God Save the Child

23

We ate cassoulet and drank Beaujolais at 2:15 in the morning in the dining room with candles and didn’t get to sleep till four. In the morning she called in sick, and we stayed in bed till almost noon. We had a cup of coffee together and cleaned up the dining room and kitchen. It was two o’clock in the afternoon before I was back to work.

Dr. Croft had an office in a medical building on one side of a small shopping center in the middle of Smithfield. Two stories, brick, pastel plywood panels, a flat roof, and maybe ten offices. Inside there was the cool smell of air-conditioned money. There were four people in Croft’s office, three women and a man. Well, you see, Doctor, I’m horny but my spouse thinks I’m a creep. Oh, yes, of course, I’ll make an appointment for you with Doctor Harroway, my horniness consultant.

The office was paneled in light plywood and carpeted in beige. A dark-faced girl with an enormous bouffant hairdo and a starched white uniform eyed me from behind a counter in the far wall. I said, “I’d like to see the doctor, please.”

She said, “Have you an appointment?”

I said, “No, but if you’ll give him my card and tell him it’s important, I think he’ll see me.” I gave her a card with just my name and address on it. The one with the crossed sabers on it might seem a little pushy, I thought.

“Have you ever been a patient of Doctor Croft’s before?”

“No, Ma’am.”

“And what is your complaint?” She was pulling out a little yellow record card and rolling it into the typewriter.

“Functional curiosity about a guy named Fraser Robinson.”

She stopped rolling the record form into the typewriter and looked at me. “I beg your pardon?”

“Look, ducks, why don’t you just take the card to the doctor, tell him my ailment, and let him puzzle out the proper response.”

She gazed at me with manifest disapproval for a long time. Then without a word got up and disappeared through a door behind the counter. In about thirty seconds she was back with her disapproval even more manifest and said icily, “The doctor will see you now.” She was hoping for a prognosis of incurable. One of the ladies in the waiting room said something about the nerve of some people, and I slunk in through the doctor’s door; no one likes a line bucker. Inside was a long corridor with examining rooms on either side. Croft stepped out of the last door on the right and said, “Come right in, Spenser Good to see you again.”

I went in and sat down in the patient’s chair in front of Croft’s big reassuring desk. On the wall was a big reassuring medical school diploma in Latin and several official-looking reassuring documents with state seals and such on them. Croft had a white medical coat over his wide-striped blue shirt and striped tie. He rested his elbows on the desk and cathedraled his hands in front of him with the tips of his fingers touching the bottom of his chin. He had a gold ring with a blue stone on the little finger of his left hand.

“How can I help you?” he asked and gave me his big predator’s smile. Consoling. Reassuring. Phooey.

“Fraser Robinson tells me you are pimping for Vic Harroway.” Croft didn’t move except for the big smile. It went away. He said, “I beg your pardon?”

I said, “Knock it off, Croft. I’ve got you. I caught Robinson in a motel with an adolescent girl, and he confided in me. It doesn’t have to be a long fall for you; I’m not with the AMA. Or the Vice Squad. You want to supplement your income by pimping while you heal, that’s your doing. But I want to know everything you know about Harroway and Kevin Bartlett and how Earl Maguire got his neck broken and that kind of thing.”

Croft reached over and pushed the intercom switch. “Joan,” he said into it, “I can’t be disturbed for at least a half hour. If an emergency comes up, switch it to Doctor LeBlanc.” He turned back toward me. “This is a mountain out of a molehill, Spenser.”

“Yeah, I’ll bet it is,” I said.

“It is, in fact. Robinson is oversexed, and he’s married to a woman who is undersexed. Nothing pathological, but it was making their marriage an armed camp. He came to me for help. You’d be surprised how many people come to their family doctor in time of trouble.”

I said, “Cue the organ.” Croft paid no attention.

“Fraser is not only a patient, he’s a friend. Most of my patients are friends too. It’s not all injections and take-these-pills-three-times-a-day. A lot of any family doctor’s task is counseling, sometimes just being a guy that will listen.”

“You may replace Rex Morgan as my medical idol, Doctor.”

“I know, Spenser, you’re a smart aleck, but the practice of medicine doesn’t come out of textbook. Fraser needed an outlet, a chance for sexual adventure, and I gave it to him. It has saved his marriage, and I would do it again in a moment.”

“How’d you happen to know about Harroway, Doctor?”

“I’d heard about him in town. Being a doctor in a town this size, the word gets around; you hear things.”

“You ever meet him?”

“Of course not. We hardly move in the same circles.” Croft looked at me steadily.

Candid. A modern Hippocrates.

“How’d you happen to have a card with his phone number on it?”

Croft’s eyes faltered, only for a minute. “Card? I’ve never had a card for Harroway.” He dropped his hands toward the middle drawer of his desk, then caught himself and folded them in his lap and leaned back in his chair.

“Yeah you did, and you gave it to Robinson — a little white card with a phone number printed on it and nothing else.” I got up and walked past the desk to look out the window. It afforded a nice view of Route 128. Two small kids were sliding down the grassy embankment away from the highway using big pieces of cardboard for sleds. I turned around suddenly and pulled the middle drawer open. He tried to jam it shut, but I was stronger. In one corner was a neat stack of little white cards just like the one Robinson had given me. I took one out and stepped back away from the desk and sat down. Croft’s face was red, and two deep lines ran from his Arabian nostrils to the corners of his mouth. I held the card in my right hand and snapped the edge of it with the ball of my thumb. It was very noisy in the quiet office.

He regrouped. “Well, naturally, it’s not the kind of thing you admit. But I ran into Harroway once or twice at a pub on the highway and one thing led to another and I spent an evening with one of the girls from his house. Afterward, Harroway asked me to take a few of these cards and give them to any of my patients who might be in, ah, the situation that Fraser was in.”

“Croft,” I said, “I am getting sort of mad. You are bullshitting me. A little discreet business card, printed up with just a phone number on it, for the sexually dysfunctional? Harroway? Harroway’s idea of a subtle pander would be to stand oil the corner near the Fargo Building yelling, ‘Hey sailor, you want to get laid?’ You thought of this, and you’re in it like an olive in a martini.”

“You can’t prove that.”

“I can prove that. The point is you don’t want me to. If I have to prove it, you’ll be giving enemas at Walpole for the next five to ten. Now we can get around that, but not till you’ve spoken to me the words I’m longing to hear.”

“What do you want?” Croft said. “What do you want me to tell you?”

“Where’s Kevin Bartlett?”

“He’s with Vic, in Boston. Vic’s got an apartment in there on the Fenway.”

“Address?”

“I don’t know.”

“You supply Harroway with drugs?”

“Absolutely not.” He wasn’t admitting what I hadn’t proved.

“He ever give you money?”

“Never.” The firmness of his denials seemed to give him confidence. He denied it again. “Never.”

“Silly old me. I thought two nights ago by the bandstand on the Boston Common that you gave him a briefcase full of Quads and he gave you an envelope full of money.” Croft looked as if his stomach hurt. “Probably not that at all though, huh? Probably buying your collection of Kay Kayser records so he and the gang out at the house could have a sock-hop. That what it was?”

Croft looked at the window and then the door and then at me. None of us helped him. He opened his mouth and closed it again. He rubbed both hands, palms down, along the arms of his chair. “I want a lawyer,” he said. The words came out in a half croak.

“Now that’s dumb,” I said. “I mean, I might let you off the hook on this if you help me find the kid. But if you get a lawyer, then all this is going to come out, and maybe you’ll end up being accessory to murder. You know how that’ll cut into a guy’s practice.”

“I told you everything I know about the boy He’s with Vic in Boston.”

“I need an address, and you have one. You’re too much involved with Harroway not to know. You give me the address and maybe I can keep you out of the rest.”

“On the Fenway. One-thirty-six Park Drive, Apartment Three.”

I reached across the desk, picked up Croft’s phone, and dialed. His eyes widened. “What are you going to do?” he said.

“I’m going to keep you on ice for a while.” A voice answered, “Essex County Court House.” I said, “Lieutenant Healy, please.”

Croft started up from his seat. I reached over and pushed him back down with my hand on his shoulder. “Be cool,” I said. “I can’t trust you not to warn Harroway. If I get the kid back okay, I’ll spring you.”

Healy came on. I said, “This is Spenser. I got a suspect on the Bartlett kidnapping, or whatever.”

Healy said, “Or whatever.”

“And I want to put a lid on him for the afternoon so I can find the kid.”

Healy said, “What’s his name?”

“John Doe.”

“Oh,” Healy said. “Him.”

“He gave me a lead on the kid, Lieutenant, and I’ve got to be sure he doesn’t tip him off before I get there.”

“I gather he didn’t volunteer the lead.”

“We practiced the art of compromise.”

“And you want me to bury him someplace without a charge till you get the Bartlett kid, is that right?”

“Yeah.”

“That is unconstitutional.”

“Yeah.”

“You think you’ll lose the kid if you turn your back on John Doe?”

“Yeah.” Croft was sitting perfectly still now, not looking at anything. There was a pause at Healy’s end of the line. Then he said, “Okay. Where are you? I’ll have one of the road patrols in your area pick him up.”

“We’ll be parked in the northbound lane of One-twenty-eight under the Route One overpass. Red nineteen-sixty-eight Chevy convertible. Mass. plates seven-one-two-dash-two-three-four. If you need to contact me, call me here.” I gave him Susan’s number.

Healy said, “If this backfires, Spenser, I’ll have your license and your ass.” and hung up.

I said, “Okay, Doc. You get the picture. Let’s go.”

“How long will they hold me?”

“Till I get the kid. When he’s home I’ll come by and get you out.”

“How will you know where I am?”

“Healy will know.”

“Who is Healy?”

“State cop, works out of the Essex County DA’s office. Don’t offer him money. He will deviate your septum if you do.”

Croft called his girl again on the intercom, told her there was an emergency and he’d be gone for the day. We went out the back door of the office building and were parked under the Route One overpass when a blue State Police cruiser pulled up behind us and a tall red-haired state cop with big ears got out and came around to the driver’s side of my car.

“You Spenser?” he said.

“Yep.”

“I’m supposed to pick up a Mr. Doe,” he said with no expression on his face.

I nodded at Croft. The trooper went around and opened the door. Croft got out. The trooper closed the door. I drove away.