Pale Kings and Princes

25

I got back to the Reservoir Court Motel at about twenty of one the next day. There was a message to call Brian Lundquist. I did.

“Same gun,” he said, “killed Rogers. Not the same gun killed Valdez.”

“You have anything on Brett Rogers?” I said.

“What I got is if you’d told me about him when you gave me the gun maybe we wouldn’t be looking at him dead now,” Lundquist said.

“Maybe,” I said. “And maybe you’d figured out the Valdez thing we’d all be windsurfing in the Bahamas.”

“Umm,” Lundquist said. “I’m having a meeting with a couple of the Wheaton people, you want to sit in?”

“When,” I said.

“Four-thirty this afternoon,” Lundquist said. “Wheaton police station.”

“I’ll be there.”

And I was, in fact I was there early and waiting outside when Lundquist showed up. We went in together. Henry, the potbellied captain, had taken over in Rogers’s office as acting chief. His pal J.D. was sitting in a straight chair near the desk.

“What the fuck is he doing here?” Henry said when I came in with Lundquist.

“I asked him,” Lundquist said. “Figured he might be able to help.”

J.D. picked up a paper cup from the edge of Henry’s desk and spit tobacco juice into it and put the cup back on the desk.

“I don’t want him here,” Henry said.

“Don’t be a pain in the ass, Henry,” Lundquist said. “We need any help we can get on this thing.”

“We’re doing fine without him,” Henry said.

I pulled a chair away from the wall and sat down in it and put my feet straight out in front of me and crossed them at the ankles.

“You’ve had three murders in the last month including your own chief and you haven’t arrested anyone,” I said. “I’d hate to see it when you weren’t doing fine.”

“You gonna run off your fucking mouth once too fucking often,” J.D. said around his tobacco.

“I already have,” I said.

Lundquist said, “Shut up, Spenser. J.D., whyn’t you put a lid on it too. We got a project here that needs working on and yelping at each other won’t help.” He was looking at Henry. “You want to cooperate with the State Police in this investigation, don’t you, Henry?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Henry said. “Sit down.”

Lundquist sat beside me.

“Okay,” he said. “Here’s what we got. We got the gun that killed Bailey. We traced the serial number. Manufacturer says it was made around 1916, sold to a firearms dealer in San Diego as part of a wholesale lot, and that’s the end of the line. The dealer doesn’t exist anymore, there’s no trace of the thing ever being registered anywhere, or sold to anyone. Spenser says the kid, Brett, told him he got the gun from Esteva. Kid’s mother confirms that she heard the kid say that too.”

“Caroline’s so hysterical you can’t count on nothing she says,” Henry said.

Lundquist shrugged. “You talked to Esteva,” he said to Henry. “What did he say?”

“Says the kid’s full of shit,” Henry answered. “Says the kid was fucking retarded anyway, and that Esteva kept him out of pity, as a favor to his old man.”

“And the hundred keys of coke that Spenser confiscated from the kid?” Lundquist said.

“Esteva says that he thinks it must be a frame or something. He don’t know nothing about it. He don’t know nobody in Belfast, Maine.”

“And you back-checked on Penobscot Seafood,” Lundquist said.

“Sure. Called the Belfast cops. They said the place is empty. Owner lives in Baltimore, says he hasn’t rented it for a year.”

“Do the Belfast cops know why trucks pull in and out of there?” I said.

“They say they don’t very much. Occasionally, they say, some trucker puts his rig in the parking lot for the night.”

“Where did you get that blow, Spenser?” J.D. said. “I think we ought to be booking you on possession, hundred keys looks like intent to sell from where I sit.”

“Where you sit is on your brains,” I said.

“Keep it up, pal, you won’t always have a state cop around to back you.”

“Don’t waste time,” Lundquist said. “We’re after a murderer here, probably killed three people.”

“We don’t know it ain’t Spenser,” Henry said.

“We don’t know it ain’t you,” Lundquist said. “Or me. But it doesn’t seem like the best avenue, you know?”

“Sure, Brian,” Henry said. “Sure, sure. What else you got?”

“Kid was killed with a .357 Mag. Two shots through the chest. One punctured his heart, and lodged up against his backbone. Other one went on through, exited under his left shoulder blade.”

“Found it in the wall,” J.D. said.

“What killed Valdez?” I said.

“Thirty-eight,” Lundquist said.

“Esteva own a gun,” I said.

“Nothing registered,” Lundquist said.

“I’m telling you,” Henry said. “Esteva’s clean. Why in hell would he give a murder weapon to some fucking seventeen-year-old retard?”

“Some kind of gesture,” I said. “Give the kid the gun that killed his father.”

“Sure, and let the kid drive around with a truckload of coke that’s gonna sell for a hundred a gram on the street,” Henry said.

“Henry’s got a point,” Lundquist said.

“Sure he has,” I said. “And it’s the point Esteva wants made. It’s why he used the kid.”

“If he did,” Henry said. “We only got your story for any of this.”

“Why would I make it up?”

“The fucking newspaper,” Henry said. “They been yelling for years about the cocaine trade in Wheaton, and they hire you and you come down here and find shit until all of a sudden you turn up with a hundred kilos that you say is Esteva’s.”

“Sell a lot of papers,” J.D. said. He spit again into his paper cup.

“Okay,” Lundquist said, “you don’t like Esteva for it. You got anybody else in mind?”

“Bailey had a lot of people didn’t like him,” Henry said.

“And didn’t like his kid?” I said.

“One at a time,” Henry said. “Maybe they’re connected, maybe they’re not.”

“So you have anybody in mind that didn’t like Bailey,” Lundquist said.

Henry eased around in his chair and put one foot up on the edge of the desk.

“Well, I don’t like to talk about this much, but Bailey was a guy who fooled around a little.”

“Women?” Lundquist said.

“He had a few. Most people didn’t know it, and it was no business of mine what he did on his time, you know. But...” Henry shrugged.

“Names?” I said.

“We ain’t got any names right now,” Henry said. “And I don’t know as I’d want to mention any to you if we did.”

Lundquist said, “If you don’t have any names how do you know Bailey was fooling around?”

“Aw, hell, Brian, you know. Guys fool around, they sort of half joke about it, they sort of let on, you know?”

Lundquist nodded. “And you think some one of his girlfriends killed him?”

“Maybe, or a husband, maybe. Things happen,” Henry said.

“Whoever killed the kid was let into the house,” I said. “No doors jimmied, no windows cracked. Kid let him in.”

“Or her,” J.D. said.

“We get who killed Bailey, maybe it’ll tell us who done the kid,” Henry said.

“Maybe Caroline,” J.D. said. “Maybe she caught old Bailey in the saddle up there.”

“I think maybe it was Madonna,” I said. “When Bailey criticized her singing.”

“That another fucking joke?” Henry said.

“The whole goddamned scene is a joke,” I said. “Esteva’s running C through here like water through a millrace and you clowns are sitting around fantasizing a mystery lover. I don’t know whether you’re as stupid as you seem or whether you’re in Esteva’s pocket. Or both... I sort of like both.”

J.D. stood up. “You son of a bitch, you can’t talk to me that way.” He reached a left hand out to grab my shirt front and I caught his wrist and held it.

“J.D.,” Henry said, “knock it off.”

J.D. strained his arm toward me. I held it still.

Lundquist stood up and slid between us. He didn’t say anything. He simply waited. I let go of J.D.’s wrist. He stepped back away from Lundquist.

“There be another time, smart mouth,” he said.

“One hopes,” I said.

Lundquist said, “This is going downhill too fast for me.” He turned toward Henry. “I’ll be in touch,” he said.

Henry nodded.

“Let’s go,” Lundquist said.

He opened the office door and stood aside to let me precede him. I turned in the open door and said to Henry and J.D., “Cherchez la femme.”

Lundquist stepped after me and we went out and Lundquist closed the door.

In the parking lot, Lundquist said, “That didn’t help.”

“Maybe not,” I said, “but did it hurt?”

Lundquist shrugged. “I don’t know. They won’t be too cooperative.”

“They aren’t anyway.”

Lundquist nodded. “I still like Esteva for this,” he said.

“They don’t,” I said.

“They don’t like you,” Lundquist said.

“Maybe they don’t like me because I might find out something.”

“Maybe,” Lundquist said. “Watch out for yourself.”

He got in the cruiser and backed out and drove away.