Hush Money (7 page)

“I was about to have lunch, I could make us both something,” she said.

“Thank you, no,” I said. “Just a couple questions.”

“Did you see him?”

“Vincent?”

She smiled as if I had prayed aloud.

“I saw him,” I said. “Handsome devil.”

“Oh isn’t he,” she said. “What did he say?”

“He said he didn’t stalk you.”

“What else.”

She was sitting on the pink sofa in the bay window of her beige living room. I was back in the uncomfortable gray chair.

“Nothing of consequence,” I said. “Could you run back over the breakup.”

Her eyes filled. She sipped some more white wine.

“I don’t think I can,” she said.

“Well, let me help you focus. Who said that you would no longer sleep together.”

“What difference does it make?” she said. “It’s over.”

There were tears now on her cheeks. She wiped them with the back of her left hand.

“It might make a difference,” I said. “I know it’s painful, but think back. Who decided that you’d stop making love.”

She drank wine again and looked down at her lap and answered me so softly that I couldn’t hear her.

“Excuse me?” I said.

“I did,” she said. “I told him that if he wouldn’t leave his wife then I wouldn’t fuck him until he did.”

“Negotiating ploy?” I said.

She looked up and her eyes though teary were harder than one would have thought.

“I was desperate,” she said.

“But you meant it.”

“Well, he had to lose something too,” she said. “He couldn’t have everything. I have to leave my beautiful house and my beautiful daughter…” Now she was not just teary, now she was crying. “I have to live in this… this cell block. He can’t keep on fucking me. He has to give up something.”

“Fair’s fair,” I said.

Struggling with her crying she said, “Could you… could you come and sit beside me?”

“Sure.”

I went and sat on the couch beside her and she leaned over and put her face against my chest and sobbed. I put an arm around her shoulder and patted. Uncle Spenser, tough but oh so gentle. After a while she stopped crying, but she stayed with her. face pressed against my chest, and turned a little so she had snuggled in against me.

“So in fact you broke it off,” I said. “Not him.”

“All he had to do was leave his wife.”

“Which he wouldn’t.”

“He can’t. She’s too dependent.”

“But he’d have been willing to have you as his girlfriend.”

“Yes.”

“Being the only one cheating in fact didn’t bother him.”

She shrugged.

“No,” she said. “Sometimes I say things because they sound right.”

“Most people do,” I said.

She seemed to wriggle a little tighter against me, though I didn’t see her move.

“You’re very understanding,” she said.

“Yep.”

“And you always seem so clear.”

“Clear,” I said.

“Have you ever cheated on Susan?”

“Once. Long time ago.”

“Really?”

“Yep.”

“She ever cheat on you?”

“That would be for her to answer,” I said.

“If she did would you care?”

“Yes.”

“Did she care the time you did?”

“Yes.”

“How’d she find out?”

“I told her.”

“Would she have known if you hadn’t told her?”

“Maybe not.”

“Why did you tell her?”

“Seemed a good idea at the time,” I said.

“If you did again would she care?”

“Yes.”

“Would you tell her?”

“I’ll decide after I do it again.”

“Do you think you’ll do it again?” she said.

I couldn’t figure out how she had moved so much closer to me, since she had started out leaning on me.

“Day at a time,” I said.

My voice sounded a little hoarse. She turned her head slightly on my chest so she could look up at me. One hand kneaded my left bicep.

“You’re awfully strong, aren’t you?”

I cleared my throat.

“It’s because my heart is pure,” I said.

I was still hoarse. I cleared my throat again. Her face was so close to mine that her lips brushed my face when she spoke.

“Really?”

“Sort of pure,” I said.

She raised her head a couple of millimeters and kissed me hard on the mouth. It seemed ungallant to struggle. She pulled her head back.

“When you kiss me put your tongue in my mouth,” she said.

Her voice had thickened and grown richer, so that it had acquired the quality of butterscotch sauce. She kissed me again and opened her mouth. I kept my tongue to myself. She pressed harder. I thought that somewhere there must be laughter, as I clung to my chastity. Finally she pulled her head back and looked at me.

“Don’t you want to fuck me?” she said.

“Very respectfully, no.”

“My God, why not. I know you’re aroused.”

“You’re very desirable,” I said. “And I get aroused at green lights.”

“Then, what?”

“I’m not at liberty, so to speak.”

“My God, you’re Victorian. A Victorian prude.”

I disagreed, but arguing about my prudishness didn’t seem productive. I shrugged.

“It’s because of Susan?”

“Sure,” I said.

She had sat up and was no longer leaning against me. This was progress, it would help my arteries relax. KC poured some more white wine and drank a swallow.

“What’s so great about Susan?”

‘The way she wears her hat,“ I said. ’The way she sips her tea.”

“Seriously, what’s so special about her? I mean I’ve known her longer than you have, since we were in college. She’s so vain, for God’s sake.”

“I’m not so sure it’s vanity,” I said.

Better to be talking about Susan than about what to do with my tongue.

“Well, what the hell is it, then. Hair, makeup, clothes, exercise, diet, always has to look perfect.”

“Well,” I said, “maybe she thinks of her appearance as a work of art in progress, sort of like painting or sculpture.”

“And she’s so pretentious, for God’s sake. She’s always like lecturing.”

“And maybe not everyone gets it,” I said.

“Gets what?”

“Susan’s pretty good at irony.”

“What’s that mean?”

“She understands herself well enough to make fun of herself,” I said.

“You’ll defend her no matter what I say, won’t you?”

“Yep.”

KC got up and walked to the other side of the room and stared out the window at the blacktop parking lot behind her building.

“Do you think Louis is the stalker?”

“Could be.”

“But why would he?”

“Maybe he feels like he’s lost control of you.”

“But we love each other.”

“Not enough for him to leave his wife,” I said. “Not enough for you to sleep with him if he doesn’t.”

“Of course I won’t. Why would I give him what he wants when he won’t give me what I want.”

“I can’t think of a reason,” I said.

“Well, I don’t believe it. I don’t believe a thing you’ve said about him.”

“Just a hypothesis.”

“Why isn’t my ex a hypothesis?”

“Doesn’t seem the type,” I said.

“How the hell would you know what type he is?”

“I talked with him.”

“And you think that’s enough?”

“No, but it’s all I’ve got. I’m not a court of law here. I am allowed to go on my reactions, my guesses, my sense of people.”

“And you sense that Louis would stalk me and Burt would not?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Well, I don’t have to listen to you. And I won’t.”

“Reading cops still checking on you,” I said.

“Like you care.”

I stood. “Time to go,” I said.

“Past time.”

I walked toward the door. She turned slowly to watch me, her hands on her hips, her face flushed.

“I would have shown you things that tight-assed Susie Hirsch doesn’t even know.”

I smiled at her. “But would you have respected me in the morning?” I said.

“Prude.”

“Prudery is its own reward,” I said, and left with my head up. I did not run. I walked out the door and toward my car in a perfectly dignified manner.

“Mr. Spenser, Patsy Lamont. I need to see you, please.” I had some coffee to drink and some donuts to eat and the tiresome-looking pile of homosexuals-to-be-outed list still to read. Reading it while eating donuts and drinking coffee would make it go better.

I called Patsy Lamont.

“Spenser,” I said. “When would you like to see me?”

She sounded like I’d awakened her, but she rallied.

“Could you come by around noon?” she said. “I have my support group in the morning.”

“Anything I can do on the phone?” I said.

“No, I, I need to talk with you.”

“Be there at noon,” I said and hung up.

I took a bite of donut, a sip of coffee, and picked up the Out list. There were some surprises on it, though none of them seemed like a clue, and by 11:30, with the coffee a dim memory, and the donuts a faint aftertaste, I put the list down and headed for my car. All I could think of was to talk with each of the people on the list. This, coupled with trying to find out who else Louis Vincent had been hustling, meant a great deal of boring legwork that made me think about becoming a poet.

I parked illegally near Mrs. Lamont’s three decker and rang her doorbell at noon. Prudish but punctual. We sat at her thick wooden kitchen table with the high sun shining in through the upper panes of the window over her sink. There was a big white envelope on the table in front of her. It had been mailed and opened.

“Would you like some coffee?” she said. “I have instant.”

“No thank you.”

“Tea?”

“No ma’am.”

“I’m going to have some tea.”

“By all means,” I said.

I sat at the table with my hands folded on it, like an attentive grammar school student, and looked around. It was a kitchen out of my early childhood: painted yellow, with Iuan mahogany plywood wainscoting all around, yellow, gray, and maroon stone patterned linoleum on the floor, white porcelain sink, an off-white gas stove with storage drawers along one side. The kitchen table top was covered with the same linoleum that covered the floor. The hot water kettle whistled that it was ready, and Mrs. Lamont poured hot water into a bright flowered teacup. She plopped in a tea bag and brought the teacup in a matching saucer to the table. She took a spoon from a drawer in the table and prodded the tea bag gently until the tea got to be the right shade of amber. Then she took the tea bag out and put it in the saucer. She picked up the teacup with both hands and held it under her nose for a moment as if she were inhaling the vapors. Then she sipped and put the cup back down.

“I barely know you,” she said.

“That’s true,” I said.

“And yet here you are,” she said.

“Here I am.”

“My husband took care of all the financial things,” she said.

I nodded.

“When he left I didn’t even know how to write a check.”

I nodded again. You find something that works, you go with it.

“I don’t know any lawyers or people like that.”

I nodded. She had some tea. I waited.

“So when this stuff came in the mail, I didn’t know who to ask.”

“This stuff?” I said and patted the big envelope.

“Yes. Now that he’s… gone, his mail comes to me.”

I knew who he was. I knew that parents tended to think of their children as
he,
or
she,
or
they,
as if there were no one else that could be so designated. And I knew that when something bad happened to a child the tendency exacerbated.

“Would you like me to look at it?” I said.

“Yes, please.”

She handed me the envelope. It was a financial statement from Hall, Peary. Home of that great romantic, Louis Vincent. Boston isn’t all that big, sooner or later cases tended to overlap. The statement showed that Prentice Lamont and Patsy Lamont JTWROS had $256,248.29 in a management account consisting mostly of common stocks and options. I copied down the name and phone number of his financial consultant which was listed at the top. It wasn’t Louis Vincent. It was someone named Maxwell Morgan.

“What is it?” she said.

“It’s a financial statement from a stockbroker.”

“What does it say?”

“It says that your son and you had two hundred fifty-six thousand and change invested in stocks and bonds, which the stockbroker managed for him.”

“You mean Prentice’s money?”

“Yes. Now yours I assume.”

“Mine?”

“Yes, see this, JTWROS? Joint tenants with right of survivorship. It means that now that your son has passed away the money is yours.”

“Mine?”

“Yes.”

“Where would Prentice get two hundred thousand dollars?”

“I was hoping you’d know,” I said. “His father?”

She snorted, in a gentle ladylike way.

“You’ve talked to his father.”

“Yes. I withdraw the question.”

I picked up the envelope. It was addressed to both Prentice and Patsy at Patsy’s address.

“Envelopes like this come here before?”

“Yes. Every month. I just gave them to him.”

“He wasn’t living here.”

“No, he lived in that apartment where they had the newspaper.”

But he had the statements sent here.

“What should I do?” Mrs. Lamont said.

“With the money?”

“Yes.”

“Do you need it?”

“Need it?”

“It’s yours,” I said.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“How do I get it?”

“Somewhere in Prentice’s effects there’s probably a checkbook.”

“He showed me one once.”

“What’d he say?”

“I don’t recall exactly, just something about see this checkbook.”

“If you had it you could simply write a check on this account when you needed to.”

“Maybe in his room,” she said. “It’s not the room he grew up in. We lived in Hingham until the divorce. It’s just the room he used when he came to see me. A child always needs to have a home to come to.”

“Yes,” I said.

“I haven’t been in his room since the funeral.”

“Would you like me to look?”

She was silent, looking into her teacup, then she nodded.

“Yes,” she said very softly.

It was a small room behind the kitchen. Single bed with a maple frame and flame shapes carved on the tops of the bedposts. A braided rag rug, mostly blue and red, that was a little raveled at one edge. A patchwork quilt, again mostly blue and red, covering the bed, some jeans and sport shirts and a pair of dark brown penny loafers in the closet. A maple bureau with an assortment of school pictures on top of it. Prentice Lamont when he was in first grade, looking stiff and a little scared in a neat plaid shirt, and in most of the grades between. His high school graduation picture dominated the collection, a round-faced kid with dark hair and pink cheeks, wearing a mortarboard. His bachelor’s degree was framed on the wall, but no college graduation picture. In the top drawer of the bureau was a checkbook and a box of spare checks and deposit slips and mailing envelopes. Apparently Prentice did his financial planning in Somerville.

There was nothing else of interest in the room. It wasn’t a room that spoke of him, of his sexuality, his fears, why he was dead, or who killed him. It was an anonymous child’s room, maintained by a mother, for an adult to come and sleep in once in a while. I brought the checkbook and the spare checks out to his mother.