Small Vices s-24 Page 10

  "Funny, you'd think by now we'd know most of the gunnies around here," Hawk said.

  "He said he wasn't local," I said.

  "I told Vinnie about him. He don't know him. Tony Marcus don't know him."

  "Neither does Quirk," I said. "And there's no one looks like him in the mug books."

  Hawk took a Smith Wesson.12-gauge pump gun from his bag and stood it behind the door. Four rounds in the magazine, one in the chamber. He put a big Ziploc bag of shotgun shells on the floor next to it. On the other side of the door, out of view of anyone in the hall, he laid a holstered Berretta Centurion, an extra magazine, and a box of 9-mm. shells on the mahogany sideboard. Beside it he put a box of.44 Magnum shells for the elephant gun he carried in a shoulder rig. Then he took a couple of changes of clothes out of the bottom of the bag and put them on the floor beside the couch.

  "This thing fold out?" he said.

  "Yeah. Take the cushions off, and you'll see the handle."

  "Is it comfy?" Hawk said.

  "I never slept on it. But I've never found a hideaway that was."

  "Be sleeping in shifts anyway," he said and sat on the couch.

  "What's the setup?" I said.

  "Got me and Vinnie for one shift. Got Belson and the gay guy…"

  "Lee Farrell," I said.

  "Got Belson and Farrell on the second shift. Quirk say he'll come around when he can, give somebody a break."

  "Nice parlay," I said.

  Hawk grinned.

  "Two cops, two robbers," he said. "How'd Belson and Farrell get the time?"

  "Farrell say he wants to be in on this. He didn't say why. Belson say, after you got his wife out that mess in Proctor, he owes you and he's going to pay off. They don't like it they can fire him. Quirk don't want to fire him so he assigns him and Farrell on special detail."

  "Special detail," I said. "Quirk's got no authority to do that."

  "Quirk don't give a shit," Hawk said.

  "No, he doesn't," I said. "He never has."

  "And Vinnie?"

  "You know nobody understands Vinnie. He just say he'll be here until it's over."

  I nodded.

  "Maybe he likes me," I said.

  Hawk grinned.

  "Maybe he like Susan."

  "More likely," I said. "I want two people always with her. This guy isn't rent-a-slug."

  "There'll be me and Vinnie, or Belson and Farrell. Henry say he's going to come around with a gun and sit in, and if he does he'll make three. But I not counting him. He's a tough little bastard, but he can't shoot for shit. We know Belson's good. Quirk will be around some. How you feel about the gay guy?"

  "Farrell. He's got a black belt in karate, and Quirk says he shoots better than anyone in the department."

  "And he ain't going to grab me by the ass?"

  "He promised me he'd try not to."

  "What you gonna do?"

  "I'm going to go about getting Ellis Alves out of jail."

  "What you going to do 'bout the man in the gray flannel suit?"

  "I'm hoping to kill him," I said.

  Chapter 26

  CLINT STAPLETON'S HOME in New York City was on Fifth Avenue, near Sixty-eighth Street in one of those big gray buildings with a doorman, and a view of the park out the front windows. The doorman in a green uniform with gold piping held the door for me just as if I weren't a shamus, and the uniformed concierge eyed me without disapproval as I walked across the black and white marble lobby.

  "Donald Stapleton," I said.

  "Your name, sir?"

  "Spenser."

  The concierge phoned up, told whoever answered that I was down here, waited maybe a minute and said, "Yes, sir," and hung up the phone.

  "Take the elevator to the penthouse," he said.

  "Is there anyone else up there?" I said.

  "No, sir, the Stapletons occupy the entire floor."

  "How nice for them," I said.

  The elevator opened into a little black and white marble foyer with a skylight. There was a thick white rug on the floor with a peacock woven into it. The Stapletons' door, directly in front of me, had a glossy black finish. In the center of the upper panel was an enormous brass knocker in the shape of a lion holding a ring in its mouth. Below and to the right was a polished brass door knob. There was a small black table next to the door, with curved legs and pawlike feet. A black lacquer vase with a golden dragon on it sat on a gold-colored doily on the table. A fan of peacock feathers plumed out of the vase, and concealed just behind them was a small functional white doorbell. The door knocker looked too heavy for me. I rang the bell.

  A stunning black maid in full maid regalia opened the door. She took my leather trench coat. She would have taken my hat if I'd had one, but I didn't. She ushered me into the living room and left with my coat. I checked myself in the mirror over the immaculate fireplace. In honor of the address I had worn a blue suit and black cordovan loafers with an elegant tassel. I had on a white oxford shirt too, with a nice roll in the button-down collar. I hadn't actually buttoned the top button of the collar. My neck being what it was, I tended to choke. But I had concealed the fact by making a slightly wide knot in my maroon silk tie, and running the tie right up over the top button so you couldn't tell it wasn't buttoned. Susan says you can always tell, but what does she know about neckties?

  The room was done entirely in tones of cream and ivory and white. There was a solid bank of picture windows overlooking the park. I was as impressed with the view as I was expected to be, but the rest of the room smacked of interior decorator. There was a child's fire engine, painted with an ivory gloss, on the coffee table. There was a white piano with the black keys painted vanilla. Ordinary things used extraordinarily, the designer had probably said. Extraordinary things restated and personalized. On the side board a pair of pearl-handled Gene Autry autograph toy six shooters lay at careful right angles to each other. I was pretty sure no one had ever eaten a green pepper pizza in this room, or made love on one of the off-white damask couches in this room, or sat around in their shorts in this room and read the Sunday paper. Men in dark expensive suits, with red ties and white broadcloth shirts, might, on occasion, have clinked ice in short, thick highball glasses while they tried to think of conversation to make in this room. Women in tight, long, expensive dresses with pearls that matched the decor might have held crystal flutes of Krug champagne while they gazed blankly out the window at the panorama of the park in this room. Waiters dressed in black tie, bearing small silver trays of endive with salmon roe, might have circulated in this room. And a nanny might, possibly, have walked through this room holding the hand of a small child in a zipped-up snowsuit on his way to be walked in the park on a cold Sunday afternoon, when the light was gray and the sun was very low in the southern sky. I would have bet all I had that the fireplace had never been warm.

  A tall lean man with a good tan, wearing a fawn-colored double-breasted suit came into the living room with a blond-haired woman on his arm. She too had a good tan. The woman was wearing high-waisted black pants and a fawn-colored silk shirt with a stand-up collar and the top three buttons undone. There were necklaces and bracelets and rings and earrings all in gold, and some with diamonds in them.

  "Mr. Spenser," the man said. "Don Stapleton. My wife Dina."

  We all shook hands. Dina had big blue eyes. Her hair was thoroughly blond and worn long and curly so that it cascaded down to her shoulders. She had a small waist, and a full figure above and below it. She was maybe forty-five and she looked as if life had been easy for her.

  "Let's sit over here by the window," Stapleton said. "We can enjoy the view while we chat."

  He carefully hiked up his pants so as not to bag the knee and sat in a white wing chair with a heavy brocade upholstery. She sat on the edge of a white satin straight chair, folded her hands on her lap, and gazed at her husband. Her shoes were sling strap spike heels in the same fawn color as her blouse and her husband's suit.

  "As
I told you on the phone," I said, "I'm sort of reexamining the circumstances of Melissa Henderson's death."

  They both smiled politely.

  "Did you know her?" I said.

  "No," Stapleton said. He had a firm voice.

  "But your son did," I said.

  "I have no reason to doubt you if you say so," Stapleton said, "but we have no personal knowledge that he did."

  "He never mentioned her to you? Brought her home? Showed you a picture?"

  Stapleton smiled patiently, I was just doing my job, it couldn't be helped that I was stupid.

  "Clint is a very good looking and popular young man," he said. "He had a lot of girls. He didn't bother to introduce us to all of them."

  "He gave this one his letter sweater."

  "If so, it was merely one of many he's earned. Clint is a very good athlete."

  Dina Stapleton gazed at her husband. She nodded occasionally in support of what he said. She didn't speak.

  "Clint appears to be of African descent," I said. "Neither of you appears to be."

  "Clint is a chosen child," Stapleton said. "We adopted him when he was an infant. Dina couldn't bear a child and we decided that if we were going to adopt, we should save a little black baby from a life of depravity."

  "Of course," I said. "Does either of you know Hunt McMartin or Glenda Baker?"

  Dina's expression softened a little, the way it does when you recognize a familiar name.

  "Who are they?" Stapleton said.

  Dina's eyes flickered a moment and then her face resumed its look of blank admiration. Stapleton put a hand on her knee. I didn't blame him. If I were in a position to do so, I'd have put my hand on her knee, too.

  "Hunt and Glenda were the witnesses against Ellis Alves," I said. "The man convicted of murdering Melissa Henderson?"

  "Now really, Mr. Spenser, how would we know that?"

  "Close-knit family," I said.

  Stapleton smiled sadly in recognition of the unbreachable gulf between them and me.

  "We are not so close knit that we spend time talking about obscure sex crimes in another city."

  I nodded, silently, acknowledging my coarseness. I hadn't mentioned anything about a sex crime.

  "What is your business, sir?" I said.

  "CEO, the Stapleton companies. I have interests in oil, in banks, commercial real estate, agribusiness, that sort of thing."

  He leaned back a little and crossed one leg over the other and clasped his hands on the knee. His socks were cashmere, I noticed, and his mahogany-colored shoes were almost as stylish as mine.

  "By training I am an attorney, a member of the New York State Bar, and I still maintain my law firm of course, Stapleton, Brann, and Roberts. Clint plans to attend law school after he graduates. Someday he'll run the whole thing."

  "And Mrs. Stapleton?" I said.

  She smiled at me and looked back at her husband.

  "Dina takes care of the home front," Stapleton said.

  "You don't know Hunt McMartin or Glenda Baker?" I said.

  "No," Dina said. "I'm sorry, I don't."

  She had a deep voice like Lauren Bacall. Her makeup was artful. Her face was calm and loving. And I knew she was lying. After another hour of conversation that was all I knew.

  Chapter 27

  I WAS ON Cone, Oakes's dime, so I was staying at the Carlyle, which was an easy walk-eight blocks uptown and one block east. On my own dime, I usually slept in the car.

  Across Fifth Avenue, the park was busy. Groups of school children were herded along the leafy walkways, a lot of third world women wheeling first-world kids in expensive prams who walked or sat on benches and chatted. Dogs chased sticks and squirrels in the park. Old men sat on benches and fed pigeons and disapproved of the third-world nannies and glared at the kids. It was still morning and the sun was shining into the park above the exclusive buildings on the east side of Fifth Avenue. It was late fall so the sun was lower in the southern sky than it would be in the warm months, and the rays slanted from behind me.

  Some of the sunlight fell through a stand of trees cloistering a low knoll deeper into the park and flashed on something and reflected brightly for a moment. A mirror? More like a magnifying lens. I lunged toward the doorway next to me and rolled in against the door as a bullet smacked into the limestone frame of the entryway. The whining sound of the ricochet blended with the bang of the original.

  I got the short Smith Wesson.38 off my hip. It was about as useful as a tennis racquet at this distance. I waited a moment. There was no second shot. I got my feet under me and burst out of the doorway, bent as low as I could get. I ran straight across Fifth Avenue, getting honked at by the taxis, and zigzagged through the Seventy-sixth Street pedestrian entrance, going as hard as I could go.

  I varied the zigzag so as not to give the shooter a pattern. A target running straight at you and moving erratically was quite hard to hit, especially with a rifle and a scope, which, I was pretty sure, was what the shooter had. My hope was that I would zig when the shooter was aiming zag, and vice versa.

  I must have raced past people, and some of them must have seen the gun in my hand, but I was so focused on the knoll ahead that I was not even aware of them. I was vaguely aware that a couple of people were staring up at the knoll as I got closer. It was flanked with some of the big stone outcroppings that add character to the park, and as I scrambled up them, I knew my breath was rasping and my heart was galloping in my chest.

  I moved from outcropping to outcropping, staying as low as I could, keeping the rocks between me and the top of the knoll. Then I was at the top, crouched behind the last sheltering rock, gasping air into my lungs. There had been no further shots after the first one. It could mean the shooter had left. It could mean that the shooter had stayed where he was and allowed me to get close enough to take me out point blank. It would have taken a lot of self-discipline, but if the shooter was who I thought he was, he probably had self-discipline.

  I took in more air. Okay, I thought, let's see. I cocked the.38, took a last deep breath, and dove over the rock. I landed in the grove of trees rolling. I kept rolling, and as I rolled I kept my gun sort of gyroscopically leveled, looking for someone to shoot, and there was no one there. I came to my feet. The grove of trees was completely still. I looked down the knoll. There was nothing unusual. No one was running, no one was carrying a rifle. No passersby were pointing or paying much attention. I could see several blocks down Fifth Avenue.

  At Seventy-fourth Street a man in a gray overcoat got into a cab. He was carrying what looked at that distance like a trombone case. The cab pulled away into the traffic. It was too far to get a number. I looked around the wooded knoll a little and scuffed the leaves and in a while I found the shell casing. It was a.458 Magnum. I was surprised it left the building standing.

  I dropped the shell in my jacket pocket, put my.38 back on my hip, and started back down the knoll. A couple of people looked at me briefly and went on about their business. I could feel the sweat soaking through my shirt. But my breathing was beginning to regulate, and my heart rate was probably down under a hundred and fifty by now.

  I walked back to the Seventy-sixth Street entrance and crossed, waiting for the light this time, and strolled back down to the doorway I'd ducked into. There was a deep pock mark about chest high in the limestone where I would have been had I not seen the flare off the scope. I didn't see the slug and didn't look for it. It wouldn't tell me anything.

  The doorman came out of the building. "What's going on?" he said.

  "I don't know," I said. "Something took a bite out of your building."

  He looked at the pock mark and looked around and shrugged.

  "Got me," he said and went back inside.

  "Got me too," I said aloud to no one and turned back up to Seventy-sixth Street and walked the block east to the Carlyle.

  The East Side was going about its upscale business just as if someone hadn't tried to shoot me. There were neat littl
e signs in the minuscule patches of plant life along the sidewalk. The signs asked you to please curb your dog. In my memory, I had never, in any city, seen a dog being curbed. Still I liked the flicker of urban optimism that the signs embodied. Without hope, what are we?

  I had no doubt who the shooter was, and he was good. The bullet would have nailed me right in the middle of the chest if I hadn't flopped at the right time. The Gray Man had known I was in New York and known where I was in New York and been able to set up and wait for me in New York. And when it hadn't worked out, he'd calmly put the rifle away and walked off and hailed a cab. The only people who knew I was in New York were Susan, and Hawk, and Don and Dina Stapleton. Only Don and Dina had known the hour of my appointment. This put them above Hawk and Susan on my list of suspects.

  Plus they had lied to me. People often lied to me, but usually they had a reason and sometimes the reason mattered. Don had known the killing was sex related though he professed no knowledge of it and I hadn't mentioned it. Dina had been startled when Don said he didn't know Hunt McMartin and Glenda Baker. She didn't have much affect, but there had been enough to tell me that. Hunt and Glenda had both gone to Andover, Glenda during the time Clint Stapleton would have been there. Clint Stapleton was the black child of white parents. Saved from a life of depravity.

  I turned into the small elegant lobby of the Carlyle and everyone was nice to me just as if I could afford to stay there. Maybe they thought I could. I had my blue suit on, and there were no bullet holes in it.

  Chapter 28

  I HAD A problem. Obviously there was something wrong with the Ellis Alves case. I needed to keep plowing at that until it was passable. Also, obviously, somebody had hired the Gray Man to kill me. And I probably ought to do something about that. Except that I didn't know what to do about that. I didn't know who had hired the Gray Man and I didn't know who the Gray Man was. Which made it hard to find him. The best I could do was to keep at the Ellis Alves case and assume that the Gray Man would find me, and that when he did, I could out-quick him.