Small Vices

Chapter 34

It was a bright Saturday morning. I had finished the last of my breakfast as I turned off of Route 128 into Newton. Clint Stapleton lived off campus in a condominium in Newton just across the Walford line near the Charles River. It was a townhouse arrangement that shared a mutual wall with another townhouse on a carefully curved road of other townhouses. All of the townhouses were white faux colonial structures with green shutters and big brass knockers on the front door, and big carriage lamps above the front door. The street was called Fifer’s Way, and wherever the developers could put up a white picket fence they had. There was no one on the street. No kids. No dogs. This was a neighborhood of the not yet married, the recently divorced, the trying-it-out-for-a-year.

Clint Stapleton came to the door in a loose-fitting ivory cable knit sweater and a pair of baggy wheat-colored canvas pants with a drawstring waist. On his feet were a pair of tasseled moccasins, no socks. He had a navy blue paisley print do rag on his head. Maybe it wasn’t just a fashion statement. Maybe he was bald and his head got cold. On the other hand, if you were bald, then you really couldn’t be said to have a do, so would it be possible to have a do rag?

“Now just what in the fuck do you want?” Clint said.

“You ever think of the metaphysical aspects of that question?” I said.

“I got no time for jiving,” he said.

He pronounced all the letters, jive-ing, like some guy at a Princeton eating club trying to get down. I inched my foot into the doorway and hoped he wouldn’t slam it. I was wearing running shoes.

“We need to talk a little more,” I said.

“About what?”

“About Melissa, about your pro career, about your cousin Hunt, about Tommy Miller, stuff like that.”

Clint didn’t know what to do. He started to speak, and didn’t. He looked over his shoulder back into the room behind him. He looked at me. I smiled.

“Can’t it wait?” he said. “I got company.”

I shook my head and smiled some more. Maybe if sleuthing didn’t work out, I could get a job selling aluminum siding, door to door.

He backed away from the front door and opened it wider.

“Okay,” he said. “Come in.”

I walked into a small entry hall with a stairway along the right-hand wall. A breakfast nook and a kitchen was to my left. The living room was straight ahead. A pretty girl with no makeup and straight blond hair that hung below her shoulders appeared in the door to the breakfast nook wearing a pale pink velour robe. She was barefooted, her toenails painted pale pink. She might have been twenty.

“I gotta talk to a guy, Trish, maybe you could make us some coffee or something.”

“Sure, Clint,” she said. “Cone filter okay?”

He nodded and I nodded and smiled at her, too. It was working so well I thought I’d spread it around. The blond kid smiled back at me and went to the kitchen. I followed Clint into the living room. There was a fireplace on a diagonal across the corner. It was one of those prefabbed, double-walled metal jobs that can be framed in anywhere you can run a chimney. A sawdust and paraffin log was burning in it, looking sort of cheerful but putting out very little heat.

“Whaddya want,” Stapleton said.

He was trying to sound tough, but there was no iron in his voice. He was scared.

“Somebody aced Tommy Miller last night, on the sixth floor of a parking garage at Quincy Market,” I said.

“Who?”

“Tommy Miller, big blond State cop who framed Ellis Alves for you.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“How much did it cost to frame Ellis?” I said.

He stood without speaking.

“You don’t know, do you?” I said. “Because your old man paid.”

He glanced toward the kitchen.

“Your old man pay someone to crank Tommy, too?” I said.

The girl with the pink toenails came into the room carrying a silver carafe of coffee, a creamer, a sugar bowl, some spoons, and three cups on a big black lacquer tray. She gave the room a big smile.

“Here’s coffee,” she said and set the tray down on a low table in front of the couch.

Clint looked at her as if she were a stranger, then he looked back at me the same way, then he said, “I gotta go,” and walked to the front hall, grabbed a blue and gold warmup jacket from the hall closet, and went out the front door. The girl stared after him. I poured two cups of coffee, handed one to her, and added cream and sugar to mine.

“Don’t feel bad,” I said. “Means more for us.”

“Where is he going?”

“Probably to call his father,” I said. “You known him long?”

“Clint? I met him when I was a freshman, but we didn’t start dating until this year.”

“What year are you now, Trish?”

“Junior.”

“You live here, or just visiting?”

“Oh, no. I live on campus. I just come over on weekends mostly.”

“You love Clint?”

“Well, sure, I mean what’s not to love, he’s gorgeous, he’s a big tennis star, lots of dough. He’s very nice.”

“You think you’ll get married?”

“Oh, no, I don’t think so. I didn’t mean I loved him that way.”

“What way do you love him?”

“Until I graduate, sort of. You know? I didn’t mean, love and marriage kind of love. Who are you anyway?”

“I’m a detective,” I said. “I think Clint is in quite a lot of trouble.”

“What kind of trouble?”

“I’m trying to find that out,” I said. “He ever talk to you about Melissa Henderson?”

She shook her head.

“Tommy Miller?”

“I don’t know anything about those people. I don’t know anything about any trouble Clint is in. In fact, I don’t believe you. I don’t think he’s in trouble at all. I think you’re a nasty racist. And I think you should leave.”

“You ever meet his father?” I said.

“I think you should leave right now,” she said.

She was frowning, and it made a little vertical furrow between her eyes that would one day be a wrinkle, depending upon how much frowning she had to do.

“Okay,” I said. “Most people don’t pay any attention to my advice, and are probably wise not to, but I think you should stay away from Clint Stapleton.”

“You’ve got no right to tell me what to do,” she said.

I put down my cup of coffee, half drunk.

“Of course I don’t,” I said and stood.

“Take care of yourself,” I said and went out into the front hall and out the front door through which Clint Stapleton had only recently fled.