“I don’t know. Everything, I guess. I’m not into drugs. I heard he didn’t deal heroin. One of the girls was talking about Quads, but I don’t really know.”
“Where’s he get the drugs?”
“I don’t know. I told you I’m not into drugs.”
“Yeah, that’s right.” I looked at the empty bottles. “You’re into New York State champagne. I forgot. How did you get in touch with Harroway?”
“Doctor Croft. Gave me a little card with the phone number. Said if I was looking for anything, to call and say what I wanted.”
“How’d he happen to do that?”
“I was having some trouble with my wife, you know. I mean she wasn’t interested much in sex, and I thought maybe I was doing something wrong; you know, technique. So I went to Doctor Croft, and he said maybe I could find a release if I wanted to and it would make our marriage better and he gave me this card. Here, gimme my pants. It’s still in my wallet.” Robinson dug it out. A calling card cheaply printed with only a phone number.
Wise old Doc Croft. Save your marriage, son; get out and screw a groupie. “Your wife ever go to Doc Croft?” I said.
“No, why?”
“Never mind. Okay, what’s the connection between Croft and Harroway?”
“I don’t know. Neither one of them ever mentioned it. Croft never said another word about it after that time he gave me the card. I never brought it up to him. I mean, it’s not the kind of thing you want to talk about, you know. I mean, how your wife is frigid and you have to go to others.” He’d found the basis for his actions as he talked. It was all his wife’s doing anyway, the bitch.
“How much does it cost?” I said.
“A hundred for a regular shack. That’s all night, if you want, but I can’t stay out all night. I mean, my wife won’t even go to bed till I come home, you know? If you want something special, the price goes up from there.”
The telling was building its own momentum, as if he’d had no one to tell about all this till now. He was getting excited. “Like sometimes I go for a nineteen-fifties’ look, like little prim broads with high necks and wide skirts, sort of cute and high-class like, like ah, oh, you know, some of those broads on TV in the fifties, like...”
“Dorothy Collins,” I said.
“Yeah, yeah, like her, and June Allyson in that movie about the ball player with one leg, like that. Well anyway. For a hundred and a half I get a chick like that, you know, dressed up and everything.”
“Isn’t that something,” I said.
“And they’ll cater parties too. You know, stag parties. Like I was at one down the Legion Hall one night they had five broads and a goat. And reefers for anyone that wanted them and a lot of other stuff I don’t know about. Jesus, you should see the equipment on that goat.”
“Sorry I missed it,” I said. “Where’s Harroway get the girls?”
“I don’t know, but they’re all young, and they live with him out somewhere on a farm or something. You know like Charles Manson, a commune or whatever. And I guess they’ll do anything he says.”
“Okay, Fraser,” I said, “you’re off the hook. But I know who you are and where you live and what your hobbies are. I’ll keep in touch.”
“Look, I told you whatever you wanted, right? I mean you got no reason to bring me into anything, have you? I mean if Harroway ever found out I told...”
“Mum’s the word, Fraser. Put on your pants.” I looked at the empty champagne bottles. “A hundred and a half,” I said, “and you get domestic champagne.” I went out and closed the door.
In the lobby I looked at my watch, 10:15; I was missing the Tuesday night movie again. Then it hit me. Tuesday night I was supposed to be having dinner with Susan Silverman, with maybe a surprise treat afterward. I was two hours and fifteen minutes late.
I called her from a pay phone. “Susan,” I said, “I’m being held captive by the West Peabody Republican Women’s Club which wishes to exploit me sexually. If I overpower my captors and escape, is it too late?”
There was silence. Then she said, “Almost,” and hung up.
As I left the phone booth I saw Fraser Robinson walk out of the lobby and toward the parking lot. Five girls, I thought, and a goat? Jesus Christ.
22
I stopped to buy a bottle of Dom Perignon and still made it to Susan Silverman’s by 10:35. Susan let me in without comment. I held the wine out to her. “They were out of Annie Greenspring,” I said.
She took it. “Thank you,” she said. She had on a chocolate satin shirt with an oversized collar and copper-colored pants. “Do you want some now?”
“Yes.”
“Then come out in the kitchen and open it. I have trouble with champagne corks.”
The house was a small Cape with some Early American antiques around. A small dining room ran between the living room and the kitchen. There was a miniature harvest table set for two with white china and crystal wineglasses. Gulp!
The kitchen was walnut-paneled and rust-carpeted with a wagon wheel ceiling fixture hanging over a chopping-block table. She put the champagne on the table and got two glasses out of the cabinet. I twisted the cork out, poured, and handed her a glass.
“I’m sorry as hell, Susan,” I said.
“Where were you?”
“Mostly sitting in the lobby at the Hideaway Inn reading ‘Broom Hilda’ and eating a Baby Ruth.”
She picked up the champagne bottle and said, “Come on. We may as well sit by what’s left of the fire.” I followed her into the living room. She sat in a black Boston rocker with walnut arms, and I sat on the couch. There was a cheese ball and some rye crackers on the coffee table, and I sampled them. The cheese ball had pineapple and green pepper in it and chopped walnuts on the outside.
“This is even better than a Baby Ruth,” I said.
“That’s nice,” she said.
I picked up the champagne bottle from where she’d set it on the coffee table. “Want some more?” I said. “No, thank you,” she said. I poured some in my glass and leaned back. The fire hissed softly, and a log shifted with a little shower of sparks. The living room was papered in royal blue, with the woodwork white and a big print of Guernica over the fireplace.
“Look, Suze,” I said. “I work funny hours. I get into places and onto things that I can’t stop, and I can’t call and I gotta be late. There’s no way out of that, you know?”
“I know,” she said. “I knew all the two and one half hours I was walking around here worrying about you and calling you a bastard.”
“Is the dinner ruined?” I said.
“No, I made a cassoulet. It probably improves with age.”
“That’s good.”
She was looking at me now, quite hard. “Spenser, what the hell happened to you? What were you doing?”
I told her. Halfway through she got up and poured herself some more champagne and refilled my glass. When I finished she said, “But where’s Kevin?”
“I don’t know. I figure that Harroway’s got him stashed somewhere else. In Boston, maybe. He must have gotten nervous after we were out to his house.”
“And Harroway’s running a whole, what, vice ring? Right here in town? How can he get away with it? I mean, this isn’t a big town. How can the police not know?”
“Maybe they do know.”
“You mean bribery?”
“Maybe, or maybe Harroway has friends in high places. Remember Doctor Croft was the one who shilled old Fraser Robinson onto Vicki’s scam.”
“But to corrupt the police...”
“Cops are public employees, like teachers and guidance counselors. They tend to give a community what it wants, not always what it should have. I mean, if you happen to go for an evening out with five broads and a goat, and you are a man of some influence, maybe the cops won’t prevent it. Maybe they’ll try to contain it and keep everybody happy.”