CHAPTER TWENTY
THE NEXT DAY it took me five miles of jogging and an hour and a half in the weight room to get the swelling out of my tongue and my vital signs functioning. I had breakfast in a diner, nothing could be finer, took two aspirin, and set out after Frank Doerr. A funeral parlor in Charlestown, Quirk had said. I brought all my sleuthing wiles to bear on the problem of how to locate it and looked in the Yellow Pages. Elementary, my dear Holmes. There it was, under “Funeral Directors”: Francis X. Doerr, 228 Main Street, Charlestown.
There’s no escape Doerr.
With the top down I drove my eight-year-old Chevy across the bridge into City Square. Charlestown is a section of Boston. Bunker Hill is there, and Old Ironsides, but the dominant quality of Charlestown is the convergence of elevated transportation. The Mystic River Bridge, Route 93, and the Fitzgerald Expressway all interchange in Charlestown.
Through the maze run the tracks of the elevated MBTA. Steel and concrete stanchions have flourished in the City Square area as nowhere else. If the British wanted to attack Bunker Hill now, they wouldn’t be able to find it.
From City Square I drove out Main Street under the elevated tracks. Doerr was maybe a half mile out from City Square toward Everett. Parking in that area of Charlestown was no problem. Most of the stores along that stretch of Main Street are boarded up. And urban renewal had not yet brought economic renewal. My car looked just right in the neighborhood.
Doerr’s Funeral Parlor was a two-story brick house with a slate roof. It was wedged in between an unoccupied grocery store with plywood nailed over the windows and a discount shoe store called Ronny’s Rejects. Across the street a vacant lot, not yet renewed, supported a flourishing crop of chicory and Queen Anne’s lace. Nature never betrayed the heart that loved her.
I brushed my hand over the gun on my hip for security and rang the bell at the front door. Inside, it made a very gentle chime. Full of solicitude. The door was opened almost at once by a plump man with a perfectly bald head. Striped pants, white shirt, dark coat, black tie. The undertaker’s undertaker.
“May I help you,” he said. Soft. Solicitous. May I take your wallet, may I have all your money? Leave everything to us.
“Yes,” I said. “I’d like to speak with Mr. Doerr.” Mr.
Doerr? He had me talking like him. I felt the scared feeling in my stomach.
“Concerning what, sir?”
I gave Baldy my card, the one with just my name on it, and said, “Tell Doerr I’d like to continue the discussion we began the other night.” Dropping the “Mr.” made me feel more aggressive.
“Certainly, sir, won’t you sit down for a moment?”
I sat in a straight-back chair with a velvet seat, and the bald man left the room. I thought he might genuflect before he left but he didn’t, just left with a dignified and reverent nod. It didn’t help my stomach. Getting the hell out would have helped my stomach but would have done little for my self-image. Doerr probably wasn’t that tough anyway. And Big Wally looked out of shape. Course you don’t have to be in really great shape to squeeze off, say, two rounds from a ninemillimeter Walther.
The building was absolutely silent and had a churchy smell. The entry hall where I sat was papered in a dim beige with palm fronds on it. Very understated and elderly. The rug on the floor was Oriental, with dull maroon the dominant color, and the ceiling fixture was wreathed in molded plaster fruit.
The bald man came back. “This way, please, sir,” he said, and stood aside to let me precede him through the door.
Well, Spenser, I said, it’s your funeral. Sometimes I’m uncontrollably droll.
Doerr’s office was on the second floor front and looked out at the elevated tracks. Just right if you wanted to make eye contact with commuters. Apparently Doerr didn’t because he sat behind a mahogany desk with his back to the window.
His desk was cluttered with manila file folders. There were two phones, and a big vase of snapdragons flourished on a small stand beside the window.
“What do you want?” Doerr said.
I sat in one of the two straight chairs in front of the desk. Doerr didn’t waste a lot of bread on decor.
“Why don’t you get right to the point, Frank?” I said.
“Don’t hide behind evasive pleasantries.”
“What do you want?”
“I want to answer some of the questions you asked me the other day.”
“Why?”
“Openness and candor,” I said. “The very hallmark of my profession.”
Doerr was sitting straight, hands resting on the arms of his swivel chair. He looked at me without expression. Without comment. A train clattered by outside the window, headed for Sullivan Square. Doerr ignored it.
“Okay,” I said. “You asked me what I was doing out at the ball park besides playing pepper.”
Doerr continued to look at me.
“I was hired to see if someone was going into the tank out there.”
Doerr said, “And?”
“And someone is.”
“Who?”
“I think we both know.”
“Why do you think that?”
“Several things, including the fact you came calling with your gunslinger right after I was out there.”
“So?”
“So you heard from someone. I know who’s dumping the games, I know who’s blackmailing him into it, and I know what shylock the blackmailer owes. And that brings us right back here to you. Okay if I call you Shy for short? We get on so well and all.”
“Names, Spenser. I’m not interested in a lot of bullshit about who you know and what anonymous whosis is doing what. Gimme a name and maybe I’m interested.”
“Marty Rabb, Bucky Maynard, and you, Blue Eyes.”
“Those are serious allegations, you got proof?”
“Serious allegations.” I whistled. “That’s very good for a guy whose lips move when he reads the funnies.”
“Look, you piece of turd, don’t get smart with me. I can have you blown away before you can scratch your ass. You understand? Now gimme what you got or you’re going to get hurt.”
“That’s better,” I said, “that’s the old glib Frankie.
Yeah, I got some proof, and I can get some more. What I haven’t got for proof yet is the tie between you and Maynard, but I can get it. I’ll bet Maynard might begin to ooze under pressure.”
“Saying you’re right, saying that’s the way it is, and you can get some proof out of Maynard. Why don’t I just waste Maynard or, maybe better, waste you?”
“You won’t waste Maynard, because I’ll bet you don’t know what he’s got on Rabb and I’ll bet even more that he’s got it stashed somewhere so if something happens to him, you’ll never know. You won’t waste me because I’m so goddamned lovable. And because there’s a homicide cop named Quirk that knows I’m here. Besides, I’m not sure you got the manpower.”
“You’re doing a lot of guessing.”
As far as you could tell from Doerr’s face, I might have been in there arranging a low-budget funeral. And maybe I was.
“I’m licensed to,” I said. “The state of Massachusetts says I’m permitted to make guesses and investigate them.”
“So what do you want?”
“I want it to stop. I want Maynard to give me the item he’s using for blackmail, and I want everyone to leave the Rabbs alone.”
“Or what?”
“I don’t suppose you’d accept ’or else.”‘ “I’m getting sick of you, Spenser. I’m sick of the way you look, and the way you dress, and the way you get your hair cut, and the way you keep shoving your face into my work. I’m sick of you being alive and making wise remarks.
You understand what I’m saying to you, turd?”
“What’s wrong with the way I dress?”
“Shut up.” Doerr’s face had gotten a little red under the health club tan. He swung his chair sideways and stared out the window. And he had begun to fiddle with a pencil.