Small Vices

Chapter 14

The Pemberton Inn fronts on Pemberton Green, a block from the Pemberton College Campus. The bar was small with a working fireplace, and the walls done in old barn boards. They served draft beer in small glasses. The whole place made me feel like singing boola boola when I went in. It was crowded in the late afternoon with young women from the college looking to meet men, and young men from greater Boston looking to meet women. I edged in at the left hand corner of the bar and ordered a beer. A row of college girls to my right checked me out. One of them had thick red hair that fell past her shoulders. I smiled at her.

“Come here often?” I said.

“Oh, brother!” she said.

“What’s your sign?” I said.

She looked around.

“Is there a hidden camera or something?”

“Gee,” I said, “I was sure that would work.”

“Get a grip,” she said.

“Wait a minute,” I said. “I’ve got one more, always works... can I buy you a drink?”

She pointed a finger at me and smiled.

“You’re right,” she said. “That’s the one. Sure, you can buy me a drink.”

I gestured to the bartender and she brought a fresh tequila sunrise to the redhead.

“My name’s Sandy,” she said. “What’s yours?”

“Spenser,” I said. “With an S, like the English poet.”

“Which English poet?”

“Edmund Spenser,” I said. “You know, The Shepheardes Calender, The Faerie Queene?”

“Oh, yeah. Spenser your first name or your last.”

“Last.”

“What’s your first name?”

I told her.

“I don’t figure you for a sophomore at Babson,” Sandy said.

“Grad student?”

She looked at me.

“Okay,” I said. “I’m not in school, but I have a friend who has a Ph.D. from Harvard.”

Sandy smiled.

“Close enough,” she said and drank some tequila sunrise. “What do you do for a living, Spenser-like-the-poet?”

I took a card from my shirt pocket and put it on the bar in front of her. She studied it for a moment and then looked at me carefully.

“Honest to God?” she said.

I nodded.

“You got a gun?”

I nodded.

“I don’t believe you.”

I opened my coat a little so she could see.

“Jesus,” she said, “you don’t have to flash me.”

Her tequila sunrise had disappeared again. I bought her another one.

“Is it like on TV?” Sandy said.

“Exactly,” I said. “A lot of times I send my stunt double on the hard stuff.”

“You working on a case or you got a thing for college girls?”

“Both,” I said.

Sandy laughed.

“Well, I’m one,” she said.

“A case, or a college girl?” I said.

“Both,” she said and laughed.

It was a full-out laugh, but no one except Sandy and I could hear it, because the room was full of people talking and laughing at peak capacity. Sandy was wearing jeans and a white tee-shirt under a gray blazer. She had strong breasts, and she brushed them against me as we talked. I didn’t want to make too much of that. The place was so crowded it might have been inadvertent. Either way there was nothing wrong with it.

“Did you know Melissa Henderson?” I said.

“Girl that got killed? That the case you’re working on?”

“Yes.”

Sandy stared at me for a minute.

“I thought that was all over. They got some black guy for it.”

“I’m sort of tying up the loose ends,” I said. “Make sure it was really him.”

“I didn’t know her well,” Sandy said. “But, you know, I saw her around.”

“She have a roommate?”

“I don’t know.”

“You know Glenda Baker?”

“Girl that saw it? No, not really, she was a senior when I was a freshman. She’s graduated by now.”

“Who would have known Melissa well?” I said.

“She was a Phi Gam,” Sandy said. “I assume the girls in the house would know about her.”

“See any of them here?”

She turned on her barstool and scanned the room. Her jeans were tight over her thighs.

“No,” she said. “But they never come here anyway.”

“Why not.”

“They’re not fun like me. Phi Gams’re all Legacies. Their mother went here, you know? and their grandmamma, and their aunt Foofy.”

“They have a house on campus?” I said.

“Oh sure. Far end of the quadrangle, opposite the chapel.”

We were squeezed close by the crowd. She studied my face.

“What happened to your nose?” she said.

“It’s been broken a couple times.”

“And you got like, what, scars, I guess, around your eyes.”

“I used to fight,” I said.

“Box, you mean. Like a prize fighter?”

“Yeah,” I said.

She reached up and squeezed my biceps. I flexed automatically.

“You must have been a pretty good one,” she said.

“I was.”

“You ever like a champion or anything?”

“No.”

“How come?”

“Pretty good,” I said, “is not the same as very good.”

She drank some more. Her breasts were now pressing steadily on my arm.

“You ever go to college?” she said.

“Yes.”

“What’d you study?” she said.

“How to run back kicks,” I said.

She smiled at me.

“You’re a funny guy,” she said.

“Everybody says that.”

“You’re kind of old for me,” she said.

“Everybody says that, too.”

“But I like you,” she said as if I hadn’t spoken.

“Well, I like you too, Sandy.”

She stopped and looked hard at my face.

“You’re kidding me, aren’t you?”

“I kid everybody a little,” I said.

She thought about that.

“You want to go someplace?” she said.

“And?” I said.

“And have sex,” she said.

“That’s a very nice offer,” I said. “But Susan Silverman and I have agreed to have sex only with each other.”

Sandy’s face was very close to mine in the crowded room. She had a wide mouth and a lot of teeth. She had turned in her seat so that she had one thigh on each side of my leg. Her chest was against my arm. In another minute we wouldn’t have to go anywhere to have sex.

“You’re not kidding, are you?”

“No.”

She stared at me some more.

“Well,” she said. “Goddamn. You are a funny guy.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Everyone always says it just that way, too.”