Rough Weather Read online

  Hawk returned with her wine. She smiled very brightly at him. She was a nice-looking kid in the way that rich kids can be. Nice teeth, nice skin, good body, good haircut. I was never clear how I could tell, but money always seemed to show. She drank some wine.

  “Anyway, my mother and father, well, I guess, more my mother, went crazy,” Valerie said. “Maurice had a girlfriend! You know?”

  “Did she push him into it?”

  “My mom can be a little pushy, but I don’t know. I went away to school, and whatever developed developed without me.”

  “He didn’t talk about it?” I said.

  “To me? Not really. He said he felt bad for Adelaide. That she’d had a pretty bad childhood, but he never said exactly what.”

  “You think he married her to help her out?” I said.

  “I don’t know. I mean, I wasn’t around. I was pretty busy here. Classes and dating and all,” Valerie said. “Hell, he was queer, she might have been a lesbian, maybe they thought they could be each other’s beard. You know?”

  I nodded. Hawk and I had finished our beer. Valerie was almost through her second wine. She looked at Hawk.

  “Are you a detective, too?” she said.

  Hawk smiled at her.

  “No, ma’am, ah jess come along to carry his luggage,” Hawk said.

  “He doesn’t seem to have any luggage,” Valerie said.

  “Easy job,” Hawk said.

  Valerie smiled again, staring at him directly now.

  “You spending the night in town?” she said.

  “Uh-uh,” Hawk said.

  “Want to buy me dinner?” Valerie said.

  “How old are you?” Hawk said.

  “I’ll be twenty in the spring,” she said.

  “And I won’t,” Hawk said.

  “So what?” Valerie said.

  Hawk smiled at her again and shook his head.

  “You good-looking and you nice,” Hawk said. “But you too young.”

  “You’d be surprised,” Valerie said.

  “No doubt that I would,” Hawk said. “And I thank you for the offer. But I be having dinner with my age mate here. He’s boring, but he’s boring about things I know.”

  She shrugged.

  “No harm trying,” Valerie said.

  “None,” Hawk said.

  “Boring?” I said to Hawk.

  54

  I was back in Boston, in my office, discussing with Hawk the official weekday start of the cocktail hour.

  “You don’t have to wait for no damn time,” Hawk said. “You want a drink, have a drink.”

  “At ten in the morning?” I said.

  “That when you want it, yes.”

  “How uncivilized,” I said.

  “I is of African heritage,” Hawk said. “’Course I uncivilized.”

  “True, while I am a descendant of Irish kings.”

  “Which be why you wanting a drink at ten in the morning,” Hawk said.

  “Not always,” I said.

  “So what we talking about?” Hawk said.

  “It’s four-thirty,” I said. “Half-hour to go.”

  Hawk shook his head.

  “Weird,” Hawk said.

  “How about yesterday?” I said. “You wouldn’t respond to a good-looking college girl who came on to you.”

  “Too young,” Hawk said.

  “She’s a full-grown woman, almost twenty, anatomically correct. What’s too young.”

  “She talked funny,” Hawk said. “You know, like they all do. High voice, nasal, talk very fast. Grating.”

  “Well, yeah. But how much talking were you expecting?”

  “She say dinner,” Hawk said. “That be chitchat. She say want me to come to your room now? Be different.”

  “Man,” I said. “I didn’t know you had limits.”

  “Like to have sex with women who was at least born when John Carlos and Tommie Smith was in Mexico,” Hawk said.

  “Wow,” I said. “And here I am thinking you required only a pulse.”

  Hawk grinned.

  “Also depends what else I got on my plate at the time,” he said.

  “Glad it’s going well for you,” I said.

  “Yowzah,” Hawk said, with the accent on the zah.

  My phone rang. It was Bradshaw.

  “I gotta see you,” he said. “Now.”

  “Where are you?” I said.

  “Wagner Motel on One twenty-eight in Burlington,” he said. “Across from the mall.”

  “What do you need?”

  “I need help,” he said. “I’m in danger. You need to come right now.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “I’m in room two-oh-three, under the name Bailey.”

  “Here we come,” I said.

  “We?”

  “My associate Hawk will be with me. Big man, black, don’t panic if you see him.”

  “Nobody else,” he said. “No one knows I’m here.”

  “Mum’s the word,” I said.

  “Hurry up,” he said. “Just get here quick.”

  I hung up. And looked at Hawk.

  “Gotta go rescue Bradshaw,” I said.

  “From what?”

  “Don’t know,” I said. “He said to hurry.”

  “There go the cocktail hour,” Hawk said.

  “We can stop in a packy,” I said. “Maybe buy a couple of nips for the car.”

  “Pathetic,” Hawk said.

  “I know,” I said. “I thought so when I said it.”

  55

  The Wagner Motel was an undistinguished suburban motel on a major highway near a big shopping center. It had a central building where the front desk, bar, and restaurant were. There was a wing on each side. Hawk and I went in the side door of one of the wings and up the stairs without passing the front desk. We were at room 323. Room 203 was at the other end. When we got there the privacy sign was hanging on the door-knob. Hawk stepped to the side. I knocked on the door. Nobody answered. I knocked a couple more times. It seemed pretty clear that there were no plans to open the door.

  I put my ear to the door. The television was playing loudly. I looked at Hawk. He shrugged.

  “Call the manager or kick it in?” he said.

  “Call,” I said.

  We were at the end of the corridor. I went to the house phone on the small lamp table. In a minute or two a nervous-looking young guy with an ineffective combover got out of the elevator and walked down the hall to us. He looked uneasily at Hawk. Then at me.

  “You the man that called?” he said.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Are you guests of the hotel?” he said.

  “No. We were invited here by the occupant of this room,” I said. “We fear something untoward might have happened.”

  The desk guy was wearing a white shirt with a green tie and a green vest. The collar on the shirt was curled up at the tips.

  “Untoward?” he said.

  I had a sense he might not be on the fast track.

  “I’m a detective,” I said. “Working on a case. We need the door opened.”

  “I can’t just override his privacy sign,” the desk guy said.

  From outside the motel there was the dim sound of a siren being turned off.

  “Ah,” I said.

  “I took the liberty of calling the police,” the desk guy said. “I will wait for them, if you don’t mind.”

  In maybe a minute, two Burlington cops came out of the elevator and walked down to us. Both were young guys who looked at if they got a lot of exercise. They were carrying their nightsticks.

  “What’s the deal,” one of them said.

  “My name is Spenser,” I said. “I’m working with a state police captain named Healy on a case.”

  “I know Healy. What’s the case?”

  “Has to do with the kidnapping a while ago on Tashtego Island.”

  “Yeah,” the cop said. “I remember that. No progress is what I heard.”
>
  “We might make some,” I said, “if we can get this door unlocked.”

  The cop looked at Hawk.

  “Who’s this,” he said.

  “My partner,” I said.

  Hawk had no expression.

  “Tell me more,” the cop said.

  His partner had taken a few steps away and stood quietly watching Hawk and me. Especially Hawk.

  “Guy called me and said he was in trouble and needed to see me right away.”

  “Guy in this room?”

  “Yeah. He’s registered as Bailey, but his real name is Bradshaw.”

  “Like the Bradshaw broad on Tashtego?”

  “Estranged husband,” I said.

  The cop nodded at the desk guy.

  “Open the door,” he said.

  The desk guy did. The door opened a couple of inches and held.

  “Security chain,” the desk guy said.

  “Mr. Bradshaw?” the cop said. “It’s the police, Mr. Bradshaw.”

  Nothing.

  “Kick it in,” the cop said.

  “Me?” the desk guy said.

  Hawk grinned.

  “Me,” he said.

  He shifted his weight and drove his right foot into the door just above the knob. The safety chain tore out of the doorjamb and the door banged open. The cop went past Hawk into the room and stopped. I went in behind him. The window opposite the door had a bullet hole in it with spiderweb fracture lines spreading across the pane. On the floor, on his back, in front of the window, with a bullet hole in his forehead and a spread of blood soaking into the rug beneath, was the late Harden Bradshaw. The cop bent over and felt for a pulse.

  “Gone,” he said after a moment.

  “Blood’s starting to dry,” I said.

  The cop nodded and yelled to his partner in the hall.

  “Call the captain, Harry,” he said. “We got a homicide.”

  Then he looked at me.

  “You and your partner stick around,” he said.

  56

  When all the crime-scene fuss was over, the place dusted, the photographs taken, the grounds searched, the room sealed, Healy sat with Hawk and me in the coffee shop of the motel and ate a sandwich.

  Healy put his sandwich down and swallowed and looked at Hawk.

  “I seem to be consorting with a known felon,” Healy said.

  “Think how I feel,” Hawk said.

  Healy nodded.

  “Motel’s dug into a sort of low hillside,” Healy said. “So ten feet from the back, there’s a hill nearly level with the second floor.”

  “Shoulda asked for a front room,” Hawk said.

  Healy nodded and ate some of his sandwich. Hawk and I each had a beer. We were hoping to do better than the Wagner Coffee Shop for dinner.

  “Footprints on the hill?” I said.

  “Nope, ground’s dry. Lotta people have walked around up there; grass is sort of trampled.”

  “Peeping Toms?” I said.

  “Everybody needs a nice hobby,” Healy said.

  “So whoever shot him knew where he was and was good with a gun. Put one in Bradshaw’s head through the glass,” I said.

  “From maybe twenty feet,” Healy said. “Didn’t have to be Annie Oakley.”

  “One shot,” I said. “That’s confidence.”

  “Maybe, but from the hill you can’t see the floor of the room,” Healy said. “When Bradshaw went down, he was out of sight.”

  “One in the middle of the forehead, one try only?” I said. “Guy must have had some confidence in himself, unless he was aiming for the middle of the mass and missed badly.”

  “Wasn’t Bradshaw some sort of spook?” Hawk said.

  “Maybe,” I said.

  “He knew he in danger,” Hawk said. “Why he called you.”

  “That’s what he said.”

  “Shoulda known better than hide in a room at somebody’s eye level,” Hawk said.

  “And stand looking out the window with the lights on,” Healy said. “There was a scatter of glass particles on his face.”

  “Maybe he wasn’t a spook,” I said.

  “Maybe not too bright,” Hawk said.

  “Fear makes you stupid sometimes,” I said.

  Hawk grinned.

  “Wouldn’t know,” he said.

  “He thought no one knew he was in the motel,” I said.

  Hawk nodded.

  “Hole looks like a small-caliber, and we found a twenty-two slug in the mattress,” Healy said. “Maybe a target gun.”

  “Which means the shooter’s a pro,” I said. “Or such an amateur that it was the only gun he could get.”

  “I’m voting for pro,” Healy said.

  “So who we got in this mess that’s a pro?” I said.

  “Tony Marcus,” Healy said. “Actually, Ty-Bop.”

  “Ty-Bop’s just the gun,” I said. “Tony pulls the trigger.”

  “I know,” Healy said.

  “Or Rugar,” Hawk said.

  “I think that’s a union violation,” I said. “You’re detecting.”

  “Nope,” Hawk said. “Just thinking out loud. Prove that I can.”

  “Why would Rugar kill this guy?” Healy said.

  “We knew that,” I said, “we might know everything.”

  “Wouldn’t that be refreshing,” Healy said.

  57

  It was Sunday. We were at the counter of the Agawam Diner, the world’s leading restaurant, having a late breakfast. Hawk had taken Sunday off, on the hopeful assumption that no one in Rowley would try to kill me. From where we sat I could see that Pearl had settled down in the driver’s seat of my car and gone to sleep just as if she didn’t know we were in there eating without her.

  “I got a call,” I said, “from Heidi Bradshaw.”

  “Really.”

  “She wants to see me.”

  “Of course she does,” Susan said. “Who wouldn’t.”

  “She sounded sort of scared,” I said.

  “Of what?”

  “She’d heard about Bradshaw,” I said. “I think she’s scared it will happen to her.”

  “She say why she thinks that?”

  “No.”

  “Be good to know,” Susan said.

  “It would,” I said. “Any other questions you think I should ask?”

  “None, I’m sure, that you haven’t thought of,” Susan said. “Myself, I would be very interested in why she didn’t get better psychiatric treatment for her daughter after she attempted suicide.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’d like to know that, too. I would also like to know if she knew Rugar in Bucharest.”

  “Do you think she’ll tell you?”

  “Probably not,” I said. “But something might come out.”

  “Nothing ventured . . .” Susan said. “Are you going there?”

  “No,” I said. “She’s coming to me.”

  “Noblesse oblige,” Susan said.

  “Yes,” I said. “I’m thrilled.”

  “Have you ever thought about how much it must cost,” Susan said, “to be Heidi Bradshaw?”

  “More than the GNP of Albania?” I said.

  “Probably,” Susan said. “She doesn’t spin, neither does she sow.”

  “She’s dependent on the kindness of husbands,” I said.

  Susan nodded.

  “The most recent of whom seem to be broke, or nearly so,” I said. “According to Epstein.”

  “Might want to factor that in,” Susan said.

  “Yeah,” I said. “You know what I don’t get? Epstein says Van Meer is broke. Van Meer says he’s rich.”

  “Drunks are the royalty of denial,” Susan said.

  “Especially while drinking,” I said.

  “Which for someone like Van Meer is probably nearly always,” Susan said.

  “Maybe that’s why he drinks. Denial is a much more pleasant reality than the one he’d have to face,” I said.

  “Maybe,” Sus
an said. “Some people drink because they like it, you know, and then get addicted and drink because they must.”

  “I’m still at the like it part,” I said.

  “You won’t get addicted,” Susan said.

  We were both drinking coffee. Susan had ordered a soft-boiled egg and some toast. I went a bit heartier: orange juice, three eggs over easy, sausages, home fries, toast, and of course, the basis of all gourmet breakfasts, pie.

  “Why not?”

  “You won’t,” she said.

  “I’m kind of addicted to you,” I said.

  “That’s because you love me,” Susan said.

  “And I don’t love booze?”

  “No,” Susan said. “You don’t, nor would you.” She smiled. “You’re much too loyal.”

  The waitress brought my orange juice. I drank some. She refilled both our coffee cups.

  “Doesn’t addiction mean that you are beyond controlling it?” I said.

  “Which is why you would never have one,” Susan said.

  “Because I’m addicted to self-control?”

  “Or not being controlled,” Susan said. “You are much too autonomous to ever let something get hold of you . . . or someone.”

  “Except?” I said.

  Susan smiled.

  “Nope, not even me,” she said. “There are, after all, things you will not do, even for me.”

  The waitress returned and put the soft-boiled egg in front of Susan and my breakfast in front of me.

  “How’d you know which of us got the big plate?” I said.

  The waitress stared at me for a moment. Then she looked at Susan and looked at me.

  “Just a wild guess,” she said. “You need anything else right now?”

  We didn’t.

  “There’s not much that I can think of that I wouldn’t do,” I said, “if you asked.”

  “It’s because I know better than to ask,” Susan said.

  “That’s crazy,” I said.

  “You’d do anything I asked?” Susan said.

  “Absolutely,” I said.

  “Can I have your pie?” Susan said.

  “No,” I said. “Of course not.”

  58

  It was like a presidential visit. First into my office were two Tashtego security guys in plain clothes with walkie-talkies.