Promised Land

Chapter 24

It was eleven-twenty when I got back to my motel. There was a note on the bureau. “I’m walking on the beach,” it said. “Be back around lunchtime. Maybe I didn’t come home all night either.” I looked at my watch: 11:22. I called my service and left word for Rose to call me at the motel. At five past twelve she did.

“You know where the New England Produce Center is in Chelsea?” I said.

“No.”

“I’m going to tell you, so get a pencil and write it down.”

“I have one.”

I told her. “When you get there,” I said, “go to the restaurant and sit at the counter and have a cup of coffee. I’ll be there by quarter of six.”

“I want Pamela to be there as well.”

“Why?”

“I’ll trust you more if she’s there.”

“That’s sort of like using a sister,” I said.

“We use what we must. The cause requires it.”

“Always does,” I said.

“She’ll be there?”

“I’ll bring her with me.”

“We will be there, with our part of the bargain.”

“You’ll need a truck.”

“How large?”

“Not large, an Econoline van, something like that.”

“We’ll rent one. Will you help us load?”

“Yes.”

“Very well. See you there.” She hung up.

I wrote a note to Susan, told her I’d be back to take her to dinner, put twenty-seven X’s at the bottom and replaced the one she’d written me. Then I called New Bedford. Jackie Sylvia said he and McDermott would meet me at the Bristol County Court House on County Street. They were there when I arrived, leaning on each side of a white pillar out front.

“Come on,” Sylvia said when I got out of the car. “We got to talk with Linhares.”

We went into the red brick courthouse, past the clerk’s office, up some stairs and into an office that said ANTON LINHARES, ASST. DIST. ATT., on the door. Linhares stood, came around the desk and shook hands with me when we went in. He was medium-size and trim with a neat Afro haircut, a dark three-piece suit and a white shirt with a black and red regimental stripe tie. His shoes looked like Gucci and his suit looked like Pierre Cardin and he looked like a future D.A. His handshake was firm and he smelled of after shave lotion. Canoe I bet.

“Sit down, Spenser, good to see you. Jackie and Rich have me wired in on the case. I don’t see any problem. When’s it going down?”

“Day after tomorrow,” I said, “at six in the morning, at the market terminal in Chelsea.”

“That Suffolk or Middlesex County?”

“Suffolk,” I said.

“You sure?”

“I used to work for the Suffolk County D.A. Everett’s Middlesex, Chelsea’s Suffolk.”

“Okay, I’m going to need some cooperation from Suffolk.” He looked at his wristwatch. It was big and had a luminous green face and you pressed a button to get the time displayed in digits. “That’s no sweat,” he said. “I’ll get Jim Clancy on the horn up there. He’ll go along.”

He leaned back in his swivel chair, cocked one foot up on a slightly open drawer and looked at me. “What’s the setup?” he said. I told him.

“So we set up around there ahead of time,” Sylvia said, “and when they are in the middle of the transaction…” He raised an open hand and clamped it shut.

Linhares nodded. “Right. We’ve got them no matter what part of the swap they’re in. One of them will have stolen money and the others will have stolen guns. I want to be there. I want part of this one.”

McDermott said. “We thought you might, Anton.”

Linhares smiled without irritation. “I didn’t take this job to stay in it all my life.”

Sylvia said, “Yeah, but let’s make sure this doesn’t get leaked to the press before it happens.”

Linhares grinned again. “Gentlemen,” he said. He shook his head in friendly despair. “Gentlemen. How unkind.”

“Sylvia’s right,” I said. “These are very careful people. King Powers by habit. Rose and Jane by temperament. They’ll be very skittish.”

“Fair enough,” Linhares said. “Now what about your people. How you want to handle that?”

“I want them not to exist,” I said. “They can be referred to as two anonymous undercover operatives whose identity must be protected. Me too. If my name gets into this it may drag theirs in with it. They’re both clients.”

Linhares said, “I’ll need the names. Not to prosecute but to bury. If they get scooped up in the net I’ve got to know who to let go.”

I told him. “They’re related?” he said.

“Yeah, husband and wife.”

“And you put this thing together for them?”

“Yeah.”

“How’d Suffolk ever let you get away?”

“Hard to figure,” I said.

“Okay.” Linhares looked at his watch again. He liked pushing the button. “Jackie, you and Rich get up there tomorrow with Spenser here and set this thing up. I’ll call Jimmy Clancy and have him waiting for you.”

“We gotta check with the squad,” McDermott said.

“I’ll take care of that,” Linhares said. “I’ll call Sergeant Cruz and have you assigned to me for a couple of days. Manny and I are buddies. He’ll go along. You get hold of Bobby Santos, he’ll go up with you tomorrow so he can brief me for the bust.” He reached over and punched an intercom on his phone and said into it, “Peggy, get me Jimmy Clancy up in the Suffolk D.A.’s office.” With one hand over the mouthpiece he said to me, “Good seeing you, Spenser. Nice job on this one.” And to Sylvia and McDermott, “You, too, guys, nice job all around.”

He took his hand away and said into the phone, “Jimmy, Anton Linhares. I got a live one for you, kid.” We got up and went out.

“Who’s this Santos?” I said to Jackie Sylvia.

“State dick, works out of this office. He’s okay. Wants to be public safety commissioner, but what the hell, nothing wrong with ambition. Right Rich?”

“I don’t know,” McDermott said. “I never had any. You want to ride up with us tomorrow, Spenser, or you want to meet us there?”

“I’ll meet you there,” I said. “In Clancy’s office. About ten.”

“Catch you then,” Sylvia said. We reached my car. There was a parking ticket under the windshield wiper. I took it out and slipped it into the breast pocket of Sylvia’s maroon blazer. “Show me the kind of clout you got around here,” I said. “Fix that.” I got in the car. As I pulled away Sylvia took the ticket out of his pocket and tore it in two. As I pulled around the corner on County Street he was giving half to McDermott.

I was into the maze again and on my first pass at the Fairhaven Bridge I ended up going out Acushnet Street parallel to the river. There was a parking lot by the unemployment office and I pulled in to turn around. There was a long line at the unemployment office and a man with a pushcart and a striped umbrella was selling hot dogs, soft drinks, popcorn and peanuts. Festive.

I made the bridge on my second try, and headed back down the Cape. The sun was at my back now and ahead was maybe a swim, some tennis and supper. I hoped Susan hadn’t eaten. It was five-twenty when I got back to the motel. I spotted Susan’s Nova in the lot. When I unlocked the door to the room she was there. Sitting in front of the mirror with a piece of Kleenex in her hand, her hair up in big rollers, a lot of cream on her face, wearing a flowered robe and unlaced sneakers.

“Arrrgh,” I said.

“You weren’t supposed to be back yet,” she said, wiping at some of the cream with her Kleenex.

“Never mind that shit, lady,” I said, “what have you done with Susan Silverman?”

“It’s time you knew, sweetie, this is the real me.”

“Heavens,” I said.

“Does this mean it’s over?”

“No, but tell me the fake you will reappear in a while.”

“Twenty minutes,” she said, “I’ve made us reservations at the Coonamessett Inn for seven.”

“How about a swim first and then some tennis, or vice versa.”

“No. I just washed my hair. I don’t want to get it wet and sweaty. Or vice versa. Why don’t you swim while I conceal the real me. Then we can have a drink and a leisurely drive to the inn and you can explain yourself and where the hell you’ve been and what you’ve been doing and with or to whom, and that sort of thing.”

I swam for a half-hour. The pool was only about fifty feet long so I did a lot of turns, but it was a nice little workout and I went back to the room with the blood moving in my veins. Susan didn’t do anything to slow it down. The hair was unrolled and the robe and cream had disappeared. And she was wearing a pale sleeveless dress the color of an eggshell, and jade earrings. She was putting her lipstick on when I came in, leaning close to the mirror to make sure it was right.

I took a shower and shaved and brushed my teeth with a fluoride toothpaste that tasted like Christmas candy. I put on my dark blue summer suit with brass buttons on the coat and vest, a pale blue oxford button-down shirt and a white tie with blue and gold stripes. Dark socks, black tassel loafers. I checked myself in the mirror. Clear-eyed, and splendid. I clipped my gun on under my coat. I really ought to get a dress gun sometime. A pearl handle perhaps, in a patent leather holster.

“Stay close to me,” I said to Susan on the way out to the car. “The Hyannis Women’s Club may try to kidnap me and treat me as a sex object.”

Susan put her arm through mine. “Death before dishonor,” she said.

In the car Susan put a kerchief over her hair and I drove slowly with the top down to the inn. We had a Margarita in the bar and a table by the window where you could look out on the lake.

We had a second Margarita while we looked at the menu. “No beer?” Susan asked.

“Didn’t seem to go with the mood or the occasion,” I said. “I’ll have some with dinner.”

I ordered raw oysters and lobster thermidor. Susan chose oysters and baked stuffed lobster.

“It’s all falling into place, Suze,” I said. “I think I can do it.”

“I hope so,” she said. “Have you seen Pam Shepard?”

“Last night.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, I slept in my apartment last night.”

“Oh? How is she?”

“Oh, nowhere near as good as you,” I said.

“I don’t mean that. I mean how is her state of mind.”

“Okay, I think you should talk with her. She’s screwed up pretty good, and I think she needs some kind of therapy.”

“Why? You made a pass at her and she turned you down?”

“Just talk with her. I figure you can direct her someplace good. She and her husband can’t agree on what she ought to be and she feels a lot of guilt about that.”

Susan nodded. “Of course I’ll talk with her. When?”

“After this is over, day after tomorrow it should be.”

“I’ll be glad to.”

“I didn’t make a pass at her.”

“I didn’t ask,” Susan said.

“It was a funny scene though. I mean we talked about it a lot. She’s not a fool, but she’s misled, maybe unadult, it’s hard to put my finger on it. She believes some very destructive things. What’s that Frost line, ‘He will not go behind his father’s saying’?”

“ ‘Mending Wall,’ ” Susan said.

“Yeah, she’s like that, like she never went beyond her mother’s sayings, or her father’s and when they didn’t work she still didn’t go beyond them. She just found someone with a new set of sayings, and never went beyond them.”

“Rose and Jane?” Susan said.

“You have a fine memory,” I said. “It helps make up for your real appearance.”

“There’s a lot of women like that. I see a lot of them at school, and a lot of them at school parties. Wives of teachers and principals. I see a lot of them coming in with their daughters and I see a lot of daughters that will grow into that kind of woman.”

“Frost was writing about a guy,” I said.

“Yes, I know. I see.” The waitress brought our oysters. “It’s not just women, is it.”

“No, ma’am. Old Harv is just as bad, just as far into the sayings of his father and just as blind to what’s beyond them as Pam is.”

“Doesn’t he need therapy too?”

The oysters were outstanding. Very fresh, very young. “Yeah, I imagine. But I think she might be brighter, and have more guts. I don’t think he’s got the guts for therapy. Maybe not the brains either. But I’ve only seen him under stress. Maybe he’s better than he looks,” I said. “He loves her. Loves the crap out of her.”

“Maybe that’s just another saying of his father’s that he can’t go behind.”

“Maybe everything’s a saying. Maybe there isn’t anything but saying. You have to believe in something. Loving the crap out of someone isn’t the worst one.”

“Ah, you sweet talker you,” Susan said. “How elegantly you put it. Do you love the crap out of anyone?”

“You got it, sweetheart,” I said.

“Is that your Bogart impression again?”

“Yeah, I work on it in the car mirror driving back and forth between here and Boston and New Bedford.”

The oysters departed and the lobster came. While we worked on it I told Susan everything we had set up for next day. Few people can match Susan Silverman for lobster eating. She leaves no claw uncracked, no crevice unpried. And all the while she doesn’t get any on her and she doesn’t look savage.

I tend to hurt myself when I attack a baked stuffed lobster. So I normally get thermidor, or salad, or stew or whatever they offered that had been shelled for me.

When I got through talking Susan said, “It’s hard to keep it all in your head, isn’t it. So many things depend on so many other things. So much is unresolved and will remain so unless everything goes in sequence.”

“Yeah, it’s nervous-making.”

“You don’t seem nervous.”

“It’s what I do,” I said. “I’m good at it. It’ll probably work.”

“And if it doesn’t.”

“Then it’s a mess and I’ll have to think of something else. But I’ve done what I can. I try not to worry about things I can’t control.”

“And you assume if it breaks you can fix it, don’t you?”

“I guess so. Something like that. I’ve always been able to do most of what I needed to do.”

We each had a very good wild blueberry tart for dessert and retired to the bar for Irish coffee. On the ride back to the motel, Susan put her head back against the seat without the kerchief and let her hair blow about.

“Want to go look at the ocean,” I said. “Yes,” she said.

I drove down Sea Street to the beach and parked in the lot. It was late and there was no one there. Susan left her shoes in the car and we walked along the sand in the bright darkness with the ocean rolling in gently to our left. I took her hand and we walked in silence. Off somewhere to the right, inland, someone was playing an old Tommy Dorsey album and a vocal group was singing “Once in a while.” The sound in the late stillness drifted out across the water. Quaint and sort of old-fashioned now, and familiar.

“Want to swim,” I said.

We dropped our clothes in a heap on the beach and went into the ebony water and swam beside each other parallel to the shore perhaps a quarter of a mile. Susan was a strong swimmer and I didn’t have to slow down for her. I dropped back slightly so I could watch the white movement of her arms and shoulders as they sliced almost soundlessly through the water. We could still hear the stereo. A boy singer was doing “East of the Sun and West of the Moon” with a male vocal group for backing. Ahead of me Susan stopped and stood breast deep in the water. I stopped beside her and put my arms around her slick body. She was breathing deeply, though not badly out of breath, and I could feel her heart beating strongly against my chest. She kissed me and the salt taste of ocean mixed with the sweet taste of her lipstick. She pulled her head back and looked up at me with her hair plastered tight against her scalp. And the beads of sea water glistening on her face. Her teeth seemed very shiny to me, up close like that when she smiled.

“In the water?” she said.

“Never tried it in the water,” I said. My voice was hoarse again.

“I’ll drown,” she said and turned and dove toward the shore. I plunged after her and caught her at the tidal margin and we lay in the wet sand and made love while Frank Sinatra and the Pied Pipers sang “There Are Such Things” and the waves washed about our legs. By the time we had finished the late-night listener had put on an Artie Shaw album and we were listening to “Dancing in the Dark.” We were motionless for a bit, letting the waves flow over us. The tide seemed to be coming in. A wave larger than the ones before it broke over us, and for a moment we were underwater. We came up, both of us blowing water from our mouths, and looked at each other and began to laugh. “Deborah Kerr,” I said.

“Burt Lancaster,” she said.

“From here to eternity,” I said.

“That far, at least,” she said. And we snuggled in the wet sand with the sea breaking over us until our teeth began to chatter.