Looking for Rachel Wallace (14 page)

I took the pistol out. “This, Mrs. Roy. It was in a drawer beside the bed.”

“It’s for protection, Ma.”

“You got a license for this, Manfred?”

“Course I do.”

“Lemme see it.”

“I don’t have to show you. You’re not on the cops no more.”

“You don’t have a permit do you, Manfred?” I smiled a big smile. “You know what the Massachusetts handgun law says?”

“I got a license.”

“The Massachusetts handgun law provides that anyone convicted of the possession of an unlicensed handgun gets a mandatory one-year jail sentence. Sentence may not be suspended nor parole granted. That’s a year in the joint, Manfred.”

“Manfred, do you have a license?” his mother said. He shook his head. All four fingers of his bruised right hand were in his mouth and he sucked at them. Mrs. Roy looked at me. “Don’t tell,” she said.

“Ever been in the joint, Manfred?”

With his fingers still in his mouth Manfred shook his head.

“They do a lot of bad stuff up there, Manfred. Lot of homosexuality. Lot of hatred. Small blond guys tend to be in demand.”

“Don’t tell,” his mother said. She had moved between me and Manfred. Manfred’s eyes were squeezed nearly shut. There were tears in the corners.

I smiled my nice big smile at his mother. Old Mr. Friendly. Here’s how your kid’s going to get raped in the slammer, ma’am.

“Maybe we can work something out,” I said. “See, I’m looking for Rachel Wallace. If you gave me any help on that, I’d give you back your Mauser and speak no ill of you to the fuzz.”

I was looking at Manfred but I was talking for his mother, too.

“I don’t know nothing about it,” Manfred mumbled around his fingers. He seemed to have shrunk in on himself, as if his stomach hurt.

I shook my head sadly. “Talk to him, Mrs. Roy. I don’t want to have to put him away. I’m sure you need him here to look after you.”

Mrs. Roy’s face was chalky, and the lines around her mouth and eyes were slightly reddened. She was beginning to breathe hard, as if she’d been running. Her mouth was open a bit, and I noticed that her front teeth were gone.

“You do what he says, Manfred. You help this man like he says.” She didn’t look at Manfred as she talked. She stood between him and me and looked at me.

I didn’t say anything. None of us did. We stood nearly still in the small hallway. Manfred snuffed a little. Some pipes knocked.

Still looking at me, with Manfred behind her, Mrs. Roy said, “God damn you to hell, you little bastard, you do what this man says. You’re in trouble. You’ve always been in trouble. Thirty years old and you still live with your mother and never go out of the house except to those crazy meetings. Whyn’t you leave the niggers alone? Whyn’t you let the government take care of them? Whyn’t you get a good job or get an education or get a woman or get the hell out the house once in awhile, and not get in trouble? Now this man’s going to put you in jail unless you do what he says, and you better the hell damn well goddamned do it.” She was crying by the time she got halfway through, and her ugly little face looked a lot worse.

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.

“You know.”

“No, I don’t, Manfred. Like what?”

“Well, if you needed people for, like, you know, like fighting and getting things done.”

“Like the baboons that pounded on me this morning?”

“I didn’t hire them, Spenser. They’re from the organization. They wanted to make sure I wasn’t bothered.”

“Because you are a Klan mucky-muck?” I said. “Second Assistant Lizard?”

“I’m an official. And they were looking out for me. We stick together.”

Manfred’s voice tried for dignity, but he kept staring at the floor, and dignity is hard, while you’re looking at the floor.

“Ever meet his mother or his sister?”

“No.”

“Know anything about them?”

“No.”

“Manfred, you are not being a help.”

“I’m trying, Spenser. I just don’t know nothing. I never heard of Rachel Whosis.”

“Wallace,” I said. “Rachel Wallace.”

Manfred and I chatted for another hour with no better results. Hardly seemed worth getting beat up for. When I left, Mrs. Roy didn’t come to say goodbye, and Manfred didn’t offer to shake hands. I got even—I didn’t wish them Merry Christmas.

It was a little after three when I got back out onto Commonwealth. The whiskey and aspirin had worn off, and I hurt. A three-block walk and I could be in bed, but that wouldn’t be looking for Rachel Wallace. That would be taking a nap. Instead I walked down to Berkeley and up three blocks to Police Headquarters to talk with Quirk.

He was there and so was Belson. Quirk had his coat off and his sleeves rolled up. He was squeezing one of those little red rubber grip strengtheners with indentations for the fingers. He did ten in one hand and switched it to the other and did ten more.

“Trying to keep your weight down, Marty?” I said.

Quirk switched the grip strengthener back to his right hand. “Your face looks good,” he said.

“I bumped into a door,” I said.

“About fifteen times,” Belson said. “You come in to make a complaint?”

I shook my head. It made my face hurt. “I came by to see how you guys are making out looking for Rachel Wallace.”

“We got shit,” Quirk said.

“Anything on those license-tag numbers I gave you?”

Quirk nodded. “The Buick belongs to a guy named Swisher Cody. Used to be a big basketball star at Hyde Park High in the Fifties, where he got the nickname. Dodge belongs to a broad named Mary Stevenson. Says she lets her boyfriend use it all the time. Boyfriend’s name is Michael Mulready. He’s a pal of Swisher’s. They both tell us that they were together the night you say they tried to run you off the road and that they were playing cards with Mulready’s cousin Mingo at his place in Watertown. Mingo says that’s right. Cody’s done time for loansharking. Mingo, too.”

“So you let them go,” I said.

Quirk shrugged. “Even if we didn’t believe them and we believe you, what have we got them for? Careless driving? We let ‘em go and we put a tail on them.”

“And?”

“And nothing. They both go to work in the Sears warehouse in Dorchester. They stop on the way home for a few beers. They go to bed. Sometimes they drive out to Watertown and play cards with Cousin Mingo.”

I nodded. “How about English?”

Quirk nodded at Belson.

Belson said, “Pretty much what you heard. He’s chairman of the Vigilance Committee.”

“Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty,” Quirk said, and squeezed his grip exerciser hard so that the muscles in his forearm looked like suspension cables.

Belson said, “Spenser been lending you books again, Marty?”

Quirk shook his head. “Naw, my kid’s taking U.S. History. He’s almost as smart as Spenser.”

“Maybe he’ll straighten out,” I said. “What else you got on English?”

Belson shrugged. “Nothing you don’t know. He’s got money—he thinks it makes him important, and he’s probably right. He’s got the IQ of a fieldmouse. And he’s got an alibi to cover any time Rachel Wallace might have been kidnaped. Did you meet his mother?”

“No. I’ve seen her picture.”

“Ain’t she a looker?” He looked at Quirk. “We ever have to bust her, Marty, I want you to send some hard-ass kids from the tac squad. You and me’d get hurt.”

“She as nice as she looks?” I said.

“Nowhere near that nice,” Belson said. “She sat in while we questioned sonny and tended to answer whatever we asked him. I told her finally, why didn’t she hold him on her knee and he could move his lips? She told me she’d see to it that I never worked for any police department in this state.”

“You scared?” I said.

“Hell, no,” Belson said. “I’m relieved. I thought she was going to kill me.”

“She active in the committee?” I said.

“She didn’t say,” Belson said, “but I’d guess yes. I have the feeling she’s active in anything sonny is active in. He doesn’t get a hard-on without checking with her.”

“You run any check on the family? There’s a sister.”

Quirk said, “What the hell do you think we do in here—make up Dick Tracy Crimestoppers? Of course we ran a check on the family. Sister’s name is Geraldine.”

“I know that, for crissake—Geraldine Julia English, Goucher College class of ‘68.”

Quirk went on as if I hadn’t said anything. “Geraldine Julia English. Married a guy named Walton Wells in June, 1968, divorced 1972. Works as a model in Boston.”

“Wells,” I said.

“Yeah, Walton Wells—slick name, huh?”

“Geraldine Julia Wells would be her married name.”

Belson said, “You were wrong, Marty. Your kid couldn’t be nearly as smart as Spenser.”

“What model agency she with?”

Belson said, “Carol Cobb.”

“She use her married name?”

“Yeah.”

“And her middle name instead of her first, I bet.”

Quirk said, “Nobody could be nearly as smart as Spenser.”

“She bills herself as Julie Wells, doesn’t she?”

Belson nodded.

“Gentlemen,” I said, “what we have here is your basic clue. Julie Wells, who is Lawrence Turnbull English, Junior’s, sister, was intimate with Rachel Wallace.”

“Intimate intimate or just friendly intimate,” Quirk said.

“Intimate intimate,” I said.

“How do you know this?” Quirk said.

I told him.

“Nice you told us first thing,” Quirk said. “Nice you mentioned her name at the beginning of the investigation so we could follow up every possible lead. Very nice.” There was no amusement in Quirk’s voice now.

“I should have told you,” I said. “I was wrong.”

“You bet your ass you were wrong,” Quirk said. “Being wrong like that tends to put your balls in the fire, too—you know that?”

“You’re not the Holy Ghost, Quirk. None of you guys are. I don’t have to run in and report everything I know to you every day. I made a guess that this broad was okay, and I didn’t want to smell up her rose garden by dragging her into this. Can’t you see the
Herald American
headline? LESBIAN LOVER SUSPECT IN KIDNAPING.”

“And maybe you guessed wrong, hot shot, and maybe your girl friend Rachel is dead and gone because you didn’t tell us something.”