And Manfred was crying. “Ma,” he said.
I smiled as hard as I could, my big friendly smile. The Yuletide spirit. ‘Tis the season to be jolly.
“All my life,” she said. Now she was sobbing, and she turned and put her arms around him. “All my rotten goddamn life I’ve been saddled with you and you’ve been queer and awful and I’ve worried all about you by myself and no man in the house.”
“Ma,” Manfred said, and they both cried full out.
I felt awful.
“I’m looking for Rachel Wallace,” I said. “I’m going to find her. Anything that I need to do, I’ll do.”
“Ma,” Manfred said. “Don’t, Ma. I’ll do what he says. Ma, don’t.”
I crossed my arms and leaned on the doorjamb and looked at Manfred. It was not easy to do. I wanted to cry, too.
“What do you want me to do, Spenser?”
“I want to sit down and have you tell me anything you’ve heard or can guess or have imagined about who might have taken Rachel Wallace.”
“I’ll try to help, but I don’t know nothing.”
“We’ll work on that. Get it together, and we’ll sit down and talk. Mrs. Roy, maybe you could make us some coffee.”
She nodded. The three of us walked back down the hall. Me last. Mrs. Roy went to the kitchen. Manfred and I went to the living room. The furniture was brightly colored imitation velvet with a lot of antimacassars on the arms. The antimacassars were the kind you buy in Woolworth’s, not the kind anyone ever made at home. There was a big new color TV set in one corner of the room.
I sat in one of the bright fuzzy chairs. It was the color of a Santa Claus suit. Manfred stood in the archway. He still had his napkin tucked into his belt.
“What you want to know?” he said.
“Who do you think took Rachel Wallace?” I said. “And where do you think she is?”
“Honest to God, Spenser, I got no idea.”
“What is the most anti-feminist group you know of?”
“Anti-feminist?”
“Yeah. Who hates women’s lib the most?”
“I don’t know about any group like that.”
“What do you know about RAM, which stands for Restore American Morality?” I said. I could hear Manfred’s mom in the kitchen messing with cookware.
“I never heard of it.”
“How about the Belmont Vigilance Committee?”
“Oh, sure, that’s Mr. English’s group. We coordinated some of the forced-busing tactics with them.”
“You know English?”
“Oh, yes. Very wealthy, very important man. He worked closely with us.”
“How tough is he?”
“He will not retreat in the face of moral decay and godless Communism.”
“Manfred, don’t make a speech at me—I’m too old to listen to horseshit. I want to know if he’s got the balls to kidnap someone, or if he’s crazy enough. Or if he’s got the contacts to have someone do it.”
“Mr. English wouldn’t hesitate to do the right thing,” Manfred said.
“Would he know how to arrange a kidnaping?” I said. “And don’t give me all that canned tripe in the answer.”
Manfred nodded.
“Who would do it for him?” I said.
Manfred shook his head. “I don’t know any names, I promise I don’t. I just see him with people, and, you know, they’re the kind that would know about that kind of stuff.”
Mrs. Roy brought in some instant coffee in white mugs that had pictures of vegetables on them. She’d put some Oreo cookies on a plate and she put the two cups and the plate down on a yellow plastic molded coffee table with a translucent plastic top that had been finished to imitate frosted glass.
I said, “Thank you, Mrs. Roy.”
Manfred didn’t look at her. She didn’t look at him, either. She nodded her head at me to acknowledge the thanks and went back to the kitchen. She didn’t want to hear what Manfred was saying.
“I heard he could get anything done and that he was a good man if you needed anything hard done, or you needed to hire anyone for special stuff.”
“Like what?” I sipped at the coffee. The water had been added to the coffee before it was hot enough, and the coffee wasn’t entirely dissolved. I swallowed and put the cup down.
