Taming a Sea Horse

28

At about a quarter to six, Perry Lehman came out of the Crown Prince Club. The doorman came with him. The doorman opened the door of a stretch limo, Perry got in and the stretch limo pulled away. I got in my car and followed it. We turned left onto Boylston and right onto Charles and left onto Beacon and headed west. The traffic was still heavy and the limo didn't go fast. There were a lot of stops. It wasn't hard to follow Lehman, but I wanted him to see me following, and with heavy traffic it took some doing. At six thirty-five the limo pulled into a long, curving drive in Chestnut Hill near the reservoir. I went right in behind it. The drive curved up among flowering shrubs and green lawn. The limo stopped under a portico in front of an enormous white chateau-style home. I pulled up behind it. A black man in a light gray three-piece suit came out to open the door, and another one came out dressed the same and stood beside the limo and looked at my car.

Lehman got out of the limo and turned and stared at me. The guy holding the door closed it and the limo pulled away. I sat in my car and looked back at Lehman. He said something to the two attendants and they all looked at me. Then the two black guys came over to my car.

"Mr. Lehman wishes to know what you want."

"Awful warm for a vest, isn't it?" I said.

"State your business, please."

"Actually I'm with the National Organization for Women, and I was wondering if Mr. Lehman would care to express himself on sexism in the marketplace."

The two men looked at each other. "Equal pay for equal worth?" I said.

The guy talking to me had a small vertical scar on his upper lip. He turned toward Lehman.

"He's talking shit, Mr. Lehman, you want us to get hold of him?"

Lehman didn't move any closer. "I want him to get the fuck out of here and leave me alone," he said.

"You hear the man?"

"Tell him I can't hear him from so far away," I said. "Tell him to come closer."

The other guard said, "Man, you're crazy. You fighting to get yourself hurt."

"Get him out of here," Lehman said. His voice had risen slightly.

I yelled out the window of my car, "Hey, Perry, who's Warren?"

"Huh?"

"Ginger Buckey went to St. Thomas with Warren and ditched him and took off with a musician. Who's Warren?"

"Get him out of here." Lehman's voice was higher. "Now, get rid of him, I don't care how you do it."

"Drive off," said the guard with the scar, "or we drive it off for you with you in the trunk."

I put the car in gear and rolled on around the driveway. Slowly. Lehman had backed up into the front doorway. As I went by he said, "You're going to get yourself killed." His voice was high and shaky. "You're going to get killed."

I made a small V sign at him and drove on down the drive and parked out on Beacon Street opposite the driveway with the motor running. My old Subaru had given out after 126,000 miles and I had a new one, a turbo coupe with four-wheel drive. The turbo meant it would go pretty fast, and if I had to thwart a villain during inclement weather I could put it into four-wheel drive. Right now going fast seemed more important. The two bodyguards walked down to the end of the drive and looked at me parked across the street. I shot at them with my forefinger. And smiled. The guy with the scar said something to his buddy, the buddy looked at me and said something back to the guy with the scar. He shook his head and they stood and looked at me. I looked back. We did that until it got dark and I got tired and the gas gauge began to get low on the idling car and I put it in gear and turboed off to bed.

The next morning I was out front of Perry Lehman's house. I had a large cardboard placard nailed to a piece of 1 by 2 that I jammed into the ground near the end of his driveway. The placard said WHO'S WARREN? It was almost ten o'clock in the morning before Perry came down the driveway in his limo. The limo stopped by the sign and the chauffeur, in the same three-piece gray suit that the bodyguards wore, got out and pulled the sign out of the ground. He went around to the trunk and opened it, put the sign in and closed the trunk and came around to the front and spotted me and leaned back inside to speak to Lehman. Then he got in the car. The car sat motionless in the driveway for maybe five minutes before the two gray-suited bodyguards appeared. They looked across the street at me. I waited. They got in the limo. The guy with the scarred lip got in back with Lehrnan. The other got in the front with the driver. I must be making an impression, three bodyguards. How flattering.

Off we went toward Boston. It took only about fifteen minutes, outside of rush hour. When the limo pulled into the alley in front of the club, the two bodyguards got out first. I stopped well up the alley. It was getting to where they'd assault me on this and I wasn't ready for that yet. I wanted to keep pressuring Lehman until he did something profoundly stupid that might prove useful to me. t trusted him to do that if I had enough time.

With the guards watching me Lehman got out and walked to the club. There was a sign posted on the wall by the door. It said WHO'S WARREN? Lehman tore it off and went into the building. The bodyguards got back in the limo and it pulled away down the alley and made a U-turn. I backed into the street and pulled away first. I turned right on Boylston and right on Tremont and went around the block. The limo didn't chase me. I came through Park Square and back onto Boylston and pulled in and parked at the edge of the alley, and took residence on my front fender again. A few customers came and went. Some noticed me. At about noon I went up to the corner and called the Crown Prince Club and asked for Perry Lehman.

"Who's calling, please?"

"My name is Spenser."

"One moment, please."

Then Lehman's voice, sounding stiff and edgy. "What the fuck is this, Spenser?"

"I was wondering if you could help me, Perry."

"I'll help you, I'll help you right into the fucking ground," he said. "You think you can fuck with me like this? You're fucking with the wrong dude, pal; lemme tell you that."

"Gee, Perry, all I wanted to know was if you happened to know a guy named Warren, member of the club…"

Lehman hung up.

I went back to the corner and leaned against my car some more and looked at the Crown Prince Club and let the Crown Prince Club look at me. Since yesterday when I talked with him I hadn't laid eyes on Hawk. I hadn't been looking for him, but it was still as puzzling as it always was that a guy as visible as Hawk could become entirely invisible whenever he needed to. Maybe he was really Lamont Cranstan.

Perry must have decided to wait me out because for the rest of the day I was undisturbed. When the limo came to pick Lehman up in the late afternoon they paid me no rnind. Lehman got in without even looking. The doorman when he opened the door ignored me and the two bodyguards did the same. They got out and flanked the car and never once glanced my way. Then they got in and the limo went to Chestnut Hill with me behind it.

I didn't go into the drive. I was trying to fine-tune this just short of violent confrontation. So I parked out on Beacon Street again, and nobody came and looked at me until it got dark and I went home.

Rejection.

The next day I went through the routine. At noon that day Lehman got a telegram inquiring about Warren, and at four that afternoon a special delivery letter came for Warren, c/o The Crown Prince Club. I continued to be ignored. Perry's people were big aggressive guys but they weren't shooters. That kind of trouble would come from the people who owned Perry. It was getting toward the time when I figured it would come, and I wanted it to come. I needed to have a run-in with the pros and win, before I took my next step. I didn't have a plan exactly but I had some sort of inchoate sense of where I wanted this to go. It was much more than I was used to having.