Crimson Joy (3 page)

"Lieutenant, do you have any suspects now?"

"No."

"Is it true, Lieutenant, that the killer may be a policeman?"

"I have an unsigned letter which makes that claim."

"Is it authentic, Lieutenant?"

"I don't know."

"I am told that there was spermatozoa at the scene of each crime, Lieutenant. Is that true? And if so, how did it get there?"

Quirk looked without expression at the questioner for a moment before he answered.

"It is true. We are assuming the killer ejaculated."

"Are you treating this as a racially motivated sequence of crimes, Lieutenant?"

"We don't know the killer. We don't know why he kills. We thought it prudent to hold judgment until we did."

"But, Lieutenant, isn't it odd that all the victims are black?"

"Yes."

"And yet, Lieutenant, you are not prepared to say it's racial?"

"No."

"Isn't that denying the obvious, Lieutenant?"

"No."

"Is it true, Lieutenant, that a Boston private detective is assisting you on this case?"

"Yes."

"Is he being paid with city funds, Lieutenant?"

"No."

"Who is paying him, sir?"

"No one. It's a charitable action on his part."

"Is it because you don't trust your colleagues, Lieutenant?"

"No."

"What is his name, Lieutenant?"

"Spenser. He's back there by the door," Quirk said. "I'm sure he'll enjoy talking with you."

Then Quirk stepped down from the lectern and walked through the reporters and past me, out the door. As he passed me, he said, "Enjoy."

On Wednesday morning there was a profile of me in the Globe. PRIVATE

EYE ON RED ROSE CASE, it said. It mentioned that I'd been involved in a number of cases, that I'd had a longtime relationship with Susan Silverman, a Cambridge psychologist, and that I had once been a boxer.

It neglected to mention that when I smiled, my cheeks dimpled sweetly.

The press never gets it right.

Wayne Cosgrove called to see if there was anything I knew that I hadn't told the beat man at the news conference. I said no. He said would I lie to him. I said yes. And we hung up. I turned to the sports page and read "Tank Macnamara," and was checking the "Transactions" listing when Quirk came in. He was carrying an easel and a chalkboard, and a large paper bag. I said, "Are you going to brief me?"

Quirk set up the easel, put the chalkboard on it, and took a new package of yellow chalk out of his coat pocket and set it on my desk. He took two napkins out of the bag and put them on my desk. Then he got two paper cups of coffee out, and two corn muffins. He put one muffin carefully on each napkin, and sat down in my client chair.

"How's Susan?" he said.

"The usual," I said, "glamorous, smart, hot for me."

Quirk bent the plastic lid of his coffee cup carefully up on one side and twisted out a neat triangle, leaving the rest of the lid in place.

"Hard to understand how someone could be all three," Quirk said.

"You're just sulky because they ran my picture in the Globe today and not yours," I said.

Quirk drank a little coffee. "Yeah," he said. "Let's go over this Red Rose thing."

"Sure," I said.

Quirk stood and walked to the chalkboard.

"If you don't mind, I'm going to want to leave this set up here," he said.

"Fine," I said.

Quirk began to write on the board.

Killer 1. Probably white

2. Blood type C 3. No vasectomy

4. Secretes PGM I 5. Ejaculates at scene

6. Victims black a. Hooker b. Waitress c. Exotic dancer d. Singer

"What else do we know about him?" Quirk said.

"Victims are black," I said. "Scene of crime is white, or mostly white."

"See 1 above," Quirk said.

"What about the victims?" I said. "Pattern?"

"Like from hooker to singer?" Quirk said.

"Might be a kind of progression up the social scale," I said.

"If he thinks like that," Quirk said.

"You got a profile of him from the forensic shrinks yet?" I said.

Quirk shrugged, "Yeah, but what? Rage against women, or rage against blacks, or both. Powerfully repressed sexuality, manifested through the gun; the semen traces may be masturbation, or they may be involuntary ejaculation. Like when he shoots her."

"Jesus Christ," I said.

"Um," Quirk said. "You talk with Susan about this?"

"Yeah."

"What's she got to say?"

"Same sort of stuff. One thing she said is to remember that psychopaths have their own symbolic system and it may not be like other people's."

"So it doesn't necessarily mean that because he kills black women he hates black women," Quirk said.

"Yes, he only hates, or fears, or something, what the black women symbolize."

"She have any thoughts about what it would be?" Quirk said.

"I asked her that," I said. "She gave me the shrink look and said, "Zee muzzer, vee often look to zee muzzer."

"

"Her too," Quirk said.

"So we should be looking for a cop had trouble with his mom," Quirk said.

"Maybe," I said.

"On a force that's eighty percent Irish," Quirk said.

"Okay," I said, "let's take another approach. Is he really a cop?"

"Why say so if he's not?" Quirk said.

"Why say so if he is?"

Quirk shook his head. "So we're right back to knowing nothing."

"He did know your home address," I said.

"Like I said, it's in the book."

"But not the Boston book," I said. "He had to know to look in the South Suburban listing."

"It's an easy guess," Quirk said. "An Irish name, not living in the city, you look for him on the Irish Riviera."

"Sure, but it means he went to some trouble," I said. "If he wasn't a cop, and didn't know you, it means he had to find out who the officer in charge was, and then track you down through phone books or whatever, all to tell you he's a cop."

"Give him a feeling of power," Quirk said. "Lotta psychos get to feel powerful by learning stuff about the cop that's chasing them."

Quirk stood quietly by the board for a moment. Then he put the chalk down and walked to my desk and sat in my client's chair. My office window was open an inch and the sound of traffic filtered up from Berkeley and Boylston streets. I looked over my shoulder out the window and glanced automatically at the window where Linda Thomas used to be.

There was a set of pastel Levolor blinds in there now.

The rain still slid down the window as it had all week. There were flood warnings in western Mass. Clouds hung around the top of the Hancock building, and places where the storm drains had clogged, the water ran over the curbing onto the sidewalk.

I looked back at Quirk. He was staring at his empty coffee cup as he turned it slowly in his thick fingers.

"How about ballistics?" I said.

"Bullets are from the same gun, but we don't know what gun," Quirk said.

"How about taking a sample from every cop?" I said.

"Commissioner says no. Says the union would raise hell. Says it unjustly casts suspicion on every officer, and would impair the function of the department, which is, as you know, to serve and protect our citizens."

Quirk gave the coffee cup a sudden sharp spin with his fingers and scaled it into my wastebasket.

"Probably wouldn't use his own piece anyway," Quirk said. . The tension in his groin was intense.

"She used to compete with me," he said.

"Your mother?" the shrink said.

"Yes. She used to want to shoot baskets with us, stuff like that."

"How old were you?"

"Little kid, 8, 9 maybe."

"And so it was hard to compete with her," the shrink said.

"Well, when I was little."

"Difficult for a child to compete with an adult," the shrink said.

"Well, hell, yes, if you're a real little kid it's hard, even if it's a woman."

The tension in his pelvis buzzed along the nerve paths. His breath was shallow.

"But pretty soon, you know, pretty soon I got older and then she couldn't compete with me."

"At least not in basketball," the shrink said.

He'd caught them once, at night, when he went to the bathroom. He heard his mother's voice and stopped and listened. The door wasn't closed entirely.

"For God's sake, George, you're too drunk to even do it."

He heard the bed rustle and the springs jounce.

"What am I supposed to do, rub it until you remember what it's for?" she said.

His father's voice was a mumble. There was more movement. He edged closer to the door. And then it was suddenly wide open and his mother was there naked.

"You dirty little pig, "she said. He could remember the feeling, the tightness in his stomach, as she dragged him by the hair back to his room and slammed the door. He heard the knob rattle, and when he tried to open it he couldn't. She had tied it shut. He still needed to go to the bathroom and he sat on the floor by the door, needing to go and filled with dread and something else he didn't understand, and cried.

"Momma, momma, momma."

I was in my office thinking about whether to go out for a second cup of coffee when Hawk came in without knocking and sat in my client chair and put his Air Jordans on the edge of my desk. He was wearing starched jeans and a double-breasted leather jacket that looked like it had been made from the hide of an Arabian armadillo. He had two coffees in a paper sack. Well, why not. I wouldn't want to offend him.

"Tony Marcus called me today," Hawk said. "Wanted to know if you and me would have lunch with him."

"Lunch?" I said. "With Tony Marcus? What's on for tonight, dinner and dancing with Imelda Marcos?"

"Tony say he can help you with the Red Rose thing."

"Why?"

Hawk shrugged. "Don't like it that some guy's killing black women."

"Tony's become an activist?"

"Tony been making his living from black women all his life," Hawk said.

"Maybe he don't like seeing the pool depleted."

"So why send you?"

"Tony think you don't like him. Think maybe he send one of his own, ah, employees, you might whack him."

"Okay, where we eating?" I said.

"Tony likes the Legal Seafood in Park Square."

"Me too," I said. "What time?"

"Noon."

"You think Tony knows something?"

Hawk shook his head. "Think he wants to see if you know something."

"Gonna be a quiet lunch," I said.

Legal served the best seafood in the city and they didn't make you dress up to eat it. Marcus was there when Hawk and I arrived, sitting at a table with a smooth-faced blond woman who wore lavender lipstick and her hair pulled back on one side. Marcus had a fat neck and a big mustache and a short black Afro touched with gray, and he looked sort of soft.

The look was deceptive. He had forced himself on the Irish and Italian mob in Boston and taken away the black community. Nothing much happened in Roxbury and along Blue Hill Avenue that Tony didn't get some of.

Black Boston was pretty much his and there wasn't anything that the white mobs and the cops and the new Jamaicans had been able to do about it. He nodded at the two empty chairs and Hawk and I sat.

"Bloody Marys are good here," Tony said. He had one in front of him.

The blonde had a glass of white wine. The waitress stood beside us.

"Something from the bar?" she said.

I ordered a Sam Adams beer. Hawk ordered a bottle of Cristal champagne.

"Jesus Christ, Hawk," Marcus said.

Hawk smiled without humor or meaning.

"You working with Quirk on this Red Rose thing?" Marcus said. "What do you know that's not in the papers?"

"Nothing," I said. "How bout yourself?"

Marcus shook his head without speaking. The waitress brought my beer and Hawk's champagne and more drinks for Marcus and the blonde. She opened the champagne, poured some for Hawk, and put the rest in a bucket near him. He smiled at her and seemed flustered. "Do you need a little time with the menus?" she said.

Hawk nodded and smiled again, and she flushed slightly and hustled away.

"Woman's fallen in love with me," Hawk said.

"Who can blame her," I said. The blonde looked puzzled.

"I don't like it that some honkie fruitcake is going around this city wasting black women," Tony said.

I raised one fist and held it for a moment, above my head. Hawk murmured, "Right on, bro," and drank some champagne.

Marcus shook his head. "I don't expect any understanding from a white guy," he said. "But you, Hawk?"

Hawk put his glass down and leaned slightly forward toward Marcus.

"Tony," he said, "I ain't black, he ain't white, and you, probably, ain't human. You want to look good down around Grove Hall, that's your business. But don't waste a lot of time with the black brother bullshit."

The waitress came for our order. I ordered Cajun fried squid. Marcus ordered red snapper for himself and the blonde. Hawk ordered scallops.

When the waitress left, Marcus smiled a little bit. He said, "You never been too sentimental, Hawk."

Hawk poured himself a little more champagne.

"So it doesn't matter none what my reasons are," Marcus said. "All I'm saying is, if I can help on this thing, I will. I got a lotta contacts, a lotta resources."

"What makes you so sure the killer's white?" I said.

"What they said in the papers," Marcus said. He finished his Bloody Mary and gestured toward the waitress for another one and a white wine for the blonde. The waitress looked at me. I shook my head. She departed.

"Tony, I don't like you," I said.

Marcus shrugged. He didn't seem disheartened.

"But I'll take any help I can get. The problem is, I don't even know enough to ask an intelligent question. The best guess is that it's a white guy and he's nuts. The stuff you were reading in the Globe is as much as I know either. All I can say is, if you hear anything, let me know. And if you catch the guy…" I shrugged.

"We catch the guy, we going to kill him," Marcus said.