”I don’t know, exactly. Runs a funeral parlor, somewhere in Charlestown. I get back to the station I’ll check for you.“
”Has he got a handle I can shake him with?“
”You? Scare him off? You try scaring Doerr and they’ll be tying a tag on your big toe down at Boston City.“
”Well, what’s he like best? Women? Booze? Performing seals? There must be a way to him.“
”Money,“ Quirk said. ”He likes money. Far as I know he doesn’t like anything else.“
”How do you know he doesn’t like me?“ I said.
”I surmise it,“ Quirk said. ”You met him?“
”Once.“
”Who was with him?“
”Wally Hogg.“
Quirk shook his head. ”Get out of this, Spenser. You’re in with people that will waste you like a popsicle on a warm day.“ The waitress brought us another round. She was wearing fishnet stockings. Could it be Ms. Right? I drank some bourbon.
”I wish I could get out of this, Marty. I can’t.“
”You’re in trouble yourself?“ Quirk asked.
”No, but I gotta do this, and it’s not making anyone too happy “Wally Hogg,” Quirk said, “will kill anyone Doerr tells him to. He doesn’t like it or not like it. Slow or fast, one or a hundred, whatever. Doerr points him and he goes bang. He’s a piece with feet.”
“Well, if he goes bang at me,” I said, “he’ll be Wally Sausage.”
“You’re not as good as you think you are, Spenser. But neither is Captain Marvel. I’ve seen people worse than you, and maybe you got a chance. But sober. Don’t go up against any of Doerr’s group half-gassed. Go bright and early in the morning after eight hours’ sleep and a good breakfast.” He stirred the ice in his new drink. I noticed he hadn’t finished the old one.
“Slow,” I said. “Always knew you were a slow drinker.”
I reached over and picked up his old drink and finished it. “I can drink you right out of your orthopedic shoes, Quirk.”
“Christ, this thing really is bugging you, isn’t it?”
Quirk said. He stood up. “I’m going back to work before you start to slobber.”
“Quirk,” I said.
He stopped and looked at me.
“Thanks for not asking for names.”
“I knew you wouldn’t tell me,” Quirk said. “And watch your ass on this, Spenser. There must be someone who’d miss you.”
I gave him a thumbs-up gesture, like in the old RAF movies, and he walked off. I drank Quirk’s new drink and gestured to the waitress. There’ll always be an England.
By five thirty in the afternoon I was sitting at the desk in my office, drinking bourbon from the bottle neck. Brenda Loring had a date, Susan Silverman didn’t answer her phone.
The afternoon sun slanted in at my window and made the room hot. I had the sash up, but there wasn’t much breeze and the sweat was collecting where my back pressed against the chair.
Maybe I should get out of this thing. Maybe it bothered me too much. Why? I’d been told to screw before. Why did this time bother me? “Goddamned adolescent children.”
I’d heard worse than that before. “Goddamned game-playing children.” I’d heard worse than that too. I drank some bourbon. My nose felt sort of numb and the surface of my face felt insulated. Dumb broad. Promises. Shit, I can’t promise what I don’t know. World ain’t that simple, for crissake. I said I’d try.
What the hell she want, for crissake? By God, I would get her out of it. I held the bottle up toward the window and looked at how much was left. Half. Good. Even if I finished it, there was another one in the file cabinet. Warm feeling having another one in the file cabinet. I winked at the file cabinet and grinned with one side of my mouth like Clark Gable used to.
He never did it at file cabinets, though, far as I could remember. I drank some more and rinsed it around in my mouth.
Maybe my teeth will get drunk. I giggled. Goddamned sure Clark Gable never giggled. Drink up, teeth. Hot damn. She was right, though, it was a kind of game. I mean, you played ball or something and whatever you did there had to be some kind of rules for it, for crissake. Otherwise you ended up getting bombed and winking at file cabinets. And your teeth got drunk. I giggled again. I was going to have Frank Doerr’s ass.
But sober, Quirk was right, sober, and in shape. “I’m coming, Doerr, you sonovabitch.” Tongue wasn’t drunk yet. I could still talk. Have a drink, tongue, baby. I drank. “Only where love and need are one,” I said out loud. My voice sounded even stranger. Detached and over in the other corner of the room.
“And the work is play for goddamned mortal stakes/Is the deed ever really done.” My throat felt hot, and I inhaled a lot of air to cool it. “Mortal goddamned stakes,” I said. “You got that, Linda Rabb/Donna Burlington, baby?” I had unclipped my holster, and it lay with my.38 detective special in it on the desk beside the bourbon bottle. I drank a little more bourbon, put down the bottle, picked up the gun still in its holster, and pointed it at one of the Vermeer prints, the one of the Dutch girl with a milk pitcher. “How do you like them goddamned games, Frank?” Then I made a plonking sound with my tongue.
