Robert B Parker
Chance
PROLOGUE
It was all to come. The cocktails, the crystal, the starched white napkins, and the soft Sunday mornings with orange juice and floral print coverlets. Apple trees in spring blossom. Evenings He would come home from work with His collar open and His tie loosened and His shirt still crisp, making a nice contrast with the tan on His face and His strong hands. Nights she would lie in the hollow of His muscular arm. They would have a sports car at first and then when they had blond children with red cheeks they'd get a station wagon.
She would wear linen dresses and pearls and flattering heels.
Standing in the parking lot, in the summer place night, she studied herself reflected in the dark window of the club. Her red hair was pulled back and tied with a blue ribbon. She wore a pair of white shorts, and a blue sleeveless tee, and dark loafers with no socks. She had on bright lipstick and a lot of dark eye shadow, and her blusher, carefully applied, hid her freckles and almost hid the bruise where her father had hit her. She took a cigarette from her purse and lit it and put it in her mouth and looked again to see how she looked with the smoke curling up in front of her face. There were mercury vapor security lights just under the eaves of the club and their light gave the rows of parked cars an otherworldly gleam.
When the club door opened she could hear the dense racket of the band and the crowd, and smell the booze and the sweet pungent marijuana smoke. She unwrapped a stick of Blackjack chewing gum and folded it into her mouth and chewed it soft. She loved the way she looked chewing gum while the cigarette bobbed in her lips and the plume of its vapor made little figures in the air.
He might be in there tonight, and He'd find her, and force His way through the crowd, moving easily as strong men do where others struggle. There would be no need to speak, she'd know Him when she saw Him and He would be the rock on which she would inarticulately found her life. He would be her strength and her joy and her life and her safety.
The door opened again and people crowded out through it.
"Here I come," she thought, and slipped into the loud and reeking room and the door closed behind her.
CHAPTER 1
I was bucks up.
I had just collected a very large fee from a very large insurance company, which could easily afford it, for solving a very large insurance scam. I was sitting in my office on a warm fall afternoon with the window open behind me, looking at my checkbook, admiring my bank balance, and thinking about whether I should retire or buy a new gun, when an important thug named Julius Ventura came in with a sullen-looking young blonde woman.
"How you doing," Ventura said.
"I'm bucks up," I said.
Ventura was one of those guys who paid so much attention to how tough he was that he didn't pay much attention to anything else.
He said, "I gotta talk to you."
He was a strong guy gone fat, with thick black hair that he combed straight back, and a big nose that came straight down from the bridge with no curvature at all. He had on a double-breasted black suit and a gray shirt with a bolero string tie knotted up tight.
The sullen woman was much younger than Ventura. She had big hair and a lot of eye makeup, and a pouty lower lip that she was aware of and emphasized by moistening it often. She was wearing one of those silly-looking single-piece top and shorts outfits where the shorts look kind of like a skirt. The outfit was red. With it she wore red heels.
I waved Ventura toward a client chair. Ever the optimist, I had five of them in the office. Ventura sat on one and took a big breath as if the effort had been telling. The young woman sat beside him.
She was wearing a wedding ring and a huge diamond solitaire. I put my checkbook away in the left-hand drawer of my desk, and leaned back in my chair and smiled in a friendly way.
"How much you charge?" Ventura said.
He sat with his feet flat on the ground, his knees apart, his stomach resting on his thighs.
"Depends on what I'm doing," I said.
"And who I'm doing it for."
"You got an hourly rate?"
"Sure," I said.
I smiled at the young woman. She didn't smile back. She was busy with her lower lip.
"Well, what is it?" Ventura said.
I told him.
"That for an eight-hour day?" Ventura said.
"That's for every hour I work," I said.
"Might be more than eight. I don't charge you for sleeping."
The young woman had sucked in her lower lip a little and caught it gently in her upper front teeth.
"Who keeps track of your hours?" Ventura said.
"I do."
"Well, that's a pretty soft deal for you now, ain't it."
"Pretty soft," I said.
We were quiet. The late September air moved gently through the window and fluttered some papers on my desk. The young woman pursed her lower lip for a moment as if she were going to whistle "Evelina." But she didn't, she just let it purse there for a moment and then went back to holding it in her upper teeth. It was sort of interesting.
"I heard about you," Ventura said.
I nodded modestly.
"Talked to some people about you."
"Un huh."
"Like your man Hawk, for instance."
"Hawk is some people," I said.
"Says you're a big pain in the ass."
"He's jealous," I said. "
"Cause girls like me better."
"Fact is I asked him to take this thing on for me."
"Oh," I said.
"That kind of work."
"Maybe," Ventura said.
"Hawk says he'll do it, if you do it."
"When I can," I said, "I like to be legal."
"Nothing illegal about this job," Ventura said.
"Un huh."
"You want it? Pay your fee, no argument; expenses, no problem; cash if you want; maybe two, maybe three weeks' work."
"So how come Hawk won't do it unless I do it too?"
Ventura shrugged.
"He didn't say."
"He often doesn't," I said.
"Whaddya got?"
Ventura glanced at the blonde beside him.
"My daughter's husband took off on her," he said.
"Daddy," the blonde said.
"You don't know that. Something coulda maybe happened."
"This your daughter?" I said.
"Yeah."
I stood and leaned over the desk and put out a hand.
"How do you do," I said.
"Yeah," she said.
"How you doing."
She took my hand and shook it.
"You know my name," I said.
"Sure."
She licked her lower lip again, quite fast back and forth.
"Her name's Shirley," Ventura said.
"Lovely name," I said.
The lower lip went under the teeth again. I let go of her hand and sat back down.
"So you want me to find your son-in-law?"
"Don't call him that," Ventura said.
"My daughter married him.
I got nothing to do with it."
"How long's he been missing?" I said.
"Three days."
"That's all, and you're coming to me?"
"My daughter misses him."
"You said he took off on her. She says maybe not. Anyone want to amplify that?"
Shirley looked at her father. Her father shrugged.
"He's a bum," Ventura said.
"I give him odd jobs here and there, keep him off welfare. But he's a bum. I figure he took off with some bimbo will work him for what he's got and leave him when he's empty."
"That's not true, Daddy. Anthony loves me."
Ventura didn't say anything.
"No problems in the marriage?" I said.
"Oh, no. He woulda stood on his head for me."
"So what might have happened?" I said.
She looked at me blankly. She showed her top teeth. They were shiny and even, like they'd been bonded. The tip of her tongue poked out under her teeth and moved along her lower lip. Her eyes looked a little random.