”Yeah,“ I said. ”But I set these guys up.“
”You mean you murdered them?“
”No, not exactly. Or… I don’t know. Maybe.“
She was quiet. Her face a pale blur in the semidarkness. She was sitting on the edge of a chaise opposite me. Her knees crossed, her chin on her fist, her elbow on her knee. I drank more bourbon.
”Spenser,“ she said, ”I have known you for only a year or so. But I have known you very intensely. You are a good man. You are perhaps the best man I’ve ever known. If you killed two men, you did it because it had to be done. I know you. I believe that.“
I put my drink on the floor and got up from the chair and stood over her. She raised her face toward me and I put one hand on each side of it and bent over and looked at her close. She had a very strong face, dark and intelligent, full of kinetic suggestion, with faint laugh lines at the corners of her mouth. She was still wearing her glasses, and her big dark eyes looked bigger through the lenses.
”Jesus Christ,“ I said.
She put her hands over mine and we stayed that way for a long time.
Finally she said, ”Sit.“
I sat and she leaned back on the chaise and pulled me down beside her and put my head against her breast. ”Would you like to make love?“ she said.
I was breathing in big low inhales. ”No,“ I said. ”Not now, let’s just lie here and be still.“
Her right arm was around me and she reached up and patted my cheek with her left hand. The stream murmured and after a while I fell asleep.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
IT WAS A HOT, windy Tuesday when I finished breakfast with Susan and drove back into Boston. I stopped on the way to look at the papers. The Herald American had it, page one, below the fold: GANGLAND FIGURE GUNNED DOWN. Doerr and Wally Hogg had been found after midnight by two kids who’d slipped in there to neck. State and MDC police had no comment as yet.
Under the expressway, street grit was blowing about in the postcommuter lull as I pulled up and parked in front of Harbor Towers. I went through the routine with the houseman again and went up in the elevator. Bucky Maynard let me in. He was informal in a Boston Red Sox T-shirt stretched over his belly.
”What do you want, Spenser?“ Informal didn’t mean friendly. Lester leaned against the wall by the patio doors with his arms folded across his bare chest. He was wearing dark blue sweat pants and light blue track shoes with dark blue stripes. He blew a huge pink bubble and glared at me around it.
”It’s hard to look tough blowing bubbles, Lester,“ I said. ”You ever think about a pacifier?“
”Ah asked what you want, Spenser.“ Maynard still had his hand on the door.
I handed him the paper. ”Below the fold,“ I said, ”right side.“
He looked at it, read the lead paragraph, and handed it to Lester.
”So?“
”So, maybe your troubles are over.“
”Maybe they are,“ Maynard said.
”So are Marty Rabb’s troubles over too?“
”Troubles?“
”Yeah, maybe you’ll stop sucking on him now that Frank Doerr’s not going to suck on you anymore.“
”Spenser, y’all aren’t making any sense. Ah’m not doing anything to Marty Rabb. Ah don’t know, for a fact, what you are talking of.“
”You’re going to recoup your losses,“ I said. ”You mean, stupid sonovabitch.“
”No reason to stand there shaking your head, Spenser.
Ah’m the one should be offended.“
”Doerr bled Rabb through you, and you never got any blood. Now he’s dead, you want yours.“
”Ah think you ought to leave now, Spenser. You’re becoming abusive.“
Lester popped his bubble gum and tittered. There were newspapers on the coffee table, the Globe and the Herald American. They’d known before I got here, and Maynard had already figured out that he had the money machine now.
”Don’t you want to know why I think you’re stupid?“ I said.
”No, ah don’t.“
”Because you were off the hook, clean. And you won’t take the break.“
”Move out,“ Lester said. ”And just keep in mind, Spenser, if anybody was blackmailing Rabb, they could get him for throwing games just as much as for marrying a whore.“
”Never mind, Lester,“ Maynard said sharply. ”We don’t know anything about it and Spenser is on his way out.“
