The Judas Goat
By
Robert B. Parker
Copyright (c) 1978
1
Hugh Dixon’s home sat on a hill in Weston and looked out over the low Massachusetts hills as if asphalt had not been invented yet. It was a big fieldstone house that looked like it ought to have vineyards, and the front entrance was porticoed. It didn’t look like the kind of place where they have much truck with private cops, but you can’t judge a house by its portico. I parked in the lower parking lot as befitted my social status and climbed the winding drive to the house. Birds sang. Somewhere out of sight on the grounds I could hear a hedge being clipped. The bell made the standard high-tone chime sound in the house when I pushed the button, and while I waited for a servant to let me in I checked my appearance reflected in the full-length windows on each side of the door. There was no way to tell, looking at me, that I only had $387 in the bank. Three-piece white linen suit, blue striped shirt, white silk tie and mahogany loafers with understated tassels that Gucci would have sold his soul for. Maybe Dixon could hire me to stand around and dress up the place. As long as I kept my coat buttoned you couldn’t see the gun.
The servant who answered was Asian and male. He wore a white coat and black trousers. I gave him my card and he let me stand in the foyer while he went and showed it to someone. The floor of the foyer was polished stone, and opened into a two-storied entry room with a balcony running around the second story and white plaster frieze around the ceiling. A grand piano sat in the middle of the room and an oil portrait of a stern person was on the wall over a sideboard.
The servant returned and I followed him through the house and out onto the terrace. A man with a huge torso was sitting in a wheel chair with a light gray blanket over his lap and legs. He had a big head and thick black hair with a lot of gray and no sideburns. His face was thick-featured with a big meaty nose and long earlobes.
The servant said, “Mr. Dixon,” and gestured me toward him. Dixon didn’t move as I walked over to him. He stared out over the hills. There was no sign of a book or magazine. No indication of paperwork, portable radio, TV, just the hills to look at. In his lap was a yellow cat, asleep. There was nothing else on the terrace. No other furniture, not even a chair for me.
From this side of the house I couldn’t hear the clippers anymore.
I said, “Mr. Dixon?”
He turned, just his head, the rest of him motionless, and looked at me.
“I’m Spenser,” I said. “You wanted to talk to me about doing some work for you.”
Full front, his face was accurate enough. It looked the way a face should, but it was like a skillful and uninspired sculpture. There was no motion in the face. No sense that blood flowed beneath it and thoughts evolved behind it. It was all surface, exact, detailed and dead.
Except the eyes. The eyes snarled with life and purpose, or something like that. I didn’t know exactly what then. Now I do.
I stood. He looked. The cat slept. “How good are you, Spenser?”
“Depends on what you want me to be good at.”
“How good are you at doing what you’re told?”
“Mediocre,” I said. “That’s one reason I didn’t last with the cops.”
“How good are you at hanging in there when it’s tough?”
“On a scale of ten, ten.”
“If I hire you on for something will you quit in the middle?”
“Maybe. If, for instance, you bullshitted me when we started and I got in and found out I’d been bullshitted. I might pack it in on you.”
“What will you do for twenty thousand dollars?”
“What are we going to do, Mr. Dixon, play twenty questions until I guess what you want to hire me for?”
“How much you think I weigh?” Dixon said.
“Two forty-five, two fifty,” I said. “But I can’t see under the blanket.”
“I weigh one hundred eighty. My legs are like two strings on a balloon.”
I didn’t say anything.
He took an 8x10 matted photograph out from under the blanket and held it out to me. The cat awoke and jumped down, annoyed. I took the picture. It was a Bachrach photo of a handsome fortyish woman and two well- bred-looking girls in their late teens. Vassar maybe, or Smith. I started to hand it back to him. He shook his head, left once, right once. “No,” he said, “you keep it.”
“Your family?”
“Used to be, they got blown into hamburg by a bomb in a restaurant in London a year ago. I remember my daughter’s left foot was on the floor next to me, not attached to the rest of her, just her foot, with her cork-soled shoe still on. I’d bought her the shoe that morning.”
“I’m sorry” didn’t have the right ring for a moment like that so I didn’t try. I said, “That how you ended up in the chair?”
He nodded once down, once up. “I was in the hospital for nearly a year.”
