Small Vices s-24 Page 7

  "Where she get all that blond hair?" Susan said. "Her father?"

  "I guess so," Elayna said. "I didn't really know him, it was all arranged by the clinic."

  "Of course," Susan said. "It must be hard raising a child alone."

  "Yes. It's exhausting and demanding, but very rewarding. I'm very pleased that I chose to have her."

  Elayna was tall and graceful and her hair was too long for her age. There was a dramatic streak of white in the front, and hints of gray showing here and there as the sunlight through the back window caught it. She was much too advanced to color her hair.

  "Do you have help?" Susan said.

  "Yes, my mother and my sister live around here. So I almost always have a baby-sitter. Today it happened they were both out and I had to bring her. I hope you don't mind."

  "Oh, no," Susan said. "I love seeing her."

  "The first year or so she pretty well killed my sex life, she was so demanding and I was so tired, I didn't have the energy, you know?"

  "I can imagine," Susan said.

  "But once she got off the breast, then I could leave her with my mom or my sister… and I was back in circulation."

  She looked at me.

  "You got any single straight friends?"

  I shook my head. That description fit Hawk, but he and Elayna didn't seem a match. The thought of him with Erika, however, made me smile.

  "See, there, you're smiling," Elayna said, "you've just thought of someone."

  "No," I said. "It's just inner peace showing through."

  Erika came out of the bedroom, shuffling in a pair of Susan's high-heeled shoes, and wearing Susan's black silk robe. The girth wasn't bad because Erika was a chunky girl and Susan was a slim woman, so they measured pretty much the same around. But since Erika was about three feet tall, and Susan was five foot seven, the length was an issue. She kept stepping on the train and from the sound it made, she kept tearing it. She had also found Susan's makeup and applied it to herself lavishly, if somewhat artlessly.

  "Erika," her mother said. Her voice hovered on the periphery of a shriek.

  Erika kept coming, trying to flounce, stumbling on the high heels, continuing to step on the trailing fabric of Susan's black silk robe, which continued to rip. I had given her that dressing gown last Christmas and it had cost me far more than I generally earned. I looked at Susan. She looked as if she had just swallowed an armadillo.

  I said, "Oh boy oh boy," very softly to Pearl, who was sitting straight up again, and flexed for attack.

  Elayna jumped up and grabbed Erika and swept her into the air.

  "Erika, my God, Erika," she kept saying as she scooted her back into the bedroom. In a moment we could hear Erika howling.

  Between howls she kept saying, "I want to wear it, I want to wear it."

  I smiled pleasantly at Susan. "Well, isn't she a princess," I said.

  "Shut up."

  I turned to Pearl and put my mouth close to her ear and did a stage whisper.

  "Maybe we could get one just like her if we adopt wisely."

  Pearl paid me no heed. Her every desire was focused on dashing into the bedroom and biting Erika. I kept a hand on her collar, to forestall that, though I was embarrassingly eager for it to happen. Susan looked at me very hard.

  "I heard that," she said. "And even if I didn't, I know what you're thinking. I knew it from the moment they walked in."

  "I'm in the evidence business," I said. "When I see some, I register it."

  "You can't generalize from one instance," Susan said.

  "No, of course not. But you can register the instance."

  I felt Pearl start to tremble slightly. Elayna walked back into the room bringing Erika with her with a firm clamp on her wrist. Erika tugged intensely to get her wrist free. But Elayna was too strong for her. The kid was wearing her own clothes again, and the makeup had been scrubbed off. She was crying determinedly.

  "Tell Susan you're sorry, Erika." Erika kept crying. And tugging. "Erika, apologize."

  Erika cried. And tugged.

  "No need," Susan said. "Really. I've had that gown forever. It was just something to wear around the house."

  She was careful not to look at me while she said it. I was quiet, holding Pearl's collar. I did not comment that the robe was pure silk and was meant to be worn in front of a fire while sipping champagne.

  "I insist on buying you a new one."

  "Oh, hell, Elayna, there's no need for it. It doesn't matter, really. I have plenty of robes."

  She had one other one that I knew of, a yellow thing with cats and dogs printed all over it in various colors. I had seen it in her closet, but she only wore it when I wasn't around, along with the flannel pajama bottoms and the oversized tee-shirt.

  "No, I absolutely insist," Elayna said. "What size?"

  "No," Susan said. "Elayna, really. It's nothing. Don't be silly."

  "Size six," I said. "If it's well made. If you buy her a cheap one, where they chintzed on the material, it might have to be an eight."

  Erika continued to cry steadily. Elayna and Susan both stared at me. Erika tried to bite her mother's hand to get her wrist free. Elayna swept her up off the ground and held her kicking and struggling and crying and said loudly, "I've got to get her out of here. Susan, I'll call you.

  When they were gone, Susan went and stood looking out the living room window for a while. Finally she turned and looked at me.

  "Should I have let Pearl go?" I said.

  "Do you think she'd really have bitten her?"

  "With proper coaching," I said.

  "God, wasn't she awful."

  "Awful," I said.

  "My beautiful silk robe," Susan said.

  "Now I guess you'll have to sit around naked and drink champagne," I said.

  Susan smiled at me, almost sadly.

  "There's always a silver lining," she said. "Isn't there."

  Chapter 18

  PEMBERTON DID NOT wish to acknowledge crime. The Pemberton Police Station had been moved as far from the center of town as it was possible to move it. It was barely within the town limits, on the edge of Route 128 in an old brick Department of Public Works building they had leased from the state. I parked in the spacious lot out front.

  Inside they were still partitioning off some of the rooms, and the carpenters were making a lot of noise. I worked my way past the front desk officer to the detective who'd worked the Henderson case, and sat with him at a desk in a half-finished office, while the sound of power saws and pneumatic nailers competed for attention. He looked about twenty, though he was probably older. You saw a lot of cops like him on suburban forces.

  High-school football player. Not good enough for a scholarship. Smart kid. No money for college. Did a stint in the Marines, maybe, came home, went on the cops. Probably got term of service credit.

  "Name's Albrano," he said. "Evidence specialist. I don't know how much I can help you. We turned things over to the State as soon as we discerned that it was a homicide. We're not set up to cover a major crime like they are, sir."

  "Miller?" I said.

  "Yes, sir."

  "You the one got the letter?"

  "Letter?"

  "The letter tipped you off that it was Alves."

  "Well, we got it here at the department," he said. "Didn't come to me personally."

  "But you read it."

  "Yes, sir, and checked it for prints. Nothing we could use."

  "And you bucked it on to Miller?"

  "Yes, sir. He made it pretty clear he was in charge of the case."

  "I'll bet he did," I said. "Who notified him?"

  "I guess I did, sir."

  "You remember just how you notified him?"

  "How?"

  "Yeah. Did you show it to him here? Did you bring it over to him? Call him up? How'd you notify him?"

  "I believe I mentioned it to him on the phone and then somebody took it in to Boston and gave it to him."

  "When you
told him on the phone," I said, "did he call you or you call him?"

  "Hell, I don't remember. This was what, year and a half ago? What's the difference?"

  "Got me," I said. "You know how it goes, just keep asking questions till you find something. What did you think of Miller?"

  "He has a good arrest conviction record, sir. I know that."

  "Because he told you?"

  Albrano's expression of professional cooperation didn't change.

  "I believe that is where I heard that, sir."

  I nodded.

  "The victim had a boyfriend," I said. "You happen to come across him?"

  "Didn't know she had one," Albrano said. "You actually think whatsis name, Alves, is innocent?"

  "It's a working hypothesis," I said.

  "Be a pretty elaborate frame-up," Albrano said.

  "Yeah."

  "But if it was a frame-up," he said, "it was a smart move picking a loser like this Alves character."

  "Jury'd figure even if he didn't do it," I said, "he did something."

  Albrano shrugged.

  "I don't know shit about juries," he said. "But it makes him a good-looking suspect. Arrest a guy for drunk driving that's done it three times before, you gotta like your chances."

  I didn't say anything. The pneumatic nailer was banging away across the half-finished room. A uniformed Pemberton cop stuck his head through the incomplete doorway.

  "Making a run, Charlie," he said. "Want anything?"

  "Large black, no sugar, and couple of Boston creams." He looked at me. "You want something?"

  I shook my head. The uniform left. We sat thoughtfully for a little longer.

  "You know," Albrano said, "now that you asked and I'm thinking about it, Trooper Miller called me and asked if we'd come up with anything on the murder of the college girl."

  I nodded.

  "So I told him about the anonymous letter and he said send it in to me."

  I nodded again.

  "I don't see that it means anything," Albrano said. "Do you?"

  "Might mean he was impatient," I said.

  Chapter 19

  MY DOOR WAS open. Hawk was sitting tipped back in one of my client chairs studying Lila in the design office across the hall. She was looking particularly Lila-esque today in a puffy-sleeved, ankle-length, black dress and a Chicago White Sox baseball hat. I was at my desk making a list of the people I had talked to about Ellis Alves. After each name I wrote a brief synopsis of what I had learned from them. It wasn't that I couldn't remember. It was that I was confused, and when I get confused I make lists. It doesn't usually solve my confusion, but it sometimes consolidates it.

  "Lila know you're looking at her?" I said.

  "Un huh."

  "She looking right back?"

  "Un huh."

  "This could be the start of something big," I said.

  "Be big," Hawk said. "Won't be often."

  "Chatting with Lila in the morning might be wearing," I said.

  "I let you know."

  I was starting back through my list to see which ones I wanted to follow up when some guys came in without knocking and barred Hawk's view of Lila by closing the door behind them. I knew this would annoy Hawk, and it did. But unless you knew him like I did, you wouldn't notice. It was mostly the way his head cocked when he looked at them.

  There were four of them. All chosen apparently for heft more than beauty. Two of them, who might have been related, slid to either side of the closed door and stood against the wall and looked at Hawk. The other two walked past Hawk and stood in front of my desk and looked at me. Symmetry.

  "You Spenser?"

  The speaker was wearing a watch cap and a pea coat. The coat, which hung open, was too long, as all his jackets would be. He was built like a beer keg.

  "I am he," I said.

  I saw Hawk smile as he stood without apparent effort and went without any hurry to the olive green office supply cabinet next to the coat rack. The two guys that might have been related watched him carefully.

  "You're working on the Ellis Alves case," he said.

  "Day and night," I said.

  "I was told to make this plain to you," Beer Keg said. "You leave that case alone from here on."

  Hawk opened the supply cabinet and took a sawed-off double-barreled shotgun off the top shelf and cocked both barrels. The guys by the door watched him closely as he did it, but by the time they reacted the shotgun was cocked and pointed. The sound of the hammers going back made the other two guys turn and look.

  "Ten gauge," Hawk said. "Ain't even fair at close range."

  Hawk leaned against the wall with the shotgun in his right hand laid idly across the crook of his left arm. He smiled at them. They looked at me. While they had been looking at Hawk I had taken the occasion to take my Smith and Wesson.357 out of the side drawer of my desk. As they looked I cocked it, and keeping it in my right hand, let it rest on the desktop. I smiled at them.

  "You should have been prepared," I said. "For the off chance that we wouldn't be paralyzed by fear."

  Beer Keg was a stand-up guy.

  "Today was just a warning anyway," he said.

  "Might be our day to shoot you in the nose, though."

  Beer Keg waded right past that.

  "Guy say we was just supposed to rough you up today."

  "What guy?" I said.

  Beer Keg shook his head. His partner was wearing a black and red Mackinaw. Mackinaw's head was shaved above the ears with long hair on top. He was taller than Beer Keg, so his coat fit better.

  "Nobody you know," he said.

  I raised the Smith and Wesson and sighted at Mackinaw's forehead.

  "I might know him," I said.

  "I don't think you'll do it," Mackinaw said and turned and walked to the door. I saw Hawk glance at me. I shook my head. Mackinaw opened the door and walked out and left it open behind him. The other three, frozen for a moment waiting for me to shoot, suddenly burst into action when I didn't and jostled each other going out the door.

  "Bad luck," Hawk said. "You picked the wrong one to bluff."

  "I know," I said.

  Hawk walked back to the chair and sat where he could see Lila again. He put the shotgun, still cocked, in his lap. I got out of my chair with the gun still in my hand and walked to my window. In maybe a minute I saw all four of them gathered on the corner of Berkeley and Providence Street, which ran between Arlington and Berkeley behind my building. In another moment a maroon Chevy station wagon drove down Providence Street and stopped. They got in. The wagon pulled out onto Berkeley and headed toward the river. It had Massachusetts plates. I turned from the window and wrote the number on my desk calendar.

  "You'd shot him dead, the others would have told you everything they knew and more."

  "I know."

  "Lucky you got me around," Hawk said, "to keep them from inducting you into the Girl Scouts."

  "It's the physical," I said. "I always have trouble with the physical."

  "You Irish, ain't you?"

  "Sure and I am, bucko."

  "So you don't have a lot of trouble with the physical," Hawk said.

  "Just enough."

  Chapter 20

  TAFT UNIVERSITY WAS in Walford, about twenty miles west of Boston and two towns north of Pemberton. I had been out there maybe seven years ago trying to do something about a basketball point fixing scam involving a kid named Dwayne Woodcock. In the process I had gotten to know the basketball coach, a loudmouth blowhard named Dixie Dunham, who was a hell of a basketball coach, and not as bad a guy as he seemed if you had a good tolerance for bullshit.

  When I came into his office at the field house he knew me right off.

  "Spenser," he said, "you son of a bitch."

  "Don't get sentimental on me, Dixie," I said.

  The office was pretty much the same. A VCR, a cabinet full of video tapes, a big desk, a couple of chairs.

  Above Dixie's desk there was still a picture
of the Portland Trailblazers point guard, Troy Murphy. Murphy had played his college ball for Dixie. Beside it there was now a picture of Dwayne Woodcock. Dixie was pretty much the same, too. He had on a gray tee-shirt, blue sweat pants with a white stripe down the leg, gray shorts over the sweats, and a pair of fancy high-cut basketball shoes, which I happened to know he got free by the case, as part of his consulting deal.

  "So you come to make trouble for my program again?" Dixie said.

  "I saved your damn program," I said. "You hear anything from Dwayne?"

  "My players stay in touch," Dixie said. "I hear from them or I hear about them."

  "How's Dwayne doing?"

  "Fifteen points a game, eleven rebounds for the Nuggets," Dixie said. "But he still plays a little soft. He toughens up, he'll double that."

  "Can he read yet?"

  "Hell, he's a college graduate," Dixie said.

  "This place?" I said.

  "Absolutely."

  "Can he read yet?"

  "Sure," Dixie said.

  "He still with Chantel?" I said.

  "Heard they got married."

  "Good."

  "So what brings you nosing around out here. Miss me?"

  "Young woman over at Pemberton," I said. "Got killed a year and a half ago."

  "Yeah, I heard about it. Some black guy, right? Raped her and strangled her?"

  "No rape," I said. "I'm trying to clean up a few loose ends on that case."

  "Yeah, so whaddya want from me, buddy? I didn't touch her."

  "I've seen a picture of her," I said, "wearing a Taft tennis letter sweater that's obviously much too big for her."

  "So you figure she was dating somebody on the Taft tennis team."

  "Yes."

  "And you want me to point you at the tennis coach."

  "Yes."

  Dixie Dunham made a low ugly sound which he probably thought was a laugh.

  "Be glad to," he said. "The sonova bitch. Tried to recruit one of my players last year, right off my team."

  "Tennis is a spring sport, isn't it?" I said.

  "When you think the Tourney is played, buddy boy?"

  "Oh, yeah."

  "Coach's name is Chuck Arnold. I'll walk on down the hall with you and introduce y' all."