God Save the Child

2

I drove north out of Boston over the Mystic River Bridge with the top down on my car. On the right was Old Ironsides at berth in the Navy Yard and to the left of the bridge the Bunker Hill Monument. Between them stretch three-decker tenements alternating with modular urban renewal units. One of the real triumphs of prefab design is to create a sense of nostalgia for slums. At the top of the bridge I paid my toll to a man who took pride in his work. There was a kind of precise flourish to the way he took my quarter and gave me back a dime with the same hand.

Out to the right now was the harbor and the harbor islands and the long curving waterfront. The steeple of the Old North Church poked up among the warehouses and lofts. On the East Boston side of the harbor was Logan Airport and beyond, northeast, the contours of the coast. The brick and asphalt and neon were blurred by distance and sunshine, and beneath it I got a sense of the land as it once must have been. The silent midsummer buzz of it and copper-colored near-naked men moving along a narrow trail.

The bridge dipped down into Chelsea and the Northeast Expressway. Across the other lane beyond a football field was a Colonel Sanders’ fast-food restaurant. The brick and asphalt and neon were no longer blurred, and the sense of the land went away. The expressway connects in Saugus to Route One and for the next ten miles is a plastic canyon of sub-sandwich shops, discount houses, gas stations, supermarkets, neocolonial furniture shops (vinyl siding and chintz curtains), fried chicken, big beef sandwiches, hot dogs cooked in beer, quarter-pound hamburgers, pizzas, storm doors, Sears, Roebuck and Co., doughnut shops, stockade fencing — preassembled sections, restaurants that look like log cabins, restaurants that look like sailing ships, restaurants that look like Moorish town houses, restaurants that look like car washes, car washes, shopping centers, a fish market, a skimobile shop, an automotive accessory shop, liquor stores, a delicatessen in three clashing colors, a motel with an in-room steam bath, a motel with a relaxing vibrator bed, a car dealer, an indoor skating rink attractively done in brick and corrugated plastic, a trailer park, another motel composed of individual cabins, an automobile dealership attractively done in glass and corrugated plastic, an enormous steak house with life-sized plastic cows grazing out front in the shadow of a six-story neon cactus, a seat cover store, a discount clothing warehouse, an Italian restaurant with a leaning tower attached to it. Overpasses punctuate Route One, tying together the north suburban towns that line it like culverts over a sewer of commerce. Maybe Squanto had made a mistake.

A sign said ENTERING SMITHFIELD, and the land reappeared. There was grass along the highway and maple trees behind it and glimpses of lake through the trees. I turned off at an exit marked Smithfield and drove toward the center of town beneath a tunnel of elm trees that were as old as the town. They bordered the broad street and interlaced thirty feet above it so that the sun shone through in mottled patterns on the street. Bordering the street behind big lawns and flowering shrubs were spacious old houses in shingle or clapboard, often with slate roofs, occasionally with small barns that had been converted to garages. Stone walls, rose bushes, red doors with bull’s-eye glass windows, a lot of station wagons, most of them with the fake wood on the sides. I was more aware than I had been of the big dent on the side of my car and the tear in the upholstery that I had patched with gray tape.

In the center of town was a common with a two-story white clapboard meeting house in the middle. The date on it was 1681. Across the street was a white spired church with a big church hall attached and next to that a new white clapboard library designed in harmony with the meeting house and church. On a stone wall across from the common six teenage kids, four boys and two girls, sat swinging their bare feet and smoking. They were long-haired and T-shirted and tan. I turned right onto Main Street at the end of the common and then left. A discreet white sign with black printing on it was set in a low curving brick wall. It said Apple Knoll.

It was a development. Flossy and fancy and a hundred thousand a house, but a development. Some of the trees had been left and the streets curved gently and the lawns were well landscaped, but all the homes were the same age and bore the mark of a central intelligence. They were big colonial houses, some garrisoned, some with breeze ways, some with peaked and some with gambrel roofs, but basically the same house. Eight or ten rooms, they looked to be, on an acre of land. Behind the houses on my right the land sloped down to a lake that brightened through the trees here and there where the road bent closer.

The Bartletts’ home was yellow with dark green shutters and a hip roof. The roof was slate, and there were A-shaped dormers protruding from it to suggest a third floor that was more than attic. Doubtless for the servants: they don’t mind the heat under the eaves; they’re used to it.

A brick walk led up to a wide green front door with sidelights. The brick driveway went parallel to the house and curved right, ending in a turnaround before a small barn designed like the house and done in the same colors. The blue van was there and a Ford Country Squire and a red Mustang convertible with a white roof and a black Chevrolet sedan with a buggy-whip antenna and no markings on the side.

The barn doors were open and swallows flew in and out in sharp, graceful sweeps. Behind the house was a square swimming pool surrounded by a brick patio. The blue lining of the pool made the water look artificial. Beyond the pool a young girl was operating a ride-around lawn mower. I parked next to the black Chevy, up against the hydrangea bushes that lined the turnaround and concealed it from the street. Black-and-yellow bumblebees buzzed frantically at the flowers. As I approached the house, a Labrador retriever looked at me without raising his head from his paws, and I had to walk around him to get to the back door. Somewhere out of sight I could hear an air conditioner droning, and I was conscious of how my shirt stuck to my back under my coat. I was wearing a white linen sport coat in honor of my trip to the subs, and I wished I could take it off. But since I’d made some people in the mob mad at me, I’d taken to wearing a gun everywhere, and Smithfield didn’t seem like the kind of place where you flashed it around.

Besides the white linen jacket, I had on a red checkered sport shirt, dark blue slacks, and white loafers. Me and Betsy Ross. I was neat, clean, alert, and going to the back door I rang the bell. Ding-dong, private eye calling.

Roger Bartlett came to the door looking more comfortable but no happier than when I’d last seen him. He had on blue sneakers and Bermuda shorts and a white sleeveless undershirt. He had a glass of what looked like gin and tonic in his hand and, from the smell of his breath, several more in his stomach.

“C’mon in, c’mon in,” he said. “How about something to fight the heat, maybe a cold one or two, a little schnapps? Hey, why not?” He made a two-inch measuring gesture with his thumb and forefinger as he backed into the kitchen, and I followed. It was a huge kitchen with a big maple-stained trestle table in the bay of the back windows. A cop was sitting at the table with Margery Bartlett, drinking a 16 oz. can of Narragansett beer. He had a lot of gold braid on his shoulders and sleeves and more on the visored cap that lay beside him on the table. He had a pearl-handled .45 in a black holster on a Sam Browne belt. The belt made a gully in his big stomach and the short-sleeved dark blue uniform shirt stretched very tight across his back. It was soaked with sweat around the armpits and along the spine. His bare arms were sunburned and almost hairless, and his big round face was fiery red with pale circles around his eyes where his sunglasses protected him. He’d recently had a haircut, and a white line circled each ear. His eyes were very pale blue and quite small, and he had hardly any neck, his head seeming to grow out of his shoulders. He took a long pull on the beer and belched softly.

“I’ll take a can of beer,” I said.

Bartlett got one from the big poppy-red refrigerator. “Want a glass?”

“No, thank you.”

The kitchen was paneled in pale gray boards, the counter tops were three-inch maple chopping blocks, the cabinets were red and so were the appliances. The wall opposite the big bow window was brick, and the appliances were built into it. An enormous copper hood spread out over the stove, and on the brick wall hung copper pans which bore no marks of use.

The floor was square flagstone, gray and red, and a hand-braided blue and red oval rug covered much of it. There were captain’s chairs around the table and some reddish maple barstools along the counter. I sat on one and popped open the beer.

Margery Bartlett said, “Mr. Spenser, this is Chief Trask of our police force. He’s been working on the case.” Her voice was a little loud, and as she spoke she held her empty glass out toward her husband. Trask nodded at me. Bartlett filled his wife’s glass from a half-gallon bottle of Beefeater gin on the counter, added a slice of lime, some ice, and some Schweppes tonic, and put it down in front of her.

Trask said, “I’d like to get a few things out in the open early, Spenser.”

“Candor,” I said, “complete candor. It’s the only way.”

He stared at me without speaking for a long while. Then he said, “Is that a wise remark, boy?” At thirty-seven I wasn’t too used to being called boy.

“No, sir,” I said. “Anyone who knows me will tell you that I’m really into candor. Only don’t give me that hard look anymore; it makes it hard to swallow my beer.”

“Keep it up, Spenser, and you’ll see how hard things can get. Understand?”

I drank some more beer. It’s one of the things I’m outstanding at. I said, “Okay, what was it you wanted to get out in the open?”

He kept the hard stare on me. “I did some checking with a few people I know in the AG’s office, after Rog told me he’d hired you. And I found out some things I don’t like hearing.”

“I’ll bet,” I said.

“Among them is that you think you’re kind of fancy and act like you’re kind of special. You don’t always cooperate with local authorities, they said.”

“Jesus, I was hoping that wouldn’t get out,” I said.

“Well, let me tell you something right now, Mister; out here in Smithfield you’ll cooperate. You’ll keep in close touch with my department, and you’ll be under the supervision of my people, or you’ll be hauling your ass — excuse me, Marge — right back into Boston. You got that?”

“How long you been working on that stare?” I said.

“Huh?”

“I mean, do you work out with it every morning in the mirror? Or is it something that once you’ve mastered it you never forget, like, say, riding a bicycle?”

Trask brought his open hand down hard on the tabletop. The ice in Margery Bartlett’s glass jingled. She said, “George, please.”

“This isn’t getting us nowhere, you know? This isn’t getting us nowhere at all,” Roger Bartlett said. Outside I could hear the low murmur of the power mower as it trimmed up the far side of the acre.

Trask took a deep forbearing breath and said, “Gimme another beer, will you, Rog?”

Bartlett did and put down another can by me, although I wasn’t halfway through the first one.

I said, “What have you got, Chief?”

“Everything there is to get; we’ve covered everything. The kid has run off and there’s no way to find him. I say he’s probably in New York or maybe California by now.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because he’s not around here. If he was we’d have found him.” Trask drank again from the can.

“What did he take when he left?”

“Just a pet whatchamacallit,” Margery Bartlett said. “Guinea pig.”

“Yeah,” Trask said, “guinea pig. He took that and what he was wearing and nothing else. Haven’t the Bartletts told you all this?”

“What was he wearing?”

“Blue short-sleeved shirt, tan pants, white sneakers.”

“Did he take any food for the guinea pig?”

Trask looked at me as if I were crazy. “Food?”

“Yeah. Food. Did he take any for the guinea pig?”

Trask looked at Margery Bartlett. She said, “I don’t know. I had nothing to do with the guinea pig.” She shivered. “Dirty little things. I hate them.”

I looked at her husband. He shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“What goddamned difference does that make? We ain’t worrying about the whatchamacallit; we’re after a missing kid. I don’t care if the whatchamacallit eats well or not.”

“Well,” I said, “if the kid cared enough about the guinea pig to come home and get it before taking off, he wouldn’t have left without food for it, would he? How about a carrying case or a box or something?”

All three of them looked blank.

“Did the shirt he was wearing have a big pocket, big enough for a guinea pig?”

Roger Bartlett said, “No, I put it through the wash the day before he left, and I noticed there were no pockets. I always go through the pockets before I put things in the wash, ya know, because the kids are always sticking things in their pockets and then forgetting them and they get ruined in the machine. So I checked and I noticed, ya know?”

“Okay,” I said, “let’s see if we can figure out whether he took any food or anything to carry the guinea pig. If you’re going to New York or California, you probably don’t want to carry a guinea pig in your hand the whole way. You can’t put him in your pants pocket, and you probably don’t buy him a cheeseburger and a Ho-Jo at Howard Johnson’s.”

Roger Bartlett nodded and said, “Come on.”

We went up through a center hall off the kitchen to the front stairs. The stairs were wide enough to drive a jeep up. Where they turned and formed a landing, a floor-to-ceiling window looked out over the bright blue pool. There was a trumpet vine fringing the window, and its big bugle-shaped red flowers obscured a couple of the window lights.

The boy’s room was second floor front, looking out over the broad front lawn and the quiet curving street beyond it. The bed was against the far wall, a low, headboardless affair that the stores insist on calling a Hollywood bed. It was covered with a red and black spread. There was a matching plaid rug on the floor and drapes of the same material as the spread on the windows. To the left of the door as we entered the room was a built-in counter that covered the entire wall. Beneath it were bureau drawers, and atop it were books and paper and some pencils and a modular animal cage of clear plastic with an orange plastic base. There was a water bottle still nearly full in its slot and some food in the dish. The perforated metal cover was open, and the cage was empty. Beside the cage was a cardboard box with the cover on. Bartlett opened the box. Inside was a package of guinea pig food pellets, a package of Guinea Pig Treat, and a blue cardboard box with a carry handle and a yellow picture of a satisfied-looking guinea pig on the outside.

Bartlett said, “That box is what they give you at the pet store to bring them home in. Kevin kept it to carry him around in.”

The two packages of food, both open, and the carry box occupied all the space in the shoe box.

I said, “Can you tell if there’s any food missing?”

“I don’t think so. This is where he kept it, and it’s still there.”

I stared around the room. It was very neat. A pair of brown loafers was lined up under the bed, and a pair of blue canvas bedroom slippers beside them, geometrically parallel. The bedside table had a reading lamp and a small red portable radio and nothing else. At the far end of the counter top was a brown and beige portable TV set. Neatly on top, one edge squared with the edge of the television, was a current TV Guide. I opened the closet door. The clothes were hung in precise order, each item on its hanger, each shirt buttoned up on the hanger, the pants each neatly creased on a pants hanger; a pair of Frye boots was the only thing on the floor.

“Who does his room?” I asked.

“He does,” his father said. “Isn’t he neat? Never saw a kid as neat as he is. Neat as a bastard, ya know?”

I nodded and began to look through the bureau drawers. They were as neat as the rest of the room. Folded underwear, rolled socks, six polo shirts of different colors with the sleeves neatly folded under. Two of the drawers were entirely empty.

“What was in these drawers?” I asked.

“Nothing, I think. I don’t think he ever kept anything in there.”

“Are you sure?”

“No. Like I say, he kept care of his own room, mostly.”

“How about your wife; would she know?”

“No.”

“Okay.” I looked around the room in case there was a secret panel or a note written in code and scratched on the window with the edge of a diamond. I saw neither. In fact there was nothing else in the room. No pictures on the wall, no nude pictures, no pot, no baseballs autographed by Carl Yastrzemski. It was like the sample rooms that furniture departments put up in big department stores: neat, symmetrical, color-coordinated, and empty.

“What are you looking for?” Bartlett asked me.

“Whatever’s here,” I said. “I don’t know until I see it.”

“Well, you through?”

“Yeah,” I said, and we went back downstairs.

When we came back to the kitchen, Trask was at the counter mixing another gin and tonic for Marge Bartlett. There were two more empty half-quart cans before his empty chair at the table, and Marge Bartlett’s voice had gotten louder.

“Well, we put it on in front of a group of young high school kids out in Bolton,” she was saying, “and the reception was fantastic. If you give children a chance to see creative drama, they’ll respond.”

Trask belched, less softly than he had the last time. “ ’Scuse me, Marge,” he said.

“Lotta gas in that Gansett,” Roger Bartlett said. “It’s a real gassy beer I don’t know why I buy it; it’s really gassy, ya know?”

Bartlett made himself another gin and tonic as he spoke. I opened my second can of beer and swallowed a little. Gassy, I thought.

Marge Bartlett got up and bumped her hip against the table as she did. She crossed the kitchen toward me with an unlighted cigarette in her mouth and said quite close to my face, “Gotta match?”

I said, “No.” She was leaning her thighs against me as I sat on the barstool, and the smell of gin was quite strong. I wondered if the gin was gassy too. She looked at me out of the corners of her eyes with her eyelids dropped down so her eyes were just slits and spoke to her husband.

“Why don’t you have shoulders like Mr. Spenser, Rog? I bet he looks great with his shirt off. Do you look great with your shirt off, Mr. Spenser?” Her unlit cigarette bobbed up and down in her mouth as she talked.

“Yeah, but I usually wear one because my tommy gun tends to cut into my skin when I don’t.”

She looked puzzled for a minute, but then Trask held a flaming Zippo lighter at her, and she got her cigarette going, took a big inhale and exhale through her nose without taking the cigarette out. She squeezed my upper arm with her right hand and said, “Oooooh.” I said, “Seen many Marlene Dietrich movies lately?”

That puzzled look again. She stepped back and picked up her drink. “I have to wee wee,” she said. And made what I guess was a seductive move toward the bathroom. I finished my beer.

“You spot anything, Sherlock Holmes?” Trask said.

I shook my head.

Trask looked pleased. “I didn’t think you would,” he said. “We’re not a big force, but we’re trained in modern techniques and we’re highly disciplined.”

“I think the kid’s local, though,” I said. “Or he went with someone.”

“The hell you say.”

“He wouldn’t set out for a long trip with a guinea pig in his hand and no food, no carry case, not even a spacious pocket. He might run in from a waiting car and grab the guinea pig and run out again. He’d go a short ride carrying the guinea pig, but not a long one. He’s a neat kid; everything is laid out in squares and angles. He wouldn’t be so un-neat as to forget food and lodging for the guinea pig.”

“Hey, that’s right,” Bartlett said. “He would never have done that; Kevin wasn’t like that; he’d never have gone off like that unless he was going like you say, Spenser He’d never do that.”

Somewhere off the kitchen a toilet flushed and a door opened and a minute later Marge Bartlett reappeared.

“Spenser thinks Kevin’s around here somewhere,” Bartlett said to her. “That he wouldn’t have gone far without taking stuff for the guinea pig and some clothes and things.”

She drained the rest of her drink and gestured the glass indiscriminately at the room. Trask jumped up. “I’ll get it, Marge. Sit still, Rog, I got it.”

“How does that sound to you, Mrs. Bartlett?” I asked. “Is Kevin the kind of kid to go off that way without preparation?”

“Marge,” she said. “Call me Marge.”

Trask gave her a fresh drink and helped himself to another beer from the refrigerator.

Bartlett said, “Jeez, I better slice up some more limes; gin and tonic without limes is like a kiss without a squeeze, right? I mean without a goddamned lime it’s like a kiss without a squeeze.”

Marge Bartlett popped another cigarette into her mouth. It had floral designs on it. Trask leaned over with his Zippo and lit it. The Zippo had a Marine Corps world and anchor emblem on it. I bet he hadn’t had the stomach thirty years ago at Parris Island.

“Is he, Marge?” I asked.

“Is he what?” she said.

“Is he the kind of kid that would go off without making any provisions for anything? His room doesn’t look like the room of that kind of person.”

“That’s right. He’s just like his damned father. So careful, so neat. Everything has to be the same. Not like me at all; I’m spontaneous. ‘Spontaneous Me.’ Ever read that poem? By Whittier?”

“Whitman,” I said.

“Yes, excuse me, Whitman, of course. Anyway, I’m spontaneous, spur-of-the-moment, zip-zap, go anywhere, do anything. Most creative people are like that, I guess, but not Kevin; a stick-in-the-mud just like old Roger Stick-in-the-mud. Supper’s got to be at six, plain food, roast beef, baked beans. I’d cook if they’d eat something creative, Julia Child, that kind of thing, but it’s got to be the same old stew, steak, hamburg. The hell with them; let them cook it themselves. Now if they would eat veal steak in wine with cherries...”

“My ass,” Bartlett said. “You’re not creative, you’re lazy. You haven’t cooked a goddamned meal around here in five years. Veal with my ass.”

“Hey, Rog,” Trask said. “Now there’s no way to talk. Marge has put out a wonderful feed at parties and stuff.”

“Yeah, catered from the goddamned deli for half my freaking profits for the month.”

“Oh, you sonova bitch,” Marge said. “That’s all you think about is your money. If you think I can take acting lessons and modern dance and sculpting all day long and try to keep myself young and interesting for you and the children and then come home and prepare a party that you’ll be proud of...”

“Balls,” Bartlett said, his face very red now. “You don’t give a rat’s ass about me or anybody else.”

“Hold on now,” Trask said. “Goddamn it, just hold on.”

I got off my barstool and took another can of beer out of the refrigerator You don’t see red refrigerators much. I went to the back door and opened it and went out. The retriever still lay there on the back steps with his tongue out, and I sat down beside him and opened the beer. The door behind me was on a pneumatic closer, and as it shut I heard Marge Bartlett say “shit” in a very loud voice.

I drank a small swallow of the beer and scratched the dog’s ear. His tail thumped on the porch. The sound of the lawn mower stopped, and a minute later a young girl came out of the barn and walked toward the house. She didn’t look at me sitting on the back steps but detoured toward the front of the house, and a minute later I heard the front door open and close.

I drank some more beer. In the middle of the front lawn, past the hydrangea, was a huge flowering crab. It was too late for blossoms, but the leaves were still reddish fading into green, and there were small green crab apples beginning to form. Some robins and some sparrows and a Baltimore oriole swarmed in and out of the branches with considerable chatter. After the green fruit, I supposed. I hadn’t seen a Baltimore oriole since I was a kid.

I heard the front door open and close again, and the girl came around the corner of the house wearing a bikini bathing suit and carrying a towel. She must have been thirteen or fourteen and was just beginning to get a figure. I was very careful not to lech at her. There has to be a line you won’t cross, and my lower limit is arbitrarily set at sixteen. As she walked by she looked at the ground and said nothing. I watched her as she went around the corner of the house toward the pool. The retriever got up as she passed and followed her. They were out of sight, and then I heard two splashes in the pool. And the sound of swimming. My beer was gone. I looked at my watch; nearly 4:30. I put the beer can on the railing of the porch, walked across the driveway, got in my car, and drove back to Boston.