Taming a Sea Horse (17 page)

I said, "Perry we came to help you, not hurt you."

"You're trying to help me right out of fucking business," he said. "What's this shit about my life being in danger?"

"Miss Manners have a contract out on you," Hawk said.

Charles Jackson's face moved slightly as if it wanted to smile and then went back into its stony palace-guard mask.

"What'd he say?" Lehman spoke to me. He didn't look at Hawk.

"We need to talk, Perry. You mind the guards hearing what we say?"

"I'm not giving up my guards," he said. His hand hovered near the corner of his desk. Probably the panic button for the other dozen men.

"Okay," I said. I sat down in one of the chairs near the desk and crossed my legs. Relaxed, nonthreatening.

Gretchen was standing to Lehman's right. Now that the focus had shifted she was looking more openly at Hawk.

"Or Miss Coolidge?" I said.

"Stop fucking around," Lehman said. "You got something to say, say it and then, haul your ass out of here."

"Asses," I said. "There's two of us."

"What is it?"

"'Yesterday some of the heavy hitters came after me. Three guys working for Jacky Wax, who, as we all know, is with Mr. Milo."

"I don't know nothing about any of that."

"Doubtless," I said. "Anyway, they were not heavy-enough hitters. With the help of my associate"-I nodded at Hawk. He smiled modestly-"I was able to thwart them and send them back to Jacky with their hair painted maroon."

Jackson had trouble with his face again. Lehman said, "What? What the fuck you talking about?"

"Your owners tried to hit me to keep me from looking into Warren, and they failed badly."

"I told you, I don't know anything about that. What's it got to do with me being in danger." Lehman drank more champagne. When he put the glass down, Jackson stepped forward and filled it for him.

"Well, think about it for a minute, Perry. Somebody very badly doesn't want me to find out about old Warren."

"I don't know any fucking Warren," Lehinan said.

"Of course not," I said. "But if you did, then the people who didn't want me to find out about Warren could think about going two ways."

Lehman frowned and drank his champagne and looked at Gretchen Coolidge. "Guy's crazy, Gretch, guy's off his fucking nut, you know?"

Gretchen nodded. "They could kill me," I said. "Which would be very effective. But they've tried and it worked out badly for them. Doesn't mean they won't try again, but my associate and I are a hard nut to crack and they may choose to crack an easier one."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning maybe they'll kill you."

Lehman opened his mouth and closed it without speaking.

"And Miss Coolidge," I said.

Gretchen's expression didn't change. Lehman looked quickly at Charles Jackson.

"See how it would work?" I said. "Just pretend for a minute Mr. Milo doesn't want me to know who Warren is, and he's having trouble getting me to stop asking. If he clips you and Miss Coolidge I got no one left to ask. He doesn't have to make me stop."

The faint sound of the pool filter was all that broke the silence in the room. I looked at Lehman. Hawk looked at nothing. Charles Jackson looked at Hawk. He didn't seem afraid of Hawk, which was a mistake.

Lehman picked up his champagne glass and emptied it and put it down. He jerked his head toward the door. "Out," he said. "You said what you had to say, now take a hike."

"Hard as nails," I said to Hawk.

"Tough as a nickel steak," Hawk said.

Lehman waggled his thumb toward the door.

"Go on," he said, "walk out of here while you still can."

"Don't say I didn't warn you," I said. Hawk glanced at me, and then turned, as I did, and walked toward the door.

"Show them out, Gretch," Lehman said. "You two go with her." He gestured to the rncn across the pool. "Make sure the nosy bastards aren't snooping around in here."

Charles Jackson poured more champagne in Lehman's glass.

"Nosy bastards," Lehman said.

Gretchen Coolidge opened the door and we went out. The two guards came behind us and Grctchen brought up the rear. No one said anything until we got to the front door.

"Ms. Coolidge," I said, "believe me, I don't want to see anyone get hurt. If you know something tell me now, before it's too late."

Her face was stiff and her movements angular.

"Good day, Mr. Spenser," she said, and nodded at Hawk, and closed the door and we went out.

"'Don't say I didn't warn you'?" Hawk said.

I shrugged.

"'Tell me now 'fore it too late'?" he said.

"So I was a little schmaltzy," I said.

"Schmaltzy," Hawk said. "Man, you embarrassing me in front of the brothers."

"They're not schmaltzy?" I said.

"Good point," Hawk said. "How long you think he hold on 'fore he panic?"

"Hard to say," I said. "If he doesn't panic quickly we'll go to plan B."

"Plan B," Hawk said. "Man, you a hightech thug."

Lehman was tougher or slower or more full of illusion than I had thought. We waited three days and he didn't do anything to help us, so we went to plan B.

Hawk came up with a late-model Cadillac sedan with doctored plates. I didn't ask him where he got it and he didn't say. We drove it mit to Chestnut Hill and parked it at the foot of Lehman's drive. We both wore ski masks. Hawk was in the driver's seat. I was in back with the windows down, and when Lehman's limousine slowed to turn into his yard I put my Smith & Wesson pump out the window and blasted three rounds of # 6 birdshot into the trunk and rear panel of the limo. Then Hawk slipped the Caddy into gear and we drove off,

The birdshot would mess up the paint and scare Lehman without much risk of killing anybody and unless he knew more about pellet weight and muzzle velocity than I thought he did, he'd think someone tried to do him in.

We left the Cadillac in the parking garage near Filene's in the Chestnut Hill Mall and climbed into my Subaru and headed back to Boston. To await developments. When we got to my office the developments had arrived already. There was a message on my answering machine that said I should call Perry Lehman whenever I got in, no matter what time. I could call him at his home or at the club, and both private numbers were on the tape.

"Perry sound a little shaky," Hawk said.

"If you thought Mr. Milo was having you killed wouldn't you be a little shaky?" I said.

"No," Hawk said.

"True," I said. "I withdraw the question."

"'Sides," Hawk said, "I believe Mr. Milo is in fact trying to have you killed. You shaky?"

"Only when no one's looking," I said.

I dialed Lehman's home number. He answered himself.

"Spenser," I said. "You called?"

"Jesus Christ, Spenser. They did it. They tried to hit me, all over a fucking banker, for crissake. It's a banker, named Warren Whitfield."

"You okay?" I said.

"Yeah, they missed, but you gotta let Mr. Milo know, Spenser. You gotta tell him you know it's Warren Whitfield."

"Then he'll try to kill me instead of you," I said.

"Man, it was your idea. You know how to do this kind of shit."

"What bank does Warren work for?" I said.

"He don't work for a bank, for crissake, he's the president. DePaul Federal. You gotta tell Mr. Milo."

"And tell him how I know?"

"Jesus, no, for fuck sake, why do you want to kill me?"

"Okay," I said, "then you just sit tight and in a while the pressure will be off."

"What are you going to do?"

"Sit tight," I said, and hung up.

Almost immediately the phone rang again. I mak it off the hook and broke the connection and left it off the hook. I looked at Hawk.

"Warren Whitfield," I said. "President of DePaul Federal."

"Told you we in the bigs," Hawk said.

"We are in fact," I said.

"Now what,". Hawk said.

"I suppose we got to talk with Warren," I said. "Ask him about Ginger, ask him if he knows where April is."

"You wonder why Mr. Milo's interested in protecting the president of a bank," Hawk said.

"They're both capitalists," I said.

"You awful cynical for a romantic," Hawk said.

"I'm not romantic about Mr. Milo," I said.

"Glad there's something," Hawk said.

Hawk went home. And I sat at my desk for a while with my feet up. The desk lamp was on but the rest of the office was dim. Outside, the Back Bay was quiet. And the light from the street was muted by the time it reached the window. I'd been following the sad track of a dead girl for too long. And the dead girl wasn't even who I was looking for. Maybe April was dead too. Maybe I'd been following a dead girl to find a dead girl. I looked at the backs of my hands. A couple of the knuckles on my left hand had been broken and healed a little larger. The hands were real, though, flesh and blood, alive. The pimp was dead too. Which pimp, I'd met so many lately. Rambeaux, the late Robert Rambeaux, reed man.

Maybe they were all either pimps or whores. Maybe it was life's classifying principle, maybe I had seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker.

I called Susan at home.

"I'm sitting in my office with only one light on," I said, "and I'm quoting Prufrock to myself."

"My God," she said, "tell me about it."

"Everybody I run into looking for April is a pimp," I said. "Except for the whores."

"Everybody?"

"Metaphorically at least. It's depressing."

"The last time you found her she went right back to whoring," Susan said.

"Yeah, that's not encouraging either. What kind of world is it when whoring is the best choice open to you?"

"Since when do you and I talk about the world," she said. "The world is what it is."

"Yeah, I know."

"Not only do you know, you've helped me to know."

"Good to be useful," I said.

"What has always made me respect you, even in the bad times, was your ability to look out at the world and see what's there. Not what you'd like to see, or even what you need to see, but simply what's there."

"I haven't killed anyone yet this trip."

Susan was silent for a moment on the phone, then she said, "Ah, that's what it is. It's not this, it's still San Francisco.

"And Idaho," she said. "Whatever you did, and whoever you killed, and however you feel about it, you have to judge all of that in context. You were doing what you felt you had to do, and you were doing it for love."

"The people I killed are just as dead."

"Yes. It makes no difference to them why you did it. But it makes a difference to me and to you. What we've been through in the last couple of years has produced the relationship we have now, achieved love, maybe. Something we've earned, something we've paid for in effort and pain and maybe mistakes as well. I live with some."

"I know," I said.

"We aren't who we were," she said.

"I know," I said.

"But if you are to continue what you do, you cannot be afraid to kill someone if you must. Otherwise you'll die, and if you do some of me will die as well."

"I know," I said.

"So either come to terms with that or do something else. We almost lost each other once."

"Doing something else doesn't seem too swell," I said.

"No, it doesn't. You are the best there is at what you do. And what you do is often crucially important to someone."

"You love me," I said, "don't you."

"More than I can say. Maybe more sometimes than I can show."

"Yes," I said, "I know."

"You want to come over?"

"No," I said, "I'm okay."

"You weren't when you called," Susan said.

"I am now," I said.

"No wonder I'm called super shrink," Susan said.

"Hey, wait a minute, the patient does all the work."

"Of course," Susan said. "You ought to not forget that whoever you killed last year, there were people you could have killed and didn't."

"There's that," I said.

"We all do what we need to, and what we have to, not what we ought to, or ought to have. You're a violent man. You wouldn't do your work if you weren't. What makes you so attractive, among other things, is that your capacity for violence is never random, it is rarely self-indulgent, and you don't take it lightly. You make mistakes. But they are mistakes of judgment. They are not mistakes of the heart."

"I thought you shrinks didn't talk about heart."

"We only do it with the patients who aren't paying," she said.

"Thank you," I said.

"When will I see you?" Susan said.

"Maybe tomorrow night. I'll call you tomorrow."

"Okay, take care of yourself."

"Yes," I said.

We hung up. I sat silently in the office for ten minutes and then got up and turned off the light and went home.

I made three tries at getting Warren Whitfield on the phone next morning and never getting past the administrative assistant, who remained courteous and implacable no matter how beguiling I became. Finally I sent him a telegram that read:

In regards Ginger Buckey, the Cr Prince Club, and St. Thomas, call Spenser promptly.

I added my phone number and sat back to wait. He didn't call that day. And Hawk and l spent the time considering a number of pressing issues. We discussed whether ethnicity had anything to do with sexual fervor among women. We also examined the issue of why the Red Sox kept building teams around the long ball and the short left-field fence, a practice that had won them three pennants in the last forty years. I quoted Peter Gammons, Hawk referenced Bob Ryan, all four of us agreed. We analyzed the relative merits of California champagne. I opted for Schramsberg, he for Iron Horse. We agreed that Taittinger was the class of the French though Krug and Cristal and Dom Perignon were worth a gulp. We agreed that Tapas Restaurant was the class of Porter Square, that Ray Robinson was the best fighter that ever lived (present company excluded), that Bill Russell was the most dominant basketball player, that Mel Torme could sing; we spoke well of Picasso, and Alan Ameche and the Four Seasons. We engaged in a long sexist analysis of female physiology.