Five Classic Spenser Mysteries (31 page)

I took the elevator to the third floor and counted numbers to 15. I knocked. There was silence while I assume she peeped out through the little spyglass. Then the door opened on a safety chain and a narrow segment of face and one eye looked out at me. I’d figured on that. That’s why I’d bought the bucket. In the box it was much too big to fit through a safety
chain opening. I held the box up and looked at the small opening.

She said, “Okay, just a minute,” and closed the door. I heard the chain slide off and then the door opened. The Bloomingdale’s wrapper does it every time. Maybe I should rely on that more and on my smile less.

The door opened. She was as described only better looking. And she was busty. So is Dolly Parton. She’d done her hair and face, but hadn’t dressed yet. She wore a long brown robe with white piping and a narrow white belt tied in front. Her feet were bare. Her toenails were painted. It didn’t help much. Never saw a toenail I liked.

“Here you go, ma’am,” I said.

She took the package. “Any message?”

“Not to me, ma’am. Maybe inside. All Mr. Giacomin told me was see that I put it right in your hands.”

“Well, thank you,” she said.

“Okay.” I didn’t move.

She looked at me. “Oh,” she said. “Wait a minute.” She closed the door and was gone maybe a minute and then the door opened and she gave me half a buck. I looked at it sort of glumly.

“Thanks,” I said.

She closed the door without comment and I went on back down to the car. I pulled out of the turnaround in front of the apartment and parked up the road a little so I could see in the rearview mirror. And I waited.

I’d accomplished a couple of things maybe. One, for certain, I knew what she looked like so if she left I could follow; otherwise, I had to wait for old Mel to show up. The second thing, maybe, was she’d call
to thank him for the gift and he’d say he never sent it and that would stir them up and one would go to the other. Or it would make them especially careful and I wouldn’t be able to find him through her. The odds were with me though. And if his wife was right, he was too randy to stay away from her forever.

Over the years I’d found that stirring things up was better than not. When things got into motion I accomplished more. Or I seemed to.

When she came out I almost missed her. I was watching the front door and just caught a glimpse of her as she cruised out from behind the apartment building in a black Buick Regal. I got in behind her, separated by one car as she swung up onto Route 9 and headed west. She had no reason to be looking for a tail and I had no reason to be tricky about it. I stayed a car or two behind her all the way onto 128 North and up Route 93 and onto Route 125 in Andover. Route 125 was harder. It was nearly deserted, running through the Harold Parker State Forest. Staying too close to her might make her notice. I hung a long way back and almost missed her again when she turned off just before Route 114 and went down Chestnut Street in Andover. What saved me was the red light. The car that had been ahead of her was stopped at it, and she wasn’t there. She must have taken the left just before it. I yanked the MG around and accelerated down Chestnut Street. It was a winding back road at this end and the MG did much better time than the Buick. I caught sight of her in about two hundred yards. I slowed and let her pull ahead again. A mile or so farther and she stopped on the right-hand side. I turned right a block behind her and stopped out of sight and got out and walked
back. Her car was there and she was disappearing into a big white house on the right.

I walked down. The house she was parked in front of was a two-family, up and down. The front hall door was unlocked and inside were two other doors. The one on the right obviously led to the downstairs apartment. The one directly ahead to the upstairs. I put my ear against the downstairs door. I could hear a TV set and the sound of a baby crying. That wouldn’t be Giacomin. If she was visiting Giacomin. For all I knew she was here to play Parcheesi with an elderly aunt.

I tried the knob of the upstairs door. It turned but the door didn’t open. Above it was the round key side of a spring bolt. They were easy, if the jamb wasn’t tight. I took a thin plastic shim from my coat pocket and tried it. The jamb wasn’t tight. I popped the bolt back and opened the door. The stairs rose straight up ahead of me to a landing and then they turned right. I went up them. At the top was another door. I put my ear against it. I could hear a radio and the low sound of conversation.

I put my hand on the knob and turned it quietly. The door was not locked. I opened it silently and stepped into a kind of foyer. Ahead was a dining room. To my right a living room through an archway. In the living room Elaine Brooks sat in a red plush armchair leaning forward, talking with a big man with a long nose and small eyes and a droopy mustache.
Elementary, my dear Watson, elementary
.

She didn’t see me, her back was toward me. But he did. He was standing with a drink in his hand while she talked to him, and when I opened the door we looked right at each other. I had never figured the drill on a situation like this. Did I say “Ah, hah” vigorously,
or just stare accusingly. He was quicker than I. He knew just the right thing to say.

He said, “What the hell do you want?”

“Perfect,” I said. “The very phrase.”

Elaine Brooks turned and looked at me. Her eyes widened.

“That’s him, Mel,” she said. “That’s the guy brought the package from you.”

Giacomin was wearing a gold Ban-Lon turtleneck and green polyester pants with no belt loops and one of those little flaps that buttons across in front instead of a belt. On the little finger of his right hand was a silver ring in the form of a snake biting its tail. On the little finger of his left hand was a silver ring with an amethyst set in it. The Ban-Lon shirt was not flattering to his body. He was fat around the middle. He said, “I asked you a question. I want an answer and I want it now.”

I said, “You shouldn’t wear a Ban-Lon shirt like that if you’re going to scare people. It’s a loser. Cary Grant wouldn’t look good in Ban-Lon, you know.”

“What did you bring her a present for? What the hell you doing trying to sneak into my house?”

I noticed he had sucked up his gut a little, but there’s not a lot you can do with beer wings. I said, “My name is Spenser. I know it sounds corny, but I’m a private detective. Your wife hired me to find her son.”

“My ex-wife,” he said. “She offered to screw you yet?”

“No. I was surprised. Most women do at once.” I looked at Elaine Brooks. “Am I starting to show my age, you think? I’m zero for two today.”

Giacomin said, “Listen, Jack, I’ve heard all I’m going to hear from you. Move out.”

I shook my head. “Nope. I need to stay and talk a little about your kid. Let’s start over. Pretend I haven’t snuck in here. Pretend you haven’t yelled at me. Pretend I haven’t been a wise guy. It’s a bad habit, I know, but sometimes I can’t resist.”

“The kid ain’t here. Now get the hell out of here or I’m going to throw you down the stairs.”

“Now I told you, we have to talk. I am very stubborn. Maybe I’ve lost my sex appeal, but I’m still stubborn. I’m going to find that kid and I’m pretty sure you can help.”

Giacomin was looking at me. He was a big guy and he’d played football, and he was probably used to being tough. But he probably also knew something about physical potential from his old football days and I think he had a suspicion that he couldn’t throw me down the stairs.

“I don’t know where he is,” Giacomin said.

“Are you worried at all about the fact that his mother doesn’t know either?” I said.

“She tell you that?” he said.

“Not exactly. She told me he was with you.”

“Well, I told you before he’s not. Now are you going to leave or am I going to call the cops?”

“You’re going to call the cops,” I said.

“You think I won’t?”

“I think you won’t,” I said.

“You think you can stop me?”

“I don’t need to. I don’t want to. I enjoy meeting policemen. Sometimes if you’re good they let you play with their handcuffs.”

He looked at me. Elaine Brooks looked at me. If there’d been a mirror, I would have looked at me. But there wasn’t. So I looked at them. In the quiet I
could hear a television playing. It didn’t seem to be from downstairs.

“Look, Jack, I’m getting pretty tired of you,” he said. “What is it you want?”

“I want to take your kid back to his mother,” I said. “I told you that already.”

“And I told you he ain’t here.”

“Why don’t I look around and prove it to myself,” I said.

“You got a search warrant?”

“A search warrant? You gotta stop watching
Starsky and Hutch
,” I said. “I’m not a cop. I don’t get search warrants.”

“You can’t just walk in here and search my house,” he said.

“Why not?”

We looked at each other some more. I was pretty sure the kid was there. If he wasn’t, why not call the cops? All I had to do was stay there. They’d bend. They wouldn’t be able to think of anything else to do.

Giacomin stopped looking at me long enough to look at his girl friend. She didn’t have anything to offer. He looked back at me.

“All right,” he said. “I’ve had enough. Either you walk out of here now or I kick your ass out.”

“Don’t do that,” I said. “You’re out of shape. I’ll hurt you.”

Giacomin looked at me and looked away. I knew he wasn’t going to.

“The hell with it,” he said with a small push-away hand gesture. “It’s not worth a fight. Take him. He’s down the hall.” Giacomin gestured with his head. He didn’t look at me or Elaine Brooks.

But the boy wasn’t down the hall. He was right
around the corner in the dining room. He stepped into sight around the archway.

“Swell fight you put up for me, Daddy dear,” he said.

He was a short thin kid and his voice had a soft whine to it. He was wearing a short-sleeved vertically striped dress shirt that gapped open near his navel, and maroon corduroy pants and Top-Siders with the rawhide lacing gone from one.

Giacomin said, “You remember who you’re talking to, kid.”

The kid smiled without humor. “I know,” he said. “I know who I’m talking to, Dads.”

Giacomin turned away from him and was silent.

I said, “My name is Spenser. Your mother sent me to bring you back to her.”

The kid shrugged elaborately. I noticed that the pants were too big for him. The crotch sagged.

“You want to go?” said.

He shrugged again.

“Would you rather stay here?”

“With him?” The kid’s soft whine was full of distaste.

“With him,” I said. “Or would you prefer to live with your mother?”

“I don’t care.”

“How about you?” I said to Giacomin. “You care?”

“The bitch got everything else,” he said. “She can have him too. For now.”

I said, “Okay, Paul. You got any stuff to pack?”

He shrugged. The all-purpose gesture. Maybe I should work on mine.

“He’s got nothing to pack,” Giacomin said. “Everything here is mine. She isn’t getting any of it.”

“Smart,” I said. “Smart. I like a man gets out of a marriage gracefully.”

“What the hell’s that supposed to mean?” Giacomin said.

“You wouldn’t know,” I said. “The kid got a coat? It’s about nineteen degrees out. I’ll see that she sends it back if you want.”

Giacomin said to his son, “Get your coat.”

The boy went to the front hall closet and took out a navy pea coat. It was wrinkled, as if it had been crumpled on the floor rather than hanging. He put it on and left it unbuttoned. I opened the door to the stairs and he walked through it and started down the stairs. I looked at Giacomin.

“You’ve gotten yourself in a lot of trouble over this, Jack, and don’t you forget it,” he said.

I said, “Name’s Spenser with an S, like the poet. I’m in the Boston book.” I stepped through the door and closed it. Then I opened it again and stuck my head back into the hall. “Under Tough,” I said. And closed the door, and walked out.

The kid sat in the front seat beside me and stared out the window. His hands fidgeted on his lap. His fingernails were chewed short. He had hangnails. I turned left at the foot of Chestnut Street and drove south past the Academy.