Текст книги "Hugger Mugger"

Автор книги: Robert B. Parker

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THIRTY-ONE

I HAD BREAKFAST with Dr. Larry Klein at the hospital cafeteria at six in the morning.

"I'm sorry to be so early," he said when I sat down, "but I have rounds at six-thirty and patients all day."

"I don't mind," I said. "Maybe I'll catch a worm."

Klein was older than I was expecting. He was smallish and wiry and looked like he might have been the off guard at a small college who got by on his set shot. I had juice, coffee, and a corn muffin. Klein was eating two frosted sweet rolls that would have sickened a coyote.

"You represent Dolly Hartman?" he said.

"Yes."

"I like Dolly," he said.

He put most of a pat of butter on one of his sweet rolls.

"Me too," I said. "Were you her physician as well as Walter Clive's?"

"Yes."

"Did Walter Clive undergo DNA testing?"

Klein sat back a little and looked at me. Around me, in the small cafeteria, nurses and patients and bleary-eyed interns were shuffling along the food line, loading up on stuff that would challenge the vascular system of a Kenyan marathoner. I could almost hear the arteries clogging all over the room. If Klein heard them he didn't seem worried.

"Why do you ask?" Klein said.

"I'd heard he was trying to establish a question of paternity."

Klein ate some of his sweet roll, and chewed thoughtfully, and drank some coffee and wiped his mouth on his napkin.

"I'm thinking about ethics," he said.

"Always nice to find someone who does," I said.

"If I may ask," Klein said, "what is the, ah, thrust of your question?"

"Dolly Hartman says that Jason is Walter's son. I thought if it was true, it might help me to find out who killed Walter."

"I don't see how."

"Well, with all due respect, Doctor, you probably don't have to see how. But in the murder of a wealthy person, it's good to eliminate all the heirs."

Klein nodded. He buttered his second sweet roll.

"Yes, I can see how it would help. Is Jason mentioned in Walter's will?"

"Apparently not," I said.

Klein swallowed some sweet roll and drank the remainder of his coffee and looked at his watch.

"I'm going to get some more coffee," he said. "Care for any?"

"This is fine," I said.

Klein got up and went to the counter. I looked around at the room, which was painted with some sort of horse-country scene of riders in red coats, and dogs and rolling countryside. Klein came back with more coffee and sat down. I smiled at him. Friendly as a guy selling siding. He drank some coffee and set the cup down and looked at me. I waited.

"They were father and son," Klein said.

"Who knows that?"

"Me."

"You haven't told anyone?"

"I told Walter. No one else has asked until you."

"You didn't tell Dolly? Or her kid?"

"I was, to tell you the truth, uncertain as to what my responsibility was. I have worried at it every day until now. In a way I'm glad you showed up."

"Was Clive secretive about the test?" I said.

"Very. He took it under a pseudonym."

"And you've told no one."

"No. Why?"

"Christ, I don't know," I said. "I barely know what to ask, let alone what the answers mean."

Klein smiled. "Rather like the practice of medicine," he said.

"I don't want to hear that," I said.

"Well, it's not always true," he said.

"When the time comes, I will tell Dolly and Jason about the DNA results," I said. "But in the meantime I think we should shut up about it."

"Fine with me," Klein said. "Even in death, a patient has the right to privacy. But why do you care?"

"I'm looking for a guy who murdered someone. Anything that I know that he doesn't know is to my benefit."

Klein swallowed some more coffee. "And if the murder had something to do with the inheritance, this information might be dangerous."

"To someone," I said.

"Maybe even to him who holds it," Klein said.

"Pretty smart for an internist," I said.

"Occasionally. Mostly I'm just trying to shag the nurses."

"Be my approach," I said.

Klein looked at his watch again. "Time for rounds," he said. "If I can help, I will. I liked Walter Clive."

THIRTY-TWO

PUD POTTER'S APARTMENT was down a side street off the square, past a sandwich shop and a place that sold baseball cards and used CDs. Upstairs, in the back, with a nice view of the railroad tracks. In the little front hall, I had to step over a narrow mattress on the floor. Beyond it there was just a bedroom, kitchenette, and bath. A window air conditioner was cranking as hard as it could, but the room wasn't cool. The mattress was bare except for a pillow and a slept-under green spread. The bed in the bedroom was unmade, but at least there were sheets. The walls were painted beige. The woodwork was painted brown. There were dishes in the sink in the kitchenette, and a couple of damp-looking towels littered the bathroom floor. Pud and Cord sat on the unmade bed while we talked. I leaned against the wall. They hadn't been awake long.

"Hard times," I said.

"Pathetic, is what it is," Pud said.

He wore a sleeveless undershirt and jeans. He had weight lifters' arms and a boozer's gut. Cord sat next to him in a pair of tennis shorts and no shirt.

"Things moved pretty swiftly," Cord said. "Take us a little time to get our feet under us."

"And do fucking what?" Pud said.

"Get on with our lives," Cord said.

"Neither one of us knows how to do shit," Pud said. "All we did was service the women, and you weren't even any good at that."

"I don't know what you're talking about," Cord said.

"You think he don't know?" Pud said. "He knows. Don't you know?"

I said, "Sure."

"I ever have any trouble with you?" Pud said.

"No, never," I said. "We were fooling around once at a party at the Clive place. But no trouble."

Pud nodded.

"I drink too much," he said. "Makes it hard to remember sometimes. I know I can be a damn fool."

"Lot of that going around," I said.

"What do you know?" Cord said.

"About what?"

"About me."

Somehow the air conditioner had succeeded in making the room clammy but not cool.

"I know you are gay. I know you prefer boys to men. I know your wife was working truck stops."

Cord looked at the floor.

"See," Pud said. "I told you he knew."

Cord shook his head slightly, still looking down.

"What's the thing about truck stops?" Pud said.

"Cord can tell you," I said.

"I don't know anything about it," Cord said.

He sat motionless. His voice was very small.

"She'd have made sure you knew," I said.

"Knew what?" Pud said.

Cord began to cry softly. Pud stared at him and then at me.

"Who said what? What's the matter?"

Cord continued to cry quietly. Pud put one arm around his shoulder.

"Come on," he said, "come on now, Cord."

Cord turned his face in against Pud's shoulder and sobbed. Pud's face reddened and his body stiffened, but he kept his arm where it was. He didn't look at me.

"What's going to happen to us?" Cord mumbled against Pud's shoulder.

"We're gonna be fine," Pud said. "We just need a little time to get our feet under us, you know. We're all right. We'll meet somebody else. We'll be all right."

I waited.

"Cord's real sensitive," Pud said. "They're like that."

The room was too small. The air was too close. The emotions were too raw. I felt claustrophobic.

"I'll buy breakfast," I said.

Pud nodded.

"Some coffee," he said. "Coffee'll make us feel better."

"You take a shower," he said to Cord, "and get dressed. We'll meet you at Finney's."

He looked at me.

"Joint downstairs," he said. "They got a couple booths."

He patted Cord's shoulder once and stood up and led me out of the apartment. Cord was still sitting on the bed sniffling.

There were in fact two booths in Finney's sandwich shop. We sat in the second one. It was against the back wall, opposite the counter, where a man and a woman were eating scrambled eggs and grits, and a grill man was busy at his trade. The young woman who worked the counter had a bright blond helmet of big hair. She also worked the booths. When she came over, with her hair and her order pad, Pud requested orange juice, ham, eggs over easy, grits, toast, and coffee. I settled for coffee.

"Poor bastard," Pud said.

"Cord?"

"Yeah. I mean I knew, we all knew, that he was a chicken fucker. Walt had to bail his ass out a couple times. And we all figured he wasn't fucking Stonie."

The waitress brought Pud's juice, and coffee for both of us.

"I mean he's queer as a square donut."

"Stonie knew it too," I said.

"Sure."

"What kept them together?" I said.

Pud drank his orange juice in one long pull, and put the empty glass down.

"How the fuck do I know? I wasn't a pretty good linebacker, I'd a flunked outta Alabama my freshman year. It was like he was okay as long as she was taking care of him."

"So why'd she stop?"

"Taking care of him?"

"Yeah."

Pud did a big shrug.

"Fucking Clive raised some weird daughters," he said.

"Tell me about it."

The waitress came with Pud's breakfast. He ate some of it before he spoke again.

"After Walt died, everything got really funky around there. I don't know exactly what was going on, but the girls were spending a lot of time together."

"Stonie and SueSue?"

"And Penny. They'd go down to the barn office and shut the door, and be in there a long time."

He ate a bite of ham.

"Then one day SueSue gives me a call at the business office and asks me to come down to the barn. I do, and she's there and so is Stonie and Cord, and Penny and that jerkoff Delroy. Penny's sitting behind the desk, and she's as nice as pie, but she tells us we gotta leave. That we are no longer welcome on Clive property."

He ate some egg, pushing it onto his fork with a piece of toast, and drank some coffee, and gestured at the blond counter girl for more coffee.

"And I say, 'For crissake, I'm married to a Clive.' And Penny says, 'That will be taken care of.' And I'm looking at SueSue and she's not looking at me. And I see Cord staring at Stonie, and she's not looking at him either. They're both looking at Penny. And I say, 'SueSue, for crissake, what is this?' And she shakes her head and won't look at me, and Penny says, 'It is too painful for my sisters, I'll talk.' "

The man and woman at the counter finished breakfast, left a dollar tip, and walked out of the shop. The blond waitress scooped the tip.

"So I say, 'I'll be fucked if you're gonna just run me off like a stray dog.' And Penny nods, and she's so nice, she says, 'I have asked Mr. Delroy to see to it.' And Delroy says, 'You have until Monday.' And…" Pud spread his hands and raised his shoulders. "That's it. Monday Delroy and four guys show up at my house and walk me off the property with nothing I couldn't pack in a suitcase."

"Is it your house?"

"Do I own it? No. It's on Clive property. Walt owned it. Same for Cord's place. Walt owned everything."

"You and SueSue having trouble?"

"No more than we ever had."

"When you had trouble, was it about drinking?"

"Yeah. She was right, I drank too much."

"I noticed when we were… fooling around at the party that night, she urged you to fight me."

"Yeah, she liked that. She liked to see me be a tough guy."

"Is that why you acted the part?"

"When I was drunk, sure. I mean, here I am living off her old man in her old man's house. I needed to show her I was worth something."

"She get on you about living off her father?"

"Nope. I think she liked it."

"Control?" I said.

He shrugged.

"I ain't a smart guy," he said.

"She faithful to you?" I said.

"Far as I know."

He was right. He wasn't a smart guy.

"But you fooled around."

"I never cheated on her with anyone she knew," he said. "Just some whores. I treated her with respect."

"That's why you kept the apartment."

"Yeah."

"SueSue knew about that?"

"Not from me," he said.

"SueSue drink a lot?" I said.

"We both liked a cocktail," he said.

"How did Cord react to all this?"

"In the barn office, when we got… fired, he never said a word, just kept staring at Stonie. Like his mother was leaving him."

"And afterwards?"

"After the barn office he just disappeared and the next time I saw him he's knocking at my apartment door. He looked like shit. Said he'd been sleeping in the back room of a queer bar."

"Bath House Bar and Grill," I said.

"Yeah."

"How'd he know where to come?" I said.

"I let him use the place every once in a while."

"For romantic interludes?"

"Whatever."

"You and Cord seem an unlikely pair," I said.

"Yeah. Me pals with a fairy. But you know, we were both in the same boat, coupla pet spaniels."

He ate the last of his breakfast.

THIRTY-THREE

CORD CLEANED UP well. When he joined us, showered, shampooed, clean-shaven, smelling of an understated cologne, and casually dressed, he looked like a successful broker on his day off. He slid into the booth beside me and smiled pleasantly.

"Sorry I sort of slopped over up there. I've been under some stress."

The waitress came over, filled our coffee cups, and asked Cord if he wanted anything to eat.

"You have any bran flakes?" Cord said.

She shook her head.

"Lunch menu," she said. "It's after eleven."

"Oh. All right, could I have some toast please, and a cup of tea?"

"Tea?"

"Yes please, with lemon."

"Sure."

The waitress went off. Cord smiled at us brightly.

"You boys talked things out," he said.

"Relentlessly," I said. "Why do you think your wife suddenly ended your marriage?"

"Must we?" Cord said.

"We must."

"Well, as you've heard Pud suggest, albeit coarsely, our marriage was in some ways a sham. I was able to…" He paused, thinking how to say it. "Service her, I guess. But in more nontraditional ways."

"Okay, you were sexually mismatched," I said. "You both must have known that for a long time."

"Yes. I had hoped when we married that I could make a go of it, but…"

"But you couldn't get it up," Pud said.

Cord looked a little embarrassed. I assumed it was the language rather than the fact.

"Well, you did make a go, after all," I said. "How long have you been married?"

"Eight years."

"Any good ones?"

"Sex aside, yes. Stonie and I were pretty good friends."

"I'm not sure there is a sex aside," I said. "But why now?"

"Why did we break up now?"

"Yes."

The waitress returned with a cup of hot water, a tea bag, and toast with a pat of butter on each slice and a couple of little packets of grape jelly on the side. Pud said yes to more coffee. I said no.

"You got some kinda pie over there?" Pud said.

"Peach," she said.

"I'll have a slice. No sense drinking all this coffee without no pie."

The waitress smiled automatically and went for the pie. Cord dropped the tea bag in his hot water and jiggled it carefully.

"I've asked myself the same question," Cord said. "And it always comes back to Penny."

I waited. He jogged his tea bag, checking the color of the tea. The waitress came back and put a fork and a piece of pie down in front of Pud, put the check down beside it, and left. I picked up the check.

"Penny decided we should go," Cord said.

"Why did she?"

"I have no idea," Cord said. "You, Pud?"

"She never liked either one of us much," Pud said.

"I don't agree," Cord said. "She may have disapproved of you, Pud. All that boozing, and the macho business. But I thought Penny liked me."

"Guess you were wrong," Pud said.

"What do you guys know about Delroy?" I said.

"Pretty good guy," Pud said.

"A fascist bully," Cord said.

"How long has he worked for the Clive family?" I said.

"Before I showed up," Pud said.

"Yes," Cord said. "He was there when Stonie and I got married."

"Always security?"

"More or less," Cord said.

"He'd get me out of the trouble booze got me into,"

Pud said. "And he'd get Cord out of the trouble his dick got him into."

"What kind of trouble?" I said.

Pud ate the last bite of his pie. "Me? Drunk and disorderly. Soliciting sex from an undercover cop-the bitch. DWI. That kind of stuff."

"What did he do to fix it?"

"Hell, I don't know. I just know he'd come and get me from jail or whatever and bring me home and tell me to clean up my act. And I never heard about the charges again."

"You?" I said to Cord.

"He's done the same sort of thing for me," Cord said.

"Young boys?"

"Misunderstandings, really. At least one clear case of entrapment, in Augusta."

"Don't you hate when that happens," I said. "Delroy took care of it?"

"Yes. I assume acting on orders from Walter."

"Bribery?" I said. "Intimidation?"

"Both, I assume."

"And why don't you like him?"

"He was always so superior, so contemptuous. He's a classic homophobe."

"Aw hell, lotta people don't like homos," Pud said. "Don't make them fascists, for crissake."

Cord nibbled on his toast.

"Any other thoughts on Delroy?" I said.

"I think he's been humping Penny," Pud said.

I felt a little shock of anger, as if someone had said something insulting about Susan, though lower-voltage.

"Oh for God sakes, Pud, you always think everyone is humping everyone."

Pud shrugged.

"You out of the apartment for a while?" he said to Cord.

"Yes."

"Good. I gotta go clean up, I got a job interview."

"Where?" Cord said.

"Package delivery service. One of us gotta work."

"Good luck," Cord said.

"I get a job, maybe we can move out of the fucking phone booth we're in now," Pud said.

"I hope so," Cord said.

"See you around," Pud said to me. "Hope you make some progress."

I gave him my card.

"You think of anything," I said, "I'm at the Holiday Inn, right now, or you can call my office in Boston. I check my machine every day."

Pud took the card, gave me a thumbs-up, and left the sandwich shop.

"Did you know he's stopped drinking?" Cord said.

"No."

"Hasn't had a drink since this happened."

"Amazing."

"He's coarse and dreadfully incorrect, and not, I'm afraid, terribly bright," Cord said. "But my God, I don't know what I'd have done without him."

"People are often better sober," I said. "Do you think Delroy is humping Penny?"

"Well, I hadn't really thought about that, but she's known him so long. I mean, what was she when Delroy came upon the scene, maybe fifteen?"

I waited while Cord tried to think about Delroy and Penny. This was hard for Cord. I was pretty sure he'd spent most of his life considering himself, and very little of his life considering anything else.

"I don't know," he said. "The idea seems sort of natural to me. I guess I'd have to say that if it proved so, I wouldn't be surprised by it."

"How about Stonie?" I said. "Do you think she was unfaithful?"

I knew the answer to that, though "unfaithful" didn't seem to quite fully cover truck-stop fellatio. I wanted to know if Cord knew.

"I would have understood," he said, "and I would have forgiven her, given how things were, and of course it's possible that she did things I don't know about. But no, I don't believe she was ever unfaithful."

"Hard to imagine," I said.

THIRTY-FOUR

THE LAMARR TOWN library was a two-and-a-half-block walk through the dense Georgia heat from the sandwich shop. By the time I got there my shirt was stuck to my back. The library was a white clapboard building, one story, with a long porch across the front. The porch roof was supported with some disproportionate white pillars. I went in. It was air-conditioned. I breathed for a while and then found an Atlanta phone book and looked up Security South. It had an address on Piedmont Road in Buckhead. Good neighborhood.

It took me two and a half hours to get to Atlanta and another twenty minutes to locate the Security South address on Piedmont in a small shopping center near the corner of East Paces Ferry Road. It was no cooler in Atlanta. When I got out of the car, the heat felt like it could be cut into squares and used to build a wall.

The little shopping center had a bookstore, a Thai restaurant, a hair salon, a place that sold bed linens and bath accessories, and a storefront office with a sign on the front window that read, "Bella's Business Services." The more I looked, the more I didn't see Security South. My best bet seemed to be Bella's, so I went in.

The room was cool and small and empty except for a switchboard, a few office machines, two file cabinets, a desk, a chair, and a woman. The woman was in the chair behind the desk. She was black, with very short hair and good shoulders.

"Bella?" I said.

"Denise," she said. "I bought the place from Bella."

"I'm looking for an outfit called Security South," I said. "Which is listed at this address but does not seem to be here."

"Right here," Denise said.

She was wearing a maroon linen dress with no sleeves and her arms were strong-looking.

"Here?" I said.

"Yes, sir. If you'd like to leave a message, I can have Mr. Delroy call you back."

"This is a mail drop," I said.

"And a phone service. We also do billing."

"Ah hah," I said.

"Ah hah?"

"Detectives say that when we come across a clue."

"Are you a detective?"

"I was beginning to wonder," I said. "I don't suppose you could tell me who their clients are."

"No, sir, I'm sorry," Denise said. "But you can see why we'd have to remain confidential about our customers."

"Sure," I said.

"You really a detective?" she said.

"Yep."

"Atlanta Police?"

"Boston. Private."

"A private eye?" she said. There was delight in her voice. "From Bahston?"

"Hey, do I make fun of your accent?" I said.

She smiled.

"Why, honey," she said, "we don't have no accent down here."

"Sho' 'nuff," I said.

I looked around the office. In the back, behind Denise's desk, was a window that opened onto a parking area. I could see the nose of what might have been a Honda Prelude parked behind the office. I smiled my aluminum-siding-salesman smile.

"While I'm here," I said, "you want me to check your security? I can give you a nice price on a beautiful system."

"No, thank you," she said. "I feel perfectly safe here."

"I meant an alarm system," I said. "Protect the office at night."

"From what? Somebody want to sneak in here and steal paper clips?"

"Well," I said, "I just assumed you had an alarm system. I could update it for you for cost, just cover the expense of my trip here."

"I don't have an alarm system," she said.

"I could put one in," I said. Always a plugger.

"Well, aren't you a hustler," Denise said.

"Well, you can't blame me for trying to salvage something," I said. "I don't find Security South, I don't get paid."

Denise smiled. She looked great when she smiled.

"No, I don't blame you, but I don't want anything you've got to sell."

"You're not the first woman to make that point," I said.

"I'm sure I'm not," Denise said. "You wish to leave a message for Mr. Delroy, I'll see that he gets it."

"Mr. Delroy?"

"Yessir, the CEO. Do you wish to leave a message for someone else?"

"No," I said. "No message."

"Best I can do," she said.

"Me too," I said, and smiled and opened her front door and wedged my way out into the swelter and thence to my car.