Looking for Rachel Wallace

25

“You want a beer?” I said. “There’s four left in the back seat.”

“I don’t drink on duty,” he said. He took two bottles of Beck’s out of the carton. “For crissake, what kind of beer is this? It doesn’t even have a twist-off cap.”

“There’s an opener in the glove compartment,” I said.

Belson opened the two beers, gave one to me and took a long pull on the other bottle.

“What you get from Mingo?”

“I thought I was ostracized,” I said.

“You know Marty,” Belson said. “He gets mad quick, he cools down quick. What you get from Mingo?”

“Haven’t you talked to him?”

“We figured you could talk with him harder than we could. We were right. But I thought he’d give you more trouble than he did.”

“I suckered him,” I said. “That got him off to a bad start.”

“Still,” Belson said, “he used to be goddamned good.”

“Me, too,” I said.

“I know that. What’d you get?”

“English set up the hit-and-run on the Lynnway.”

“Mingo do it through his cousin?”

“Yeah.”

“Cousin tell you that?”

“Yeah. Him and Cody did the work. Mingo gave them a deuce. He got the money from English. I braced Cousin Michael this morning.”

“I know,” Belson said.

“What the hell is this—practice teaching? You follow me around and observe?”

“I told you we had Cody and Mulready staked out,” Belson said. “When you showed up, the detail called in. I told them to let you go. I figured you’d get more than we would because you don’t have to sweat brutality charges. They lost you heading out of Sears, but I figured you’d end up here and I came over. Got here about one thirty and been sitting in the next block since. You get anything else?”

“No. But English is looking better and better. You look into those pie-throwers in Cambridge?”

Belson finished the beer and opened another bottle. “Yeah,” he said. “There’s nothing there. Just a couple of right-wing fruitcakes. They never been in jail. They don’t show any connection with English or Mingo Mulready or the Vigilance Committee or anybody else. They go to MIT, for crissake.”

“Okay. How about Julie Wells? You talk to her yet?”

Belson held the beer between his knees while he got a half-smoked cigar out of his shirt pocket and lit it and puffed at it. Then he took the cigar out of his mouth, sipped some beer, put the cigar back in, and said around it, “Can’t find her. She doesn’t seem to have moved or anything, but she’s not at her apartment whenever we show up. We’re sort of looking for her.”

“Good. You think you might sort of find her in a while?”

“If we’d known some things earlier, buddy, we’d have been more likely to have kept an eye on her.”

“Know anything about Mingo? You sound like you’ve known him before.”

“Oh, yeah, old Mingo. He’s got a good-sized file. Used to work for Joe Broz once. Used to be a bouncer, did some pro wrestling, some loansharking. Been busted for assault, for armed robbery, been picked up on suspicion of murder and released when we couldn’t turn a witness that would talk. English employs some sweetheart to drive the old babe around.”

I said, “You people going to keep English under surveillance?”

“Surveillance? Christ, you been watching Police Woman again? Surveillance. Christ.”

I said, “You gonna watch him?”

“Yeah. We’ll try to keep someone on him. We ain’t got all that many bodies, you know?”

“And he’s got money and maybe knows a couple city councilmen and a state senator.”

“Maybe. It happens. You know Marty. You know me. But you also know how it works. Pressure comes down, we gotta bend. Or get other work, you know?”

“Felt any pressure yet?”

Belson shook his head. “Nope,” he said, “not yet.” He finished the bottle of beer.

“Belmont cops?”

“They said they could help out a little.”

“You got anybody at Julie Wells’s apartment?”

“Yeah. And we check in at the agency regular. She ain’t there.”

I said, “You want a ride to your car?”

He nodded, and I went around the block and dropped him off on the street behind Mingo’s house. “You stumble across anything, you might want to give us a buzz,” Belson said as he got out.

“Yeah,” I said. “I might.”

He said, “Thanks for the beer,” and closed my door, and I pulled away. It was almost an hour and a half in the snow and the near-motionless rush hour until I got to my apartment. Susan was there.

“I had an Adolescent Development Workshop at B.U. this afternoon, and when I got out it was too bad to drive home, so I left my car in the lot and walked down,” she said.

“You missed a golden opportunity,” I said.

“For what?”

“To take off all your clothes and make a martini and surprise me at the door.”

“I thought of that,” Susan said, “but you don’t like martinis.”

“Oh,” I said.

“But I made a fire,” she said. “And we could have a drink in front of it.”

“Or something,” I said. I picked her up and hugged her.

She shook her head. “They were talking about you all day today,” she said.

“At the workshop on adolescent development?”

She nodded and smiled her fallen-seraph smile at me. “You exhibit every symptom,” she said.

I put her down and we went to the kitchen. “Let us see what there is to eat,” I said. “Maybe pulverized rhino horn with a dash of Spanish fly.”

“You whip up something, snooks,” she said. “I’m going to take a bath. And maybe rinse out the pantyhose in your sink.”

“A man’s work is never done,” I said. I looked in the refrigerator. There was Molson Golden Ale on the bottom shelf. If we were snowbound, at least I had staples on hand. In the vegetable keeper there were some fresh basil leaves and a bunch of parsley I’d bought in Quincy Market. It was a little limp but still serviceable. I opened a Molson. I could hear the water running in the bathroom. I raised the bottle of ale, and said, “Here’s looking at you, kid,” in a loud voice.

Susan yelled back, “Why don’t you make me a gimlet, blue eyes, and I’ll drink it when I get out. Ten minutes.”

“Okay.”

In the freezer was chopped broccoli in a twenty-ounce bag. I took it out. I got out a large blue pot and boiled four quarts of water, and a smaller saucepan with a steamer rack and boiled about a cup of water. While it was coming to a boil I put two garlic cloves in my Cuisinart along with a handful of parsley and a handful of basil and some kosher salt and some oil and a handful of shelled pistachios and I blended them smooth. Susan had given me the Cuisinart for my birthday, and I used it whenever I could. I thought it was kind of a silly toy, but she’d loved giving it to me and I’d never tell. When the water boiled, I shut off both pots. I could hear Susan sloshing around in the tub. The door was ajar, and I went over and stuck my head in. She lay on her back with her hair pinned up and her naked body glistening in the water.

“Not bad,” I said, “for a broad your age.”

“I knew you’d peek,” she said. “Voyeurism, a typical stage in adolescent development.”

“Not bad, actually, for a broad of anyone’s age,” I said.

“Go make the gimlet now,” she said. “I’m getting out.”

“Gin or vodka?” I said.

“Gin.”

“Animal,” I said.

I went back to the kitchen and mixed five parts gin to one part Rose’s limejuice in a pitcher and stirred it with ice and poured it into a glass with two icecubes. Susan came into the kitchen as I finished, wearing the half-sleeved silk shaving robe she’d given me last Christmas, which I never wore, but which she did when she came and stayed. It was maroon with black piping and a black belt. When I tried it on, I looked like Bruce Lee. She didn’t.

She sat on one of my kitchen stools and sipped her gimlet. Her hair was up and she had no make-up and her face was shiny. She looked fifteen, except for the marks of age and character around her eyes and mouth. They added.

I had another Molson and brought my two pots to a boil again. In the big one I put a pound of spaghetti. In the small one with the steamer rack I put the frozen broccoli. I set the timer for nine minutes.

“Shall we dine before the fire?” I said.

“Certainly.”

“Okay,” I said. “Put down the booze and take one end of the dining-room table.”

We moved it in front of the fire and brought two chairs and set the table while the spaghetti boiled and the broccoli steamed. The bell on the timer rang. I went to the kitchen and drained the broccoli and tried the spaghetti. It needed another minute. While it boiled I ran the Cuisinart another whirl and reblended my oil and spices. Then I tried the pasta. It was done. I drained it, put it back in the pot and tossed it with the spiced oil and broccoli. I put out the pot, the leftover loaves of Syrian bread that I bought for lunch, and a cold bottle of Soave Bolla. Then I held Susan’s chair. She sat down. I put another log on the fire, poured a dash of wine in her glass. She sipped it thoughtfully, then nodded at me. I filled her glass and then mine.

“Perhaps madam would permit me to join her,” I said.

“Perhaps,” she said.

I sipped a little wine.

“And perhaps later on,” she said, “we might screw.”

I laughed halfway through a swallow of wine and choked and gasped and splattered the wine all over my shirt front.

“Or perhaps not,” she said.

“Don’t toy with me while I’m drinking,” I said, when I was breathing again. “Later on I may take you by force.”

“Woo-woo,” she said.

I served her some pasta with broccoli and some to myself. Outside it was snowing steadily. There was only one light on in the room; most of the light came from the fire, which was made of applewood and smelled sweet. The glow of the embers behind the steady low flame made the room faintly rosy. We were quiet. The flame hissed softly as it forced the last traces of sap from the logs. I wasn’t nearly as sore as I had been. The pasta tasted wonderful. The wine was cold. And Susan made my throat ache. If I could find Rachel Wallace, I might believe in God.