Promised Land Page 13

  “Naw, I only do what I want. I never do what I’m told. Same with old Spenser here. You yell your ass off at him, if you want, but he ain’t going to do a goddamned thing he don’t want to do. You and Macey listen to him. He talking about money, he probably ain’t bullshitting. You don’t like what you hear. Then I’ll move him out.”

  “Aw right, aw right. Let’s hear it, for crissake. Spit it out.” Powers’ pale face was a little red and he was looking at me hard. Macey, on the bed, had sat up, and put his feet on the floor. He still held the Journal in his left hand, his forefinger keeping the place.

  “Okay, King. First. Harv can’t pay up, at this time.”

  “Then his ass is grass and I’m a fucking lawnmower,” Powers said.

  “Trendy,” I said.

  “Huh?”

  “Trendy as a bastard, that slick maroon and white combo. And to top it off you talk so good. You’re just an altogether with-it guy.”

  “You keep fucking around with me, Spenser, and you’re going to wish you never did.”

  “Whyn’t you get to the part about the bread, Spenser,”

  Hawk said. “In the purse. Whyn’t you talk on that.”

  “I got a buyer with about a hundred thousand dollars who is looking for some guns. I will trade you the buyer for Shepard.”

  “What makes you think I can get guns?”

  “King, for a hundred thousand skins you could get a dancing aardvark.” He smiled. His lips were puffy and when he smiled the inside of his upper lip turned out. And his gums showed above his top teeth.

  “Yeah, maybe I could,” he said. “But Shepard’s into me for a lot of fucking dough.” He ran his eyes down the ledger page in front of him. “Thirty big ones. I took a lot of risk with that dough, just on a handshake, you know? It ain’t easy to trade that off.”

  “Okay,” I said. “See you, we’ll take it elsewhere,” I said. “Come on, Harv.”

  Powers said, “You’re choice, but your pal better have the payment on him now, or we’re going to be awful mad.”

  “The payment’s in the offer. You turned it down, you got no bitch.” I turned to go. Hawk was between us and the door. His hands resting delicately on his hips.

  “Hawk,” Powers said. “Shepard don’t leave.”

  “Hundred thousand’s a lotta vegetable matter. King,” Hawk said.

  “Hawk’s right, Mr. Powers.” Macey on the bed had dropped his Journal and brought out a neat-looking little .25 automatic with a pearl handle and nickel plating. Probably matched his cuff links.

  “What’s in it for you, Spencer?” Powers said.

  “Thirty percent,” I said. “You can use it to pay off Shepard’s loan.”

  Powers was quiet. We all were. It was like a stop frame in instant replay.

  Hawk at ease in front of the door. Shepard with his skin squeezing tight on his body, Macey with his cute gun. Powers sitting at the table, thinking.

  The window was behind him and the light coming in framed him like a back-lit photograph. The little tendrils of fuzz in the double-knit were silhouetted and clear along his coat sleeves and the tops of the shoulders. The mutton-chop sideburns where the whiskers individuated at the outer edge were more gold than copper against the light.

  “Who’s your customer?” King said. Hawk whistled shave-and-a-haircut-two-bits between his teeth. Softly. “If I told you that I probably wouldn’t be needed as go-between, would I?”

  Powers turned his lip up again and giggled. Then he turned to the thin guy. “Macey,” he said, “I got some golf to play. Set this thing up.” He looked at me. “This better be straight,” he said. “If it ain’t you are going to be pushing up your fucking daisies. You unnerstand? Fucking daisies you’ll be pushing up.” He got up and walked past me toward the door.

  “Daisies,” I said.

  He went out. Macey put the .25 away and said, “Okay, let’s get to work.”

  I said, “Is he going to play golf in his Anderson-Little cutaway?”

  “He’s going to change in the clubhouse,” Macey said. “Haven’t you ever played golf?”

  “Naw, we were into aggravated assault when I was a kid.”

  Macey smiled once, on and off like a blinking light. Hawk went and lay down on the bed and closed his eyes. Shepard went stiffly to the bureau where the booze was and made a big drink. Macey sat down at the round table and I joined him. “Okay,” he said, “give me the deal.”

  Chapter 21

  There wasn’t all that much to set up with Macey yet. I told him I’d have to get in touch with the other principals first and get back to him, but that the 100 grand was firm and he should start getting in touch with his sources.

  “The guns would be top dollar,” Macey said. “There’s the risk factor, and the added problem of market impact. Large quantity like this causes ripples, as you must know.”

  “I know. And I know you can manage it. That’s why I came to you.”

  Macey said, “Um-hum” and took a business card from the breast pocket of his seersucker suit. “Call me,” he said, “when you’ve talked to the other party.”

  I took the card and put it in my wallet. “We’re in business then,” I said.

  “Certainly,” Macey said. “Assuming the deal is as you represent it.”

  “Yeah, that too,” I said. “That means if we’re in business that you folks will lay off old Harv here. Right?”

  “Of course,” Macey said. “You heard Mr. Powers. We borrow and lend, we’re not animals. There’s no problem there.”

  “Maybe not,” I said. “ButI want a little more reassurance.

  Hawk?”

  Hawk was motionless on the bed, his hands folded over his solar plexus, his eyes closed. Without opening his eyes he said, “Shepard’ll be okay.”

  I nodded. “Okay,” I said. “Let’s go, Harv.”

  Shepard put down what was left of his drink, and went out of the room without even looking around. I followed him. Nobody said goodby.

  When we got in my car and started out of the parking lot, Shepard said, “How do we know they’ll keep their word?”

  “About staying off your back?” I said.

  Shepard nodded.

  “Hawk said so,” I said.

  “Hawk? The nigger? He’s the one beat me up last time.”

  “He keeps his word,” I said. “AndI told you before, call him Hawk. I’m not going to tell you again.”

  “Yeah, sure, sorry, I forgot. But, Jesus, trusting him. I mean the guy Macey seems reasonable, like a guy you can do business with … But Hawk.”

  “You don’t know anything,” I said. “Macey would take out your eyeballs for a dollar. You think he’s a guy you can deal with’cause he talks like he went to the Wharton School. Maybe he did, but he’s got no more honor than a toad. He’ll do anything. Hawk won’t. There’s things Hawk won’t do.”

  “Like what?”

  “He won’t say yes and do no.”

  “Well, I guess you know your business. Where the hell are you getting the money?”

  “That’s not your problem,” I said. We pulled up in front of Shepard’s house. He’d banged back two big drinks while I was talking with Macey and his mouth was a little slow.

  “Thanks, Spenser,” he said. “Just for going, let alone for making that gun deal. I was scared shit.”

  “You should have been,” I said. We shook hands, Shepard got out and went in the house. I cruised back to the motel. Susan wasn’t around and her car wasn’t in the lot. I called Pam Shepard from my hotel room.

  “You hear from the girls?” I said.

  “From Rose, yes. They’ll meet us. I know you’re being funny, but please don’t call them girls.”

  “Where?”

  “Where will they meet us?”

  “Yeah.”

  “In Milton. There’s an observatory on top of the Great Blue Hill. Do you know where that is?”

  “Yeah.”

  “They’ll meet us in the obser
vatory. This afternoon at five.”

  I looked at my watch: 1:25. There was time. “Okay,” I said. “I’ll come pick you up and we’ll go. I’ll leave now, should be there around three. Start looking out the window then. I’ll park on the street and when you see me, come on down.”

  “What are we going to do?”

  “I’ll talk with you about it while we drive to Milton.”

  “All right.”

  “You bored?”

  “Oh God, I’m going crazy.”

  “Not too much longer,” I said.

  “I hope not.”

  We hung up, I went back to my car and set out for Boston again. If I made the trip many more times I’d be able to sleep on the way. I pulled up in front of my apartment at ten after three. In about forty seconds Pam Shepard came out the front door and got in the car. And we were off again for the Blue Hills.

  The top was down and Pam Shepard leaned her head back against the seat and took a big inhale. “Good God, it’s good to get out of there,” she said.

  “That’s my home you’re speaking of,” I said. “I was kind of wishing I could get in there.”

  “I didn’t mean it’s not nice, and it’s not even so much that it’s been that long, it’s just that, when you know you can’t go out, it’s almost like claustrophobia.”

  Her clean brown hair was pulled back, still in the French twist she’d worn since I met her, and the wind didn’t bother it much. I went out along Park Drive and the Jamaicaway and the Arborway south on Route 28. Just across the Neponset River, Route 138 branched off from Route 28 and we went with it, taking our time. We pulled into the Blue Hills Reservation and parked near the Trailside Museum at four o’clock.

  “We’re awfully early,” Pam Shepard said.

  “Plan ahead,” I said. “I want to be here waiting. I don’t want them to get nervous waiting for us and leave.”

  “I don’t mind,” she said. “What are we going to do?”

  “We’ll walk up to the observatory on the top. And when they come, I’ll tell them I have a seller for them.”

  “A seller?”

  “A gun broker. I’ve got a guy who’ll sell them all the guns they can afford.”

  “But why? Why would you do that?”

  “Isn’t that why you stole the money?”

  “Yes, but you don’t approve of us, do you? You don’t want to arm us certainly.”

  “That doesn’t matter. I’m working on a very fancy move, and I don’t want you trying to pretend you don’t know. So I won’t tell you. Then you won’t have to pretend. You just assume I’m in your corner, and you vouch for me every time the question comes up.”

  “I’ve done that already. On the phone when they called. They don’t trust you and they don’t like you.”

  “Hard to imagine, isn’t it,” I said.

  She smiled, and closed her eyes and shook her head slightly.

  “Come on,” I said, “let’s get out and walk.”

  The blue hills are actually spruce green and they form the center of a large reservation of woods and ponds in an upper-middle-class suburb that abuts Boston. The biggest of the blue hills supports on its flank a nature museum, and on its crest a fieldstone observatory from which one gets a fine view of Boston’s skyline, and an excellent wind for kite flying on the downside pitch of the hill below the building. It’s a hike of maybe fifteen minutes to the top, through woods and over small gullies, and there are usually Cub Scout packs and Audubon members clambering among the slate-colored outcroppings. I offered Pam Shepard a hand over one of the gullies and she declined. I didn’t offer on the next one. I’m a quick study.

  The observatory at the top had two sets of stairs and two balconies and kids were running up and down the stairs and shouting at each other from the balconies. Several kites danced above us, one of them shaped like a large bat. “That’s auspicious,” I said to Pam, and nodded at the bat.

  She smiled. “They have all sorts of fancy ones like that now,” she said. “The kids went through the kite stage. Harvey and I could never get them to fly…. Or us either, now that I think of it.”

  “It can be done,” I said. “I’ve seen it done.”

  She shrugged and smiled again and shook her head. We stood on the upper balcony of the observatory and looked at the Boston skyline to the north. “What is it,” Pam Shepard said, “about a cluster of skyscrapers in the distance that makes you feel … What? … Romantic? Melancholy? Excited? Excited probably.”

  “Promise,” I said.

  “Of what?”

  “Of everything,” I said. “From a distance they promise everything, whatever you’re after. They look clean and permanent against the sky like that. Up close you notice dog litter around the foundations.”

  “Are you saying it’s not real? The look of the skyscrapers from a distance.”

  “No. It’s real enough, I think. But so is the dog litter and if you spend all your time looking at the spires you’re going to step in it.”

  “Into each life some shit must fall?”

  “Ah,”I said, “you put it so much more gracefully than I.” She laughed.

  Below us to the left Jane emerged from behind some trees where the trail opened out into a small meadow below the observatory. She looked around carefully and then looked up at us on the balcony. Pam Shepard waved. I smiled inoffensively. Jane turned her head and said something and Rose emerged from the trees and stood beside her. Pam waved again and Rose waved back. My smile became even more inoffensive. And earnest. I fairly vibrated with earnestness. This was going to be the tough part. Guys like Powers you can get with money, or the hope of it. Or fear, if you’re in a position to scare them. But people like Rose, they were hard. Zealots were always hard. Zeal distorts them. Makes the normal impulses convolute. Makes people fearless and greedless and loveless and finally monstrous. I was against zeal. But being against it didn’t make it go away. I had to persuade these two zealots to go along with the plan or the plan washed away and maybe so did me Shepards.

  They trudged up the hill to the observatory warily, alert for an ambush among the kite-flying kids and the Cub Scouts looking at lichen growth on the north side of rocks. They disappeared below us as they went into the stairwell and then appeared coming up the stairs behind us. As Rose reached the top of the stairs Pam Shepard went to her and embraced her. Rose patted her back as they hugged. With one arm still around Rose, Pam took Jane’s hand and squeezed it.

  “It’s good to see you both,” she said.

  Rose said, “Are you all right?”

  Jane said, “Have you got a place to stay?”

  “Yes, yes, I’m all right, I’m fine, I’ve been using his apartment.”

  “With him?” Rose looked suddenly menopausal.

  “No,”I said. The way I used to say it to my mother. “No, I’ve been down the Cape, working on a case. Besides I have a girlfriend, ah woman, ah, I have a person, I … I’m with Susan Silverman.”

  Rose said to Pam Shepard, “That’s good of him.” Jane said to Rose and Pam Shepard, “I still don’t trust him.”

  “You can,” Pam said. “You really can. I trust him. He’s a good man.”

  I smiled harder. Ingratiation. Jane eyes me for vulnerable points.

  Rose said, “Well, whether or not we can trust him, we can talk some business with him at least. I’ll reserve my opinion of his trustworthiness. What is his offer exactly?” And, while she hadn’t yet addressed me directly, she looked at me. Once they did that I always had them. I think it was the puckish charm. “Well?” she said. Yeah, it was the puckish charm.

  “I can get you all the guns you need, one hundred thousand dollars’ worth. And bullets. No questions asked.”

  “Why?”

  “I get a broker’s fee.”

  Rose nodded. Jane said, “Perhaps that’s why we can trust him.”

  Rose said, “I suppose we give you the money and then you have the guns delivered? Something like that perhaps
? And when we get tired of waiting for delivery and call you up you seem to have moved?”

  Pam Shepard said, “No. Rose, believe me, you can trust him. He’s not dishonest.”

  “Pam, almost everyone is dishonest. He’s as dishonest as anyone else. I don’t want to do business with him.”

  “That’s dumb,” I said. “It’s the kind of dumb that smart people get because they think they’re smart.”

  “What the hell does that mean?” Jane said.

  “It means that if everyone’s dishonest you aren’t going to do better elsewhere. And the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t know. I got one character witness. Where you going to find a gun dealer that has that many?”

  Rose said, “We are not fools. You assume women can’t manage this sort of thing? That gunrunning is a masculine profession?”

  “I don’t assume anything. What I know is that amateurs can’t handle this sort of thing. You will get ripped off if you’re lucky and ripped off and busted if you’re not.” Ah, Spenser, master of the revolutionary argot. Word maven of the counterculture.

  “And why should we believe you won’t rip us off?” Jane said.

  “You got my word, and the assurance of one of your own people. Have I lied to you yet? Have I turned Pam in to her husband, or the fuzz? You held up a bank and killed an old man. He used to be a cop and the New Bedford cops are not going to forget that. They are going to be looking for you until Harvard wins the Rose Bowl. You are fugitives from justice as the saying goes. And you are in no position to be advertising for a gun dealer. If the word gets out that a group of women are looking to make a gun buy, who do you think the first dealer will be? The easy one, the one that shows up one day and says he’s got what you want?”

  “So far,” Rose said, “it seems to be you.”

  “Yeah, and you know who I am. The next one will be somebody undercover. An FBI informant, a special services cop, an agent from the Treasury Department, maybe a woman, a nice black woman with all the proper hatreds who wants to help a sister. And you show up with the cash and she shows up with thirteen cops and the paddy wagon.”

  “He’s right, you know,” Pam Shepard said. “He knows about this kind of thing, and we don’t. Who would get us guns that we could trust better?”