Chance (3 page)

Authors: Robert B. Parker

BOOK: Chance

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CHAPTER 4

Lennie Seltzer was in his usual booth at the Tennessee Tavern on Mass Avenue. He was talking on a portable phone and sipping beer. A laptop computer sat on the table in front of him, the lid up, the screen blank. On the seat across from him in the booth a briefcase stood open. As I sat down Lennie nodded at me and made a small gesture with his free hand at the bartender. I waited while Lennie listened to the phone. He didn't say anything. The bartender brought over a shot of Irish whisky and a draft beer.

Lennie always bought me a shot of Irish whisky and a beer when he saw me. I always drank the beer and left the whisky, but it didn't discourage Lennie at all. Lennie kept listening to the phone.

As he listened he turned on the computer. I drank some beer.

Finally Lennie said, "Copacetic," and hung up. He typed on the computer for a moment, looked at what he'd written, nodded to himself, hit a couple more keys on the computer, turned it off, and shut the lid. Then he picked up his beer bottle, poured a little into his glass, and drank some. He took a handkerchief from his breast pocket, patted his lips, refolded the handkerchief, and put it back.

"Question?" he said.

"How come you always buy me a shot of Irish whisky and a draught beer, even though you drink bottle beer, and I never drink the whisky?"

"Cause you're Irish, aren't you?"

"Oh, yeah."

"What else you want?" Lennie said. He had on a brown suit with a tan chalk stripe, a lavender shirt, with a white collar and a wide chocolate-colored silk tie tied in a big Windsor knot. His black hair was parted in the middle and slicked back evenly on both sides of the part.

"Know a guy named Anthony Meeker?"

"Un huh."

"He a gambler?"

"Gambler implies that sometimes you win. I win more than I lose, for instance. It's how I make my living. Anthony don't gamble. Anthony loses."

"Stupid?"

"Yeah, but that ain't it. Stupid you lose more than you win; but even stupid, you win sometimes. Anthony needs it too much."

"The money?"

"Probably not the money. Probably the rush. I don't know. For me it's better than regular work. But it don't make me crazy. For Anthony? I seen him once keep betting in five-card stud when he was beat on the table. You know? Guy had three eights showing with four cards out. Anthony had nothing. Best he could do with a fifth card was a pair. But he kept kicking into the pot."

Lennie drank some beer, poured out the rest of the bottle, and stared at the foam as it settled.

"Compulsive," I said.

"Sure," Lennie said.

"He been losing a lot lately?"

"Don't know. He married Julius Ventura's daughter I wouldn't let him bet with me anymore."

"Julius say anything?"

"No, but I been doing fine these years without pissing Julius Ventura off. I didn't see no reason to start."

"So you don't know firsthand, you hear anything?"

"People don't talk about Julius Ventura's son-in-law, Spenser.

He's in hock to them they stay low about it, you know."

The bartender brought Lennie a new bottle of Budweiser.

"How many beers you drink a day?" I said.

"Maybe sixteen," Lennie said.

"Why you asking about Anthony."

"He's missing."

Lennie nodded.

"Julius hired me to find him," I said.

"You're shitting me."

"Nope."

I drank some beer.

"He fool around with women?" I said.

"Julius Ventura hired you to find his son-in-law?"

"Me and Hawk," I said.

"What kind of beer is this?"

Lenny shrugged and called to the bartender over his shoulder.

"Jackie, what kinda draught beer you serving us?"

"New Amsterdam Black and Tan," Jackie said.

"New Amsterdam Black and Tan," Lennie said.

"Thanks," I said.

"His answer was much too hard for me."

"Why the fuck is Julius hiring you and Hawk, for cris sake "Julius's a first-class guy," I said.

"You know he ain't," Lennie said. He lowered his voice when he said it.

"What's going on?"

I shrugged.

"Anthony fool around with women?" I said.

"I don't know," Lennie said.

"Can you find out?"

"No."

"I like a man knows his limitations," I said.

"I know gambling," Lennie said.

"I don't know shit about fooling around."

"Your wife will be pleased to hear that."

"She's the reason I don't know."

I finished my New Amsterdam Black & Tan. I wanted another one, but I was used to that. I always wanted another one. Lennie picked up his portable phone and dialed a number.

"It's Lennie," he said into the phone.

"Gimme what you got."

I got up from the booth, shot Lennie once by dropping my thumb on my forefinger, and left the bar, and headed down Newbury Street.

CHAPTER 5

It was a grand Wednesday afternoon on Newbury Street. The sky was blue, the temperature was in the low seventies, and people trying to look like Eurotrash were sitting outside having various kinds of fancy coffee and looking at each other. A college-aged woman in tight jeans, high boots, and a red St. Lawrence Hockey jacket walked by with a black Lab on a leash. The Lab wore a red bandana around his neck. Most black Labs you saw in the Back Bay had red bandanas around their neck, but not every one was color-coordinated with its owner. I walked down from Mass Ave. toward my office, past boutiques, designer shops, handmade jewelry stores, sidewalk cafes, tiny chic restaurants, pet stores that sold iguanas, places that sold frozen yogurt, Hermes scarfs, hand hammered silver, decorative furniture, muffins, scones, wine, cheese, pate. Behind me across the street in front of a sign that advertised boysenberry sorbet was a big guy in a watch cap who had as much business on Newbury Street as I did. I had seen him outside my office earlier this morning, and he had been behind me when I went to talk with Lennie. Now he was looking in the window of the ice cream store, his hands deep in his jacket pockets while he studied the options to boysenberry sorbet, paying no attention to me. And being blatant about it.

I walked on to Dartmouth Street and turned right toward Copley Square. Across from the public library, I turned right onto Boylston Street and went past H. H. Richardson's other church back toward Mass Ave. By the time I reached Exeter Street, the guy in the Patriots football jacket was turning up Boylston. I stopped outside Morion's Steak House and leaned on the doorway. He walked on past me and crossed Exeter Street and leaned idly against the streetlight post, musing on the new addition to the library. Probably agreed with me that the new addition was ugly. I walked across Exeter Street, and stood beside him on the corner, looking at the new part of the library.

"Looks like corporate headquarters for an oil refinery," I said.

"Don't you think?"

"You talking to me?" he said.

"Doesn't it just leave a sour taste in your mouth when an architectural treasure is esthetically debased?" I said.

"Sure, pal. I'll be talking to you."

"That why you're following me around?" I said. "

"Cause you want to talk to me?"

"Following you? What the fuck are you talking about?"

He started to walk away. I walked along beside him. At Fair field, he turned right and I turned right with him. He stopped. I stopped.

"Buzz off," he said.

I smiled at him. He walked again, across Newbury down to Commonwealth. I walked with him. He stopped.

"Keep it up, pal," he said, "and I'm going to knock you on your ass."

"Probably not," I said.

"I warned you," he said.

We crossed the inbound side of Commonwealth and turned right on the mall toward The Public Gardens. He was stepping out smartly.

"Don't you think this is a great stretch of city?" I said.

He kept walking.

"I don't know if I've seen another stretch of urban space like it," I said.

"The brick and brownstone townhouses, the wide pedestrian mall in the center, all the statues, the trees, the flowering shrubs. You know any other places like it?"

Apparently he didn't.

"And you can see the full length of it, from Charles Street to Kenmore Square, because it's dead flat, you know?"

Apparently he knew.

At Clarendon Street he stopped under the arching trees, near a bench. I stopped too. A gray-haired woman in a black and white checked pant suit passed us walking a honey-colored spaniel on a red leash.

When she had passed the big guy said, "You don't know who you're fucking with, pal. Now you either get lost or I knock you on your ass."

"Who am I fucking with?" I said.

The big guy led with his right, which is effective only with amateurs. I pulled my head out of the way and smiled. He followed up with a meandering left hook which I avoided also.

"You loop your punches," I said.

He lunged at me and I stepped sideways and played him past me with my hands.

"You're going to hurt yourself," I said.

He stood staring at me, breathing hard. Then he lowered his head and charged at me. I slipped the charge again and drove my right fist into his left kidney as he went by. He grunted and fell face forward. I stepped away from him.

"See," I said.

"Short punches. The one I hit you with didn't travel a foot, but I turned into it when I threw it and got a lot behind it."

He got to his hands and knees, and then to his feet. He stood crookedly, as if his left kidney were hurting, which it surely was, and stared at me.

"We going to walk some more?" I said.

He unzipped his jacket with his right hand and reached inside.

By the time he got his hand on his gun, mine was out and pointing at him.

"Silly to walk around with your gun zipped up inside," I said.

"I know you didn't expect you'd need it, but once I got annoying, you should have at least un zippered just in case."

He didn't know what to do. He stood staring at my gun, holding his gun half out from under his coat.

"Did the folks who told you to follow me also tell you it would be okay to shoot me in the middle of Comm Ave. at ten-thirty in the morning?"

He let the gun slide back into its place and took his hand away from his coat.

"No."

"Good," I said.

"Why don't you zip the coat up good, and I'll just sort of keep my piece handy here in my pocket."

"Why don't you kiss my ass," he said. And turned and started walking toward The Public Gardens again. I walked with him. My gun was the short-barreled Smith & Wesson.38 and I could easily hold it inside the pocket of my green windbreaker. We reached Arlington Street in silence and crossed and went into The Public Gardens which was still bright with flowers in the early fall. Near the big statue of George Washington on horseback he stopped again.

"You going to follow me home?" he said.

"Sure," I said.

"You're making me look bad, you know? You're gonna get me in trouble, following me like this." – "Un huh."

Ahead of us the swan boats were still in the water, full of people, trailed by a convoy of hungry ducks to whom the tourists gave peanuts.

"Whyn't you gimme a fucking break, pal?"

"Naw."

He stood some more. He looked at Washington above him. He looked back at the Swan Boat Lagoon, and the boats full of people being slowly pedaled about by college kids with quads of steel. He looked back at me.

"Okay," he said.

"I'm fucked. What do you want?"

"I want to know why you are following me."

"Guy asked me to."

"Who?"

"You gotta promise me, you don't say I told you, you know. It don't make me look real good."

"Don't feel bad," I said.

"You just weren't ready for what you got. You're used to collecting overdue from some guy fixes timing chains for a living. Doesn't matter you loop your punches, you still hit him. You don't need to have your gun where you can get at it quick."

"You gotta promise," he said.

"Sure."

"They find out I let you roust me, it won't do me no good."

I waited. Behind him one of the swan boats drifted under the little bridge. The ducks glided behind it.

"Marty told me to see who you talked to," the Big Guy said.

"Marty who?"

"Marty Anaheim," he said. There was surprise in his voice that there could be another Marty.

"Works for Gino Fish," I said.

Again the guy looked startled.

"He don't work for him, man. Marty's his number-one guy," he said.

"Awesome," I said.

"You know why he wanted me followed?"

"Naw. I'm just a fucking laborer, you know. Grunt work. They don't tell me shit."

"When did Marty tell you to start following me?"

"Sent me out this morning."

"How long were you supposed to stay on me?"

"Till he told me to stop."

"Okay, here's what you do. Tell him I made you, and you decided the wisest course was to bail out on the tail. You got that?"

"The wisest course…?"

"Ad lib if you want to."

"Yeah, but Marty'll put somebody else on you."

"Tell him not to," I said.

"I can't tell Marly Anaheim what to do."

"Anyone else follows me around I'm going to speak to Marty direct."

"Jesus, you can't do that, he'll know I told you."

I shrugged and turned and walked away from him. I crossed Arlington Street at the light. Down at the corner of Newbury Street people were going into the Ritz, probably having lunch in the cafe.

The bar would be open. I wondered if they served New Amsterdam Black & Tan these days. I looked back at the Big Guy. He was still standing there beside Washington. Next to the monumental sculpture he looked small.

CHAPTER 6

I was sitting at my desk with my feet up, reading the Globe, when Hawk came into my office with a bag of donuts and two large cups of coffee. My windows were open behind me and the sound and scent of morning traffic drifted up, along with the smell of bacon cooking somewhere, and beneath it, the smell from the river five blocks away. Even though it was September, it still smelled like summer.

"Got you some delicious decaffeinated," Hawk said.

"You drinking real coffee?" I said.

"Guatemalan dark roast," he said.

"Keep drinking that stuff you'll be bouncing around like one of the Nicholas Brothers."

Hawk set out the coffee for each of us and put the bag of donuts between us. He hooked one of my client chairs over near the desk where he could reach the donuts and sat down. He was wearing a dark blue suede jacket made to look like denim, over a white silk tee-shirt. His jeans were pressed and his black cowboy boots were hand tooled from the skin of some reptile I didn't recognize.

"Just up tempo my natural rhythm," he said.

"What we going to do about Marty Anaheim?"

"Sort of a problem," I said.

"I told the slugger I wouldn't spill the beans."

"That you made him, and he told you who sent him?"

"Yeah."

Hawk stared at me for a time. Then he shook his head.

"… obedient, cheerful, thrifty," he muttered, more to himself than to me, "brave, clean, and reverent."

"I'm not too obedient," I said.

"You ain't too fucking reverent either," Hawk said, "but you still a goddamned Eagle Scout."

"I told him I wouldn't," I said.

"You know what Marty's like."

"I remember once Marty beat a guy to death with a pool cue," Hawk said.

"They playing pool, and the guy kidding Marty. Saying how Patriots folded against the Bears in the eighty-five Super Bowl. Marty likes those Patriots. So he starts hitting the guy with the butt end of the pool cue."

"Guy overestimated Marty's sense of humor," I said.

Hawk nodded.

"Your slugger probably be in some trouble, you tell Marty he screwed up the tail job."

"He's a dope," I said.

"He couldn't tail a bull through a china shop. No need to get him killed."

"Everybody know Marty's a psycho. You work with him, you gotta be prepared to deal with that."

"I sort of promised."

"Okay," Hawk said.

"I know what you like. How we going to do it?"

I ate a plain donut and drank some decaf. Hawk sipped his Guatemalan dark roast.

"Well, the best guess is that Marty, or more likely Gino Fish, knew that Julius hired me. And they wanted to see who I talked to and what I found."

"Julius hired us," Hawk said.

"You're so sensitive," I said.

"Nobody follow me."

"For cris sake I said.

"You haven't been doing anything."

"I waiting for my kind of work," Hawk said.

"I don't do gumshoe work, rattle fucking doorknobs."

Hawk stood and went to my window and looked down at the corner of Berkeley and Boylston. It was a fine bright morning.

There was a lot of foot traffic at ten of nine, people going to work at the big insurance companies that littered the Back Bay. The young women were still in their summer dresses. The young men wore no topcoats.

"Cross Boylston," Hawk said.

"Corner near Louis'."

I stood beside him and looked.

"Sort of tall with square shoulders," Hawk said.

"Fishing hat, tan raincoat, looking uninterested."

"I see him," I said.

"Newspaper under his arm."

"So he can lean on a lamppost and read it," Hawk said.

"He's doing everything but," I said.

"Your guy?"

"No," I said.

"They wouldn't send the same tail two days in a row."