I got up and walked around the living room with my hands in my hip pockets. I’d found out what I was supposed to find out, and I’d earned the pay I’d hired on at.
“Did you call your husband?” I said.
She shook her head. “He’s pitching today,” she said, and her voice was steady but without inflection. “I don’t like to bother him on the days he’s pitching. I don’t want to break his concentration. He should be thinking about the Oakland hitters.”
“Mrs. Rabb, it’s not a goddamned religion,” I said.
“He’s not out there in Oakland building a temple to the Lord or a stairway to paradise. He’s throwing a ball and the other guys are trying to hit it. Kids do it every day in schoolyards all over the land.”
“It’s Marty’s religion,” she said. “It’s what he does.”
“How about you?”
“We’re part of it too, me and the boy—the game and the family. It’s all he cares about. That’s why it’s killing him because he has to screw us or screw the game. Which is like screwing himself.”
I should be gone. I should be in Harold Erskine’s office, laying it all out for him and getting a bonus and maybe a plaque: OFFICIAL MAJOR LEAGUE PRIVATE EYE. Gumshoe of the stars. But I knew I wasn’t going to be gone. I knew that I was here, and I probably knew it back in Redford, Illinois, when I went to her house and met her mom and dad.
“I’m going to get you out of this,” I said.
She didn’t look at me.
“I know who’s blackmailing you.”
This time she looked.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
I TOLD HER what I knew and what I thought.
“Maybe you can scare him off,” she said. “Maybe when he realizes you know who he is, he’ll stop.”
“If he’s wearing Frank Doerr’s harness, I’d say no.”
“Why?”
“Because he’s got to be more scared of Frank Doerr than I can make him of me.”
“Are you sure he’s working for Frank What’s‘isname?”
“I’m not sure of anything. I’m guessing. Right after I started looking around the ball club, Doerr came to my office with one of his gunbearers and told me I might become an endangered species if I kept at it. That’s suggestive, but it ain’t definitive.”
“Can you find out?”
“Maybe.”
“Marty makes a lot of money. We could pay you. How much do you charge?”
“My normal retainer is two corn muffins and a black coffee. I bill the rest upon completion.”
“I’m serious. We can pay a lot.”
“Like Jack Webb would say, you already have, ma’am.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
“But I don’t want you to start until we get Marty’s approval.”
“Un-unh. Your retainer doesn’t buy that. I’m still also working for Erskine, and I’m still looking into the situation.
I’m now looking with an eye to getting you unhooked, but you can’t call me off.”
“But you won’t say anything about us?” Her eyes were wide and her face was pale and tight again and she was scared.
“No,” I said.
“Not unless Marty says okay.”
“Not until I’ve checked with you and Marty.”
“That’s not quite the same thing,” she said.
“I know.”
“But, Spenser, it’s our life. It’s us you’re frigging around with.”
“I know that too. I’ll be as careful as I can be.”
“Then, damn it, you have got to promise.”
“No. I won’t promise because I may not be able to deliver. Or maybe it will turn out different. Maybe I’ll have to blow the whistle on you for reasons I can’t see yet. But if I do, I’ll tell you first.”
“But you won’t promise.”
“I can’t promise.”
“Why not, goddamn you?”
“I already told you.”
She shook her head once, as if there were a horsefly on it. “That’s bullshit,” she said. “I want a better reason than that for you to ruin us.”
“I can’t give you a better reason. I care about promises, and I don’t want to make one I can’t be sure I’ll keep. It’s important to me.”
“Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit.” She was leaning forward, and her nostrils seemed to flare wider as she did.
“My game has rules too, Mrs. Rabb.”
“You sound like Marty,” she said.
I didn’t say anything.
She was looking at the Christian Science dome again.
“Children,” she said to it. “Goddamned adolescent children.’‘ My stomach felt a little funny, and I was uncomfortable as hell.
”Mrs. Rabb,“ I said, ”I will try to help. And I am good at this. I’ll try.“
She kept looking at the dome. ”You and Marty and all the goddamned game-playing children. You’re all good at all the games.“ She turned around and looked at me. ”Screw,“ she said, and jerked her head at the door.
I couldn’t think of much to say to that, so I screwed.
She slammed the door behind me, and I went down in the elevator feeling like a horse’s ass and not sure why.
It was almost three o’clock. There was a public phone outside the drugstore next to the apartment building entrance. I went in and called Martin Quirk.
”Spenser,“ he said. ”Thank God you called. I’ve got this murder took place in a locked room. It’s got us all stumped and the chief said; ’Quirk,‘ he said, ’only one man can solve this.“‘ ”Can I buy you lunch or a drink or something?“
”Lunch? A drink? Christ, you must be in deep trouble.“
I did not feel jolly. ”Yes or no,“ I said. ”If I wanted humor, I’d have called Dial-A-Joke.“
”Yeah, okay. I’ll meet you at the Red Coach on Stanhope Street.“
I hung up. There was a parking ticket neatly tucked under the wiper blade on the driver’s side. The string looped around the base. A conscientious meter maid. A lot of them just jam it under the wiper without looping the string, and sometimes on the passenger side where you can’t even see it.
It was nice to see samples of professional pride. I put the ticket in a public trash receptacle attached to a lamppost.
I drove down Boylston Street past the Prudential Center and the new public library wing and through Copley Square. The fountain in the square was in full spray, and college kids and construction workers mingled on the wall around it, eating lunch, drinking beer, taking the sun. A lot of them were shirtless. Beyond the fountain was the Copley Plaza with two enormous gilded lions flanking the entrance.
And at the Clarendon Street end of the square, Trinity Church gleamed, recently sandblasted, its brown stones fresh-looking, its spires reflecting brightly in the windows of the Hancock Building. A quart of beer, I thought, and a cutlet sub. Shirt off, catch some rays, maybe strike up a conversation with a coed. Would you believe, my dear, I could be your father? Oh, you would.
I turned right on Clarendon and left onto Stanhope, where I parked in a loading zone. Stanhope Street is barely more than an alley and tucked into it between an electrical supply store and a garage is the Red Coach Grill, looking very old world with red tile roof and leaded windows. It was right back of police headquarters, and a lot of cops hung out there.
Also a lot of insurance types and ad men. Despite that, it wasn’t a bad place. Quiet lighting, oaken beams, and such.
Quirk was at the bar. He looked like I always figured a cop ought to. Bigger than I am and thick. Short, thick black hair, thick hands and fingers, thick neck, thick features, a pockmarked face, and dressed like he’d just come from a summit meeting. Today he had on a light gray three-piece suit with a pale red plaid pattern, a white shirt, and a silk-finish wide red tie. His shoes were patent leather loafers with a gold trim.
I slipped onto a barstool beside him.
”You gotta be on the take,“ I said. ”Fuzz don’t get paid enough to dress like that.“