Pale Kings and Princes (12 page)

"I need to talk with you both," I said.

Caroline didn't argue. She got up and went out of the living room and returned in a moment with Brett. The first time he looked at me I didn't register. He had a vague apprehensive look, the way a kid might have when his mother says a man wants to talk with you. Then he saw me again and I did register. He stopped short, and stared at me and then took a step back and closer to his mother.

"Yeah," I said, "it's me. The guy on the Maine Pike."

He shook his head and opened his mouth and closed it.

"What about the Maine Pike," Caroline said.

I looked at Brett. He didn't say anything.

"Brett?" Caroline said.

Brett's face was red. He didn't look at me, or his mother. His hands were jammed into the side pockets of his beige and blue warmup suit.

Caroline looked at me. "Mr. Spenser?"

I took in a deep breath. "Having nothing better to do a few days back I staked out the Esteva warehouse and when Brett drove out in a big tractor with no trailer I followed him."

Neither Brett nor his mother moved. Brett's round body seemed to huddle in on itself.

"He drove up to Belfast, Maine, and hooked up to a refrigerator trailer at a fish wholesaler and headed back home. I hijacked his truck from him on the Maine Turnpike and drove it home and unloaded it and found three hundred kilos of cocaine in it."

Caroline moved closer to her son. "Brett didn't know," she said.

I didn't say anything.

"He was just doing what he was told. He wouldn't know what was in the truck."

I looked at Brett.

Caroline's voice rose. "He wouldn't. He's a kid. He was just running errands."

"I was not," Brett said.

Caroline's head jerked toward him.

"Mr. Esteva trusted me. I was the only one he'd trust."

"Brett . . ." Caroline said.

"He did," Brett said. "And you stole the blow, and Mr. Esteva is mad at me."

"How often did you run the stuff for Esteva," I said.

"You're the one made Mr. Esteva mad," Brett said. "I had a good job and he trusted me. I was the only one he trusted to drive." Brett's face was even redder and his voice had a wheezy quality. Caroline had both hands pressed against her mouth. She had edged over so she was partly in front of her son. Fat as he was she couldn't shield him entirely.

"I'm not after you, Brett," I said. "I'm after Esteva."

"No," he said.

"Yeah," I said. "You can help me."

"No," Brett said again.

This wasn't going quite as I'd planned. Someday, when I had time, maybe I'd think of exactly when it was that something had gone as I'd planned.

"He was simply doing what his boss told him. He had no responsibility, he's seventeen years old."

"I did." Brett's teeth were clenched and the words hissed out. "I did. I knew."

"God damn it, Brett." Caroline was hissing too. "You be quiet."

"And you spoiled it," he hissed. "You got Mr. Esteva mad at me. You going to get me fired and Mr. Esteva mad."

"Brett," Caroline hissed.

Brett turned and rushed out of the room. Caroline stood frozen on the spot and looked after him. She said, "Brett," again, but there was no hiss to it. She looked at me.

"He's only seventeen," she said. "You can't-"

"I don't want to," I said. "I'm only interested in Esteva."

"It's the first job he's ever had," she said. "He didn't finish high school. He's . . ." Brett came back in the room with a handgun.

All of us were quiet.

It was a big handgun, a long-barreled revolver with a tarnished nickel plating. Brett held it in front of him at chest level in his right hand. He looked awkward, as if he wasn't used to a handgun. Lots of seventeen-year-old kids aren't. His elbow was bent and held close to his side and he had to cock his wrist forward to keep the gun level. He was hunched forward over the weapon, his head extended on his fat neck. From where I sat the gun looked bigger than a .38. Maybe a .44.

Brett said, "You bastard, you get out of here. You leave me and my mother alone."

I said, "Brett, unless you've got some experience with handguns there's a pretty good chance that you won't hit me if you shoot from there."

"Bastard," Brett said.

Caroline said, "Brett, where did you get that?"

That didn't seem the most important issue to me.

"I got it," Brett said. He was still looking at me, red-faced and wheezy, hunched fatly over the old revolver.

"Put it down, right now," Caroline said.

I edged my feet under me behind the coffee table.

"Now, Brett," Caroline said.

"It's mine," Brett said. But the edge in his voice had dulled.

"Now," Caroline said.

Brett looked away from me.

"Now."

He lowered the gun. Caroline reached out and took it by the barrel. They stood motionless for a moment, he holding the butt, she the barrel. Then he let go of the gun and Caroline took it, holding it by the barrel.

I stood and stepped across the living room and took the gun. Brett had his head down, his arms at his sides.

"Everything's going to be spoiled," he said. I looked at the gun. It was an old Navy Colt with a palm-worn walnut handle. And it wasn't a .44. It was a .41. His mother's question took on more weight.

"Where'd you get the gun, Brett?" I said. He shook his lowered head.

"Is it one of your husband's?" I said to Caroline.

She shook her head. "I've never seen it. I turned all of Bailey's guns in to Henry Macintire after the funeral. I don't want Brett having anything to do with guns."

I said, "It's a forty-one caliber. Same caliber that killed your husband. It's a very uncommon caliber." I opened the cylinder. It held four slugs. "Where'd you get the gun, Brett?"

"I found it," he said. He was still staring at the floor.

Caroline's eyes were wide. "What are you saying," she said.

"I'm saying this might be the gun that killed your husband."

"That's ridiculous," she said. "There must be thousands of guns like that."

"There are no forty-one-caliber handguns registered in the state," I said.

"For God's sakes; what does that prove, Brett wouldn't kill his own father."

"I'm sure he wouldn't," I said. "And this gun doesn't prove he did, but I sure would like to know where he got it."

"I found it," Brett said.

"Where," I said.

"On the ground."

"Where on the ground." I had stepped closer to him.

"Near the library."

"In the snow?"

"Yah."

"So how come there's no rust where the nickel's worn?"

"I dunno."

Brett's voice got softer with each response and his gaze stayed unvaryingly on the blue and red braided rug on the living room floor.

"I think you're lying, Brett," I said.

"No."

"Yes, you're lying."

Brett began to snuffle. "Am not," he said.

"Enough," Caroline Rogers said. "He's a seventeen-year-old boy. I won't let you bully him. He's done nothing wrong. You're treating him like a criminal."

"Caroline," I said, "he's running dope, he threatened me with a loaded weapon. He may be in possession of the weapon used in a murder."

Caroline's eyes began to tear as well. "Oh, Brett," she said.

"I'm sorry," Brett said. "I'm sorry, Mama. I'm sorry."

They were both crying full out now, incoherently.

I took the four rounds out of the Navy Colt and slipped them into my pants pocket. I stuck the gun into my belt and turned and walked to the front window and stared out at the snow-covered lawn.

So far so good. I had a recently widowed mother and her orphaned son crying hysterically. Maybe for an encore I could shoot the family dog.

Behind me I heard Caroline say, "It's all right, honey. It's all right. We'll fix it, nothing we can't fix. It'll be all right."

I turned and she was looking at me. She had her arms awkwardly around her fat child. "We have to fix it," she said.

"I know," I said. "We'll fix it. But we have to know what we're fixing. Brett needs to tell us where he got the rod."

"Tell me, Brett," his mother said. "You don't have to say it loud. You can whisper if you want to, just whisper it to me."

Brett nodded.

She put her ear close to his mouth and he whispered. She nodded.

"Okay," she said. "I'll tell Mr. Spenser, but I'll whisper too."

She walked over to me and whispered in my ear. "Esteva."

"Jesus Christ," I whispered back.

I was sitting in the front seat of Lundquist's State Police cruiser parked in the lot behind the library. The Navy Colt was in a paper bag on the floor of the rental Mustang parked next to us.

"This is going to be a little tricky," I said. Lundquist nodded.

"I may have the weapon that killed Rogers, and I need to get it tested against the bullets they took out of him to see if in fact it's the gun."

"No problem," Lundquist said.

It was a gorgeous winter day. Bright sun bouncing around off the snow, just warm enough for eaves to drip.

"Well, maybe not," I said. "The thing is that I don't want to tell you where I got it."

Lundquist nodded. "I can see where that might be a problem," he said.

"Say it turns out to be the gun, and it's going to be major-league coincidence if it doesn't, you're going to want to know whose gun it is, and if I tell you that I'll have to tell you how I know it's his and if I tell you that I'll have to tell you things I don't want to tell you."

"But now that we know you've got it," Lundquist said, "we can sort of insist."

"True," I said.

"And you know how hard we can insist when we feel like insisting."

"Also true," I said. "On the other hand, you've only got my word that I've got it, and if I retract, what have you got?"

"There's that," Lundquist said. "We could squeeze you a little."

"Un huh."

"But I got the feeling you been squeezed before."

"Un huh."

"So," Lundquist said, "you got a plan?"

"I give you the piece," I said. "You find out if it killed Rogers and tell me, and we go from there."

"Go where," Lundquist said.

"Where we can," I said. "There's stuff that has to be worked out."

"Like what?"

I shook my head.

Lundquist looked out at the little park off to his left in front of the library. He drummed his thick pale fingers gently on the top of the steering wheel.

"I don't see where I'm worse off than I was," he said.

I got out of the cruiser and opened my car door and took the gun out in its paper bag and got back in the cruiser and handed the gun to Lundquist. He opened it and looked in.

"Fingerprints?" he said.

"No," I said. "I wiped it."

"Swell," Lundquist said.

"Told you it was tricky," I said.

Lundquist nodded. "I think I'll keep this pretty much to myself," he said.

"Me too," I said.

I got out of the cruiser. Lundquist put the gun on the seat beside him, still in the paper bag, and put the car in gear and drove away. I watched him pull out into North Street and turn down the hill toward Main Street. Then I got back in the Mustang and sat.

Ballistics would prove that the Navy Colt had killed Bailey Rogers. A second .41 in the small circle I was snooping in was too big a coincidence. It meant that Esteva killed Rogers, or had it done. But that wasn't a bolt from the blue and it would still be hard to prove. The gun wasn't registered and there'd be no way to connect it to Esteva except through Brett's testimony. But that would open up the kid's connection with Esteva and the kid was not in shape for that. I wasn't sure what he was in shape for. His mother was in no shape for that either. So if I kept the blanket pulled up over Brett, what did I have. A reasonable and unprovable certainty that Esteva killed Rogers. If I'd never heard of Brett I would have had a reasonable and unprovable guess that Esteva killed Rogers. I could probably nail Esteva on the coke business, but again not without Brett. And I couldn't use Brett. Without Brett, Esteva was safe.

"Jesus Christ."

I got out of the car and went into the library.

There was a pale young woman with glasses at the desk.

"Is Mrs. Rogers here," I said.

"She's in the office," the pale woman said. "Left of the card catalogues."

I went to the office. Caroline Rogers was sitting at a library table with a card-file drawer on the table in front of her. She looked up when I came in and her eyes widened.

I said, "Where's Brett?"

"He's at work," she said. "We both thought it best not to stay home and brood."

"Call him, can you?"

"Of course I can. Why should I?"

"If Esteva finds out that we know about him and the gun," I said.

Caroline stared at me. "Oh, God," she said. "Brett would never tell."

"Let's just call him," I said.

She swung around in her chair and picked up the phone from the desk behind her. She dialed and waited.

"Brett Rogers, please."

She waited. There was a small coffee maker on a stand past the table with a pot of coffee almost boiled away on one of the burners. It made a harsh odor.

"He isn't?" Caroline said. "You're sure. Thank you."

She hung up. And turned in her chair. And looked at me.

"They said he's not there. That he didn't come to work." She picked up the receiver again and punched out another number. She waited. I went over and removed the coffeepot from the burner. She hung up the phone. "No answer," she said. "I'm going home."

"I'll drive you," I said.

She started to speak and then didn't. Her coat was on a hanger on the coatrack inside the office door. I held it for her while she slipped her arms through and then we were on our way. I spun the Mustang's wheels on the hard frozen ground in the parking lot and the back end fishtailed a little as I pulled out onto North Street. Caroline was silent for the ten minutes it took to drive to her house. I didn't have anything to say either.