Early Autumn Read online

  I’d accomplished a couple of things maybe. One, for certain, I knew what she looked like so if she left I could follow; otherwise, I had to wait for old Mel to show up. The second thing, maybe, was she’d call to thank him for the gift and he’d say he never sent it and that would stir them up and one would go to the other. Or it would make them especially careful and I wouldn’t be able to find him through her. The odds were with me though. And if his wife was right, he was too randy to stay away from her forever.

  Over the years I’d found that stirring things up was better than not When things got into motion I accomplished more. Or I seemed to.

  CHAPTER 3

  When she came out I almost missed her. I was watching the front door and just caught a glimpse of her as she cruised out from behind the apartment building in a black Buick Regal. I got in behind her, separated by one car as she swung up onto Route 9 and headed west. She had no reason to be looking for a tail and I had no reason to be tricky about it. I stayed a car or two behind her all the way onto 128 North and up Route 93 and onto Route 125 in Andover. Route 125 was harder. It was nearly deserted, running through the Harold Parker State Forest. Staying too close to her might make her notice. I hung a long way back and almost missed her again when she turned off just before Route 114 and went down Chestnut Street in Andover. What saved me was the red light. The car that had been ahead of her was stopped at it, and she wasn’t there. She must have taken the left just before it. I yanked the MG around and accelerated down Chestnut Street. It was a winding back road at this end and the MG did much better time than the Buick. I caught sight of her in about two hundred yards. I slowed and let her pull ahead again. A mile or so farther and she stopped on the right-hand side. I turned right a block behind her and stopped out of sight and got out and walked back. Her car was there and she was disappearing into a big white house on the right.

  I walked down. The house she was parked in front of was a two-family, up and down. The front hall door was unlocked and inside were two other doors. The one on the right obviously led to the downstairs apartment. The one directly ahead to the upstairs. I put my ear against the downstairs door. I could hear a TV set and the sound of a baby crying. That wouldn’t be Giacomin. If she was visiting Giacomin. For all I knew she was here to play Parcheesi with an elderly aunt.

  I tried the knob of the upstairs door. It turned but the door didn’t open. Above it was the round key side of a spring bolt. They were easy, if the jamb wasn’t tight. I took a thin plastic shim from my coat pocket and tried it. The jamb wasn’t tight. I popped the bolt back and opened the door. The stairs rose straight up ahead of me to a landing and then they turned right. I went up them. At the top was another door. I put my ear against it. I could hear a radio and the low sound of conversation.

  I put my hand on the knob and turned it quietly. The door was not locked. I opened it silently and stepped into a kind of foyer. Ahead was a dining room. To my right a living room through an archway. In the living room Elaine Brooks sat in a red plush armchair leaning forward, talking with a big man with a long nose and small eyes and a droopy mustache. Elementary, my dear Watson, elementary.

  She didn’t see me, her back was toward me. But he did. He was standing with a drink in his hand while she talked to him, and when I opened the door we looked right at each other. I had never figured the drill on a situation like this. Did I say “Ah, hah” vigorously, or just stare accusingly. He was quicker than I. He knew just the right thing to say. He said, “What the hell do you want?”

  “Perfect,” I said. “The very phrase.”

  Elaine Brooks turned and looked at me. Her eyes widened.

  “That’s him, Mel,” she said. “That’s the guy brought the package from you.”

  Giacomin was wearing a gold Ban-Lon turtleneck and green polyester pants with no belt loops and one of those little flaps that buttons across in front instead of a belt. On the little finger of his right hand was a silver ring in the form of a snake biting its tail. On the little finger of his left hand was a silver ring with an amethyst set in it The Ban-Lon shirt was not flattering to his body. He was fat around the middle. He said, “I asked you a question. I want an answer and I want it now.”

  I said, “You shouldn’t wear a Ban-Lon shirt like that if you’re going to scare people. It’s a loser. Cary Grant wouldn’t look good in Ban-Lon, you know.”

  “What did you bring her a present for? What the hell you doing trying to sneak into my house?”

  I noticed he had sucked up his gut a little, but there’s not a lot you can do with beer wings. I said, “My name is Spenser. I know it sounds corny, but I’m a private detective. Your wife hired me to find her son.”

  “My ex-wife,” he said. “She offered to screw you yet?”

  “No. I was surprised. Most women do at once.” I looked at Elaine Brooks. “Am I starting to show my age, you think? I’m zero for two today.”

  Giacomin said, “Listen, Jack, I’ve heard all I’m going to hear from you. Move out.”

  I shook my head. “Nope. I need to stay and talk a little about your kid. Let’s start over. Pretend I haven’t snuck in here. Pretend you haven’t yelled at me. Pretend I haven’t been a wise guy. It’s a bad habit, I know, but sometimes I can’t resist.”

  “The kid ain’t here. Now get the hell out of here or I’m going to throw you down the stairs.”

  “Now I told you, we have to talk. I am very stubborn. Maybe I’ve lost my sex appeal, but I’m still stubborn. I’m going to find that kid and I’m pretty sure you can help.”

  Giacomin was looking at me. He was a big guy and he’d played football, and he was probably used to being tough. But he probably also knew something about physical potential from his old football days and I think he had a suspicion that he couldn’t throw me down the stairs.

  “I don’t know where he is,” Giacomin said.

  “Are you worried at all about the fact that his mother doesn’t know either?” I said.

  “She tell you that?” he said.

  “Not exactly. She told me he was with you.”

  “Well, I told you before he’s not. Now are you going to leave or am I going to call the cops?”

  “You’re going to call the cops,” I said.

  “You think I won’t?”

  “I think you won’t,” I said.

  “You think you can stop me?”

  “I don’t need to. I don’t want to. I enjoy meeting policemen. Sometimes if you’re good they let you play with their handcuffs.”

  He looked at me. Elaine Brooks looked at me. If there’d been a mirror, I would have looked at me. But there wasn’t. So I looked at them. In the quiet I could hear a television playing. It didn’t seem to be from downstairs.

  “Look, Jack, I’m getting pretty tired of you,” he said. “What is it you want?”

  “I want to take your kid back to his mother,” I said. “I told you that already.”

  “And I told you he ain’t here.”

  “Why don’t I look around and prove it to myself,” I said.

  “You got a search warrant?”

  “A search warrant? You gotta stop watching Starsky and Hutch,” I said. “I’m not a cop. I don’t get search warrants.”

  “You can’t just walk in here and search my house,” he said.

  “Why not?”

  We looked at each other some more. I was pretty sure the kid was there. If he wasn’t, why not call the cops? All I had to do was stay there. They’d bend. They wouldn’t be able to think of anything else to do.

  Giacomin stopped looking at me long enough to look at his girl friend. She didn’t have anything to offer. He looked back at me.

  “All right,” he said. “I’ve had enough. Either you walk out of here now or I kick your ass out.”

  “Don’t do that,” I said. “You’re out of shape. I’ll hurt you.”

  Giacomin looked at me and looked away. I knew he wasn’t going to.

  “The hell with it,” h
e said with a small push-away hand gesture. “It’s not worth a fight. Take him. He’s down the hall.” Giacomin gestured with his head. He didn’t look at me or Elaine Brooks.

  But the boy wasn’t down the hall. He was right around the corner in the dining room. He stepped into sight around the archway.

  “Swell fight you put up for me, Daddy dear” he said.

  He was a short thin kid and his voice had a soft whine to it He was wearing a short-sleeved vertically striped dress shirt that gapped open near his navel, and maroon corduroy pants and Top-Siders with the rawhide lacing gone from one.

  Giacomin said, “You remember who you’re talking to, kid.”

  The kid smiled without humor. “I know” he said. “I know who I’m talking to, Dads.”

  Giacomin turned away from him and was silent.

  I said, “My name is Spenser. Your mother sent me to bring you back to her.”

  The kid shrugged elaborately. I noticed that the pants were too big for him. The crotch sagged.

  “You want to go?” I said.

  He shrugged again.

  “Would you rather stay here?”

  “With him?” The kid’s soft whine was full of distaste.

  “With him,” I said. “Or would you prefer to live with your mother?”

  “I don’t care.”

  “How about you?” I said to Giacomin. “You care?”

  “The bitch got everything else,” he said. “She can have him too. For now.”

  I said, “Okay, Paul. You got any stuff to pack?”

  He shrugged. The all-purpose gesture. Maybe I should work on mine.

  “He’s got nothing to pack,” Giacomin said. “Everything here is mine. She isn’t getting any of it”

  “Smart,” I said. “Smart. I like a man gets out of a marriage gracefully.”

  “What the hell’s that supposed to mean?” Giacomin said.

  “You wouldn’t know,” I said. “The kid got a coat? It’s about nineteen degrees out. I’ll see that she sends it back if you want.”

  Giacomin said to his son, “Get your coat.”

  The boy went to the front hall closet and took out a navy pea coat. It was wrinkled, as if it had been crumpled on the floor rather than hanging. He put it on and left it unbuttoned. I opened the door to the stairs and he walked through it and started down the stairs. I looked at Giacomin.

  “You’ve gotten yourself in a lot of trouble over this, Jack, and don’t you forget it,” he said.

  I said, “Name’s Spenser with an S, like the poet. I’m in the Boston book.” I stepped through the door and closed it. Then I opened it again and stuck my head back into the hall. “Under Tough,” I said. And closed the door, and walked out.

  CHAPTER 4

  The kid sat in the front seat beside me and stared out the window. His hands fidgeted on his lap. His fingernails were chewed short. He had hangnails. I turned left at the foot of Chestnut Street and drove south past the Academy.

  I said, “Who would you rather live with, your mother or your father?”

  The kid shrugged.

  “Does that mean you don’t know or you don’t care?” I said.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Does that mean you don’t know the answer to my question or you don’t know who you’d rather live with?” I said.

  The kid shrugged again. “Can I turn on the radio?” he said.

  I said, “No. We’re talking.”

  He shrugged.

  “Would you rather be adopted?”

  This time he didn’t shrug.

  “A ward of the state?”

  Nothing.

  “Join a gang of pickpockets and live in the slums of London?”

  He looked at me as if I were crazy.

  “Run off and join the circus? Make a raft and float down the Mississippi? Stow away on a pirate ship?”

  “You’re not funny,” he said.

  “Lot of people tell me that,” I said. “Who would you rather live with, your mother or your father?”

  “What’ll you do if I won’t say?” he said.

  “Ride around and be funny at you till you plead for mercy.”

  He didn’t say anything. But he didn’t shrug. And he did look at me. Briefly.

  “Want me to turn around and take you back to your father?”

  “What difference does it make?” the kid said. “What do you care? It’s not your business. Whyn’t you leave me alone?”

  “Because right now you’re in my keeping and I’m trying to decide what’s best to do with you.”

  “I thought my mother hired you, Whyn’t you do what she tells you?”

  “I might not approve of what she wants me to do.”

  “But she hired you,” he said.

  “She gave me a hundred bucks, one day’s pay. If you don’t want me to take you to her, I’ll take you back to your old man, give her back her hundred.”

  “I bet you wouldn’t,” he said. He was staring out the window when he said it

  “Convince me you should be with him and I will.”

  “Okay, I’d rather be with him,” the kid said. His face was still turned to the window.

  “Why?” I said.

  “See. I knew you wouldn’t,” he said. He turned his face toward me and he looked as if he’d won something.

  “I didn’t say I wouldn’t,” I said. “I asked for reasons. This is important stuff, choosing a parent. I’m not going to have you do it to win a bet.”

  He stared out the window again. We were in North Reading, still going south.

  “See, Paul, what I’m trying to do is get you to decide what you’d like best to do. Are the questions too hard for you? You want to try watching my lips move?”

  With his face still turned to the window the kid said, “I don’t care who I live with. They both suck. It doesn’t make any difference. They’re both awful. I hate them.”

  The soft whine was a little shaky. As if he might cry.

  “Son of a bitch,” I said. “I hadn’t thought of that”

  Again he looked at me in an odd sort of triumph. “So now what are you going to do?”

  I wanted to shrug and look out the window. I said, “I’ll probably take you back to your mother and keep the hundred dollars.”

  “That’s what I thought,” the kid said.

  “Would you rather I did something else?” I said.

  He shrugged. We were through Reading Square almost to 128. “Can I turn on the radio now?” he said.

  “No,” I said. I knew I was being churlish, but the kid annoyed me. In his whiny, stubborn desperation he irritated the hell out of me. Mr. Warm. There’s no such thing as a bad boy.

  The kid almost smirked.

  “You want to know why I’m taking you to your mother?” I said.

  “To get the hundred bucks.”

  “Yeah. But it’s more than a hundred bucks. It’s a way of thinking about things.”

  The kid shrugged. If he did it enough, I would stop the car and bang his head on the pavement “When all your options are lousy” I said, “you try to choose the least lousy. Apparently you’re equally bad off with your mother or your father. Apparently you don’t care which place you’re unhappy. If I take you back to your father you’re unhappy and I get nothing. If I take you back to your mother you’re unhappy and I get a hundred bucks. So I’m taking you back to your mother. You understand?”

  “Sure, you want the hundred.”

  “It would be the same if it were a dime. It’s a way to think about things. It’s a way not to get shoved around by circumstances.”

  “And Mommy will give you money,” he said. “Maybe you can fuck her.” He checked me carefully, looking sideways at me as he said it, to see how shocked I’d be.

  “Your father suggested the same thing,” I said. “Your mom into sex, is she?”

  The kid said, “I dunno.”

  “Or you figure I’m so irresistible that it’s inevitable.”


  The kid shrugged. I figured I could take maybe two more shrugs before I stopped the car. “I don’t want to talk about it,” he said.

  “Then you shouldn’t have brought it up,” I said.

  He was silent.

  I turned off of Route 28 onto Route 128 South, toward Lexington.

  “I also think it’s bad form to talk about your mother that way to a stranger.”

  “Why?”

  “If’s not done,” I said.

  The kid shrugged and stared out the window. He had one shrug left.

  “If my father had started to fight with you, what would you do?”

  “I’d have subdued him.”

  “How?”

  “Depends how tough he is.”

  “He used to be a football player and he still lifts weights at the health club.”

  I shrugged. It was catching.

  “Do you think you could beat him up?” he said.

  “Oh, sure,” I said. “He’s a big strong guy, I guess, but I do this for a living. And I’m in better shape.”

  “Big deal,” the kid said.

  “I didn’t bring it up,” I said.

  “I don’t care about muscles,” the kid said.

  “Okay,” I said.

  “I suppose you think you’re a big man, having muscles,” the kid said.

  “I think they are useful to me in what I do,” I said.

  “Well, I think they’re ugly.”

  I took my hands off the wheel long enough to turn my palms up.

  “How come you’re a detective?” he said.

  “Like the man said, because I can’t sing or dance.”

  “It’s an awful gross job to me,” he said.

  I made the same palms-up gesture. We were passing the Burlington Mall. “What exit do I take?” I said.

  “Four and two-twenty-five toward Bedford,” he said. “How come you want to do a gross job?”

  “It lets me live life on my own terms,” I said. “You sure you mean toward Bedford?”

  “Yes. I’ll show you,” he said. And he did. We turned off toward Bedford, turned right, and right again and over an overpass back toward Lexington. Emerson Road was not far off the highway, a community of similar homes with a lot of wood and glass and some stone and brick. It was contemporary, but it worked okay in Lexington. I parked in the driveway out front and we got out. It was late afternoon and the wind had picked up. We leaned into it as we walked to his back door.