“I’ve explained that to him,” Susan said.
“Who is this doctor,” Dix said. “Is he a shrink?”
“His M.D. is urology,” Susan said. “He bills himself as a therapeutic counselor.”
“Rosselli,” Dix said.
“You know him?” I said.
“Emil Rosselli,” Dix said. “That’s who it is, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” I said. “What do you think of him?”
“Dope dealer to the rich and famous,” Dix said. “He’s a fucking disgrace.”
“Don’t get too technical on me,” I said.
“I simply strive for accuracy,” Dix said.
He scanned the list.
“There’s some vitamins here,” he said, “which probably do no harm, and the rest are psychotropic drugs.”
“Like sedatives?” I said.
“Some,” he said. “There’s an assortment to get you up, calm you down, get a balance between. All of them have legitimate uses, but they are not normally used in this amount or these combinations.”
“Pills?” I said.
“Some pills, some injectables, some that come in either form,” Dix said. “I can’t tell from the list how often the patient received this stuff.”
“He went there every two weeks,” I said.
“Doesn’t tell me if he gave her the same thing every time,” Dix said.
“The more he went, I suppose, the more money he made.”
“Most Feelgoods use injections,” Dix said. “Patient can take pills himself, but the doc can jack up the price if the patient thinks he always has to get a shot.”
“Maybe he also did counseling,” I said.
“I hope not,” Dix said.
“What would be the effect of these drugs on the recipient?” I said.
“It can vary,” Dix said. “But certainly it would dull her response to the phenomenological world.”
“How about on a young woman who had been sexually molested and attempted suicide.”
“Palliative at best,” Dix said.
“Harmful?” I said.
“The actual drugs? Can’t say without more information. But if she is suffering severe post-molestation psychopathology, it’s like putting a Band-Aid over gangrene.”
“The pathology will continue to fester,” I said.
“A bit dramatic maybe,” Dix said, “but yes. She will continue to need help.”
“But not from Emil Rosselli,” I said.
“First do no harm,” Dix said.
“I think Rosselli is governed by a different code,” I said.
Dix smiled.
“Show me the money,” he said.
53
In the late afternoon,
Hawk and I sat with Valerie Lessard in a big wooden booth in the taproom at the Nassau Inn in Princeton. The room looked like it was supposed to, with dark wood and murals. Valerie had some white wine; Hawk and I drank beer.
“The thing about poor Maurice,” Valerie said, “is he was gay.”
“Was he out?” I said.
“Not around my parents,” Valerie said.
“They didn’t know?”
Valerie, as she talked, was obliquely studying Hawk.
“He didn’t want them to,” Valerie said.
“Would they disapprove?” I said.
“I don’t think so,” Valerie said. “Plus, hell, they knew. Anyone who spent time with my brother would know.”
“They talk with you about it?”
Still appraising Hawk, Valerie nodded her head.
“Sure,” she said. “Not, did I think he was gay? More, did I know his friends? Did he have any girlfriends? Was he happy?”
“You and your brother get along?”
“Yeah,” Valerie said. “I liked him. He was really sweet. We could talk. More like having a sister than a brother, I guess. Except we didn’t have to compete for dates.”
“Did he date?”
“No.”
“Men or women?”
“No. I don’t know for sure if he ever had sex with anyone,” she said.
“Did he tell you he was gay?”
“Not in so many words,” Valerie said. “But we both knew that we both knew, if you know what I’m saying.”
“I do,” I said. “How did he end up with Adelaide Van Meer?”
“School. He was a junior when she was a freshman. They got to be friends. Not boyfriend, girlfriend. Just friends. Except for me, she might have been his first close friend. Two lost souls, I guess . . .”
Valerie stopped for a moment and looked at the tabletop. Her eyes were teary, but she didn’t cry.
“Poor Maurice,” she said finally.
“Adelaide was lost, too?” I said.
“Yeah. She was sort of withdrawn and, like, fearful, and mad, all at the same time. Conflicted, maybe,” Valerie said. “I’m not sure if she was straight.” Valerie smiled and sort of shrugged. “I’m a psych major.”
“No shame in it,” I said.
She nodded and finished her wine and looked toward the bar.
Hawk stood and said, “Chardonnay?”
She smiled at him and nodded. He went to the bar.
“So how did it develop from friendship to marriage?” I said.
She shrugged.
“I guess they started going to, you know, parties together, and people started to treat them like a couple. And one day he brought her home for the weekend. I don’t remember the occasion. Maybe one of those big rowing events on the Schuylkill.”
Hawk returned with her wine. She smiled very brightly at him. She was a nice-looking kid in the way that rich kids can be. Nice teeth, nice skin, good body, good haircut. I was never clear how I could tell, but money always seemed to show. She drank some wine.
“Anyway, my mother and father, well, I guess, more my mother, went crazy,” Valerie said. “Maurice had a girlfriend! You know?”
“Did she push him into it?”
“My mom can be a little pushy, but I don’t know. I went away to school, and whatever developed developed without me.”
“He didn’t talk about it?” I said.
“To me? Not really. He said he felt bad for Adelaide. That she’d had a pretty bad childhood, but he never said exactly what.”
“You think he married her to help her out?” I said.
“I don’t know. I mean, I wasn’t around. I was pretty busy here. Classes and dating and all,” Valerie said. “Hell, he was queer, she might have been a lesbian, maybe they thought they could be each other’s beard. You know?”
I nodded. Hawk and I had finished our beer. Valerie was almost through her second wine. She looked at Hawk.
“Are you a detective, too?” she said.
Hawk smiled at her.
“No, ma’am, ah jess come along to carry his luggage,” Hawk said.
“He doesn’t seem to have any luggage,” Valerie said.
“Easy job,” Hawk said.
Valerie smiled again, staring at him directly now.
“You spending the night in town?” she said.
“Uh-uh,” Hawk said.
“Want to buy me dinner?” Valerie said.
“How old are you?” Hawk said.
“I’ll be twenty in the spring,” she said.
“And I won’t,” Hawk said.
“So what?” Valerie said.
Hawk smiled at her again and shook his head.
“You good-looking and you nice,” Hawk said. “But you too young.”
“You’d be surprised,” Valerie said.
“No doubt that I would,” Hawk said. “And I thank you for the offer. But I be having dinner with my age mate here. He’s boring, but he’s boring about things I know.”
She shrugged.
“No harm trying,” Valerie said.
“None,” Hawk said.
“Boring?” I said to Hawk.
54
I was back in Boston,
in my office, discussing with Hawk the official weekday start of the cocktail hour.
“You don’t have to wait for no damn time,” Hawk said. “You want a drink, have a drink.”
“At ten in the morning?” I said.
“That when you want it, yes.”
“How uncivilized,” I said.
“I is of African heritage,” Hawk said. “’Course I uncivilized.”
“True, while I am a descendant of Irish kings.”
“Which be why you wanting a drink at ten in the morning,” Hawk said.
“Not always,” I said.
“So what we talking about?” Hawk said.
“It’s four-thirty,” I said. “Half-hour to go.”
Hawk shook his head.
“Weird,” Hawk said.
“How about yesterday?” I said. “You wouldn’t respond to a good-looking college girl who came on to you.”
“Too young,” Hawk said.
“She’s a full-grown woman, almost twenty, anatomically correct. What’s too young.”
“She talked funny,” Hawk said. “You know, like they all do. High voice, nasal, talk very fast. Grating.”
“Well, yeah. But how much talking were you expecting?”
“She say dinner,” Hawk said. “That be chitchat. She say want me to come to your room now? Be different.”
“Man,” I said. “I didn’t know you had limits.”
“Like to have sex with women who was at least born when John Carlos and Tommie Smith was in Mexico,” Hawk said.
“Wow,” I said. “And here I am thinking you required only a pulse.”
Hawk grinned.
“Also depends what else I got on my plate at the time,” he said.
“Glad it’s going well for you,” I said.
“Yowzah,” Hawk said, with the accent on the
zah
.
My phone rang. It was Bradshaw.
“I gotta see you,” he said. “Now.”
“Where are you?” I said.
“Wagner Motel on One twenty-eight in Burlington,” he said. “Across from the mall.”
“What do you need?”
“I need help,” he said. “I’m in danger. You need to come right now.”
“Okay,” I said.
“I’m in room two-oh-three, under the name Bailey.”
“Here we come,” I said.
“We?”
“My associate Hawk will be with me. Big man, black, don’t panic if you see him.”
“Nobody else,” he said. “No one knows I’m here.”
“Mum’s the word,” I said.
“Hurry up,” he said. “Just get here quick.”
I hung up. And looked at Hawk.
“Gotta go rescue Bradshaw,” I said.
“From what?”
“Don’t know,” I said. “He said to hurry.”
“There go the cocktail hour,” Hawk said.
“We can stop in a packy,” I said. “Maybe buy a couple of nips for the car.”
“Pathetic,” Hawk said.
“I know,” I said. “I thought so when I said it.”
55
The Wagner Motel
was an undistinguished suburban motel on a major highway near a big shopping center. It had a central building where the front desk, bar, and restaurant were. There was a wing on each side. Hawk and I went in the side door of one of the wings and up the stairs without passing the front desk. We were at room 323. Room 203 was at the other end. When we got there the privacy sign was hanging on the door-knob. Hawk stepped to the side. I knocked on the door. Nobody answered. I knocked a couple more times. It seemed pretty clear that there were no plans to open the door.
I put my ear to the door. The television was playing loudly. I looked at Hawk. He shrugged.
“Call the manager or kick it in?” he said.
“Call,” I said.
We were at the end of the corridor. I went to the house phone on the small lamp table. In a minute or two a nervous-looking young guy with an ineffective combover got out of the elevator and walked down the hall to us. He looked uneasily at Hawk. Then at me.
“You the man that called?” he said.
“Yes,” I said.
“Are you guests of the hotel?” he said.
“No. We were invited here by the occupant of this room,” I said. “We fear something untoward might have happened.”
The desk guy was wearing a white shirt with a green tie and a green vest. The collar on the shirt was curled up at the tips.
“Untoward?” he said.
I had a sense he might not be on the fast track.
“I’m a detective,” I said. “Working on a case. We need the door opened.”
“I can’t just override his privacy sign,” the desk guy said.
From outside the motel there was the dim sound of a siren being turned off.
“Ah,” I said.
“I took the liberty of calling the police,” the desk guy said. “I will wait for them, if you don’t mind.”
In maybe a minute, two Burlington cops came out of the elevator and walked down to us. Both were young guys who looked at if they got a lot of exercise. They were carrying their nightsticks.
“What’s the deal,” one of them said.
“My name is Spenser,” I said. “I’m working with a state police captain named Healy on a case.”
“I know Healy. What’s the case?”
“Has to do with the kidnapping a while ago on Tashtego Island.”
“Yeah,” the cop said. “I remember that. No progress is what I heard.”
“We might make some,” I said, “if we can get this door unlocked.”
The cop looked at Hawk.
“Who’s this,” he said.
“My partner,” I said.
Hawk had no expression.
“Tell me more,” the cop said.
His partner had taken a few steps away and stood quietly watching Hawk and me. Especially Hawk.
“Guy called me and said he was in trouble and needed to see me right away.”
“Guy in this room?”
“Yeah. He’s registered as Bailey, but his real name is Bradshaw.”
“Like the Bradshaw broad on Tashtego?”
“Estranged husband,” I said.
The cop nodded at the desk guy.
“Open the door,” he said.
The desk guy did. The door opened a couple of inches and held.
“Security chain,” the desk guy said.
“Mr. Bradshaw?” the cop said. “It’s the police, Mr. Bradshaw.”
Nothing.
“Kick it in,” the cop said.
“Me?” the desk guy said.
Hawk grinned.
“Me,” he said.
He shifted his weight and drove his right foot into the door just above the knob. The safety chain tore out of the doorjamb and the door banged open. The cop went past Hawk into the room and stopped. I went in behind him. The window opposite the door had a bullet hole in it with spiderweb fracture lines spreading across the pane. On the floor, on his back, in front of the window, with a bullet hole in his forehead and a spread of blood soaking into the rug beneath, was the late Harden Bradshaw. The cop bent over and felt for a pulse.