Pale Kings and Princes (15 page)

"I thought shrinks cryptic," Hawk said.

"Only with patients," Susan said.

"The only thing I got to add is that there was a state trooper assigned to this thing," I said, "a sharp kid named Lundquist, and somebody got him reassigned."

"So there's folks connected," Hawk said.

I shrugged. "Cocaine," I said. Hawk nodded.

"Esteva?" Susan said.

"Maybe," I said. "Maybe the cops."

"The Wheaton cops?" Susan said.

"Maybe."

"Maybe Esteva who the Wheaton cops connected to," Hawk said.

"Maybe," I said, "at one end."

"Till we know," Hawk said, "probably not a swell idea to call them for help."

"True," I said.

"So we're on our own out here," Susan said.

"Yes," I said.

"Don't suppose you want to just dust Esteva and go on home," Hawk said.

"We don't know if he did anything," I said.

"Done something," Hawk said. "We know he running coke."

"But you can't prove it," Susan said.

Hawk smiled his warm meaningless smile. "Proving don't matter to me, Susan. Knowing's enough."

"I want it all," I said.

"You always do," Hawk said. "How about this lady?"

"Caroline Rogers?"

"Yeah, we gonna save her too?"

"Yes."

Hawk's smile got wider.

"Thought we probably would," he said.

Susan took the Mustang to visit Caroline Rogers.

"Her doctor makes hospital rounds after five today," I said. "His name's Wagner."

"Internist?" Susan said.

"Yeah, I looked him up in the phone book."

"I'll speak to him. Sedation helps, but only for so long. After a point it delays the process of reintegration."

"Don't want to do that," Hawk said.

Susan smiled at him. "Different kind," she said. She looked at me and back at Hawk. "Take care of each other," she said. Then she pulled away, spinning her tires, going a little too fast, as she always did.

We got in Hawk's Jaguar.

"Where we going?" Hawk said.

"Might as well go talk with Esteva," I said.

"Any chance he might want to shoot us a little?" Hawk said.

"Some," I said.

"Bet he can't," Hawk said. He slid the car into first and we glided out of the parking lot. The stereo was playing softly.

"What the hell is that?" I said.

"Waylon Jennings," Hawk said. He reached over and ejected the tape.

"You?"

Hawked looked over at me. "Naw, man. Susan. She into that hillbilly stuff."

"Yeah," I said, "I know. She's smart though, and a good dancer."

People looked at the Jaguar as we went through Wheaton. There were some workers in the yard at Esteva's produce warehouse when we pulled up. They stared at the Jaguar. When we got out, they stared at Hawk. He glanced at them and they turned quickly away and went about their business, or made some up to be about.

There was a door near the front of the warehouse. Over it a small rustic sign hung from a wrought-iron arm. It said OFFICE. We went in. There was a desk opposite the door and filing cabinets on the wall behind it. A round-shouldered man with thick black hair and a long nose sat at the desk. The sign on his desk said SHIPPER. "Arthur" was lettered in white script above the pocket of his dark blue work shirt.

"Help you?" he said. He glanced at me and then at Hawk and then quickly back to me.

"Esteva?" I said.

"Mr. Esteva's got a meeting," Arthur said. "What's it about?"

"Tell him Spenser's here," I said.

Arthur picked up the phone and dialed. "Arthur," he said into the phone. "Tell Mr. Esteva there's a guy named Spenser out here to see him. Another guy with him, too."

He listened at the phone for about a minute. Then he nodded. "Okay," he said, and hung up. He pointed toward a door in the wall to our right. "Through there, turn left. There's some stairs at the far side of the warehouse. Go up the stairs."

I said, "Thank you."

We went through the door and were in the warehouse proper. There were roller conveyors and long flat tables and wide aisles through which forklift trucks moved. Crates of vegetables were piled on the tables and workers repacked them and sent them on down the rollers to the next station as orders were packed. Most of the workers were Hispanic.

The wooden stairs went up at right angles, along the far wall of the building. At the top of the stairs an office with frosted-glass windows perched like a tree house halfway up the wall. When I reached the door, it opened and I stepped inside. Hawk stopped outside. Esteva was at his desk. Cesar was standing against the wall to his left. Hands hanging at his side., His small hat sitting squarely on top of his head. I glanced behind the door that had just opened. The guy in the Celtics jacket was behind me.

"Tell your friend to come in," he said.

"How about you walk over near the desk," I said, "where we can see you. Then he'll come in."

Celtics Jacket looked at Esteva. Esteva made a barely perceptible nod of his chin. Celtics Jacket shrugged. He left the door open and walked over to stand against the wall to Esteva's right.

Hawk stepped through the door and closed it quietly behind him. He looked at Cesar. Cesar looked back, with no expression. I looked at Esteva. He looked back: No one was looking at Celtics Jacket. He'd had his turn. The silence lasted for a long time, for a silence.

"Esteva's the one in the middle," I said to Hawk. "Guy with the funny hat is named Cesar. Guy with the Celtics jacket, I don't know his name."

"How come he wearing his jacket indoors," Hawk said.

"Probably doesn't own a shirt," I said.

"What do we call him," Celtics Jacket said. "He got a name or we just call him Schwartze?"

"They call me Mr. Tibbs," Hawk said. He still hadn't taken his eyes off Cesar.

"Tibbs, huh? Sounds like a fucking schwartze name . . ."

"Shut up, Felice," Esteva said without looking at him. "He's kidding you."

We were all quiet again, looking.

Esteva lit one of his Gilbert Roland cigars. He inhaled, let out a cloud of smoke and gazed at me through it. Dramatic.

"You come to do any business?" Esteva said.

"Maybe," I said. "What kind of business you got in mind?"

"I figure you got something you want to sell me."

Beside me Hawk was as motionless as Cesar. They seemed oblivious to the rest of us, lost in contemplation.

"What do you think that is?" I said.

Esteva puffed on his cigar.

"How I know you don't have a wire?" he said.

"Let Felice pat us down, one at a time," I said.

Esteva turned his head toward Cesar. "Not Cesar," I said. "Felice."

"Sure," Esteva said. He nodded at Felice. Felice patted me down carefully.

"He carrying, Mr. Esteva," Felice said.

"Un huh," Esteva said.

Felice moved slowly to Hawk and patted him down. Even during the frisk, Hawk's eyes never left Cesar.

"Tibbs carrying too, Mr. Esteva."

"Any wire?"

"No."

"Good," Esteva said. "No problem." Felice stepped back to his place by the wall. Esteva said, "No need to bullshit anymore. You got two hundred keys of cocaine belongs to me."

"I had to turn in a hundred to the cops to explain what I was doing with the kid."

"Sure, and you figure to bust me too. Hundred good as three to bust me," Esteva said. "If I go to jail you sell it to somebody else."

"You understand," I said.

"I understand business," Esteva said. "Two hundred keys, a lot of coke. A lot of money. It's why you still alive." He pronounced you as if it were spelled with a j.

"Because I know where it is," I said. Esteva smiled and nodded.

"I thought of that too," I said. "And I thought about how once I sell it back to you, there's no reason for me to stay alive."

"Lotta money in this business," Esteva said. "But it's risky"-he inhaled some cigar smoke -"risky business. Why there's so much money."

"So are you buying?"

Esteva shrugged. I waited. Esteva waited. I waited some more.

"How much you asking?" Esteva said.

"Thirty-two thousand a kilo," I said.

Esteva shook his head. "That's list around here," he said.

"I know," I said.

"I already paid for the junk once," Esteva said. "Can't make a living paying list price twice."

I said, "Un huh."

Esteva didn't say anything. Neither did I. Below and behind us the sounds of produce distribution went on. The clatter of the rollers on the conveyor runs, the thump of crates being tossed around.

"Ten," Esteva said.

"In Boston I can get over forty," I said.

"Ten, and you stay alive," Esteva said.

We were quiet again. Beside me Hawk was whistling to himself. Almost inaudibly. He did it between his teeth, with his lips barely parted. "Georgia on My Mind."

"Think about it," Esteva said. "No rush, a few days."

"I'll think about it," I said, and turned and started out the door. Hawk pointed his forefinger at Cesar with his thumb cocked. He grinned and dropped the thumb. "Bang," he said.

Cesar never blinked. Hawk made a little laughing sound to himself that sounded like "hum." Then he turned and came after me. At the foot of the stairs were Arthur and three other guys who didn't look like workers. I recognized two of them from the lobby of the Reservoir Court Motel. We walked through them without comment and through the office and out into the yard.

"How'd you like Cesar," I said.

"Ain't no lettuce plucker," Hawk said.

"Probably not," I said.

We got in Hawk's car and pulled away. Slowly.

"He ain't gonna give you money for that stuff," Hawk said. "He can't stay in business, he let people hold him up like that."

"I know," I said. "He's smart, though. He haggled with me just like he was going to pay."

"He'll come to a price with you and then when you show up he'll kill you."

"Unless we prevent him."

Hawk grinned. "Cesar going to take heavy preventing."

"We heavy enough?" I said.

Hawk's grin widened. "'Course," he said. "You got some kind of plan here?"

"About half a plan," I said. "I held back the two hundred kilos so I could have some leverage with Esteva. If everything was aboveboard a hundred keys is enough to blow Esteva out of the water and if it did I could turn the other two in."

"But it didn't," Hawk said.

"No. Which meant pretty sure that everything was not aboveboard."

"We back to Wheaton's finest again."

"Yes," I said.

"Where the stuff now," Hawk said.

"In a storage room downstairs at the Harbor Health Club."

"You kind of illegal," Hawk said.

"I figured you wouldn't mind," I said.

"Mind," Hawk said, "I like it. Just never figured out where you draw all them lines you draw."

"I'm a little fuzzy on that myself."

"You know Esteva's going to ace you if he can, which he can't but he don't know that. You know he's Frosty himself for maybe the whole Northeast. You think he clipped three people including a seventeen-year-old kid. You willing to hijack his truck and hold his junk and extort him, all of which making him and old Cesar mad as hell."

"True," I said.

"But you not willing to just dust him and fold it up."

"No."

"You not practical, babe."

"True."

"You willing to kill some people. You done it to a bunch out west a couple years ago."

"Yeah."

"But not here."

"I don't know enough," I said.

"I don't know the whole thing and Caroline Rogers has a right to know it all."

"You had to shoot anybody since out west?" Hawk said.

"Shot a guy in the leg, couple weeks back," I said.

Hawk said, "Um."

"Didn't I hear you whistling Willie Nelson back there in the warehouse?" I said.

"Susan play those tapes at me," he said, "all the way out."

"And maybe you kind of like Willie?" I said.

"He ain't Jimmy Rushing," Hawk said.

Susan came back from seeing Caroline Rogers. She came into the bar, where Hawk and I were being served in silence by Virgie. Hawk and I were drinking beer.

"Asked for champagne," Hawk said to Susan. "They gave me Korbel."

"Frontier living," Susan said. Hawk slid down a stool along the bar, and Susan sat between us. Virgie came down the nearly empty bar and looked at her.

"Margarita," Susan said, "on the rocks, salt."

"What do you think," I said.

"I talked with Wagner. He's all right. He's not awfully sophisticated about emotions, but he knows it and is glad for the help."

"How about Caroline," I said.

"She's home," Susan said, "Wagner released her while I was there and we took her home. She's going to take tranquilizers for about three months and then we'll slowly reduce the dosage."

"Otherwise you get cardiac problems," Hawk said.

Susan and I both looked at Hawk for a moment.

"That's right," Susan said. Hawk smiled.

"You look like a scary Mona Lisa when you do that," Susan said.

Hawk's smile broadened.

"How'd Caroline feel about you," I said.

"Ambivalent," Susan said. "She's suspicious of shrinks. She'd rather you had been there."

"Un huh."

"She is under the impression that you can leap tall buildings at a single bound."

"Well," I said, "not really tall buildings."

"But whoever she'd prefer," Susan said, "she knows she needs help with this, and she seems to believe, at least partially, that help is possible."

"That's encouraging," I said.

"Yes, it is," Susan said. "Hopelessness is hard."

"Did you make any arrangements?" I said.

"I'll see her tomorrow. Then we'll see. I don't normally do house calls. I don't know if she'll want to drive forty miles each way, twice a week, to see me."

"You could refer her," I said.

"Yes, for the long term. For the short term she's suicidal and you can probably help her as much as I can."