Robert B. Parker’s Someone to Watch Over Me

29

The outdoor bar was square-shaped and sat about twenty people under a vaulted roof of polished wood beams. Every seat had a fine view of the pool and the beach. And Poppy Palmer appeared every bit content under the wide straw hat with a tall, blue drink in hand.

“What’s an evil woman like you doing in a place like this?” I said.

Poppy viewed us like we were a curiosity. Mattie stood firm-footed beside me, arms crossed over her chest. She looked as if she wanted to make Poppy eat her big hat.

“Or didn’t you want to be noticed?” I said.

“Were you hoping I wouldn’t notice you outside my home?” Poppy said. Her accent thicker and decidedly less posh than I expected. I was no Henry Higgins, but she sounded like she’d grown up working class somewhere outside London.

“Go fuck yourself,” Mattie said.

I held up my hand, hoping to offer a wittier and more nuanced retort.

The man in the khaki suit pushed himself off the poolside wall and approached the bar. He sidled up beside Poppy with his back turned, asking the bartender for a Perrier with a twist of lemon. His hair was salt-and-pepper and buzzed close to his head. He had on silver sunglasses, his face pockmarked with acne scars. As he turned to look at me, I noted a slight bulge on his right hip.

Mattie noticed it, too. She nodded at me.

“Professional,” I said. “Doesn’t drink on the job.”

“You have no idea,” Poppy said.

“I have some idea,” I said. “Did you come here to intimidate me with your bikini? Because you should know, my heart belongs to another.”

“She looks like a hooker,” Mattie said.

I placed a light hand upon Mattie Sullivan’s shoulder. Poppy’s nostrils flared, but she grinned.

“I am a member of the club,” she said. “I have every right to be here. And every right to have you and this little trollop tossed out on your asses.”

“What’s a trollop?” Mattie said.

“Kind of like a hooker,” I said.

“Takes one to know one,” Mattie said.

“Do you want to tell me what’s on your mind, Poppy?” I said. “Subtlety is often lost on me.”

Poppy nodded behind my shoulder. Two more men walked up to the bar. One was a young muscular black man in a navy suit and the other was a thin Latino in a suit as pink as the inside of a conch shell. Not many men could pull off the pink. I pointed to him across the bar and nodded my appreciation.

“Don’t ever come to my home again,” Poppy said. “You have business with Peter, you take it up with Peter in Boston. But this is where I live, and you’re only causing trouble and embarrassment for me.”

“Trouble and embarrassment,” I said, “is in my Google profile.”

“You are insufferable,” Poppy said.

“True,” I said. “And you are an accomplice to a sexual predator.”

“That’s slanderous,” she said. “What on earth are you talking about?”

At close range, it appeared that Poppy’s breasts had been surgically augmented. They stood at attention like a pair of Tomahawk missiles. She had some kind of scrawl inked onto her rib cage and wore a diamond stud in her navel. She did not appear to be a woman of means. Or style. She was what Susan might call tacky.

“You help Steiner procure young women,” I said. “But soon, both of you will be whistling ‘Stone Walls and Steel Bars.’”

“My attorney will have a restraining order on you and this gawky young woman by this afternoon.”

Mattie’s face flushed. Her jaw clenched as she took two steps forward.

“That gawky young woman has the temperament and drive of a pit bull on Dexedrine.”

“I know who she is,” Poppy Palmer said.

Mattie hugged her arms tight around her body as if she didn’t trust her fists being free. “You don’t know a damn thing about me.”

“You’re a trashy little girl from Southie,” she said. “You grew up in the housing projects with a deadbeat mother who got herself killed. I would think that would make you more cautious.”

Mattie knocked the blue drink from Poppy Palmer’s hands. The glass shattered across the polished concrete. Poppy didn’t flinch, only smiled slightly. “Whoops,” she said.

My smile dropped. I looked into her flat, black eyes. “Then you know who I am, too,” I said. “And my reputation.”

“Of course.”

“Then you know I don’t quit.”

“Weren’t you shot in the back a few years ago?” she said. “Left to die in an icy river?”

That wasn’t a story that many people knew. Or one that I liked being known. It wasn’t best for business. Poppy Palmer could see I was taken aback and grinned. A waitress had walked up on us and started to rake the broken glass and blue ice into a dustpan.

“Things like that happen every day,” Poppy said. “People come and go. People disappear. This little girl with you is a reckless child lost on a battlefield.”

“This little girl isn’t lost,” I said. “She’s with me.”

Mattie rested her hand on my right arm. I nodded at Poppy. I nodded at the three men. Neither of them acknowledged they even saw me from behind the sunglasses.

“Then leave,” Poppy Palmer said. “You can walk away from here now, fly home to Boston, and go back to your small lives. I’m warning you. This will all come to a fast and violent end. All I have to do is snap my fingers.”

I nodded. “And I’d hate to get blood all over that man’s pink suit. Not many people can carry off the pink.”

“You against three of my best?” she said. “I’d like to see you try.”

Poppy Palmer’s nostrils flared even more as she breathed in and out. Small black straps covered her freckled, slightly peeling shoulders.

“Is that it?” I said. “Because I’d rather lie in the sun and catch up on my reading, if you don’t mind.”

“Do as you like.”

Poppy touched the top part of her upper lip with her tongue and laughed. A trail of sweat ran down from her temple and across her cheek.

Mattie and I walked back to the table under the striped umbrella. The waitress had cleared away the fries and the last bit of the club sandwich.

“What was that woman saying to you about being shot?” Mattie said.

“Something that happened not long before I met you.”

“Was it bad?”

“Yeah.”

“Real bad?” Mattie said.

“Took me a while to get back on my feet and in shape,” I said. “Susan helped. And so did Hawk.”

“How’d she know about that?”

“Boston is a small town.”

“You don’t believe that,” she said. “Something’s worrying you. I can see it all over your face.”

We watched as Poppy Palmer stood up from the bar and exited, three men trailing behind her. The black man in the blue suit walking up and placing a silk robe across her sunburned shoulders.

“Do you think if I tossed those guys into the pool, we’d be invited back to the Boca Raton Resort?” I said.

“Probably not.”

“Then I shall restrain myself,” I said.