Sudden Mischief (4 page)

Penny's address was a big rambling gray clapboard while-trim apartment complex on Pier 7. There was parking under, and the front door was a flight up. A big pretty woman answered the door. I asked if she were Penny Putnam, and she said that she was. She smiled. She was friendly. I could tell she liked me. I asked if I could ask a few questions about the sexual harassment suit she was involved in, and the valves of her attention closed like a stone.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I have no comment."

"Why not?" I said.

The door closed more firmly than the valves of her attention. So the trip shouldn't be a complete waste of time, I stood for a moment and looked across the harbor at the downtown waterfront. Nice view. Then I turned and went back to my car and drove away. I was still sure she liked me. Her rejection was circumstantial.

I went across the Charlestown Bridge and picked up the Central Artery near North Station. They had built a third tunnel under the Harbor and were in the process of dismantling the Central Artery and putting it underground. The result was that City Square had disappeared and there were convoluted detours from Charlestown to Mattapan. It was always exciting to see where you would end up.

Marcia Albright lived in Quincy, and Olivia Hanson lived in Malden. I figured I'd get the Southeast Expressway over with, so I headed for Quincy. Marcia's place was very much like Penny's-an apartment complex with a water view, only Marcia's was brick. I never did find out what Marcia looked like. I got as far as the intercom and was told that she had no comment and the line went dead. Only because I'm methodical, I went back up the expressway, over the Mystic River Bridge, and a short haul up Route 1 to another apartment complex. This one, in Malden, designed to look like, I guess, a Moorish castle. If you got in just the right place, there was a view of the Saugus River.

Olivia Hanson was much nicer than Penny or Marcia. She actually came out into the vestibule and spoke with me.

"Oh, no," she said. "I'm terribly sorry. But I really couldn't comment on the lawsuit."

"On advice of counsel?" I said.

"Whatever," she said and gave me a lovely smile. She was smallish and perky and had a lot of blonde hair. "Are you a lawyer?"

"No," I said. "I'm a detective."

"Really? Can I see a badge or something?"

I showed her my license.

"Wow," she said. "You're a private detective. Do you have a gun?"

"Yes," I said. "But it's kind of small."

She widened her eyes at me. "Is that like an off-color remark?" she said.

I opened my jacket and let her see the short-barreled Smith & Wesson.38 I was wearing.

"Oh it is small, isn't it?" she said.

I grinned.

"But sufficient," I said. "Did Brad Sterling make some off-color remarks?"

"Don't try and trick me," she said. "I told you I'm not supposed to talk about that with anyone."

"Who says?"

She smiled at me and shook her head. "No, no, no," she said.

We did about five more minutes of that in the vestibule until even my killer charm was beginning to wear Ihin. I looked at my watch. Maybe bribery.

"Care for some lunch?" I said.

She shook her head again. My killer charm was apparently threadbare.

"No, I don't think I better."

"My loss," I said, ever gallant.

"But maybe sometime, once the legal stuff is over," she said. "I'll take a rain check."

I wrote "lunch-rain check" on the back of one of my business cards and handed it to her. We shook hands and I left the vestibule and got in my car and went back to Boston.

"You remember the first time you ate out?" I said.

"Sure," she said. "And you?"

"Yeah, some diner outside Laramie, I think. One of my uncles took me. I had a ham and egg sandwich."

She smiled. "My father used to take us to dinner every Friday night at the dining room of the Hotel Edison in Lynn."

"Lynn?"

"Before the shoe factories moved out. The Edison was still quite fancy."

"What did you have?"

"Lobster pie." Susan smiled at the memory. "Lobster out of the shell, covered with bread crumbs soaked with melted butter, and baked. If someone served that to me now, I would probably feel faint."

"But then?" I said.

Susan was drinking Merlot with her chicken, daring to be different. She looked into her glass for a moment and sipped a small amount.

"I loved it. Who knew about good for you?" She smiled again. It was the smile which hinted of fun and something slightly evil. "And it drove my mother crazy."

"Lobster pie?"

"No, me. I know she wanted to get a sitter and leave me home."

"They ever do that?"

"No," Susan said. I could hear the echo of childhood triumph even now. "I went almost everywhere with him."

"Way to go," I said.

She laughed.

"Do I still sound that triumphant?" she said.

"Yes."

"One never entirely outgrows one's childhood," she said.

"You going to eat those mashed potatoes," I said.

"Just leave me this much."

She marked off a section with the tines of her fork.

"So your mother was jealous of you," I said.

"Yes, I'm sure she was. My father was her link to the world. She didn't drive. She rarely went anywhere, except with him. She was aaaalways home."

"And now she had to share him."

Susan smiled again.

"Unequally," she said.

My view of Lila was obliterated by a tall fat man who came through the open door of my office followed by a short thick man with a small head. The fat man was wearing a shiny leather jacket, necessarily unzipped, with a white shirt under. The collar points of his shirt were carefully folded out over the jacket collar. He was clean shaven and his black hair was slicked back. He had a freshly washed pink moist look to his face, like he'd just come from a steam bath. The short guy was very thick. His neck was wider than his head, and his lats were so swollen that his arms made an A line out from his body. He had on a white dress shirt buttoned to the neck.

"You Spenser?" the fat man said. His voice was raspy and high.

"Yes I am," I said.

The fat man closed the door behind him and the short thick guy leaned on it with his arms folded. Don't they all.

"We got a business arrangement to discuss with you," the fat man said.

I nodded toward one of my client chairs. The fat man ignored me. Probably wouldn't have fit in it anyway.

"You're working on a thing," the fat man said. "And we want you to stop."

"Which thing you have in mind?" I said.

"Thing with ah, Sterling, thing about the sexual harassing."

"You want me to stop looking into that?"

"Yeah."

"What's in it for me?"

"I been authorized to pay you for your time," the fat man said. He pronounced it autorized. "And also, like, a bonus."

"Sort of an outplacement package," I said.

"Whatever," the fat man said.

"How much you authorized to pay?" I said.

"A week's work at your standard rate, and a grand bonus."

"Who do you represent?" I said.

"I ain't authorized to tell you that."

"And what if I decline?"

"Huh?"

"What if I tell you to buzz off?"

"You get a bad beating."

I nodded thoughtfully.

"Buzz off," I said.

The fat guy looked startled. His buddy with the undersized head didn't look anything.

"You think we're fooling around?"

"I think you can't pull it off," I said.

"'The two of us against you?" the fat guy said.

"Doesn't seem fair," I said, "does it. Maybe if I kept one hand in my pocket."

"Fun-ny," the fat man said. "Is he a funny guy, Bullet?"

Bullet didn't comment on whether I was funny or not.

"Last chance," the fat man said. "Take the deal or the beating."

I stood up behind my desk. "Buzz off," I said.

"Bullet," the fat man said.

Bullet left the door and walked toward me. He seemed to be walking on the balls of his feet. He moved lightly for a guy as wide as he was. As he came around the desk after me, I moved to my left, keeping the desk between us. The fat man stood back a little. Probably didn't want my blood splattering all over his white shirt. Now Bullet was behind my desk and I was in front of it. The fat man took another half step back to stay out of the way. He was amused at the ring around that I was playing with Bullet. I did a sharp half turn with my upper body and hit the fat man with my elbow on his right cheek and turned back toward Bullet who came in a rush angling to cut me off before I got the desk between us again, but I didn't try to get the desk between us. I kicked him in the groin instead and turned back toward the fat man and hit him a left, right combination and the fat man went back against the wall and slid slowly down it to slump on the floor with his legs splayed out in front of him as I spun back again to Bullet. He was down, so I took my gun off my hip and went and sat on the edge of my desk. The fat guy was sitting against the wall beside the door staring at nothing, waiting for his head to clear. There was a red mouse under his right eye that would darken and enlarge over the next few days. Bullet lay silently on his side. I knew what he was doing. He was waiting for the waves of crampy pain to stop. But he showed no sign that he was in pain. He showed no sign of anything. He simply lay motionless on his side with his knees bent. I sat on the edge of my desk and held my gun without pointing it and waited and didn't say anything.

"Okay," the fat man said after a while. "Okay."

I nodded helpfully.

"You sucker punched me," he said.

His right eye was beginning to narrow as the mouse under it continued to expand.

"Yes," I said. "I did."

He nodded his head slowly. His eyes were still dull as he looked at me.

"Okay," he said. "So you get the beating another day."

"I like optimism," I said.

"Oh, you'll get it," the fat guy said. "Bullet and me maybe misjudged you a little. Nobody told us you'd be a hard case. But next time we'll know that, won't we, Bullet?"

Bullet had recovered enough to sit up with his back to me. He didn't say anything. The fat guy nodded as if Bullet had answered.

"Yeah. We'll come at it a little different," he said. "Next time."

"Might want to bring more people," I said. "Even the odds up a little."

"We can bring more people, we need to," the fat man said. "We got some people we could bring, huh, Bullet?"

Bullet got himself slowly onto his feet and walked flatfooted now, and much less lightly over to the fat man and put down a hand and pulled the fat man to his feet.

"You've bought yourself a lotta trouble, pal," the fat man said.

"All part of the service," I said.

"You sure you don't want to think about this," the fat guy said. "A week's pay plus a grand?"

"Buzz off," I said.

Again the fat man shrugged.

"Okay by me," he said. "Bullet 'n me would just as soon beat the crap out of you anyway. Which we will do at another time. Right, Bullet?"

Bullet stood silently holding the door. His eyes were very small and they were very close to his nose.

"See you around," the fat man said and walked out. Bullet followed him. Neither of them was moving very briskly. Their footsteps receded and paused. I heard the elevator. I heard the elevator doors open and shut. I got up and walked to the door and checked the corridor. They had, in fact, buzzed off.

I walked back to my desk and put the Smith & Wesson on my blotter and sat down with my feet up and thought about their offer.

Clients loved Henry. They figured if they paid attention, they could look like he did. And they were right, if they happened to have his genes. Henry had been a lightweight boxer with the scar tissue around his eyes to prove it. His weight was the same as it had been when he fought. He wore a white tee shirt and white satin warm-up pants, and he looked like a pint and a half of muscle stuffed into a pint shirt.

The new client was doing a bench press with no weight on the machine. He was wearing a leopardprint sweatband, black fingerless weight-lifting gloves, a black tanktop, black shorts, and high-top black basketball shoes with no socks. His legs were pale and skinny. His arms were pale and skinny. He had a tattoo on each shoulder.

"Excellent," Henry said. "Now, let's try it this time with the pin in."

"My wife doesn't want me to get overdeveloped," the guy said.

"Sure," Henry said. "We'll be real careful about that. How's this weight?"

The guy did a big exhale and pushed up one plate of the weight stack.

"Terrific," Henry said. "Ter-rif-ic. Now let's go for ten."

The client cranked out eight and stopped. "Dynamite," Henry said. "You'll be doing ten in no time."

The guy was breathing too hard to answer. When he sat up on the bench he showed a surprising belly for a skinny guy. Hawk stopped watching and did another set on the machine, his face expressionless, his movements almost serpentine as the muscles swelled and subsided with each repetition. Henry moved his client to the next room to do leg presses. He kept a perfectly straight face as he walked past Hawk and me. Hawk finished his second set and got up and got a drink of water and came back.

"Fat guy," he said thoughtfully, "and a fireplug named Bullet. Must be new in town, or new in the business."

I nodded. It was an unusual local thug that neither of us knew.

"Be coming back though," Hawk said. "Sluggers don't much like getting their ass kicked by the designated sluggee."

"I'd sort of like to know who sent them," I said.

"You guessing Ronan?"

"Rita says he's got the connections," I said. "And the temperament."

"Makes you wonder how good his wife's case is on the sexual harassment," Hawk said. "He trying to chase you off the case."

He settled onto the bench, set the pin at 250 pounds, and began doing chest presses.

"Yeah, but is he going to court with a case that can't stand investigation?" I said.

"Nobody will talk to you about it," Hawk said.

The weight bar moved smoothly up and down as he talked. His voice remained normal. His breathing was even.

"Well, it makes sense that the women won't talk," I said. "Any lawyer would tell them to shut up and save it for court."

"Hell," Hawk said. "Your own client ain't telling you doo dah."

"Doo dah?"

"Doo dah." Hawk continued to push the bar up and let it down.

"How many reps so far?"

"Twenty-eight," Hawk said. "Why you suppose your client ain't telling you doo dah?"

"While I haven't phrased it to myself so gracefully," I said, "I have been considering that question."

"And what have you come up with?"

"Doo dah," I said.

"So maybe he don't want you in it," Hawk said.

"Wasn't our previous theory that he did, which was why he brought his problem to Susan?"

"Uh huh."

Hawk drove the bar up a final time and let it down.

"So how many reps is that," I said.

"Forty-two," he said.

"You were either aiming for forty and decided to do a couple extra," I said, "or you were hoping for forty-five and couldn't make it."

Hawk sat up from the bench and smiled. There was a glisten of sweat on his smooth head.

"Maybe you wrong in your previous theory," he said.

"Actually, I believe it was your theory."

"A foolish consistency," Hawk said, "be the hobgoblin of little minds."

"Of course it be," I said. "So if he doesn't want me in it, why doesn't he say so?"

"Don't know," Hawk said.

"Well, why did he go to Susan with it?"

"Maybe he just need to whine a little," Hawk said, "and Susan, being Susan, take the whining seriously, and take action and now Sterling don't know how to get out of it without looking foolish."

"So maybe he sent the sluggers," I said.

"You the detective," Hawk said.

"How can you tell?" I said.

"Mostly guesswork," Hawk said. "Why don't we take some steam while we here and got Henry to protect us, then I'll trail along with you, case the sluggers show up with, ah, tactical support."

"I'll just tell them you did forty-two reps with two hundred fifty and they'll surrender without a struggle."

"Or I could shoot them," Hawk said.

"That would be effective," I said.

On our way to the steam room we passed Henry who was working with a new client.

"No ma'am," he was saying. "Most women don't bulk up from exercise."