The Godwulf Manuscript

clean-shaven and wild-haired, and when his eyes got used to the dimness he headed over to us and slid in beside Terry Orchard. He picked up her half-filled glass, drained it, set it down, and said to her, 'Who's this creep?'

'Dennis,' she said, 'be nice.'

He squeezed her arm hard with one hand and repeated the question. I answered for her.

'My name's Spenser.'

He turned his head toward me and looked very hard at me. 'I'm talking to her, not you, Jack. Shut up.'

'Dennis!' She said it with more emphasis this time. 'Who the hell do you think you are? Let go of my arm.'

I reached over and took hold of his wrist. 'Listen, Goldilocks,' I said, 'I bought her a beer and you drank it. On my block that entitles you to get your upper lip fattened.'

He yanked his hand away from me. 'You think maybe the long hair makes me soft?'

'Dennis,' Terry said, 'he's a private detective.'

'Freaking pig,' he said, and swung at me. I pulled my head out of the way and slipped out of the booth. The punch rammed against the back of the booth; the kid swore and turned toward me. He was not planning to quit, so I figured it best end swiftly. I feinted toward his stomach with my left hand, then hooked it over his lowered guard and turned my whole shoulder into it as it connected on the side of his face. He sat down hard on the floor.

Terry Orchard went down on her knees beside him, her arms around his shoulders.

'Don't get up, Dennis. Stay there. He'll hurt you.'

'She's right, kid,' I said. 'You're an amateur. I do this kind of thing for a living.'

The big old tough waitress came around and said, 'What the hell is going on? You want the cops in here? You want to fight, go outside.'

'No more trouble,' I said. 'I'm a movie stunt man and I was just showing my friend how to slip a punch.'

'And I'm Wonder Woman and if you do it again, I'm calling the blues.' She stomped off.

'The beer offer still holds,' I said. The kid got up, his jaw already beginning to puff. He wouldn't want to chew much tomorrow. He sat down in the booth beside Terry, who still held his arm protectively.

'I'm sorry, Mr. Spenser,' she said. 'He isn't really like that.'

'What's he really like?' I asked.

His eyes, which had been a little out of focus, were sharpening. 'I'm like I am,' he said. 'And I don't like to see Terry sitting around boozing with some nosy goddamn gumshoe. What are you doing around here anyway?'

The left hook had taken some of the starch out of him. His voice was less assertive, more petulant. But it hadn't made him any sweeter.

'I'm a private detective looking for a stolen rare book, the Godwulf Manuscript. Ever hear of it?'

'No.'

'How'd you know I was a private cop?'

'I didn't till Terry said so, but you got the look. If your hair were much shorter it would be a crew cut. In the movement you learn to be suspicious. Besides, Terry's my woman.'

'I'm not anybody's woman, Dennis. That's a sexist statement. I'm not a possession.'

'Oh, Christ,' I said. 'Could we cut the polemics a minute. If you know of the manuscript, know this also. It has to be kept in a climate-controlled atmosphere. Otherwise it will disintegrate. And then it will be worthless both to scholars and to you, or whoever the book-nappers may be. The university hasn't got the money to ransom it.'

'They got the money to buy football players and build a hockey rink and pay goddamn professors to teach three hours a week and write books the rest of the time.'

'I'm not into educational reform this week. Do you have any thoughts on where the missing manuscript might be?'

'If I did I wouldn't tell you. If I didn't I could find out, and when I found out I wouldn't tell you then either. You aren't peeking over the transom in some flophouse now, snoopy. You're on a college campus and you stick out like a sore thumb. You will find out nothing at all because no one will tell you. You and the other dinosaurs can rut around all you want?we're not buying it.'

'Buying what?'

'Whatever you're selling. You are the other side, man.'

'We aren't getting anywhere,' I said. 'I'll see you.' I left a five on the table to cover the lunch and left. It was getting dark now and the commuter traffic was starting. I felt the beer a little, and I felt the sadness of kids like that who weren't buying it and weren't quite sure what it was. I got my car from where I'd parked it by a hydrant. It had a parking ticket tied to the windshield wiper. Eternal vigilance, I thought, is the price of liberty. I tore the ticket up and drove home.

Chapter 3

I was living that year on Marlborough Street, two blocks up from the Public Garden. I made myself hash and eggs for supper and read the morning's New York Times while I ate. I took my coffee with me into the living room and tried looking at television. It was awful, so I shut it off and got out my carving. I'd been working on a block of hard pine for about six months now, trying to reproduce in wood the bronze statue of an Indian on horseback that stands in front of the Museum of Fine Arts. The wood was so hard that I had to sharpen the knives every time I worked. And I spent about half an hour this night with whetstone and file before I began on the pine. At eleven I turned on the news, watched it as I undressed, shut it off, and went to bed.

At some much later time, in the dark, the phone rang. I spiraled slowly upward from sleep and answered it after it had rung for what seemed a long time. The girl's voice at the other end was thick and very slow, almost like a 45 record played at 33.

'Spenser?'

'Yeah.'

'It's Terry… help me.'

'Where are you?'

'Eighty Hemenway Street, apartment three.'

'Ten minutes,' I said, and rolled out of bed. It was 3:05 in the morning when I got into my car and headed for Hemenway Street. It wasn't till 3:15 when I got there. Three A.M. traffic in Boston is rarely a serious problem.

Hemenway Street, on the other hand, often is. It is a short street of shabby apartment buildings, near the university, and for no better reason than Haight-Ashbury had, or the East Village, it had become the place for street people. On the walls of the building Maoist slogans were scrawled in red paint. On a pillar at the entrance to the street was a proclamation of Gay Liberation. There were various recommendations about pigs being offed scrawled on the sidewalk. I left my car double-parked outside 80 Hemenway and tried the front door. It was locked. There were no doorbells to push. I took my gun out, reversed it, and broke the glass with the handle. Then I reached around and turned the dead lock and opened the door from the inside.

Number three was down the hall, right rear. There were bicycles with tire locks lining both walls, and some indeterminate litter behind them. Terry's door was locked. I knocked; no answer. I knocked again and heard something faint, like the noise of a kitten. The corridor was narrow. I braced my back against the wall opposite the door and drove my heel, with 195 pounds behind it, against the door next to the knob. The inside jamb splintered, and the door tore open and banged violently against the wall as it opened.

Inside all the lights were on. The first thing I saw was Dennis Goldilocks lying on his back with his mouth open, his arms outspread, and a thick patch of tacky and blackening blood covering much of his chest. Near him on her hands and knees was Terry Orchard. Her hair was loose and falling forward as though she were trying to dry it in the sun. But it wasn't sunny in there. She wore only a pajama top with designs of Snoopy and the Red Baron on it, and it was from her that the faint kitten sounds were coming. She swayed almost rhythmically back and forth making no progress, moving in no direction, just swaying and mewing. Between her and Dennis on the floor was a small white-handled gun. It or something had been fired in the room; I could smell it.

I knelt beside the blond boy and felt for the big pulse in his neck. The minute I touched his skin I knew I'd never feel the pulse. He was cool already and getting colder. I turned to Terry. She still swayed, head down and