Pale Kings and Princes

5

The specials didn’t bode well for the Reservoir Court dining room so I went out to a supermarket and bought some fixings and a six-pack of beer and went back to the motel to dine alone. I got some ice from the ice machine in the corridor and cooled the beer in a wastebasket I had tuna salad and coleslaw and whole wheat bread and some paper plates and plastic cutlery, and a jar of bread and butter pickles. Green vegetables are important.

I made supper and marveled at the progress I had made in only a day. The police chief had told me to get lost, after careful probing and a liberal application of the old rough-hewn Spenser sex appeal the woman tending bar had told me to get lost. So far my only success was not getting carded at the Wheaton Liquor Store. I sipped from my bottle of Samuel Adams beer. I was on an American-beer binge. Working on the assumption that locally brewed is fresher and hence tastier. The Sam Adams seemed fresh and tasty, thus confirming my suspicions. Who said I couldn’t detect. Who said I couldn’t find a whale in a fishbowl. Who had said that Valdez was fooling around with Colombian women?

I hadn’t mentioned that. Bailey Rogers had said that. It was after all the suggestion of a clue. If Valdez had been having an affair with a Colombian woman, that cut the suspects from 15,734 to fewer than 5,000.

I drank some more Sam Adams and let it seep down my throat and admired the label. Nice picture of old Sam. That’s pretty good detective work, eliminate more than ten thousand suspects with one master stroke. Actually probably only half the remaining five thousand were female, and many of them would be too old or too young. Hell, I practically had the she-devil cornered.

Sam Adams was so fresh and tasty that I was on my third before I got to making supper. The options for an entertaining evening in Wheaton were fairly limited and I was exercising one of the most likely. I carefully spread the tuna salad on the whole wheat bread, and added a dab of coleslaw and made two sandwiches. I cut each one into four triangles and arranged them on a paper plate, the expensive glazed kind, and added a colorful garnish of pickle. I got a hand towel from the bathroom to serve as a napkin, and the water glass to hold beer. For predinner cocktails drinking from the bottle was fine, in fact preferable. But with dinner one needed to decant it. I sat at the little round table by the window and looked out onto the parking lot and had supper.

Talking to Virgie had tended to reinforce what I’d gotten from Chief Rogers. The subject of Valdez’s death was not an open subject. Virgie’s reaction had been fear of involvement and amazement that I’d even broach the subject let alone broach it without police authority or backup.

I ate a triangle of sandwich. The commercial coleslaw tasted like commercial coleslaw but it wasn’t bad, and Sam Adams made it better.

One would hate to generalize, but the first two people I’d talked with wanted the Valdez killing to go away and never be discussed again. As they say on the cop shows, I smelled a cover-up. Spenser, Private Nose.

I ate another triangle, and a bite of pickle.

Have nose will travel.

I drank some more beer. In the water glass it had a pleasant amber tone. Like Anchor Steam beer.

Cyrano de Spenser.

I finished the sandwiches and the beer. It was almost seven. I called Susan.

“Hello,” she said. “Have you found the culprit yet?”

“Only the nose knows,” I said.

“Have a little beer with our supper?” Susan said.

“I’d have had more,” I said, “but I didn’t want to sound drunk when I called you.”

“Restraint,” she said.

“Restraint is my middle name,” I said.

“I’d always wondered,” Susan said.

“So far,” I said, “I have found out that people don’t want me to find out anything.”

“Not a new treat for you,” she said.

“No, I’m getting kind of used to it. You want to come out Friday night when you’re through seeing patients?”

“To Wheaton?”

“Yes, we could share a Polish Platter at the Reservoir Motel Hunt Room, and afterwards stroll down Route Thirty-two and look at the automobile salvage yards.”

“That’s enticing,” Susan said, “but maybe you’d rather come home and have some of my legendary takeout from Rudi’s and go see the Renoir exhibit at the MFA.”

“You city kids are like that,” I said, “always putting down the country. Out here is what America used to be.”

“Mmm,” Susan said.

“Besides,” I said, “I can’t come home — unlike you slugabed shrinks I work weekends.”

“Okay, you honey-tongued spellbinder, you’ve talked me into it,” Susan said. “Everything except the Polish Platter.”

“There must be an alternative,” I said.

“I should hope so,” Susan said. “I don’t want to be corny, but how far will people go to keep from talking to you about the Valdez thing?”

“They might try to kill me,” I said.

“How comforting,” Susan said.

“Easier said than done,” I said.

“I know,” Susan said. “I count on that.”

“Me too.”

“I’ll be there by eight Friday,” Susan said.

“I’ll be there,” I said. “Tell me one thing, though, before we hang. Do you admire my restraint even more than you admire my sinewy body?”

“Yes,” Susan said.

“Let me rephrase the question,” I said.

Susan’s laugh bubbled. “Ask me if I love you,” she said.

“Do you love me?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Do I love you?”

“Yes, you do.”

“What a happy coincidence,” I said.