Hush Money

CHAPTER FORTY

Before we could unleash ourselves on Amir and Willie we had Louis Vincent to attend to. It was a tricky one to time. I had shared my plan with Sgt. O’Connor of the Reading cops. He was keeping an eye on KC and reported that she was home. Burt Roth had given me his beeper number and said he’d be standing by. So it was all in place, at least for the moment, and if Louis Vincent came out to lunch this noontime we might be in business. If he didn’t we’d have to innovate.

He did. I was standing in a doorway on the opposite corner of State and Congress so I could see him whichever door he came out. State Street was one way, so Hawk was idling his Jaguar, on the corner of State and Broad, two blocks down. Vincent walked out onto Congress Street wearing a Burberry trench coat and a tweed hat and turned the corner and headed down State Street toward the waterfront. I let him see me and as soon as he did he ran. It was a panic run. Hawk turned up onto State Street and was idling at the curb when I caught Vincent. Vincent tried to kick me and I turned my left hip and deflected the kick and nailed him on the chin with a right hook. He sagged, I caught him. Hawk was out of his car and had the back door open. I shoved Vincent in, and went in after him. Hawk was back in and behind the wheel by the time I got straightened up, and we were off to Reading. A couple of pedestrians stared after us.

Vincent took a while to get over the right hook, so he was quiet as we went down past North Station and through the old West End. As Hawk went up onto the expressway at Leverett Circle, Vincent said, “What are you doing?”

“Shut up.”

“You can’t…”

I slapped him across the face. It was more startling than painful. He put his hands up in case I was going to do it again.

“Shut up.”

Vincent was a quick study, one slap was enough. He didn’t say another word as we went up Route 93. Hawk dialed Burt Roth’s beeper, punched in his car phone number, and hung up. As we were passing Medford Square the car phone rang, Hawk spoke into it a moment, and hung up. Vincent looked worried but didn’t say anything.

“He’ll be there,” Hawk said to me without turning his head.

Vincent looked more worried when we turned off at the Reading exit and even more worried when we headed north on Route 28 toward KC’s place. A Reading police car was parked out front. Roth was in the parking lot in a green Subaru station wagon. When we pulled in, I got out and waved at the Reading cruiser. Sgt. O’Connor gave me a thumbs-up sign out the window as he pulled away. Hawk had gotten out and was standing by Vincent’s door. I went around and opened it and jerked my head at Vincent.

“Where we going?” Vincent said.

Hawk reached in, got hold of his hair, and dragged him out headfirst.

“Hate a rapist,” Hawk said.

Burt Roth got out of his car and walked toward us. And stopped in front of us and looked at Vincent. Roth’s face had no expression.

“You know each other?” I said.

“Know of,” Roth said. “We’ve never met.”

“Who are you?” Vincent said.

^“Burt Roth.”

“Jesus.”

“Let’s go inside,” I said.

“I don’t want to go in,” Vincent said.

I took his arm and moved him firmly toward the door. As I did so he had half an eye on Hawk.

“Nobody here cares anything at all about what you want, Louis.”

I rang the doorbell and KC answered. Even here, in the face of what must have been a genuinely shocking event, her reaction had a theatricality about it. She stared and then opened her mouth and then staggered back several steps into her living room. Burt Roth went first.

“It’s okay, KC,” he said. “Everything is okay.”

Her eyes were wide and she made small noises which were not quite crying. It was as if she couldn’t get enough air into her lungs to actually cry. I moved Vincent in ahead of me and Hawk followed us and closed the front door and folded his arms and leaned on it. Talk about theatrical.

KC said, “Burt,” in a strangled kind of voice. She didn’t look at Vincent.

Roth spoke softly and fast.

“This is kind of like an intervention, KC. People who care about you gathered together to help you get past a hard thing.”

“You care about me?”

“Of course. No false messages. Our life together is over, I believe. We each have another life to live. But I’ve known you most of my adult life. We share a child. Of course I care about you.”

She was trying so hard to pretend that Vincent wasn’t there that it made all her motions stiff as she avoided seeing him.

“I don’t even know that man,” she said looking at Hawk.

Hawk smiled at her. When he chose to he could look as warm and supportive as a cinnamon muffin.

“He’s with me,” I said. “We brought Vincent.”

When I said his name it was as if I had jabbed her with an electrode. She winced visibly and looked very hard at her ex-husband.

“What are you going to do?” she said.

“This man raped you, KC,” Burt Roth said quietly. “You are too important to let someone misuse you that way.”

“You know…?”

“I know he did, KC.”

“I never…” Vincent started.

Hawk put his hand on Vincent’s shoulder and said, “Shhh.”

Vincent seemed to freeze when Hawk spoke to him.

“You made a mistake with him, maybe,” Burt Roth said. “Everybody makes mistakes. You probably made one with me, too. But they are honorable mistakes. Mistakes made for love. The best kind of mistake to make.”

KC was staring at him as if she’d never seen him or anything quite like him. I wasn’t sure how much of what he was saying he believed, but he was saying it well.

“And I’m determined,” Roth went on, “that you will not have to suffer as you’ve suffered for making honest mistakes.”

“God,” KC said, “I have suffered.”

“And if we don’t put this creep where he belongs.” He nodded at Vincent and paused.

I admired how clever he was at avoiding specifics.

“If we don’t,” Roth said, “will he rape you again? Who else will he rape?”

He paused again, and looked steadily at KC.

“Maybe one day he’ll rape Jennifer,” Roth said softly.

KC made kind of a moan, and stepped back again and sat down on the edge of her couch as if her legs had given way. Again I believed her sincerity, without missing the contrived quality of it. Maybe she was simply an endless series of contrivances and when they had all been peeled away she could cease to exist.

I said, “Did Louis Vincent rape you, KC?”

She stared at Roth for a time as if I hadn’t spoken, then, for the first time, she looked at Vincent.

“Yes,” she said.

Behind her eyes hatred crackled, for a genuine moment, like heat lightning.

“Yes he did,” she said.

Vincent started to speak, looked at Hawk, and didn’t. His gaze shifted rapidly around the room, as if he could find a place to run. He couldn’t. I walked over to the end table beside the couch and picked up her phone and called Sgt. O’Connor. Roth sat down on the sofa beside KC. She put her hand out and he took it. Hawk looked at Roth and nodded his head once in approval. For Hawk that was the Croix de Guerre.

O’Connor came on the line.

“Spenser,” I said. “We have your rapist if you’d like to come up and get him.”

I hung up the phone and turned. Vincent was staring at me. Suddenly his eyeballs rolled back in their sockets and he fell backward. Hawk stepped aside and let him fall against the wall and slide to the floor. He lay on his back with his eyelids open over his white eyeballs and his mouth ajar. We all looked at him.

“Rapist appears a little vaporish,” Hawk said.

Faintly I could hear the police sirens coming our way.