As I walked across the Common, the Hare Krishnas were chanting and hopping around in their ankle-length saffron robes, Hush Puppies and sneakers with white sweat socks poking out beneath the hems. Did you have to look funny to be saved? If Christ were around today, He’d probably be wearing a chambray shirt and flared slacks. There were kids splashing in the wading pool and dogs on leashes and squirrels on the loose and pigeons. In the Public Garden the swan. boats were still making their circuit of the duck pond under the little footbridge.
At home I got out a can of beer, read the morning Globe, warmed up some leftover beef stew for supper, ate it with Syrian bread while I watched the news, and settled down in my living room with my copy of Morison. I’d bought it in three-volume soft-cover and was halfway through the third volume. I stared at it for half an hour and made no progress at all. I looked at my watch: 7:20. Too early to go to bed.
Brenda Loring? No. Susan Silverman? No. Over to the Harbor Health Club and lift a few and talk with Henry Cimoli?
No. Nothing. I didn’t want to talk with anyone. And I didn’t want to read. I looked at the TV listings in the paper. There was nothing I could stand to look at. And I didn’t feel like woodcarving and I didn’t feel like sitting in my apartment. If I had a dog, I could take him for a walk. I could pretend.
I went out and strolled along Arlington to Commonwealth and up the mall on Commonwealth toward Kenmore Square. When I got there, I turned down Brookline Ave and went into a bar called Copperfield’s and drank beer there till it closed. Then I walked back home and went to bed.
I didn’t sleep much, but after a while it was morning and the Globe was delivered. There it was, page one, lower left, with a Carol Curtis by-line. sox WIFE REVEALS OTHER LIFE. I read it, drinking coffee and eating corn bread with strawberry jam, and it was all it should have been. The facts were the way Linda Rabb had given them. The writing was sympathetic and intelligent. Inside on the sports page was a picture of Marty, and one of Linda, obviously taken in the stands on a happier occasion. Balls.
The phone rang. It was Marty Rabb.
“Spenser, the doorman says Maynard and another guy are here to see me. Linda said to call you.”
“She there too?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll be over. Don’t let them in until I come.”
“Well, shit, I’m not scared…”
“Be scared. Lester’s got a gun.”
I hung up and ran for my car. In less than ten minutes I was in the lobby at Church Park and Bucky and Lester were glaring at me. The houseman called up and we three went together in the same elevator. No one said anything. But the silence in the elevator had the density of clay.
Marty Rabb opened the door and the three of us went in. Me first and Lester last. Linda Rabb came out of the bedroom with her little boy holding on to her hand. Rabb faced us in the middle of the living room. Legs slightly apart, hands on hips. He had on a short-sleeved white shirt, and his lean, wiry arms were tanned halfway up the forearms and pale thereafter. Must pitch with a sweat shirt on, I thought.
“Okay,” he said. “Get it done, and then get the hell out of here. All three of you.”
Bucky Maynard said, “Ah want to know just what in hell you think you gonna accomplish with that nonsense in the newspapers. You think that’s gonna close the account between you and me? ’Cause if you think so, you better think on it some more, boy.”
“I thought on it all I’m going to think on it, Maynard,” Rabb said. “You and me got nothing else to say to each other.”
“You think ah can’t squeeze you some more, boy? Ah got records of every game you dumped, boy. Every inning you fudged a run for the office pools, and ah can talk just as good as your little girl to the newspapers, don’t you think ah can’t.”
Lester was leaning bonelessly against the wall by the door with his arms across his chest and his jaws working. He was doing Che Guevara today, starched fatigue pants, engineer boots, a fatigue shirt with the sleeves cut off, and black beret. The shirt hung outside the pants. I wondered if he had the nickel-plated Beretta stuck in his belt.
“You can,” I said. “But you won’t.”
Linda and the boy stood beside Marty, Linda’s left hand touching his arm, her right holding the boy’s.
“Ah won’t?”
“Nope. Because you can’t do it without sinking yourself too. You won’t make any money by turning him in and you can’t do it without getting caught yourself. Marty will be out of the league, okay. But so will you, fats.”
Maynard’s face got bright red. “You think so?” he said.
“Yeah. You say one word to anybody and you’ll be calling drag races in Dalrymple, Georgia. And you know it.”
Everybody looked at everybody. No one said anything.
Lester cracked his gum. Then Rabb said, “So it looks like I got you and you got me. That’s a tie, you fat bastard. And that’s the way it’ll end. But I tell you one time: I’ll pitch and you broadcast, but you come near me or my wife or my kid and I will kill you.”
Lester said, “You can’t kill shit.”
Rabb kept looking at Maynard. “And keep that goddamn freak away from me,” he said, “or I’ll kill him too.”
Lester moved away from the wall, the slouch gone. He shrugged into his tae kwon do stance like a man putting on armor…
The little boy said, “Momma,” not very loud, but with tears in it.
Marty said, “Get him out of here, Linda.” And the woman and the boy backed away toward the bedroom. Maynard’s face was red and sweaty.
“Hey, kid,” Lester said, “your momma’s a whore.”
Rabb swung a looping left hand that Lester shucked off his forearm. He planted his left foot and swung his right around in a complete circle so that the back of his heel caught Rabb in the right side, at the kidneys. The kick had turned Lester all the way around. But he spun back forward like an unwinding spring. He was good. The kick staggered Rabb but didn’t put him down. The next one would, and if it didn’t, Lester would really hurt him. Maybe he already had. A kick like that will rupture a kidney.
Linda Rabb said, “Spenser.” And grabbed hold of her husband, both arms around him. “Stop it, Marty,” she said, “stop it.” The boy pressed against her leg and his father’s.
Marty Rabb dragged his wife and son with him as he started back toward Lester. Lester was back in his stance, blowing a big bubble and chewing it back in again. He was about three feet to my left. I took one step and sucker-punched him in the neck, behind the ear. He fell down, his legs folding under him at the knees so that he sank to the floor like a penitent in prayer.
“Marty,” I said, “get your wife and kid out of here. You don’t want the kid seeing this. Look at him.”
The kid was in a huddle of terror against his mother’s leg. Marty reached down and picked him up, and with his other arm tight around Linda Rabb, he hustled them into the bedroom.
“I will say to you what Rabb did, you great sack of guts,” I said. “You and your clotheshorse stay away from Rabb as long as you live or I will put you both in the hospital.”
Lester came off the floor at me, but he was wobbly. He tried the kick again, but it was too slow. I leaned away from it. I moved in behind the kick and drove a left at his stomach.
He blocked it and hit me in the solar plexus. I tensed for it, but it still made me numb. A good punch turning the fist over as it came, but there wasn’t as much steam as there should have been behind it, and I was inside now, up against him. I had weight on him, maybe fifteen pounds, and I was stronger.