Painted Ladies (8 page)

“Oh,” I said. “The usual, you know. Gunfire, that kind of stuff.”

“Fucking gunfire?” she said.

“Just giving you a hypothetical example,” I said.

“You mean, like, I’m in danger?”

“Only if you flash that smile,” I said.

“I’m serious,” she said.

“No one is interested in you, except, of course, me,” I said. “Sit tight and you’re fine.”

“Me and Pearl,” she said.

I nodded. I was watching my office door as we talked. I didn’t want to take my gun out, thus causing Lila to freak. But I let my hand stay close to my hip.

“What do I tell my employers?” she said. “If any of them come in.”

“Tell them you’re doing me a favor,” I said.

“Most of them don’t like you,” she said.

“Oh, of course they do,” I said. “How could they not?”

“And they pay my salary,” she said.

“But do they feel about you the way I do?” I said.

“Probably,” she said. “But nobody’s due in today until late afternoon, anyway.”

“I owe you,” I said.

“You certainly do,” Lila said.

“Lock the door,” I said.

M
y office was on the second floor, with windows that opened on Berkeley Street. I went out into the hall and down the back stairs to the alley, where my car was parked illegally. The snow was still drifting down halfheartedly. I got a pair of binoculars from the car and ducked with my head down across Berkeley Street in the middle of the block, and got glared at. If there was somebody in my office, they would be watching the door, not looking at the street.

I went into the Schwartz Building across the street from my office and up to the second floor. It was the office where, when the building was in another incarnation, a dark-haired art director with great hips had often been visible from my office, bending over her board. I slid behind a counter, stood at the window, and adjusted the binoculars.

A clerk said, “Excuse me, sir. May I help you with something?”

“Shhh,”
I said. “Surveillance.”

He apparently didn’t know what to say about that, so he stood and stared at me. With the binoculars I brought my office into focus. There were two of them. One sitting behind my desk with an Uzi-like automatic weapon, maybe a Colt M4. The other guy stood to the right of my door, so that he’d be behind the door when it opened. He had a handgun. Neither of them moved around any. As far as I could see from where I was, neither of them said anything.

I lowered the binoculars and looked at the clerk, who was still staring at me.

“Thanks,” I said, and left.

I went back downstairs and out, and crossed Berkeley at the corner, with the light. I hated being glared at. In the alley, I took off my coat and put it on the backseat, along with the binoculars. Then I sat in my car, took out my gun, and made sure there was a round in the chamber. I got an extra magazine from the glove compartment and slipped it into my hip pocket. Then I cocked the gun and got out and went back up to my floor.

Lila’s door was still closed. I stood against the wall to the right of my door and reached out and unlocked it. Nothing happened. I took the key from the lock, put it in my pocket. Then I knelt down and pushed the door open. I was out of the line of fire, low against the wall of the corridor.

Nothing happened.

I waited.

Time was on my side. The longer they sat and stared at the silent, empty doorway, the more it would be on my side. They didn’t know how many I was. They didn’t know which side of the doorway I was on. Or how close. If I were them I’d come out together, shooting in both directions as I came. I backed a little down the corridor and lay flat on the floor with my gun ready. It was a new gun, an S&W .40-caliber semiautomatic. There were eleven rounds in the magazine and one in the chamber. If that wasn’t enough, I probably wasn’t, either.

Most of the people on my floor were in sales. And except for Lila, who served as a communal secretary, there was rarely anyone around during the day. No one moved in the hall. Nothing happened at my office door. I was listening so hard that my breath seemed loud. I moved my shoulders a little, trying to keep them loose. I inhaled gently, trying to be silent.

They came out shooting. The Uzi sprayed the corridor away from me. The handgun guy fired several slugs over my head before I shot him. The man with the Uzi spun toward me, and I shot him, too. They both went down. The man with the handgun never moved. The guy with the Uzi spasmed maybe twice and then lay still. I stayed prone on the hall floor with my gun still aimed, taking in air. Then I stood and walked over and looked at them. They were dead. I uncocked my new gun and holstered it, and heaved in some more air.

Lila had called 911. I could hear the distant sirens rolling down Boylston Street.

P
earl and I spent pretty much the rest of the day in close contact with the Boston Police Department. First came the prowl-car guys. Then the precinct detectives, and the crime scene people. About an hour after it started, Belson came in and looked at me and shook his head.

“Wyatt Fucking Earp,” he said.

I shrugged.

Belson went and talked with a crime scene investigator. Then he went over to the couch and scratched Pearl’s right ear. Her short tail thumped against the cushion.

“She been out?” he said.

“Lila across the hall,” I said. “Took her out about a half-hour ago.”

“Okay,” Belson said. “Then let’s you and me gather at your desk and chat.”

One of the precinct detectives said, “I’ve questioned him, Frank. Want me to bring you up to speed?”

“No,” Belson said.

I sat at my desk. Belson pulled a chair up and sat across the desk from me.

“Crime scene guy tells me one round each. Middle of the chest both times.”

I nodded again.

“Annie Fucking Oakley,” Belson said. “Talk to me.”

“You know about the painting got stolen?” I said. “And the guy got blown up out on Route Two trying to get it back?”

“The guy you were bodyguarding?”

“Yep.”

“Nice,” Belson said. “Assume I don’t.”

“Okay,” I said.

I told my story.

As I told it, Belson sat perfectly still and listened. Like Epstein, he didn’t take notes. He rarely did. But two years later, he’d be able to give you what I’d said verbatim. Cops.

When I finished, he said, “Dog saved your ass.”

I nodded.

“She did.”

“You figure it’s connected to the art theft and the murder?”

“Don’t you?” I said.

Belson shrugged.

“You’ve annoyed a lot of people in the last twenty years,” he said.

“Why limit it?” I said.

“You’re right, you been good at it all your life.”

“Everybody gotta be good at something,” I said.

“But,” Belson said, “it don’t do us much good picking names of people might want you dead.”

“Too many,” I said.

“So,” Belson said, “assume it’s connected. Why now?”

“Don’t know,” I said. “I been poking around at it since it happened. I must have poked something live.”

“Where you been poking recently,” Belson said.

“Walford University. Winifred Minor. Her daughter. Couple of her daughter’s classmates.”

“Most recent?”

“Missy and Winifred Minor,” I said.

“Missy Minor,” Belson said.

“Cute name,” I said.

“Cute,” Belson said. “You know either of the stiffs?”

“No,” I said.

“We’ll see what we can find out,” Belson said.

“Lemme know,” I said.

“Might,” Belson said. “You turned your piece over to the crime scene people?”

“Yep.”

“You got another one?” Belson said. “People trying to kill you and all.”

I reached into my desk drawer and took out a .38 Chief’s Special.

“Loaded,” Belson said. “No trigger lock.”

“Got a nice holster,” I said.

“Okay,” Belson said. “In that case, I won’t run you in.”

“Stern,” I said. “But compassionate.”

“And if they succeed in killing you next try,” Belson said, “I’ll try to catch them.”

“That’s encouraging,” I said.

I
was halving oranges and squeezing the juice into a glass in my kitchen when Susan appeared, fresh from the shower and the makeup mirror. I took a deep breath. Whenever I saw her I took a deep breath. It was more dignified than yelling “Jehoshaphat!”

“Isn’t that a lot of trouble?” Susan said. “I like the stuff in a carton fine.”

“That’s pasteurized,” I said. “I want the authentic experience. Unprocessed. Nothing between me and the orange, you know?
Mano a orange-o!
”

I gave her the glass and squeezed some for myself.

“You are, as they say in psychotherapeutic circles, a weird dude,” Susan said.

“And yet you love me,” I said.

“I know.”

“It’s all about the sex,” I said. “Isn’t it.”

“Not all,” Susan said. “You cook a nice breakfast, too.”

She had on tight black jeans tucked into high cavalier boots, the kind where the top folds over. Her open-collared shirt was white, and over it she wore a small black sweater vest. It set off her black hair and big, dark eyes. She probably knew that.

“Good sex and a nice breakfast,” I said. “An unbeatable combination.”

Susan smiled.

“I don’t recall anyone using the word ‘good,’ ” she said.

“Seems to me,” I said, “you were singing different lyrics an hour ago.”

She actually flushed a little bit.

“Don’t be coarse,” she said.

“Not even in self-defense?” I said.

She grinned at me.

“Well, maybe,” she said. “We were quite lively. Weren’t we.”

“With good reason,” I said.

I finished my orange juice and poured us both some coffee. Susan wasn’t anywhere near finishing her orange juice. But she might never finish it. Over the years I’d learned to proceed and let her sort it out.

Pearl was asleep on her back on the couch, with her head lolling off. She was waiting, I knew, for actual food to be prepared and served, at which time she’d get off the couch and come over and haunt us.

“I have a question,” Susan said. “And a comment.”

“Is this one of those questions where you also know the answer, but you’d like to hear what I have to say?”

“Yes,” Susan said. “But first the comment.”

“Okay.”

“It was very clever of you to turn the situation around the way you did.”

“You mean opening the door and sitting tight?”

“Yes. Up to that point, they had the power. They were waiting to ambush you. When you pushed the door open, you took the power from them. Now you were waiting to ambush them.”

“Astounding, isn’t it,” I said.

“Do you think of these things in the moment?” Susan said. “Or do you keep a little list?”

“Like a quarterback with the plays on his wristband,” I said.

“Whatever that means,” Susan said.

“A sports metaphor,” I said. “Mostly I react. But in fact, in this case, I had done it before. I used that ploy a long time ago, in London. It sort of came back to me when Pearl gave me the heads-up.”

“Why do you suppose she did that?” Susan said.

“She loves me?”

“She and I both,” Susan said. “But I’m serious. What made her growl like that? You say you’ve never heard her make that sound before.”

“No. It did not sound like her.”

“So why did she?”

“A smell in the room that she hadn’t encountered?”

“There must be a hundred smells,” Susan said. “Cleaning people. Clients. Why this smell?”

“I don’t know.”

We were quiet. Pearl shifted slightly into an even more comfortable position.

“I’ve had dogs nearly all my life,” I said. “And most of them have been German shorthaired pointers named Pearl. I try not to romanticize them. But it is very clear to me that more goes on in there than we understand.”

Susan nodded.

“You think she somehow knew something was bad?” Susan said.

“Very little is known about dogs,” I said.

Susan nodded and looked at Pearl.

“Well, whatever motivated her,” Susan said, “good dog!”

Pearl opened her eyes and looked at Susan upside down, saw that nothing more consequential was coming her way, and closed her eyes again.

“There was also a question?” I said.

Susan emptied a packet of Splenda into her coffee and stirred it carefully.

“When Pearl warned you,” she said, “and you went across the street and looked, and saw those two men waiting for you in your office . . .”

“Yeah?”

“Why didn’t you just call the police?”

“ ‘Call the police,’ ”I said.

“Yes.”

I drank some coffee. Susan waited.

“I never thought of it,” I said.

“Literally?”

“Literally,” I said.

She nodded slowly.

“And if you had thought of it,” she said, “you wouldn’t have done it, anyway, would you.”

“No,” I said.

“Because you clean things up yourself.”

“Yes.”

“Still your father’s son,” Susan said.

“And my uncles’,” I said.

She nodded.

“Still chasing the bear,” she said.

“You knew the answer before you asked the question,” I said.

“But I kind of wondered if you did,” she said.

“You know where I came from,” I said. “And you know what I do, and if I’m going to continue to do it, I can’t be someone who calls the cops when there’s trouble.”

“Because it’s bad for business?” Susan said.