As I passed the dining room, I noticed the coach and his buddy still at the buffet. A colony of beer cans had sprung up on the highboy beside them. In the kitchen Roger Bartlett was mixing drinks at the counter from half-gallons of booze. A plastic trash can was filled with chopped ice and beer cans, and a whole ham garnished with fruit was being readied for the buffet table. I wondered if the two gourmets in the corner had already polished off the first one. It would be fun to join them and comment on the broads and make wisecracks about the other guests and eat and drink till it became self-destructive and have your wife drive home. That would be more fun than finding a guy with his neck snapped, or going one-on-one with a weight lifter. Or following Marge Bartlett around all evening. I looked around for Mr. Confidence. I needed a booster shot.
Bartlett poured a glass near full of Scotch, added an ice cube and a teardrop’s worth of water, and gave it to his wife. She took a big drink and said, “Whoooo, that’s strong. You want me to get drunk so you can take advantage of me.”
“Dear, by the time I get to the bedroom tonight, you’ll be snoring like a hog.”
“Roger!” she said and turned away. She saw me standing in the doorway and came over.
“My God, Spenser, you’re a big handsome brute,” she said and leaned against me with her right arm around me.
I said, “You’re really into words, aren’t you?”
“He’s my bodyguard,” Marge Bartlett said to a woman with bags under her eyes and a pouty mouth. “Don’t you think I ought to keep my body very close to him so he can guard it?” She made snuggling motions at me. Pressed against me, she felt tightly cased and ready to burst, like a knockwurst.
The woman with the baggy eyes said, “Someone should guard your body, sweetie, that’s for sure.”
I said, “You’re leaning on my gun arm.”
She put her mouth up close to my ear and said, “I could lean on something else, if you were nice.”
“It wouldn’t carry the weight,” I said.
“You’re awful,” she said and stepped away from me.
I said, “All us big handsome brutes are like that.”
Baggy-eyes snickered, and Marge Bartlett spotted Mr. Confidence across the kitchen and went after him.
“Are you really a bodyguard?” Baggy-eyes said.
“Yep.”
“Do you have a gun?”
“No,” I said. “I have this mysterious power I acquired in the Orient to cloud men’s minds so they cannot see me.”
Susan appeared with an assorted platter from the buffet table and offered me some. “I have two forks,” she said. Baggy-eyes moved off. Marge Bartlett and Mr. Confidence were in close proximity across the kitchen. I wondered if she had called him a big handsome brute.
“Having a nice time?” Susan asked.
“It’s better than getting bitten by a great white shark,” I said.
“Oh, it’s not that bad. In fact, you kind of like it. I’ve been watching you. You look at everything; you listen to everybody. I bet you know what everyone in the kitchen is talking about and what they look like. They fascinate you.”
“Yeah,” I said, “I’m into people.”
“Oh, you’re such a big tough guy, and you think you’re funny, but I’ll bet if that fool with the confidence courses got in trouble, you’d get him out of it.”
“A catcher in the rye,” I said.
“You’re being smart, I know, but that’s right. That’s exactly what you are. You are exactly that sentimental.”
The wall phone in the kitchen rang. A thin woman said, “Oh, Christ, that’s my kid, I’ll bet anything.” And a tall white-haired man with a red face and a green polka-dot bow tie answered. “Duffy’s Tavern, Archie the manager speaking.” He listened and then he said, “Anybody here named Spenser?” The thin woman said, “Whew.” I took the phone and said hello.
“Mr. Spenser? This is Mary Riordan at the State Police. Lieutenant Healy asked me to call you and tell you that Earl Maguire died of a broken neck apparently the result of being struck on the side of the face with a solid blunt object.”
“Son of a gun,” I said. “Thank you.”
She hung up. Susan looked at me and raised her eyebrows.
“Nothing,” I said. “Just a confirmation on the cause of death. I asked Healy to let me know, and he did. I didn’t think he would.”
“Who’s Healy?” she asked.
“State cop.”
I looked across the kitchen and was suddenly aware that I didn’t know where Marge Bartlett was. “Where’d Marge Bartlett go?” I said to Susan.
“I don’t know. Just a minute ago she was over there talking to a fat guy with a mustache.”
I walked through the kitchen to the dining room. And on into the living room. No sign. I felt the first small tug of anxiety in my stomach. Atta boy, lose your goddamned assignment in her own house. On either side of the fireplace in the living room were French doors, thinly curtained. One was slightly ajar, and I walked toward it. Outside I heard someone say in a half scream, “Don’t, don’t.” The little tug in my solar plexus darted up to my throat, and I jumped through the door. I was on a screened porch that ran the whole side of the house. In the dim light I could see a man and a woman struggling. The man had his back to me, but I could see the woman’s face across his shoulder, white in the dimness. It was Marge Bartlett. She wrenched away from him as I came onto the porch. I took one step with my left foot, planted it, turned sideways, and drove my right foot into the small of the man’s back. He said, “Ungh,” and went headfirst through the screen and into a mass of forsythia. I went after him. Marge Bartlett was screaming. The man was sluggishly trying to get out of the forsythia. I got his right arm bent up behind him and my left hand clamped under his chin and dragged him back on the porch.
He was protesting, but not coherently. The porch light snapped on. People were crowding out on the porch. The guy I had hold of was Vaughn, the fat man with the crew cut and the big mustache who had been one of the first to arrive.
“Goddamned tease,” he was yelling now. “She got me out here; I didn’t do anything. Goddamned stinking tease. Get you hot and then scream when you touch her. Bastard. Bitch.” There were scratches on his face where he went through the screen. There was lipstick on his face too. I looked at Marge Bartlett; her lipstick was smudged. The deep V-neck of her blouse was torn, and some of a black long-line bra showed.
“Let him go, Spenser. Are you crazy? We were just talking. For God’s sake, haven’t you ever been to a party? We were just talking, and I guess he got the wrong idea. You know how men are.” Dimly visible through her makeup her face seemed to be red. “They always get the wrong idea. I was just surprised. I could have handled this. Look at my screen. Look...” I let the man go.
“Goddamned liar. You got me out here and started playing goddamned kissy face with me and rubbing your boobs up against me and when I get serious you start screaming and yelling and your goddamned gorilla comes charging out and hits me from behind.”
“Gorilla?” I said.
Susan Silverman had come up beside me. “Goddamned gorilla,” she said.
16
It was 2:35 in the morning. The noise was dense and tangible in the living room. Marge Bartlett had changed from a lavender to a yellow top, and the lavender trimmings she still wore glared more brusquely than ever. Vaughn, his back sore but unbroken, had collected his very silent and thin-mouthed wife and departed. The stereo was playing, and Billie Holiday’s remarkable voice cut through the coarse air. “...Papa may have, but God bless the child that’s got his own...” I edged a little closer so I could listen.