God Save the Child (9 page)

”I was looking for clues,“ I said. ”I’m a professional investigator.“

She said, ”Mmmm.“

We went out a side door to the parking lot. Behind it the lawn stretched green to a football field ringed with new-looking bleachers and past that a line of trees. There was a group of girls in blue gym shorts and gold T-shirts playing field hockey under the eye of a lean tan woman in blue warm-up pants and a white polo shirt with a whistle in her mouth.

”Gym class?“ I asked.

”Yes.“

Susan’s car was a two-year-old Nova. I opened the door for her, and she slipped into the seat, tucking her blue skirt under her.

We drove out of the parking lot, turned left toward the center of town, and then right on Main Street and headed north.

”How’d you locate this place so quickly?“

”I collected a favor,“ she said, ”from a girl in school.“

We turned left off Main Street and headed east. The road was narrow, and the houses became sparser. Most of the road was through woods, and it seemed incredible that we were but fifteen miles from Boston and in the northern reaches of a megalopolis that stretched south through Richmond, Virginia. On my right was a pasture with black and white Ayrshire cows grazing behind a stone wall piled without benefit of mortar. Then more woods, mostly elm trees with birch trees gleaming through occasionally and a smattering of white pine.

”It’s along here somewhere,“ she said.

”What are we looking for?“

”A dirt road on the left about a half mile past the cow pasture.“

”There,“ I said, ”just before the red maple.“

She nodded and turned in. It was a narrow road, rocky and humpbacked beneath the wheel ruts. Tree branches scraped the sides and roof of the car as we drove. Dogberry bushes clustered along the edge of the path. A lot of rust-colored rock outcroppings showed among the greenery, and waxy-looking green vines grew among them in the shade, putting forth tiny blue flowers. All that waxy green effort for that reticent little flower.

We pulled around a bend about two hundred yards in and stopped. The land before us was cleared and might once have been a lawn. Now it was an expanse of gravel spattered with an occasional clump of weeds, some of which, coarse and sparse-leafed, looked waist-high. Behind one clump was a discarded bicycle on its back, its wheelless forks pointing up. The scavenged shell of a 1937 Hudson Terraplane rusted quietly at the far edge of the clearing. The remnants of a sidewalk, big squares of cracked cement, heaved and buckled by frost, led up to a one-story house.

Once, when it was newly built, an enthusiastic real estate broker might have listed it as a contemporary bungalow. It was a low ranch built on a slab. The siding was asphalt shingle faded now to a pale green. A peak over the front door had been vertically paneled with natural planks, and a scalloped molding, showing traces of pink paint, ran across the front. Attached to the house was a disproportionate cinder block carport, partly enclosed, as if the owner had given up and moved out in mid-mortar. From the carport came the steady whine of a gasoline engine. Not a car, maybe a generator. I saw no utility wires running in from the road.

A narrow mongrel bitch, about knee-high, with pendulous dugs, burrowed in an overturned trash barrel near the front door. A plump brown-haired girl of maybe fourteen sat on the front steps. She had big dark eyes that looked even bigger and darker in contrast with her white, doughy face.

She had on a white T-shirt, blue dungarees with a huge flare at the bottom, and no shoes. She was eating a Twinkie and in her right hand held an open can of Coke and a burning filter tip cigarette. She looked at us without expression as we got out of the car and started up the walk.

”I don’t like it here,“ Susan Silverman said.

”That’s the trouble with you urban intellectuals,“ I said.

”You have no sense of nature’s subtle rhythms.“

The girl finished her Twinkie as we reached her and washed it down with the rest of the Coke.

”Good morning,“ I said.

She looked at me without expression, inhaled most of her filter tip cigarette, and without taking it from her mouth, let the smoke out through her nose. Then she yelled, ”Vic.“

The screen door behind her scraped open—one hinge was loose—and out he came. Susan Silverman put her hand on my arm.

”You were right,“ I said. ”He is unusual, isn’t he?“

Vic Harroway was perhaps five ten, three inches shorter than I, and twenty pounds heavier. Say, 215. He was a body builder, but a body builder gone mad. He embodied every excess of body building that an adolescent fantasy could concoct. His hair was a bright cheap blond, cut straight across the forehead in a Julius Caesar shag. The muscles in his neck and chest were so swollen his skin looked as if it would burst over them. There were stretch marks pale against his dark tan where the deltoid muscles drape over the shoulder and stretch marks over his biceps and in the rigid valley between his pectoral muscles. His abdominal muscles looked like cobblestones. The white shorts were slit up the side to accommodate his thigh muscles. They too showed stretch marks. My stomach contracted at the amount of effort he’d expended, the number of weights he’d lifted to get himself in this state.

He said, ”What do you turds want?“ Down home hospitality.

I said, ”We’re looking for Walden Pond, you glib devil you.“

”Well there aren’t no Walden Pond around here, so screw.“

”I just love the way your eyes snap when you’re angry,“ I said.

”If you came out here looking for trouble, you’re gonna find it, Jack. Take your slut and get your ass out of here, or I’ll bend you into an earring.“

I looked at Susan Silverman. ”Slut?“ I said.

Harroway said, ”That’s right. You don’t like it? You want to make something out of it?“ He jumped lightly off the steps and landed in front of me, maybe four feet away, slightly crouched. I could feel Susan Silverman lean back, but she didn’t step back. A point for her A point for me too, because as Harroway landed I brought my gun out, and as he went into his crouch he found himself staring into its barrel. I held it straight out in front of me, level with his face.

”Let’s not be angry with each other, Vic. Let us reason together,“ I said.

”What the hell is this? What do you want?“

”I am looking for a boy named Kevin Bartlett. I came out here to ask if you’d seen him.“

”I don’t know anybody named Kevin Bartlett.“

”How about the young lady,“ I asked, still looking at Harroway. ”Do you know Kevin Bartlett?“

”No.“ I heard a match strike and smelled the cigarette smoke as she lit up. Imperturbable.

The generator in the garage whined on. The dog had found a bone and was crunching on it vigorously. There was color on Harroway’s cheekbones; he looked as if he had a fever. I was stymied. I wanted to search the place, but I didn’t want to turn my back on Harroway. I didn’t want to have to herd him and the girl around with me. I didn’t want Susan out of my sight. I was trespassing, which bothered me a bit. And I had no reason not to believe them. I didn’t know who might be in the house or behind it or in the garage.

”If at first you don’t succeed,“ I said to Susan Silverman, ”the hell with it. Come on.“

We backed down the sidewalk to her car and got in.

Harroway never took his eyes off me as we went. Susan U-turned on the lawn, and we drove away. Another point for Susan. She didn’t spin gravel getting out of there.

She didn’t say anything, but I noticed her knuckles were white on the steering wheel. When we got back to Main Street, she pulled over to the side of the road and stopped.

”I feel sick,“ she said. She kept her hands on the wheel and stared straight ahead. She was shivering as if it were cold. ”My God, what a revolting creature he was. My God!

Like a… like a rhinoceros or something. A kind of impenetrable brutality.“

I put a hand on her shoulder and didn’t say anything.

We sat maybe two minutes that way. Then she put the car in gear again. ”I’m okay,“ she said.

”I’ll say.“

”What do you think?“ she said. ”Did you learn anything?“

I shrugged. ”I learned where that place is and what Vic Harroway is like. I don’t know if Kevin is there or not.“

”It seemed like an unpleasant experience for nothing,“ she said.

”Well, that’s my line of work. I go look at things and see what happens. If they were lying, maybe they will do some things because I went there today. Maybe they will make a mistake. The worst thing in any case is when nothing is happening. It’s like playing tennis: you just keep returning the ball until somebody makes a mistake. Then you see.“

She shook her head. ”What if you hadn’t had a gun?“

”I usually have a gun.“

”But, my God, if you hadn’t, or you hadn’t reached it in time?“

”I don’t know,“ I said. ”It depends on how good Harroway really is. He looks good. But guys that look like that often don’t have to fight. Who’s going to start up with them? There’s a lot to being strong, but there’s a lot to knowing how. Maybe someday we’ll find out if Harroway knows how.“

She looked at me and frowned. ”You want to, don’t you?

You want to fight him. You want to see if you can beat him.“

”I didn’t like that ‘slut’ remark.“

”Jesus Christ,“ she said. ”You adolescent, you. Do you think it matters to me if someone like Vic Harroway calls me a slut? Next thing you’ll challenge him to a duel.“ She wheeled the car into the high school parking lot and braked sharply.

I grinned at her boyishly, or maybe adolescently.

She put her hand on my forearm. ”Don’t mess with him, Spenser,“ she said. ”You looked…“ she searched for a word, ”frail beside him.“

”Well, anyway,“ I said, ”I’m sorry you had to go. If I’d known, I’d have left you home.“

She smiled at me, her even white teeth bright in her tan face. ”Spenser,“ she said, ”you are a goddamned fool?“

”You think so too, huh?“ I said and got out.

That afternoon I was in the ID section of the Boston Police Department trying to find out if Vic Harroway had a record.

If he did, the Boston cops didn’t know about it. Neither did I.

It was almost five o’clock when I left police headquarters on Berkeley Street and drove to my office. The commuters were out, and the traffic was heavy. It took me fifteen minutes, and my office wasn’t worth it. It was stale and hot when I unlocked the door The mail had accumulated in a pile under the mail slot in the door I stepped over it and went across the room to open the window. A spider had spun a symmetrical web across one corner of the window recess. I was careful not to disturb it. Every man needs a pet. I picked up the mail and sat at my desk to read it.

Mostly bills and junk mail. No letter announcing my election to the Hawkshaw Hall of Fame. No invitation to play tennis with Bobby Riggs in the Astrodome. There was a note on pale violet stationery from a girl named Brenda Loring suggesting a weekend in Provincetown in the late fall when the tourists had gone home. I put that aside to answer later.

I called my answering service. They reported five calls from Margery Bartlett during the afternoon. I said thank you, hung up, and dialed the Bartlett number.

”Where on earth have you been?“ Margery Bartlett said when I told her who I was. ”I’ve been trying to get you all afternoon.“

”I was up to the Boston Athenaeum browsing through the collected works of Faith Baldwin,“ I said.

”Well, we need you out here, right away. My life has been threatened.“

”Cops there?“

”Yes, there’s a patrolman here now. But we want you here right away. Someone has threatened my life.

Threatened to kill me. YOu get right out here, Spenser, right away.“

”Yes, ma’am,“ I said, ”right away.“

I hung up, looked at my watch—five twenty—got up, closed the window, and headed for Smithfield. It was six fifteen when I got there. A Smithfield police cruiser was parked facing the street in the driveway. Paul Marsh, the patrolman I’d met before, was sitting in it, his head tipped back against the headrest, his cap tilted forward. The barrel end of a pump action shotgun showed through the windshield held upright by a clip lock on the dashboard. I could hear the soft rush of open air on the police radio in the car as I stopped at the open side window near the driver.

”What’s happening?“ I asked.

He shook his head. ”Phone call. Mrs. Bartlett answered and was threatened. Something about evening the score. I didn’t talk to her. Trask did. He knows the details. I don’t.

This was my day off.“

”You eaten?“

”No, but one of the guys’ll bring me down something in a while.“

”I’ll be here if you want to shoot out and get something.“

Marsh shook his head again. ”Naw, Trask would have my ass. I think he’s hot for Mrs. Bartlett.“

”Okay,“ I said. ”I’ll go in and see what she can tell me.

Her husband home?“

”Nope. He’s still working, I guess. Just her and her daughter and the lawyer, Maguire.“

They were in the kitchen. Maguire, small, neat, and worried let me in. Marge Bartlett in a green crepe pants suit and white shirt with ruffled cuffs was standing against the kitchen counter turning a highball glass in her hands. She was very carefully made-up. At the kitchen table was the same young girl I’d seen going for a swim on my first visit.

The Bartletts’ daughter; I assumed. She was eating a macaroni and cheese TV dinner and drinking a can of Tab.

Her bones were small, her face was delicate and impassive.

Her black hair was long and straight. She was wearing a faded yellow sweat shirt that said Make Love Not War in black letters across the front. The Lab sat on the floor by her chair and watched every mouthful as it moved from the foil container to her mouth.

Marge Bartlett said, ”Spenser, where the hell were you?“

”You already asked me that,“ I said.

Maguire said, ”Glad you got here, Spenser.“

Marge Bartlett said, ”They threatened me. They said they’d…“ She glanced at her daughter. ”Dolly, why don’t you finish your supper and go watch TV in the den?“