Pale Kings and Princes (16 page)

"By doing what?" I said.

"By being there. By seeing her. By telling her she can count on you. She's fastened on you in the middle of a time when everything has collapsed."

"Hell, I'm part of what caused the collapse," I said.

"Don't matter," Hawk said.

"That's right," Susan said. "It doesn't. It's a little like the baby geese that, new hatched, imprint on their keeper and act as though he were their mother. When tragedies like this hit people, they are nearly destroyed, the old order has, at least symbolically, died."

"Or actually died, in this case," I said.

"Yes. So that Caroline is, as it were, new hatched."

"And she imprinted on you, babe," Hawk said.

"Only because you weren't around, Mona."

"Likely," Hawk said.

"It's more than grief," Susan said.

"What else?" I said.

"There's guilt," Susan said.

"About what?"

"I don't know yet, I barely know there's a guilt. But it's there."

"Lot of people feel guilty when someone they're close to dies," I said. "The better-him-than-me syndrome. The if-only-I'd-been-nice-to-him-slash-her syndrome."

"The what- am-I-going-to-do-for-money-slash-sex syndrome," Hawk said.

"Maybe any, maybe all of those," Susan said. "But she's already idealizing her husband. She's not idealizing her son."

"Which means?"

"I don't know what it means. I know that it suggests a variation from the usual patterns of grief that I see."

"It's atypical," I said.

"Yes," Susan said. "It's atypical. Psychology is not practiced with the innards of birds. If you have experience and you've seen a lot of people in extremis, you see patterns. And then you see anyone in extremis whose behavior is different from the ones you've been seeing, and you say, in technical language, hoo ha!"

"And Caroline is different."

"Yes. If I were talking to a colleague I would never be this bold. I would say perhaps more often, and inappropriate, and further examination may reveal, but to you I say, there's guilt."

"Because I'm not your colleague," I said.

"That's right," Susan said. "You are my sweet patootie."

A short round-faced guy in a navy pea coat and jeans came into the bar and walked toward us.

"Spenser?" he said.

"Yes."

"My name's Conway. I'm the cop that was in the reception room at Wheaton Union Hospital the day you were there."

When I was inquiring about a shooting."

"Yeah."

"You seemed to feel there was no shooting," I said.

"Yeah. Can we talk?"

"Right here is fine," I said.

"This is private."

"All for one," I said, "and one for all. Here is good."

Conway took a breath and looked at Virgie. She was down at the far end of the bar.

He lowered his voice. "You're playing against a house deck," he said.

I nodded.

"Cops ain't on your side," he said.

"The Wheaton cops."

"Yeah. They're Esteva's."

"I sort of figured that," I said.

"They're going to show up here in a while and search your room and find some cocaine."

"Which they'll bring," I said.

"We think you maybe got some there," Conway said, "but if you don't they'll find it anyway."

"And arrest me."

"Conspiracy to distribute."

"They got a warrant?" I said.

"They can have one if they want to," Conway said. "You don't understand about this town. It's Esteva's. He owns all of it."

"Did he own Bailey?" I said.

"I don't know," Conway said.

"How come you're blowing the whistle," Hawk said.

Conway shook his head. "I ain't. I grew up with these guys. I known them all my life. But I can't be part of it anymore."

"Which was it," I said. "Bailey or the kid?"

"Both," Conway said. "After Bailey went down I decided to get out. Then the kid got killed. Seventeen-year-old kid." He shook his head.

"You won't talk to the state cops?"

"No. I'm talking to you because I don't want no more killings on my head."

"You figure we'd be killed resisting arrest?"

"Sooner or later," he said. "They gotta find the coke 'fore you die, but once they get you in they ain't gonna let you out. None of you." He looked at Susan.

"So what are you going to do," I said.

"I'm outa here," Conway said. "I'm single. Got the dog in the car outside. Got a thousand bucks I saved. I'm going to California."

"Still want to be a cop?"

"Yeah. I like it, or I used to. Then the money started getting so easy, and blowing the whistle on your buddies . . . I couldn't."

"There's a homicide cop in Los Angeles, a lieutenant named Samuelson," I said. "If you go there and look him up he might be able to help. Tell him I sent you."

"Samuelson," Conway said. "I'll remember. Thanks."

"How about the guy I shot on the road that night?" I said.

"Chuckie," he said. "He's okay. Didn't hit the bone."

"Who recruited them?" I said.

"Esteva. Chuckie and his brother both done a little time. Used to do low-level stuff like that for Esteva."

"I'm low-level stuff?"

"We thought so," Conway said.

"Anything else you can tell us," I said.

"No, I'm outa here," he said. "I should be gone now."

"Thank you," Susan said.

"Yeah," I said. Hawk nodded. For Hawk that was bathetic gratitude.

"Samuelson," Conway said. "I'll remember."

"Luck," I said.

"You too," Conway said, and turned and walked away.

"What do we do," Susan said.

"I think maybe we get you back home," Hawk said.

"No," she said. "I came out here to help and I will."

I nodded. Hawk grinned. "Spenser ain't the only one stubborn," he said.

"But it doesn't mean I wish to sit here and be arrested," Susan said.

"No," I said. "Let's repair to the Jaguar and cruise around and think."

"Two things at the same time," Hawk said. He put a twenty on the bar and we walked out.

In the parking lot Hawk took a .12-gauge shotgun out of the trunk and a box of ammunition. He fed four shells into the magazine and handed me the gun and the extra ammo. I got in the backseat with the shotgun. Hawk and Susan got in front. Hawk drove.

"We can't leave Caroline," Susan said. "For whatever reason she seems to have fixed on Spenser as her salvation. Her husband and son have, in a manner of speaking, abandoned her. If Spenser does as well it might very well kill her."

"We stay here," Hawk said, "we gonna have to shoot up a mess of Wheaton cops."

"I know," Susan said.

"There ain't but maybe fifty of them," Hawk said.

"But then all the other cops in the world will be on our case," I said.

"We may run out of ammunition," Hawk said.

"She's suicidal?" I said.

"Yes," Susan said. "She's suicidal and she's got this fixed notion that somehow if you stick by her she may not have to die."

Hawk shook his head. We were cruising away from Wheaton out toward the reservoir. He said, "A fine mess you got us into this time, Ollie."

Susan was half turned in the front seat so she could talk to both Hawk and me. Her arm rested along the back of the seat. I had the shotgun leaning against my left thigh, the butt on the floor. Susan turned her head fully toward me.

"She feels guilty about her husband," Susan said. She wasn't quite looking at me. She wasn't quite looking at anything. She had her head tilted slightly downward the way she did when she was thinking. I waited. The headlights on the jag made an empty tunnel into the darkness ahead of us.

"Could she have killed him?" I said.

"Yes, she could have. I don't think so, but it's possible."

Snow was spitting again, just hard enough for Hawk to turn on the wipers. He set them at INTERVAL and their periodic pass across the windshield seemed arrhythmic in its spacing.

"But she's feeling guilty about his death?" I said.

"About her husband," Susan said. "Whether about his death, I don't know."

The wipers made one sweep and the empty tunnel ahead was a little clearer. There was more snow spit. The windshield beaded slowly, some of the flakes melted and formed little lines of trickle. Then the wiper blades made another pass and the emptiness was clear again.

"Maybe this isn't about cocaine," I said.

"Maybe some of it is," Hawk said.

"Yeah. But maybe all of it isn't," I said.

"You thinking hearts full of passion, jealousy, and hate?" Hawk said.

"Maybe," I said.

"Makes the world go round," Hawk said.

"That's love," I said.

"Same thing," Hawk said.

"Not always," Susan said.

The Jaguar was almost soundless as it purred through the inconsistent snowfall in the dark.

"We have to talk with her," Susan said. "It's a difficult time for her, but . . ." Susan shook her head.

"Time like this she may say things she'd not say if everything was more cohesive," I said. Susan nodded.

"Still it might be pretty bad for her to be questioned about things like this now."

"I'm not worried about her," Susan said. "Right now I'm worried about you. They're going to frame you on a cocaine charge."

"Yes."

"And they can probably make it stick. You did hijack three hundred pounds of it."

"Kilos," I said.

"Kilos, pounds, whatever," Susan said.

"And you got two hundred keys in Henry Cimoli's cellar," Hawk said.

"So they can have police arrest you anywhere. You can't be safe by merely staying out of Wheaton."

"True," I said.

"And surely you can't be safe by staying in Wheaton."

"True also," I said.

"So we have to talk with Caroline," Susan said.

"And if this is too much for her, too soon right after her tragedy?" I said.

"Then it is," Susan said. "I don't think it will be. I don't think she has a future unless we get this unraveled. But if it destroys her, then it destroys her. I will not let it destroy you," she said.

"Your car's back at the motel," Hawk said to Susan.

"Yes. So are my clothes and my makeup. My God, my entire face is in the motel room."

"No," I said. "Stay out of the motel room. If they got hold of you they'd use you to get me."

"My entire face," Susan said.

I said, "Forget the face."

We were all quiet for a space as the wipers made their idiosyncratic sweeps of the windshield.

"Okay," Susan said. "But you can't look at me again."

"I'll stare only at your body," I said.

"So we going to see Miss Caroline?" Hawk said.

"Best I can think of," I said.

Hawk slowed, and swung the Jaguar in an easy U-turn.

"You figure the cops be busy at the motel framing us?"

"I hope so," I said. "They have no reason to think we know."

"Unless, of course, that kid," Susan said, "what was his name . . . ?"

"Conway."

"Unless Conway was lying."

"To what end," I said.

"An end we don't know," Susan said.

"Always possible," I said. "But complicated."

"Yes," Susan said.

"When in doubt I tend to go for the simple," I said.

"Except for me," Susan said.

"About you," I said, "I'm not in doubt."

"So we'll act as if Conway was telling the truth," Susan said.

"It's the best information we've got."

"And if it's wrong?"

"Readiness is all," I said.

At seven-thirty in the evening Wheaton was not lively. Everyone was in watching Entertainment Tonight. The snow made things even quieter than usual. There was a town Yuck with a plow on the front and a sand spreader on the back moving slowly along Main Street. No cops, no roadblocks, nobody saying "ten four" into a microphone. Just a couple of teenage boys in maroon satin jack` ets with WHEATON on the back, in chenille lettering, near the pizza place trying to make snowballs with insufficient snow.

Caroline didn't seem surprised to see us when we arrived. Hawk put his car in the empty stall of her two-car garage next to a jeep station wagon and closed the garage doors. He came in carrying the shotgun and the box of shells.

"Never had a second car," Caroline said. "Bailey always used the unmarked cruiser. Now Henry's got it." She stared at Hawk and the shotgun but she didn't say anything, and she shook hands politely when I introduced them. Hawk put the shells on the coffee table.

"Will you have coffee?" Caroline said.

"No," I said. "Keep me awake all night."

Hawk said, "I hope you'll pardon me," to Caroline. "I need to take a look around." She smiled as politely as she'd shaken hands.

"Certainly," she said.

Hawk moved off through the house. I heard him slide the chain bolt on the back door. Caroline sat on the couch, at the end opposite from the shotgun shells. Susan sat beside her. I sat across from them in the wing chair next to the fireplace.

"Is there something wrong," Caroline said. She had a bright perky quality that was as natural as a neon light.

"Yes," Susan said. "There is and we need to talk."

"What else could go wrong," Caroline said. It was as if she'd had a trying day where the washing machine jammed and the cat threw up on the rug.

"The Wheaton police seem to be conspiring with Esteva and are going to shoot Spenser," Susan said.

"The police?"

"Yes."

"What did you do," Caroline said.

"He seemed to be making some progres toward solving the murders," Susan said "and interrupting the drug traffic here in Wheaton."

That was a considerable exaggeration of my progress but I didn't interrupt. Susan probably knew what she was doing. It was probably a nice feeling.

"My husband's murder?"

"Yes."

"You think the police are connected with Esteva?" Caroline said.

"Yes."

"Not my husband."

Susan nodded very slightly. I could see the professional self slowly slide into place. She sat perfectly still, and her nod was not firm enough for agreement, nor lateral enough to imply disapproval. It was merely a movement of the head that said, oh? tell me more.