40
MARLBOROUGH WAS VERY QUIET and pocketed in shadows and squares of light from the red-brick buildings and brownstones. The orange-white light of the streetlamps glowed intermittently from Arlington onward, toward Dartmouth and beyond.
I looked east to west and did not hear a sound. A black sedan of some type passed and continued down the one-way street. I watched as the taillight glowed and the car hung a right on Berkeley. I took a breath and opened the passenger-side door. Jemma was silent and a bit wobbly on her tall heels as she got out of the Explorer. Cars lined nearly every inch of the street.
“Are you okay?”
“Yes.”
“Can you walk on your own?”
Nod. I helped her anyway.
There was a light click of a door opening. And then another. I nearly did not hear it. I reached for Jemma’s hand and hustled her across the street as two men approached us. They were both young and swarthy and blocked the steps to my apartment. They both wore dark suits with dark dress shirts and no ties. The word “eek” came to mind but did not feel appropriate. I could ask them if they would let us through or comment on the nice spring night. Or we could turn tail and run. Unfortunately, I did not think Jemma could get far in six-inch heels and full of three vodka martinis.
No one said anything.
One of the men walked down two steps and shoved me with the heel of his right hand. He was thick and muscular, like a competitive weight lifter. But I had expected it and widened my stance. The other reached for Jemma and grabbed her by the elbow, dragging her to the open door of a sedan. I reached for her wrist with my left hand and clocked the young man with an overhand right. He wavered. Jemma screamed. His pal jumped on my back and started to pound my head using the bottom of his fist as a hammer. I spun him toward the glass door and rammed him against it. The glass shattered and he fell halfway into the vestibule. The other man had reached out for Jemma again, pulling her into the car by a handful of hair. He threw her inside and slammed the door shut. He was halfway around the hood of his car when I slipped a forearm around his throat and pounded his head with my left hand. He fell to the ground and I got a knee in the base of his skull, pushing his face flush to the street. I grabbed a handful of his hair and knocked his head against the bumper of the sedan.
When I looked up, his partner was over me, holding a .45 automatic.
He had narrow black eyes, a dumb stare, and hair artfully gelled to look like he’d just woken up. I let go of his partner’s hair and stood. He stepped carefully around me, shards of glass tinkling from his suit jacket to the ground. He was bleeding. His narrow dumb eyes watched me as we circled, trading places. Do-si-do.
His friend was having a hard time standing. Dumb Eyes watched me, unsure what to do, keeping the gun outstretched in both hands. He held the .45 like cops in the movies did. It was so close I could touch it. And I did. I pulled forward and twisted it away from my body just as he fired. The sound of the gunshot elicited another scream inside the car from Jemma and caused her to honk the horn repeatedly. I tried to twist the gun from his grip, the barrel turning away from me, muscling it enough to keep it pointed away but unable to pull it from his hands. Lights clicked on up and down Marlborough. The horn kept honking.
His partner on the ground reached out and grabbed for my leg. The whole thing was as undignified and unpretty as it gets. I kicked at the man on the ground and nearly got the .45 from the other’s hand. I head-butted him and knocked him back a step. He would not let go, gritting his teeth and using both hands. I held the gun with one hand and reached around his neck to pull him down in a headlock. His partner bit my ankle.
It was that kind of thing.
Jemma honked the horn some more. Someone new screamed. I thought I heard Pearl barking from up in my bay window. The gun went off again.
And then it was all quiet. Jemma honked the horn two more times, and then, seeing her attacker was down, crawled outside and behind me. The ankle biter was bloody but unbowed as he got to his feet and behind the wheel of the black sedan. The key warning dinged inside until he slammed the door and started the engine.
I was catching my breath in the headlights. The other man lay busted and bleeding against the curb as the car squealed out and headed west at about ninety. I put my hands on top of my head like a sprinter, my right hand still clutching the .45.
“He’s dead,” Jemma said. “Bloody hell. He’s dead.”
I closed my eyes and lowered my hands, placing the .45 on the ground. The man lay in the street, his dumb, narrow eyes staring into nothing. Police sirens sounded in the distance. There had probably been a few 911 calls. I wondered how my neighbors felt about me now.
“Jesus Christ, Spenser,” she said.
She started to cry. I put my arm around her and waited for the cops.
They arrived thirty seconds later. Thirty minutes later, a patrol officer told me that Sergeant Belson requested my presence at headquarters.
“Terrific,” I said.
41
I WAS BROUGHT to a slick room with a slick laminate conference table at the police headquarters in Roxbury. Everything about Boston Police Headquarters was slick. It reminded me of a conference center in an airport Hyatt. I waited at the table for maybe thirty minutes before Frank Belson walked in wearing a damp raincoat along with another homicide cop named Lee Farrell. Belson said Quirk was on vacation.
“I didn’t know Quirk took vacations,” I said.
“I think he spends the time rearranging his tool shed,” Farrell said.
Farrell set a digital recorder on the table. He wore an old pair of Dockers and a red-and-white-striped golf shirt. It was very wrinkled. When he sat, he exposed navy socks worn with moccasins.
“Are you sure you’re gay?” I said.
“I played Celine Dion all the way here,” he said.
“Yeah?”
“Sounded nice with the siren.”
“I thought all gay men had style.”
“No,” Farrell said. “We just like other dudes.”
“Ah.”
Belson took off his raincoat and sat at the head of the table. His always bluish-tinged jawline was now black with a full day’s growth. He probably shaved with a weed whacker. The rain and dampness of his clothes had deepened the smell of cheap cigars on him. It was fortunate that the city had instated a no-smoking policy when they opened the new digs.
“So,” Belson said. “Tell us about the stiff.”
“Well, they forgot to introduce themselves while trying to kill me.”
Farrell snorted. Belson gave him a hard look and Farrell broke into a small grin.
“Can I see your belt?” Belson said. “Like to know where you’re adding all those notches.”
“They tried to take a woman by force,” I said. “When I tried to stop them, they pulled a gun on me. When I tried to disarm the man, he pulled the trigger and shot himself. The other one ran.”
“And you didn’t know them?” Farrell said.
“Nope.”
“Never seen ’em?” Belson said.
“Nope.”
“Who is the woman and why were you with her?” Farrell said. He had pulled out a legal-sized yellow pad. He kept eye contact while jotting down notes. It was quite a talent.
“Jemma Fraser,” I said. “But you know that. You just came over from talking to her. That’s why you left me for thirty minutes without coffee.”
Belson shrugged. “So the broad worked for Rick Weinberg, and since the son of a bitch was found without his head,” he said, “she needed some protection.”
“He didn’t show up without his head,” I said. “It was just his head that showed up. They found the rest later.”