Movieolas. After the first sexual contact had established for sure what I was looking at, I shut off the projector and rewound the film. I went into the bathroom and stripped the film off the reel into the tub. I got the package of complimentary matches from the bedside table and lit the film. When it had burned up, I turned on the shower and washed the remnants down the drain. It was close to noon when I checked out of the hotel.
Before I caught the shuttle back to Boston, I wanted to visit the Metropolitan Museum. On the way uptown in a cab, I stopped at a flower shop and had a dozen roses delivered to Patricia Utley. I checked my overnight bag at the museum, spent the afternoon walking about and throwing my head back and squinting at paintings, had lunch in the fountain room, took a cab to La Guardia, and caught the six o’clock shuttle to Boston. At seven forty-five I was home.
My apartment was as empty as it had been when I left, but stuffier. I opened all the windows, got a bottle of Amstel out of the refrigerator, and sat by the front window to drink it. After a while I got hungry and went to the kitchen.
There was nothing to eat. I drank another beer and looked again, and found half a loaf of whole wheat bread behind the beer in the back of the refrigerator and an unopened jar of peanut butter in the cupboard. I made two peanut butter sandwiches and put them on a plate, opened another bottle of beer and went and sat by the window and looked out and ate the sandwiches and drank the beer. Bas cuisine.
At nine thirty I got into bed and read another chapter in Morison’s History and went to sleep. I dreamed something strange about the colonists playing baseball with the British and I was playing third for the colonists and struck out with the bases loaded. In the morning I woke up depressed.
I hadn’t worked out during my travels, and my body craved exercise. I jogged along the river and worked out in the BU gym. When I was through and showered and dressed, I didn’t feel depressed anymore. So what’s a strikeout? Ty Cobb must have struck out once in a while.
It was about ten when I went into the Yorktown Tavern. Already there were drinkers, sitting separate from each other smoking cigarettes, drinking a shot and a beer, watching The Price Is Right on TV or looking into the beer glass. In his booth in the back, Lennie Seltzer had set up for the day.
He was reading the Globe. The Herald American and the New York Daily News were folded neatly on the table in front of him. A glass of beer stood by his right hand. He was wearing a light tan glen plaid three-piece suit today, and he smelled of bay rum.
He said, “How’s business, kid?” as I slid in opposite him.
“The poor are always with us,” I said. He started to gesture at the bartender, and I shook my head. “Not at ten in the morning, Len.”
“Why not, tastes just as good then as any other time.
Better, in fact, I think.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of. I got enough trouble staying sober now.”
“It’s pacing, kid, all pacing, ya know. I mean, I just sip a little beer and let it rest and sip a little more and let it rest and I do it all day and it don’t bother me. I go home to my old lady, and I’m sober as a freaking nun, ya know.” He took an illustrative sip of beer and set the glass down precisely in the ring it had left on the tabletop. “Find out if Marty Rabb’s going into el tanko yet?”
I shook my head. “I need some information on some betting habits, though.”
“Uh-huh?”
“Guy named Lester Floyd. Ever hear of him?”
Seltzer shook his head. “How about Bucky Maynard?”
“The announcer?”
“Yeah. Floyd is his batman.”
“His what?”
“Batman, like in the British army, each officer had a batman, a personal servant.”
“You spend too much time reading, Spenser. You know more stuff that don’t make you money than anybody I know.”
“‘Tis better to know than not to know,” I said.
“Aw bullshit, what is it you want to know about Maynard and what’s’isname?”
“Lester Floyd. I want to know if they bet on baseball and, if they do, what games they bet on. I want the dates. And I need an idea of how much they’re betting. Either one or both.”
Seltzer nodded. “Okay, I’ll let you know.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
AT PATRICIA UTLEY S HOME I returned to the Calvados. Patricia Utley had some sherry.
“Would you care to see the film, Spenser?” she said.
“No, thank you.”
“Why not? I never met a man that didn’t care for eroticism.”
“Oh, I’m all for eroticism.” I was thinking of Linda Rabb in her Church Park apartment in her clean white jeans.
“It’s movies I don’t like.”
“AS YOU wish.” She sipped some sherry. “You were going to mention some names to me.”
