Hush Money (14 page)

Before I got Robinson Nevins tenure at the university, I had the issue of Louis Vincent and KC Roth to resolve. I didn’t have it in me to walk up and kill him. I’d killed people. And maybe I would again, but I’d always thought it was because I had to. Hawk would do it. He was more practical than I was. He didn’t wait until he had to. He’d do it if it seemed a good solution to the problem – which it did. But I couldn’t ask Hawk to do things I was too squeamish to do. What I needed to do was figure out what I was not too squeamish to do.

I crossed the little footbridge over Storrow Drive and onto the Esplanade and turned west and strolled upriver. The narrow strip of parkland ran along the Boston side of the Charles River all the way out to Watertown and beyond. In good weather it was crowded with people walking and jogging and walking dogs and bicycling and Rollerblading and sunbathing. Today, except for a few people who owned intrepid dogs, the space was pretty much mine. Not everyone understood about a walk in the rain. Pearl, for instance, despite her great hunting lineage, would not walk in the rain. Even for a cookie.

Squeamish was actually the wrong word for my hesitation. I would have, in fact, loved to throw Louis Vincent off a bridge. But it seemed somehow the wrong thing to do, and while I tried not to get hung up on abstractions more than I had to, I couldn’t seem to get around this one. I could tell the cops he was the man, but as long as KC wouldn’t testify, what could we do that was legal? Hitting him hadn’t worked. I could hit him more, and harder. Which would be heartwarming, but if he was as obsessive as he seemed, it might merely wind him tighter. I needed KC to testify.

The racing crews in their eight-man shells were on the river, men’s teams and women’s teams, which meant, I supposed, that some of the shells were eight-woman shells, or that all of the shells were eight-person shells. The crew coaches, in motor-boats, hovered near them like sheepdogs. During rest periods the rowers slumped over their oars as if they were dead, letting the rain beat down on them without regard.

I thought about Susan’s analysis. KC’s refusal to identify Louis Vincent seemed to be as much about her ex-husband as it was about Louis Vincent.

At the B.U. Bridge I turned back, my collar up, my Braves hat pulled down over my eyes, liking the feel of the rain as it came down in a straight easy fall, watching the idea coalesce. By the time I got back to my place the idea was nearly complete, or as complete as it could be.

I stripped off my wet clothes and tossed them in the washer, took a hot shower, toweled off, and put on fresh clothes. Then I went to the kitchen. It was 5:20 in the evening. Time enough for the first drink of the day, maybe past time. I filled a pint glass with ice, put in two ounces of scotch, and filled it with soda. I took the first sip. The first sip wasn’t the best thing in the world, but it was in the top five. And trying to recapture the first sip is a reminder that maybe you really can’t go home again. I picked up the glass and inspected my food supply. It was embarrassingly similar to Susan’s. But there was a head of garlic and a can of black beans and some linguine and some biscuits left over from breakfast.

I put the biscuits in a low oven to warm. The coalescing idea unified and I knew what I was going to do. I drank a toast to my brain. Then I tucked a dish towel into my belt to make a little apron, the way my father used to, got out a knife and separated the garlic head into cloves and peeled the cloves. I cooked the garlic on low heat with some olive oil in a fry pan for a while, and while it was cooking I heated a large pot of water. When the water boiled I added a dash of olive oil and a little salt and put the linguine in. When the garlic cloves were soft I added some sherry, and as it began to cook down I opened the can of black beans and drained off the liquid and dumped them in with the sherry and olive oil and garlic and put a lid on the fry pan. I toasted my coalesced idea again and the glass was empty and I mixed another. It was still good, but it wasn’t the first one. The first one wouldn’t be available until tomorrow.

I sprinkled a little cilantro in among the black beans, garlic, olive oil, and sherry. When everything was cooked I tossed the black beans with the linguine and got out the biscuits and sat at my kitchen counter by myself and ate the pasta and sipped the scotch and soda and wondered if my plan would work. There was a lot I couldn’t control, but it was a better plan than any of the others, except maybe just shooting Louis Vincent. But since I didn’t think I should do that, and wouldn’t ask Hawk to do it, and had promised KC that Louis Vincent would bother her no more, and since I had had two scotch and sodas, it seemed a very fine plan indeed, with every chance of succeeding. Of course, a lot depended on Burton Roth. But he’d seemed a solid guy when I’d met him, and I had hopes. On the other hand, if I didn’t have hopes what the hell was I doing in this business. I could always make a fine living creating great suppers out of nothing.

After watching the lightning and counting the seconds until I heard the thunder and figuring out by doing that how far away the storm was, and wondering if that actually was accurate, and then wondering why I in fact cared, I decided I had stalled on my plan long enough and called Burton Roth with somewhat less confidence than I had felt after two drinks the night before. We talked for half an hour and I had been right after all. He understood the problem and was prepared to help me solve it. Never a doubt in my mind. I told Roth I’d get back to him, and hung up just before Hawk came in with raindrops still bearded on his lavender silk trench coat.

“Got a plan?” Hawk said. “Got a million,” I said. “Or are you talking about a workable plan?”

Hawk unbuttoned his coat and went and stood looking out my office window at the rain falling on the corner of Berkeley and Boylston.

“Bobby worried about his kid,” Hawk said.

“Even after he met me?” I said.

“Bobby don’t know about you.”

“I’m not so sure about me sometimes either.”

“I gave him my word,” Hawk said.

“Yeah. Thanks.”

“So what you got in mind?”

“Well, I was thinking about pitching it in and becoming a caterer – you know? Leftovers R Us. Come in, take whatever there is in the house, fix up a tasty meal?”

Hawk continued to stare at the rain through my window. I went over and stood beside him and looked down. Puddles had formed and the raindrops hitting the puddles made tiny eruptions. The lightning skidded along the arch of the sky and shortly afterward the thunder cracked. It was dandy.

“I’d target the WASP market,” I said.

Hawk nodded. The rain slithered in thick rivulets down the outside of my window. It diffused the lightning flash prismatically for a transitory moment.

“Be about a hundred million white guys in this country,” Hawk said as the electricity crackled in the sky, “I end up with you.”

“Talk about luck,” I said.

“Talk about,” Hawk said. “What we gonna do about Bobby’s kid?”

“Do what we always do,” I said. “Keep dragging on the end we got hold of, see what we pull out of the hole.”

“What end we got hold of?”

“Willie and Amir.”

“So we follow them and see what’s at the other end.”

“Exactly,” I said.

“That your plan?”

“You bet,” I said.

“And you do this for a living?”

“So far,” I said.

“We gonna share?” Hawk said.

“Yes, you take Amir, I’ll take Willie.”

“Okay I give Amir a swat, I get the chance?”

“Long as he doesn’t spot you tailing him,” I said.

Hawk turned from the window.

“How you doing with that other gig, the stalker?”

“I’m working on it,” I said.

“You doing as good with that as you are with this?” Hawk said.

“No.”

Hawk nodded and smiled.

“Leftovers R Us,” he said. “Might catch on.”

On the street below, people were shielding themselves from the rain by various means, including but not limited to umbrellas. A woman went by holding her purse over her head, another used a briefcase. Several
Boston Globes
and at least one
Boston Herald
were also deployed.

“I figure I can buy a couple cases of cream of mushroom soup,” I said. “And I’m in business.”

“The basis of WASP cuisine,” Hawk said. “While I walking around behind Amir Abdullah, you got any idea what I’m looking for?”

“We’ll know it when we see it,” I said. “We need to know two things – who threw Prentice Lamont out the window, and why Amir was trying to sink Robinson Nevins’ tenure.”

“‘Cause Amir a creep?” Hawk said.

“Good enough for you and me, maybe not good enough for the university tenure committee.”

“They overrule the English department,” Hawk said.

“They can, Susan told me, and so can the dean,” I said. “Though Susan says neither one likes to.”

“So Robinson got a couple more shots.”

“If we can come up with something,” I said.

“We up against it I can always hold Amir upside down,” Hawk said, “and shake him until something falls out.”

“That’s plan B,” I said. “First we find out what we can by watching. Otherwise while you’re shaking him other people might scoot out of sight.”

“What other people?”

“That’s what we’re watching to find out.”

“Why you think there’s other people?”

“Leads somewhere,” I said. “Assume there aren’t any other people, and we don’t know what to do next.”

“You caterers do be some deep philosophical motherfuckers,” Hawk said.

“We do,” I said.

He did. I was standing in a doorway on the opposite corner of State and Congress so I could see him whichever door he came out. State Street was one way, so Hawk was idling his Jaguar, on the corner of State and Broad, two blocks down. Vincent walked out onto Congress Street wearing a Burberry trench coat and a tweed hat and turned the corner and headed down State Street toward the waterfront. I let him see me and as soon as he did he ran. It was a panic run. Hawk turned up onto State Street and was idling at the curb when I caught Vincent. Vincent tried to kick me and I turned my left hip and deflected the kick and nailed him on the chin with a right hook. He sagged, I caught him. Hawk was out of his car and had the back door open. I shoved Vincent in, and went in after him. Hawk was back in and behind the wheel by the time I got straightened up, and we were off to Reading. A couple of pedestrians stared after us.

Vincent took a while to get over the right hook, so he was quiet as we went down past North Station and through the old West End. As Hawk went up onto the expressway at Leverett Circle, Vincent said, “What are you doing?”

“Shut up.”

“You can’t…”

I slapped him across the face. It was more startling than painful. He put his hands up in case I was going to do it again.

“Shut up.”

Vincent was a quick study, one slap was enough. He didn’t say another word as we went up Route 93. Hawk dialed Burt Roth’s beeper, punched in his car phone number, and hung up. As we were passing Medford Square the car phone rang, Hawk spoke into it a moment, and hung up. Vincent looked worried but didn’t say anything.

“He’ll be there,” Hawk said to me without turning his head.

Vincent looked more worried when we turned off at the Reading exit and even more worried when we headed north on Route 28 toward KC’s place. A Reading police car was parked out front. Roth was in the parking lot in a green Subaru station wagon. When we pulled in, I got out and waved at the Reading cruiser. Sgt. O’Connor gave me a thumbs-up sign out the window as he pulled away. Hawk had gotten out and was standing by Vincent’s door. I went around and opened it and jerked my head at Vincent.

“Where we going?” Vincent said.

Hawk reached in, got hold of his hair, and dragged him out headfirst.

“Hate a rapist,” Hawk said.

Burt Roth got out of his car and walked toward us. And stopped in front of us and looked at Vincent. Roth’s face had no expression.

“You know each other?” I said.

“Know of,” Roth said. “We’ve never met.”

“Who are you?” Vincent said.

^“
Burt Roth.”

“Jesus.”

“Let’s go inside,” I said.

“I don’t want to go in,” Vincent said.

I took his arm and moved him firmly toward the door. As I did so he had half an eye on Hawk.

“Nobody here cares anything at all about what you want, Louis.”

I rang the doorbell and KC answered. Even here, in the face of what must have been a genuinely shocking event, her reaction had a theatricality about it. She stared and then opened her mouth and then staggered back several steps into her living room. Burt Roth went first.

“It’s okay, KC,” he said. “Everything is okay.”

Her eyes were wide and she made small noises which were not quite crying. It was as if she couldn’t get enough air into her lungs to actually cry. I moved Vincent in ahead of me and Hawk followed us and closed the front door and folded his arms and leaned on it. Talk about theatrical.

KC said, “Burt,” in a strangled kind of voice. She didn’t look at Vincent.

Roth spoke softly and fast.

“This is kind of like an intervention, KC. People who care about you gathered together to help you get past a hard thing.”

“You care about me?”

“Of course. No false messages. Our life together is over, I believe. We each have another life to live. But I’ve known you most of my adult life. We share a child. Of course I care about you.”

She was trying so hard to pretend that Vincent wasn’t there that it made all her motions stiff as she avoided seeing him.

“I don’t even know that man,” she said looking at Hawk.

Hawk smiled at her. When he chose to he could look as warm and supportive as a cinnamon muffin.

“He’s with me,” I said. “We brought Vincent.”

When I said his name it was as if I had jabbed her with an electrode. She winced visibly and looked very hard at her ex-husband.

“What are you going to do?” she said.

“This man raped you, KC,” Burt Roth said quietly. “You are too important to let someone misuse you that way.”

“You know…?”

“I know he did, KC.”

“I never…” Vincent started.

Hawk put his hand on Vincent’s shoulder and said, “Shhh.”

Vincent seemed to freeze when Hawk spoke to him.

“You made a mistake with him, maybe,” Burt Roth said. “Everybody makes mistakes. You probably made one with me, too. But they are honorable mistakes. Mistakes made for love. The best kind of mistake to make.”

KC was staring at him as if she’d never seen him or anything quite like him. I wasn’t sure how much of what he was saying he believed, but he was saying it well.

“And I’m determined,” Roth went on, “that you will not have to suffer as you’ve suffered for making honest mistakes.”

“God,” KC said, “I have suffered.”

“And if we don’t put this creep where he belongs.” He nodded at Vincent and paused.

I admired how clever he was at avoiding specifics.

“If we don’t,” Roth said, “will he rape you again? Who else will he rape?”

He paused again, and looked steadily at KC.

“Maybe one day he’ll rape Jennifer,” Roth said softly.

KC made kind of a moan, and stepped back again and sat down on the edge of her couch as if her legs had given way. Again I believed her sincerity, without missing the contrived quality of it. Maybe she was simply an endless series of contrivances and when they had all been peeled away she could cease to exist.

I said, “Did Louis Vincent rape you, KC?”

She stared at Roth for a time as if I hadn’t spoken, then, for the first time, she looked at Vincent.

“Yes,” she said.

Behind her eyes hatred crackled, for a genuine moment, like heat lightning.

“Yes he did,” she said.

Vincent started to speak, looked at Hawk, and didn’t. His gaze shifted rapidly around the room, as if he could find a place to run. He couldn’t. I walked over to the end table beside the couch and picked up her phone and called Sgt. O’Connor. Roth sat down on the sofa beside KC. She put her hand out and he took it. Hawk looked at Roth and nodded his head once in approval. For Hawk that was the Croix de Guerre.

O’Connor came on the line.

“Spenser,” I said. “We have your rapist if you’d like to come up and get him.”

I hung up the phone and turned. Vincent was staring at me. Suddenly his eyeballs rolled back in their sockets and he fell backward. Hawk stepped aside and let him fall against the wall and slide to the floor. He lay on his back with his eyelids open over his white eyeballs and his mouth ajar. We all looked at him.

“Rapist appears a little vaporish,” Hawk said.

Faintly I could hear the police sirens coming our way.