Love Nest (18 page)

“Yes, I was good,” Harriet said simply.

“Good as Melody?”

There was no answer, none expected. The screech of jays came through the raised window as if the shot of unseasonable weather had jarred their senses. Rita spoke slowly.

“It’s not the cop you want, is it?”

Harriet turned her face away, sharply, with a cataclysm of feeling, and drew her lips forcibly over her large teeth.

“No, I didn’t think so,” Rita said, a suspicion confirmed.

In what seemed a moment of weightlessness, Harriet glided to the open window and raised it more. She went up on her toes and breathed deeply, sunlight irradiating her. Rita regarded her at length.

“You’re in tremendous shape. Most ex-hookers let themselves go. Thirty-five, they look fifty. Forty, forget it. Christ, you look like you could crawl into a ring, win on points.”

Harriet turned about casually. “I live by my body.”

“Not anymore.”

“Alfred didn’t marry me for my brain.”

“But you’ve got one. My brother said to me, long time ago, watch out for you.”

“Your brother was smart.”

“He was a genius. He said you got the brain but you don’t always use it. He said you were like me that way.” Rita loosened her cape and spread her knees. “You told me what Alfred married you for. What’d you marry him for?”

“Same thing.”

“You worshipped the ground he walked on, way we saw it.”

“Yes.”

“Before you came into the picture, when he was trying to get on the good side of my brother, he wined and dined me at Locke-Ober. The bottle of wine cost three-hundred dollars. Got me tipsy. End of the evening, in his car, I gave him a blow job. He ever tell you?”

Harriet was playing with a button on her shirt. She said, “He may have. I don’t remember.”

“Did you blow my brother?”

She answered without thought or memory. “Probably.”

“Fiddling with your shirt that way makes you look a little like Melody. That what you want?”

“Hardly.”

“Then you ought to be careful. Every couple of weeks I used to pay Melody a hundred bucks for a massage. She had good hands. You got good hands, Harriet?”

“You know I do.”

“Been a long time, hasn’t it? I got Ralph doing me now, he’s not so good.”

“If I ever need a hundred dollars I’ll call you.”

Rita grimaced. She liked the fruit drink but wanted no more of it. “Here, take it,” she said, and Harriet came forward and relieved her of the tumbler. “You finish it.”

“Yes, I won’t waste it,” Harriet said, her dull expression undeviating, something Olympian in her stance.

Rita let her voice drop drastically. “You’re going to throw everything away, aren’t you?”

“Nothing’s clear in my mind.”

“I think everything’s crystal clear,” Rita said, and each gazed at the other with a sort of fascination, as if fully seeing each other for the first time, deep inward looks surgical in nature. Then, with a heavy effort, Rita rose from the chair and pulled at her cape. The floor seemed to quiver under her weight. “I don’t think it’d do much good to argue.”

Harriet raised the tumbler to her lips. “I don’t think you would anyway.”

“You act like I don’t care.”

Harriet gave out a smile both desolate and wise. “Oh, you care all right.”

In the foyer Rita added sunglasses to her face and inspected herself in the oak-framed mirror. Something of her image saddened her, and she toyed with the idea that back in time she had been someone else, someone less emphatic but more secure. Harriet waited for her at the open door, toward which she moved with a pinch of regret in her expression, her arms extending out of the cape.

Their embrace was brief but full of feeling, as if they might not see each other again.

• • •

Chief Chute said, “I don’t have so many detectives I can have one working on a case that’s closed.”

“It has a life of its own,” Dawson said, “almost nothing to do with me.”

“The chief and I don’t understand talk like that.” The speaker was the district attorney, Ned to his friends. He had dense, iron gray hair, a large, virile face with an eagle nose, and the padded bulk of a former college football player. He consumed a chair near Chief Chute’s desk. “Or maybe the chief understands. He knows you better.”

Dawson sat in a smaller chair with one long leg flung over the other. The chief had summoned him to his office a half hour after the district attorney had entered it.

“Fact is, Sergeant, you never should’ve been on the case. If I’d known about your involvement with the victim you wouldn’t have been. But I can understand the chief doing for you. You’re his favorite. I got favorites of my own I stick my neck out for.”

Chief Chute stirred uncomfortably at his desk, his soft chin rising above the busy braid of his shirt. “I thought it best to tell the D.A. everything. To protect you, Sonny.”

“She was kind of young for you, wasn’t she, Sergeant?”

Dawson flushed faintly and bit back what he was going to say, which would not have been politic. The district attorney flashed a smile meant to be man-to-man.

“Was she that good?”

“No,” Dawson said. “She was that different.”

“I told you, Ned, it wasn’t that kind of relationship,” the chief interposed quietly.

“That’s hard to swallow.”

“I was getting information from her,” Dawson said.

“That so?”

“You know about Alfred Bauer, his past connection with Tony Gardella. Now it’s with Gardella’s sister, who lives right here in town now. The two of them owned the Silver Bell Motor Lodge, at least they did until today. Bauer used to import high-priced hookers to the motel, two and three times a week. He worked it through a shrink named Stickney, an old buddy, who provided classy clients for so-called therapy. The clients were mostly from the town’s high-tech companies.”

The district attorney absently stroked the back of his neck. “So these clients were patients under professional care.”

“If you want to be ironic about it.”

“Situation like that, I’m not sure it’s illegal. I’d have to check. But the chief tells me you put a word in the right ear and Bauer killed the operation. No fuss, no scandal for the town, everything taken care of diplomatically. I’d say that was smart police work. Should’ve ended there. Instead you involved yourself with the girl.”

“She involved herself with me.”

“Takes two to tango.”

“I wanted Bauer.”

“Why, Sergeant? Was it personal?”

“Matter of common sense. People like him and Gardella’s sister are too big for the town. A few years from now they’ll be putting selectmen into office, that’s my opinion.”

“What are you, a crusader?” The district attorney snorted indulgently. “OK, you wanted Bauer, but the girl didn’t give him to you. Did you seriously think she would?” His smile turned chilly and authoritative. “Looking back, do you think Bauer was ever in the least worried?”

“I don’t know,” Dawson said in a low tone, and the district attorney gave out another snort, louder and less indulgent. With a glance at the narrow door to Chief Chute’s private lavatory, his shoulders straining the open jacket of his suit, he hoisted himself up.

“Mind if I use your toilet, Chief?”

Dawson and Chief Chute shifted their eyes to other places, for he did not bother to close the door. He propped an arm against the facing wall and leaned over the open bowl, his trousers worn so low under the arc of his belly that he nearly did not need to bother with the zipper. He spoke above the forceful clatter of his splash.

“I’ve been D.A. for twelve years, a lawyer for twenty, and before that I was a cop just like you, Sergeant, sin city of Revere. I learned something all those years. A hooker, from the lowest to the highest, never turns in her pimp. That’s her daddy.”

He finished with a flourish and a shiver, struck the flushing lever, and stepped to the sink. He spoke over the roar.

“My belief, Sergeant, is deep in your gut you knew this, but you wanted to shack up with her. Who the hell could blame you? I heard she was a knockout. Must’ve had a heart of gold too. Right?”

Chief Chute, avoiding Dawson’s eyes, lowered his fuzzy head and rearranged something on his desk. The district attorney came out blotting his hands in paper toweling.

“What I can’t understand is you still fiddling with the case. Far as everybody’s concerned, exception of you, it’s closed. Even if you did come up with something, chances are I couldn’t use it. You’d be suspect. A lawyer would tear you apart, for Christ’s sake.”

“I did come up with something. Didn’t the chief tell you?”

“I told him, Sonny.”

“Yeah, he told me, and it’s bullshit. Who cares why the Bauer kid put a belt around his neck? Either case, he was sick in the head. You’d rather it not be suicide because you don’t want the guilt. I can’t worry about that and neither can the chief. He’s got a town to look after, I got a whole county.”

The district attorney made a sodden ball of the toweling and tossed it into the chief’s wastebasket. Then he picked up his coat.

“Something else I learned through the years, Sergeant. Trust your first instinct. Nine times out of ten it’s on the mark.”

Left alone, Dawson and Chief Chute avoided each other’s eyes, their silence uneasy. The chief opened a desk drawer as if in search of something not quite worth finding and rummaged up a fingernail trimmer. “Well, Sonny, I’m glad the D.A. knows everything.” He pared a nail. “I feel like a load’s been taken off our shoulders, don’t you?”

“Your shoulders,” Dawson said, rising. “Not mine.”

A couple of minutes later he approached the desk sergeant, who was munching a Danish that bore a passing resemblance to a pizza. The front doors of the station were open, letting in sunshine and a breeze. With sticky fingers the desk sergeant held out a yellow slip of paper. “Dispatcher left a message for you. Number, no name.”

Dawson stared at the scribbled telephone number. It was local and familiar.

“Beautiful day, huh, Sonny?” the desk sergeant said with icing in his mustache. “But a tease. You know what’s coming, right?”

“No,” Dawson said, “I wish I did.”

He turned left, stepped into the small interrogation room, and made the call from there. The number belonged to Bauer Associates. The voice in his ear belonged to the receptionist, Eve James. He said, “I’m returning Alfred Bauer’s call.”

She said, “No, Sonny, you’re returning mine.”

• • •

When Fran Lovell emerged from the back door of the bank, the sun had vanished, but the air was still warm, fraudulent in its promise. Walking toward her car with her weighty coat open, she saw Sergeant Dawson waiting for her. She smiled wryly. “Is this a pinch?”

“I’d like to buy you a cup of coffee,” he said, and she pulled a face.

“I’ve got a bunch of errands to do and a kid to pick up. Unless you’re planning to ask me to run away with you, I’ll take a rain check.”

“Could we talk in your car? Just for a minute.”

“Sure, why not. If you play it right, you might grab yourself a cheap feel. On second thought, you’d better not. I’m a little sore.”

Her car was a small economical model with an overloaded ashtray and coffee-mug rings on the narrow top of the dash. Settled in, she lowered her window and lit a cigarette. Dawson shoved back the passenger seat to prevent his knees from nudging his chin. He said, “Do you remember Eve James from high school?”

“Of course I remember her. I hated her, naturally.”

“Why naturally?”

“I was pretty, more than pretty, but she was beautiful. Remember that gorgeous red hair of hers, so thick it must have taken three hours to dry when she washed it?”

“She had her problems.”

“Didn’t we all. But you’re right, she got heavy into drugs, senior year.”

“What happened to her after graduation?”

“Her father’s company transferred him to Houston or some foolish place like that. Eve stayed, or rather she moved to Boston. Somebody told me she went to work in a health club. She wanted to become a model, but talk was she became something else, if you know what I mean. Christ, how many years ago was that? Don’t tell me.”

“She’s back in town. She works for Bauer Associates.”

“I know. I ran into her there on bank business. She was arranging flowers in a vase for her boss’s office.”

“She’s the receptionist.”

Fran Lovell laughed. “She’s more than that. The dress she was wearing cost at least three hundred dollars.”

“I didn’t recognize her at first.”

“I knew her right away, even with her hair cut so short, but I had to tell her who
I
was, which pissed me off. Have I changed so much?”

“We all have.”

“Not you, not her. She’s hard in the face, but she’s still got the same great shape, which is more than I can say. I tried to get her into conversation, but she wasn’t interested in talking over old times. I’m an assistant vice-president in the town’s biggest bank, and she looked at me like I’m some old cow. Bitch!” She pitched her cigarette out the window. “Why are you so interested in her?”

“She’s asked me out to dinner tonight. Her treat.”

Fran Lovell’s face stiffened. “Lucky you.” She jammed in the ignition key. “Get out. I’ve got things to do.”

“Why are you so mad?”

“I’m not. I’m in a hurry.”

“I have another question, not about Eve. About Paige Gately buying the Silver Bell. That was a major league purchase. How’d she get the bank to go along with her?”

“Come on, Sonny. You know she and Ed Fellows have always had a special relationship. Same as I’ve always had one with him, though mine’s not as special.”

He gave out a mock look of innocence, and she bristled with impatience and irritation.

“Don’t tell me you never wondered how I made it in the bank? I was no big brain in high school, was I? A surprise I graduated.”

She started up the car, and he climbed out. Before he could shut the door, she bent her head and looked out at him, her hair falling over half her face.

“You poor fool.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Eve James will eat you up.”

• • •