Текст книги "Thin Air"

Автор книги: Robert B. Parker

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Chapter 22

Sports Club LA is about the size of Chicopee, Mass., but slicker. There was valet parking, a snack bar, a restaurant, a sports equipment shop, a unisex hair salon, a pool the size of Lake Congamond, a full-sized basketball court, handball courts, a weight-training room with pink equipment exclusively for women, two aerobics studios, a coed weight room big enough to train the World Wrestling Federation, a vast onslaught of Stairmasters, exercycles, Gravitrons and treadmills and, swarming over the equipment, a kaleidoscope of tight buns barely contained by luminous spandex.

The cutie at the front desk said of course she knew Woody, and wasn't he a trip, and took me straight to where he was on the second floor, in the coed gym. I felt as if I were wading in a sea of pulchritude. Like a rhinoceros lumbering through a swarm of butterflies.

"Here's Woody," the cutie said.

Woody was sitting on a bench, at a chest press machine catching his breath. He had on rainbow striped spandex shorts and a spaghetti strap black tank top. His thick blond hair was, perfectly cut, brushed straight back and held in place by a folded black kerchief knotted into a sweat band. He was tanned so evenly that he must have worked on it very carefully. He was lean and muscular. His teeth were expensively capped. And he had a small diamond in his left ear lobe. We shook hands. Woody was wearing fingerless leather workout gloves.

"Lemme just do this third set," he said, "then we can chat."

He lay back on the bench and pressed up 150 pounds ten times, carefully exhaling on each press, doing the exercise slowly and correctly. When he was through he sat back up and checked himself covertly in the mirror while he patted his face with a small towel and wiped the bench off. Then he turned and smiled a big wide perfect smile, crinkling his eyes very slightly. "So, Spense, what's the deal?"

"Your first name Elwood?" I said.

"Yeah, is that a kick? My old man wanted to be a WASP."

"I'm looking for a woman named Angela Richard," I said.

"I'm looking for any woman I can get," Woody grinned widely.

"She was a hooker once," I said. "You used to be her pimp."

"Excuse me?"

"You turned Angela Richard out," I said. "Ten, twelve years ago. She got busted for hooking. You got busted for living off the earnings. Sheriff's department grabbed you."

"You are tripping, dude. I'm a movie producer."

"Easy segue," I said.

"This is ridiculous, you never heard of me? I produced Malibu Madness last year. I did a two-hour, for-cable syndication, Don Ho's Hawaii. It's playing all over the country."

"And the country's better for it," I said. "Sometime after she got out of Pomona Detox, Angela Richard moved back to the Boston area, changed her name to Lisa St. Claire, and married a Boston cop named Frank Belson."

"Man, this is ragtime. I don't know anything about this broad."

"After they'd been married maybe six months, she disappeared. And I'm looking for her."

"You a cop?"

"Sure," I said. "If you're a movie producer. Tell me what you can about Angela."

We were speaking softly. Just a couple of workout buddies gassing, maybe talking a little deal, the project's yours, baby, you run with it, I'll take a little up front for a finder's fee. Woody stood up from the bench.

"I think this conversation is over, pal. I don't have time to talk hip-hop with some wiseass I don't even know."

"Oh, okay, Woody," I said. "I'll talk to these other nice folks."

I turned toward a young woman with a tight body and rippled stomach who was doing dips on a Gravitron.

"Did you know Woody used to be a pimp?" I said.

She looked at me blankly for a moment.

"Hey," Woody said. "Hey, hey, hey."

"Shame he went downhill from there," I said to the young woman. "Now he's a producer."

"I don't know him," the young woman said. "And I'm trying to get a workout here."

Woody took my arm and steered me toward the vestibule between the two aerobics studios, where sleek people cavorted frantically near the front of the class in front of instructors wearing microphones and urging them on. In the back rows of both studios the action was a little more sedate and nowhere near as graceful.

"Lemme tell ya, I don't appreciate you saying things like that about me to people. I'm here to tell you I don't appreciate it one little bit."

A well-known actress with big breasts and thin legs walked by in a candy-striped thong leotard and went into one of the aerobics classes. She got in the back row and jumped around clumsily without too much regard for what the instructor was doing up front.

"Elwood," I said. "You stop pretending you weren't a pimp, and I'll stop telling people you were."

"That's a damn ugly word," he said. "You know that. Pimp is a nasty word. And I'll tell you something, I'm getting damned tired of hearing you use it."

"You knew Angela Richard, did you not?"

"So why don't you buzz out of here right now before I maybe get kind of mad."

I could feel myself smiling. I tried not to. I didn't want to hurt Woody's feelings. But I couldn't help it. I raised my forefinger in a wait-a-minute gesture, walked back into the exercise area, took the pin out of the slot and put it in the lowest spot on the stack. I didn't bother to see how much weight it was. Most machines went up to about 275. I took off my beautifully tailored black silk tweed jacket with the fine cognac windowpane plaid in it that I'd recently ordered from a catalog, and hung it carefully on a curl machine nearby. I adjusted my gun on my right hip so I wouldn't lie on it and got on the bench and took hold of the handles and pushed up the whole stack and let it down and did it nine more times. Breathing carefully, keeping form. Then I got up and readjusted my gun and put my coat back on, and walked back out into the vestibule between the aerobic studios and gave Woody a big friendly smile.

"That doesn't mean anything," Woody said. "I've seen guys can do more than that."

"Sure," I said. "Me too. Let's talk about Angela Richard."

The young woman on the Gravitron got off and walked toward the triceps machine. As she passed the bench press station, she checked the weight and glanced covertly at me, only a flick of a glance at the weight and at me, but it was enough. I knew she was mine.

"I came out here with her," Woody said. "We were in high school together and we took off in the middle of senior year in my uncle's car and came to LA."

"What high school?"

"Haverhill High."

"Haverhill, Mass.?" I said.

"Yeah."

"By golly," I said. "Isn't it a small world, Elwood. You and she going to break into pictures?"

"Yeah." He shrugged. "We were kids. Angela was a real knockout, we figured she'd make it easy and I could manage her. You know? Even then I was a guy could put things together."

"So you lived for a while out in Venice."

Woody looked a little surprised.

"Yeah, and we weren't getting anywhere in legit films at first, so we did some adult films."

"Porn," I said.

"Yeah. Sixteen millimeter stuff, and then we came up with a really clever gig, for Angela to be a strip tease disc jockey."

"You thought that up, Elwood?"

"Yeah. I don't think anyone else is doing it. And we did that for a while all over, conventions, stag parties, that kind of thing. But there's so much competition in the market especially with video, you know? Videocassettes, home movies on video, and half the broads in LA willing to take their clothes off for nothing anyway. So we did a little hooking."

"You and Angela."

"Yeah, of course, who else we talking about? I put it together, she did the johns. We did pretty good till she got busted. She wouldn'ta got busted either, she wasn't drunk. I told her look out for the Vice Guys undercover. I could spot one two blocks away. But she's so drunk she drifted away from me one day and props one. By the time I get there she's in cuffs and yelling at the cop. I told her fifty times, you get busted, shut up, go downtown. Sit in the tank an hour. And I'll bail you out. But she's in the damned wrapper and she's yelling at the cops and I try to get her quieted down and the damned cops up and bust my ass. Put the arm on me. Sheriff's deputies. Those guys are the worst. City guys you can talk to, but the county guys, man-oh-man." Woody shook his head. He looked at the clock above the second-floor balcony where the aerobic machines stood row upon cardiovascular row, ringing the exercise floor below. It was 5:05.

"I need a drink. You want a drink, man?"

"Sure," I said. "Replenish those electrolytes."

We went to the first floor and across the lobby and to the bar at the far end. The bartender was a neat, compact black man with a black and gold paisley vest over a white shirt.

He said, "'Shappening, Woody?"

Woody said, "Hey, Jack. Gimme an Absolut on the rocks with a twist."

I ordered a beer. Now that he had given in, Woody seemed to be caught up in his own story and was pitching it to me.

"They held her overnight and took her out to Pomona in the morning. I tried to get her out, but they told me she didn't want to get out and…"

He spread his hands.

"I never saw her again. Too bad. I miss her, nice babe. Excellent look, you know."

He sipped his vodka.

"Oh-baby-oh-baby," he said. "The first one hits the spot, doesn't it, Spense?"

"Oh-baby," I said. "Why'd you run away?"

"Run away?"

"Yeah, during your senior year at Haverhill High? Why'd you and Angela run away?"

"Haverhill was a drag, you know. I was looking for some action."

"How about Angela?"

"Trouble at home," Woody said.

"You know where her parents are?"

"No."

"Brothers, sisters, cousins?"

"No."

"Know anybody named Vaughn?"

"I know a lot of people. First name or last?"

"I don't know."

"Don't mean shit to me," he said. "Singer named Jimmie Vaughn, Stevie Ray's brother…"

I nodded.

"Not him," I said. "Got any idea where she might have gone, or why?"

"Angela and I traveled together, Duke, a little grass, a little wine, maybe some poontang."

"What else is there?" I said.

Woody shrugged.

"Give her credit, though, she helped me get rolling out here."

He swallowed the rest of his vodka.

"And, let me tell you, Spense, I'm rollin' on the river out here now, rolling on the river."

I put out my hand. Woody took it. My hand was much bigger than his. I squeezed it. Woody tried not to show it, but I knew he was uncomfortable.

"I'm going now," I said. "I hope I don't have to talk with you again…"

I tightened my grip a little more, Woody tried to pull his hand away and couldn't.

"But if I do," I said, "and you call me Spense again, I will kick your ass around Westwood like a beach ball. Capeesh?"

Woody nodded.

"Good. Don't say another word."

I let him go and headed back to the hotel where I could wash my hands.

Chapter 23

Susan was standing in front of the full-length mirror in the hotel room wearing black-and-white striped silk underwear. She had a short black skirt with a long black jacket held up in front of her, and was standing on her toes to simulate high heels as she smoothed the skirt down over her thighs.

"L'Orangerie is dressy," she said.

"Yes."

She turned a little, watching how the jacket fell over the skirt, and then went back to the closet and got a pale gray pants suit and took it to the mirror.

"When we get to the restaurant," I said, "won't it be hard to eat holding your clothes in front of you like that?"

Susan's powers of concentration could set driftwood on fire. She ignored me, and in fact, may not even have heard me.

I got out my address book and thumbed through it and found a number in Los Angeles that I hadn't used in four years. I dialed it.

A voice said, "Hello?" I said,

"Bobby Horse?"

"Who's calling?"

"Your hero, Spenser, from Boston."

Bobby Horse said, "What the fuck do you want?"

"The usual adulation," I said.

"And?"

"And to talk to Mr. del Rio."

"Hold on," Bobby Horse said. In a moment del Rio came on the line.

"Spenser?" he said. He always said my name as if it amused him.

"I need a favor," I said.

"I'll bet you do," del Rio said. "Why should I do you a favor?"

"We were okay on the Jill Joyce thing five years ago."

"Si."

Del Rio did a movie Mexican accent when it pleased him to, though he spoke English without any accent at all. Hawk did some of the same thing. Amos and Andy one minute, Alistair Cooke the next.

"I'm looking for a guy's wife. Anglo woman. She might have disappeared into an Hispanic ghetto in a city north of Boston called Proctor. She might be with a bad guy."

"Si."

"I need somebody speaks Spanish, doesn't mind bad guys."

"And I'm supposed to yell `Ceesco, le's ride'?"

"Not you," I said. "I want to borrow Chollo."

"Ahhhh! "

We were both quiet for a moment.

"Why should Chollo do that?"

"Because you'll tell him to."

"Even I don't tell Chollo to do things, Senor."

Again del Rio paused.

"But I can ask him."

"Do that," I said.

There was silence on the line for a while. Del Rio came back on the line.

"Chollo says he's never been to Boston and would like to see it."

"Like that?" I said.

"Si. Have you seen Jill Joyce?"

"No," I said. "How is your daughter?"

"Amanda is at the Sorbonne," del Rio said. "She speaks fluent French."

"I'm in LA now, when do I look for Chollo?"

"He needs to finish up his current project. When are you going back to Boston?"

"Tomorrow. When will Chollo show up?"

"Soon," del Rio said.

"Does he know where to find me?"

"He'll find you."

"Thank you."

"Adios, amigo," del Rio said and hung up.

Susan had on panty hose by now, and a pair of high-heeled shoes, and a honey-colored silk blouse. She was holding up a caramel-colored skirt and jacket in front of the mirror and looking at it approvingly.

"Remember before panty hose?" I said.

Susan turned a little to one side and looked at the caramel-colored suit from that angle.

"Garter belt and stockings," I said. "That was the look."

Susan nodded to herself and hung the jacket on the back of a chair. She scuffed off her heels and stepped into the skirt. Then she stepped back into her heels and put on the jacket.

"Everything new isn't necessarily better," I said.

Susan shook her head, took off the jacket, took off the honey-colored blouse, put on a gold necklace with some kind of amber stones in it, put the jacket back on, buttoned it, looked in the mirror, patted her hair a little, and turned toward me.

"Okay," she said. "I'm ready to go."

"So quick?" I said.

L'Orangerie had a bouquet of flowers in the center of the room that was about the size of a sequoia. Susan and I had roast chicken and a bottle of Graves.

"So has the trip been successful?" Susan asked me.

"All trips are successful when we go on them together," I said.

"Yes, they are," Susan said and gave me her heartstopping smile. "And did you learn anything that will help you find Lisa?"

"I gathered a lot of information," I said.

"Useful information?"

I shrugged.

"Don't know. You can pretty well guarantee that most of it won't be useful. This case, any case. But you can't usually know it beforehand. I just trawl up everything I can find, see how it works."

Susan carefully cut the skin off her chicken.

"Aren't you the babe that ate more Mexican food the other day than Pancho Villa?" I said.

"This isn't Mexican food," she said.

"Oh," I said. "Of course."

"We cannot spend the rest of our lives together without sex, Angel," he said.

It was the first time he'd brought it up directly. She felt her chest tighten and the sharp jab o =f anxiety in her stomach.

"We cannot spend the rest of our lives together, period!" she said.

She was wearing a plaid shirt and a buckskin skirt with cowboy boots and feeling like a chorus dancer in Oklahoma.

"We have had sex many times."

"I liked to think of it as making love, Luis."

"And you do not wish to make love anymore?"

"I do not love you, Luis. Remember? I don't love you."

"Love does not alter when it alteration finds," he said.

My God, she thought. He must have been preparing for this discussion. He must have looked that up in some quotation manual. She knew it was a line from some famous writer, but she didn't know which one.

"It should," she said. "If you change, your love changes."

"And you have changed?"

"Yes."

"I have not," he said.

He stood over her in black western clothes. She never remembered how tall he was. His childishness, his odd, sadistic vulnerability made him seem smaller to her than he was.

"I cannot, Luis."

"You cannot? Perhaps you will have to."

She shook her head stubbornly, knowing the futility of saying no in her situation but insisting on it, grimly, doggedly.

"I cannot, Luis."

Chapter 24

The morning after Susan and I came back from LA, I drove up to Haverhill, on a bright and charming spring Tuesday, to look for Angela Richard's parents.

I bought some decaf and two Dunkin' Donuts. I thought you got more if you bought the Dunkin's because of the little handles. The donuts made the decaf taste more like coffee and the weather made me feel good. Thinking about the trip to LA with Susan made me feel good, too. I'd found out some things and we'd had a good time. The things I'd found out didn't seem to be getting me any closer to finding Lisa St. Claire/Angela Richard. But I had learned when I was still a cop that if you kept finding things out, eventually you'd find out something useful, which was why I was heading for Haverhill. In my lifetime I'd had little occasion to go to Haverhill. I knew that it was a small city north of Boston on the Merrimack River, east of Proctor. I knew that John Greenleaf Whittier had been born there.

I parked out front of the public library and went in and got hold of the local phone book. There were five Richards listed. Four of them were men. One was simply listed as M. Richard, which usually meant a female. I left the library and got in my car and got out my street map book and did what I do. Three were nobody home. One was a young couple with a ten-month-old baby. M. Richard was it.

I said, "Do you have a daughter named Angela?"

She paused and then said, "Why do you want to know?"

She was a tall, stylish woman in a belted cotton dress. She had short salt-and-pepper hair and a pair of gold-rimmed glasses around her neck on a blue cord.

"I'm a detective," I said. "She's been reported missing.

"I'm not surprised," M. Richard said. "She has been missing much of her life."

"May I come in?" I said.

"Do you have some identification?"

I showed her. A short pale woman in a blue denim shirtwaist appeared behind her. She looked at me with no hint of affection.

"Everything all right, Mimmi?"

M. Richard nodded without speaking while she looked at my license carefully.

Then she said, "He's here asking about Angela."

"That's ancient history, Bub," the pale woman said. She wore her short blonde hair in a tight permanent.

"That may be," I said. "But she's still missing. May I come in?"

I gave them my killer smile.

"We can't help you," the pale woman said. So much for the killer smile.

"It's all right, Marty," M. Richard said. She stepped aside.

"Come in, Mr. Spenser."

It was a big old house with dark woodwork and high ceilings. The oak floors gleamed. The shades throughout were half drawn. To my left was a living room with sheets over the furniture. To the right was some sort of sitting room with heavy furniture and a cold fireplace faced with dark tile. There was a long sloping lawn in front, which set the house back a ways from the street. The walls were thick and there was very little sound inside the house when she closed the door.

We went to the sitting room. Marty kept her eyes fixed on my every movement in case I decided to make a grab for the silverware.

M. Richard said, "Will you have coffee, Mr. Spenser? Or tea? Or a glass of water?"

"No thank you, Mrs. Richard. When is the last time you saw your daughter?"

"Nineteen eighty," she said. "The night before she ran off with the Pontevecchio boy."

Beside her Marty snorted.

"Little Miss Round Heels," Marty said.

"Have you been in touch with her at all during that time?"

M. Richard's mouth was very firm. "No," she said, "I have not."

"How about her father?"

"Mimmi, you don't have to go through this," Marty said.

M. Richard smiled at her gently.

"I'm all right, Marty," she said. "Her father lives or lived in Brunswick, Maine."

"Address?" I said.

"None, merely an RFD number," she said. "He wrote me a letter some years ago. I did not reply. Vaughn ceased to be of any interest to me years before his death."

"Vaughn is his first name?"

"His middle name actually, but he used it. His full name is Lawrence Vaughn Richard."

"Tell me a little about Angela," I said.

"She was a recalcitrant, disobedient child," M. Richard said. "She and her father drove me nearly insane."

"Tell me about it."

"He was a drunk and a womanizer."

"A man," Marty mumbled on the couch beside her. I'd probably wasted the killer smile on Marty.

"And she was his daughter," M. Richard said. "The stress of them drove me to alcohol addiction."

"From which you've recovered?"

"The addiction is lifelong, but I no longer drink."

"AA."

"Yes. It's where I met Marty."

"And how come you've not been in touch with your daughter in all this time?" I said.

"She has not been in touch with me."

"And if she were?"

"I would not respond."

I nodded. The walls of the sitting room were a dark maroon, and dark heavy drapes hung at each window. There was a dark, mostly maroon oriental rug on the floor. Somewhere, perhaps in the draped living room, I could hear a clock ticking.

"All of that is behind me," M. Richard said. "Husband, child, marriage, alcohol, pain. I am a different person now. I live a different life."

I looked at Marty. She looked back at me the way a hammer eyes a nail.

"Did you know your daughter was married?"

"No."

"You ever hear of anyone named Luis Deleon?" I said.

"I have not."

"Lisa St. Claire?"

"No."

"Frank Belson?"

"No."

"Your daughter is also a recovering alcoholic," I said.

"That is no longer a concern of mine."

"Mimmi has no interest in your world any longer," Marty said. "Why don't you just get up and go back to it?"

Marty was very tense, leaning forward slightly over her narrow thighs, as she sat on the couch next to M. Richard.

"I never realized it was mine," I said.

M. Richard rose gracefully to her feet. Her voice was calm.

"I'll show you to the door, Mr. Spenser. Sorry I couldn't be more helpful."

"I am too," I said and gave her my card. "If something helpful should occur, please let me know."

M. Richard put the card on the hall table without looking at it and opened the front door. I went out.

She said, "Goodbye," and closed the door.

As I walked down the walk toward my car parked at the bottom of the sloping lawn, a bluejay swooped down, clamped onto a worm and yanked it from the earth. He flew back up with it still dangling from its beak and headed for a big maple tree at the side of the house. I got in my car. Be a cold day in hell before I gave either one of them a look at my killer smile again.

"Vaughn," I said to the jay. "Son of a gun!"