God Save the Child (20 page)

Marge Bartlett said, ”He can’t decide. He’s not old enough.“ No one paid any attention. Harroway gently took Kevin’s shoulders and moved him out of the way. ”Watch this, Kev. It won’t take long.“ He shrugged his shoulders forward, and the triceps swelled out at the back of his upper arms. ”Come and get it, Spenser.“

I wasn’t paying attention to his arms. I was watching his feet. If he set up as if he knew what he was doing, I might be in some trouble. We both knew I couldn’t out muscle him. He stood with his feet spread, flat-footed in a slight crouch. Good. He didn’t know what he was doing.

Sometimes an iron freak will get hung up on karate and kung fu, or sometimes they’re wrestlers. Harroway was none of those. If I could keep my concentration, and if he didn’t get hold of me, I had him.

I shuffled toward him. The ground was dry and firm. I had a lot of room. We were in the middle of the football field. A few people had begun to gather in along the sidewalk and a couple in the stands. They were uneasy, looking at the trouble. We who are about to die salute you. I was dressed for the work; I had on sneakers and Levi’s jeans, my Stakeout clothes. I put a left jab on Harroway’s nose. He grabbed at me, and I moved out. Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee. Come to think of it, he wasn’t champ anymore, was he? Harroway swung on me with his right hand. Better and better. I let it go by, stepped in behind it, and drove two hard right-hand punches into his kidneys; hitting the muscle web of the latissimus dorsi under his rib cage was like hitting a chain link fence. I moved back away from him. He grazed me with his left fist, and I hit him in the nose again. It started to bleed. I hoped Marge Bartlett was pleased. The silence in the open field seemed thunderous.

The sound of a helicopter, probably one of the traffic reporters, made the silence seem more thunderous by contrast. The helicopter bothered my concentration. Watch his middle, watch his feet, let peripheral vision take care of his fists, he can’t fake with his middle. Stay away. Don’t let him get hold of you. I tried a combination. Left jab, left hook, right cross. It worked. I scored on all three. But no one was counting. Harry Balleau wasn’t going to jump into the ring at the end and raise my hand. If we clinched, Artie Donovan wasn’t going to jump in and make sure we broke clean. There was a mouse starting under Harroway’s right eye. I circled him counterclockwise. Moving my hands in front of me, shuffling, keeping my left foot forward. Don’t get caught walking. Don’t let him get you between steps.

Shuffle, jab, one two, shuffle, jab, one two. Move in. Move out. I was way ahead on points. But Harroway didn’t seem to be weakening. He lunged at me. I moved out of the way and got him With the side of my fist on the temple. Don’t break your hand. Don’t hit his head with your knuckles.

Shuffle, move. Jab. The sweat began to slip down my chest and arms; it felt good. I was getting looser and quicker.

Ought to warm up really. Should do some squat jumps and stretching exercises before you have a fight with a 215-pound body builder who probably killed a guy with his fist last week. Harroway was breathing a little short. I gave him a dip with my right shoulder, went left, and dug my left fist into his stomach. He grunted. He got hold of my shoulder with his left hand. I twisted in toward him and came up under his jaw with the heel of my right hand. His head jolted back. I hammered him in the Adam’s apple with the edge of the same hand. He made a choking sound. I rolled on out away from him, breaking the grip on my shoulder as I did, and brought my left elbow back against his cheekbone with the full weight of my rolling 195 behind it. He went down. I heard Kevin gasp. Harroway was halfway up when I finished my roll and kicked him in the face. I sprawled him over on his side. He kept going, rolled over, and came up.

Maybe I was just making him mad. There was a lot of blood on his face and shirt now. Besides his nose, there was a cut under the eye where the mouse had been. The eye was almost closed. The right side of his face where my elbow had caught him was beginning to puff. He seemed to have trouble breathing. I wondered if I’d broken something in the neck. He came at me. I went to work on the other eye. Two jabs, a left hook. Move away, circle. Concentrate. Don’t let him grab you. Don’t let him tag you. Concentrate. Move.

Jab. He swung a right roundhouse, and I caught it on my forearm. The whole arm went numb, and I back pedaled out of range waiting for it to recover. Better not let that happen again. Harroway kept coming. His face was bloody. One eye was shut and the other closing. His breathing was hoarse and labored, but he kept coming on. I felt a tickle of fear in my stomach. What if I couldn’t stop him? Never mind what if I couldn’t. Think about jabbing and moving.

Concentrate. Don’t think things that don’t help. Don’t think at all. Concentrate. I jabbed the closing eye. Harroway grunted in pain. He was having trouble seeing. I hit the same eye again. There was a cut on the eyebrow, and the blood was blinding him. He stood still. Weaving a little.

Like a buffalo, with his head lowered. I stepped away from him.

”Stop it, Harroway,“ I said.

He shook his head and lunged toward the sound of my voice. I moved away and hit him a left hook in the neck.

”Stop it, you goddamned fool,“ I said.

He came at me again. I stepped in toward him like a lineman on a pass rush and came up against the side of his head with my forearm, my whole body behind it, driving off my legs. Harroway straightened up and fell over on his back without a sound. The shock of the impact tingled the length of my arm and up into my shoulder. No one said anything.

Kevin stood by himself opposite his mother and father with Harroway between them lying on his back in the sun.

Kevin said, ”Don’t, Vic. Get up. Don’t quit. Don’t let him beat you. Don’t quit.“

”He didn’t quit, kid, he’s hurt. Anybody can be hurt.“

”He let you beat him.“

”No. He couldn’t stop me. But there’s no shame in that.

It’s just something I know how to do better than he does.

He’s a man, kid. I think he’s a no-good sonova bitch. But he didn’t quit. He went as far as he could, for you. In fact he went a lot farther than he could, for you. So did your mother and father.“

Now that it was over I was shaky. My shirt was soaked with sweat. My arms trembled and my legs felt weak. I took the bullets out of my pants pocket and reloaded the gun while I talked. ”How far have you gone for anybody lately?“

The boy still looked at Harroway. In the distance I heard a siren. Somebody had called for the buzzers, and here they came. Kevin started to cry. He stood looking at Harroway and cried with his hands straight down by his side.

”I don’t know what to do,“ he said. Roger Bartlett got his feet under him and stood up. He put out his hand and helped his wife up. He fumbled a handkerchief out of his hip pocket and gave it to her, and she held it against her still-leaky nose. The two of them stood looking at Kevin who stood crying. Then Marge Bartlett said, ”Oh, honey,“ and stepped over Harroway and put her arms around the kid and cried too. Then Bartlett got his arms around both of them and held on for dear life. Harroway sat up, painfully, and hugged his knees and looked at me with his one slightly open eye.

”Slut?“ I said. He looked at me without comprehension.

I said, ”A couple of days ago you called Susan Silverman a slut.“ He still looked blank. ”Never mind,“ I said.

It was suppertime before we got things cleaned up with the Boston cops and I got back to Smithfield. Boston would bold Harroway on an assault charge until they straightened out with Healy and Trask the kidnapping, murder, extortion, contributing to the delinquency of a minor, and procuring charges that seamed likely. Kevin went home with his mother and father, and I went to Susan Silverman’s house to see if there was any cassoulet or champagne or whatever left around and to soak my hands in ice water. She gave me bourbon on the rocks with a dash of bitters in a big glass.

We sat on her couch.

”And was it Vic Harroway all along?“ she said.

”Nope, not entirely. According to Harroway it was actually Croft that ran things. He got them drugs, set up the prostitution customers, kept things cool with the local fuzz.“

”Chief Trask?“

”Maybe. Harroway says he doesn’t know. He knows only that Croft said the cops wouldn’t bother him.“

”Did he kill Maguire?“

”Yeah. Harroway says it was an accident. He and Kevin were going to get some of Kevin’s things. Harroway was lifting some booze while they were at it, and Maguire caught them. Maguire panicked, grabbed for the poker, and Harroway hit him too hard.“

”And the kidnapping and the sick jokes and everything?“

”That’s not too clear Harroway seemed to have two reasons. First, practical: he thought that they could finance ‘a new life together’—-that’s what he called it—by putting the arm on the old man for the ransom money. And he says then he thought once they got the dough that they’d have a little sport with the straight world. Kevin says it was his idea, but Harroway says no, it was all his own doing. He also says that Kevin was upstairs in his room when Maguire got killed, but Kevin says he was there. Harroway seems to be protecting him, and Kevin’s not entirely coherent. You can imagine. He’s torn apart. He found out he still had some feelings for his mother and father he didn’t realize he had, and it’s all over for Harroway, and the kid knows it.“

Susan said, ”I wonder if it was good or bad for him to see Harroway beaten.“

”I thought it would be good. I hope I was right.

Harroway represented something solid and safe and indestructible; you know, a kind of fantasy superhero to insulate Kevin from the world, to be everything his father wasn’t and his mother wouldn’t let him or his father be.“

”Maybe,“ she said. ”Or maybe it’s a glib generalization that won’t hold. I guess we’ll have to wait awhile and see how therapy works. Psychological truth usually isn’t that neat.“

”Yeah,“ I said, ”but I didn’t have time to wait and see out there in the field.“

She said, ”I know. You do what you have to. And besides, he insulted us once, didn’t he?“

”Yeah,“ I said, ”there’s that.“

I rattled the empty glass at her, and she got up and refilled it. The bourbon made a spread of warmth in my stomach. I took my left hand out of the ice water and put my right one in. I put my feet up on the coffee table and rested my head on the back of her couch. Susan came back with the second drink.

”You know,“ I said, ”he was a nasty, brutish, mean sonova bitch. But he loved that kid.“

”They all do,“ Susan Silverman said.

”You mean his mother and father?“ She nodded. ”Yeah, you’re right,“ I said, ”they do. You should have seen that henpecked, browbeaten bastard try to go up against Harroway.

You’ve seen what Harroway looks like, and Bartlett tried to take him. And so did she. Amazing.“ I took my right hand out of the ice water and switched my glass to it and put my left arm around Susan’s shoulder.

She said, ”How did Croft and Harroway get mixed up together?“

”Harroway says that Croft looked him up. Harroway was doing a little bit of small-time pimping, and he says Croft told him he knew all about it and had an idea for them to get a much bigger and more profitable operation. He’d supply the drugs, get the word around, and Harroway would do the on-the-spot managerial duties.“

”And they split?“

”No, that’s the interesting part. Harroway says Croft had a silent partner Harroway never knew who it was. One third of the take was a lot more dough than Harroway ever dreamed of, and he didn’t complain.“

”Do we know the silent partner?“

I shook my head. ”I imagine Healy will get that out of Croft in a while.“

”Oh, speaking of Healy, there’s a message here for you from him. And one from some policeman in Boston.“ She went to the kitchen and came back with an envelope which said New England Telephone in the return address space.

She looked at it and said, ”A woman called—I didn’t get her name—and said she was from Lieutenant Healy’s office, and the Lieutenant wanted you to know that the package you gave him to keep is being stored at the Smithfield Police Station. You can pick it up when you need it, but it better be soon.“

”That’s Croft,“ I said. ”They must have gotten nervous riding him around and figured to let Trask bear the brunt of a false arrest suit.“

”And,“ she said, ”I have a message that you should call either a Sergeant Belson or a Lieutenant Quirk when you came in. They said you knew the number.“

”Do I ever,“ I said. ”Okay. I’ll do that now.“ I hated to get up, and I was beginning to get stiff. Ten years ago I didn’t get stiff this soon. I let my feet down off the coffee table and drank most of the second bourbon and got myself upright. I felt as if I needed a lube job. A few more bourbons and I’d be oiled. Ah, Spenser, your wit’s as keen as ever. I dialed Boston Homicide and got Quirk.

”I got the information on your man,“ he said. No salutation, no golly, Spenser, it’s swell to hear your voice.

Sometimes I wasn’t sure how fond Quirk was of me.

”Okay,“ I said.

”He’s got a record. Wanted in Tacoma, Washington, for performing an illegal abortion. Got himself disbarred or delicensed or whatever the hell they do with doctors that screw up. That was about seven years ago. Now he could probably do it legal in half the country, but then it was still a big unh-unh.“

”And he’s still wanted?“

”Yeah, he skipped bail and disappeared. The AG’s office out there has an outstanding warrant on him, but it’s not international intrigue. I don’t think there are a lot of people working on it these days.“

”Anything else?“

”Nothing much. Seems the guy had a good practice before this happened. I met the homicide commander out there once, and I gave him a call. Says this Croft was well thought of. Probably did the abortion as a kindness, not for dough. Didn’t want to be quoted, but said he thought it was kind of a shafting. Girl’s old man made a goddamned crusade of it, you know?“

”Yeah.“

”One thing, though,“ Quirk said.