Pale Kings and Princes s-14 Read online

  "There," she nodded, "past the card catalogue in the research section."

  "Thank you," I said. The charming smile works every time. If I'd turned it up a notch, she'd probably come over and sit on my lap.

  The Wheaton Street Directory was the size of a phone book with a green cover plastered with ads for local establishments. At the bottom was printed A Public Service Publication of the Central Argus. It consisted of an alphabetical listing of the streets, each address and the name of the person who lived at that address. People who go to great trouble to keep their phones unlisted never think to keep themselves out of the street directory.

  I started with Acorn Street and went down the list looking at the names listed opposite the numbers. In the best of all possible worlds there was no reason they couldn't live on Acorn Street. There was no reason to think I'd have to go through the whole book. Early in the afternoon, about one-fifteen, I found the name Esteva an Water Street.

  I put the directory back on the shelf, smiled winningly at Caroline Rogers, and left the library. Caroline was still fighting off my charm but it was only a matter of time. Next time maybe the wide boyish grin.

  Water Street had no reason for its name. It was high on the hills behind town, and the only hint of water in sight was the gorge of the Wheaton River several hundred feet below. The Estevas lived at number three, at the dead end of the short street, a square twostoried cinder block house painted pink. The roof was flat and the flat, square one-story wing supported a deck which, in summer, was probably used for cookouts. There was a chain link fence around the property, with barbed wire on top. The gate to the driveway was open, but I could see the electronic apparatus on it so that one could close and open it with a beeper. There was a short front yard with no shrubbery. The fence appeared to circle the house. In the driveway was a silver Mercedes sport coupe.

  I parked in front and walked through the open gate and rang the front doorbell. A dog barked. There was a hint of footsteps and a pause while someone checked me out through the peephole. Then the door opened.

  There was a woman and a dog. The dog was a big Rottweiler, with a chain choke collar held on a short leather leash. The woman was almost as tall as I was and dressed in emerald green silk. She held the short leash and kept the dog pressed against her thigh. The dog looked at me without emotion. The woman was more distant.

  "Yes?" she said.

  She had on high-waisted green slacks, green suede boots with very high heels, and a green silk blouse with a deep cleavage. There was a green headband that kept her long black hair back off her face. There was a gold and emerald necklace and an emerald ring and a gold bracelet inset with a series of emeralds. She had on a lot of makeup, scarlet lipstick and green eyeshadow. Her face was less Spanish than Indian. A face that was used to looking scornful, used to looking down.

  I said, "Emmy Esteva?"

  "Esmeralda," she said.

  "I wonder if I might talk with you a moment," I said.

  "Go ahead."

  "May I come in?"

  "No."

  "Aw, come on, Mrs. Esteva," I said. "Don't beat around the bush."

  "If you have something you wish to say, say it," she said.

  "Did you know Eric Valdez?"

  "No."

  "I've been told you did."

  "Who told you this?" she said. The dog was motionless against her thigh.

  "A person who would know."

  "He lies. I know nothing of Eric Valdez."

  "I am told you were intimate with him."

  "He is a liar," she said. "If I let this dog go he will tear your throat out."

  "Or vice versa," I said.

  We looked at each other. Then Esmeralda took a step back. The dog moved with her. The door closed. Nothing else happened. I could ring the bell some more, but I didn't want to have to shoot the dog. He looked like a nice dog. I like dogs. If Eric Valdez had gotten it on with Mrs. Esteva, he was a major leaguer. I'd have been scared to.

  I turned around and went back to the car and got in and drove back down the hill. Halfway down I passed a pickup truck with ESTEVA PRODUCE on the side in emerald-green lettering. Caroline Rogers's son was driving. Son of a gun.

  I had nothing else to do so I U-turned with the help of a driveway and went back up the hill. The truck was parked out front of the Esteva house and the kid was just going in the front door with a large cardboard box. I circled past the house and parked halfway down the hill and watched in my rearview mirror. The Rogers kid came out in maybe two minutes and got in the pickup and drove on down the hill past me. I fell in behind him and we went through town. The bright red sports car was not the choice of shadow experts, but I didn't especially care if the kid spotted me or not. Under the railroad trestle on the east end of town we turned right and the kid turned into the parking lot of a large blue warehouse with the name ESTEVA PRODUCE painted on it in large green letters. Now I knew where 21 Mechanic Street was. The truck disappeared around back of the warehouse and I drove on and parked a way up the road out of sight.

  The police chief's son worked for Mr. Esteva. Mrs. Esteva was said to have had an affair with Eric Valdez. The police chief said Eric Valdez had been killed by a jealous husband.

  There were radio controls in the middle of the steering wheel of the sports car. I looked at them. Ah ha! I said.

  Chapter 13

  I drove back to my motel. As I drove west the late afternoon sun slanted directly in through the windshield, and even with sunglasses on and my Red Sox cap tilted way over my nose, I had trouble seeing the road. The car had a button to push so that the radio would scan the dial locating the local stations. It had a thermostatic heater/ cooler so that you set the temperature digitally and it stayed that way winter and summer. It had cruise control and turbo intercooling and a beeper to remind you that your fly was open. But if you drove west in the late afternoon, it couldn't do a goddamned thing about the sun. I kind of liked that.

  I scanned the dial on the radio but the local stations all played either Barry Manilow or an unidentifiable sound which someone had once told me was heavy metal. I finally found a station in Worcester that called itself the jazz sound, but the first record was a Chuck Mangione trumpet solo, so I shut the thing off, electronically, and sang a couple of bars of "Midnight Sun." Beautifully.

  The "ah ha" had probably been overoptimistic when I followed the Rogers kid to Esteva's, but compared to what I'd been coming up with before, it was a smoking pistol. It was a pattern. Coincidence exists but believing in it never did me any good.

  The sun had set by the time I got to the Reservoir Court. I parked in front of the motel and went in. The desk clerk, a little pudgy guy with a maroon three-piece suit, smirked at me as I came in. He wore a flowery tie and his white shirt gaped out under his vest by maybe four inches.

  "A gentleman wishes to see you in the lounge, Mr. Spenser." He said it in the way Mary Ellen Feeney used to say, "The principal wants to see you."

  There were a couple of guys sitting near the front door with overcoats on not doing anything. I unzipped my leather jacket and went into the bar. Virgie was on station. There were a couple of people having late lunch or early supper down past the bar in the dining room, and at a round table for six in the bar sat three men. The guy in the middle was wearing a double-breasted white cashmere overcoat with the high collar turned up. At the open throat I could see a white tie knotted against a dark shirt. His face was shaped like a wedge with the mouth a straight line slashed wide across the lower part. His forehead was prominent and his eyes recessed deeply beneath it. It was not a Spanish face, it was Indian. The man to his left was tall and thin with long hair and a drooping pencil-thin moustache. He sat languidly back in his chair like a cartoon Hispanic. His green Celtics warm-up jacket was open over a T-shirt that said "Anchor Steam Beer" on the front. The other guy was squat and his body jammed into a green and blue wool jacket that seemed about two sizes too small. The jacket was buttoned up tight to his neck. His
hair was thick and curly and needed cutting. On top of his head was a small flat-crowned hat with the brim turned up all the way. His nose was wide and flat and so was his face. His eyes were very small and dark and still.

  "My name is Spenser," I said.

  The guy in the Celtics jacket nodded toward a chair. I sat down. The guy in the Celtics jacket looked at me. So did the guy with the cashmere coat. The guy with the hat didn't look at anything.

  I looked back.

  After a while the guy in the cashmere coat said, "Do you know who I am?"

  "Ricardo Montalban," I said.

  They looked at me some more. I looked back.

  "I loved you in Star Trek II. The Wrath of Khan," I said.

  Cashmere glanced at Celtics Jacket. Celtics jacket shrugged.

  "My name is Felipe Esteva," Cashmere said.

  "I'll be goddamned," I said. "I'm never wrong about Ricardo. I saw him once outside the Palm on Santa Monica Boulevard. He was driving a Chrysler LeBaron and wearing a white coat just like that." I shook my head. "You sure?" I said.

  The guy in the Celtics jacket leaned forward over the table and said, "You are going to be in very big trouble."

  "Trouble?" I said. "What for? It's an easy mistake to make. Especially with the white coat."

  Esteva said, "Shut up. I didn't come to listen. I came to talk."

  I waited.

  "Today you went to my house," he said, "and you talked to my wife."

  I nodded.

  "What did you talk about?"

  "I asked her if she knew Eric Valdez," I said.

  "Why did you ask her that?"

  "I heard she did know him," I said.

  "Who you hear that from?"

  "A person who should know," I said.

  "Who?"

  I shook my head. "It was in confidence."

  Esteva looked at the guy with the hat. "Maybe Cesar can change your mind."

  "Maybe Cesar can't," I said. Cesar never moved. His eyes didn't shift. For all I could tell he hadn't heard us.

  "Don't be foolish, Spenser. You think you are tough, and some people I know say maybe you are. But Cesar . . ." Esteva shook his head. Cesar remained silent.

  "You ain't as tough as Cesar," the guy in the Celtics jacket said. He smiled when he said it and I saw that his upper front teeth were missing.

  "Sure," I said.

  We sat some more.

  "I don't like you talking to my wife," Esteva said.

  "Don't blame you, but it seemed a good idea at the time."

  "You think she got something to do with Valdez?"

  "Maybe," I said. "I was told that Valdez had had an affair with the wife of a Colombian and that he'd been killed by the husband."

  Esteva stared at me. Then he said something in Spanish and his two pals got up and went to the bar and sat on stools out of earshot.

  "I maybe kill you for saying that," Esteva said.

  "Sure," I said. "Or you'll kill me for thinking you were Ricardo Montalban, or because you want to prove how tough Cesar is. I understand that possibility. But let's not waste time here with it. You saying you're going to kill me doesn't scare me. Probably it should. But it doesn't. And every time you say it, I got to think up a smart answer to prove that it doesn't scare me. It uses up all our energy and we've got more important stuff to talk about."

  Esteva took out a long thin black cigar like Gilbert Roland used to smoke in the movies and lit it and got it drawing and inhaled and exhaled and gazed for a moment at the glowing tip. Then he looked at me and nodded. "That is true," he said.

  He took in some more cigar smoke and let it out in a narrow stream.

  "You think my wife had an affair with Eric Valdez?" he said.

  "I don't know," I said.

  "You think I killed him?"

  "I don't know."

  He was silent.

  "That's why I asked," I said.

  "You think maybe she's mad at me for killing him, she tell you about it."

  "It happens," I said.

  "Emmy don't have an affair with nobody," he said. "If she did I would kill him, sure. Maybe her too. But she don't. She love me, Spenser, and she respect me. You understand that?"

  "Yeah," I said.

  "You have other questions?" he said.

  "Valdez's boss thinks he was killed to keep the lid on the cocaine trade here."

  "That a question?" Esteva said.

  "Yes," I said.

  "What cocaine business," Esteva said. He put the cigar in the corner of his mouth and inhaled and exhaled without removing it.

  "I was asking you," I said.

  "I don't know nothing about cocaine," he said.

  "You're in the produce business?" I said.

  "Yes."

  "And those two guys walk around with you in case a tough greengrocer tries to put the arm on you."

  "I'm rich," Esteva said. "Lot of Anglos don't like a rich Colombian."

  "How about the chief's son? How come he works for you?"

  Esteva shrugged elaborately. "Don't do harm to do favors for the chief. Good business."

  "Kid drives a truck," I said.

  "Kid's slow," Esteva said. "Job's a good job for him."

  "You send some people out to Quabbin Road the other night to roust me?"

  Esteva shook his head.

  "I didn't think you did," I said.

  "You think I tell you if I did?" Esteva said.

  "Hell," I said, "I don't know, Mr. Esteva. I don't know what's going on so I wander around and ask questions and annoy people and finally somebody says something or does something then I wander around and ask questions about that and annoy people and so on. Better than sitting up in a tree with a spyglass."

  "Well, you annoying people. That is true," Esteva said. "One day it could get you hurt bad."

  He got up and nodded toward the two men at the bar. They fell in behind him and followed as he walked out. When they reached the lobby the two guys in overcoats stood. Cesar stopped in the doorway of the lounge and turned slowly and looked at me. I looked back. It was like staring into a shotgun. Then he turned and went out behind the rest of them.

  "That's for sure," I said. But no one heard me.

  Chapter 14

  Garrett Kingsley called me at seven-ten in the morning.

  "Bailey Rogers has been killed," he said. "We picked it up on the police radio. About fifteen minutes ago."

  "Where," I said.

  "Someplace on Ash Street," Kingsley said. "You know where that is?"

  "Yeah," I said. "It's up past the library."

  "Good, get over there and see what's going on.

  "Do I get a by-line?" I said.

  "We've got a reporter and a photographer on the way down there. But it's got to be connected."

  "To Valdez?"

  "Of course."

  "I'll take a look," I said. "You know anything else?"

  "No. That's all, just the initial call on the police radio."

  "Who's the reporter?" I said.

  "Kid named Murray Roberts," Kingsley said. "I don't know who the photographer will be yet."

  "Okay," I said. "I'll be in touch."

  I was showered and shaved and dressed for running. I took off my sweats and put on my jeans and a pink sweater. I took off my S&W .32 and put on my Colt Python. Leather jacket, sunglasses, and I was ready to solve something.

  There were four cruisers, including one from the State Police, at the top of Ash Street. An ambulance was pulled up at a slant on the right-hand side of the road in front of an Oldsmobile Cutlass with a small roof-top antenna. The front door of the Cutlass was open. Two EMT's were at the door, one had his head inside, one stood behind him leaning on the roof with his left hand. The buzz and chatter of the police radios filled in the background. A yellow plastic police line had been strung around the scene. There were four or five Wheaton cops and one state trooper inside the line, and maybe twenty civilians in various stages of dress from bathrobe to suit
and tie outside it. Somebody's yellow Lab was sniffing the tires of the State Police cruiser.

  Henry, the pot-bellied Wheaton police captain who had tried to roust me on my first visit to the Wheaton Library, was standing behind the Olds, his arm around Caroline Rogers. He looked uncomfortable.

  I parked along the side of the road and got out and walked over toward the Oldsmobile. J.D., the sergeant who'd been with Henry, spotted me.

  "What the hell do you want?" he said.

  "I understand someone aced the chief," I said.

  "There's a crime under investigation," he said. "That's all you need to know."

  "I figured you'd want to talk with me," I said.

  "About what?"

  "Usually cops talk to everybody that was in any way connected to a capital crime," I said. "Especially a cop killing."

  "We'll get to you," J.D. said.

  The state cop who had been talking with one of the EMT's saw me with J.D. and walked over.

  "Who's this?" he said.

  "Private cop from Boston," J.D. said.

  The trooper was big, as so many of them are. He had short-cropped blond hair and pink cheeks.

  "Boston, huh?" he said. "Know anybody I know?"

  "Healy," I said. "Used to work out of Essex County DA's office. Now he's in at 1010 Commonwealth, I think."

  "Homicide commander," the trooper said. "What are you doing out here?" J.D. had drifted fast away when the trooper spotted me.

  "Central Argus hired me to come out and see about what happened to one of their reporters," I said.

  The trooper nodded. "Valdez. Yeah, I looked in on that too. It's either coke or a jealous husband, or both. We turned up shit on it."

  "That's what everyone else has turned up," I said. "Think this is connected?"

  The trooper shrugged. "Town like Wheaton? Goes forty years without a killing then there's two murders in a month? Tough coincidence."

  "That's what I thought," I said.

  "Got any thoughts," the trooper said.

  "No," I said. "Not yet."

  The trooper nodded. He took a card from his uniform shirt pocket and gave it to me. "You come across anything give me a call," he said. "Where you staying?"