Chapter 24
The light blue Smithfield cruiser was still parked in the Bartletts’ driveway, and Silveria, the bushy-haired cop, was reading a copy of Sports Illustrated in the front seat.
I parked beside him in the turnaround, and he looked at me over the top of the magazine as I got out. “Better not park that thing on the street on trash day,” he said.
“Don’t your lips get tired when you read?” I said.
“Your ears are gonna be tired when Mrs. Bartlett gets talking to you. She’s been calling you things I don’t understand.”
“I gather no one tried to do her in.”
“I think her husband might, and I wouldn’t blame him.
Jesus, what a mouth on that broad.”
“Watch me soothe her with my silver tongue,” I said.
Silveria said, “Good luck.”
Marge Bartlett opened the back door and said, “Spenser, where in hell have you been, you rotten bastard?”
Silveria said, “Good, you’ve already got her half won over.”
At the door I said to her, “I know where your son is.”
She said, “We’re paying you to protect me and you run off on your damned own.” I said, “I know where your son is, and I want your husband and you to come with me to get him.”
She said, “It’s lucky I’m alive.”
I pushed past her into the house and said, “Where’s your husband? Working today?”
She said, “Damn you, Spenser, aren’t you going to explain yourself.”
I went to the sink, filled a glass with water, turned back to her. She said, “I want a goddamned explanation.” I poured the water on her head. She screamed and stepped back. She opened her mouth but nothing came out. The relief was wonderful.
“Now,” I said. “I want you to listen to me, or I will get you so wet your skin will wrinkle.” She pulled a paper towel from its roller under a cabinet and dried her hair. “I know where Kevin is. I want you and your husband to come with me to Boston and get him back.”
“Can’t you get him? I mean, won’t there be trouble? I’m not even dressed. My hair’s a mess. Mightn’t it be better if you got him and brought him here? I mean, with me there he might make a scene.”
“No,” I said. “I’ll locate him. And I’ll take care of any trouble. But he’s your kid. You bring him home. I won’t drag him home for you. You owe him that.”
“My husband is working in town—Arden Estates—he’s putting up half a dozen houses near the Wakefield line on Salem Street. We can stop for him on the way.”
“Okay,” I said, “let’s go. We’ll take my car.”
“I have to change,” she said, “and put on my face and do something with my hair. I can’t go out like this.” She had on jeans and sneakers and a man’s white shirt. The curls on each side of her face were held in place by Scotch Tape.
“We are not going out dancing to the syncopated rhythms of Blue Barron,” I said.
She said, “I can’t leave the house looking like this,” and went upstairs. Twenty minutes later she descended in a double-breasted blue pinstripe pants suit with a blue and white polka-dot shirt and three-inch blue platform shoes.
She had on lipstick, rouge, eye makeup, earrings, and doubtless much more that I didn’t recognize. Her hair was stiff with spray. She put on big round blue-colored sunglasses, got her purse from the table in the front hall, and said she was ready.
I said, “I hope you got on clean underwear so if we get in an accident.” She didn’t answer me. And I left it at that. As long as she was quiet, I didn’t want to press my luck.
When we found him at the construction trailer, Roger Bartlett was wearing green twill work clothes and carrying a clipboard.
“Hey,” he said when I told him, “hey, that’s great. Wait a minute, I’ll tell the foreman and I’ll be with you. Hey, that’s okay.” He went across the bulldozed road to a half-framed house and yelled up to one of the men on a scaffold. Then he put the clipbord down on the subfloor of the house and came to my car.
“Get in back, Roger, would you? It’s hard for me without wrinkling my suit.”
She leaned forward and held the seat, and he slid into the back.
On the ride in I told them a little of what I knew. I didn’t mention Croft or Fraser Robinson. I merely told them that I had an address in town where Kevin was staying, and I knew he was staying with Vic Harroway. Neither Bartlett nor his wife knew Harroway. “The sonova bitch,” Bartlett said, “if he’s hurt my kid, I’ll kill him.”
“No,” I said. “You let me handle Harroway. He is not easy. You stay away from him.”
“He’s got my kid, not yours,” Bartlett said.
“He hasn’t harmed Kevin. They like one another. Kevin’s with him by choice.”
Bartlett said, “The sonova bitch.”
