said.

"Good money," I said.

"I'll listen."

I looked at Gino. Gino nodded.

I said, "Let's take a walk."

Gino said, "You don't wish to talk in front of me?"

"True," I said.

"Why?"

"I know Vinnie never says anything to anybody about anything. So I trust him. I know that you will do what suits your best interest. So I don't trust you."

"Be careful how you talk to me," Gino said gently.

"You asked," I said.

Gino nodded and looked at Vinnie and tipped his head toward the door. Vinnie got up and we went out.

Vinnie is shorter than I am and maybe twenty pounds lighter. He's compact and always moved as if he knew exactly what he was doing. Along with a guy in L.A., Vinnie was the best shooter I'd ever seen, and had the quickest hands.

As we walked up Clarendon Street past Hammersley's Bistro and the new ballet building, Vinnie said to me, "You need to be careful about Gino. Just cause's he's queer don't mean he's not tough."

"I know he's tough," I said.

"Gino's okay," Vinnie said.

"Sure," I said.

I told him about Potshot and the Dell and Preacher. Vinnie didn't interrupt. When I was through he said, "Who else's in it?"

"Hawk," I said.

"And you."

"Yeah."

"I come in, that's three."

"Un-huh."

"Who else you going for?"

"People you don't know."

"Out of town," Vinnie said.

It wasn't a question. He would know anybody in town.

"Yes," I said. "You in?"

"Sure," Vinnie said.