Hush Money (12 page)

At about six o’clock in the evening I got in my car and drove over to Cambridge. Susan wasn’t due back until the next morning, so I took Pearl with me. We parked outside Lillian’s apartment building on Kirkland Street and waited. I didn’t know what I was waiting for, but I often didn’t. I was trying to figure out a way to get information from a hostile witness.

Pearl and I watched the sights and sounds of Cambridge pass by the car. Pearl reacted only to other dogs, and then with hostility, otherwise she rested her head placidly on the backseat and stared.

“Cambridge was placed here,” I said, “across the river from Boston to provide comic relief.”

A woman came by with an ugly black dog wearing a bandanna. Pearl barked at her. Or maybe it was her owner. Across the street Lillian Temple came out of the door to her building and walked across the street behind the car. It was a cool night. I cracked the windows.

“I gotta go,” I said to Pearl, “you gotta stay. I’ll be back.”

I locked the car doors and followed Lillian down Kirkland Street toward Mass Ave. It was still light, but she seemed a single-minded person, like many in Cambridge, who didn’t pay much attention to what was happening around her. She took no notice of me tagging along behind. At Mass Ave she turned left and walked toward Harvard Square. There were some guys in native garb playing Peruvian pipes outside the Harvard Coop. Three or four people asked me for money. One offered to sell me a newspaper called
Spare Change,
“the newspaper by and for the homeless.” There was a guy beating rhythm on the bottom of a series of different-sized inverted buckets. There were many kids with ring-pierced body parts and pastel hair hanging around the subway kiosk. Harvard students, and future Harvard students, parents, faculty, and staff all moved about the square among the street people ignoring the traffic and the traffic laws. There was a diverse variety of cops around the square. MBTA cops hanging at the subway entrance, Cambridge cops lingering near the corner of JFK and Brattle, a motorcycle cop with gleaming boots parked near Cardullo’s, Harvard cops standing outside the Holyoke Center near the perpetual chess games.

Lillian turned right at Nini’s corner and went down Brattle Street to The Casablanca bar and restaurant. When I got inside she was at the bar. It was about 7:20 on Thursday night and the bar was half empty. Or half full depending on how much you’d been drinking. I slid onto a bar stool beside her. She paid no attention to me. But she was aware of at least a male shape beside her because she looked at her watch sort of obviously to let me know she was waiting for someone and was not available. She ordered a glass of white wine, making it a longer process than it might have been by asking what kinds they had and how much it cost. She settled on a modest California chardonnay. I ordered a draught beer. I looked around on the bar, no cashews. They didn’t seem to care about becoming upscale. Maybe they already were upscale. Lillian sipped her wine and looked ostentatiously at her watch again, lest one of the unaccompanied males, made reckless by animal lust, proposition her. She made no eye contact with anyone. Everything in her being vibrated with
I’m-waiting-for-someone.

“Excuse me,” I said. “Do you come here often?”

She fixed me with a withering stare, which changed slowly into recognition, which changed slowly into anxiety.

“Oh,” she said, “it’s you.”

“Yes it is,” I said.

“I’m waiting for someone,” she said, and drank some of her wine.

“Really?”

“Yes. Bass, Bass Maitland.”

She said the name as if it would make me slide off the stool and scuttle for the door. I held fast. She drank some more wine.

“While you’re waiting,” I said, “may I buy you a glass of wine?”

“I… I’d… I would rather you didn’t,” she said.

“Okay,” I said.

I sat and looked at her. She looked at me and looked at her watch and glanced around the bar casually, the way a rat does when it’s cornered. I drank a little beer. She finished her wine. I was quiet, still looking at her with a friendly look. Spenser – large but pleasant. She looked at her empty wineglass. She glanced at me and smiled a half smile. And glanced quickly down the bar toward the door to remind me that Bass was imminent. I remained calm.

“Offer still stands,” I said.

“Oh, well, very well. It’s kind of you.”

I gestured to the bartender.

“Martin,” I said, “a glass of white wine, for the lady.”

“You’ve been here before,” she said.

“I’ve been everywhere before,” I said in perfect imitation of Humphrey Bogart.

She didn’t seem to recognize it.

“Really?” she said.

Martin brought the wine and looked at my beer. I shook my head.

“Sure, the other guy is Gary,” I said. “Impressive, isn’t it.”

She smiled politely. Badinage didn’t seem her strongest suit. She drank nearly half of her new glass of wine. Maybe that was her strongest suit. I didn’t say anything. She looked around the bar again. I had a swallow of beer. She drank most of the rest of her wine. I nodded at Martin. She checked the doorway, looked at her watch, finished her wine, and Martin brought her another one.

“Oh, I really couldn’t,” she said.

“Okay,” I said.

She looked at the fresh glass of wine. A trickle of moisture ran down the side of the cold glass.

“I don’t mean to be ungracious,” she said.

“No offense,” I said.

She looked at the wine. I swallowed a little more beer. She picked up the wine and drank some.

“No point in being stubborn,” she said and smiled at me thinly.

She was wearing black sandals and a loose ankle-length black dress with pink and yellow flowers printed on it. Her hair was pulled back tight to her head and culminated in a long braid. Her skin was pale, and she had on no makeup except some pink lipstick.

“How are you doing in your, ah, investigation,” she said.

“Depends on how you define progress,” I said. “I’m no closer to finding out whether Robinson Nevins got jobbed in his tenure bid, but I have found out that Prentice Lamont was a blackmailer, and that he was murdered.”

“Murdered?”

“Un huh.”

“How do you know that?”

“I detected it.”

“And what’s this about blackmail?” Lillian said.

She was nearly finished with her third glass of wine and when Gary went by she gestured him for a refill.

“He was blackmailing homosexuals who would rather not be outed,” I said.

She finished her previous glass and handed it to Gary as he set the new glass down.

“My God,” she said.

“Exactly,” I said.

She looked at me uneasily for a moment.

“Did you come here to talk to me?” she said.

“I followed you here,” I said.

“Followed?”

“Yep. I need to know who told you that Lamont’s suicide was connected to Robinson Nevins.”

“I have already told you that is confidential information.”

“Not anymore,” I said. “I haven’t gone to the cops yet, because I’m trying to save everybody a lot of grief. But if I can’t solve this myself, I will take it to the cops, and you can tell the homicide guys, who, by the way, are nowhere near as charming as I am.”

“Homicide?”

“You are going to have to tell, Professor Temple. You can tell me, now, or you can tell the cops soon.”

She looked at the door again, and around the bar, and at her watch, and drank some wine and turned to me and said, “Difficult choices.”

“Not really,” I said. “One’s easy, one’s hard, same outcome.”

She stared at me for a moment, looked away, looked down at her wine, looked back at me, but couldn’t hold the look.

Staring at the wineglass she said, “Will he have to know I told?”

“Probably not,” I said. “I can’t guarantee it, but I won’t tell if I don’t have to.”

She nodded, still staring into the wineglass.

“Amir,” she said.

“Amir Abdullah?”

“Yes.”

“He told you Prentice Lamont and Robinson Nevins were having an affair?”

“Yes. And that Robinson broke it off cruelly and Prentice killed himself.”

“He say how he knew this?”

“No.”

“And you took it and reported it whole, as he told it.”

“I had no – have no – reason to doubt him. Amir is a very principled man.”

I had some reservations about exactly how principled Amir Abdullah was, but I let them slide, because Bass Maitland had arrived. He was strolling in from the front door. By the way Lillian was looking at him he might have been walking on water.

“Bass,” she said.

“Hi, Lil,” he said in his big round satisfied voice.

He was wearing a seersucker jacket, well-faded blue jeans, a black polo shirt with the collar turned up, and deck shoes, no socks.

Lillian said, “You remember Mr… the detective we talked to.”

“Spenser,” I said.

“Oh, absolutely. How are you?”

He gave me the kind of big firm handshake that a big firm man would give. He was so pleased with himself that it was infectious. I almost liked him.

“Is this a coincidence,” he said with a big smile, “or are you staking us out?”

“Holding your place for you,” I said, and stood up.

“Appreciate it.”

He took my seat and smiled again, like an affable crocodile. He was probably a very principled man, too. So were they all, all principled men. And women. There were few things more annoying than a visibly principled person. Or more troublesome. Most of the ones I’d met could have used a little uncertainty to dilute their principled-ness. But it didn’t seem a fruitful topic to discuss with Bass and Lillian, so I said good-bye and went off to get my dog.

“Come quickly,” she said. “Please. I need you.”

She sounded teary.

“What’s your problem?”

“Louis.”

“What about Louis?”

“He came back.”

“Really?”

“Oh, please, come quickly. Please.”

“Why?”

“He, he… please come.”

“What did he do?”

“He… violated me.”

“Do you mean he raped you?”

She was silent.

“Did he rape you?” I said.

“Yes.”

“Have you called the police?”

“Oh, God no, I can’t talk about this with the police. I, please, I have to see you, you’re the only one.”

“When did this happen,” I said.

“Just now. He just left.”

“He’s gone.”

“Yes. He beat me and he violated me.”

“Have you been to the doctor?”

“No. I told you. I can’t…”

“Don’t take a shower,” I said. “Don’t bathe or wash yourself. Stay still. I’ll be there in half an hour. Will you be all right until then?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. When I get there I’m going to take you to the doctor.”

“No.”

“Unless you agree to that I won’t come.”

“I… I can’t…” She was crying.

“You’ll have to promise. Otherwise I’ll hang up and call the Reading cops and it’ll be you and them.”

“No… oh why are you so awful?”

“Promise?”

She was silent, sobbing. I waited.

“Oh yes, goddamn you,” she said and hung up.

I got dressed and drove up to Reading. She was hugging herself looking out the door waiting for me. Until I saw her I thought she might be making it up. Now I was pretty sure she wasn’t. Someone had slapped her around pretty good. Her upper lip was swollen and one eye was puffed. It would be shut by morning. She had on a white tee shirt and gray sweatpants and moccasins. Her hair was a mess.

“Oh God,” she said, and backed away as I came in.

“Come on,” I said. “Hospital.”

“You’re really going to make me?”

“You bet,” I said.

I took her arm. She flinched away for a moment. But I kept hold and she relaxed enough to go with me.

The on-call gyno who showed up at the emergency room was a young woman with red hair and a good backside who whisked into the examining room, took one look at KC, and whisked me out with one brisk all-inclusive gesture. I sat in the waiting area and looked at people with bruises and cuts and breathing problems and stomach pains as they came and went. I read several ancient copies of
People
magazine, which left me feeling like I’d eaten too much fudge.

After about an hour, the gyno came out and said, “Mr. Spenser?”

“Me,” I said.

“Come in please.”

I went in. KC was in a johnny and those silly slippers that they give you. Her hair had been combed and her face washed and she seemed a little foggy. A large black woman in a nurse suit hovered around and looked at me disapprovingly.

“I’m Dr. Tripp,” the red-haired woman said. “Mrs. Roth says I may speak freely with you. What is your relationship to her?”

“Employee,” I said.

“In what capacity?”

“I’m a detective. She hired me to prevent this from happening to her.”

“She may wish to rethink that,” Dr. Tripp said.

“She may,” I said. “Was she raped?”

“She was.”

“No doubt of it?”

“None. There’s vaginal bruising. There’s semen. The police have been notified.”

KC stared at her.

“No,” she said thickly. “I don‘ wan’ that.”

“Mrs. Roth, I’m required to,” she said. “Neither you nor I have a choice.”

“Tranquilizer?” I said.

“Valium. You’re not with the police.”

“No. I’m a private detective.”

“Really,” she said. “Do you know who did this?”

“I think so,” I said.

“No. He din’t,” KC said. “I will swear he din’t.”

Dr. Tripp stared at her.

“You’ll protect the man who did this?”

“I don‘ know who did,” KC said.

Dr. Tripp looked at me. I shrugged.

“I would like to keep her overnight,” Dr. Tripp said.

“I think that’s a good idea,” I said. “Maybe you can put the cops off until tomorrow.”

“One reason I want her to stay,” Dr. Tripp said.

“Will you stay wi‘ me?” she said to me. “I won’ stay ‘less you stay wi’ me.”

“It’s permitted,” Dr. Tripp said.

“Oh good,” I said.

Spending the night sitting in a chair by KC Roth’s bedside was about as appealing as a Howard Stern film festival. I took in a lot of air through my nose and let it out the same way. Dr. Tripp and the black nurse and KC all stared at me with various degrees of male-oriented hostility.

“Sure,” I said. “Be glad to.”