Taming a Sea Horse

31

Lehman was tougher or slower or more full of illusion than I had thought. We waited three days and he didn't do anything to help us, so we went to plan B.

Hawk came up with a late-model Cadillac sedan with doctored plates. I didn't ask him where he got it and he didn't say. We drove it mit to Chestnut Hill and parked it at the foot of Lehman's drive. We both wore ski masks. Hawk was in the driver's seat. I was in back with the windows down, and when Lehman's limousine slowed to turn into his yard I put my Smith & Wesson pump out the window and blasted three rounds of # 6 birdshot into the trunk and rear panel of the limo. Then Hawk slipped the Caddy into gear and we drove off,

The birdshot would mess up the paint and scare Lehman without much risk of killing anybody and unless he knew more about pellet weight and muzzle velocity than I thought he did, he'd think someone tried to do him in.

We left the Cadillac in the parking garage near Filene's in the Chestnut Hill Mall and climbed into my Subaru and headed back to Boston. To await developments. When we got to my office the developments had arrived already. There was a message on my answering machine that said I should call Perry Lehman whenever I got in, no matter what time. I could call him at his home or at the club, and both private numbers were on the tape.

"Perry sound a little shaky," Hawk said.

"If you thought Mr. Milo was having you killed wouldn't you be a little shaky?" I said.

"No," Hawk said.

"True," I said. "I withdraw the question."

"'Sides," Hawk said, "I believe Mr. Milo is in fact trying to have you killed. You shaky?"

"Only when no one's looking," I said.

I dialed Lehman's home number. He answered himself.

"Spenser," I said. "You called?"

"Jesus Christ, Spenser. They did it. They tried to hit me, all over a fucking banker, for crissake. It's a banker, named Warren Whitfield."

"You okay?" I said.

"Yeah, they missed, but you gotta let Mr. Milo know, Spenser. You gotta tell him you know it's Warren Whitfield."

"Then he'll try to kill me instead of you," I said.

"Man, it was your idea. You know how to do this kind of shit."

"What bank does Warren work for?" I said.

"He don't work for a bank, for crissake, he's the president. DePaul Federal. You gotta tell Mr. Milo."

"And tell him how I know?"

"Jesus, no, for fuck sake, why do you want to kill me?"

"Okay," I said, "then you just sit tight and in a while the pressure will be off."

"What are you going to do?"

"Sit tight," I said, and hung up.

Almost immediately the phone rang again. I mak it off the hook and broke the connection and left it off the hook. I looked at Hawk.

"Warren Whitfield," I said. "President of DePaul Federal."

"Told you we in the bigs," Hawk said.

"We are in fact," I said.

"Now what,". Hawk said.

"I suppose we got to talk with Warren," I said. "Ask him about Ginger, ask him if he knows where April is."

"You wonder why Mr. Milo's interested in protecting the president of a bank," Hawk said.

"They're both capitalists," I said.

"You awful cynical for a romantic," Hawk said.

"I'm not romantic about Mr. Milo," I said.

"Glad there's something," Hawk said.

Hawk went home. And I sat at my desk for a while with my feet up. The desk lamp was on but the rest of the office was dim. Outside, the Back Bay was quiet. And the light from the street was muted by the time it reached the window. I'd been following the sad track of a dead girl for too long. And the dead girl wasn't even who I was looking for. Maybe April was dead too. Maybe I'd been following a dead girl to find a dead girl. I looked at the backs of my hands. A couple of the knuckles on my left hand had been broken and healed a little larger. The hands were real, though, flesh and blood, alive. The pimp was dead too. Which pimp, I'd met so many lately. Rambeaux, the late Robert Rambeaux, reed man.

Maybe they were all either pimps or whores. Maybe it was life's classifying principle, maybe I had seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker.

I called Susan at home.

"I'm sitting in my office with only one light on," I said, "and I'm quoting Prufrock to myself."

"My God," she said, "tell me about it."

"Everybody I run into looking for April is a pimp," I said. "Except for the whores."

"Everybody?"

"Metaphorically at least. It's depressing."

"The last time you found her she went right back to whoring," Susan said.

"Yeah, that's not encouraging either. What kind of world is it when whoring is the best choice open to you?"

"Since when do you and I talk about the world," she said. "The world is what it is."

"Yeah, I know."

"Not only do you know, you've helped me to know."

"Good to be useful," I said.

"What has always made me respect you, even in the bad times, was your ability to look out at the world and see what's there. Not what you'd like to see, or even what you need to see, but simply what's there."

"I haven't killed anyone yet this trip."

Susan was silent for a moment on the phone, then she said, "Ah, that's what it is. It's not this, it's still San Francisco.

"And Idaho," she said. "Whatever you did, and whoever you killed, and however you feel about it, you have to judge all of that in context. You were doing what you felt you had to do, and you were doing it for love."

"The people I killed are just as dead."

"Yes. It makes no difference to them why you did it. But it makes a difference to me and to you. What we've been through in the last couple of years has produced the relationship we have now, achieved love, maybe. Something we've earned, something we've paid for in effort and pain and maybe mistakes as well. I live with some."

"I know," I said.

"We aren't who we were," she said.

"I know," I said.

"But if you are to continue what you do, you cannot be afraid to kill someone if you must. Otherwise you'll die, and if you do some of me will die as well."

"I know," I said.

"So either come to terms with that or do something else. We almost lost each other once."

"Doing something else doesn't seem too swell," I said.

"No, it doesn't. You are the best there is at what you do. And what you do is often crucially important to someone."

"You love me," I said, "don't you."

"More than I can say. Maybe more sometimes than I can show."

"Yes," I said, "I know."

"You want to come over?"

"No," I said, "I'm okay."

"You weren't when you called," Susan said.

"I am now," I said.

"No wonder I'm called super shrink," Susan said.

"Hey, wait a minute, the patient does all the work."

"Of course," Susan said. "You ought to not forget that whoever you killed last year, there were people you could have killed and didn't."

"There's that," I said.

"We all do what we need to, and what we have to, not what we ought to, or ought to have. You're a violent man. You wouldn't do your work if you weren't. What makes you so attractive, among other things, is that your capacity for violence is never random, it is rarely self-indulgent, and you don't take it lightly. You make mistakes. But they are mistakes of judgment. They are not mistakes of the heart."

"I thought you shrinks didn't talk about heart."

"We only do it with the patients who aren't paying," she said.

"Thank you," I said.

"When will I see you?" Susan said.

"Maybe tomorrow night. I'll call you tomorrow."

"Okay, take care of yourself."

"Yes," I said.

We hung up. I sat silently in the office for ten minutes and then got up and turned off the light and went home.