Silent Night: A Spenser Holiday Novel

THE SPENSER NOVELS

Robert B. Parker’s Wonderland

(by Ace Atkins)

Robert B. Parker’s Lullaby

(by Ace Atkins)

Sixkill

Painted Ladies

The Professional

Rough Weather

Now & Then

Hundred-Dollar Baby

School Days

Cold Service

Bad Business

Back Story

Widow’s Walk

Potshot

Hugger Mugger

Hush Money

Sudden Mischief

Small Vices

Chance

Thin Air

Walking Shadow

Paper Doll

Double Deuce

Pastime

Stardust

Playmates

Crimson Joy

Pale Kings and Princes

Taming a Sea-Horse

A Catskill Eagle

Valediction

The Widening Gyre

Ceremony

A Savage Place

Early Autumn

Looking for Rachel Wallace

The Judas Goat

Promised Land

Mortal Stakes

God Save the Child

The Godwulf Manuscript

THE JESSE STONE NOVELS

Robert B. Parker’s Damned If You Do

(by Michael Brandman)

Robert B. Parker’s Fool Me Twice

(by Michael Brandman)

Robert B. Parker’s Killing the Blues

(by Michael Brandman)

Split Image

Night and Day

Stranger in Paradise

High Profile

Sea Change

Stone Cold

Death in Paradise

Trouble in Paradise

Night Passage

THE SUNNY RANDALL NOVELS

Spare Change

Blue Screen

Melancholy Baby

Shrink Rap

Perish Twice

Family Honor

COLE/HITCH WESTERNS

Robert B. Parker’s Ironhorse

(by Robert Knott)

Blue-Eyed Devil

Brimstone

Resolution

Appaloosa

ALSO BY ROBERT B. PARKER

Double Play

Gunman’s Rhapsody

All Our Yesterdays

A Year at the Races

(with Joan H. Parker)

Perchance to Dream

Poodle Springs

(with Raymond Chandler)

Love and Glory

Wilderness

Three Weeks in Spring

(with Joan H. Parker)

Training with Weights

(with John R. Marsh)

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Copyright © 2013 by The Estate of Robert B. Parker

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Parker, Robert B., 1932–2010.

Silent night : a Spenser Holiday novel / Robert B. Parker with Helen Brann.

p. cm.—(A Spenser Holiday Novel)

ISBN 978-0-698-15515-2

1. Spenser (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Private investigators—Massachusetts—Boston—Fiction. 3. Boston (Mass.)—Fiction. I. Brann, Helen. II. Title.

PS3566.A686S56 2013 2013028875

813'.54—dc23

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Joan:

Every Christmas gift I cherished came nicely wrapped as you.

S
USAN AND I WALKED
from my place up to Newbury Street on a sunny Saturday morning. The snow from the night before had stopped falling. There wasn’t much traffic, mostly cabs and an occasional noisy snowplow. It was two weeks before Christmas. A Salvation Army worker in full uniform was ringing a bell beside a tripod bucket at the corner of Boylston and Berkeley.

“I’m glad we don’t exchange presents anymore,” I said.

“Me too,” Susan said. “Have you canceled your account at Victoria’s Secret?”

“Reluctantly. But they still send me the catalog.”

“You could probably have your name removed from the list,” Susan said.

“Sure.”

She smiled.

We went into a women’s boutique, where the staff seemed to know Susan. I found a chair designed for a woman who weighed 108 pounds. I resumed my lifelong comparative study of the female form. Susan had opened a nearly insurmountable lead. That was no reason not to see who might be runner-up. Or in the top ten. After about forty minutes we left. Susan had bought what she referred to as a “lovely little top.” And several small packages in a shopping bag decorated with a large Santa Claus.

“I didn’t think Jews did Christmas shopping,” I said.

“More often we do Christmas selling. You do realize there’s a group of us at Harvard who gather every year and drink wine and exchange one gift each.”

“Any men in this group?”

“No.”

“Sounds like a fun crowd. A gathering of Harvard women.”

“It can get a little fustian at times,” Susan said. “But I like these women, and there’s something sort of nice about a girls’ night out.”

“Sort of like Hawk and me at the fights?”

“Sort of.”

We turned the corner and into the bar door of the Taj Boston, formerly the Ritz, for a libation at the table we liked overlooking the Garden.

“I’ll have a glass of Edna Valley chardonnay,” Susan said to the waiter.

“Johnnie Walker Blue, soda, highball,” I said.

Susan smiled at me. “I like your Christmas spirit.”

“And I like yours.”

Susan sipped her wine. “Why do you suppose a grown woman, a doctor, a therapist at that, feels at Christmastime the same sense of excitement and anticipation she did when she was just a girl?”

“Perhaps we’ll need to discuss this later,” I said, lifting my glass.

“I do hope so,” Susan said, and raised her glass to me. “At length.”

I
STOOD AT MY OFFICE WINDOW
and looked out at the snow falling quietly onto the Back Bay and muffling the gleam of the Christmas lighting in the store windows. The snow had come often this year.

“Fa, la, la,” I said.

Pearl raised her head. She was with me on a take-your-dog-to-work day, which she spent, as she often did, on the couch in my office. I looked at her.

“La, la,” I said.

She didn’t know what I was talking about, but she was used to that. She could also sense that whatever it was, it had no connection to food. So she put her head back down on her paws and watched me in silent resignation.

I liked the myth elements of Christmas. The way in which its origins reach back far beyond Jesus, to the rituals of people unknown to us. The celebration of the winter solstice. The coming of light in the darkest time. And with it the promise of spring to come and beginning again. I liked it better than Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.

I went to my desk and sat down.

“Actually,” I said to Pearl, “I’ve had bad colds I liked better than Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.”

I sensed movement in her look. Then she lost interest and snapped her head toward the door and made a low growl. Hospitality dog.

The door opened and a kid came in.

He looked at Pearl and said, “That dog going to bite me?”

“Not,” I said, “unless you attack me.”

“Attack you?”

“Uh-huh.”

“For crissake, I’m a fucking kid.”

“I guessed that. Have a seat.”

Still watching Pearl, the kid sat down opposite my desk. His face was pointy and his eyes were close. He was wearing gray sweatpants that were too long for him. The bottoms of the pant legs were torn and ragged where the heel of his sneakers had repeatedly caught in them. His jacket was a threadbare navy peacoat, also too big, with the sleeves turned back. Under it was a gray hoodie. His baseball cap had a flat brim, and he wore it level and straight under the hood.

“How old are you?”

“Eleven, I think.”

“You think?”

“Yeah. I was there, but I don’t remember it, you know.”

“What about your parents? You know them?”

“My old lady was a drunk. I don’t think she knew who my old man was.”

“She the one who raised you?”

“Awhile,” the kid said. “Then she didn’t.”

“Run off?”

“Wherever she went, she went.”

“So who raised you?”

“The orphanage.”

“How was that?”

“Sucked,” the kid said. “You wanna hear why I come to see you?”

“I do.”

“I live in a place.”

“Where,” I said.

He made a looping gesture with his right hand.

“Around,” he said.

“Nice neighborhood.”

The kid frowned at me. He was so street-worn and tough-talking and life-weary that I forgot he was only eleven. Irony is not the long suit of eleven-year-olds.

“You don’t know where I live,” he said.

“No,” I said. “I was just making a little joke.”

“Ain’t funny.”

“No,” I said. “Probably not. What’s your name?”

“Slide.”

“Last name?”

“Slide,” he said.

I nodded.

“What do you want me to do for you?”

“I want you to talk with Jackie,” Slide said.

“Who’s Jackie?” I said.

“Jackie asked me to come here and deliver his message. He needs to see you.”

“What does he want to talk to me about?”

“He’ll tell you.”

“Why me?”

“He seen you on the TV.”

“Why didn’t Jackie come?” I said.

“He sent me. He wanted to know if you would see him,” Slide said.

“How long have you known Jackie?”

“A few weeks,” he said.

I nodded. “And before that?”

He shuffled uncomfortably in the chair. “Did odd jobs. Slept where I could. The Y. You know.”

“Uh-huh,” I said.

“Will you see Jackie?”

I took a card out of the middle drawer of my desk and gave it to him.

“You or Jackie call me when you’re ready,” I said.

“Okay,” he said.

The kid took the card and put it in the side pocket of his pants without looking at it. Then he stood up and looked at me and didn’t say anything and turned and went out.

I went to my window and watched him walk through the snow, his shoulders hunched, hands in his pockets, staying close to the walls of buildings, until he turned the corner onto Boylston Street and disappeared in the direction of the Public Garden.