Stardust (9 page)

I nodded. Pomeroy seemed to sense my agreement even though he didn't appear to be looking at me.

“These dogs are like my family,” he said.

“Yeah,” I said.

“I don't have anything else,” he said.

“Yeah.”

There seemed no purpose to the path we were on. It meandered through the second-growth forest. Under the evergreens, where the snow was thin, dark pine needles and matted leaves were slick with ice and snow melt. The dogs ranged ahead of us, sniffing intently at the ground, and swinging back in singly or together to look at us before they ranged away again. We came up a low rise and looked down into a shallow swale where groundwater stood, frozen and snow covered. The flat surface was crisscrossed with dog tracks, and among them, bird tracks, partridge maybe, or pheasant.

We stopped and looked down at the swale. The trees and brush grew thickly right to its banks.

“I was married to her once,” Pomeroy said.

He was staring down into the swale. I didn't say anything. It was as if he were a shattered cup, badly mended, with the shards of himself barely clinging together. I stayed very still. One of the dogs came back from ranging and sat on Pomeroy's feet and looked down at the swale too.

“You don't believe me,” he said.

“Yes,” I said, “I do.”

“I used to tell people, but they never believed me. Most people think I'm a little off anyway.”

He reached a hand down absently toward the dog. The dog lapped it industriously.

“I probably am a little off,” he said.

“Maybe nobody's on,” I said. “Maybe there's nothing to be off of.”

He glanced at me for a moment. I nearly lost him. Then he shook his head and shrugged. Spenser the philosopher king.

“Guy lives in the woods with three dogs,” he said. “Guy like that isn't all with it, you know?”

“When were you married?” I said.

He paused a moment, a little startled, trying to remember what he'd been saying about marriage.

“Nineteen sixty-eight,” he said. “I was in the Navy in San Diego, I met her in a bar.”

“Love at first sight?”

“For me.”

“How about her?”

“She was seventeen. She liked the uniform, maybe.”

The other two dogs came out of the woods and circled along the rim of the swale and sat down near us, their tongues out, and looked at us.

“How long did it last?” I said.

“She ran away in a month. I never saw her again.”

“Until?”

“Until she came to Boston.”

“So you did try to see her,” I said.

He didn't answer. The dog at his feet rose suddenly and made off with its nose to the ground. The two others followed. They went over the hill on the far side and out of sight and in a minute we could hear them yelping.

“Rabbit,” Pomeroy said.

I waited. The yelping faded, then stopped.

“I wanted to see her. After all that time, I . . . the month I was with her was . . .” He shrugged, spread his hands. “It was my best month,” he said.

The dogs trotted back, single file, and sat and looked at us again.

“She wasn't friendly,” I said.

“No. She . . . what the hell. She's a big star and I'm . . . look at me, you know?”

I nodded.

“But you persisted.”

“Persisted,” he said, rolling the word around like a piece of strange candy. “I wanted to see her,” he said finally. “I'm not much, but I am married to her.”

“Still?” I said.

“I never divorced her. I never heard from her. Far as I know we're still married.”

“Was Jill Joyce her name then?”

“No.” For the first time since I'd met him Pomeroy almost smiled. “It was Jillian Zabriskie.”

“She born in San Diego?”

He nodded. “I never met her parents,” he said, “but I'm pretty sure they were around there somewhere.”

“Why'd she run off?”

“She never said. One day I came home and she wasn't there and she was never there again.”

“You look for her?”

“Sure. I told the police and stuff. Everyone who knew anything about her knew she was wild. Everyone assumed she run off with somebody.”

“You think so?”

“She always liked men,” he said.

“What was the name of the bar?” I said.

“Pancho Doyle's,” he said. I knew he'd remember.

“Still there?” I said.

“I don't know. After I got discharged I never went back to San Diego. I just come home here. I was a radar man when I got out. I went to Worcester Tech for a semester, gonna be an engineer, but . . .” He shrugged.

“Honorable discharge?” I said.

“They kicked me out,” he said. “I was drinking.”

“Worcester Tech?”

He nodded. “I was drinking more. I dropped out.”

“Still drink?” I said.

He shook his head. “AA,” he said. “Been sober five years in March.”

“So you called Jill Joyce and she told you to take a hike, and you kept calling and finally a guy named Randall came to see you.”

“He was very scary,” Pomeroy said. He was staring down at the ground in front of him.

“What'd he say?”

“He shoved me around a little, and he said I was to stay away from Jill Joyce or I'd be sorry. He was kicking my dogs too.”

“For what it's worth,” I said, “I kicked him in the balls a few days ago.”

Pomeroy looked up at me, a little startled. “You did?”

“Thought you might like to know that.”

“I would. Ah, you . . . you must be pretty tough.”

“I think so,” I said. “You ever threaten Jill Joyce?”

“Me? No. I couldn't . . .”

“You know anyone named Babe Loftus?”

He shook his head.

“You work?” I said.

“A little, lawns in the summer. Shovel some sidewalks. Mostly I get welfare.”

“Anything from Jill?”

He shook his head.

“You got any idea why anyone would threaten Jill Joyce, want to kill her?”

“Somebody tried to kill her?”

“Somebody killed her stunt double. Whether it was a mistake or a warning, none of us know.”

“I wouldn't want her to get hurt,” Pomeroy said.

“Lot of people would, I think. I don't know what she was in San Diego twenty-five years ago, but she's turned into a high-octane pain in the ass since.”

Pomeroy didn't say anything. We turned away from the swale and walked back through the woods, the dogs coursing ahead of us, one or another of them looking back over its shoulder now and then to be sure we were there.

“Took your damned sweet time,” Phillips said when we got there.

“Boy, that police training,” I said. “You don't miss a trick.”

18

H
Awk
sat in perfect repose on the wide windowsill in Salzman's office, with the winter landscape behind him. He had on a white shirt and black jeans and black cowboy boots and a black leather shoulder holster containing a pearl-handled, chrome-plated .44 mag, excellent against low-flying aircraft. Salzman was at his desk. Jill was on the couch, her legs tucked demurely under her, a bright plaid skirt tucked around her knees. I was pacing.

“You tell me you don't know Rojack,” I said. “I go out there and find out you do. You tell me you never heard of Wilfred Pomeroy. I go out there and he tells me you're married.”

“He's a liar,” Jill said serenely. “I never have heard of him.”

“He tells me that you never got a divorce.”

“I did too,” Jill said. “I told you he's a liar.”

Hawk smiled from the windowsill, like a man appreciating a funny remark.

“If you had told me the truth you'd have saved me a couple of days' driving and talking.”

“Sandy,” Jill said, “are you going to let him treat me this way?”

“He's trying to help you, Jilly, like we all are.”

“The hell he is,” Jill said. “He's trying to dig up a lot of dirt from my past and make something out of it.”

“Like sense,” I said.

“I wouldn't be surprised if he was really working for one of those shows,” she said. She glanced at Hawk.

“Geraldo Spenser,” Hawk said.

“Don't be fooled,” I said, “by my good looks. I'm just a simple gumshoe.”

“Simple snoop,” Jill said. She was warming to her role. She'd decided her motivation and had a real handle on her character. “I hired you to protect me, not to snoop around looking for cruddy gossip.”

“That's a tautology,” I said.

“Whaat?” Jill said. She cocked her head a little and her eyelashes nearly fluttered. Cute was what she did when she didn't understand something.

“All gossip is cruddy,” Hawk said.

“I don't care,” Jill said. “I don't want him around; get rid of him. Hawk will protect me.”

“Nope,” Hawk said.

Jill's head swiveled toward him and there was real alarm in her face.

“No?”

“I work for him.” Hawk nodded toward me. “He go, I go.”

“You work for me,” Jill said.

Hawk smiled pleasantly and shook his head. Jill looked back at me and then to Hawk.

“You don't mean that, Hawk,” she said. She moved her body a little on the couch and waited for Hawk to bark. He didn't.

“Jill . . .” Sandy said.

“You fucking men.” Jill's face was red. “You're good for one thing. All I deal with is men, I got no one to trust, no one to talk to, no one who gives a shit about me.” Tears started down her face. “I want them gone, off this set, out of here. Now. Goddamned . . .”

Salzman got up and walked around his desk. “Jilly,” he said and put an arm around her shoulder. “Jilly, come on. We'll work this out. You work so hard, you're tired.” He patted her shoulder. She leaned her head against his hip. “Jilly, take a break. Here, I'll get Molly to walk over to your trailer with you. Come on.”

He eased Jill to her feet and with an arm around her edged her to the door.

“Oh, Sandy,” Jill was sniffling. “Oh, Sandy, sometimes I feel so alone.”

“You're a star, honey. It happens to stars. But I'm here for you, all of us are.”

“Not those two bastards,” Jill said.

“Sure. I'll straighten that out, Jilly,” Salzman said. He sounded like he was talking to an excitable puppy.

They walked that way to the door. Salzman opened it.

“Molly,” he said to a woman at the desk in the outer office. “Take Jill to her trailer and stay with her. She's not feeling well.”

“Sure, Sandy.”

Molly put her arm through Jill's and squeezed it.

“Got some coffee over there, Jill?” Molly said. “Maybe get some cake. Some girl talk? Who needs men.”

Jill went with her. As they left, Molly, who was dark-eyed and thin-faced, gave Salzman a look of savage reproach over her shoulder. Salzman shrugged and came back into his office and closed the door. He rubbed his hands over his face.

“Christ,” he said.

He stood that way for a moment, rubbing his face, then he turned and went back behind his desk. He looked at me and Hawk.

“How are we going to work this?” he said.

“Can you stand her?” I said to Hawk.

“Seen worse,” Hawk said.

“Jesus,” Salzman said. “I'd like to know where.”

I said, “So we'll keep Hawk with her, and I'll try to run this thing down. You can tell her you fired me and prevailed upon my, ah, colleague to stay on.”

“What are you going to do?” Salzman said.

“I've got another name. I'll go see if I can find the name and ask some questions and get other names and go see them and ask them questions and . . .” I spread my hands.

“Magic,” Hawk said.

“What's this gonna cost me?” Salzman said.

“A round trip to San Diego,” I said.

“Can't you call?” Salzman said.

“Yeah, but it's not the same. You don't see people, you don't notice peripheral things, people don't see you.”

“Why should they see you?” Salzman said.

“Case you big and mean-looking like him,” Hawk said, “might be able to scare them a little.”

“Ahhh,” Salzman said. “Okay, probably cheaper than Jill's bar bill, anyway.”

19

T
HE
slender mirrored face of the John Hancock Building rose fifty stories on the southern edge of Copley Square, reflecting the big brownstone Trinity Church back upon itself. Across the new plaza, snow covered now and crisscrossed with footpaths, opposite the church was the Public Library. There were Christmas lights in the square, and the uniformed doorman at the Copley Plaza stood between the gilded lions and whistled piercingly for a cab. I'd always wanted to do that and never been able to.
Anyone can whistle, any old time, easy.
I pursed my lips and whistled quietly. I put two fingers in my mouth and blew. There was a flat-sounding rush of air.
So what?
I headed for the library with the doorman's whistle soaring across Dartmouth Street.
The hell with whistling.
I went past the bums lounging in the weak winter sun on the wide steps to the old entrance, and went in the ugly new entrance on Boylston Street.

A half hour among the out-of-town phone directories gave me three Zabriskies in greater San Diego. I copied down addresses and phone numbers, and walked back down Boylston Street toward my office.

When I went inside, Martin Quirk was sitting at my desk with his feet up.

“Spenser,” I said. “Boy, you're much uglier than I'd heard.”

Quirk let his feet down and stood and walked around to the chair in front of my desk, the one for clients, when any came to my office.

“You don't get any funnier,” Quirk said.

“But I don't get discouraged, either,” I said.

“Too bad,” Quirk said.

I sat behind my desk. He sat in the client chair.

I said, “Can you whistle, loud, like doormen do?”

“No.”

“Me either. You ever wonder why that is?”

“No.”

“No, I suppose you wouldn't,” I said.

I swiveled half around in my chair and pulled out a bottom drawer and put my right foot on it. I could see out the window that way, down to the corner where Berkeley crosses Boylston. There were people out in large number, carrying packages. I looked back at Quirk. He always looked the same. Short black hair, tweed jacket, dark knit tie, white shirt with a pronounced roll in the button-down collar. His hands were pale and strong-looking with long blunt fingers and black hair on the backs. Everything fit, and since Quirk was about my size, it meant he shopped the Big Man stores or had the clothes made. He'd been the homicide commander for a long time, and he probably should have been police commissioner except that nothing intimidated him, and he wasn't careful what he said.

“What you got on this TV killing?” he said.

“Babe Loftus?”

“Un huh.”

“Nothing directly. Jill is not an open book,” I said. “She sort of doesn't get it that I'm working for her.”

“She doesn't get that about us, either.”

“What have you got?” I said.

“I asked you first,” Quirk said.

“I know she's had a relationship with a guy named Rojack, lives out in Dover.”

“Stanley,” Quirk said. “Got a big geek of a bodyguard named Randall.”

“Yes,” I said.

“Whom you knocked on his ass in front of the Charles one morning last week.”

“It seemed the right thing to do,” I said.

“It was,” Quirk said.

“Jill's story is she doesn't know him, and anyway he's a creep.”

“Tell me about him,” Quirk said. “What you know.”

I did, everything except the detail about Wilfred Pomeroy.

“Don't underestimate Randall,” Quirk said when I finished. “He's bad news.”

“Me too,” I said.

Quirk nodded, a little tiredly. “Yeah,” he said. “Aren't we all.” He scrubbed along his jawline with the palms of both hands. Across Boylston Street there were three or four guys in coveralls stringing Christmas lights around Louis'.

“Rojack is not exactly a wise guy,” Quirk said, “and he's not exactly Chamber of Commerce. He's a developer and what he develops is money. He's enough on the wild side to have a bodyguard. He gets to go to receptions at City Hall, and I'm sure he's got Joe Broz's unlisted number.”

I nodded.

“You want something fixed, he's a good guy to see. People he does business with are shooters, but Rojack stays out in Dover and has lunch at Locke's.”

“He's dirty,” I said.

“Yeah, he's dirty; but almost always it's secondhand, under the table, behind the back. We usually bust somebody else and Rojack goes home to Dover.”

“Why would he shoot Babe Loftus?” I said.

Quirk shrugged.

“What's the autopsy say?”

“Shot once, at close range, in the back, with a three fifty-seven magnum, bullet entered her back below the left shoulder blade at an angle, penetrated her heart and lodged under her right rib cage. She was dead probably before she felt anything.”

“Think the killer's left-handed?” I said.

“If he stood directly behind her,” Quirk said, “which he may or may not have done. Even if he is, it narrows the suspects down to maybe, what, five hundred thousand in the Commonwealth?”

“Or maybe he was right-handed and shot her that way so you'd think he was left-handed.”

“Or maybe he was ambidextrous, and a midget, and he stood on a box,” Quirk said. “You been reading Philo Vance again?”

“So young,” I said, “yet so cynical.”

“What else you got?” Quirk said.

“That's it,” I said.

“You think it's mistaken identity?”

“I don't know.”

“You think Rojack did it, or had Randall do it?”

“No.”

“Why not?” Quirk said.

“Doesn't seem his style,” I said.

Outside the light was gone. The early winter evening had settled and the artificial light in storefronts and on street corners had taken hold. Nothing like colored light to spruce up a city.

“Why do I think you know more than you're telling?” Quirk said.

“Because you've been a copper too long. It's made you suspicious and skeptical.”

“I've known you too long,” Quirk said.

I was about to make a devastating response when my door opened and Susan came in, bringing with her a light scent of lilac. Quirk rose and Susan came and kissed him on the cheek.

“If you are going to arrest him, Martin, could you wait until he's taken me to dinner?”

“If being a pain in the ass were illegal,” Quirk said, “he'd be doing life in Walpole.”

“He's kind of cute, though, don't you think?”

“Cuter than lace pants,” Quirk said.