Crimson Joy (10 page)

"I saw your name in the paper." She said, "Um hmm."

Maybe someday…

"Your boyfriend's working on the Red Rose case."

"Um hmm."

Maybe someday… The fear slivered through him.

"Why would a guy do something like that?"

She merely looked interested. She didn't speak.

The sensation he felt as he talked with her was reminiscent of the way it felt to wiggle a loose tooth when he was small. She suspected him.

It was like undressing in front of her. Look at this.

"I'm sort of fascinated with this guy, this Red Rose guy."

"Um hmm?" she said. There was encouragement in her voice, no disapproval.

"You don't mind me talking about it?"

"No," she said. "See what it leads to."

"My mother would have been .. He did an imitation of his mother's uncomfortable disapproving frown. "She hated anything dirty."

"What kinds of things did she consider dirty?"

"You know, sex, anything about sex."

She nodded. She understood.

"And your father?" she said.

"He loved her so much. He did everything she wanted . except stop drinking."

"So she was the power in the family," she said.

"No, yes, well, it was funny. We all pretended she was, and we said how smart she was, and how she could always fix things and find things and figure out things. But in fact she was weak and stupid and scared of everything, and it was like a game my father and me played. Except we never said."

"Did you know?" She sat very quietly, her big eyes on his face. She was very interested and very kind.

"Not then, except I did. I guess I did and I didn't, does that make sense?"

She nodded her head. "Sure," she said.

"I mean, she'd be telling you absolutely how things were and ought to be and you believed her and at the same time you knew she didn't know anything about it. I mean, she couldn't tell you where Brazil was. And she couldn't read very well, and she lived at home until she married my father and lived with him the rest of the time, until he died."

She was sitting a little forward in her chair now, her knees together, her hands in her lap.

"And she was never really interested in either one of us. She said she was, but she never really paid any attention to what you said, or had any sense of what you cared about. I don't think she understood much, and when anyone talked about things it made her scared."

The room was quiet. She sat, wearing a black suit. He thought of her putting on the suit in the morning. He could feel tears at the edge of crying. He was breathing only a little air at a time, small breaths, rapidly.

"But she loved me," he said.

"And if you didn't play the game, she wouldn't," she said.

He couldn't speak. He nodded. They sat quietly together while he struggled with his breathing and his tears.

"Weakness," she said, "can be powerful, can't it?"

He nodded again.

"And frightening."

"Yes," he said. His voice sounded strangled. He wanted to tell her the other thing. The thing he never told. He opened his mouth. He could feel the thing close on him. He couldn't. He never had. He couldn't.

In seven days Quirk and Belson and I had gotten up a list of seven suspects. Everyone else was too female, or too old, the wrong color, or the wrong size.

We sat in my office on a lovely bright Saturday morning and drank coffee while Quirk listed the seven possibilities on the blackboard.

"Okay," Quirk said, "here's what we got." His excommunication hadn't made a dent in his lieutenant-ness. "In order we spotted them: The first guy Belson tailed is named Gordon Felton, lives in Charlestown, near Thompson Square. Works as a security guard for an outfit in Boston called Bullet Security Systems, Inc."

Belson grinned. "Probably got crossed Uzis on their calling cards," he said.

"Makes him sort of a cop," I said.

"Sort of," Quirk said. "Your man is Phil Iselin, instructor in Eastern studies at Harvard, lives where you found him on Putnam Street. Third one is Mark Charles, intern at Boston City Hospital, lives in the South End, West Newton Street. Number four is Lewis Larson, he's a cop, works out of station fifteen in a cruiser. Number five is a guy runs a gourmet food store in Wellesley, Edward Eisner lives next to the store.

Number six is Ted Sparks, teaches math at MIT, lives in Boston on Lime Street. Number seven is a French national named Emil Gagne, who's a graduate student in politics at the Kennedy School and lives in a condo on Mount Auburn Street."

Quirk paused and looked at us. We looked back. So far Quirk was just getting his ducks in a row. There wasn't much cause for excitement. "So one of these seven is probably the guy you chased," Quirk said.

"Been a hell of a lot easier if you'd caught him," Belson said, "or at least got a good look."

"Maybe we should line them up and have them race me," I said. "The ones I beat aren't it."

"Nothing from Susan?" Quirk said.

"Nope. Hawk's been there all day every day with the upstairs door open.

There's been no trouble and Susan isn't reporting anything special."

"Hawk enjoying himself?" Belson said.

"Like the birdman of Alcatraz," I said.

Belson smiled. "It's the closest Hawk's ever come to jail," he said.

"Keeps him off the street," Quirk said.

"Now that I've narrowed it for you to seven, do you suppose you could find out which one is Red Rose?" I said. "While you're on sabbatical?"

"Are we not trained investigators?" Quirk said.

"Without getting us sued by the Boston Psychoanalytic Institute?" I said.

"Maybe we get fired," Quirk said. "We'll open our own firm. Quirk and Belson, Private Inquiries."

"Always a lieutenant," Belson said.

"Alphabetically it should be Belson and Quirk."

"We find anything, we'll be in touch," Quirk said to me.

"Check the security guard and the cop first," I said.

"Yeah," Quirk said.

"Everyone else is what you'd expect to find, even the cop, because of you steering them," I said. "But how many security guards are getting psychotherapy from a Cambridge shrink, do you think?"

"There must be some," Belson said.

"Yeah, but everyone else but the cop fits the pattern, and we can sort of explain the cop job stress, Susan's reputation, word of mouth among the fuzz. The security guard is the atypical one. You got to start someplace." Quirk nodded. "I'll let you know what we find," he said.

I had the answering machine on in my office while I baby sat Susan and waited for Quirk and Belson to come up with something. In one of the oddest pairings since Mutt and Jeff, Hawk was helping them, and I was alone with my books and my radio and my Colt Python up in Susan's living room with the door ajar.

I felt isolated and bored and useless and frustrated. My desire for the guy who'd left the rose and outrun me was tangible, like lust, and it tingled along my neck and shoulder muscles all the time I sat and waited and listened.

To pass the time I beeped my answering machine and found a message from a woman named Sara, who said she was a producer for the Jimmy Winston show and would I come on and talk about Red Rose.

I called her.

"Oh," she said, very upbeat, "thanks for calling back.

We know that not everyone is satisfied that this man Washburn is really the Red Rose killer." I said, "Un huh."

She said, "And we can't get anyone to talk about it. We had the homicide commander on by phone-in last week, but since then no one in the police department or the district attorney's office will even return our calls."

"Happens to me all the time," I said. "Makes you doubt yourself sometimes."

"Ah, yes. Anyway, we know you've been involved in this case, and we wondered if perhaps you could come on some night and talk with Jimmy, and perhaps take some calls."

"Sure," I said. The department couldn't force me to take a vacation.

"Would it be possible," she said, "to come tonight?"

"Sure," I said, "as long as I can bring a date."

"Certainly," Sara said.

Which is how it came about that Susan and I were going up in an elevator in a building near Government Center at quarter to ten at night.

"Why are you doing this, again?" Susan said.

"Sort of getting even for Quirk," I said. "He has to do what he's told.

I don't."

"Yes," Susan said. "I've noticed that about you."

The elevator reached the seventh floor and we reported to the female guard at the reception desk. I noticed she was not from Bullet Security. The guard made a call, and in a minute a chunky blond woman wearing maroon harlequin eyeglasses came down the hall.

"Hi," she said. "I'm Sara. Jimmy's waiting for you."

We went down the hall and into the studio where Jimmy Winston, wearing earphones, was listening to a caller. He nodded as we came in and waved me to a seat across the U-shaped console from him. There was a swivel chair and earphones hanging from a nail. On a wall opposite Jimmy were the station's call letters in large print and the call-in phone number in equally large print. Below the numbers was a glass window and through that the control room. I sat in the swivel chair, Susan sat in another, pushed back against the wall by the door. I noticed that Jimmy checked her legs when she sat.

"Well, you're entitled to your opinion," Jimmy said into the mike, "but frankly I'm sick of listening to it."

He made a cut motion at the control room.

"This is WKDK, the Thought of Boston, and I'm Jimmy Winston, back after this five-minute newsbreak."

He pointed again at the control room. And leaned back in his chair and swiveled toward me. Through the glass I saw a cadaverous-looking newscaster settle in beside the engineer and begin to read the news.

"They're out there howling tonight," Jimmy Winston said. He was a fat guy with a crew cut who wore dark glasses indoors. Black-rimmed Raybans. He had a long collared white shirt open halfway down his chest. His slacks were some kind of gray worsted, and he had his shoes off under the console.

"You're the detective," he said.

I nodded. "This is Susan Silverman," I said.

He nodded briefly at Susan.

"So whaddya know that you haven't been telling?" he said.

"I've got a recipe for cornmeal pancakes," I said, "that I've never made public."

Jimmy's smile was automatic and meaningless.

"Yeah, great. How about the serial killer? You figure the cops got the wrong guy?"

Sara came into the room and handed Jimmy a piece of typescript.

"We gotta change the promo, Jimmy. And there's a PSA after the promo where you just read the tag, okay?"

"Jesus Christ," Jimmy said. "Why not wait till I'm on the goddamned air to tell me. What genius changed the promo, you?"

"The programming…" Sara started.

Jimmy waved his hand.

"Never mind, for chrissake. I haven't got time. Beat it. I'll read this through and fix it on the air." Sara smiled painfully at us and scurried out. Jimmy shook his head and rolled his eyes at me.

"Dizzy little broad," he said, and turned his attention to the new promo copy. I looked at Susan. She smiled at me serenely. "This is going to be really exciting," Susan said.

The newscaster got through, and Jimmy turned the sound up on the studio speaker. A commercial for a car dealer came on.

"Okay, we got about thirty seconds," Jimmy said. "I'll set the scene by asking you a couple things, then we go to the calls. You'll need the earphones for the calls." He looked sort of like a toad, but his voice had the rich timbre that professional voices have. Full of authority.

Brook no insolence. Trust me. The air light went on and Jimmy said,

"This is WKDK, the Thought of Boston, and I'm Jimmy Winston. This hour we'll be talking with a Boston private eye who says there's police cover-up in the Red Rose killings and is here to back it up with fact.

How'd you first get on this case, Mr. Spenser?"

I was looking at Susan. "Police cover-up," she mouthed silently, and smiled at me as sweetly as a field of alfalfa.

"I was asked on by the man in charge of the investigation."

Jimmy looked at his notes. "That would be Homicide Lieutenant Martin Quirk," he said. Everything he said sounded like either an accusation or the announcement of World War Three.

"Yes."

"He's no longer on the case," Winston said. "Why are you? You think Washburn's innocent?"

"I don't think Washburn is the Red Rose killer," I said. "He looks good for it, and solves everybody's problems if he goes down for it. But I think the genuine article is still walking around loose."

"Even though the top criminal investigative officials in the Commonwealth are convinced otherwise?"

"Daunting," I said. "But yes."

Jimmy lit a cigarette. It was maybe his fifth since I'd been there.

"You want to solve this," Jimmy said.

"I want it solved."

"But wouldn't you rather it be solved by you?"

"So I can make the movie deal and have my picture in People?"

"I can't believe you hadn't thought of that," Jimmy said.

"Try," I said.

"You have evidence?" Jimmy said. "If you do, maybe you could tell us what it is, and maybe explain why neither the chief of police nor the Suffolk County District Attorney's office has it."

I gave him everything I had except the stuff about Susan and our gang of seven. Jimmy looked disgusted.

"You haven't got anything Lieutenant Quirk didn't have," he said. "Time for the phones." He looked at the small TV screen in front of him and saw six names displayed along with the towns from which they were calling.

"We've got Clara from Boston. Hi, Clara, you're on the Thought of Boston."

"Hi. Jimmy?"

"Go ahead, you're on the air."

"Jimmy, I love your show. I wanted to tell you that."

"Thank you. Do you have a question for our guest?" Jimmy said.

"Yeah. Mr. Spenser?"

"Yes, Clara?"

"You seen the bodies, right?"