Pale Kings and Princes (8 page)

"My name is Spenser," I said.

The guy in the Celtics jacket nodded toward a chair. I sat down. The guy in the Celtics jacket looked at me. So did the guy with the cashmere coat. The guy with the hat didn't look at anything.

I looked back.

After a while the guy in the cashmere coat said, "Do you know who I am?"

"Ricardo Montalban," I said.

They looked at me some more. I looked back.

"I loved you in Star Trek II. The Wrath of Khan," I said.

Cashmere glanced at Celtics Jacket. Celtics jacket shrugged.

"My name is Felipe Esteva," Cashmere said.

"I'll be goddamned," I said. "I'm never wrong about Ricardo. I saw him once outside the Palm on Santa Monica Boulevard. He was driving a Chrysler LeBaron and wearing a white coat just like that." I shook my head. "You sure?" I said.

The guy in the Celtics jacket leaned forward over the table and said, "You are going to be in very big trouble."

"Trouble?" I said. "What for? It's an easy mistake to make. Especially with the white coat."

Esteva said, "Shut up. I didn't come to listen. I came to talk."

I waited.

"Today you went to my house," he said, "and you talked to my wife."

I nodded.

"What did you talk about?"

"I asked her if she knew Eric Valdez," I said.

"Why did you ask her that?"

"I heard she did know him," I said.

"Who you hear that from?"

"A person who should know," I said.

"Who?"

I shook my head. "It was in confidence."

Esteva looked at the guy with the hat. "Maybe Cesar can change your mind."

"Maybe Cesar can't," I said. Cesar never moved. His eyes didn't shift. For all I could tell he hadn't heard us.

"Don't be foolish, Spenser. You think you are tough, and some people I know say maybe you are. But Cesar . . ." Esteva shook his head. Cesar remained silent.

"You ain't as tough as Cesar," the guy in the Celtics jacket said. He smiled when he said it and I saw that his upper front teeth were missing.

"Sure," I said.

We sat some more.

"I don't like you talking to my wife," Esteva said.

"Don't blame you, but it seemed a good idea at the time."

"You think she got something to do with Valdez?"

"Maybe," I said. "I was told that Valdez had had an affair with the wife of a Colombian and that he'd been killed by the husband."

Esteva stared at me. Then he said something in Spanish and his two pals got up and went to the bar and sat on stools out of earshot.

"I maybe kill you for saying that," Esteva said.

"Sure," I said. "Or you'll kill me for thinking you were Ricardo Montalban, or because you want to prove how tough Cesar is. I understand that possibility. But let's not waste time here with it. You saying you're going to kill me doesn't scare me. Probably it should. But it doesn't. And every time you say it, I got to think up a smart answer to prove that it doesn't scare me. It uses up all our energy and we've got more important stuff to talk about."

Esteva took out a long thin black cigar like Gilbert Roland used to smoke in the movies and lit it and got it drawing and inhaled and exhaled and gazed for a moment at the glowing tip. Then he looked at me and nodded. "That is true," he said.

He took in some more cigar smoke and let it out in a narrow stream.

"You think my wife had an affair with Eric Valdez?" he said.

"I don't know," I said.

"You think I killed him?"

"I don't know."

He was silent.

"That's why I asked," I said.

"You think maybe she's mad at me for killing him, she tell you about it."

"It happens," I said.

"Emmy don't have an affair with nobody," he said. "If she did I would kill him, sure. Maybe her too. But she don't. She love me, Spenser, and she respect me. You understand that?"

"Yeah," I said.

"You have other questions?" he said.

"Valdez's boss thinks he was killed to keep the lid on the cocaine trade here."

"That a question?" Esteva said.

"Yes," I said.

"What cocaine business," Esteva said. He put the cigar in the corner of his mouth and inhaled and exhaled without removing it.

"I was asking you," I said.

"I don't know nothing about cocaine," he said.

"You're in the produce business?" I said.

"Yes."

"And those two guys walk around with you in case a tough greengrocer tries to put the arm on you."

"I'm rich," Esteva said. "Lot of Anglos don't like a rich Colombian."

"How about the chief's son? How come he works for you?"

Esteva shrugged elaborately. "Don't do harm to do favors for the chief. Good business."

"Kid drives a truck," I said.

"Kid's slow," Esteva said. "Job's a good job for him."

"You send some people out to Quabbin Road the other night to roust me?"

Esteva shook his head.

"I didn't think you did," I said.

"You think I tell you if I did?" Esteva said.

"Hell," I said, "I don't know, Mr. Esteva. I don't know what's going on so I wander around and ask questions and annoy people and finally somebody says something or does something then I wander around and ask questions about that and annoy people and so on. Better than sitting up in a tree with a spyglass."

"Well, you annoying people. That is true," Esteva said. "One day it could get you hurt bad."

He got up and nodded toward the two men at the bar. They fell in behind him and followed as he walked out. When they reached the lobby the two guys in overcoats stood. Cesar stopped in the doorway of the lounge and turned slowly and looked at me. I looked back. It was like staring into a shotgun. Then he turned and went out behind the rest of them.

"That's for sure," I said. But no one heard me.

Garrett Kingsley called me at seven-ten in the morning.

"Bailey Rogers has been killed," he said. "We picked it up on the police radio. About fifteen minutes ago."

"Where," I said.

"Someplace on Ash Street," Kingsley said. "You know where that is?"

"Yeah," I said. "It's up past the library."

"Good, get over there and see what's going on.

"Do I get a by-line?" I said.

"We've got a reporter and a photographer on the way down there. But it's got to be connected."

"To Valdez?"

"Of course."

"I'll take a look," I said. "You know anything else?"

"No. That's all, just the initial call on the police radio."

"Who's the reporter?" I said.

"Kid named Murray Roberts," Kingsley said. "I don't know who the photographer will be yet."

"Okay," I said. "I'll be in touch."

I was showered and shaved and dressed for running. I took off my sweats and put on my jeans and a pink sweater. I took off my S&W .32 and put on my Colt Python. Leather jacket, sunglasses, and I was ready to solve something.

There were four cruisers, including one from the State Police, at the top of Ash Street. An ambulance was pulled up at a slant on the right-hand side of the road in front of an Oldsmobile Cutlass with a small roof-top antenna. The front door of the Cutlass was open. Two EMT's were at the door, one had his head inside, one stood behind him leaning on the roof with his left hand. The buzz and chatter of the police radios filled in the background. A yellow plastic police line had been strung around the scene. There were four or five Wheaton cops and one state trooper inside the line, and maybe twenty civilians in various stages of dress from bathrobe to suit and tie outside it. Somebody's yellow Lab was sniffing the tires of the State Police cruiser.

Henry, the pot-bellied Wheaton police captain who had tried to roust me on my first visit to the Wheaton Library, was standing behind the Olds, his arm around Caroline Rogers. He looked uncomfortable.

I parked along the side of the road and got out and walked over toward the Oldsmobile. J.D., the sergeant who'd been with Henry, spotted me.

"What the hell do you want?" he said.

"I understand someone aced the chief," I said.

"There's a crime under investigation," he said. "That's all you need to know."

"I figured you'd want to talk with me," I said.

"About what?"

"Usually cops talk to everybody that was in any way connected to a capital crime," I said. "Especially a cop killing."

"We'll get to you," J.D. said.

The state cop who had been talking with one of the EMT's saw me with J.D. and walked over.

"Who's this?" he said.

"Private cop from Boston," J.D. said.

The trooper was big, as so many of them are. He had short-cropped blond hair and pink cheeks.

"Boston, huh?" he said. "Know anybody I know?"

"Healy," I said. "Used to work out of Essex County DA's office. Now he's in at 1010 Commonwealth, I think."

"Homicide commander," the trooper said. "What are you doing out here?" J.D. had drifted fast away when the trooper spotted me.

"Central Argus hired me to come out and see about what happened to one of their reporters," I said.

The trooper nodded. "Valdez. Yeah, I looked in on that too. It's either coke or a jealous husband, or both. We turned up shit on it."

"That's what everyone else has turned up," I said. "Think this is connected?"

The trooper shrugged. "Town like Wheaton? Goes forty years without a killing then there's two murders in a month? Tough coincidence."

"That's what I thought," I said.

"Got any thoughts," the trooper said.

"No," I said. "Not yet."

The trooper nodded. He took a card from his uniform shirt pocket and gave it to me. "You come across anything give me a call," he said. "Where you staying?"

"Reservoir Court Motel."

"Got a card?" he said. I gave him one. The trooper grinned. "Enjoy," he said, and walked on toward the cruiser.

Just a big friendly kid in a spiffy uniform. Now he'd get in the cruiser and call in and see what they had on me. And they'd get hold of Healy and see what he could tell them. It had taken him maybe ten seconds to spot me when I showed up. If he hadn't turned up anything on the Valdez killing, it meant that there wasn't much to turn up. Or it was buried deeper than he'd had time to dig.

I walked along the edge of the police line. The EMT's had backed away from the Olds and a police photographer was taking flash pictures.

Caroline Rogers looked up and saw me. She said something to the captain. He looked at me and shook his head. She dipped her head slightly and stepped away from him and walked toward me. The skin on her face looked tight, but her voice was quiet when she said, "Mr. Spenser."

"Your husband," I said. She nodded gravely. "I'm sorry," I said.

She nodded again. "They've killed him," she said softly.

I waited.

She didn't say anything else. "Can I help you?" I said.

She looked at me steadily, her eyes wide and nearly all pupil. Her breathing was quiet. The skin seemed to tighten still more over the bones of her face as I looked at her.

"Maybe," she said. "Maybe you can."

"I'm at the Reservoir Court Motel," I said.

"I know," she said.

The state trooper was still sitting in the cruiser talking on the radio. Henry the police captain had walked over and stood outside the car, leaning on the roof with his arms folded, waiting for the trooper to get through.

The photographer got through and the EMT's started to bundle the corpse out of the front seat and into a body bag. I put my hands on Caroline Rogers's shoulders and turned her toward me.

"I can look," she said.

"I'm sure you can," I said, "but there are probably better ways to remember him."

She shook her head. "I'll remember it all," she said. "I wish to."

I took my hands off her shoulders and she turned and watched as they zipped her husband up in the bag and put him on the trundle and wheeled him to the ambulance. The legs folded, the trundle slid on into the bed of the ambulance. They closed the two doors, walked around to the driver's compartment, got in and drove away. The emergency light on the roof was flashing, but they didn't use the siren. Bailey was in no rush.

Caroline watched it pull away. When it rounded the curve and disappeared, she turned back to me and her eyes looked vacant. She seemed aimless, as if now that the event was over there was no place to go and nothing to do.

"The children?" I said.

"There's only Brett," she said. "He's away. He doesn't know yet." She seemed to be looking for something to do with her hands. "They never got along," she said. She clasped her hands in front of her. "Bailey demanded so much of Brett."

A neat dark-haired woman in a pleated plaid skirt stepped close to us on the other side of the police line.

"Caroline," she said, "come to the house with us."

Caroline looked at me a moment. I nodded. She nodded back. Then she turned toward the woman in the plaid skirt.

"Yes," she said, "maybe some coffee." She bent and slipped under the yellow plastic ribbon with the black police-line-do-not-cross printing on it and straightened on the other side. The woman in the plaid skirt took her hand and held it and together they walked across the street and into a white frame house with green shutters.

I looked at the trooper's card: Brian P. Lundquist. I looked at the cruiser. Lundquist had stepped out and was talking with the captain. Then both of them walked over to me.

"Lieutenant Healy says you could probably help on this," he said. "Says you used to be a police officer."

"Says they fired your ass, too," Henry said. Lundquist's eyes shifted very briefly from me to him and back.

"And it came out here and made captain," I said.

Lundquist smiled.

Henry didn't. "This is our business," he said. "We don't need a lot of outsiders coming in here telling us what to do."

Lundquist dropped his head in a polite little bob. "'Course you don't, Cap'n. Your chief gets smoked you want to take care of it yourself. Anyone would."