Rough Weather Read online

  “No.”

  “How’d it work?” I said.

  “Tashtego? Three four-man patrols plus a supervisor. When the guys got killed it was the second shift. Two Jeeps. Two guys in a Jeep. Radio. Sidearms. One shotgun per Jeep. Locked in a mount.”

  “Supervisor?” I said.

  “No. He only works during the day. Senior guy was in charge.”

  “He was?”

  “Chet. Chester DeMarco, one of the guys killed.”

  “How many people do you employ?” I said.

  “You mean overall?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Whole company.”

  “Two hundred eighty-seven,” he said. “Plus the home office staff of thirteen, myself included.”

  “Who knew about the Tashtego operation?” I said.

  “Home office, guys on Tashtego, I don’t know, some others, I’m sure. It wasn’t secret or anything.”

  “You have files on all your employees?”

  “Your guys got them already,” he said.

  “My guys?”

  “Couple Massachusetts detectives came in, borrowed all the records.”

  “Okay,” I said. “They’ll do all the fact-crunching. Leaves me to do the genius stuff.”

  Fonseca looked at me. He had shiny blue eyes that looked almost metallic.

  “You do much of that?” he said.

  “Genius stuff?” I said. “Hardly any.”

  He nodded.

  “They were okay guys,” Fonseca said. “You know? Guys like you play ball with, drink beer, talk about broads. Ordinary. They all had some experience. Cops, military. None of them had a record. All of them were trained . . . not one of them cleared his piece.”

  “They were up against something unusual,” I said.

  “Guy that pulled this off, what’s his name, Rugar?”

  “That’s the one he was using when he pulled it off,” I said.

  “You need anything from me to help catch him,” Fonseca said, “you got it.”

  I nodded.

  “If you need one,” Fonseca said, “I can put together a small army. Pretty good men. Some women, too. None of them happy about this.”

  “I’ll keep it in mind,” I said.

  “Cops told me no ransom demand yet.”

  “That’s what they tell me, too,” I said.

  “So what kind of kidnapping is this?” Fonseca said. “Why didn’t they just wait until after the honeymoon and grab her off the street on her way to the supermarket.”

  “I doubt that she goes to the supermarket,” I said.

  “Or the polo field? Wherever people like her fucking go,” Fonseca said.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Anyone say anything to you about me being there?”

  “At the wedding?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Nope,” he said.

  “She didn’t ask you for a referral?”

  “Nope.”

  “You’d be the logical choice,” I said.

  “If it was a security question,” Fonseca said. “Maybe it wasn’t.”

  “Or maybe she thought you wouldn’t like her hiring somebody else.”

  “Maybe,” Fonseca said.

  “You know Jimmy Gabriel?”

  Fonseca shrugged.

  “Professionally,” Fonseca said. “He put us together with Ms. Bradshaw.”

  “You like him?”

  “He’s a freakin’ lawyer,” Fonseca said.

  “That makes it hard,” I said.

  “Don’t dislike him,” Fonseca said.

  “Any thoughts on why she might have wanted me there?”

  “Don’t know why she wanted you there,” Fonseca said.

  “Me, either,” I said.

  “Didn’t make much difference,” Fonseca said.

  Through the big window in the wall behind Fonseca’s ornately carved cherrywood desk, I could see the Providence River where it passed through the downtown.

  “No,” I said. “None at all.”

  Fonseca took a business card from a small holder on his desk and slid it across to me.

  “Offer holds,” Fonseca said. “Any help I can give you, finding that fucking Rugar, I’ll do it.”

  I picked up the card and put it in my shirt pocket.

  “You got a card?” Fonseca said.

  I gave him one of mine.

  “You ever do security work?” Fonseca said.

  “Not really. Bodyguard now and then.”

  “Well, you got the build for it,” Fonseca said. “Used to box, too, didn’t you.”

  “Face give it away?” I said.

  “Uh-huh. Around the eyes a little, and the nose.”

  “You ever box?” I said to Fonseca.

  “Not really,” he said. “We all do a little martial-arts training in the company, ’cept the secretaries, but I never did any boxing. I might need a guy like you sometime. I’ll give you a call.”

  “Sure.”

  “What you gonna do now?” Fonseca said.

  “I’ve asked everybody else why Ms. Bradshaw hired me. I guess I may as well go ask her.”

  “Good thinking,” Fonseca said.

  19

  Susan was busy trying to help the deranged, so she didn’t come with me to Tashtego again. Too bad. I was interested in seeing how her relationship with Heidi would develop. Susan did not like women who flirted with me in front of her, or, I assume, at other times, but at other times the issue didn’t come up. She was also far too classy to let it show, and I was always fascinated at the thoughtful solutions to that problem that she came up with. However, her location, in the heart of Cambridge, gave her a huge market for her skills, and in the fall, when Harvard was cranked up to its maximum silliness, Susan had very little free time.

  The Tashtego patrol had obviously been augmented since the wedding. There was a security search on the dock in New Bedford before we went on the launch.

  “Can’t go aboard with a weapon,” the security guy said. “We’ll hold it here for you.”

  I didn’t argue. Gun hadn’t done a hell of a lot for me last time.

  There were guards with shotguns on the launch. On the island, one man in each Jeep carried his shotgun on his lap. No antebellum carriage ride for me this time. I got in the front seat of one of the Jeeps. The guy with the shotgun sat behind me in the backseat.

  “There’s cocktails in the atrium,” Maggie Lane said when I presented myself at the door. “Heidi has asked that you join us.”

  Heidi was, apparently, not in seclusion. Maggie led me briskly down the hall. I hated briskly. When I wasn’t rushed, I liked to saunter. She paused at the atrium door to wait for me. She didn’t say anything, and her face didn’t show anything. But her shoulders looked impatient. I could hear the sound of a stringed instrument and the low sound of elegant conversation.

  “Before I plunge into the social whirl,” I said, “how did you happen to get this job with Heidi?”

  “We both went to Lydia Hall College,” Maggie said. “Though we weren’t there at the same time. But when Heidi was looking for an assistant she called the placement office, and they sent me out, and we . . .” Maggie spread her hands to imply that the rest was history.

  “You know when she graduated?” I said.

  “Oh, before my time. Nineteen eighty, maybe.”

  “What was her maiden name?” I said.

  Maggie looked slightly startled.

  “Maiden name? Before she got married?” Maggie said. “Hell, I don’t know. When she hired me her name was Heidi Van Meer.”

  “First husband?” I said.

  “Second, I believe.”

  “And Bradshaw?”

  “Current husband,” Maggie said. “Estranged.”

  Maggie opened the door and stepped aside, and I went in past her. The room was amazing. It was all glass, including the domed roof, and in all directions it offered a view of the Atlantic Ocean stretching empty into the distance, hinting of eternity. The men wo
re blazers in various tones of blue and brown, green and gray, striped and solid. Most of them wore white or pale tan slacks. The women were in little cocktail dresses, some black, some flowered, all showing a lot of suntanned arms, backs, shoulders, and chests. A woman in a long, roomy white dress was in an alcove against the wall of the main house, playing a large harp and using a lot of wrist flourish to do it. She had a flower in her hair.

  There was a bar near the harpist, and a bartender in a white jacket and a black bow tie. There were two cocktail waitresses dressed in the short-skirted black dress, white apron getup that had been the staple of dirty French-maid postcards in my early youth. At the far window, with her hair piled high, and the sun shimmering on her jewelry, wearing a very minimal white cocktail dress and very high heels, Heidi Bradshaw was talking to a man with shoulder-length blond hair who looked like he might be the lead dancer for the Chippendales. He was stuffed into a wheat-colored unstructured linen jacket over a maroon polo shirt with the collar turned up. They were sipping something that from where I stood looked like mojitos.

  Heidi saw me and waved and gestured me over. I went.

  “Here you are,” she said, and gave me a small air kiss near my cheek. “This is Clark.”

  I said, “Hello, Clark.”

  He nodded. Probably too muscular to speak.

  “Clark’s looking out for me,” Heidi said.

  “That’s nice,” I said.

  One of the French maids came by with a tray.

  “Mojito, sir?” she said.

  “No, thank you,” I said.

  “Oh, don’t be a poop,” Heidi said. “Have a drink.”

  “I don’t care much for mojitos,” I said.

  Clark looked like he wanted to smack me for not liking mojitos. But he contained it.

  “Bring Mr. Spenser something he likes,” Heidi said to the waitress.

  The waitress looked at me.

  “Beer would be swell,” I said.

  “Yes, sir,” she said, and she walked away toward the bar. I watched her. She did a nice walk-away.

  “Could we take a few minutes to talk?” I said.

  “About what?” she said.

  “About your daughter, that sort of thing,” I said.

  “That is of no further concern to you,” she said. “I asked my accountant to pay you. Has he not done so?”

  “He has,” I said. “Have you heard anything from your daughter’s kidnappers?”

  “I prefer not to talk about it,” Heidi said.

  “Why did you agree to see me?” I said.

  “I was trying to be agreeable. I didn’t want you to think that I was angry with you for failing to prevent the awful thing that happened. I just thought you’d stop by, have a drink, and we’d part on good terms.”

  My beer arrived. Heineken. I took the bottle, left the glass on the tray. In a minute, I knew, I was going to hear from Clark. I was annoyed. I knew nothing, and the more I nosed around, the less I knew. I had no idea what Heidi was doing. I was being lied to. I didn’t like that. I didn’t like the growing suspicion that I had been used in some capacity I couldn’t figure out. And I didn’t like Clark. I didn’t like his hair, or his linen jacket, or his stand-up collar, or his square jaw. I didn’t like his tan, or his muscles, or the honey-colored woven-leather loafers he had on. I didn’t like his proprietary glare. Or his erroneous assumption that he could knock me down and kick me if he needed to.

  “Do you have any idea where your daughter is?” I said.

  “I’ve answered that already,” she said.

  “What did you hire me for?” I said.

  “I regret that I did,” she said.

  “Me, too,” I said. “But the question stands.”

  She looked at the Chippendale.

  “Clark?” she said.

  He nodded.

  “Ms. Bradshaw has told you she don’t wish to speak of it,” he said. “You’ll have to leave.”

  I had a brief internal struggle, which I lost. I was too frustrated.

  “What’s option B?” I said.

  “I remove you,” Clark said.

  “I’ll take that one,” I said.

  “What?”

  “I’ll take option B,” I said. “Remove me.”

  Clark looked at Heidi. Heidi had an odd look on her face.

  “Remove Mr. Spenser, Clark.”

  He was so spectacularly big and muscular that it probably didn’t occur to him that he couldn’t. Most times he probably just frightened people into submission. He put his left hand flat against my chest and pushed.

  “Okay,” he said. “Move it.”

  I brought both hands up and knocked his hand away, which left both my hands up, and in convenient position for step two. Clark initiated step two by throwing a big roundhouse right hand at me. I deflected it with my left and stepped back.

  “Clark,” I said. “That’s not the way.”

  He lunged at me and I put a stiff jab on his nose.

  “Get your feet under you,” I said. “Left one forward.”

  I gave him another jab and ducked under his left and moved to my right.

  “See, if you don’t have your legs under you, you don’t turn well. Which lets me get around you and bang up your body.”

  I hooked him left, then right, to the ribs. I heard him gasp. He wouldn’t last long, even if I didn’t hit him. There’s shape, and there’s fighting shape. Clark was maybe in posing shape. He was already starting to suck air. He was slower throwing the big right again. I brushed it away with my left.

  “And don’t loop your punches,” I said. “Lead with your hip. Keep your elbows in. Guy your size, you should be working in close anyway, use your muscle.”

  I doubled up on a jab to the nose and then stepped in and hit him a big right-hand uppercut, and Clark fell over.

  “See how I started my hip first?” I said. “And let the punch follow it?”

  Clark wasn’t out. But he was through. He sat on the floor. I knew his head was swimming. He was breathing as hard as he could.

  “The companions you hire,” I said to Heidi, “don’t seem to be working out.”

  Her face was a little flushed. Her eyes were shiny. She ran the tip of her tongue along her lower lip. I turned and walked out of the atrium. Behind me the harpist was still playing. As I walked down the hall toward the front door, two security guards came in, walking fast.

  “What happened,” one of them said to me.

  “Clark just got knocked on his ass,” I said.

  “Good,” he said, and kept on past me into the atrium.

  20

  “Well,” Susan said. “That worked out swell.”

  It was Sunday morning. We were in her kitchen. She was sipping her coffee, watching me make clam hash for breakfast.

  “Nothing ventured, nothing gained,” I said.

  “And what was gained from this venture?” she said.

  “The considerable satisfaction of giving Clark a big smack,” I said.

  “That’s why your right hand seems swollen.”

  “I deserve it,” I said. “The uppercut was showing off. Another minute or so and he’d have run out of oxygen.”

  “It didn’t seem to bother you earlier this morning,” Susan said. “Does it hurt?”

  “Only if I punch somebody.”

  “Which you do much less of these days,” Susan said.

  “I’m maturing,” I said.

  “But not aging,” Susan said.

  I smiled at her.

  “You’re thinking about earlier this morning, aren’t you.”

  “Hard not to,” Susan said.

  I was chopping onions.

  “Is there a pun in there?”

  “Not unless you are a lecherous pig,” Susan said.

  “Oink,” I said.

  “And bless you for it,” Susan said. “You might have learned some things. You said Heidi Bradshaw acted strangely.”

  “The fight excited her,”
I said.

  “Fights can be exciting?”

  “There was something wrong with her excitement,” I said. “Her eyes. There was something going on in her eyes.”

  “Like what?” Susan said.

  I mixed the chopped onions with the clams.

  “Like I was peeking in a window and seeing something terrible,” I said.

  “I guess you had to be there,” Susan said.

  I nodded. I cubed some boiled red potatoes, skins and all, and stirred them in with the chopped clams and onions.

  “There’s something else, now that I’m thinking about it,” I said.

  “Yes,” she said. “I think there is.”

  “You know what it is?” I said.

  “Yes,” Susan said. “If you’re reporting accurately.”

  “I always report accurately,” I said.

  She nodded.

  “I know,” she said. “Heidi’s behavior is inconsistent with all the things that have happened.”

  “Wow,” I said.

  Susan smiled.

  “Harvard,” she said, “PhD”

  “Yet still sexually active,” I said.

  “You should know,” Susan said.

  “I should,” I said. “Right after the kidnapping you remarked that her reactions seemed odd, but we both know that shock can cause all sorts of behavior.”

  “Yes,” Susan said. “But the shock should have worn off by now. Her current behavior should be far more genuine.”

  “Cocktails in the atrium,” I said. “A new companion.”

  “Or bodyguard,” Susan said. “However ineffective.”

  “I wasn’t too effective, either,” I said.

  “Hard to decide that,” Susan said, “without knowing exactly what you were supposed to effect.”

  I nodded.

  “And it seemed like an inside job,” I said.

  “You’ve always wanted to say that, haven’t you?”

  “Detectives are supposed to say stuff like that,” I said. “And it had to be inside. Rugar wouldn’t have taken a job without knowing the layout. Who was where. What the security was. What time things were happening.”

  “You think Heidi was involved in kidnapping her own daughter?”

  “If that’s what it was,” I said.

  “What it was?”

  “I’m just noodling,” I said. “But what if the kidnapping was a head fake. What if the real business was something else?”