Pale Kings and Princes (14 page)

"Yeah, yeah," Henry said. "Sit down." Lundquist sat beside me.

"Okay," he said. "Here's what we got. We got the gun that killed Bailey. We traced the serial number. Manufacturer says it was made around 1916, sold to a firearms dealer in San Diego as part of a wholesale lot, and that's the end of the line. The dealer doesn't exist anymore, there's no trace of the thing ever being registered anywhere, or sold to anyone. Spenser says the kid, Brett, told him he got the gun from Esteva. Kid's mother confirms that she heard the kid say that too."

"Caroline's so hysterical you can't count on nothing she says," Henry said.

Lundquist shrugged. "You talked to Esteva," he said to Henry. "What did he say?"

"Says the kid's full of shit," Henry answered. "Says the kid was fucking retarded anyway, and that Esteva kept him out of pity, as a favor to his old man."

"And the hundred keys of coke that Spenser confiscated from the kid?" Lundquist said.

"Esteva says that he thinks it must be a frame or something. He don't know nothing about it. He don't know nobody in Belfast, Maine."

"And you back-checked on Penabscot Seafood," Lundquist said.

"Sure. Called the Belfast cops. They said the place is empty. Owner lives in Baltimore, says he hasn't rented it for a year."

"Do the Belfast cops know why trucks pull in and out of there?" I said.

"They say they don't very much. Occasionally, they say, some trucker puts his rig in the parking lot for the night."

"Where did you get that blow, Spenser?" J.D. said. "I think we ought to be booking you on possession, hundred keys looks like intent to sell from where I sit."

"Where you sit is on your brains," I said.

"Keep it up, pal, you won't always have a state cop around to back you."

"Don't waste time," Lundquist said. "We're after a murderer here, probably killed three people."

"We don't know it ain't Spenser," Henry said.

"We don't know it ain't you," Lundquist said. "Or me. But it doesn't seem like the best avenue, you know?"

"Sure, Brian," Henry said. "Sure, sure. What else you got?"

"Kid was killed with a .357 Mag. Two shots through the chest. One punctured his heart, and lodged up against his backbone. Other one went on through, exited under his left shoulder blade."

"Found it in the wall," J.D. said.

"What killed Valdez?" I said.

"Thirty-eight," Lundquist said.

"Esteva own a gun," I said.

"Nothing registered," Lundquist said.

"I'm telling you," Henry said. "Esteva's clean. Why in hell would he give a murder weapon to some fucking seventeen-year-old retard?"

"Some kind of gesture," I said. "Give the kid the gun that killed his father."

"Sure, and let the kid drive around with a truckload of coke that's gonna sell for a hundred a gram on the street," Henry said.

"Henry's got a point," Lundquist said.

"Sure he has," I said. "And it's the point Esteva wants made. It's why he used the kid."

"If he did," Henry said. "We only got your story for any of this."

"Why would I make it up?"

"The fucking newspaper," Henry said. "They been yelling for years about the cocaine trade in Wheaton, and they hire you and you come down here and find shit until all of a sudden you turn up with a hundred kilos that you say is Esteva's."

"Sell a lot of papers," J. D. said. He spit again into his paper cup.

"Okay," Lundquist said, "you don't like Esteva for it. You got anybody else in mind?"

"Bailey had a lot of people didn't like him," Henry said.

"And didn't like his kid?" I said.

"One at a time," Henry said. "Maybe they're connected, maybe they're not. "

"So you have anybody in mind that didn't like Bailey," Lundquist said.

Henry eased around in his chair and put one foot up on the edge of the desk.

"Well, I don't like to talk about this much, but Bailey was a guy who fooled around a little."

"Women?" Lundquist said.

"He had a few. Most people didn't know it, and it was no business of mine what he did on his time, you know. But . . ." Henry shrugged.

"Names?" I said.

"We ain't got any names right now," Henry said. "And I don't know as I'd want to mention any to you if we did."

Lundquist said, "If you don't have any names how do you know Bailey was fooling around?"

"Aw, hell, Brian, you know. Guys fool around, they sort of half joke about it, they sort of let on, you know?"

Lundquist nodded. "And you think some one of his girlfriends killed him?"

"Maybe, or a husband, maybe. Things happen," Henry said.

"Whoever killed the kid was let into the house," I said. "No doors jimmied, no windows cracked. Kid let him in."

"Or her," J.D. said.

"We get who killed Bailey, maybe it'll tell us who done the kid," Henry said.

"Maybe Caroline," J.D. said. "Maybe she caught old Bailey in the saddle up there."

"I think maybe it was Madonna," I said. "When Bailey criticized her singing."

"That another fucking joke?" Henry said.

"The whole goddamned scene is a joke," I said. "Esteva's running C through here like water through a millrace and you clowns are sitting around fantasizing a mystery lover. I don't, know whether you're as stupid as you seem or whether you're in Esteva's pocket. Or both . . . I sort of like both."

J.D. stood up. "You son of a bitch, you can't talk to me that way." He reached a left hand out to grab my shirt front and I caught his wrist and held it.

"J.D.," Henry said, "knock it off."

J.D. strained his arm toward me. I held it still.

Lundquist stood up and slid between us. He didn't say anything. He simply waited. I let go of J.D.'s wrist. He stepped back away from Lundquist.

"There be another time, smart mouth," he said.

"One hopes," I said.

Lundquist said, "This is going downhill too fast for me." He turned toward Henry. "I'll be in touch," he said.

Henry nodded.

"Let's go," Lundquist said.

He opened the office door and stood aside to let me precede him. I turned in the open door and said to Henry and J.D., "Cherchez la femme."

Lundquist stepped after me and we went out and Lundquist closed the door.

In the parking lot, Lundquist said, "That didn't help."

"Maybe not," I said, "but did it hurt?"

Lundquist shrugged. "I don't know. They won't be too cooperative."

"They aren't anyway."

Lundquist nodded. "I still like Esteva for this," he said.

"They don't," I said.

"They don't like you," Lundquist said.

"Maybe they don't like me because I might find out something."

"Maybe," Lundquist said. "Watch out for yourself."

He got in the cruiser and backed out and drove away.

Caroline Rogers was sitting up in bed watching a soap opera when I went to see her at the hospital. Her hair was brushed back from her face and she had on lipstick. Her nightgown was white with a blue ribbon at the throat. There were flowers in the room.

"Hello," I said.

She turned her head away from the television and refocused slowly on me.

"Hello," she said.

I put my hand out and took hers and held it. "I'm all right," she said, as if I'd asked. "I'm a little dull feeling, he says it's shock. And I know I have tranquilizers in me." Her voice was not quite slurred, but slow and unanimated.

I kept hold of her hand.

"If I just concentrate," she said, "on watching TV or eating my breakfast, or putting on lipstick, I'm all right." She smiled at me a little, her head turned toward me on the pillow. "If I think about, you know, the future,"

Tears formed in her eyes. She rubbed them away slowly, with the hand I wasn't holding. "I don't know what to do."

"You will," I said.

"Will I?"

"Yes."

"How will I?"

"You're strong, and you're young. You'll come out of this. You'll have a life."

The tears were there again and she didn't bother to wipe them away. "Why do I want a life?" she said.

I sat on the edge of the bed. "I don't know," I said. "If I'd gone through what you have maybe I'd wonder too."

"Did you?" she said.

"Go through something like this?"

"No," she said. "Did you ever wonder why you should live."

"Yes," I said.

"But you didn't die."

"No."

She was crying tranquilly. I leaned forward and put my arms around her. She sat straighter and leaned against me and cried against my neck.

"Why didn't you," she said.

"Die? I don't know. Maybe I knew that I'd come out of it, that there was stuff to do that I'd want to do. Maybe just curiosity, see how things come out."

"Curiosity saved the cat," she murmured.

"What I found out is that sometimes when it's all falling apart, there's a chance to make something better."

"Better than the old life?"

"Maybe."

"I don't think so."

"No," I said. "You can't think so now."

"I don't know if I can stand it," she said.

"I know," I said. "I'll help you."

"I haven't any family, now."

"Parents, sisters, brothers?"

She shook her head slowly against my neck.

"You're enough," I said.

She shook her head some more. "No," she said.

"Yeah, you are," I said. "And I'll be around. I'll help."

She was silent, shaking her head, hugging me.

"I want to die," she said.

"You can always do that," I said. "It's always there if things really are unbearable."

She nodded. "You'll help," she said.

"I'll help you live," I said.

She was quiet, but she kept her face against my neck and her arms around me. During the commercial break on the soap opera, a nurse came in.

"Okay, Mrs. Rogers," she said. "Time for pills . . ."

Caroline was compliant. She let go of me and lay back against the pillow. The nurse gave her two tablets and a glass of water. She took the tablets, gave the glass back to the nurse, and turned her head toward the television. The nurse nodded at me, and smiled and left the room. In five more minutes Caroline Rogers was asleep.

I left the room and stopped by at the nurses' station.

"Is she getting any emotional help," I said. The nurse was cute and blond, with a green ribbon tied on her ponytail, under her nurse's cap.

"Dr. Wagner has talked with her," the nurse said.

"He's her doctor?"

"Yes."

"What's he think?"

"You'd probably have to talk with him, sir. She's had a terrible shock and he's been keeping her sedated."

"Yeah, I noticed."

"Dr. Wagner will be making rounds after five if you want to wait and speak with him."

"He in Wheaton?" I said.

"Yes, sir."

"I'll call him, thanks."

I went on out of the hospital. I had questions that I wanted to ask Caroline, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. Maybe she didn't know anything anyway. That would make two of us.

When I came back from running the next morning, Lundquist's cruiser was parked in the motel parking lot with the motor running. I walked over to it, breathing hard, feeling the sweat in the small of my back under the three layers of running gear that I wore to keep out the winter.

"Get in," he said.

I sat in the passenger seat. The heater was running full and the car was warm.

"I've been reassigned," Lundquist said.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. We're letting the local authorities handle this. We stand ready to provide support, but I'm more useful manning a radar trap on the Pike."

"Where'd that come from," I said.

Lundquist shook his head. "You got me," he said. "I got it through the chain of command."

"Somebody knows a state senator," I said.

Lundquist said, "You're on your own in this thing. I'll do what I can unofficially, you know, but . . ." He shrugged.

"I'll see what the Central Argus can do with this," I said.

"Long as you didn't get it from me," Lundquist said. "I don't know what's going on here, but I was you I'd try not to let the local cops get behind me."

"I'm expecting some backup today," I said.

"I hope it's good," Lundquist said.

"Gold medal in backup," I said. I got out of the car.

"You got anything firm and clear," Lundquist said, "I'll be happy to come and make an arrest."

"I'll let you know," I said.

"Watch your ass," Lundquist said.

I watched him pull away and then went into the motel.

The backup was there, sitting together at a table in the lounge drinking coffee. Susan's thick dark hair, looking as if it smelled of jasmine, brushed the collar of a big-shouldered crimson leather coat. The frames of her wraparound sunglasses matched the coat. Beside her Hawk had his black lizard-skin cowboy boots cocked up on the chair next to him. He had on starched jeans and a white silk shirt and a black velvet jacket with the collar turned up. The black skin of his shaven head gleamed under the fake Tiffany lighting as if it had been oiled. A black leather storm coat with a lot of brass zippers hung on the back of the fourth chair.

"Clever disguise," I said. "No one would ever guess you're outsiders."

Susan kissed me.

Hawk looked at my layered sweats. "Love yo' outfit, honey," he said.

I sat down and ordered decaffeinated coffee.

"Still quitting," Susan said.

"Almost there," I said.

"Um," Susan said.

"Susan told me on the way out," Hawk said, "how you been spreading your charm around town and now they ready to lynch your ass."

"Charm can only carry you so far," I said.

"I hear that," Hawk said.

My coffee came. I added cream and sugar. Decaf goes down better with cream and sugar. I sipped a little.

"Yum," I said. "Okay, I assume Suze told you everything that's going on."

"Probably a little more than that," Hawk said.

"I'm a female Jewish shrink," Susan said. "You expect long silences?"