God Save the Child

11

That afternoon I was in the ID section of the Boston Police Department trying to find out if Vic Harroway had a record. If he did, the Boston cops didn’t know about it. Neither did I.

It was almost five o’clock when I left police headquarters on Berkeley Street and drove to my office. The commuters were out, and the traffic was heavy. It took me fifteen minutes, and my office wasn’t worth it. It was stale and hot when I unlocked the door. The mail had accumulated in a pile under the mail slot in the door. I stepped over it and went across the room to open the window. A spider had spun a symmetrical web across one corner of the window recess. I was careful not to disturb it. Every man needs a pet. I picked up the mail and sat at my desk to read it. Mostly bills and junk mail. No letter announcing my election to the Hawkshaw Hall of Fame. No invitation to play tennis with Bobby Riggs in the Astrodome. There was a note on pale violet stationery from a girl named Brenda Loring suggesting a weekend in Provincetown in the late fall when the tourists had gone home. I put that aside to answer later.

I called my answering service. They reported five calls from Margery Bartlett during the afternoon. I said thank you, hung up, and dialed the Bartlett number.

“Where on earth have you been?” Margery Bartlett said when I told her who I was. “I’ve been trying to get you all afternoon.”

“I was up to the Boston Athenaeum browsing through the collected works of Faith Baldwin,” I said.

“Well, we need you out here, right away. My life has been threatened.”

“Cops there?”

“Yes, there’s a patrolman here now. But we want you here right away. Someone has threatened my life. Threatened to kill me. You get right out here, Spenser, right away.”

“Yes, Ma’am,” I said, “right away.”

I hung up, looked at my watch, 5:20, got up, closed the window, and headed for Smithfield. It was 6:15 when I got there. A Smithfield police cruiser was parked facing the street in the driveway. Paul Marsh, the patrolman I’d met before, was sitting in it, his head tipped back against the headrest, his cap tilted forward. The barrel end of a pump-action shotgun showed through the windshield held upright by a clip lock on the dashboard. I could hear the soft rush of open air on the police radio in the car as I stopped at the open side window near the driver.

“What’s happening?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Phone call. Mrs. Bartlett answered and was threatened. Something about evening the score. I didn’t talk to her. Trask did. He knows the details. I don’t. This was my day off.”

“You eaten?”

“No, but one of the guys’ll bring me down something in a while.”

“I’ll be here if you want to shoot out and get something.”

Marsh shook his head again. “Naw, Trask would have my ass. I think he’s hot for Mrs. Bartlett.”

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll go in and see what she can tell me. Her husband home?”

“Nope. He’s still working. I guess. Just her and her daugther and the lawyer, Maguire.”

They were in the kitchen. Maguire, small, neat, and worried, let me in. Marge Bartlett in a green crepe pants suit and white shirt with ruffled cuffs was standing against the kitchen counter turning a highball glass in her hands. She was very carefully made-up. At the kitchen table was the same young girl I’d seen going for a swim on my first visit. The Bartletts’ daughter, I assumed. She was eating a macaroni and cheese TV dinner and drinking a can of Tab. Her bones were small, her face was delicate and impassive. Her black hair was long and straight. She was wearing a faded yellow sweat shirt that said Make Love Not War in black letters across the front. The Lab sat on the floor by her chair and watched every mouthful as it moved from the foil container to her mouth.

Marge Bartlett said, “Spenser, where the hell were you?”

“You already asked me that,” I said.

Maguire said, “Glad you got here, Spenser.”

Marge Bartlett said, “They threatened me. They said they’d...” She glanced at her daughter. “Dolly, why don’t you finish your supper and go watch TV in the den?”

“Oh, Ma... I know what they said. I heard you talking about it with Mr. Trask this afternoon.” She drank some Tab.

“Well you shouldn’t have. You shouldn’t be hearing that sort of thing.”

“Oh, Ma.”

“What exactly happened, Mrs. Bartlett?” I asked.

“They called about noon,” she said.

“Did you record it?”

Maguire said, “No. They took the recorder off this morning about three hours before the call.”

“Okay,” I said, “what did they say? Be careful and get it as exact as possible.”

Dolly said, “Ma, is there any dessert?”

“I don’t know. Look in the cupboard and don’t interrupt.” She turned toward me. “The call came about noon. I was in the study running over my lines. I’m playing Desdemona in a production of Othello we’re putting on in town. And the phone rang and I answered it. Hoping it might be about Kevin, and a girl’s voice said, ‘We got Kevin, now we’re going to even it up with you. We’re going to shoot you in the...’ and she used a dirty word. It refers to the female sex area. Do you know which one I mean? It starts with c.” She glanced at her daughter.

“Yeah, I know the word. Anything else?”

“No. She just said that and hung up. Why would she say that?”

I shrugged. Dolly Bartlett got a package of Nutter Butter cookies from the cabinet and another Tab from the refrigerator and sat back down at the table.

“And you didn’t recognize the voice?”

“No.”

Maguire poured a stiff shot into the glass, added ice and soda, and gave it to Marge Bartlett.

“When you say girl’s voice, how old a girl?”

“Oh, a girl. You know, not a woman, a teenager.”

Dolly Bartlett said, “Ma, why don’t you ever get Coke. I hate Tab.”

“Dolly, damn it, will you not interrupt me? Don’t you realize that I’m under great stress? You might have a little consideration. The Tab has almost no calories. Don’t you care that I’m in danger? Great danger?” Tears began to form, and her lower lip began to quiver: “Oh, goddamn you,” she said and hustled out of the room without spilling her drink.

Maguire said, “Aw, Marge, c’mon,” rolled his eyeballs at me, and hustled out after her. Dolly Bartlett continued to eat her Nutter Butter cookies.

“My name is Spenser,” I said. “I gather you’re Dolly.”

“Yes,” she said. “My name is really Delilah. Isn’t that a dumb name?”

“Yeah,” I said, “Delilah is kind of dumb.”

“Want a cookie?”

I took one. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. Want any Tab?”

“No, thank you.” The cookie tasted like a peanut-flavored matchbook.

“She lied to you, you know,” Dolly said.

“Your mother?”

“Yes.”

“How do you know?”

“I listened upstairs on the other phone. I do it all the time. If you pick it up before she does, she never notices. She’s really dumb.”

“What did the girl really say when she called?”

“She said they were going to punish my mother for screwing her ass off all over town,” Dolly said. She offered Punkin a Nutter Butter cookie. He sniffed it and refused. My respect for him increased. “Then the girl said that about shooting her down there. Isn’t that gross?”

“Gross,” I said.

“Don’t tell my mother I told you.”

“I won’t. Did the girl say anything else?”

“No.”

“Do you think what she said about your mother was true?” That was a nice touch; grill the kid about her mother’s sex habits. Nice line of work you’re in, Spenser.

“Oh sure. Everybody knows about my mother except maybe Daddy. She screws with everybody. She screws with Mr. Trask, I know.”

I wanted to know who else but couldn’t bring myself to ask. Instead I said, “Does it bother you?”

“Yeah, of course, but,” she shrugged, “you get used to it, you know?”

“I guess you would, wouldn’t you.”

“Used to drive Kevin crazy, though. I don’t know if he ever got used to it like I did.”

“It’s harder for boys to get used to, maybe,” I said. It wasn’t too easy for me to get used to. Maybe I should become a florist.

She shrugged again.

Her mother came back into the kitchen, her eyes puffy, with fresh makeup around them. Earl Maguire came with her. Was she screwing with him? Screwing with Mr. Trask? Christ.

Marge Bartlett said, “Dolly, go in the den and watch TV, please, darling. Mommy is upset. It will be better for you to go in there now.” She kissed her daughter on top of her head. Dolly picked up the package of cookies. “Come on, Punkin,” she said, and the dog followed her out of the kitchen.

“Well, Mr. Spenser, I see you’ve met my Dolly. Did you and she have a nice talk?”

“Yep.”

“Good. Chief Trask has left a patrolman here to guard the house. But I’d feel much safer if you’d stay too.”

Earl Maguire said, “We’d expect to pay you extra, of course. Mrs. Bartlett has already talked to her husband, and Rog has authorized payment to you.”

“What can I do the cops can’t?”

“You can stay close to me,” Mrs. Bartlett said. “You can go with me when I shop and go to parties and play rehearsal and things. You can be right here in the house.”

“We’d be employing you as a bodyguard,” Maguire said.

“While I’m guarding your body, I can’t be looking for your kid,” I said.

“Just for a little while,” she said. “Please? For me?”

“Okay. I’ll have to go home and pack a suitcase. You’ll be all right with Marsh here. Just stay close till I come back. This may just be a crank call, you know. Kidnappings and disappearances bring out a lot of crank calls.”