“But…”
“We’ll stake it out,” I said again. “We’ll be cool about it. We got two days to set it up.”
Trask said, “Now just hold on, Spenser. This is my town, and I decide whether or not we do any surveillance.”
Healy let the front legs of his chair down slowly to the floor, put his folded hands on the tabletop, leaned forward slightly, and with no inflection in his voice said, “George, please keep your trap shut until we are finished talking.”
Trask flushed. He opened his mouth and closed it. He looked hard at Healy for a minute, and then his eyes shifted away.
“Now,” Healy continued. “George, here’s what I want you to do. I want you to go down to the town hall and get some maps of that area from the surveyor’s office and bring them back. And together we will go over them.” He turned toward the Smithfield patrolman named Paul. “Marsh, I want you to take these two items into Ten-ten Commonwealth and have the crime lab go over them. You know people in there?”
Paul said, “Yessir, I been in there before.”
Healy handed him the two envelopes. Paul started to leave, looked uncertainly at Trask, then at Healy. Healy nodded. Paul left, holding the two envelopes under his raincoat. Trask sat looking at his knuckles. The muscles at his jaw hinge were clenched. There was a tic in his left eyelid.
“The maps, George,” Healy said. Their eyes locked again, briefly. Then Trask got up, put on a yellow slicker, and went out. He slammed the door In the kitchen it was quiet except for Margery Bartlett’s sobbing. Her husband stood about three feet from her, his arms hanging straight down as if he didn’t know what to do with them.
Earl Maguire said, “We’d better get a doctor over here.
He can give her something. Who’s your doctor; Rog? I’ll call him for you.”
“It’s there by the phone,” Bartlett said. “Croft, Doctor Croft. Have him come over. Tell him what happened. Tell him she needs something. That’s a good idea. Tell him to come over and give her something.”
Healy stood up, took off his coat, hung it over the back of his chair, loosened his tie, and sat back down. He nodded toward the chair Trask had left. “Sit down, Spenser,” he said. “We got some work to do.”
Chapter 5
Margery Bartlett had gone upstairs to lie down, Dr. Croft had come over and given her a shot. Roger Bartlett had gone to a neighbor’s house to pick up his daughter. Trask had brought back the maps, and he and Healy and I were looking at them spread out on the kitchen table. A small slick-haired state cop in plainclothes and rimless glasses had hooked a tape recorder to the phone in the den off the kitchen and sat next to it with earphones, reading a copy of Playboy he’d found in the magazine rack. He turned it sideways to look at the centerfold.
“Sonova bitch,” he said, “hair and all. You see this, Lieutenant?”
Healy didn’t look up. “If you gotta read that garbage, read it, but don’t narrate it.”
The little cop held the magazine out at arm’s length.
“Sonova bitch,” he said.
Healy said, “What’s up here, back of the riding stable?”
“Nothing,” Trask said, “just woods. It’s the west end of the Lynn Woods. Runs for miles back on into Lynn.”
“Hills?”
“Yeah, low ones; it slopes up back of the stable riding ring.”
“Can we put someone up there with glasses?”
“Sure, the woods are thick. He could climb a tree if he wanted.”
“You know the people at the stable?”
“Can we put somebody in there?”
“In the stable?”
Healy said, “I don’t mean inside the stable. Can we have someone posing as an employee?”
“Oh yeah, sure. I’ll set it up.”
Healy made some notes on a small notepad he’d taken from inside his coat. He used a big red fountain pen that looked like one my father had used when I was small.
“If they pick up the money here,” I said, “that’s northbound. Where’s the first place they can get onto Route 1 north?”
“Saugus,” Healy said. “Here, by the shopping center.”
“And the first place they can get off?”
“Here, about two hundred yards up, at this intersection.
Otherwise they could dip down through the underpass here and head up Route 1 or turn off here at 128. We can put a couple of people at each place.”
“And a walkie-talkie up on the hill with the glasses?”
Healy nodded. “We’ll put an unmarked car here.” He put a cross on the map at the intersection of Route 1 and Salem Street. “Here, here, he could U-turn at the lights. So here, southbound.” Healy marked out eleven positions on the map.
“That’s a lot of cars,” Trask said.
“I know. We’ll have your people use their own cars and supply them with walkie-talkies. How many people can you give me?”
“Everybody; twelve men. But who’s going to pay them per them?”
Healy looked at him. “Per them?”
“For the cars. They’re supposed to get a per them mileage allowance for the use of their own cars on official business. This could mount up if all of them do it. And I have to answer to a town meeting every year.” I said, “Do you accept Master Charge?”
Trask said, “It’s not funny. You’ve never had to answer to a town meeting. They’re a bunch of unreasonable bastards at those things.”
Healy said, “The state will rent the cars. I’ll sign a voucher. But if you screw this up, you’ll learn what an unreasonable bastard really is.”
“There won’t be any screw-up. I’ll be right on top of every move my people make.”
“Yeah,” Healy said.
“Who you going to put into the stable?” I asked Healy.
“You want to do it? You’re the least likely to be recognized.”
“Yeah.”
“You know anything about horses?”
“Only what I read in the green sheet.”
“It doesn’t matter We’ll go up and look around.”
Healy put on his coat, tightened his tie, put the snap-brimmed straw hat squarely on his head, and we went out.
The rain had started again. Healy ignored it. “We’ll go in your car,” he said. “No need to have them looking at the radio car parked up there. Stick here, Miles,” he said to the cop leaning against the cruiser. He had on a yellow rain slicker now. “I’ll be back.”
“Yes, sir,” Miles said.
I backed out, pulling the car up on the grass to get around the state cruiser.
“Your roof leaks,” Healy said.
“Maybe I can get the state to give me per them payment for a new one,” I said.
Healy said nothing. The stable was about ten minutes from the Bartletts’ home. We drove there in silence. I pulled into the parking lot in front of the stable, parked, and shut off the motor. The stable was maybe one hundred yards in from the road. The access to it was between a restaurant and a liquor store. The restaurant was roadside coloniaclass="underline" brick, dark wood and white plastic, flat-roofed. In front was an enormous incongruous red and yellow sign that advertised home cooking and family-style dining and cocktails. The store was glass-fronted; the rest was artificial fieldstone. It too had a flat roof rimmed in white plastic. In the window was an inflated panda with a sign around his neck advertising a summer cooler. Across the top of the store was a sign that said Package Store in pink neon. Two of the letters were out. The parking lot narrowed to a driveway near the stable.
The stable looked like someplace you’d go to rent a donkey. It was a one-story building with faded maroon siding, the kind that goes on in four-by-eight pregrooved panels. The trim was white, and the nails had bled through so that it was rust streaked. The roof was shingled partly in red and partly in black. Through it poked three tin chimneys. Next to it was a riding ring of unpainted boards and the trailer part of a tractor trailer rig, rusted and tireless on cinder blocks. In front of the stable parked among the weeds were five horse trailers, an old green dump truck with V-8 on the front, an aqua-colored ‘65 Chevy hardtop, a new Cadillac convertible, and a tan ’62 Chevy wagon. A sign, Solid Fill Wanted, stood at the edge of the road, and a pile of old asphalt, bricks, paving stones, tree stumps, gravel, crushed stone, sewer pipe, a rusting hot water tank, three railroad ties, and a bicycle frame settled into the marshy ground behind it. Marlboro country.