Pale Kings and Princes

3

The Wheaton police station is in the bottom of the red brick Gothic Revival town hall at the south end of town which is near the bottom end of the Quabbin Reservoir which is about a hundred miles west of Boston and much farther than that from everywhere. The chief’s name was Bailey Rogers and he was explaining to me the futility of my venture.

“The whole thing is a fucking media invention,” Bailey told me. “There’s people do coke here. There’s people do coke in the city room at the Central Argus too, whyn’t you go investigate them.”

“They hired me to come down here,” I said. “Probably a ploy to throw me off the track.”

“And I don’t need any big-deal Boston wiseass dick to come out here and piss all over my town, you understand.”

“You don’t?” I said.

Rogers had a fat neck. The rest of him was middling to big and in okay shape, but his neck spilled out over his collar and his face was very red. He leaned forward in his chair with the palms of his hands resting on the arms of the chair as if he was going to leap out of it.

“No, I don’t, and don’t get smart with me either, buster, or you’ll wish you were back in Boston.”

I smiled at him admiringly. “God,” I said, “you’re tough.”

“You think I’m kidding you?”

“I think a kid came down here to do a newspaper story and somebody killed him and you don’t know who, and you’re blowing around so I won’t notice.”

“Dumb bastard had it coming,” the chief said. “You can’t fuck around with those people’s women like he did. He was begging for it.”

“What people,” I said.

“The Colombians. You know what they’re like.”

“There’s a lot of Colombians here,” I said.

“Sure, about five thousand. Came up to work the mills, only the mills closed so now they mostly stay home and pump the old lady and collect welfare.”

“But no coke?”

“Sure, some coke, like I say there’s coke everywhere. But there’s no more here than anywhere else. If we had a bunch of Canucks here on welfare the question wouldn’t even come up. But just because they’re Colombian... does this look like Miami?”

“A lot of Miami doesn’t look like Miami,” I said. “What makes you think Valdez was killed by a jealous husband?”

“He was dicking everything that wiggled,” Rogers said. “When we found him his nads were gone. What would you think.”

“Suspects?” I said.

Rogers spread his hands. “We hauled a bunch of them in, sweated them, nobody would give us anything.”

“Anybody specific?” I said. “I don’t mean to be nosy, but if you know he was getting it on you must know some names.”

“Listen” — he glanced down at my card tucked under one corner of his desk blotter — “Spenser. You start asking around down in that neighborhood and you’ll end up with your balls missing too.”

“League of Women Voters would sponsor a day of mourning,” I said. “You got a name?”

Rogers shook his head. “No, for your own good. You stay out of it. We’ve checked this out, and there’s nothing there. I got no right to be giving out the names of people who’ve been cleared of suspicion so you and that fucking newspaper can harass them.”

“Bailey,” I said, “I appreciate your position. Your position sounds to me like bullshit, but I appreciate it. On the other hand, you have to appreciate my position. I come in here friendly, even charming, respectful of your law enforcement experience, and ask you to help me solve a murder which took place in your jurisdiction, and which you haven’t solved. You tell me to screw. Now if I go back to my employer and say I tried to solve the crime but the police chief told me to screw, what kind of a letter of recommendation do you think he’ll write for me on my next job?”

“I don’t give a fuck,” Rogers said.

“Bailey, I believe you. That’s probably the department motto. But it’s no help to me. What I’m going to have to do is stick around this Rural Roach Box and find out what’s happening and maybe, because you are not pleasant, maybe I’ll demonstrate, while I’m at it, that you are an incompetent horse’s ass.”

The red tone of Rogers’s fat face and neck deepened. “You be careful,” he said. “You be goddamned careful.”

I stood up and walked to the door. I opened it and stopped and looked back at him.

“You too,” I said. Then I walked out and closed the door, and giggled while I walked through the squad room. You too. Ah, Spenser, you thespian devil you.