Looking for Rachel Wallace (2 page)

“Neither of the above,” I said. “Is there a third choice?”

“I hope so,” she said. She motioned to the waiter and ordered another round. “I have work to do,” she went on. “I have books to write and publicize. I have speeches to give and causes to promote and a life to live. I will not stay in some safe house and hide while my life goes by. I will not change what I am, whatever the bigots say and do. If you want to do this, you’ll have to understand that.”

“I understand that,” I said.

“I also have an active sex life. Not only active but often diverse. You’ll have to be prepared for that, and you’ll have to conceal whatever hostility you may feel toward me or the women I sleep with.”

“Do I
get
fired if I blush?”

“I told you before, I have no sense of humor. Do you agree or disagree?”

“Agree.”

“Finally, except when you feel my life is in danger, I want you to stay out of my way. I realize you will have to be around and watchful. I don’t know how serious the threats are, but you have to assume they are serious. I understand that. But short of a mortal situation I do not want to hear from you. I want a shadow.”

I said, “Agree,” and drank the rest of my beer. The waiter came by and removed the empty peanut bowl and replaced it. Rachel Wallace noticed my beer was gone and gestured that the waiter should bring another. Ticknor looked at his glass and at Rachel Wallace’s. His was empty, hers wasn’t. He didn’t order.

“Your appearance is good,” she said. “That’s a nice suit, and it’s well tailored. Are you dressed up for the occasion or do you always look good?”

“I’m dressed up for the occasion. Normally I wear a light-blue body stocking with a big red S on the front.” It was dim in the bar, but her lipstick was bright, and I thought for a moment she smiled, or nearly smiled, or one corner of her mouth itched.

“I want you presentable,” she said.

“I’ll be presentable, but if you want me appropriate, you’ll have to let me know your plans ahead of time.”

She said, “Certainly.”

I said thank you. I tried to think of things other than the peanuts. One bowl was enough.

“I’ve had my say, now it is your turn. You must have some rules or questions, or whatever. Speak your mind.”

I drank beer. “As I said to Mr. Ticknor when he and I first talked, I cannot guarantee your safety. What I can do is increase the odds against an assassin. But someone dedicated or crazy can get you.”

“I understand that,” she said.

“I don’t care about your sex life. I don’t care if you elope with Anita Bryant. But I do need to be around when it happens. If you make it with strangers, you might be inviting your murderer to bed.”

“Are you suggesting I’m promiscuous?”

“You suggested it a little while ago. If you’re not, it’s not a problem. I don’t assume your friends will kill you.”

“I think we’ll not discuss my sex life further. John, for God’s sake order another drink. You look so uncomfortable, I’m afraid you’ll discorporate.”

He smiled and signaled the waiter.

“Do you have any other statements to make?” she said to me.

“Maybe one more,” I said. “I hire on to guard your body, that’s what I’ll do. I will work at it. Part of working at it will include telling you things you can do and things you can’t do. I know my way around this kind of work a lot better than you do. Keep that in mind before you tell me to stick it. I’ll stay out of your way when I can, but I can’t always.”

She put her hand out across the table, and I took it. “We’ll try it, Spenser,” she said. “Maybe it won’t work, but it could. We’ll try.”

“Okay,” I said, “tell me about the death threats.”

“I’ve always gotten hate mail. But recently I have gotten some phonecalls.”

“How recently?”

“As soon as the bound galleys went out.”

“What are bound galleys? And who do they go out to?”

Ticknor spoke. “Once a manuscript is set in type, a few copies are run off to be proofread by both author and copy editor. These are called galley proofs.”

“I know that part,” I said. “What about the bound ones going out?”

“Galleys normally come in long sheets, three pages or so to the sheet. For reviewers and people from whom we might wish to get a favorable quote for promotional purposes, we cut the galleys and bind them in cheap cardboard covers and send them out.” Ticknor seemed more at ease now, with the third martini half inside him. I was still fighting off the peanuts.

“You have a list of people to whom you send these?”

Ticknor nodded. “I can get it to you tomorrow.”

“Okay. Now, after the galleys went out, came the phone-calls. Tell me about them.”

She was eating her martini olive. Her teeth were small and even and looked well cared-for. “A man’s voice,” she said. “He called me a dyke, ‘a fucking dyke,’ as I recall. And told me if that book was published, I’d be dead the day it hit the streets.”

“Books don’t hit the streets,” I said. “Newspapers do. The idiot can’t get his cliches straight.”

“There has been a call like that every day for the last week.”

“Always say the same thing?”

“Not word for word, but approximately. The substance is always that I’ll die if the book is published.”

“Same voice all the time?”

“No.”

“That’s too bad.”

Ticknor said, “Why?”

“Makes it seem less like a single cuckoo getting his rocks off on the phone,” I said. “I assume you’ve rejected the idea of withdrawing the book.”

Rachel Wallace said, “Absolutely.”

Ticknor said, “We suggested that. We said we’d not hold her to the contract.”

“You also mentioned returning the advance,” Rachel Wallace said.

“We run a business, Rachel.”

“So do I,” she said. “My business is with women’s rights and with gay liberation and with writing.” She looked at me. “I cannot let them frighten me. I cannot let them stifle me. Do you understand that?”

I said yes.

“That’s your job,” she said. “To see that I’m allowed to speak.”

“What is there in the new book,” I said, “that would cause people to kill you?”

“It began as a book about sexual prejudice. Discrimination in the job market against women, gay people, and specifically gay women. But it has expanded. Sexual prejudice goes hand in hand with other forms of corruption. Violation of the equal employment laws is often accompanied by violation of other laws. Bribery, kickbacks, racket tie-ins. I have named names as I found them. A lot of people will be hurt by my book. All of them deserve it.”

“Corporations,” Ticknor said, “local government agencies, politicians, city hall, the Roman Catholic Church. She has taken on a lot of the local power structure.”

“Is it all Greater Boston?”

“Yes,” she said. “I use it as a microcosm. Rather than trying to generalize about the nation, I study one large city very closely. Synecdoche, the rhetoricians would call it.”

“Yeah,” I said, “I bet they would.”

“So,” Ticknor said, “you see there are plenty of potential villains.”

“May I have a copy of the book to read?”

“I brought one along,” Ticknor said. He took his briefcase off the floor, opened it, and took out a book with a green dust jacket. The title, in salmon letters, took up most of the front. Rachel Wallace’s picture took up most of the back. “Just out,” Ticknor said.

“I’ll read it tonight,” I said. “When do I report for work?”

“Right now,” Rachel Wallace said. “You are here. You are armed. And quite frankly I have been frightened. I won’t be deflected. But I am frightened.”

“What are your plans for today?” I said.

“We shall have perhaps three more drinks here, then you and I shall go to dinner. After dinner I shall go to my room and work until midnight. At midnight I shall go to bed. Once I am in my room with the door locked, I should think you could leave. The security here is quite good, I’m sure. At the slightest rustle outside my door I will call the hotel security number without a qualm.”

“And tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow you should meet me at my room at eight o’clock. I have a speech in the morning and an autographing in the afternoon.”

“I have a date for dinner tonight,” I said. “May I ask her to join us?”

“You’re not married,” she said.

“That’s true,” I said.

“Is this a casual date or is this your person?”

“It’s my person,” I said.

Ticknor said, “We can’t cover her expenses, you know.”

“Oh, damn,” I said.

“Yes, of course, bring her along. I hope that you don’t plan to cart her everywhere, however. Business and pleasure, you know.”

“She isn’t someone you cart,” I said. “If she joins us, it will be your good fortune.”

“I don’t care for your tone, buster,” Rachel Wallace said. “I have a perfectly legitimate concern that you will not be distracted by your lady friend from doing what we pay you to do. If there’s danger, would you look after her first or me.”

“Her,” I said.

“Then certainly I can suggest that she not always be with us.”

“She won’t be,” I said. “I doubt that she could stand it.”

“Perhaps I shall change my mind about this evening,” Rachel Wallace said.

“Perhaps I shall change mine, too,” I said.

Ticknor said, “Wait. Now just wait. I’m sure Rachel meant no harm. Her point is valid. Surely, Spenser, you understand that.”

I didn’t say anything.

“Dinner this evening, of course, is perfectly understandable,” Ticknor said. “You had a date. You had no way to know that Rachel would require you today. I’m sure Rachel will be happy to have dinner with you both.”

Rachel Wallace didn’t say anything.

“Perhaps you could call the lady and ask her to meet you.”

Rachel Wallace didn’t like Ticknor saying “lady,” but she held back and settled for giving him a disgusted look. Which he missed, or ignored—I couldn’t tell which.

“Where are we eating?” I said to Rachel.

“I’d like the best restaurant in town,” she said. “Do you have a. suggestion?”

“The best restaurant in town is not
in
town. It’s in Marblehead, place called Rosalie’s.”

“What’s the cuisine?”

“Northern Italian Eclectic. A lot of it is just Rosalie’s.”

“No meatball subs? No pizza?”

“No.”

“Do you know this restaurant, John?”

“I’ve not been out there. I’ve heard that it is excellent.”

“Very well, we’ll go. Tell your friend that we shall meet her there at seven. I’ll call for reservations.”

“My friend is named Susan. Susan Silverman.”

“Fine,” Rachel Wallace said.

Rosalie’s is in a renovated commercial building in one of the worst sections of Marblehead. But the worst section of Marblehead is upper middle class. The commercial building had probably once manufactured money clips.

The restaurant is up a flight and inside the door is a small stand-up bar. Susan was at the bar drinking a glass of Chablis and talking to a young man in a corduroy jacket and a plaid shirt. He had a guardsman’s mustache twirled upward at the ends. I thought about strangling him with it.

We paused inside the door for a moment. Susan didn’t see us, and Wallace was looking for the maitre d‘. Susan had on a double-breasted camel’s-hair jacket and matching skirt. Under the jacket was a forest-green shirt open at the throat. She had on high boots that disappeared under the skirt. I always had the sense that when I came upon her suddenly in a slightly unusual setting, a pride of trumpets ought to play alarms and flourishes. I stepped up to the bar next to her and said, “I beg your pardon, but the very sight of you makes my heart sing like an April day on the wings of spring.”

She turned toward me and smiled and said, “Everyone tells me that.”

She gestured toward the young man with the guardsman’s mustache. “This is Tom,” she said. And then with the laughing touch of evil in her eyes she said, “Tom was nice enough to buy me a glass of Chablis.”

I said to Tom, “That’s
one
.”

He said, “Excuse me?”

I said, “It’s the tag line to an old joke. Nice to meet you.”

“Yeah,” Tom said, “same here.”

The maitre d‘, in a dark velvet three-piece suit, was standing with Rachel Wallace. I said, “Bring your wine and come along.”

She smiled at Tom and we stepped over to Wallace. “Rachel Wallace,” I said, “Susan Silverman.”

Susan put out her hand. “Hi, Rachel,” she said. “I think your books are wonderful.”

Wallace smiled, took her hand, and said, “Thank you. Nice to meet you.”

The maitre d‘ led us to our table, put the menus in front of us, and said, “I’ll have someone right over to take your cocktail order.”

I sat across from Susan, with Rachel Wallace on my left. She was a pleasant-looking woman, but next to Susan she looked as if she’d been washed in too much bleach. She was a tough, intelligent national figure, but next to Susan I felt sorry for her. On the other hand I felt sorry for all women next to Susan.

Rachel said, “Tell me about Spenser. Have you known him long?”

“I met him in 1973,” Susan said, “but I’ve known him forever.”

“It only seems like forever,” I said, “when I’m talking.”

Rachel ignored me. “And what is he like?”

“He’s like he seems,” Susan said. The waitress came and took our cocktail order.

“No, I mean in detail, what is he like? I am perhaps dependent on him to protect my life. I need to know about him.”

“I don’t like to say this in front of him, but for that you could have no one better.”

“Or as good,” I said.

“You’ve got to overcome this compulsion to understate your virtues,” Susan said. “You’re too self-effacing.”

“Can he suspend his distaste for radical feminism enough to protect me properly?”

Susan looked at me and widened her eyes. “Hadn’t you better answer that, snookie?” she said.

“You’re begging the question, I think. We haven’t established my distaste for radical feminism. We haven’t even in fact established that you are a radical feminist.”

“I have learned,” Rachel Wallace said, “to assume a distaste for radical feminism. I rarely err in that.”