I shrugged. “It wouldn’t have mattered. If you survived the crash they’d have waited and blasted you.”
“You seem, so, so at ease with all of this.”
“I’m not. It scares me.”
“Perhaps. It scares me, too. But you seem to expect it. There’s no moral outrage. You’re not appalled. Or offended. Or … aghast. I don’t know. You make this seem so commonplace.”
“Aghast is irrelevant, too. It’s useless. Or expressing it is useless. On the other hand I’m not one of the guys in the other car.”
We went past the dog track and around Bell Circle. There was no one noticeable in the rearview mirror.
“Then you do what you do in part from moral outrage.”
I looked at her and shook my head. “I do what I do because I’m comfortable doing it.”
“My God,” she said, “you’re a stubborn man.”
“Some consider it a virtue in my work,” I said.
She looked at the gun lying on the seat.
“Oughtn’t you to put that away?”
“I think I’ll leave it there till we get to the Ritz.”
“I’ve never touched a gun in my life.”
“They’re a well-made apparatus,” I said. “If they’re good. Very precise.”
“Is this good?”
“Yes. It’s a very nice gun.”
“No gun is nice,” she said.
“If those gentlemen from the Lynnway return,” I said, “you may come to like it better.”
She shook her head. “It’s come to that. Sometimes I feel sick thinking about it.”
“What?”
“In this country—the land of the free and all that shit—I need a man with a gun to protect me simply because I am what I am.”
“That’s fairly sickening,” I said.
6
I picked Rachel Wallace up at her door at eight thirty the next morning, and we went down to breakfast in the Ritz Cafe. I was wearing my bodyguard outfit—jeans, T-shirt, corduroy Levi jacket, and a daring new pair of Pumas: royal-blue suede with a bold gold stripe. Smith and Wesson .38 Police Special in a shoulder holster.
Rachel Wallace said, “Well, we are somewhat less formal this morning, aren’t we? If you’re dressed that way tonight, they won’t let you in the dining room.”
“Work clothes,” I said. “I can move well in them.”
She nodded and ate an egg. She wore a quiet gray dress with a paisley scarf at her throat. “You expect to have to move?”
“Probably not,” I said. “But like they say at the Pentagon, you have to plan for the enemy’s capacity, not his intentions.”
She signed the check. “Come along,” she said. She picked up her briefcase from under the table, and we walked out through the lobby. She got her coat from the check room, a pale tan trenchcoat. It had cost money. I made no effort to hold it for her. She ignored me while she put it on. I looked at the lobby. There were people, but they looked like they belonged there. No one had a Gatling gun. At least no one had one visible. In fact I’d have been the only one I would have been suspicious of if I hadn’t known me so well, and so fondly.
A young woman in a green tweed suit and a brown beret came toward us from the Arlington Street entrance.
“Ms. Wallace. Hi. I’ve got a car waiting.”
“Do you know her?” I said.
“Yes,” Rachel said. “Linda Smith.”
“I mean by sight,” I said. “Not just by hearing of her or getting mail from her.”
“Yes, we’ve met several times before.”
“Okay.”
We went out onto Arlington Street. I went first. The street was normal nine AM busy. There was a tan Volvo sedan parked at the yellow curb with the motor running and the doorman standing with his hand on the passenger door. When he saw Linda Smith, he opened the passenger door. I looked inside the car and then stepped aside. Rachel Wallace got in; the doorman closed the door. I got in the back, and Linda Smith got in the driver’s seat.
As we pulled into traffic Rachel said, “Have you met Mr. Spenser, Linda?”
“No, I haven’t. Nice to meet you, Mr. Spenser.”
“Nice to meet you, Ms. Smith,” I said. Rachel would like the Ms.
“Spenser is looking after me on the tour,” Rachel said.
“Yes, I know. John told me.” She glanced at me in the rearview mirror. “I don’t think I’ve ever met a bodyguard before.”
“We’re just regular folks,” I said. “If you cut us, do we not bleed?”
“Literary, too,” Linda Smith said.
“When are we supposed to be in Belmont?”
“Ten o’clock,” Linda said. “Belmont Public Library.”
“What for?” I said.
“Ms. Wallace is speaking there. They have a Friends of the Library series.”
“Nice liberal town you picked.”
“Never mind, Spenser,” Rachel Wallace said. Her voice was brusque. “I told them I’d speak wherever I could and to whom I could. I have a message to deliver, and I’m not interested in persuading those who already agree with me.”
I nodded.
“If there’s trouble, all right. That’s what you’re being paid for.”
I nodded.
We got to the Belmont Library at a quarter to ten. There were ten men and women walking up and down in front of the library with placards on poles made of strapping.
A Belmont Police cruiser was parked across the street, two cops sitting in it quietly.
“Park behind the cops,” I said.
Linda swung in behind the cruiser, and I got out. “Stay in the car a second,” I said.
“I will not cower in here in front of a few pickets.”
“Then look menacing while you sit there. This is what I’m paid for. I just want to talk to the cops.”
I walked over to the cruiser. The cop at the wheel had a young wise-guy face. He looked like he’d tell you to stick it, at the first chance he got. And laugh. He was chewing a toothpick, the kind they put through a club sandwich. It still had the little cellophane frill on the end he wasn’t chewing.
I bent down and said through the open window, “I’m escorting this morning’s library speaker. Am I likely to have any trouble from the pickets?”
He looked at me for ten or twelve seconds, worrying the toothpick with his tongue.
“You do, and we’ll take care of it,” he said. “You think we’re down here waiting to pick up a copy of Gone with the Wind?”
“I figured you more for picture books,” I said.
He laughed. “How about that, Benny?” he said to his partner. “A hot shit. Haven’t had one today.” His partner was slouched in the seat with his hat tipped over his eyes. He didn’t say anything or move. “Who’s the speaker you’re escorting?”
“Rachel Wallace,” I said.
“Never heard of her.”
“I’ll try to keep that from her,” I said. “I’m going to take her in now.”
“Good show,” he said. “Shouldn’t be any trouble for a hot shit like you.”
I went back to the car and opened the door for Rachel Wallace.
“What did you do?” she said as she got out.
“Annoyed another cop,” I said. “That’s three hundred sixty-one this year, and October’s not over yet.”
“Did they say who the pickets were?”
I shook my head. We started across the street, Linda Smith on one side of Rachel and me on the other. Linda Smith’s face looked tight and colorless; Rachel’s was expressionless.
Someone among the pickets said, “There she is.” They all turned and closed together more tightly as we walked toward them. Linda looked at me, then back at the cops. We kept walking.
“We don’t want you here!” a woman shouted at us.
Someone else yelled, “Dyke!”
I said, “Is he talking to me?”
Rachel Wallace said, “No.”
A heavy-featured woman with shoulder-length gray hair was carrying a placard that said, A Gay America is a Communist Goal. A stylish woman in a tailored suit carried a sign that read, Gays Can’t Reproduce. They Have to Convert.