Pale Kings and Princes (6 page)

"Out here there is never a sudden traffic flow," I said. "A few cars passed me as I walked to the motel."

"Does it mean the police are involved in the death of that reporter?"

"It might," I said, "or it might mean they're involved in the cocaine trade and the cocaine trade was involved with the killing, or it might just be they don't want me to spoil the coke deal. Hard to make much money in Wheaton."

Susan nodded. Gert appeared with the salad and put it in front of Susan. Iceberg lettuce, a wedge of winter tomato, and two carrot curls, with a splat of orange-colored French dressing on it.

Susan looked at it. "The lettuce is crisp," she said.

"Always a silver lining," I said.

Susan speared a piece of lettuce with her fork and ate a little of it.

"I think they used lard in the French dressing," she said.

"What a nice idea," I said.

Gert reappeared with my third beer. "You want another martini?" she said to Susan.

"No, thank you," Susan said. Her smile was warm with gratitude.

Gert went away.

I poured some beer into my glass. "The thing that bothers me is, I don't think these guys on the road were cops."

"You can tell?" Susan said. She cut her tomato wedge in half and ate one of the halves.

"Yeah, I think so."

"Even small-town caps?"

"Yeah, cops are cops. This is a small town, but if it's cocaine central then it's a pretty tough town and the cops straight or crooked are going to be more like city cops. These guys were shit kickers. They weren't tough, they were mean. Cops are confident, or if they're not, they make you think they are. They're used to confrontation. They're not uncomfortable with it."

"And your, ah, assailants weren't comfortable with it?"

I shook my head. "And they didn't know what to do with the gunshot wound," I said.

"They should have if they were cops."

Gert brought my chicken potpie and Susan's shrimp.

"You through with your salad?" she said.

Susan said, "No, I'll keep it, thanks."

"You want me to bring the shrimp back later," Gert said.

"No, I'll eat them both," Susan said.

"You want another beer," Gert said.

I shook my head.

"Three's about right," I said.

Gert shrugged and went away.

I consulted my chicken potpie.

"What a disappointment," I said to Susan.

"Canned?" Susan said.

"No, I was hoping for canned. I think they made this themselves."

"Will you be able to finish?" Susan said.

"I think so," I said.

"So, if they weren't cops who were they," Susan said.

"Don't know. Maybe friends of cops, maybe non-Colombian coke workers, maybe guys hired to do the nasty stuff while the cops blocked off the highway."

"Or maybe somebody that you don't know anything about," Susan said.

"That would be consistent," I said.

"In that you're trying to operate in a circumstance you don't understand."

"Yes."

"That is consistent with everyone's experience. You're just more aware of it," Susan said.

"Was that philosophical?" I said.

"I think so," Susan said.

I drove Susan back to Boston Sunday night and kept her car.

"I'll rent one," she said. "You can pay for it."

"The Argus can pay for it," I said.

Then it was Monday morning and Susan was gone and I was back to hanging around Wheaton looking for a clue. I felt like an ugly guy at a dating bar. I went into the Friendly restaurant and sat at the counter and had an English muffin and a cup of coffee.

"I heard there was some kind of excitement out on the Quabbin Road the other night," I said. The young woman behind the counter looked at me blankly.

"Really?" she said. "What kind of excitement?"

"I'm not sure," I said. I turned to the guy next to me, who was wearing a gray satin sweatsuit and black loafers. "You hear about it?" I said.

He was dipping a corner of his toast into the yellow of a fried egg. He finished doing that and looked up and shrugged.

"Nope," he said. He had a two-day growth of beard and while his hair was brown, the beard was mostly gray.

"What'd you hear, mister?" The girl behind the counter was maybe nineteen and already was starting to look haggard.

"Oh, some kind of accident, out there, guy got shot or something."

"Shot? Honest to God?"

"What I heard," I said.

Gray stubble next to me said, "Know his name?"

"No," I said. "Heard a car got burned too."

"Honest to God," the counter girl said. Two cops came into the restaurant. They sat down at the counter three stools past gray stubble.

"Hey, Lenny," the counter girl said to one of them, "what happened out on Quaiabin Road the other night? This guy says somebody got shot."

She poured coffee for both of them without being asked.

Lenny was maybe twenty-five with a thick blond moustache and his police cap crushed like a bomber pilot on his fifty-third mission. He looked down the counter at me. "What's this?" he said.

"I heard there was a shooting out on Quabbin Road," I said. "Heard a car got burned too."

"Where'd you hear that," Lenny said.

"Got it from an eyewitness," I said.

Lenny looked at his partner. "You know anything about a shooting, Chuck?"

Chuck was blond too, but taller than Lenny and clean-shaven. Chuck drank from his coffee cup holding it in both hands, his wrists limp, his shoulders hunched, the way Jack Palance did it in Shane. He sipped another sip and then put the cup down slowly and looked at me, turning only his head.

"Don't know anything about it," he said. "I would be real careful about the rumors I was spreading in this town, pal."

"Oh, sure," I said. "I'm probably wrong, just talk you hear around."

"You know something," Lenny said, "you report it to us, otherwise you do yourself a favor and keep your trap shut, you understand?"

Chuck kept gazing at me with his best baleful gaze. Baleful gazes are more effective if you aren't twenty-five and blond and can't grow a moustache.

"Gotcha," I said. "Thanks for clearing that up, officers." I left three one-dollar bills on the counter and got up and strolled out onto the street.

Susan had a new car, a bullet-shaped red Japanese sports car with a turbo-charged engine that would go from 0 to 5 million in 2.5 seconds. She blazed around in it like Chuck Yeager, but it scared me half to death and whenever I could I drove it with the cruise control set to fifty-five so it wouldn't creep up to the speed of light on me when I glanced at the road. I nursed it away from the curb and went out Main Street toward the Wheaton Union Hospital. I picked up the Wheaton cruiser in my rearview mirror almost at once. They had their open tail on me again. I was supposed to pick them up in the rearview mirror.

About a quarter of a mile farther I picked up another tail, behind the cops, a silver Ford Escort. I love a parade.

Wheaton Union was a square two-story yellow-brick building with some glass brickwork around the entrance. A sign pointed around back to the emergency room and outpatient clinic. I parked and went in.

There was a waiting room with three people in it, and beyond a glassed-in reception area with two white-coated women, and beyond that the corridor and examining rooms.

I went to the reception room and spoke with one of the women.

"I understand a man was brought in Friday night around six o'clock with a gunshot wound in the left thigh," I said.

Behind me a Wheaton cop, no one I'd seen before, strolled into the reception area and sat down in one of the spring-back wheeled chairs behind the desk next to the one I stood before. He was eating an apple.

"I beg your pardon, sir?" the woman at the desk said.

The other woman said, "Hello, Dave," to the cop with the apple.

I said, "The guy that got shot Friday night, I wondered how he was."

The cop swallowed his apple and said to my receptionist, "Hey, Jenny, you and Kevin coming to the softball banquet?"

She nodded at the cop and looked at me and said, "I'm sorry, sir, I have no record of anybody with a gunshot wound."

"Without even checking?" I said.

"A gunshot wound would be news, sir. There's been no one brought in here shot."

The cop took another bite of his apple. My receptionist looked at him and then the other receptionist.

"You don't know anything about a gunshot victim, do you, Marge?"

Marge pushed her lower lip out and shook her head slowly. To my right a small blackhaired woman came into the waiting room and sat down.

The cop was short and round-faced and wore his cap on the back of his head. He took a last bite out of the apple and looked around for the wastebasket. Didn't see it and put the core in an ashtray.

My receptionist picked it up with a wrinkled nose and dropped it in the basket under her desk.

"Really, Dave," she said. "Did you grow up in a barnyard?"

He grinned at her and then looked at me for the first time. He had been elaborately not looking at me up until now.

"Guess there's no gunshot wound here, mister," he said.

"Silly me," I said and turned and went back out into the waiting room, The small blackhaired woman was careful not to look at me. I went on out into the parking lot and got in my car and pulled out of my parking slot. The cop ambled out and got in his cruiser and turned around the curve of the emergency room drive and fell in behind me again. As I reached the top of the drive the small blackhaired woman came out of the emergency room door and headed for her car. Two hundred yards down the road I checked the rearview mirror again and the little Ford Escort was back in line behind the cops. Maybe she wasn't following me, maybe she was following Dave. I didn't want to be egocentric. I drove straight back through town and on out Quabbin Road to my motel. I parked in the lot and walked toward the lobby. The Wheaton cruiser moseyed on by me and turned back toward town. The Ford Escort drove on past me and parked at the end of the lot. I went on into the lobby and turned and watched through the glass doors as the small blackhaired woman got out of the Escort and walked slowly toward the motel. As she walked she kept looking off in the direction the cruiser had taken. When she got to the hotel lobby, I was standing by the entry to the bar.

"Care for a cocktail?" I said.

She looked at me for a moment and said, "Yes," and walked past me into the bar and sat at a small table against the far wall. I followed her and sat down across. The lunch crowd was starting to drift into the restaurant. Virgie was behind the bar.

"What would you like," I said.

"Perrier," she said. "Wedge of lime."

I stood and went to the bar. "Perrier, Virgie," I said. "And a bottle of Sam Adams."

"Lime?" Virgie said.

"In the Perrier," I said.

"I'll bring them over," Virgie said.

I went back and sat down. The dark-haired woman had lit a cigarette and as I sat down she exhaled some smoke.

"You mind," she said. I shook my head.

Virgie came around the bar with a tray and set the drinks down and went back to the bar. The woman across the table was not very old, twenty-six maybe, twenty-seven. She was Hispanic with prominent cheekbones and dark oval eyes. Her black eyebrows were thick and she wore no makeup. Her long black hair was pulled back and clubbed behind with a tortoiseshell, clasp. She wore a white shirt with a button-down collar and mannish-looking khaki slacks and brown leather gum-soled shoes. Around her throat where the shirt gapped open she wore some kind of Indian-looking choker of blue and white beads. She had a silver ring with a big turquoise oblong set in it on the forefinger of her right hand.

She picked up the Perrier glass with the same hand that held her cigarette and gestured at me.

"Salud, " she said.

I nodded and poured some beer into my glass and made a slight gesture with it and we each took a sip. Someday I'd have to find out how all this glass-touching stuff began. People were obsessive about it. She hadn't drunk till I'd poured the beer and responded.

We put our glasses down and looked at each other. I laced my fingers together and rested my chin on them and waited.

"My name is Juanita Olmo," she said.

"You know mine?" I said.

"Spenser," she said. I nodded.

"Why did you ask if I wanted a drink?" she said.

"Saw you following me. Saw you at the hospital. Watched you park here after the cops left."

She nodded.

"I suppose you are wondering why I've been following you."

"I assumed it was my virile kisser and manly carriage," I said.

She didn't smile. "I am not interested in you as a person," she said.

"There is no other way to be interested," I said.

She tipped her head to the side and forward in a cranial gesture of apology.

"I didn't mean it that way," she said. "I'm a social worker. I share your respect for the value of the individual."

"Dynamite," I said. "I knew we'd get along. You want my room key?"

"Please, Mr. Spenser. I'm a serious person and I am concerned about serious things. I don't want to joke."

"Sure," I said.

"You are here looking into the death of Eric Valdez," Juanita said.

I nodded, seriously.

"I knew Eric," she said.

"Un huh."

"I thought I could help."

"So how come you've been following me around."

"I wanted to get you when the police weren't there," she said. "And I . . . I wanted to get an idea of you. I wanted to look at you and see what you were like."

"From two cars back?"

"I was going to get closer, but then you stopped me here in the lobby and I knew you had seen me."

"So you want to sit and look at me for a while before you say anything?"

"No," she said. "And I do not want you to patronize me either. I'm not a fool."

"We'll see," I said.

She smiled faintly. "I appreciate honesty," she said.