Pale Kings and Princes (13 page)

I was beside her when she put her key into the front door and opened it. I pushed in ahead of her when I smelled the cordite through the open door. The living room was as neat and chintzy as it had been yesterday, except that in the middle of it, on the hand-braided rug, Brett Rogers was facedown with blood already blackening the back of his cotton flannel shirt. I went to a knee beside him and felt for a pulse. There was none. His skin was cold to the touch. I looked up at Caroline. She was standing in the open doorway with her hands at her sides, the door key in her hand, her face without expression and very pale. I shifted my body to try and block her view of the kid. As I did she slowly sank to her knees in the entryway, and settled back so she was sitting on her feet. And she began to scream. I scrambled over beside her and put my arms around her. She was as stiff and unyielding as a lawn chair and her scream was formless and guttural, as if it was torn loose from inside her. I rubbed her back in small aimless circles with my right hand. There was nothing to say.

I drove the eighty miles from Wheaton to Cambridge and was in Susan's waiting room when her last patient finished. She came out of her office with the patient and saw me sitting in the green leather chair reading a copy of The New Yorker. She smiled at me. The patient was a sturdy woman in chino trousers carrying a maroon backpack.

Susan said, "Good-bye, Ms. Lewis, I'll see you on Thursday."

Ms. Lewis nodded and did not look at me and went out. Susan slid the bolt in the outer door after her and came back and plunked herself down on my lap.

"You've come to the right place," she said. "I can help you."

I grinned and we kissed each other. "Do you have a diagnosis?" I said.

"Fucking crazy," Susan said.

"Never mind the technical jargon," I said. "Is there hope?"

"Our best chance is maintenance," Susan said. "I don't think we can plan on improvement."

I put my head against her chest. Her perfume smelled expensive. I could feel her heart pulsing.

"You okay?" Susan said.

"I don't know," I said. "I need to eat dinner and talk."

"I am supposed to have dinner with Patti Greiff," Susan said.

I nodded.

"I'm meeting her at the Harvest," Susan said. "Want to join us and afterwards, you and I can talk?"

"Sure."

It was dark on Brattle Street and the lights of the American Rep Theatre gleamed happily through the wide glass windows. The windows of the croissant shop were steamy and the display windows of Crate and Barrel in the Design Research Building were full of colorful knickknacks and elegant folding chairs. We turned in through the courtyard of the Design Research Building and walked to the end where the Harvest Restaurant nestled in the far left corner. Susan was holding my hand.

It was cold and Susan was wearing her silver fox fur with the red fox collar turned up. There was something about the mingle of cologne and fur and cold air that made her seem even more beautiful than she usually seemed. We were quiet as we walked.

It was warm and noisy in the Harvest. To the left the bar was crowded with people who hoped to meet each other. Ahead of us a stunning blond-haired woman waved at us from a booth. She wore a wide-brimmed gray felt hat. Her black-and-white-checked coat was open and thrown back off her shoulders.

"There's Patti," Susan said.

"I'll say."

We slid into the booth across from Patti. And Susan introduced us.

"The BF?" Patti said.

"Isn't he adorable?" Susan said.

"Hunkus Americanus," Patti said. She cocked her head. "Maybe a little bit scary-looking."

"It's my steely blue stare," I said. "I can't help it."

Dinner passed easily. Patti and Susan had been friends for a long time, and I spent much of the evening at the periphery of their interest. When dinner was over, Patti took the check.

"I've waited years to meet you," she said. "Let me celebrate by paying."

We left the Harvest. Outside Patti gave Susan a squeeze.

"Take care," she said. "It was lovely to meet him."

"He's happy to have met you too," I said.

"He's quieter than I'd have guessed," Patti said.

"Yes," Susan said. "He is."

Patti went to her car. Susan and I walked through Harvard Square. We held hands. Our breath hung in the air. In a recessed doorway a young man played guitar and sang into a microphone, a single speaker set up, and beside it the guitar case open for donations.

"You are quieter than I'd have guessed," Susan said.

"I know. It's why I came home."

"Yes. We are each other's home, aren't we?"

"It's bad in Wheaton," I said.

Susan was quiet.

"There's a woman whose husband was murdered and then a few days later her son was murdered."

"Part of the drug business?"

"Probably," I said. "The thing is, I probably caused both killings."

"How?"

"Doing what I do," I said. "Poking, pushing, following, looking."

"And?"

"The woman's husband was the police chief."

"Rogers," Susan said. She probably lost the key to something about once a month, but in human matters she never forgot anything.

"Yes. His kid worked for Esteva and when things weren't happening I followed him."

Across the intersection of Brattle and Mass. Avenue the out-of-town newsstand was still open and still busy. We turned up Mass. Ave.

"He picked up a load of coke in Maine and you hijacked it," Susan said.

"Yes."

"And you went to ask him about it."

"Yes, and he pulled a gun on me," I said. "And his mother took it away from him. It was a forty-one Navy Colt. The same caliber that killed his father."

"Umph," Susan said.

"And I asked him where he got it and he wouldn't tell and we pressed him and he said Esteva gave it to him."

"And sometimes you save them." Susan had turned full toward me and was holding both my hands.

"A little like your business," I said.

Susan nodded. "A little."

"I involved that kid," I said.

"No," Susan said. "He involved himself."

"I should have figured he'd tell Esteva," I said.

Susan stood so close to me that we touched from knee to chest. She pressed my hands in hers against her, just below her hips.

"Probably," she said. "Probably you should have. You made a mistake. You'll make more before you're through. But you make fewer than most people I know. And no one makes them in better causes."

"This mistake was mortal," I said.

"Your work is mortal, your mistakes will be too."

"Yeah," I said.

"Yeah," Susan said. "And the mortal parts of it are what makes it work you'll do. It's what makes it matter. If it didn't have mortal consequences it would bore you."

"I don't like to see people die," I said.

"And you've saved some," Susan said. I nodded. "You're the one who said it to me."

''What?"

"Death is the mother of beauty."

"I didn't think you were listening," I said, and took my hands from hers and slid them up her back and held her against me in the cold night under the bright artificial light on the empty street.

We were in Susan's living room having a cup of hot chocolate. There was a fire. We sat beside each other on the couch with our feet on the coffee table.

"Have you spoken to Hawk?" Susan said.

"Not yet," I said.

"When will you?"

"Soon," I said.

Susan turned her head and looked at me. "Aren't you stubborn," she said.

"But exciting sexually," I said.

"Sometimes," Susan said. "Are you planning to go this alone no matter what, just to prove you can?"

"No," I said. "I'm going to ask you for help." Susan raised her eyebrows.

"Caroline Rogers is going to need help. There are two other women involved in all of this in ways I don't understand, and I'm going to need help with them."

"And you want me to cancel my appointments and trek out to Wheaton?"

"Well put," I said.

"There are people here who need help," Susan said. "Some of them need it very much."

"I know," I said.

We both drank some cocoa.

"Tell me about the other women," Susan said.

"Juanita Olmo is a social worker who knew Eric Valdez," I said.

"The reporter who was murdered to start with," Susan said.

"Yes. She told me that Emmy Esteva was having an affair with Valdez."

"Those are the other two women?"

"Yes. Juanita is probably a generation or so removed from Colombia. Emmy is more recent."

"What is your problem with them?" Susan said.

"Things don't mesh right," I said. "Juanita tells me that Emmy was sleeping with Valdez-which gives Felipe a motive for killing Valdez and castrating him, just like Rogers contended. But Juanita insists that Esteva didn't and wouldn't. That Rogers did it. Apparently out of meanness. She says that Esteva is sort of a Colombian Horatio Alger and has beaten us Yankees at our own capitalism game-she specified my capitalistic game." Susan smiled.

"Further, she says that Emmy, Mrs. Alger, is his weakness. A slut, a tramp, a scarlet woman," I said.

"Perhaps she has a passion for Esteva herself," Susan said.

"More than perhaps, I would say."

"We shrinks are reserved," Susan said. "Perhaps, and appropriate, are as ferocious as we ever get."

"Yeah," I said. "But if she's lusty for Esteva, then why does she tell me about Emmy and Valdez, thus incriminating the object of her lust. How appropriate is that?"

"People are not always appropriate."

"Boy, it's great working with a pro," I said. "I asked her if maybe she had been sleeping with Valdez herself and she got a kind of loopy expression on her face and got up and went into the ladies' room."

"You thought she might be jealous of Emmy over Valdez," Susan said.

"Yes, and maybe jealous of Emmy over Esteva too," I said.

"It's great working with a pro," Susan said.

"And she hates Rogers," I said.

"Why," Susan said. "Was he hateful?"

"Seemed so to me. Maybe that's all there is to it. But Caroline seems like a pretty solid person and she loved him."

Susan shrugged. "That might be an overly romantic view of love."

"Good people can love not-good people," I said,

"Yes," Susan said.

We were quiet for a moment. I held my cocoa in my left hand and massaged the back of her neck for a moment with my right hand. "True," I said.

"Perhaps she hated him because he was hateful, perhaps there's another reason. It should be interesting to find out," Susan said. "How do you think I can best help Caroline Rogers?"

"I don't know. Two tragedies like this in sequence have got to do her damage. I don't want to leave her to deal with the damage alone."

"Perhaps she will want to deal with it alone."

I shrugged. "If you were around to consult on her and Emmy and Juanita . . ."

"And?" Susan said.

"And to help me cope with my sexual energy," I said.

"Getting a little edgy staying out in Wheaton alone so long, are we?" Susan said.

"Maybe," I said.

She drank the rest of her cocoa.

"Okay," she said. "Here's the deal, big guy. I'll try to reorganize my schedule, which will take me a day or two, and then I'll come out and join you."

"Ah," I said.

"On two conditions," Susan said. "One, that me never eat again in the motel diningroom . . ."

I nodded.

"And, two," Susan said, "you call Hawk tonorrow and ask him to join you."

"And if he refuses?" I said.

"I'll call him."

"Done," I said. "It is great working with a pro."

Susan turned toward me and put her mouth lightly against mine and said, "You ain't seen nothing yet."

I got back to the Reservoir Court Motel at about twenty of one the next day. There was a message to call Brian Lundquist. I did.

"Same gun," he said, "killed Rogers. Not the same gun killed Valdez."

"You have anything on Brett Rogers?" I said.

"What I got is if you'd told me about him when you gave me the gun maybe we wouldn't be looking at him dead now," Lundquist said.

"Maybe," I said. "And maybe you'd figured out the Valdez thing we'd all be windsurfing in the Bahamas."

"Umm," Lundquist said. "I'm having a meeting with a couple of the Wheaton people, you want to sit in?"

"When," I said.

"Four-thirty this afternoon," Lundquist said. "Wheaton police station."

"I'll be there."

And I was, in fact I was there early and waiting outside when Lundquist showed up. We went in together. Henry, the potbellied captain, had taken over in Rogers's office as acting chief. His pal J.D. was sitting in a straight chair near the desk.

"What the fuck is he doing here?" Henry said when I came in with Lundquist,

"I asked him," Lundquist said. "Figured he might be able to help."

J.D. picked up a paper cup from the edge of Henry's desk and spit tobacco juice into it and put the cup back on the desk.

"I don't want him here," Henry said.

"Don't be a pain in the ass, Henry," Lundquist said. "We need any help we can get on this thing."

"We're doing fine without him," Henry said.

I pulled a chair away from the wall and sat down in it and put my feet straight out in front of me and crossed them at the ankles.

"You've had three murders in the last month including your own chief and you haven't arrested anyone," I said. "I'd hate to see it when you weren't doing fine."

"You gonna run off your fucking mouth once too fucking often," J.D. said around his tobacco.

"I already have," I said.

Lundquist said, "Shut up, Spenser. J.D., whyn't you put a lid on it too. We got a project here that needs working on and yelping at each other won't help." He was looking at Henry. "You want to cooperate with the State Police in this investigation, don't you, Henry?"