Now & Then E-Book

Robert B Parker

• Herausgeber: No Exit Press
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Serie: A Spenser Novel
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 253

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

Spenser knows something's amiss the moment Dennis Doherty walks into his office. The guy's aggressive yet wary, in the way men frightened for their marriages always are. So when Doherty asks Spenser to investigate his wife Jordan's abnormal behavior, Spenser agrees. A job's a job, after all. Not surprisingly, Spenser catches Jordan with another man, tells Dennis what he's found out, and considers the case closed. But a couple of days later, all hell breaks loose, and three people are dead. This isn't just a marital affair gone bad. Spenser is in the middle of a hornet's nest of trouble, and he's got to get out of it without getting stung...

Leseprobe

A SPENSER NOVEL

Spenser knows something’s amiss the moment Dennis Doherty walks into his office. The guy’s aggressive yet wary, in the way men frightened for their marriages always are. So when Doherty asks Spenser to investigate his wife Jordan’s abnormal behavior, Spenser agrees. A job’s a job, after all.

Not surprisingly, Spenser catches Jordan with another man, tells Dennis what he’s found out, and considers the case closed. But a couple of days later, all hell breaks loose, and three people are dead. This isn’t just a marital affair gone bad. Spenser is in the middle of a hornet’s nest of trouble, and he’s got to get out of it without getting stung…

Robert B. Parker has long been acknowledged as the dean of American crime fiction. His novels featuring the wisecracking, street-smart Boston private-eye Spenser earned him a devoted following and reams of critical acclaim, typified by R.W.B. Lewis’ comment, ‘We are witnessing one of the great series in the history of the American detective story’ (The NewYork Times Book Review).

Born and raised in Massachusetts, Parker attended Colby College in Maine, served with the Army in Korea, and then completed a Ph.D. in English at Boston University. He married his wife Joan in 1956; they raised two sons, David and Daniel. Together the Parkers founded Pearl Productions, a Boston-based independent film company named after their short-haired pointer, Pearl, who has also been featured in many of Parker’s novels.

Robert B. Parker died in 2010 at the age of 77.

CRITICAL ACCLAIM FOR ROBERT B. PARKER

‘Parker writes old-time, stripped-to-the-bone, hard-boiled school of Chandler…His novels are funny, smart and highly entertaining…There’s no writer I’d rather take on an aeroplane’ – Sunday Telegraph

‘Parker packs more meaning into a whispered ‘yeah’ than most writers can pack into a page’ – Sunday Times

‘Why Robert Parker’s not better known in Britain is a mystery. His best series featuring Boston-based PI Spenser is a triumph of style and substance’ – Daily Mirror

‘Robert B. Parker is one of the greats of the American hard-boiled genre’ – Guardian

‘Nobody does it better than Parker…’ – Sunday Times

‘Parker’s sentences flow with as much wit, grace and assurance as ever, and Stone is a complex and consistently interesting new protagonist’ – Newsday

‘If Robert B. Parker doesn’t blow it, in the new series he set up in Night Passage and continues with Trouble in Paradise, he could go places and take the kind of risks that wouldn’t be seemly in his popular Spenser stories’ – Marilyn Stasio, New York Times

THE SPENSER NOVELS

The Godwulf Manuscript

Chance

God Save the Child

Thin Air

Mortal Stakes

Small Vices

Promised Land

Sudden Mischief

The Judas Goat

Hush Money

Looking for Rachel Wallace

Hugger Mugger

Early Autumn

Potshot

A Savage Place

Widow’s Walk

Ceremony

Back Story

The Widening Gyre

Bad Business

Valediction

Cold Service

A Catskill Eagle

School Days

Taming a Sea-Horse

Dream Girl (aka Hundred-Dollar Baby)

Pale Kings and Princes

Now & Then

Crimson Joy

Rough Weather

Playmates

The Professional

Stardust

Painted Ladies

Pastime

Sixkill

Double Deuce

Wonderland(by Ace Atkins)

Walking Shadow

Lullaby (by Ace Atkins)

THE JESSE STONE MYSTERIES

Night Passage

Stranger in Paradise

Trouble in Paradise

Night and Day

Death in Paradise

Split Image

Stone Cold

Fool me Twice (by Robert Brandman

Sea Change

Killing the Blues (by Robert Brandman)

High Profile

Damned If You Do (by Michael Brandman)

THE SUNNY RANDALL MYSTERIES

Family Honor

Melancholy Baby

Perish Twice

Blue Screen

Shrink Rap

Spare Change

ALSO BY ROBERT B. PARKER

Training with Weights

A Year at the Races (with Joan Parker)

(with John R. Marsh)

All Our Yesterdays

Three Weeks in Spring

Gunman’s Rhapsody

(with Joan Parker)

Double Play

Wilderness

Appaloosa

Love and Glory

Resolution

Poodle Springs

Brimstone

(and Raymond Chandler)

Blue Eyed Devil

Perchance to Dream

Ironhorse (by Robert Knott)

Available from No Exit Press

Joan, Dave, and Dan: the rest is decoration.

1

He came into my office carrying a thin briefcase under his left arm. He was wearing a dark suit and a white shirt with a red-and-blue-striped tie. His red hair was cut very short.

He had a thin, sharp face. He closed the door carefully behind him and turned and gave me the hard eye.

‘You Spenser?’ he said.

‘And proud of it,’ I said.

He looked at me aggressively and didn’t say anything. I smiled pleasantly.

‘Are you being a wise guy?’ he said.

‘Only for a second,’ I said. ‘What can I do for you?’

‘I don’t like this,’ he said.

‘Well,’ I said. ‘It’s a start.’

‘I don’t like funny either,’ he said.

‘Then we should do great,’ I said.

‘My name is Dennis Doherty,’ he said.

‘I love alliteration,’ I said.

‘What?’

‘There I go again,’ I said.

‘Listen, pal. You don’t want my business, just say so.’

‘I don’t want your business,’ I said.

‘Okay,’ he said.

He stood and walked toward my door. He opened it and stopped and turned around.

‘I came on a little strong,’ he said.

‘I noticed that,’ I said.

‘Lemme start over,’ Doherty said.

I nodded.

‘Try not to frighten me,’ I said.

He closed the door and came back and sat in one of the chairs in front of my desk. He looked at me for a time. No aggression. Just taking notice.

‘You ever box?’ he said.

I nodded.

‘The nose?’ I said.

‘More around the eyes,’ Doherty said.

‘Observant,’ I said.

‘The nose has been broken,’ Doherty said. ‘I can see that. But it’s not flattened.’

‘I retired before it got flat,’ I said.

Doherty nodded. He looked at the large picture of Susan on my desk.

‘You married?’ he said.

‘Not quite,’ I said.

‘Ever been married?’

‘Not exactly,’ I said.

‘Who’s in the picture?’ he said.

‘Girl of my dreams,’ I said.

‘You together?’ Doherty said.

‘Yes.’

‘But not married,’ he said.

‘No.’

‘Been together long?’ he said.

‘Yes.’

We were quiet.

‘You having trouble with your wife?’ I said after a time.

He glanced at the wedding ring on his left hand. Then he looked back at me and didn’t answer.

‘The only person you could ever talk with is your wife,’ I said, ‘and she’s the issue, so you can’t talk to her.’

He kept looking at me and then slowly nodded.

‘You know,’ he said.

‘I do.’

‘You’ve been through it.’

‘I’ve been through something,’ I said.

He looked at Susan’s picture.

‘With her?’ he said.

‘Yes.’

‘You’re still together?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you’re all right?’ Doherty said.

‘Very.’

With his elbows on the arms of the chair, he clasped his hands and rested his chin on them.

‘So it’s possible,’ he said.

‘Never over till it’s over,’ I said.

‘Yeah,’ he said.

I waited. He sat. Then he opened the thin briefcase and took out an 8×10 photograph. He put the photograph in front of me on the desk.

‘Jordan Richmond,’ he said.

‘Your wife.’

‘Yes,’ Doherty said. ‘She kept her name. She’s a professor.’

‘Ah,’ I said, as if he had explained something.

I try to be encouraging.

‘I think she thought it was low class,’ he said. ‘To have a name like Doherty.’

‘Too ethnic,’ I said.

‘Too Irish,’ he said.

‘Even worse,’ I said.

‘I don’t mean she’s snobby,’ Doherty said. ‘She isn’t. She just grew up different than I did. Private school, Smith College.’

‘Kids?’ I said.

‘No.’

‘Where do I come in?’ I said.

He took in a big breath of air.

‘I want you to find out what she’s up to,’ he said.

‘What do you think she’s up to?’ I said.

‘I don’t know. She’s out late a lot. Sometimes when she comes home I can tell she’s been drinking.’

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘That.’

‘That?’

‘You think she’s fooling around,’ I said.

‘I don’t think she’d do that to me,’ he said.

‘Maybe it’s not about you,’ I said.

‘What?’

I shook my head.

‘So what do you think?’ I said.

‘I don’t know what to think, it’s just not going well. She’s out too much. She’s sort of brusque when she’s home. I don’t know. I want you to find out.’

There were a few questions I wanted to ask, but they were more shrink-type questions. And he wasn’t hiring me for my shrink skills.

‘Okay,’ I said.

‘What do you charge?’

I told him. He nodded.

‘And you’ll find out?’ he said.

‘Yes.’

‘I don’t want her to know,’ Doherty said.

‘I’m pretty slick,’ I said. ‘Where do you live?’

‘No need to know that,’ he said. ‘You can pick her up at school.’

‘And tail her home,’ I said.

He nodded.

‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Six thirty-six Brant Island Road in Milton.’

I looked at the picture.

‘Good likeness of her?’ I said.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘She’s fifty-one, looks younger. Five feet, seven inches, a hundred and thirty pounds. She’s in good shape. Works out. Drives a silver Honda Prelude. Mass plate number ARP7 JD5.’

He reached into the slim briefcase again and brought out a printed sheet of paper. He put it on the desk beside her photograph.

‘Her teaching schedule,’ he said. ‘Concord College, you know where it is?’

‘I do.’

‘Her office is in Foss Hall,’ Doherty said. ‘English department. It’s on the schedule.’

‘How about you?’ I said. ‘How do I reach you?’

‘I’ll give you my cell phone,’ he said.

I wrote it down.

‘Where do you work?’ I said.

‘You don’t need to know that,’ he said. ‘Cell phone will get me.’

I didn’t press it.

‘You want regular reports?’

‘No. When you know something, tell me.’

‘If she’s doing anything out of the ordinary,’ I said, ‘it shouldn’t take long to catch her.’

He nodded.

‘I don’t think she’s having an affair,’ he said.

‘Sure,’ I said.

‘When can you start?’

‘I’m away for a couple of days,’ I said. ‘I’ll start Tuesday.’

He didn’t move. I waited.

‘She’s not …’ he said finally. ‘I can’t see her having an affair … she’s not that interested in sex.’

‘I’ll let you know,’ I said.

He nodded and turned and headed for the door. The way his jacket fell, he might have been carrying a gun behind his right hip.

2

It was late September on Cape Cod, and the summer people were gone. Susan and I liked to go down for a couple of nights in the off-season, before things shut down for the winter. Which is how we ended up on a Sunday night, eating cold plum soup and broiled Cape scallops, and drinking a bottle of Gewürztraminer at Chillingsworth in Brewster.

‘When someone says that their mate is not interested in sex,’ Susan said, ‘all they can really speak to with authority is that their mate is not interested in sex with them.’

‘I’ve never made that statement,’ I said.

‘And with good reason,’ Susan said.

‘It sounds like sex to me,’ I said.

‘And it sounds like he fears that it is,’ Susan said.

‘He fears something,’ I said.

‘And he’s reticent about himself,’ she said. ‘Didn’t want to tell you where he lived. Won’t tell you where he works.’

‘Lot of people are embarrassed about things like this,’ I said.

‘Are you?’ she said.

‘No more than you are, shrink girl.’

She smiled and sipped her wine.

She said, ‘We both uncover secrets, I guess.’

‘And chase after hidden truths,’ I said.

‘And people are often better for it,’ she said.

‘But not always.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘Not always.’

We ate our plum soup happily and sipped our wine.

‘You don’t like divorce cases, do you?’ she said.

‘Make me feel like a Peeping Tom,’ I said.

Susan smiled, which is a luminous sight.

‘Is that different than a private eye?’ she said.

‘I hope so,’ I said.

‘You feel intrepid, chasing bad guys,’ Susan said.

‘Yes.’

‘And sleazy, chasing errant mates.’

‘Yes.’

‘But you do it,’ she said.

‘It’s work.’

‘It’s good work,’ Susan said. ‘The pain of emotional loss is intense.’

‘I recall,’ I said.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘We both do. Half my practice comes from people like that.’

‘Despite similarities, our practices are not identical.’

‘Mine requires less muscle,’ she said. ‘But the point is, you can rescue people in different ways. Leaping tall buildings at a single bound is not the only way.’

‘I know,’ I said.

‘Which is why you’ll work divorce cases,’ she said, ‘even though they make you feel sleazy.’

‘Heroism has its downside,’ I said.

‘It has its upside too,’ Susan said.

Susan’s eyes had a small glitter.

‘Speaking of which …’ I said.

‘Could we maybe finish dinner?’ she said.

‘Of course,’ I said. ‘The upside is patient.’

‘And frequent,’ Susan said.

3

I knew Doherty’s name and address. It would not be very hard to find out more about him. He had not, however, hired me to find out anything about him. So I decided to find out about his wife. Concord College was not in Concord. It was in Cambridge.

Three recent high-rise buildings with a lot of windows, just across the Longfellow Bridge in Kendall Square. A software tycoon with a streak of vestigial hippie-ness had endowed the place with a sum larger than the GNP of several small countries.

And the college, perhaps respectful of its financial base, was an exfoliating swamp of unusual ideas. It cost about $40,000 a year to go there.

I went into Foss Hall, which was the middle high-rise, and up to the fourth floor. Aside from my adulthood, I was too neat to be mistaken for a student. Most of them wore very sloppy clothes that had cost a lot. Chronologically, I could have passed for faculty, but once again the neatness factor gave me away. The faculty was no neater than the students, but their clothes had cost less. Hoping to pass anyway, I was carrying a green book bag. Deep cover.

According to the schedule Doherty had given me, Jordan Richmond’s office was in room 425, and her office hours began in ten minutes. I strolled past the office. It had an oak door with a window. There was no one in there. I wandered past the door and stopped to study a bulletin board, beyond the next office. Crush Imperialism … Film Festival: Jean-Luc Godard … Stop the Murders for Oil … Roommate Wanted, M or F … Wage Peace … No Welfare for the Wealthy … Keg Party at MIT … African-American conference … Concordian Lecture Series: ‘Apollonian Despair in the Poetry of Sara Teasdale’ … Equal Work, Equal Wage … Gay & Lesbian Coalition … Intelligent Design Is Neither … Maybe it wasn’t such a hothouse of new ideas. Except for Apollonian Despair. As I studied the notices, Jordan Richmond strolled past me down the hall toward her office.

Her picture didn’t do her justice. There was a time in my life when I would have thought that admiring the butt of a fifty-one-year-old woman was exploiting the elderly. I had not entertained that conceit in some years, but if I had, Jordan Richmond would have ended it. She had brown hair with blond highlights. By the standards of her colleagues she appeared to be vastly overdressed. Glimpsed covertly as she passed, she seemed to be wearing makeup. She had on black pants and a jacket with a faint chalk stripe. Under the jacket was a pink tee. By the sound they made on the hard floor, I could tell she was wearing heels.

I hung around the hallway, trying to look inconspicuous, until she finished her office hours at 4:30 and, carrying a black leather briefcase, she headed out of the building. I went with her. We stood so close in the elevator that I could smell her perfume.

On the street we turned right and she went into the Marriott hotel. I took a baseball cap out of my book bag and put it on. Spenser, master of disguise. Then I put the book bag in a trash basket out front, waited for a moment, and went in after her. She was in the lobby bar. At a table with a man. I sat with my hat on, at the far end of the bar, where it turned. It put her back to me, and I could look at her companion. He appeared to be tall.

His mustache and goatee were neatly trimmed. His nose was strong. His dark eyes were deep-set. His dark hair was curly and short with touches of gray. He wore an expensive dark suit with a white shirt and a blue silk tie. He was sipping a martini.

As soon as she was seated he spoke to the waitress. She took his order and brought Jordan a martini. Jordan picked it up and gestured with it at the man. He raised his glass and they touched rims. I ordered a beer. The bartender put down a dish of nuts. I ate some so as not to hurt his feelings.

Jordan and her companion gave some evidence that Doherty’s fears were not groundless. They sat close together. She touched him often, putting a hand on his forearm, or on his shoulder. Once, laughing, she leaned forward so that their foreheads touched. All his movements were languid, not as if he was tired, more as if he was happily relaxed about everything. And very pleased to be him.

They had two drinks. He paid the check. They got up and went out. I left too much money on the bar and went after them. They walked back to Concord College together. Got into a Honda Prelude in the parking lot and drove out. I was parked down Main Street a way. By the time I got to my car they were out of sight. So instead I went over the Longfellow Bridge and drove down to Milton.

It took about a half hour to get to Brant Island Road. I parked on the corner with a view of the house where Dennis and Jordan lived. It was a white garrison colonial, with green shutters. The lights were on. There was a Ford Crown Vic in the driveway. At ten after eleven Jordan pulled the Prelude into the driveway next to the Crown Vic. She got out, straightened her pants a little, fluffed her hair for a moment, then took her briefcase from the car, closed the car door, and walked carefully to the house.

4

It does sound kind of affair-y,’ Susan said.

‘I saw them together,’ I said. ‘It’s an affair. But it’s not proof of an affair.’

‘I know,’ Susan said. ‘Will you say anything to the husband?’

‘I don’t think so,’ I said. ‘It would just be my opinion.’

‘You want to offer him certainty?’

‘I think until I can prove it, he’ll refuse to believe it,’ I said.

Susan nodded.

‘Hard to know, sometimes, what’s best,’ she said.

‘How about the truth?’ I said.

She smiled.

‘That’s often effective,’ she said.

We were sharing sweet-and-sour pork for supper at P. F.Chang’s in Park Square. Unless you think that sharing means equal portions for both. In which case, I was having sweet-and sour pork, and Susan was having a couple of bites.

‘But I don’t know,’ I said, ‘at this stage of things, if I would have wanted to know without certainty.’

‘You already had reason for suspicion,’ Susan said.

‘I did, but I couldn’t believe it.’

‘Why not?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I don’t know if I couldn’t believe you’d do it, or I couldn’t believe it could happen to me.’

‘Or wouldn’t,’ Susan said.

‘Same result,’ I said.

Susan isolated a small piece of pork on her plate, sliced it in half, and ate one of the halves.

‘So I think I’ll wait until I can prove it,’ I said.

Susan nodded.

‘Are you planning to burst in on them with a video camera?’ Susan said.

‘Ugh!’ I said.

‘How about planting some sort of electronic device?’

‘Ugh!’

She smiled.

‘Are you sure you’re cut out for this sort of work?’ she said.

‘Doherty needs to know,’ I said.

‘Even though it will cause him pain,’ she said.

‘He’s in pain now,’ I said.

She nodded again, and ate the other half of the small piece of

pork.

‘And the pain of knowing is better than the pain of not knowing?’ she said.

‘Yes.’

She nodded. She seemed to have very little to say about this. Usually she had a lot.

‘Do you have a plan for proving it?’

‘None,’ I said.

‘So what are you going to do?’

‘What I usually do,’ I said. ‘Plow along, try not to break things, see what develops.’

‘And if nothing does?’ Susan said.

‘I nudge it a little,’ I said.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘You certainly do.’

5

This time I duked the doorman at the Marriott a twenty to hold my car out front. Unfortunately Jordan Richmond and her male friend didn’t go to the Marriott. They went down the street to a bar called the Kendall Tap. It was small, so I waited outside across the street for two hours and twenty minutes until they came out and walked back toward the college. Before we got there they stopped beside a silver Mercedes sedan parked at an expired meter. The man took a parking ticket off the windshield and folded it and put it in his pocket. Then he went around and opened the passenger door. Jordan got in. He closed the door, walked back around, got in the driver’s side, and drove away. Foiled again.Mostly to make myself feel better, I wrote down the license plate number. Then I walked back to the Concord College parking lot.

Jordan Richmond’s car was still parked there. That meant that her friend would need to bring her back. I went over to the Marriott and got my car from the doorman, and parked on the street near the Concord College parking lot. I was hungry. It was 7:13 on the dashboard clock. If Jordan kept to last night’s schedule she wouldn’t be picking her car up until about ten. I thought about a baked bean sandwich with mayo on anadama bread. I thought about corned beef hash with eggs. I thought about linguine with meatballs.

I wondered why I never thought about foie gras, or roast guinea hen, or duck with olives. I wondered if everyone was like that or was it because I was plebeian? Probably because I was plebeian. Maybe if you were more cultured you thought about Dover sole when you were hungry.

It had been raining in Boston much of the time since Labor Day, and it began again. I liked rain. I thought it was romantic. Susan didn’t like it. It ruined her hair. I sometimes wondered how we could possibly be together. About the only thing we liked in common was us. Fortunately we liked us a lot.

There seemed little chance that linguine or Dover sole was forthcoming soon, so I watched the rain patterns on my windshield and thought about sex. Kendall Square at night is not lively. Now and then someone in rainwear would trudge past me. Occasionally a car, its wipers arcing slowly, would move along Broadway. The rest of the time it was just me, and the bright traffic lights reflected on the rain-shiny street.

At about ten to ten the silver Mercedes pulled up and parked next to the parking lot. The tall stranger got out and went around and opened the passenger door. Jordan Richmond got out wearing some sort of cowboy-looking rain hat. They held hands as they walked to her car. He waited while she unlocked the door. Then she swept her hat off and turned into him and they kissed good night. It was a long kiss, enough, probably, to straggle her hair, and it involved a lot of body English. Finally they broke and she got into the car, and then got back out again and they kissed again. Thank God the rain blurred it some. I tilted my head back and stretched my neck and looked for a long moment at the roof of the car. When I looked again she was getting into her car for the second time. This one took. He waited until her door was closed and her car was running before he walked back to his. She pulled out of the parking lot and headed for the Longfellow Bridge. I stayed put. When she was safely on her way, the tall stranger went west on Broadway, and I followed him.

He pulled into a garage on University Road, off Mt. Auburn Street. I lingered outside near the corner, where I could see both Mt. Auburn and University Road. He didn’t reappear. The garage serviced a large condominium building under which it was located, and my guess was that the tall stranger lived there and had accessed it by an elevator in the garage. There was nothing more to see there. I decided to go home and reread my collection of Tijuana Bibles.

6

The silver Mercedes was registered to Perry Alderson, whose address was in fact the Mt. Auburn Street building, unit 112, a condo above the garage where he’d parked. I got out my brown Harris tweed jacket, put it on over a black turtleneck, added a notebook and a camera, and drove over to Cambridge. I left my car with Richie the doorman at the Charles Hotel, and walked through the light rain over to Perry Alderson’s building.There was a woman at the concierge desk in the lobby. I smiled at her. A smile rich with warm sincerity.

‘Hi,’ I said.

She was red-haired and pale-faced and, had she allowed any of it to show, she might have had a good body. But she was shrouded in one of those voluminous ankle-length dresses that seem to be part of the municipal code in Cambridge. So the condition of her body remained moot.

‘Hello,’ she said.

‘I’m writing a piece on urban living for Metropolis magazine,’ I said. ‘I was in Chicago last week, Near North, you know. And next week I’m in DC doing Georgetown.’

‘Really?’ she said.

‘Boston this week,’ I said. ‘Cambridge and the Back Bay.’

‘And you want to write about this building?’

‘I sure do. It’s a beauty.’

‘I’m afraid I can’t let you bother the residents,’ she said.

‘Oh, God no,’ I said. ‘Of course not. I don’t need to. I was a guest here once, Mr Perry Alderson, and I have pictures of his apartment and a lot of stuff I can use. But the fact-checkers are on my case. I remember I was on the first floor, number one twelve, but I can’t remember, was it the last one at the end of the corridor?’

‘That’s all?’ she said.

‘Absolutely,’ I said. ‘I have that, and I’m in business. Take a few exterior shots. Be out of your hair.’

‘Mr Alderson is the last door on the left,’ she said.

I looked down the corridor past the elevators.

‘On the left,’ I said. ‘I would have sworn it was at the end.’

‘Mr Alderson is on the left, sir,’ she said firmly.

‘What a memory,’ I said. ‘Some journalist. May I take your picture?’

She almost blushed.

‘Photography is not permitted, sir, in the lobby, without permission of the condominium board.’

‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Of course. Can you do me one small favor?’

‘Well, that would depend,’ she said. ‘Wouldn’t it?’

‘I’m going to sort of hedge this story a little, and I’m hoping this conversation could just be ours?’

‘I am not a talker, sir,’ she said.

‘I knew that,’ I said. ‘Beautiful yet mysterious.’

This time she did blush. I winked at her debonairly, and walked away. The Compleat Journalist.

7

I waited near the entrance to the lobby bar at the Marriott. Jordan and Perry were in place, having a drink. At about 7:40 they finished. Perry paid the bill while Jordan organized her things, and put the strap of her big purse over her shoulder. As they came out of the bar, I went in, jostled her slightly, dropped a small listening device into her bag, and said, ‘Excuse me.’

She smiled absently and nodded and they kept going. As soon as they were gone, I turned and went out and ran through the rain to Hawk’s Jaguar, which was idling across the street.

‘Doorman had his car,’ Hawk said. ‘Silver Mercedes.’

‘Follow that car,’ I said.

Hawk looked at me as he put the car in gear.

‘You being Boston Blackie?’ he said.

‘That would be you,’ I said.

‘Lawzy,’ Hawk said. ‘Racial humor.’

The silver Mercedes stopped by the Concord College parking lot. Jordan got out with her shoulder bag and went to her car. When she was in and the car was started, the Mercedes pulled away, and Jordan followed in her Honda Prelude.

‘How come they splitting up?’ Hawk said.

‘Save him driving her back afterwards, maybe.’

‘Or maybe they know we on the case and they given up.’

‘We’ll see,’ I said. ‘Radio tuned right?’

‘Uh-huh.’

I turned it on. There was a slightly muffled quality to the sound, but I could hear hip-hop being sung. I could also hear her windshield wipers. Pretty good.

‘This isn’t one of your stations,’ I said.

‘Not my style,’ Hawk said. ‘She listening to the radio. ‘

The Prelude followed the Mercedes west on Broadway, which meant that she wasn’t going home.

‘Where you get the bug?’ Hawk said.

‘Voyeurs-R-Us,’ I said.

‘Didn’t know you was a spy tech guy.’

‘I consulted Emmett Sleeper,’ I said.

‘Sleeper the Peeper,’ Hawk said. ‘Top drawer.’

‘He says this thing will listen at fifty feet and transmit an FM signal half a mile. Only problem would be background noise.’

‘They be doing what you think they doing,’ Hawk said, ‘background noise be the evidence.’