God Save the Child

5

Margery Bartlett had gone upstairs to lie down, Dr. Croft had come over and given her a shot. Roger Bartlett had gone to a neighbor’s house to pick up his daughter. Trask had brought back the maps, and he and Healy and I were looking at them spread out on the kitchen table. A small slick-haired state cop in plainclothes and rimless glasses had hooked a tape recorder to the phone in the den off the kitchen and sat next to it with earphones, reading a copy of Playboy he’d found in the magazine rack. He turned it sideways to look at the centerfold.

“Sonova bitch,” he said, “hair and all. You see this, Lieutenant?”

Healy didn’t look up. “If you gotta read that garbage, read it, but don’t narrate it.”

The little cop held the magazine out at arm’s length. “Sonova bitch,” he said.

Healy said, “What’s up here, back of the riding stable?”

“Nothing,” Trask said, “just woods. It’s the west end of the Lynn Woods. Runs for miles back on into Lynn.”

“Hills?”

“Yeah, low ones; it slopes up back of the stable riding ring.

“Can we put someone up there with glasses?”

“Sure, the woods are thick. He could climb a tree if he wanted.”

“You know the people at the stable?”

“Sure.”

“Can we put somebody in there?”

“In the stable?”

Healy said, “I don’t mean inside the stable. Can we have someone posing as an employee?”

“Oh yeah, sure. I’ll set it up.”

Healy made some notes on a small notepad he’d taken from inside his coat. He used a big red fountain pen that looked like one my father had used when I was small.

“If they pick up the money here,” I said, “that’s northbound. Where’s the first place they can get onto Route One north?”

“Saugus,” Healy said. “Here, by the shopping center.”

“And the first place they can get off?”

“Here, about two hundred yards up, at this intersection. Otherwise they could dip down through the underpass here and head up Route One or turn off here at One-twenty-eight. We can put a couple of people at each place.”

“And a walkie-talkie up on the hill with the glasses?”

Healy nodded. “We’ll put an unmarked car here.” He put a cross on the map at the intersection of Route One and Salem Street. “Here, here, he could U-turn at the lights. So here, southbound.” Healy marked out eleven positions on the map.

“That’s a lot of cars,” Trask said.

“I know. We’ll have your people use their own cars and supply them with walkie-talkies. How many people can you give me?”

“Everybody; twelve men. But who’s going to pay them per diem?”

Healy looked at him. “Per diem?”

“For the cars. They’re supposed to get a per diem mileage allowance for the use of their own cars on official business. This could mount up if all of them do it. And I have to answer to a town meeting every year.”

I said, “Do you accept Master Charge?”

Trask said, “It’s not funny. You’ve never had to answer to a town meeting. They’re a bunch of unreasonable bastards at those things.”

Healy said, “The state will rent the cars. I’ll sign a voucher. But if you screw this up, you’ll learn what an unreasonable bastard really is.”

“There won’t be any screw-up. I’ll be right on top of every move my people make.”

“Yeah,” Healy said.

“Who you going to put into the stable?” I asked Healy.

“You want to do it? You’re the least likely to be recognized.”

“Yeah.”

“You know anything about horses?”

“Only what I read in the green sheet.”

“It doesn’t matter. We’ll go up and look around.”

Healy put on his coat, tightened his tie, put the snap-brimmed straw hat squarely on his head, and we went out. The rain had started again. Healy ignored it. “We’ll go in your car,” he said. “No need to have them looking at the radio car parked up there. Stick here, Miles,” he said to the cop leaning against the cruiser. He had on a yellow rain slicker now. “I’ll be back.”

“Yes, sir,” Miles said.

I backed out, pulling the car up on the grass to get around the state cruiser.

“Your roof leaks,” Healy said.

“Maybe I can get the state to give me per diem payment for a new one,” I said.

Healy said nothing. The stable was about ten minutes from the Bartletts’ home. We drove there in silence. I pulled into the parking lot in front of the stable, parked, and shut off the motor. The stable was maybe 100 yards in from the road. The access to it was between a restaurant and a liquor store. The restaurant was roadside colonial: brick, dark wood and white plastic, flat-roofed. In front was an enormous incongruous red and yellow sign that advertised home cooking and family-style dining and cocktails. The store was glass-fronted; the rest was artificial fieldstone. It too had a flat roof rimmed in white plastic. In the window was an inflated panda with a sign around his neck advertising a summer cooler. Across the top of the store was a sign that said PACKAGE STORE in pink neon. Two of the letters were out. The parking lot narrowed to a driveway near the stable.

The stable looked like someplace you’d go to rent a donkey. It was a one-story building with faded maroon siding, the kind that goes on in four-by-eight pregrooved panels. The trim was white, and the nails had bled through so that it was rust streaked. The roof was shingled partly in red and partly in black. Through it poked three tin chimneys. Next to it was a riding ring of unpainted boards and the trailer part of a tractor trailer rig, rusted and tireless on cinder blocks. In front of the stable parked among the weeds were five horse trailers, an old green dump truck with V-8 on the front, an aqua-colored ’65 Chevy hardtop, a new Cadillac convertible, and a tan ’62 Chevy wagon. A sign, Solid Fill Wanted, stood at the edge of the road, and a pile of old asphalt, bricks, paving stones, tree stumps, gravel, crushed stone, sewer pipe, a rusting hot water tank, three railroad ties, and a bicycle frame settled into the marshy ground behind it. Marlboro country.

Healy looked at it all without speaking. Carefully. A sea gull lit on the containerized garbage back of the restaurant and began working on a chunk of something I couldn’t identify through the rain.

“Let’s get out,” Healy said. We did. The rain was steady and warm and vertical. No wind slanted it. Healy had on no raincoat but seemed not to notice. I turned the collar up on my raincoat. We walked down toward the stable. The bare earth around it had been softened into a swamp of mud, and it became hard to walk. On the other side of the riding ring a handmade sign said Bridle Path, and an arrow pointed to a narrow trail that led into the woods. We walked back out to the parking lot and stood at the edge of Route One at the spot where Mrs. Bartlett was to stand. Cars rushed past in a hiss of wet pavement. To the left the road curved out of sight beyond a hill. To the right it dipped into a tunnel with a service road branching off to the right and parallel. Two hundred yards down was a light on the service road and a cross street.

Healy turned and headed back toward the stable. I followed. Healy seemed to assume I would. I walked a little faster so I’d be beside him, not behind him. I was beginning to feel like a trainee.

At the far end of the stable was a door marked “Office.” The torn screen door was shut, but the wooden door inside was open and a television set was tuned to a talk show. “Were you first into transcendental meditation before or after you made this picture?” “During, actually. We were in location in Spain...” Healy rapped on the door, and a dark-haired man answered. He was wearing black Levis and a white T-shirt that was too small for him. His stomach spilled over his belt and showed bare where the T-shirt gapped. His skin was dark and moist-looking, and his face sank into several layers of carelessly shaved chin. He went perfectly with the stable. He also smelled strongly of garlic and beer.

“Yeah?”

I said, “I’d like to rent a high-spirited palomino stallion with a hand-tooled Spanish leather saddle and silver-studded bridle, please.” The man looked at me with his eyes squinting, as if the light were too bright.

“A what?” he said.

“Shut up, Spenser,” Healy said and showed his badge to the fat man. “May we come in, please?”

The fat man stepped back from the door. “Sure, sure, come on in; I’m just having lunch.”

We went in. The television was on top of a rolltop desk. The actress was saying to the talk show hostess, “Sylvia, I never pay any attention to the critics.” On the writing surface of the desk were a big wedge of cheese and a salami on the white butcher’s paper in which they’d been wrapped. There was also a half-empty quart bottle of Pickwick ale, an open pocketknife, and a jar of pickled sweet peppers. The fat man belched as he waved us to a seat. Or waved Healy to a seat. There was only a straight-backed chair by the desk and a sprung swivel chair with a torn cushion on it. The fat man sat in the swivel chair, Healy took the straight chair, and I stood. “The critics I care about, Sylvia, are those people out there. If I can make them happy, I feel that I’m...” Healy reached over and shut off the television.

“What’s up?” the fat man said.

“My name is Healy. I’m a detective lieutenant with the Massachusetts State Police. I want to have this man spend the next two days here as if he were an employee, and I don’t want to tell you why.”

A dirty white cat jumped up on the desk and began to chew on a scrap of salami. The fat man ignored it and cut a piece of cheese off the wedge. He speared it with the jackknife and popped it into his mouth. With the other hand he fished a pickled pepper out of the jar and ate it. Then he drank most of the rest of the ale from the bottle, belched again, and said, “Well, for crissake, Lieutenant, I got a right to know what’s happening. I mean, for crying out loud, I don’t want to screw up my business, you know. I got a right.”

Healy said, “You gotta right to discuss with the building inspector the code violations he and I are going to spot in this manure bin if you give me any trouble.”

The fat man blinked a minute at Healy and then said, “Yeah, sure, okay. Look, always glad to help out. I was just curious, you know. I don’t want no trouble. Be glad to have this fellow around.”

Healy said, “Thank you. He’ll be here tomorrow morning dressed for work, and he’ll hang around here for the next couple of days. I don’t want you to say anything about this to anyone. It is a matter of life and death, and if anyone starts talking about this, it could be fatal. Kind of fatal for you too. Got me?”

“You can trust me, Lieutenant. I won’t say nothing to nobody. Don’t worry about it.” He looked at me. “You’re welcome to stay around all you want. My name’s Vinnie. What’s yours?”

“Nick Charles,” I said. He grabbed my hand.

“Good to meet you, Nick. Anything you need, just holler. Want a piece of cheese or salami, anything?”

“No, thanks.” Vinnie looked at Healy. Healy shook his head.

“Remember, Vinnie, keep your mouth shut about this. It matters.”

“Right, Lieutenant. Mum’s the word. Wild horses...”

“Yeah, okay. Just remember.” Healy left. I followed.