Pale Kings and Princes

21

I parked the rented Mustang in Caroline Rogers’s driveway before lunch on Monday. The driveway had been plowed and a path had been cut through the plow spill to the front door. The house was a two-story raised ranch with fieldstone facing on the first floor and red cedar siding on the second. The front door was painted green. I rang the bell. Caroline opened the door. She was dressed and her hair was combed and she had on lipstick. There was no particular sign of pain. Grief makes less of a mark on people’s appearance than is thought. People torn with sorrow often look just like people who aren’t.

I said, “Hello, Mrs. Rogers, may I come in?”

She smiled and nodded and stepped aside. I walked into a living room full of maple furniture upholstered in print fabric. Somewhere in the house a television set was on.

“Let me take your coat,” she said.

I took off my leather jacket and handed it to her. She paid no attention to the gun in the shoulder rig. She was a cop’s wife. She’d seen guns before.

“Coffee?” she said. “It’s all made.”

“Thank you.”

She left the living room and came back in maybe a minute with cream, sugar, and a mug of coffee on a small tole tray. The mug was white and had a big red apple painted on the side. She set the tray down on the coffee table, and gestured toward the couch.

I sat. She smoothed her plaid skirt down along the backs of her thighs and sat in a wing chair across from me, her knees together. She was wearing cream-colored cable-stitched knee socks and penny loafers. She folded her hands on her lap. I noticed there were no rings on either hand.

“How are you?” I said.

“I’m coping,” she said.

I poured a little cream in the coffee, added two sugars, and stirred. If you add the sugar first it doesn’t taste right.

“How’s the kid?”

“Brett seems all right. He and his father were not close.”

I drank some coffee.

“No rings,” I said.

“No,” she said. “It’s a way to start living a new way. I miss him, but I have a long time left without him.”

I nodded.

“Is your son home?”

“Yes, he’s in the den.”

I squeezed my lips together for a moment. “I need to see him,” I said. “I need to talk with you both about something.”

“What is it?”

“I need to talk with you both,” I said.

Caroline didn’t argue. She got up and went out of the living room and returned in a moment with Brett. The first time he looked at me I didn’t register. He had a vague apprehensive look, the way a kid might have when his mother says a man wants to talk with you. Then he saw me again and I did register. He stopped short, and stared at me and then took a step back and closer to his mother.

“Yeah,” I said, “it’s me. The guy on the Maine Pike.”

He shook his head and opened his mouth and closed it.

“What about the Maine Pike,” Caroline said.

I looked at Brett. He didn’t say anything.

“Brett?” Caroline said.

Brett’s face was red. He didn’t look at me, or his mother. His hands were jammed into the side pockets of his beige and blue warm-up suit.

Caroline looked at me. “Mr. Spenser?”

I took in a deep breath. “Having nothing better to do a few days back I staked out the Esteva warehouse and when Brett drove out in a big tractor with no trailer I followed him.”

Neither Brett nor his mother moved. Brett’s round body seemed to huddle in on itself.

“He drove up to Belfast, Maine, and hooked up to a refrigerator trailer at a fish wholesaler and headed back home. I hijacked his truck from him on the Maine Turnpike and drove it home and unloaded it and found three hundred kilos of cocaine in it.”

Caroline moved closer to her son.

“Brett didn’t know,” she said.

I didn’t say anything.

“He was just doing what he was told. He wouldn’t know what was in the truck.”

I looked at Brett.

Caroline’s voice rose. “He wouldn’t. He’s a kid. He was just running errands.”

“I was not,” Brett said.

Caroline’s head jerked toward him.

“Mr. Esteva trusted me. I was the only one he’d trust.”

“Brett...” Caroline said.

“He did,” Brett said. “And you stole the blow, and Mr. Esteva is mad at me.”

“How often did you run the stuff for Esteva,” I said.

“You’re the one made Mr. Esteva mad,” Brett said. “I had a good job and he trusted me. I was the only one he trusted to drive.”

Brett’s face was even redder and his voice had a wheezy quality. Caroline had both hands pressed against her mouth. She had edged over so she was partly in front of her son. Fat as he was she couldn’t shield him entirely.

“I’m not after you, Brett,” I said. “I’m after Esteva.”

“No,” he said.

“Yeah,” I said. “You can help me.”

“No,” Brett said again.

This wasn’t going quite as I’d planned. Someday, when I had time, maybe I’d think of exactly when it was that something had gone as I’d planned.

“He was simply doing what his boss told him to do,” Caroline said. “He didn’t know. He had no responsibility, he’s seventeen years old.”

“I did.” Brett’s teeth were clenched and the words hissed out. “I did. I knew.”

“God damn it, Brett.” Caroline was hissing too. “You be quiet.”

“And you spoiled it,” he hissed. “You got Mr. Esteva mad at me. You going to get me fired and Mr. Esteva mad.”

“Brett,” Caroline hissed.

Brett turned and rushed out of the room. Caroline stood frozen on the spot and looked after him. She said, “Brett,” again, but there was no hiss to it. She looked at me.

“He’s only seventeen,” she said. “You can’t—”

“I don’t want to,” I said. “I’m only interested in Esteva.”

“It’s the first job he’s ever had,” she said. “He didn’t finish high school. He’s...”

Brett came back in the room with a handgun.

All of us were quiet.

It was a big handgun, a long-barreled revolver with a tarnished nickel plating. Brett held it in front of him at chest level in his right hand. He looked awkward, as if he wasn’t used to a handgun. Lots of seventeen-year-old kids aren’t. His elbow was bent and held close to his side and he had to cock his wrist forward to keep the gun level. He was hunched forward over the weapon, his head extended on his fat neck. From where I sat the gun looked bigger than a .38. Maybe a .44.

Brett said, “You bastard, you get out of here. You leave me and my mother alone.”

I said, “Brett, unless you’ve got some experience with handguns there’s a pretty good chance that you won’t hit me if you shoot from there.”

“Bastard,” Brett said.

Caroline said, “Brett, where did you get that?”

That didn’t seem the most important issue to me.

“I got it,” Brett said. He was still looking at me, red-faced and wheezy, hunched fatly over the old revolver.

“Put it down, right now,” Caroline said.

I edged my feet under me behind the coffee table.

“Now, Brett,” Caroline said.

“It’s mine,” Brett said. But the edge in his voice had dulled.

“Now,” Caroline said.

Brett looked away from me.

“Now.”

He lowered the gun. Caroline reached out and took it by the barrel. They stood motionless for a moment, he holding the butt, she the barrel. Then he let go of the gun and Caroline took it, holding it by the barrel.

I stood and stepped across the living room and took the gun. Brett had his head down, his arms at his sides.

“Everything’s going to be spoiled,” he said.

I looked at the gun. It was an old Navy Colt with a palm-worn walnut handle. And it wasn’t a .44. It was a .41. His mother’s question took on more weight.

“Where’d you get the gun, Brett?” I said.

He shook his lowered head.

“Is it one of your husband’s?” I said to Caroline.

She shook her head. “I’ve never seen it. I turned all of Bailey’s guns in to Henry Macintire after the funeral. I don’t want Brett having anything to do with guns.”

I said, “It’s a forty-one caliber. Same caliber that killed your husband. It’s a very uncommon caliber.” I opened the cylinder. It held four slugs. “Where’d you get the gun, Brett?”

“I found it,” he said. He was still staring at the floor.

Caroline’s eyes were wide. “What are you saying,” she said.

“I’m saying this might be the gun that killed your husband.”

“That’s ridiculous,” she said. “There must be thousands of guns like that.”

“There are no forty-one-caliber handguns registered in the state,” I said.

“For God’s sakes, what does that prove, Brett wouldn’t kill his own father.”

“I’m sure he wouldn’t,” I said. “And this gun doesn’t prove he did, but I sure would like to know where he got it.”

“I found it,” Brett said.

“Where,” I said.

“On the ground.”

“Where on the ground.” I had stepped closer to him.

“Near the library.”

“In the snow?”

“Yah.”

“So how come there’s no rust where the nickel’s worn?”

“I dunno.”

Brett’s voice got softer with each response and his gaze stayed unvaryingly on the blue and red braided rug on the living room floor.

“I think you’re lying, Brett,” I said.

“No.”

“Yes, you’re lying.”

Brett began to snuffle.

“Am not,” he said.

“Enough,” Caroline Rogers said. “He’s a seventeen-year-old boy. I won’t let you bully him. He’s done nothing wrong. You’re treating him like a criminal.”

“Caroline,” I said, “he’s running dope, he threatened me with a loaded weapon. He may be in possession of the weapon used in a murder.”

Caroline’s eyes began to tear as well. “Oh, Brett,” she said.

“I’m sorry,” Brett said. “I’m sorry, Mama. I’m sorry.”

They were both crying full out now, incoherently.

I took the four rounds out of the Navy Colt and slipped them into my pants pocket. I stuck the gun into my belt and turned and walked to the front window and stared out at the snow-covered lawn.

So far so good. I had a recently widowed mother and her orphaned son crying hysterically. Maybe for an encore I could shoot the family dog.

Behind me I heard Caroline say, “It’s all right, honey. It’s all right. We’ll fix it, nothing we can’t fix. It’ll be all right.”

I turned and she was looking at me. She had her arms awkwardly around her fat child.

“We have to fix it,” she said.

“I know,” I said. “We’ll fix it. But we have to know what we’re fixing. Brett needs to tell us where he got the rod.”

“Tell me, Brett,” his mother said. “You don’t have to say it loud. You can whisper if you want to, just whisper it to me.”

Brett nodded.

She put her ear close to his mouth and he whispered. She nodded.

“Okay,” she said. “I’ll tell Mr. Spenser, but I’ll whisper too.”

She walked over to me and whispered in my ear. “Esteva.”

“Jesus Christ,” I whispered back.