pickup truck with ESTEVA PRODUCE on the side in emerald-green lettering. Caroline Rogers's son was driving. Son of a gun.
I had nothing else to do so I U-turned with the help of a driveway and went back up the hill. The truck was parked out front of the Esteva house and the kid was just going in the front door with a large cardboard box. I circled past the house and parked halfway down the hill and watched in my rearview mirror. The Rogers kid came out in maybe two minutes and got in the pickup and drove on down the hill past me. I fell in behind him and we went through town. The bright red sports car was not the choice of shadow experts, but I didn't especially care if the kid spotted me or not. Under the railroad trestle on the east end of town we turned right and the kid turned into the parking lot of a large blue warehouse with the name ESTEVA PRODUCE painted on it in large green letters. Now I knew where 21 Mechanic Street was. The truck disappeared around back of the warehouse and I drove on and parked a way up the road out of sight.
The police chief's son worked for Mr. Esteva. Mrs. Esteva was said to have had an affair with Eric Valdez. The police chief said Eric Valdez had been killed by a jealous husband.
There were radio controls in the middle of the steering wheel of the sports car. I looked at them. Ah ha! I said.
Chapter 13
I drove back to my motel. As I drove west the late afternoon sun slanted directly in through the windshield, and even with sunglasses on and my Red Sox cap tilted way over my nose, I had trouble seeing the road. The car had a button to push so that the radio would scan the dial locating the local stations. It had a thermostatic heater/ cooler so that you set the temperature digitally and it stayed that way winter and summer. It had cruise control and turbo intercooling and a beeper to remind you that your fly was open. But if you drove west in the late afternoon, it couldn't do a goddamned thing about the sun. I kind of liked that.
I scanned the dial on the radio but the local stations all played either Barry Manilow or an unidentifiable sound which someone had once told me was heavy metal. I finally found a station in Worcester that called itself the jazz sound, but the first record was a Chuck Mangione trumpet solo, so I shut the thing off, electronically, and sang a couple of bars of 'Midnight Sun.' Beautifully.
The 'ah ha' had probably been overoptimistic when I followed the Rogers kid to Esteva's, but compared to what I'd been coming up with before, it was a smoking pistol. It was a pattern. Coincidence exists but believing in it never did me any good.
The sun had set by the time I got to the Reservoir Court. I parked in front of the motel and went in. The desk clerk, a little pudgy guy with a maroon three-piece suit, smirked at me as I came in. He wore a flowery tie and his white shirt gaped out under his vest by maybe four inches.
'A gentleman wishes to see you in the lounge, Mr. Spenser.' He said it in the way Mary Ellen Feeney used to say, 'The principal wants to see you.'
There were a couple of guys sitting near the front door with overcoats on not doing anything. I unzipped my leather jacket and went into the bar. Virgie was on station. There were a couple of people having late lunch or early supper down past the bar in the dining room, and at a round table for six in the bar sat three men. The guy in the middle was wearing a double-breasted white cashmere overcoat with the high collar turned up. At the open throat I could see a white tie knotted against a dark shirt. His face was shaped like a wedge with the mouth a straight line slashed wide across the lower part. His forehead was prominent and his eyes recessed deeply beneath it. It was not a Spanish face, it was Indian. The man to his left was tall and thin with long hair and a drooping pencil-thin moustache. He sat languidly back in his chair like a cartoon Hispanic. His green Celtics warm-up jacket was open over a T-shirt that said 'Anchor Steam Beer' on the front. The other guy was squat and his body jammed into a green and blue wool jacket that seemed about two sizes too small. The jacket was buttoned up tight to his neck. His hair was thick and curly and needed cutting. On top of his head was a small flat-crowned hat with the brim turned up all the way. His nose was wide and flat and so was his face. His eyes were very small and dark and still.
'My name is Spenser,' I said.
The guy in the Celtics jacket nodded toward a chair. I sat down. The guy in the Celtics jacket looked at me. So did the guy with the cashmere coat. The guy with the hat didn't look at anything.
I looked back.
After a while the guy in the cashmere coat said, 'Do you know who I am?'
'Ricardo Montalban,' I said.
They looked at me some more. I looked back.
'I loved you in Star Trek II. The Wrath of Khan,' I said.
Cashmere glanced at Celtics Jacket. Celtics jacket shrugged.
'My name is Felipe Esteva,' Cashmere said.
'I'll be goddamned,' I said. 'I'm never wrong about Ricardo. I saw him once outside the Palm on Santa Monica Boulevard. He was driving a Chrysler LeBaron and wearing a white coat just like that.' I shook my head. 'You sure?' I said.
The guy in the Celtics jacket leaned forward over the table and said, 'You are going to be in very big trouble.'
'Trouble?' I said. 'What for? It's an easy mistake to make. Especially with the white coat.'
Esteva said, 'Shut up. I didn't come to listen. I came to talk.'
I waited.
'Today you went to my house,' he said, 'and you talked to my wife.'
I nodded.
'What did you talk about?'
'I asked her if she knew Eric Valdez,' I said.
