Small Vices (22 page)

"And you loved it because it was such a pretty red color," I said.

"Yes. Does this rice look opaque to you?"

I looked and said that it did. Susan ladled some broth into the rice and began to stir it carefully. While she stirred, she looked in the pot and then at the rice.

"Do you think I have to put this broth in a little at a time, the way the recipe says?"

I said that I did. She stirred some more.

"It has to all absorb before I put in more?" she said.

"When you see the bottom of the pan as you stir, add some more broth," I said.

She nodded. The counter around the stove and the space on the stove not occupied by the risotto fixings and the roast was covered with pans and plates and dishes and cups and measuring spoons and forks and knives and a grater and two wooden spoons and a platter of grated beets and a dish of grated cheese and some onion skins and three pot holders and a crumpled paper towel and a damp sponge and her glass of barely sipped red wine and a lip-liner tube and a copy of the recipe written in Susan's pretty illegible hand on the back of a paperback copy of Civilization and Its Discontents. Susan was not a clean up as you go kind of cook.

"They always lie to you on television," Susan said.

"I know," I said.

"This woman never said you had to stand here for an hour and stir the damn stuff."

"When you tear away the mask of glamour…" I said.

Susan stirred some more, studying the rice, looking for the bottom of the pan.

"Hurry up," she said into the pan.

I thought about explaining to her how a watched pot never boils, but it might have seemed contentious to her, so I skipped it and went and looked out the front window at Marlborough Street. There was an east wind coming off the water, slowing down as it funneled through the financial district and downtown, picking up speed as it came down across the Common and the Public Garden, driving some leaves and some street litter past my building at a pretty good clip. I watched it for a while, keeping my mind on the wind, trying not to think of anything, sipping red wine.

"Look how pretty," Susan said behind me.

I turned and left the window. The big white pot of bright red rice was in fact pretty, though had we been eating at Susan's house the pot it was in would have been pretty, too.

"Keep it warm in the oven," I said, "while I make the salad and then we'll eat."

"You didn't say it was pretty."

"The beet risotto is very pretty," I said.

"Thank you."

Susan set the table while I made the salad. Then we ate the lamb and risotto with a green salad and some bread from Iggy's Bakery.

"You feel sort of mad about having to sell Concord?" I said.

Susan shrugged.

"It had to be done," she said. "But yes, I probably resent it a little. If you were a stockbroker maybe I wouldn't have had to."

I nodded.

"How about the baby, any new thoughts on that."

"Yes."

"Care to tell me?"

Susan drank some of her wine and touched her lips with a napkin.

"I can't bring a child into this kind of a life," Susan said.

"A life where I may be off getting shot on her first day in kindergarten?"

"Or his," Susan said. "Yes, that kind of life."

"I think you're right," I said.

"You have thought that since I first mentioned the idea," Susan said.

I shrugged. We ate together for a moment in silence. The risotto was very good. Susan put her fork down.

"And I suppose that makes me a little angry as well," she said.

"Yeah," I said. "I can see where it would."

"And I suppose I'm angry sometimes because the man I love keeps getting in harm's way and I have to be frightened that he might not come back."

"It's the only thing I'm any good at," I said.

"Not entirely true, but I understand. I don't want you to change. I just wish I didn't have to be scared as much as I am."

"Me too," I said.

Pearl, with her hunter's instinct, had come instantly awake when we started to eat and was now sitting alertly on the floor between us, watching closely.

"Life is imperfect," Susan said.

I nodded.

"But it is not so imperfect that we cannot enjoy it," Susan said. "We don't have our country house, and I will probably never be a mother. But I love you, and you love me, and we are here, together."

"Works for me," I said. "And what about the anger, what are you going to do with that?"

"I'm not going to do anything with it. Anger doesn't have to be expressed. It is enough to know that you're angry, and know why, and not lie to yourself about it."

"You mean it's not repression if I keep my feelings to myself?"

"No," she said. "It's repression if you pretend to yourself you don't have them."

"Does Dr. Joyce Brothers know about this?" I said.

"I doubt it," Susan said. "Our life together has not always been placid. You must certainly have some anger at me. What do you do with it?"

"I know that I'm angry," I said. "And I know why, and I don't lie to myself about it."

"Very good," Susan said and smiled at me. "We'll both keep doing that."

"Till death do us part?" I said.

"Or hell freezes over," Susan said. "Whichever comes first."

"You sure adorable little Erika didn't have any influence on your decision to adopt a child?"

Susan smiled slowly.

"You are a cynical bastard," she said.

"Of course," I said.

Pearl put her head on my lap and looked up at me by rolling her eyes up. I gave her a spoonful of the risotto. She liked it. On the other hand she liked just about everything. Things were quite simple with Pearl.

THE CHANCES OF a black man being elected DA in Suffolk County were comparable to discovering that the pope is a Buddhist. But there he was, Owen Brooks, the son of a New York City cop, a graduate of Harvard Law School, neat, well dressed, pleasant, and as easy to fool as a Lebanese rug merchant.

We were in Pemberton Square in Brooks's office: Brooks, Quirk, Donald, Dina, and Cьnt Stapleton, a guy named Frank Farantino from New York who represented Donald Stapleton, and me.

Brooks did the introductions. When he finished, Farantino said, "Why is Spenser here?"

"Mr. Spenser is here at my request," Brooks said. "Since he has been both the primary investigator in this case, and one of its victims, I thought it might serve us all to listen to him, before we get into court and this thing turns into a hairball."

"Is this a formal procedure?" Farantino said.

"Oh, of course not," Brooks said. His smile was wide and gracious. "Nothing's on the record here, I just thought we might get some sense of where the truth lies if we talked a little before we started grinding the gears of justice."

Quirk sat in the back row of chairs, against the wall of the office, next to the door. Clint sat rigidly between his parents. He was stiffly upright. His face was blank. Don was regal in his bearing. Dina rested her hand on her son's forearm. Farantino was to the left of Don. I was to the right of Dina.

"Spenser, you want to hold forth?"

"Here's what I think happened," I said.

"Think?" Farantino said. "We're here to see what he thinks?"

Brooks made a placating gesture with his right hand. "He can prove enough of it to require us to pay attention," Brooks said.

"Clint Stapleton killed Melissa Henderson," I said. "I don't know why. But he concocted a story about a black man kidnapping her and he got his cousin Hunt McMartin and his cousin's wife Glenda to say they saw the kidnapping. When a State cop named Tommy Miller came in on the case, he took one sniff and it smelled bad. It would have smelled bad to any cop. But Miller also knew that Stapleton had dough and that his father had more money than Courtney Love, and Miller saw a chance to get some of it. So he supported Clint's story and even supplied a fall guy, guy named Ellis Alves. Maybe he busted him once for something else. Maybe he just pulled him up off the known offenders file. We look hard, we'll find a connection. And it all works, and Alves goes to Cedar Junction and everybody else gets back to being a yuppie."

Nobody said anything. From his place by the door, Quirk's eyes moved from person to person in the room. Otherwise he was as motionless as everyone else.

"But because Alves's lawyer won't quite quit on the thing, I get brought in and I start to poke around and pretty soon people are having to lie to me, and the lies are the kind that won't hold if I keep on looking, and I keep on looking and Miller tries to scare me off and that doesn't work out, and it implicates Miller so somebody killed him before he can say anything, and Clint's father hires a guy to kill me. We have that guy, he probably killed Miller, he tried to kill me, and he'll testify that Don Stapleton hired him."

"In exchange for what?" Farantino said.

"We've made no deals with him," Brooks said.

"So he's looking at major time," Farantino said.

"I would think so," Brooks said without expression. "If Spenser testifies against him."

Farantino looked at me very quickly. "Why wouldn't you testify," he said.

I shrugged and shook my head.

Farantino looked back at Brooks just as quickly.

"What's your case against Rugar."

"Eyewitness," Brooks said. "Rugar shot Spenser and Spenser saw him do it."

Farantino's head swiveled back at me. "You sonova bitch," he said. "You have a deal with him, don't you?"

I shrugged again.

Don Stapleton said, "What's going on, Frank?"

"You see how cute they are?" Farantino said. "The DA's got no deal with him, but unless Spenser testifies against Rugar they've got no case. So Spenser makes the deal. Rugar gives them you, and Spenser won't testify. So they may as well give him immunity and use him to try and get you."

"And he goes free?"

"He goes free."

All three of the Stapletons stared at me.

I said to Clint, "Why'd you kill her? Did you mean to or did something happen?"

Farantino said, "Don't answer that."

He turned toward Brooks.

"That's an entirely inappropriate question and you damned well know it, Owen."

Brooks nodded vigorously. "Entirely," he said.

"It was an accident," Clint Stapleton said softly.

Don Stapleton said, "Shut up, Clint."

"We were having fun, it was rough but she liked rough, and there's a thing you do, you know where you choke someone while having sex and it makes them come…"

Dina Stapleton put her hand over her son's mouth. Don Stapleton said, "Clint, that's enough, not another word out of you. I mean it."

Clint gently turned his head away from his mother's hand.

"Great White Bwana," he said without looking at his father. "You think you can fix this?"

Don Stapleton was on his feet. "You goddamned fool, I can if you'll keep your mouth shut."

Clint shook his head staring at the floor between his feet.

"Get fucking real," he said.

"Don't you speak to me like that," Don said.

Dina began to cry softly, her hands clasped in her lap, her head down. Farantino was on his feet now, beside Don.

"Everybody just shut up," he said.

"Well, Melissa loved that, we'd done it before, but this time we both got too excited and… she died."

It had been said. There was no way to reel the words back in. They hung there in the room, surprisingly inornate after all that had been done to keep them from being said.

Clint was trying not to cry, and failing. His mother cried beside him, her shoulders slumped hopelessly. His father, still on his feet, was white faced, and the lines at the corners of his mouth seemed very deep.

"And I got scared and left her body and called my dad." Clint's voice was soft and flat and the emptiness in it was uncomfortable to hear. "My dad," he said, "the Great White Fixer. He fixed it good, didn't he."

"Clint, you're my son," Don said. "I was doing what I had to do."

"You been fixing it all my life," Clint said in his effectless voice. "Fix the pickininny. Well, you fixed it good this time, Bwana."

There was a rehearsed quality to Clint's speech as if it were a part he'd learned, the fragment of a long argument with his father that had unspooled silently in his head since he was small.

Farantino said, "You simply have to stop talking, both of you. You simply have to be quiet." He looked at Brooks, who was listening and watching. "This is informal," Farantino said. "This is off the record. You can't use this."

Brooks smiled at him politely.

"Goddamn you," Don said to his son. The tension trembled in his voice.

"He already has," Clint said and the words seemed clogged as he started to cry hard and turned toward his mother and pressed his face against her chest and sobbed.

Dina put her arms around him and closed her eyes. She cried with him, the tears squeezing out under the closed eyelids. I glanced back at Quirk. He was expressionless. I looked at Brooks. His face was as empty as Quirk's. I wondered what mine looked like. I felt like a child molester.

"You hired Rugar to kill Spenser, didn't you?" Brooks said quietly to Don Stapleton.

Farantino said, "Don!"

Don said, "Yes," in a voice so soft it was almost inaudible.

"And Miller," Brooks said, "to cover your tracks."

"Yes."

I was looking at Clint when his father confessed. The dead look left his eyes. For a moment he looked triumphant.

"I think we need a stenographer," Brooks said and picked up the phone.

WHEN THEY LET Ellis out, Hawk picked him up and brought him to my office. I had just finished endorsing the check from Cone, Oakes, and was slipping it into the deposit envelope when they came in.

"What are you going to do now?" I said to Ellis.

He was as tight and watchful and arrogant as he had been before, but now that he was out he was more talkative.

"You been in the place four years, what you do?"

"Whatever it was would involve a woman," I said.

"You got that right," he said.

"Try to make it voluntary," I said.

"You got no call talking to me that way," Alves said. "ah'm an innocent man."

"You didn't do Melissa Henderson," I said. "That's not the same as being innocent."

"You get me in here to talk shit?" Alves said.

"You need some money?" I said.

"'Course I need money," he said. "You think being inside a high-paying fucking job?"

I took two hundred dollars out of my wallet and gave it to him. It left me with seven, until I deposited the check, but the bank was close by. Ellis took the money and counted it and folded it over and slipped it into the pocket of his pale blue sweat pants.

"Ah' in supposed to say thank you?"

"We know you an asshole, Ellis," Hawk said. "You don't have to keep proving it every time you open your mouth."

"I just figure Whitey owe me something, and he making a down payment," Alves said.

Hawk looked at me and grinned. "Way to go, Whitey."

I nodded modestly.

"You got a job anywhere?" I said.

"No reason for you to be asking me about no job," Alves said. "It got nothing to do with you."

"Know a guy runs a trucking service out of Mattapan," I said.

"Don't need no help from you," Alves said.

"You did yesterday," Hawk said.

"I'm supposed to be grateful?" Alves said. "I'm in for four years on something I didn't do, that some honky rich kid done, and they let me out and ah'm supposed to say thank you?"

"Actually it was a nigger rich kid," Hawk said. "And they didn't let you out, Spenser got you out."

"And he got paid for it too, didn't he? Who gonna pay me for my four years?"

"Actually," I said, "two hundred is probably about what four years of your time is worth. You want that trucker job give me a call."

"Don't you be sitting 'round waiting," Alves said.

He turned toward the door and hesitated fractionally while he looked at Hawk, saw no objection, and walked out of my office.

"Glad he didn't get all sicky sweet with gratitude," Hawk said.

"Yeah," I said. "It's always so embarrassing."

"He be back inside in six months," Hawk said.

"I hope so," I said.

We were quiet for a moment…

"I probably wouldn't have made it back without you," I said to Hawk.

"Probably not," Hawk said.

I picked up the deposit envelope and looked at it.

"What do you think he'll do with the two hundred?" I said.

"Depends," Hawk said. "If he don't have a gun, he'll buy one. If he does, he'll spend it on a bottle of booze and a woman."

"Nice to know he's got priorities," I said.

"Good to know what they are, too," Hawk said.

I nodded and looked at the deposit envelope again. It was a lot of money.

"I might have made it back alone," I said.

Hawk smiled his charming heartless smile.

"Maybe," he said.