Robert B Parker - Spenser 21 - Walking Shadow Read online

  After an hour of this Susan leaned toward me and said, "What do you think?"

  "It's heavy-handed but impenetrable," I said.

  "Not an easy achievement," Susan said.

  The lead actor was in fool's motley, divided in two vertical halves. One side was explicitly female, the other side explicitly male. He/she came downstage and began to speak directly to the audience.

  "I am Tiresias," he she said.

  "An old man with wrinkled dugs."

  He/she half turned and looked at a figure in some sort of triangulated costume downstage left. The orchestra suddenly began to play up tempo and he she began to sing.

  "Lucky in love, lucky in love, what else matters if you're lucky in love?"

  The actor stopped. Simultaneously there was a flat crack from the back of the theater. I recognized the sound. The orchestra continued to play the accompaniment. The actor took a silent step backwards and a red stain began to soak through the costume. I got up and started for the stage as the actor sank to his knees, and then fell backwards onto the floor, his legs bent partially back under him. Still the audience didn't get it. The other actors were motionless for a moment, and then one of them, a tall actress in blackface, lunged forward and dropped to her knees beside the actor just as I reached them.

  There were people standing in the wings. I shouted at one of them.

  "Call 911," I yelled.

  "Tell them he's been shot."

  I felt for the actor's pulse. I couldn't find it. I tilted his head, blew two big breaths into his mouth.

  "You know CPR?" I said.

  She shook her head. I pushed her gently out of the way with one arm and started chest compression. The front of his shirt was slick with blood. A pair of tan slacks appeared beside me as I pumped his chest. Allan Edmonds loafers. No socks.

  A voice said, "I'm a doctor."

  "Good," I said.

  "Jump in."

  He said to someone, "Get me something, towels, anything."

  He said to me, "Pulse?"

  "No," I said.

  I saw his hand reach in and take the actor's arm and feel for the pulse in his wrist and hold it, feeling. Then some towels came into view and he said, "Stop for a minute."

  I did. He ripped down the front of the actor's shirt and wiped the chest with a folded hand towel. There was a small entry wound, directly over the heart. The flesh was puffed slightly around the edges of the puncture, from which the blood welled as fast as he could wipe it away.

  "Shit," he said, and folded the towel one more time and put it over the wound.

  "A rock and a hard place," the doctor said. He seemed to be talking to himself more than to us.

  "The chest pressure will increase the bleeding, but if his heart isn't started he's dead anyway."

  "Bullet should be right in his heart," I said, between breaths.

  "Given the location of the entry wound."

  "Probably," the doctor said.

  "Which makes it pretty much academic."

  He paused for a moment. Then he shrugged.

  "It's the best we can do," he said.

  "He's not going to start up," I said.

  "I know," the doctor said.

  But we kept at it for what seemed forever long after the actor was gone, long after anyone thought he wasn't.

  The ambulance arrived and the EMTs took over the futile effort.

  I stood up feeling a little dizzy, and realized that the theater was still full, and entirely silent. The cast ringed us in a motionless circle.

  Susan had come up on stage, and a nice-looking, black-haired woman wearing a big diamond and a wedding ring was standing by the orchestra pit, apparently waiting for the doctor. Two Port City cops had arrived. One cop was talking into his radio. Soon there'd be many cops.

  "Any chance?" Susan said.

  I shrugged.

  "He's got a hole in his heart," I said.

  Susan looked at the doctor. He nodded.

  "Not my specialty," he said.

  "I'm an orthopedic surgeon. But I'd say he was dead when he hit the floor."

  I looked at the tallish actress standing beside us in her ridiculous black makeup. Her face was vacant. The pupils of her eyes seemed big.

  "You okay?" I said.

  She shook her head. More cops arrived. Uniforms and lab guys and detectives. I recognized DeSpain.

  "I know you," he said.

  "Spenser," I said.

  "How are you, DeSpain."

  "You used to work out of the Middlesex DA's office."

  "Long time ago," I said.

  "I'm private now."

  DeSpain nodded.

  "You did some work up here five, six years ago," DeSpain said.

  He looked at the doctor.

  "Who's this," he said.

  "Steve Franklin," the doctor said.

  "I was in the audience I'm an MD."

  DeSpain nodded. He was a big blond guy with bright blue eyes that seemed to have no depth at all.

  "DeSpain," he said.

  "I'm Chief of Police here. He going to make it?"

  "I don't think so," the doctor said.

  DeSpain looked back at me.

  "So," DeSpain said.

  "Tell me about it."

  "Shot once," I said.

  "From the back of the theater. I didn't see the shooter. Probably a.22 from the sound and the entry hole, maybe a target gun. It was a hell of a shot. Right through the heart."

  "The killer may know something of anatomy," the doctor said.

  "Most people don't know exactly where the heart is."

  "A good shot that knows anatomy," DeSpain said as if to himself.

  "Hell, we've got the bastard cornered."

  We got out of there very late in the evening, and drove Christopholous home. He lived on the first floor of a two-family house next to a Chinese market, across the street from a fish-processing plant.

  "Can you help us on this?" Christopholous said when I parked out front.

  "The murder?"

  "Yes."

  "I can't catch your shadow at the same time," I said.

  "Do you think they're related?"

  "I hate coincidences," I said.

  "I... think the murder takes precedence," Christopholous said.

  "Would you like to know my rates?"

  "I thought... we don't have any money... I was hoping, as a friend of the theater... ?"

  I looked at Susan.

  "My usual fee?" I said.

  "I'll double it," she said.

  "Okay," I said to Christopholous.

  "I'll watch you to your doorway. When you're inside, lock it. If someone wants in, be sure you know who you're opening it for."

  "You think I'm in danger?"

  "There's some around," I said.

  "What time do you leave your house in the morning?"

  "Nine o'clock, usually. I stop off and have coffee, and get to the theater around ten."

  "Someone will pick you up," I said, "and keep an eye on you and see if the shadow's around. Probably be a black man about my size but not as good-looking."

  Christopholous nodded. He hesitated, then shrugged and got out of the car. I watched him climb the front steps and go into his shabby house and close the door. In a minute, lights showed through some windows to the right of the doorway. I pulled away.

  On the ride home, Susan said, "Remind me again of your usual fee?"

  "Two nights of ecstasy."

  "So doubled would be four," Susan said.

  "Payable in thirty days?"

  "Normally, but doubling the amount includes halving the time."

  "So four nights of ecstasy in two weeks," Susan said.

  "That's the deal?"

  "Yes."

  We were quiet rolling through the empty darkness north of Boston. Susan giggled.

  "Sucker," she said.

  "You don't think I'm charging enough?" I said.

  "It's enough," Susan said, "but you'd
have gotten it anyway."

  "I know."

  CHAPTER 4

  Most people having dinner Upstairs at the Pudding had never seen anyone who looked like Hawk. At 6' 2" he weighed 210 and had a 29-inch waist. He was monochromatic tonight. Black skin, black eyes, black suit, black shirt, black tie, black boots. His head was clean-shaven.

  "This place is so Cambridge," Susan said, "it gives me goose bumps."

  "Cambridge give you goose bumps?" I said to Hawk.

  "Hives," Hawk said.

  The main dining room had a thirty-foot ceiling, and the dark green walls were decorated with posters advertising Hasty Pudding Club productions dating back to the early nineteenth century. We sat at a table outside on the patio deck.

  "Think maybe I'm integrating the place?" Hawk said.

  "You're so sensitive," Susan said.

  "There was a Kenyan diplomat in here just last year."

  Hawk grinned.

  "Don't smile," I said.

  "Ruins the look."

  Susan was busily waving at people.

  "You're like the Mayor here," Hawk said.

  "And rightly so," Susan said.

  The waitress came and took our order.

  "Well, nobody following your Greek," Hawk said.

  "I been on his tail since you called me."

  "You think the shadow saw you?" Susan said.

  Hawk stared at Susan as if she'd spoken in tongues.

  "I beg your pardon," Susan said.

  "Sure," Hawk said.

  "Could mean the shadow heard about me."

  "Which would make him likely part of the theater company, or at least someone in Christopholous' circle," I said.

  "Un huh. Or the murder stirred everything up and scared him off," Hawk said.

  "Or?"

  "Or Christopholous made him up," Hawk said.

  "Or her," Susan said.

  Hawk and I both smiled, and nodded.

  A young couple with a baby stopped at our table.

  "This is my friend, Diane," Susan said.

  "And her husband, Dennis. And their daughter, Lois Helen Alksninis."

  Hawk put his finger out and the baby grabbed it.

  "Name's bigger than the kid," Hawk said.

  "What kind of name is that?"

  "A hard one," Dennis said and Hawk grinned. Lois Helen let go of his finger. And they moved on to their table.

  "Did you speak to that policeman?" Susan said.

  "DeSpain? Yeah. I went over this morning."

  "DeSpain?" Hawk said.

  "State cop? Big blond guy, stone eyes?"

  "Yeah," I said.

  "Except now he's Chief in Port City."

  "Port City a tough town," Hawk said.

  "I know."

  "DeSpain a tough guy," Hawk said.

  "What a coincidence," I said.

  A lean, outdoors-looking man in a blue blazer passed us on his way to the door. He saw Hawk and nodded slightly. Hawk nodded back.

  "Who's that?" Susan said.

  "Hall Peterson," Hawk said.

  "Do some investments for me."

  "Investments, Hawk?" Susan said.

  "You never cease to amaze."

  "Never," Hawk said.

  "Victim's name was Craig Sampson," I said for Hawk's benefit.

  I looked at Susan.

  "What do we know about him?"

  "He was forty-one, forty-two," Susan said.

  "Single. Poor family. Never went to college. He went to acting school at night on the GI Bill, or whatever they call it now, and waited on table, and worked for a caterer, and for a home cleaning service, and painted apartments, and lived in hideous little one-room walkups downtown in New York, and all the other awful stuff you do if you want to be an actor, and finally he auditioned for the Port City Company last year and made it."

  "That's all?"

  "Doesn't seem like much, does it," Susan said.

  "Not going to be more," Hawk said.

  Susan nodded. Hawk and I were quiet. There were trees growing up around the patio dining room, and plants along the railing.

  There was no roof. The effect was of dining in a private treehouse in a lush garden, although we were twenty feet up from Harvard Square. Overhead, small lights strung along the beamed superstructure twinkled like captive stars, above them the darkness ascended infinitely. I looked at Susan across the table. Her eyes seemed as deep as space; and I felt, as I always did when I looked at her, as if I were staring at eternity. I half expected Peter Pan to cruise in and make me young again.

  "You want me to stay on the Greek?" Hawk said.

  "Christopholous, yes."

  "And if I see a shadow you want me to grab him.. he looked at Susan... "or her?"

  "It would be nice if we could chat with him... or her."

  "What you going to do?" Hawk said.

  "Susan and I are going to a reception and board meeting at the theater," I said.

  "What could be better," Hawk said.

  "How about getting whacked in the nose with a brick?" I said.

  "Well, yeah," Hawk said.

  "That would be better."

  Susan gazed up at the night sky.

  "One and a half billion males on the planet and I'm having dinner with Heckel and Jeckel," she said.

  The entrees arrived. Susan cut her tuna steak in two and put one half of it aside on her butter plate. Hawk watched her.

  "Trying to lose some weight?" Hawk said in a neutral voice.

  "Yes. I have three or four pounds of disgusting fat that I want to get rid of."

  Hawk said, "Un huh."

  "I know, maybe you can't see it, but it's there."

  Hawk looked at me.

  "I've missed it too," I said.

  "And I'm a trained detective."

  "Remember where we are," Susan said.

  "I could have you both arrested for sexual harassment."

  "I counter with the charge of racial insensitivity," Hawk said.

  "Yes," Susan said.

  "That would be appropriate. Then we join forces against our common oppressor."

  They both turned and gazed at me.

  "The white guy," I said.

  CHAPTER 5

  Susan and I met Christopholous in the conference room upstairs, where board members and invited guests milled thirstily around the open bar.

  "Please call me Jimmy," Christopholous said.

  "It's the English version of Demetrius. I try not to be too ethnic."

  "Christopholous kinda gives it away though," I said.

  He smiled.

  "Well, all one can do is one's best," he said.

  "Thank you for agreeing to meet with us. I've not seen your black man."

  "He's been there," I said.

  "Really? He's very elusive."

  "So's your shadow," I said.

  "There's been no sign of him."

  "Perhaps this terrible business has frightened him away," Christopholous said.

  "Susan, you look as radiant as you always do."

  "It's the board meeting," she said.

  "I get so excited."

  "Of course," he said and turned to an older woman in a flowered dress and took both her hands in his. Susan and I moved away.

  "Trying times, Dodie, trying times. You look radiant, anyway, as you always do."