Hush Money

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

I took a rosewood-paneled elevator up to the top floors of the State Street Building where Hall, Peary flourished. There were five guys in striped shirts and red suspenders riding up with me. For a guy who kept all his money in his wallet, I was spending a lot of time with stockbrokers. When I went into Louis Vincent’s big corner office I closed the door behind me. Louis was contemplating his computer screen, breathless with adoration.

“Hello there,” I said. Spenser, the genial gumshoe.

Vincent looked up.

“Oh, hi. Come on in, or, well, you are in, aren’t you.”

“I bring you greetings,” I said, “from KC Roth, and Meredith Teitler, and a woman in Hingham whose name I do not know, but whose significant other is a large fierce man named Al who says he will remove your head if he ever encounters you.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Vincent said.

“Don’t dick around with this, Vincent. You’ve stalked a number of women in the past and you are stalking KC Roth currently.”

He got to his feet.

“You’re crazy,” he said.

I walked around the corner of his desk and put a good short left hook in under his rib cage on the right side. He gasped and staggered back, and began flailing at me with both hands. He was so inept that his fists weren’t fully closed and if he’d hit me it would have been more of a slap than anything else. But he didn’t hit me. It had been a long time since somebody who punched like he did had hit me. I hit him again, same punch, same place, and he gasped again.

Then he hollered, “Betty.”

I punched him in the solar plexus with my right hand and he sagged. He tried to yell Betty again but he had too little breath. Behind me the door opened.

A woman’s voice said, “My God.”

“Call cops,” Vincent gasped.

I stepped away. He tried to straighten up, still struggling to get air in, and I clipped him on the jaw with a good professional right cross and he sat down hard on the floor and stayed there.

“Stop it,” Betty screamed, “stop it.”

“Done,” I said.

Betty turned and ran toward her desk. Vincent was staring at me from the floor. He was about half functional.

“Can you understand me?” I said.

He nodded.

“If anything even slightly annoying, anything at all happens to KC Roth, ever again, I will come back and knock every tooth out of your head.”

He continued to stare.

“And maybe I’ll tell Al where you are.” I could see that he heard me.

“You understand that?” I said.

He nodded very slightly. He was very pale, and he kept himself rigid as if any movement would make him disintegrate.

“Feel free to explain to the cops why I punched you,” I said and turned and walked out of his office.

Betty had hung up the phone. When she saw me she pointed me out to a couple of vigorous-looking young guys who were probably good at squash.

“That’s him,” she said. “Don’t let him get away.”

I didn’t feel like instructing them in the difference between scuffling and squash, so I smiled at them courteously and opened my coat so they could see that I was wearing a gun.

“Let him get away,” I said.

Which they did.