Early Autumn (7 page)

Her face stayed flushed. Her voice stayed in the whisper, though it sounded hoarser and less stagey now.

“Why?” she said. “Why isn’t it?”

“Well, for one thing, it’s contrived.”

“Contrived?”

“Yeah, like you read
The Total Woman
and took notes.”

Her eyes had begun to fill. She had let her hands drop to her sides.

“And there’s other things. There’s Paul, for instance. And a woman I know.”

“Paul? What the hell has Paul got to do with it?” She wasn’t whispering now. Her voice was harsh. “I have to get Paul’s permission to fuck?”

“It’s not a matter of permission. Paul wouldn’t like it if he found out.”

“What do you know about my son?” she said. “What do you think he cares? Do you think he’d think less of me than he does now?”

“No,” I said. “He’d think less of me.”

She stood without movement for maybe five seconds. Then she deliberately took hold of her robe and shrugged it back over her shoulders and let it drop to the floor. She was naked except for a pair of sling-back pumps made of, apparently, transparent plastic. “You saw most of it already,” she said. “Want to see it all?” She turned slowly around, 360 degrees, her arms out from her sides. “What do you like best?” she said. Her voice was very harsh now and there were tears on her cheeks. “You want to pay me?” She walked over to me. “You figure I’m a whore, maybe you’ll pay me. Twenty bucks, mister? I’ll give you a good time.”

“Stop it,” I said.

“Who’d tell Paul that you fucked his whorey mother? How would he find out you’d been dirty?”

Her voice was shaking and clogged. She was crying.

“You’d tell him when there was a good occasion. Or you’d tell his father and his father would tell him. And besides there’s this woman I know.”

Patty Giacomin pressed against me. Her shoulders were heaving, she was crying outright. “Please,” she said. “Please. I’ve been good. I’ve cooked. I pay you. Please, don’t do this.”

I put my arms around her and patted her bare back. She buried her face against my chest and with both hands straight at her sides, stark naked except for her transparent shoes, she sobbed without control for a long time. I patted her back and tried to think of other things.
Carl Hubbell struck out Cronin, Ruth, Gehrig, Simmons, and Jimmy Foxx
in an all-star game. Was it 1934? The crying seemed to feed on itself. It seemed to build. I rested my chin on the top of her head.
Who played with Cousy at Holy Cross? Kaftan. Joe Mullaney? Dermie O’Connell. Frank Oftring
. Her body pressed at me. I thought harder:
All-time all-star team players I’d seen. Musial; Jackie Robinson; Reese; and Brooks Robinson. Williams; DiMaggio; Mays; Roy Campanella; Sandy Koufax, left-hand pitcher; Bob Gibson, right-hand pitcher; Joe Page in the bullpen
. She was crying easier now.

“Come on,” I said. “You get dressed, I’ll take a cold shower, and we’ll have some breakfast.”

She didn’t move, but the crying stopped. I stopped patting. She stepped away and squatted gracefully to pick up the peignoir. She didn’t put it on. She didn’t look at me. She walked away toward her bedroom.

I went into the kitchen and stood at the open back door and took in a lot of late April air. Then I poured a cup of coffee and drank some and scalded my tongue a little. The principal of counterirritant.

It was maybe fifteen minutes before she came out of the bedroom. In the meantime I rummaged around in the kitchen and got together a potato-and-onion omelet. It was cooking when she came into the
kitchen. Her makeup was good and her hair was neat, but her face still had the red, ugly look faces have after crying.

“Sit down,” I said. “My treat this morning.” I poured her coffee.

She sat and sipped at the coffee.

I said, “This is awkward, but it doesn’t have to be too awkward. I’m flattered that you offered. You should not consider it a negative on you that I declined.”

She sipped more coffee, shook her head slightly, didn’t talk.

“Look,” I said. “You’ve been through a lousy divorce. For sixteen years or more you’ve been a house-wife and now all of a sudden there’s no man in the house. You’re a little lost. And then I move in. You start cooking for me. Putting flowers on the table. Pretty soon you’re a housewife again. This morning had to happen. You had to prove your housewifery, you know? It would have been a kind of confirmation. And it would have confirmed a status that I don’t want, and you don’t really want. I’m committed to another woman. I’m committed to protecting your son. Screwing his mom, pleasant as that would be, is not productive.”

“Why not?” She looked up when she said it and straight at me.

“For one thing it might eventually raise the question of whether I was being paid for protecting Paul or screwing you, of being your husband substitute.”

“Gigolo?”

“You ought to stop doing that. Classifying things under some kind of neat title. You’re a whore, I’m a gigolo, that sort of thing.”

“Well, what was I if I wasn’t a whore?”

“A good-looking woman, with a need to be loved, expressing that need. It’s not your fault that you expressed it to the wrong guy.”

“Well. I’m sorry for it. It was embarrassing. I was like some uneducated ginzo.”

“I don’t know that the lower classes do that sort of thing much more often than we upper-class types. But it wasn’t simply embarrassing. It was also in some ways very nice. I mean I’m very glad to have seen you with your clothes off. That’s a pleasure.”

“I need men,” she said.

I nodded. “That’s where the bucks are,” I said.

“That’s still true” she said. “But it’s more than that.”

I nodded again.

“Women are so goddamned boring,” she said. She stretched out the
or
in boring.

“Sometime I’ll put you in touch with a woman I know named Rachel Wallace,” I said.

“The writer?”

“Yeah.”

“You know her? The feminist writer? Well, that’s all right in theory. But we both know the reality.”

“Which is?”

“That we get a lot further batting our eyes and wiggling our butts.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Look where it got you.”

With a quick sweep of her right hand she knocked the half-full cup of coffee and its saucer off the table and onto the floor. In the same motion she got up out of her chair and left the kitchen. I heard her go up the short stairs to her bedroom and slam the door. She never did try my potato-and-onion omelet. I threw it away.

It was two days after the peignoir that they came for the kid. It was in the evening. After supper. Patty Giacomin answered the doorbell and they came in, pushing her backward as they came. Paul was in his room watching television. I was reading
A Distant Mirror
, chapter seven. I stood up.

There were two of them and neither was Mel Giacomin. The one doing the shoving was short and dumpy and barrel-bodied. He was wearing the ugliest wig I’ve ever seen. It looked like an auburn Dynel ski cap that he’d pulled down over his ears. His partner was taller and not as bulky. He had a boot camp crew cut and a navy watch cap rolled up so that it looked like a sloppy yarmulke.

The short one said, “Where’s the kid?”

The tall one looked at me and said, “Spenser. Nobody told me about you in this.”

I said, “How are you, Buddy?”

The short one said, “Who’s he?”

Buddy said, “He’s a private cop. Name’s Spenser. You working, Spenser?”

I said, “Yes.”

“They didn’t tell me you’d be here.”

“Mel didn’t know, Buddy. It’s not Mel’s fault.”

“I didn’t say anything about no Mel,” Buddy said.

“Aw, come on, Buddy, don’t be a jerk. Who the hell else would send you for the kid?”

The short one said, “Never mind all the crap. Parade the fucking kid out here.”

I said to Buddy, “Who’s your friend with his head in a bag?”

Buddy made a very small smile.

The short one said, “What the hell’s that remark supposed to mean, douchebag?”

“It means you look like you’re wearing an Astroturf bathing cap for a rug. Funniest looking rug I’ve ever seen.”

“Keep running your mouth, douchebag, and we’ll see how funny you are.”

Buddy said, “Be cool, Harold.” To me he said, “We come to take the kid back to his old man. We didn’t know you’d be here, but that don’t change the plan.”

I said, “No.”

“No, we can’t take him back? Or no, it don’t change the plan,” Buddy said.

“No, you can’t take him back,” I said.

Harold pulled a black woven leather sap from his hip pocket and tapped it gently against the palm of his hand.

“I’ll enjoy this,” he said. And I hit him a stiff left jab on his nose, turning my body sideways as I threw the punch to get all of me into it and to make a smaller target. The blood spurted out of Harold’s nose and he staggered three steps backward, flailing his arms for balance. The blackjack hit a table lamp and smashed it Harold got his balance. He held one hand against the blood coming from his nose and shook his head once as if there were a fly in his ear.

Buddy shrugged a little sadly. Harold came back at me and I hit him the same jab, same place, a little
harder. It sat him down. Blood was all over his face and shirt.

“Jesus Christ, Buddy” he said. “Jump in. He can’t take two of us.”

“Yeah, he can,” Buddy said. Harold started to get up. His legs were wobbly. Buddy said, “Leave it alone, Harold. He’ll kill you if you try again.”

Harold was on his feet, trying to keep his nose from bleeding. He still held the blackjack in his right hand, but he didn’t seem to remember that. He looked confused.

I said, “That’s what you brought for muscle, Buddy?”

Buddy shrugged. “He’d have been all right for the broad,” he said. “He does good with barbers and car salesmen that get a little behind on the vig.” Buddy spread his hands.

“How come Mel didn’t come himself?”

“I don’t know no Mel.”

“Come on, Buddy. You want to discuss unlawful entry and assault with the Lexington cops?”

“What are they going to do, beat the shit out of me with a Minuteman?”

“Jail is jail is jail, babe. Don’t matter who put you there. How long since you and Harold summered at Walpole?”

“How about we just walk out of here,” Harold said. His voice was thick. He had a handkerchief wadded against his nose.

I reached around and took my gun out of its hip holster. I showed it to both of them. I smiled.

Buddy said, “So we know Mel. We thought we’d do him a favor. He heard that his old lady had hired some private cop to be a bodyguard. We figured we come get the kid for him. We didn’t know it was you.
We figured it would be some stiff that used to be a bank guard. Hell, we didn’t even bring a piece.”

“How you happen to know Mel, Buddy?”

Buddy shrugged again. “Seen him around, you know. Just trying to do him a favor.”

“What did he pay you?”

“A C each.”

“Big league,” I said.

“See you again,” Buddy said. “Come on, Harold. We’re walking.”

Harold looked at the gun. He looked at Buddy. Buddy said, “Come on,” and turned toward the front door. Harold looked at me again. Then he turned after Buddy.

Patty said, “Spenser.”

I shook my head and put the gun away. “Tell Mel that if he keeps sending people down to annoy us I’m going to get mad,” I said. Buddy nodded and went down the three stairs to the front hall. Harold followed him.

“The next people he sends won’t walk out,” I said.

Buddy paused and looked back. “You never were a shooter,” he said. “It’s what’s wrong with you.” Then he went out the front door and Harold went after him. I heard it close behind them.

Patty Giacomin stood where she’d stood throughout “Why did you let them go?” she said.

“We had a deal,” I said. “If they told me what I asked I wouldn’t turn them in.”

“You didn’t say that,” she said.

“Yeah, but Buddy and I both knew it”

“How do you know him? Who are they?”

“I don’t know Harold. Buddy I’ve run into over the years. He works on the docks, and he grifts. He unloads ships when there’s work. When there isn’t, he
steals. He’s an errand boy. You want your warehouse burned for insurance, you give Buddy a couple of bucks and he torches it. You want a Mercedes sedan, you pay Buddy and he steals you one. Some grocery clerk owes you money and he won’t pay and Buddy goes over and collects. Nothing heavy. Nothing complicated.”

“He belongs in jail,” Patty said.

“Yeah, I suppose so. He’s been there. He’ll be there again. He’s not that bad a guy.”

“Well, I think he’s pretty bad,” she said. “He broke into my house, manhandled me, tried to kidnap my son. I think he is very bad.”

“Yeah, I suppose you would. But that’s because you don’t know any people who are in fact very bad.”

“And you do?”

“Oh, my, yes,” I said.

“Well, I’m glad I don’t. I hope Paul didn’t see this.”

“Oh, he saw it,” I said. I nodded at the stairs. In the shadows of the upper hall, three stairs up from the living room, Paul was standing looking down.

“Paul,” she said. “How long have you been there?”

He didn’t say anything.

I said, “Since Buddy and Harold came in.”

“Don’t be scared, Paul,” she said. “It’s okay, Mr. Spenser has made them go away. He won’t let them bother us.”

Paul came down the stairs and stood on the middle step.

“How come you didn’t shoot them?” he said.

“I didn’t need to,” I said.

“Were you scared to?”

Patty Giacomin said, “Paul.”

“Were you?”

“No.”

“The guy said that there was something wrong with you. That you weren’t a shooter.”

“True.”

“What’d he mean?”

Patty said, “Paul, that’s enough. I mean it. You’re being very rude.”

I shook my head. “No. This all revolves around him. He has a right to ask questions.”

“What did he mean?” Paul said.

“He meant that if I was quicker to kill people, my threat would work better.”

“Would it?”

“Probably.”

“Why don’t you?”