Pale Kings and Princes

13

I drove back to my motel. As I drove west the late afternoon sun slanted directly in through the windshield, and even with sunglasses on and my Red Sox cap tilted way over my nose, I had trouble seeing the road. The car had a button to push so that the radio would scan the dial locating the local stations. It had a thermostatic heater/cooler so that you set the temperature digitally and it stayed that way winter and summer. It had cruise control and turbo intercooling and a beeper to remind you that your fly was open. But if you drove west in the late afternoon, it couldn’t do a goddamned thing about the sun. I kind of liked that.

I scanned the dial on the radio but the local stations all played either Barry Manilow or an unidentifiable sound which someone had once told me was heavy metal. I finally found a station in Worcester that called itself the jazz sound, but the first record was a Chuck Mangione trumpet solo, so I shut the thing off, electronically, and sang a couple of bars of “Midnight Sun.” Beautifully.

The “ah ha” had probably been overoptimistic when I followed the Rogers kid to Esteva’s, but compared to what I’d been coming up with before, it was a smoking pistol. It was a pattern. Coincidence exists but believing in it never did me any good.

The sun had set by the time I got to the Reservoir Court. I parked in front of the motel and went in. The desk clerk, a little pudgy guy with a maroon three-piece suit, smirked at me as I came in. He wore a flowery tie and his white shirt gaped out under his vest by maybe four inches.

“A gentleman wishes to see you in the lounge, Mr. Spenser.” He said it in the way Mary Ellen Feeney used to say, “The principal wants to see you.”

There were a couple of guys sitting near the front door with overcoats on not doing anything. I unzipped my leather jacket and went into the bar. Virgie was on station. There were a couple of people having late lunch or early supper down past the bar in the dining room, and at a round table for six in the bar sat three men. The guy in the middle was wearing a double-breasted white cashmere overcoat with the high collar turned up. At the open throat I could see a white tie knotted against a dark shirt. His face was shaped like a wedge with the mouth a straight line slashed wide across the lower part. His forehead was prominent and his eyes recessed deeply beneath it. It was not a Spanish face, it was Indian. The man to his left was tall and thin with long hair and a drooping pencil-thin moustache. He sat languidly back in his chair like a cartoon Hispanic. His green Celtics warm-up jacket was open over a T-shirt that said “Anchor Steam Beer” on the front. The other guy was squat and his body jammed into a green and blue wool jacket that seemed about two sizes too small. The jacket was buttoned up tight to his neck. His hair was thick and curly and needed cutting. On top of his head was a small flat-crowned hat with the brim turned up all the way. His nose was wide and flat and so was his face. His eyes were very small and dark and still.

“My name is Spenser,” I said.

The guy in the Celtics jacket nodded toward a chair. I sat down. The guy in the Celtics jacket looked at me. So did the guy with the cashmere coat. The guy with the hat didn’t look at anything.

I looked back.

After a while the guy in the cashmere coat said, “Do you know who I am?”

“Ricardo Montalban,” I said.

They looked at me some more. I looked back.

“I loved you in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan,” I said.

Cashmere glanced at Celtics Jacket. Celtics Jacket shrugged.

“My name is Felipe Esteva,” Cashmere said.

“I’ll be goddamned,” I said. “I’m never wrong about Ricardo. I saw him once outside the Palm on Santa Monica Boulevard. He was driving a Chrysler LeBaron and wearing a white coat just like that.” I shook my head. “You sure?” I said.

The guy in the Celtics jacket leaned forward over the table and said, “You are going to be in very big trouble.”

“Trouble?” I said. “What for? It’s an easy mistake to make. Especially with the white coat.”

Esteva said, “Shut up. I didn’t come to listen. I came to talk.”

I waited.

“Today you went to my house,” he said, “and you talked to my wife.”

I nodded.

“What did you talk about?”

“I asked her if she knew Eric Valdez,” I said.

“Why did you ask her that?”

“I heard she did know him,” I said.

“Who you hear that from?”

“A person who should know,” I said.

“Who?”

I shook my head. “It was in confidence.”

Esteva looked at the guy with the hat. “Maybe Cesar can change your mind.”

“Maybe Cesar can’t,” I said. Cesar never moved. His eyes didn’t shift. For all I could tell he hadn’t heard us.

“Don’t be foolish, Spenser. You think you are tough, and some people I know say maybe you are. But Cesar...” Esteva shook his head. Cesar remained silent.

“You ain’t as tough as Cesar,” the guy in the Celtics jacket said. He smiled when he said it and I saw that his upper front teeth were missing.

“Sure,” I said.

We sat some more.

“I don’t like you talking to my wife,” Esteva said.

“Don’t blame you, but it seemed a good idea at the time.”

“You think she got something to do with Valdez?”

“Maybe,” I said. “I was told that Valdez had had an affair with the wife of a Colombian and that he’d been killed by the husband.”

Esteva stared at me. Then he said something in Spanish and his two pals got up and went to the bar and sat on stools out of earshot.

“I maybe kill you for saying that,” Esteva said.

“Sure,” I said. “Or you’ll kill me for thinking you were Ricardo Montalban, or because you want to prove how tough Cesar is. I understand that possibility. But let’s not waste time here with it. You saying you’re going to kill me doesn’t scare me. Probably it should. But it doesn’t. And every time you say it, I got to think up a smart answer to prove that it doesn’t scare me. It uses up all our energy and we’ve got more important stuff to talk about.”

Esteva took out a long thin black cigar like Gilbert Roland used to smoke in the movies and lit it and got it drawing and inhaled and exhaled and gazed for a moment at the glowing tip. Then he looked at me and nodded.

“That is true,” he said.

He took in some more cigar smoke and let it out in a narrow stream.

“You think my wife had an affair with Eric Valdez?” he said.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“You think I killed him?”

“I don’t know.”

He was silent.

“That’s why I asked,” I said.

“You think maybe she’s mad at me for killing him, she tell you about it.”

“It happens,” I said.

“Emmy don’t have an affair with nobody,” he said. “If she did I would kill him, sure. Maybe her too. But she don’t. She love me, Spenser, and she respect me. You understand that?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“You have other questions?” he said.

“Valdez’s boss thinks he was killed to keep the lid on the cocaine trade here.”

“That a question?” Esteva said.

“Yes,” I said.

“What cocaine business,” Esteva said. He put the cigar in the corner of his mouth and inhaled and exhaled without removing it.

“I was asking you,” I said.

“I don’t know nothing about cocaine,” he said.

“You’re in the produce business?” I said.

“Yes.”

“And those two guys walk around with you in case a tough greengrocer tries to put the arm on you.”

“I’m rich,” Esteva said. “Lot of Anglos don’t like a rich Colombian.”

“How about the chief’s son? How come he works for you?”

Esteva shrugged elaborately. “Don’t do harm to do favors for the chief. Good business.”

“Kid drives a truck,” I said.

“Kid’s slow,” Esteva said. “Job’s a good job for him.”

“You send some people out to Quabbin Road the other night to roust me?”

Esteva shook his head.

“I didn’t think you did,” I said.

“You think I tell you if I did?” Esteva said.

“Hell,” I said, “I don’t know, Mr. Esteva. I don’t know what’s going on so I wander around and ask questions and annoy people and finally somebody says something or does something then I wander around and ask questions about that and annoy people and so on. Better than sitting up in a tree with a spyglass.”

“Well, you annoying people. That is true,” Esteva said. “One day it could get you hurt bad.”

He got up and nodded toward the two men at the bar. They fell in behind him and followed as he walked out. When they reached the lobby the two guys in overcoats stood. Cesar stopped in the doorway of the lounge and turned slowly and looked at me. I looked back. It was like staring into a shotgun. Then he turned and went out behind the rest of them.

“That’s for sure,” I said. But no one heard me.