Текст книги "Pastime"

Автор книги: Robert B. Parker

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CHAPTER 30

WHATEVER happened to that Harvard woman you used to date?" Susan said.

"Daisy or Cindy?" Hawk said. "They both from Harvard."

"Well, tell me about both of them," Susan said. "I didn't realize you had this passion for intellectuals."

"I'se here with you, missy."

"True," Susan said. "Which one was Daisy?"

I probed the sliced turkey with my fork. It was densely blanketed with a dark gravy.

"Daisy is the redhead, taught black studies." Hawk's face was without expression. Susan raised her eyebrows.

"Yeah," Hawk said. "This a while ago. Everybody teaching black studies.

Red-haired broad with freckles, grew up in Great Neck, Long Island. Only black people she ever saw were from the Long Island Expressway driving through Jamaica."

"I assume her emphasis tended toward the more theoretical aspects of the black experience," Susan said.

I ate some turkey. It was pretty tender, but the gravy was hard to chew.

"She'd read Invisible Man six times," Hawk said. "Everything Angela Davis ever wrote. Told me she ashamed of being white. Told me she thought maybe she black in another life."

I tried some mashed potatoes. They were chewy, too.

"An African princess perhaps?" I said. It came out muffled because I was still gnawing on the mashed potatoes.

"Amazing you should guess that," Hawk said.

"Funny, isn't it," I said-and paused and tried to swallow the potato, and succeeded on the second try-"how people almost never seem to have been four-dollar whores in a Cape Town crib in another life."

"Anyway, me and Daisy used to go to The Harvest for dinner," Hawk said.

"The Harvest?" Susan said.

"Un huh," Hawk said.

I put a forkful of lukewarm succotash in my mouth, chewed it aggressively and swallowed it, hoping to tamp down the potatoes a bit.

"My God," Susan said. "The thought of you at The Harvest."

"Un huh," Hawk said.

"People in The Harvest talk about Proust," Susan said. "And Kierkegaard."

"Daisy talk about my elemental earthiness," Hawk said.

"And they talk about whether they have a date for Saturday night," Susan said. "And sometimes they discuss your sign."

"You been going there without me?" I said.

"Certainly. While you're out waltzing through the woods with your faithful dog, I'm at the bar in The Harvest, wearing a beret, reading Paris-Match, sipping white wine, and smoking imported cigarettes with my hand turned the wrong way."

"Waiting for Mister Right?" I said.

"Yes. In a seersucker jacket."

"Mister Right don't wear no seersucker jacket," Hawk said.

"Sandals?" Susan said.

Hawk shook his head.

"Chinos and Bass Weejuns?"

"Nope."

"Does he wear his sweater draped over his shoulder like a shawl?"

"Positively not," Hawk said.

"He wears blue blazers with brass buttons," I said. "And has a nose that's encountered adversity."

"And an eighteen-inch neck?" Susan said.

"That's the guy," I said.

"Yes, it is," Susan said.

"Other woman was Cindy Astor," Hawk said. "Taught at the Kennedy School.Only female full professor they had when I was with her. Specialized in LowCountry politics. Had a law degree, a master's in English, a Ph.D. in Dutch history. Used to work for the StateDepartment, spent some time at the American Embassy in Brussels. Smart."

I worked on the turkey with gravy some more. In a little paper cup next to it was some pink applesauce-maybe.

"Smarter than you?" Susan said.

"No."

"And did you and she dine at The Harvest?"

Hawk shook his head.

"Her place mostly. Sometimes we'd go to the Harvard Faculty Club, get some boiled food."

"Were you impressed with the Harvard Faculty Club?" Susan said.

I knew she knew that Hawk was never impressed with anything, and I knew how much she was enjoying the image of Hawk eating haddock and boiled potatoes among the icons of Harvard intellection.

"Man asked me once what I did for a living," Hawk said. His voice sank into a perfect mimic of the upper-class Yankee honk.

" `What exactly is it you do, sir?' man say to me. I say, `I'm in security and enforcement, my good man.' And the man say to me `How fascinating.' And

I say, `More fascinating if you the enforcer than if you the enforcee.' And he look at me sort of strange and say, `Yes, yes, certainly,' and he hustle off to the bar, order a double Manhattan. Two cherries.

I ate the dessert. It might have been vanilla pudding.

"But you weren't in love with these women?"

"No."

"Think you'll ever fall in love?"

"Probably not," Hawk said.

"You might," Susan said.

"Maybe I can't," Hawk said.

My eyes were heavy and I leaned back against the pillow. I heard Susan say, "I hadn't thought of that." And then I was asleep.

CHAPTER 31

PEARL was hurrying around my apartment, sniffing everything, including RichBeaumont and Patty Giacomin, which neither of them liked much.

"Can you get Pearl to settle down?" Paul said.

"I could speak to her, but she'd continue to do what she wants, and I'd look ineffectual. My approach is to endorse everything she does."

Susan said, "Come here, Pearl." And Pearl went over to her, and Susan gave her a kiss on the mouth, and Pearl wagged her tail, and lapped Susan's face, and turned and went back and sniffed at Patty.

"Isn't that cute," I said.

"Never mind about the damn dog," Beaumont said. "We got a problem here and we need to solve it.

He had helped himself to one of my shirts, which was too big for him, and he hadn't shaved. He looked a little seedier than he had in Stockbridge. He glanced once, uneasily, toward Hawk, leaning on the wall near the front hall entry. Hawk smiled at him cheerily.

"I mean, we can't stay here forever," Beaumont said.

"I thought of that too," I said. "What's your plan?"

"I don't know," Beaumont said. "Can you help us out?"

"He already did that," Paul said.

"Yeah," Beaumont said. "Yeah, sure. I know. I mean, shit, you got yourself shot helping us out. It's not like I don't know that and appreciate it."

"We both do," Patty said. She was sitting beside Beaumont on the couch, holding his hand. "We both appreciate it so much."

"I was you I'd go to the cops," I said.

"Cops?"

"Yeah. You must have enough to trade them for protection."

"Christ-the stuff I got is on the cops. Who we paid, when, how much. I wouldn't last a day."

"I'll put you in touch with cops you can trust," I said.

"And they'll have me guarded by cops they can trust, and so on. Sure. But what if they're wrong, or what if you're wrong?"

"I'm not wrong."

"It's a big world," Beaumont said. "We got money to go anywhere in it. All you got to do is get us out of this city." "How about you, Mom?" Paul said.

Patty shook her head and clutched onto Beaumont's hand.

"You want to go anywhere in the world with him?"

Patty glanced around the room; nobody said anything. She pressed her face against Beaumont's shoulder.

"Sure she does," Beaumont said. "She loves me."

"A crook, Mom? A guy that carries a gun and steals money and is a fugitive from the damned mob?"

Patty sat up straight and rested her clenched fists on her thighs. "It's not so easy for a girl to be alone, Paulie."

Paul said, "You don't go off with a goddamned gangster because it's hard to be alone. If you can't be alone, you can't be anybody. Haven't you ever found that out? To be with somebody first you got to be with you."

"Oh, Paulie, all that psychobabble. I never thought you should have gone to that shrink in the first place."

"And where do you get off calling me a gangster, kid?" Beaumont asked.

"You don't like `gangster'? How about `thief'? That better?"

"I don't have to take that shit," Beaumont said.

"Please," Patty said. "Please. Paulie, I can't make it alone. When your father left me I thought I'd die. I have to be with somebody. Rich loves me. There's nothing wrong with being loved. Rich would stand on his head for me."

"Jesus Christ, Ma," Paul said. "My father leaving you was the best chance you had. You didn't love him. He was a creep. You had a chance and instead you went to another creep, and then another. Get away from this guy, be alone for a while. I'll help you. Find out who you are. You could have a decent guy someday if you got your goddamned head together."

"Who you calling a creep?" Beaumont said. He leaned forward as if he were going to stand. Leaning on the wall, Hawk cleared his throat. Beaumont looked at him and froze, then sank back on the couch.

Patty pounded both fists on her thighs. "Goddamn you! I found a man who loves me. I won't let him go. Not for you and all your highfaluting shrink ideas. You don't know what it's like to be abandoned."

Paul was silent for a moment. No one else spoke. Pearl got up from where she had been sitting near Susan and walked over to sniff at Hawk's pants leg.

"Well, not like I mean," Patty said. "I mean, sure, you had a tough time when you were a kid maybe, but we took care of you. You went to good schools. Now, you turned out fine, see that. How bad a mother could I be?

Look at you. Got a career, got a girlfriend. I must have done something right."

Pearl seemed to have, found out whatever she wanted to find out by sniffing

Hawk's pants leg. She turned and came back across the room and sat down next to me and leaned against my leg. Unerringly she leaned against the bad one. I flinched a little and shifted.

"What I got, Ma," Paul said, "is me. And I didn't get that from you. I got that from him." He nodded toward me.

"Oh, God, it makes me tired to listen to you. It's all words. I don't know what they all mean. I know that Rich loves me. If he goes, I'm going with him. You don't know, none of you do, what it's like being a woman."

"Some of us do," Susan said.

"Yes-and you've got a man," Patty said.

"We have each other," Susan said.

"Well, I've got Rich."

"Happy as a fish with a new bicycle," I said softly.

Paul was silent. He stared at his mother; nobody said anything. Beaumont stirred a little on the couch.

"It's kind of no-class, kid," he said, "to wash the family linen in front of strangers like this, you know?"

Paul paid no attention to him. He was still looking at his mother. She had linked her arm through Beaumont's and was pressing her cheek, defiantly, this time, against his shoulder. She looked back at him unflinchingly. They held the stare, and as they held it Paul began to nod slowly.

"Okay," he said. "That was my last shot. I've been talking to you for two days. You do what you need to do. You are my mother, and I love you. If you need something from me, you know where I am."

Patty got up. "Oh, Paulie," she said and put her arms around him and pressed her face into his chest. She cried quietly, and he held her tight and patted her back, but his gaze over her shoulder was deeply silent and focused on something far down a dwindling perspective.

I looked at Beaumont. "No cops?" I said.

"No cops."

"Does it bother you at all that if you take off I'm going to have to deal with Broz?"

"You could take off, too," Beaumont said. "You need some money, I can pay you for what you did."

I shook my head.

"Then I can't help you," Beaumont said. "I got to take care of my own ass."

"And hers," I said.

"Of course," Beaumont said.

"I'd have to deal with Gerry anyway," I said. I looked at Hawk.

"Where you want to go?" he said to Beaumont.

Beaumont hesitated and looked at me, and then at Hawk. He decided.

"Montreal," he said.

Hawk nodded. "Get your things," he said.

CHAPTER 32

I was in my office on Monday morning, with my office calendar, figuring out how many days were left until baseball season began. The door opened and Vinnie Morris came in and stood aside, and Joe Broz came in, followed by Gerry Broz. I opened the second drawer in my desk, near my right hand where I kept a spare gun. "Broz and Broz," I said. "Double the fun."

Vinnie started to close the door and Joe shook his head. "Wait in the car,

Vinnie," he said. "Joe?" Vinnie said. "In the car, Vinnie. This is family." "I'm not family, Joe?" Broz shook his head again. "No," he said.

"Not quite, Vinnie. Not on this." "I'll be in the corridor," Vinnie said.

Again Broz shook his head. "No, Vinnie-in the car."

Vinnie hesitated with the door half open, his hand on the knob. He was looking at Joe.

"Go, Vinnie. Do it."

Vinnie nodded and went out without looking at me and shut the door behind him. Gerry started to pull up one of my client chairs.

"No," Broz said. "Don't sit. We ain't here to sit."

"Jesus, you got to tell me everything to do. Stand? Sit? In front of this creep?"

"Spenser ain't no creep," Joe said. "One of your many problems, Gerry. You don't think about who you're dealing with."

"So whaddya going to do, explain him to me?"

Joe stared at me. It was almost as if we were friends, which we weren't.

Then he inhaled slowly and turned to look at his son.

"Man gave you a break," Joe said. "He could have dropped you in the woods."

"He knew what would happen to him if he did," Gerry said.

Gerry was a little taller than his father, but softer. He was dressed on the cutting edge with baggy, stone-washed jeans and an oversized black leather jacket with big lapels. Joe wore a dark suit and a gray tweed overcoat with -a black velvet collar. Both were hatless.

"What would have happened?" Joe said.

"You'd have had Vinnie pop him."

Joe nodded without saying anything. I waited. At the moment this had to do with Joe and Gerry.

"And what should I do now?" Joe said.

"Since when do you ask me, Pa? You don't ask me shit. You asking me now?"

Joe nodded.

"Okay-we'll have Vinnie pop him, like you shoulda done a long time ago."

Joe was looking only at Gerry. Gerry's eyes shifted back and forth between

Joe, and, obliquely, me.

"You think he's got to go, Gerry?"

Gerry shifted, glanced again at me, and away again.

"For crissake, Pa, I already told you. Yeah. He's trouble. He's in the way.

We'd have had Beaumont out west if he hadn't been there."

"And you chased him into the woods with four guys besides yourself, and he took you."

` Pa. 11

"With a fucking bullet in him."

"Pa, for crissake. You gotta do this here, in front of him?"

Gerry's face was flushed. And his voice sounded thick.

"And he got away with it," Joe said. His voice was flat, scraped bare of feeling by the effort of saying it.

"Pa." Gerry's breathing was very short. Each exhalation was audible, as if the air was too thin. "Pa, don't."

Joe nodded vigorously.

"I got to, Gerry," he said. "I thought about this for three four days now.

I haven't thought about anything else. I got to."

The flush left Gerry's face. It became suddenly very pale, and his voice pitched up a notch.

"What? You got to what?"

"One of these days I'm going to die and the thing will be yours. The whole fucking thing."

Gerry was frozen, staring at his father. I could have been in Eugene,

Oregon, for all I mattered right then.

"And when you get it you got to be able to take care of it or they'll bite you in two, you unnerstand, like a fucking chum fish, they'll swallow you."

Gerry seemed to lean backwards. He opened his mouth and closed it and opened it again and said, "Vinnie…"

"I wish you was like Vinnie," Joe said. "But you don't take care of this thing by having a guy do it for you. Vinnie can't be tough for you."

"You think I need Vinnie? You think Vinnie has to take care of me? Fuck

Vinnie. I'm sick of Vinnie. Who's your son anyway, for crissake? Fucking

Vinnie? Is he your son? Whyn't you leave the fucking thing to him, he's so great?"

"Because he's not my son," Joe said.

All of us were still. Outside, there was the sound of traffic on Berkeley

Street, dimmed by distance and walls. Inside my office the silence swelled.

Finally Gerry spoke. His voice was small and flat. "What do you want me to do?"

"I want you to deal with him," Joe said and tilted his head toward me.

"I been telling you that," Gerry said. "I been saying that Vinnie-"

"No," Joe said. "Not Vinnie. You. You got to deal with Spenser. You run our thing and there will be people worse to deal with than him. You got to be able to do it, not have it done. You think I started out with Vinnie?"

"You had Phil," Gerry said.

"Before Phil, before anybody, there was me. Me. And after me there's got to be you. Not Vinnie, not four guys from Providence. You."

"You want me to take him out," Gerry said. "You're telling me that right in front of him."

"Right in front," Joe said. "So he knows. So there's no back-shooting and sneaking around. You tell him he's gone and then you take him out."

"Right now?" Gerry's voice was barely audible.

"Now you tell him. You take him out when you're ready to."

"Joe," I said.

They both turned and stared at me as if I'd been eavesdropping.

"He can't," I said. "He's not good enough. You'll get him killed."

Joe was looking sort of up at me with his chin lowered. He shook his head as if there was something buzzing in his ears.

"They'll take everything away from him," Joe said.

"He could find other work," I said.

Joe shook his head.

"I don't want to kill him, Joe," I said.

"You motherfucker," Gerry said. His voice cracked a little as it went up. "You won't kill me. I'll fucking kill you, you fuck."

"Talks good, too," I said to Joe.

"You heard him," Joe said. "Be looking for him. Not Vinnie, not me, Gerry.

You heard him."

"Goddamn it, Joe," I said. "Let him up. He's not good enough."

"You heard him," Joe said and turned on his heel and went out of the room.

Gerry and I looked at each other for a silent pause, then Gerry turned on his heel, just like his poppa, and went out. Nobody shut the door.

I sat for a while and looked at the open door and the empty corridor. I looked at the S W.357 in the open drawer by my right hand. I closed the drawer, got up, and closed the door. Then I went back and sat down and swiveled my chair and looked out the window for a while.

Spenser, rite of passage.

CHAPTER 33

PAUL and I were drinking beer at the counter in my kitchen. It was late.

Pearl was strolling about the apartment with a yellow tennis ball clamped in her jaws. She was working it the way a pitcher chews tobacco. "So that's her," Paul said. "That's my mom." "Yes, it is," I said. "Not exactly June Cleaver." "Nobody is," I said. "Not exactly an adult woman,"

Paul said. "No," I said. "Do you know where Hawk took them?" No. "I wonder if I'll ever hear from her." "Yes," I said. "I think you will." "Because she'll miss her baby boy?" I shrugged. "Because the relationship with

Beaumont won't last and she'll need help and she'll call me." "Yes."

"You think Beaumont loves her?"

"I think he has some kind of feeling for her," I said. "But love is not usually an issue for guys like Beaumont."

"She's crazy about him."

"Maybe."

"Or she needs him, or someone like him."

Pearl came by and nudged my arm. I tried to ignore her. I didn't want to play ball right now. She nudged again and made a low sound.

"Always a loser," Paul said. "From my father on. Always some flashy second-rate jerk. Like she's not good enough for a decent guy and she knows it, or chooses these guys to punish herself for being… whatever she is: sexual, irresponsible, a bad wife, a bad mother, a bad girl instead of the boy her father wanted? How the fuck do I know? Sometimes I think I've talked too long with the shrinks."

"Saved your life at one point," I said.

"Sure," Paul said. He drank some beer from the bottle. His elbows were on the counter and he had to dip his neck to get enough tilt to the bottle.

Pearl made another low sound and nudged my arm again. I patted her head and she shied away, hoping to lure me into a grab for the ball. I was too smart for her. I drank a little beer instead.

"Well, we found her," Paul said.

"Yes."

"I needed to find her."

"I know."

"I won't have to find her again."

Pearl stood close to my knee and dropped the tennis ball suggestively and looked at me with her head canted to the right.

The ball bounced twice and lay still on the floor. I paid no heed.

"She has no control," Paul said. He bounced his clenched fist gently on the counter top. "She has never taken control of her life-Who are you? I'm the woman in that man's life-Jesus Christ!"

"She needs to be alone for a while," I said.

"Of course she does," Paul said. "You think she ever will be?"

"Not by choice," I said.

"She doesn't do anything by choice," Paul said.

"You're not like her," I said.

"Christ what a gene pool, though, her and old Mel, the paterfamilias."

"You're not like your father either," I said.

We were quiet. Pearl had picked up the ball again and was mouthing it at me. Paul got off the stool and got two more beers out of the refrigerator and opened them and handed me one.

"Why don't you and Susan get married?" Paul said.

"I'm not sure," I said. "It's probably in the area of if it's not broke, don't fix it."

"You love her."

"Absolutely."

"You're so sure," Paul said.

"Like I know I'm alive," I said.

"I'm not sure everyone is like you," Paul said.

"Probably just as well," I said. "But…" I shrugged. "I don't know. I don't know if I really love Paige."

I nodded.

"You don't know either, do you?" Paul said.

"If you really love Paige? No, I don't."

"No advice?"

"None."

"It helped, you know, finding my mother," Paul said.

"I know."

"Metaphorically, as well as really," he said.

"I know."

Pearl had the ball again and nudged my arm and murmured at me. I made a lightning move for the ball, and she moved her head half an inch and I missed. She growled and wagged her tail. I grabbed again. She moved her head again. If I'd had her reflexes I'd have beaten Joe Walcott… and my nose would be straight. On the third try I grabbed her collar and held her while I pried the ball loose. Then I fired it into the living room where it ricocheted around with Pearl in lickety-split pursuit, her claws scrabbling on the hardwood floors. She got it and brought it back and nudged my arm and made a low sound.

"You needed to find your mother, and you did and you got the chance to look straight at her and now you know what she's like," I said. "That's prog ress.

"The truth will set you free," Paul said. His voice was angry.

"Not necessarily," I said. "But pretend sure as hell doesn't do it."

Paul turned and looked at me for a minute andthen raised his bottle and drank and put it back down on the counter top and grinned.

"Malt does more than Milton can," he said, "to justify God's ways to man."

Pearl nudged my arm again. I grabbed at the ball. And missed.