”I never worked,“ Pam said. ”I always just stayed home with the kids.“
”But that must be interesting too,“ Susan said. ”And tiresome. I never had much chance to do that.“
”You’re not married?“
”Not now, I was divorced quite some time ago.“
”Children?“
Susan shook her head, I pulled into the parking lot at Bert’s. ”You know anybody in this town,“ I said to Pam.
”No.“
”Okay, then this place ought to be fairly safe. It doesn’t look like a spot people would drive up from the Cape to go to.“
Bert’s was a two-story building done in weathered shingles fronting on the ocean. Inside, the dining room was bright, pleasant, informal and not very full. We sat by the window and looked at the waves come in and go out. The waitress came. Susan didn’t want a drink. Pam Shepard had a stinger on the rocks. I ordered a draft beer. The waitress said they had none. ”I’ve learned,“ I said, ”to live with disappointment.“ The waitress said she could bring me a bottle of Heineken. I said it would do. The menu leaned heavily toward fried seafood. Not my favorite, but the worst meal I ever had was wonderful. At least they didn’t feature things like the John Alden Burger or Pilgrim Soup.
The waitress brought the drinks and took our food order. I drank some of my Heineken. ”Okay, Mrs. Shepard,“ I said.
”What’s up?“
She looked around. There was no one near us. She drank some of her stinger. ”I… I’m involved in a murder.“
I nodded. Susan sat quietly with her hands folded in front of her on the table.
”We… there was…“ She took another gulp of the stinger. ”We robbed a bank in New Bedford, and the bank guard, an old man with a red face, he… Jane shot him and he’s dead.“
The tide was apparently ebbing. The mark was traced close to the restaurant by an uneven line of seaweed and driftwood and occasional scraps of rubbish. Much cleaner than New Bedford harbor. I wondered what flotsam was. I’d have to look that up sometime when I got home. And jetsam.
”What bank?“ I said.
”Bristol Security,“ she said. ”On Kempton Street.“
”Were you identified?“
”I don’t know. I was wearing these sunglasses.“
”Okay, that’s a start. Take them off.“
”But…“
”Take them off, they’re no longer a disguise, they are an identification.“ She reached up quickly and took them off and put them in her purse.
”Not in your purse, give them to me.“ She did, and I slipped them in Susan Silverman’s purse. ”We’ll ditch them on the way out,“ I said.
”I never thought,“ she said.
”No, probably you don’t have all that much experience at robbery and murder. You’ll get better as you go along.“
Susan said, ”Spenser.“
I said, ”Yeah, I know. I’m sorry.“
”I didn’t know,“ Pam Shepard said. ”I didn’t know Jane would really shoot. I just went along. It seemed… it seemed I ought to—they’d stood by me and all.“
Susan was nodding. ”And you felt you had to stand by them. Anyone would.“
The waitress brought the food, crab salad for Susan, lobster stew for Pam, fisherman’s plate for me. I ordered another beer.
”What was the purpose of the robbery?“ Susan said.
”We needed money for guns.“
”Jesus Christ,“ I said.
”Rose and Jane are organizing… I shouldn’t tell you this…“
”Babe,“ I said, ”you better goddamned well tell me everything you can think of. If you want me to get your ass out of this.“
Susan frowned at me.
”Don’t be mad at me,“ Pam Shepard said.
”Bullshit,“ I said. ”You want me to bring you flowers for being a goddamn thief and a murderer? Sweets for the sweet, my love. Hope the old guy didn’t have an old wife who can’t get along without him. Once you all get guns you can liberate her too.“
Susan said, ”Spenser,“ quite sharply. ”She feels bad enough.“
”No she doesn’t,“ I said. ”She doesn’t feel anywhere near bad enough. Neither do you. You’re so goddamned empathetic you’ve jumped into her frame. ‘And you felt you had to stand by them. Anyone would.’ Balls. Anyone wouldn’t. You wouldn’t.“
I snarled at Pam Shepard. ”How about it. You thought you were going to a dance recital when you went into that bank with guns to steal the money? You thought you were Faye Dunaway, la de da, we’ll take the money and run and the theme music will come up and the banjos will play and all the shots will miss?“ I bit a fried shrimp in half. Not bad. Tears were rolling down Pam Shepard’s face. Susan looked very grim. But she was silent.
”All right? Okay. We start there. You committed a vicious and mindless goddamned crime and I’m going to try and get you out of the consequences. But let’s not clutter up the surface with a lot of horseshit about who stood by who and how you shouldn’t tell secrets, and oh-of-course-anyone-would-have.“
Susan said, between her teeth, ”Spenser.“
I drank some beer and ate a scallop. ”Now start at the beginning and tell me everything that happened.“
Pam Shepard said, ”You will help me?“
”Yes.“
She dried her eyes with her napkin. Snuffled a little. Susan gave her a Kleenex and she blew her nose. Delicately. My fisherman’s platter had fried haddock in it. I pushed it aside, over behind the French fries, and ate a fried clam.
”Rose and Jane are organizing a women’s movement. They feel we must overcome our own passivity and arouse our sisters to do the same. I think they want to model it on the Black Panthers, and to do that we need guns. Rose says we won’t have to use them. But to have them will make a great psychological difference. It will increase the level of militancy and it will represent power, even, Jane says, a threat to phallic power.“
”Phallic power?“
She nodded.
I said, ”Go ahead.“
”So they talked about it, and some other women came over and we had a meeting, and decided that we either had to steal the guns or the money to buy them. Jane had a gun, but that was all. Rose said it was easier to steal money than guns, and Jane said that it would be easy as pie to steal from a bank because banks always instruct their employees to cooperate with robbers anyway. What do they care, they are insured. And banks are where the money is. So that’s where we should go.“
I didn’t say anything. Susan ate some crab salad. Pam Shepard seemed to have no interest in her lobster stew. Looked good too.
”So Rose and Jane said they would do the actual work,“ she said. ”And I—I don’t know exactly why—I said I’d go with them. And Jane said that was terrific of me and proved that I was really into the women’s movement. And Rose said a bank was the ideal symbol of masculine-capitalist oppression. And one of the other women, I don’t know her name, she was a black woman, Cape Verdean I think, said that capitalism was itself masculine, and racist as well, so that the bank was a really perfect place to strike. And I said I wanted to go.“
”Like an initiation,“ I said.
Susan nodded. Pam Shepard looked puzzled and shrugged. ”Maybe, I don’t know. Anyway we went and Jane and Rose and I all wore sunglasses and big hats. And Jane had the gun.“
”Jane has all the fun,“ I said. Susan glared at me. Pam Shepard didn’t seem to notice.
”Anyway, we went in and Rose and Jane went to the counter and I stayed by the door as a… a lookout… and Rose gave the girl, woman, behind the counter a note and Jane showed her the gun. And the woman did what it said. She took all her money from the cash drawer and put it in a bag that Rose gave her and we started to leave when that foolish old man tried to stop us. Why did he do that? What possessed him to take that chance?“
”Maybe he thought that was his job.“
She shook her head. ”Foolish old man. What is an old man like that working as a bank guard for anyway?“