Pale Kings and Princes (11 page)

It was about four in the afternoon when I hit Route 128 north of Boston and humped the big tractor trailer off of 128 and down a ramp and through an underpass and up into the vast parking area of the Northshore Shopping Center in Peabody. I parked out of the way, partly to be inconspicuous and partly because I wasn't too confident I could parallel-park a ten-wheeler. The snow was mixed with rain down here. I climbed down and walked over to the shopping center. I cut through Herman's sporting goods and went into the Sears store. I bought a big pry bar and a hammer with a steel shank, a new padlock and a flashlight. Then I went back out to my truck. In ten minutes I had the lock off and I was inside. There were cases of mackerel, most of which didn't smell that good. I pried them open and rummaged around and found under the mackerel, packed neatly in clear plastic bags, about three hundred kilos of cocaine.

No wonder no one had called the cops.

I called Susan from a pay phone in the shopping mall. Her voice sounded sleepy.

"I'm at the Northshore Shopping Center," I said. "I need you to come and get me."

"Where's my car," she said.

"On the Maine Turnpike," I said. "Safe in a parking lot behind the Burger King."

"The Maine Turnpike?"

"We'll go into it later, it's perfectly safe."

"And you're at the Northshore Shopping Center?"

"Yes, near the movie theater, in a big trailer truck."

"A trailer truck."

"Yes."

"Jesus Christ," she said.

"I knew you wouldn't mind," I said.

"I'll be there in about an hour," she said. Susan exaggerated a bit, it was actually an hour and thirty-five minutes before she showed up, but time has never been Susan's master and, as always, she was worth the wait. She had rented the sportiest thing she could find, which was, in this case, a red Mustang convertible with a white roof, which looked a little forlorn as it pulled up through the dark winter night. When she got out and walked toward me through the headlights of her car, she was wearing gray boots, and jeans, and a silver fox fur coat. Her hair was in perfect place and her makeup was elegant. I had always suspected that were she routed out of bed at 3:00 A.M. by the secret police she'd find a way to do her hair and put on her makeup before they hauled her away. I climbed down from the cab and put my arms out and she leaned in against my chest and put her arms around me and kissed me. I had the feeling I always had, every time, the feeling of breathing deep and clear, and a lot of the sleepless tension in my back and shoulders eased.

"I may someday faint from contentment," I said with my face against her hair.

"Um hum," she said.

"Will you give me mouth-to-mouth," I said.

"I'm doing that now," she said, and kissed me again. "Preventive medicine," she said with her mouth still against mine. "Now what's up?"

Standing as we were, arms around each other, I told her.

"Three hundred kilos of cocaine?" she said when I was through. "We're rich!"

"Even if we keep a little for your nose," I said. "Current street price in Boston is a hundred dollars a gram, a hundred and twenty if it hasn't been stepped on too heavy."

"That's enough for a new car," Susan said.

"Un huh."

"What are we going to do with it?"

"I don't know exactly," I said.

"Are we going to turn it over to the police?"

"Not right now," I said.

"Why not?"

"I think we're going to hold it hostage," I said.

"Is that law-abiding?"

"No."

Susan moved her head against my chin. "I thought it wasn't," she said.

We unloaded the bags of cocaine from the truck and put them in the trunk of the Mustang.

"It would make a nice headline," Susan said. "Cambridge therapist collared in drug bust."

"Claim you were my love slave," I said. "Any jury would buy it."

Susan closed the trunk. "What about the truck?" she said.

"We'll leave it, eventually someone will wonder what it's doing here, quite soon if the weather warms."

We got in the Mustang, Susan on the driver's side.

"Will they trace it to the owner?" she said.

"I doubt it," I said. "I suspect they'll find that the registration is a fake."

Susan slipped the Mustang in gear and drove out of the parking lot and onto Route 128 very quickly.

"It would not be good to get busted for speeding with a trunkload of coke," I said.

"I'm only doing sixty-eight," Susan said.

"Yeah, I know. But I'm worried about when you get out of second."

I could see her smile as she eased up on the gas and brought the car down to the speed limit. I put my head back against the front seat headrest.

"Your place or mine," she said.

"Mine," I said.

"Tired?" Susan said.

"And hungry and in the throes of caffeine withdrawal, and sexually unrequited for six days," I said.

"There are remedies to all those problems," Susan said. "Trust me, I have a Ph.D."

"From Harvard too," I said.

"Veritas, " Susan said.

I closed my eyes and didn't exactly sleep while we drove down Route 1 and over the Mystic Bridge. But I didn't exactly not sleep either and when we pulled up and parked in my parking space in the alley in back of my place on Marlborough Street, Susan had to say, "We're here."

I fumbled the keys out and we went in the front door and up to the second floor and I unlocked the door to my apartment and we went in. I stopped in the living room and took off my jacket. Susan went into the bedroom. I dropped my jacket on the couch and followed her. She had turned the bed back. I took my gun off of my hip and put it on the bureau. Then I undressed and got into bed.

"Aren't you going to read me a story," I said.

"Not tonight," Susan said. "You need to sleep. But God knows what may happen in the morning."

I slept until ten-thirty the next morning, and when I woke up I could smell coffee. I rolled over. I could smell Susan's perfume on the pillow next to mine but I had no memory of her coming to bed. I sat up. The clothes I had dropped on the floor last night were gone. I got out of bed and stretched and looked out the window. The sun was bright on the thin dusting of snow that had accumulated on Marlborough Street. I went out into the living room.

Susan looked up from behind the counter that separated the kitchen.

"My God, you shameless animal," she said. "You're naked."

"I'm on my way to the shower," I said. "You just happen to be in the right place at the right time."

"If you're not too tired you might shave as well," Susan said. She was mixing something but I couldn't see what.

"I'll try," I said, and went into the bathroom.

Ten minutes later I was reeking of cleanliness, smooth-shaven, and smelling of Clubman cologne. I put a towel around my waist and came out of the bathroom.

"Are you squeaky clean?" Susan said.

"Yes."

"Smooth-shaven?"

"Yes."

"Teeth brushed?"

"Un huh."

"Good," Susan said. "Then I think we should make love and then have breakfast."

"Excellent plan," I said. "But what about your patients?"

"It's Sunday," Susan said. "I have no patients."

"Sunday?"

Susan nodded. She was wearing a loose heavy white sweater over her jeans. There were two gold chains around her neck. She had on gold earrings in the shape of triangles, and a gold bracelet and a small gold chain and a gold watch on her left wrist and a very large thick white bracelet on her right. "Complacencies of the peignoir," I said, "and late coffee and oranges in a sunny chair."

"Eliot?" Susan said.

"Stevens," I said, and put my arms around her. "And the green freedom of a cockatoo upon a rug."

"I never heard it called that," Susan murmured, and kissed me and leaned away and jerked her head toward the bedroom and smiled the smile she had that would launch a thousand ships.

It was almost noon when we sat down for breakfast. I was wearing my maroon bathrobe with the satin lapels and Susan had on a yellow silk number with maroon trim that she kept at my place. Susan had made cornbread, and we ate it with honey and drank black coffee, at the counter. The cornbread was still warm.

I made a toasting gesture at her, with my coffee cup.

"Mingled to dissipate the holy hush of ancient sacrifice," I said.

"Are you going to quote all of it?" Susan said.

"I don't know all of it," I said.

Susan smiled. "Small mercies," she said. "What are you going to do with the three hundred kilos of cocaine in the trunk of my rental car?"

"I think we'll leave it there for now," I said. "We'll drive up to Maine and get your car and I'll take the Mustang and drive on back to Wheaton."

"And do what," Susan said.

"I don't know, exactly. But I figure it's a bargaining chip that I didn't have before. And so is the kid."

"The chief's son?"

"Un huh, at worst I can squeeze him. I've got him for smuggling coke."

"Have you though?" Susan said. "All he has to do is deny everything. The truck's in Peabody and you've got the coke."

"And I know that he got it at Penobscot Seafood in Belfast and I know what the guy looks like that he transacted with. If I have to I can shake it loose from that end."

"Well, why don't you?"

"Because I was hired to find out who killed Valdez, not to break up coke smuggling. Maybe I can do both, and maybe to do one I'll have to do the other. But Wheaton is where the killing took place and Wheaton is where I should be working if I can."

Susan leaned forward and kissed me gently on the lips.

"One of the things I like best about you," she said, "is how earnest you are about your work. You pretend to be such a wise guy, and you are so rebellious about rules; but you are so careful to do what you say you'll do."

"There's not too much else to be careful about," I said.

"Post Christian ethics," she said.

"I'm careful about you," I said.

She cut a wedge of cornbread and transferred it carefully to her plate. A faint wisp of steam eased up from it.

"Yes," she said, "about me, and about us."

"You too," I said.

"We've both learned to be careful of us," she said.

We looked at each other. The connective force of our gaze was palpable.

"Forever," I said finally. Susan nodded.

I drank some coffee, looking at Susan over the rim of the cup. Then I put the cup down and cut another piece of cornbread from the round. I felt the intensity of the silence, like a cup filled too full and keeping its contents through surface tension. I took a breath and let it out.

Susan smiled.

"Are you going to confront the cocaine man?" she said.

"Esteva? Maybe. And the kid probably, and see what happens."

"What do you think will happen?"

"I don't know," I said. "It's like sluice mining where they wash tons of earth off a hillside with jets of water. They get all this sludge in motion and see if gold turns up."

"Do you think Esteva will be angry?"

"Yes," I said.

"Will you need help?" Susan said.

"Against a horde of armed killers? Surely you jest."

"Will you do something for me," she said. "Will you ask Hawk to go with you?"

"Maybe," I said, "in a while, since you asked so nice."

She smiled. "Thank you," she said. "But you acquiesce so easily. Perhaps all is not as it appears to be?"

"Well," I said, "maybe not."

"You were going to ask him anyway."

"But not for myself," I said. "It's best for society if Hawk is kept busy."

I parked the rented Mustang in Caroline Rogers's driveway before lunch on Monday. The driveway had been plowed and a path had been cut through the plow spill to the front door. The house was a two-story raised ranch with fieldstone facing on the first floor and red cedar siding on the second. The front door was painted green. I rang the bell. Caroline opened the door. She was dressed and her hair was combed and she had on lipstick. There was no particular sign of pain. Grief makes less of a mark on people's appearance than is thought. People torn with sorrow often look just like people who aren't.

I said, "Hello, Mrs. Rogers, may I come in?" She smiled and nodded and stepped aside. I walked into a living room full of maple furniture upholstered in print fabric. Somewhere in the house a television set was on.

"Let me take your coat," she said.

I took off my leather jacket and handed it to her. She paid no attention to the gun in the shoulder rig. She was a cop's wife. She'd seen guns before.

"Coffee?" she said. "It's all made."

"Thank you."

She left the living room and came back in maybe a minute with cream, sugar, and a mug of coffee on a small tole tray. The mug was white and had a big red apple painted on the side. She set the tray down on the coffee table, and gestured toward the couch.

I sat. She smoothed her plaid skirt down along the backs of her thighs and sat in a wing chair across from me, her knees together. She was wearing cream-colored cable-stitched knee socks and penny loafers. She folded her hands on her lap. I noticed there were no rings on either hand.

"How are you?" I said.

"I'm coping," she said.

I poured a little cream in the coffee, added two sugars, and stirred. If you add the sugar first it doesn't taste right.

"How's the kid?"

"Brett seems all right. He and his father were not close."

I drank some coffee. "No rings," I said.

"No," she said. "It's a way to start living a new way. I miss him, but I have a long time left without him."

I nodded.

"Is your son home?"

"Yes, he's in the den."

I squeezed my lips together for a moment. "I need to see him," I said. "I need to talk with you both about something."

"What is it?"