Thin Air Part 3

"Money," he said. "I never saw anyone worry about money like her. How to get it, how to save it, why we shouldn't spend it, why I should earn more. How we were going to hold up our head in the neighborhood when Trudy Fitzgerald's husband made twice what I did being an engineer at Sylvania. If I would of paid her to f.u.c.k she'd have done it every night."

"What could be more natural," I said.

"'Course, after the first couple months I would probably have paid her not to. But we had the kid and then we had a couple more. Kitty always knew the correct number of children to have. She had all the d.a.m.n rules down, you know? Whether you needed a house on the water, whether the girls should go to parochial school, whether you should add salt to the water before you boiled it, what kind of underwear a decent woman wore."

He stopped talking for a while. He still held the coffee, but he didn't drink it. I waited. A couple of cops came in and sat at the counter. Belson nodded at them without speaking. Both cops ordered coffee, one had a piece of pineapple pie with it.

"But you didn't get a divorce," I said.

"We were Catholics since twenty f.u.c.king thousand years ago. And we had the kids, and, s.h.i.+t, the time went by and we'd been married twenty-three years and barely spoke. I worked a lot of overtime."

"And then you met Lisa," I said.

"Yeah. Cambridge had picked up a guy named Wozak on an a.s.sault warrant, thought he might be a guy we were looking for; clipped an informant we use, junkie named Eddie Navarrone. Eddie's no loss, but it's a departmental policy to discourage murder when we can, so I went over and talked with Wozak. Might be our guy, I'm not sure. Cambridge has got him cold, so he's not going anywhere. At least until some judge walks him because he was denied health insurance."

"Or they got no place to put him," I said.

Belson shrugged, his back still to me, staring out at the grim spring day.

"Oughta put him in the ground," Belson said.

I ordered another decaf. Belson's coffee must have turned cold in his cup while we talked. He still held it, and he didn't drink it. He glanced out at the early spring snow spatter.

"You seen any robins yet?" Belson said.

"No."

"Me either."

"Did you meet Lisa in Cambridge?" I said.

"Yeah."

"You want to tell me about it or shall I make something up and you tell me if I'm getting warm?"

Belson took a sip of coffee, shook his head and put it down.

"It's about five-thirty. I'm at the bar at the Charles Hotel, having a vodka and tonic. And she's at the bar. It's not a big bar, you ever been there?"

"Yeah."

"She had on a yellow dress, and one of those hats with the brim turned up all around that women wear right down over their eyes, and she's drinking the same thing. And she says to me, 'What kind of vodka?' And I say, 'Stoli,' and she smiles at me, says, 'That's what I used to drink. Great minds, huh?"'

The two cops at the counter finished their coffee, got up, and headed for the door. Belson watched them go. "Area B guys," he said absently.

"So it began," I said.

"Yeah. And she asked me what I did and I told her and she said, 'Are you carrying a gun?' and I said, 'Yeah, pointing your finger at them doesn't work,' and she laughed and we talked the rest of the night. And I didn't go home with her, but I got her number and I called her the next day."

He paused again, watching the two cops get into a gray Ford sedan and pull away from the hydrant they'd parked on. Then he spoke again, still staring after the departing car.

"She wasn't, isn't, like anyone else. She was all there in the right-now, you know? She was everything she was, all the time. Nothing held back, no games. And the first time we went to bed she said to me, 'I'll tell you anything about myself you want to know, but if it's up to me, I'd like to pretend life started the night we met.' And I said, 'Sure. No past. No nothing, just you and me.' And that's how it's been. I don't know anything about her except with me."

I waited, sipping my decaf. Belson sat quietly.

"You think Kitty might have anything to do with Lisa going away?"

"No," Belson said slowly. "I've thought about it. And no. Kitty's a bad a.s.shole, but she's not that kind of bad a.s.shole. She's in Florida with her sister, been there since February tenth."

She could have had it done, I thought. But that implied things it would do Belson no good to think about.

"You think you might want to look into Lisa's background a little, now that this has happened?"

"Yeah," Belson said. "I haven't, but I know I have to."

After a while I said, "You'll find her."

"Yeah," he said softly. "I will."

It was a good shower. Lots of hot water. Lots of water pressure. The water washed over her, soaking her hair, sluicing over her body. She scrubbed herself vigorously, lathering her body, shampooing her hair, was.h.i.+ng away the grime and sweat of her captivity and, as much as she could, the fear. He was there with his camera, open-shuttered and pa.s.sive. Could she keep something? Keep some piece of Lisa intact? Nearly immobilized with terror, feeling the hopeless weight of it dragging at her every movement, could there be some part of her that could remain Lisa? She stood fully erect and made no attempt to conceal her nakedness. She couldn't keep him from seeing her. But she could get clean, and G.o.dd.a.m.n him, she wasn't going to cower. But she was so frightened, so alone, that she knew how thin her resolve was. It would not take much more than this to make her cower. She amended her resolve. I will try not to cower, she thought. When she was through she stepped from the shower and toweled herself dry, making no attempt to hide herself, looking straight at him and his implacable lens. Frank will find me, she thought. She hung the towel on its hook beside the shower and walked straight at the camera lens. He backed away from her as she walked, into the bedroom. Her clothes were gone, and laid out on the bed was fresh lingerie and a costume, a black flapper dress, with beads along the hemline.

"You want me to wear this?" Lisa said.

It was the first sound she had made other than the h.e.l.los. Her voice startled her. It sounded ordinary. It sounded like the voice of someone who had never been carried from her home in bondage and locked up in a dark place somewhere.

"Every day we will be different, " he said.

"Sure," Lisa said.

She began to dress. Frank will find me. The phrase was like a mantra. She said it to herself the way someone might mumble a prayer. She slid the dress over her head. It fit. It would. He would know her size. What would Frank tell her to do? What should she do? Frank would tell her to be ready. Frank would tell her not to wait for him. Frank would tell her to get herself out. I'll try, she thought. I can try. When she was dressed, he seated her at the table. The light from a single candle played on his face and brightened the gla.s.sware. The sound of the monitors was shut off. The rest of the room was dark and the darkness came very close about them. He was wearing a starched collar and his hair was slicked back. He raised his gla.s.s to her.

"Welcome home, Angel."

She shook her head. Maybe first I can try reason, she thought. Even silently spoken, her speech sounded shaky inside her head.

"No?" he said.

"No," she said. "My home is with my husband."

"That is over, Angel. It was a mistake. It will be corrected."

He sipped some wine from his gla.s.s and poured a little more. He smiled at her gently as if he had settled a question important to a child. She felt a flash of anger.

"It can't be corrected, Luis. I love him."

He frowned momentarily, and then his face smoothed again and be inclined his head indulgently.

"I won't say I didn't love you," Lisa said. "I think I probably did. It was real. But it wasn't permanent. "

She felt as if she had to get air in after nearly every word. Her speech seemed halting to her. She was so frightened she was speaking so carefully. He didn't seem to notice. He smiled at her, indulgently, and took a cigar from his pocket. He trimmed it carefully with a small silver knife and lit it carefully, turning the cigar so that it burned evenly. Then he put the lighter away and puffed placidly on the cigar. On the soundless monitors her image, bound on the floor of his van, moved on the screens, lit by the harsh light bar of his camera. She looked away.

"It couldn't be permanent," she said.

The words were getting away from her. She could feel them start to bubble carelessly out, before they'd been thought about, before they'd been sanitized.

"Because you never saw me when you looked at me. You saw a f.u.c.king bowling trophy. Some s.e.x, some fun, to lock up in the trophy case when not in use. Like now, like I am in your G.o.dd.a.m.ned camera."

He inhaled slowly and let the smoke drift back out. He smiled at her dreamily, leaning back in his chair, turning his wine gla.s.s slowly by the stem.

"Angel, I have loved you since I met you. It is I who am locked up-in your eyes, in your lips, by your body."

"That's exactly the flowery bulls.h.i.+t that you used to smother me with. And the more I tried to be an actual G.o.dd.a.m.ned human being, the more flowery bulls.h.i.+t you shoveled. It has never been about me. It is always about you and how I make you feel."

The skin around his eyes looked stiff, as if someone had pulled it too tight. She seemed unable to stop the words as they tumbled out, she was frightened to be saying them, but she couldn't stop. If she could just pause, get a breath, get control.

"Frank takes me seriously," she said.

"And I..." he said, appalled at what he was hearing. "I do... not... take you seriously. I... who nearly died when you left me. Who spent every moment since you left looking for you? I who am nothing without you. I do not take you seriously?"

She felt the shaky feeling spread from the pit of her stomach and dart along her arms and legs and up her spine. And yet, at the center of herself there was starting to be something else, an ill-formed kernel of self that would not yield. That would not, or, the thought skittered briefly past her consciousness, could not, cease to be Lisa. She would fight him, as best she could, with whatever she had. She had come too far, been through too much, before finally becoming Lisa. She would not go back. She would rather die than go back. She stared at him for a moment leaning intensely toward her.

"No," she said. "You take yourself seriously."

His face seemed to crumple and then recompose. He puffed on the cigar for a moment and there was something flickering in his eyes that frightened her intensely.

"And so shall you," he said.

Chapter 5.

I was in my office. Outside my window it was a bright hard spring day, not very warm, but no wind and a lot of suns.h.i.+ne. There were spring clothes in the shops along Newbury Street, and somebody had put a few tables outside some of the cafes. It was still too brisk for anyone to sit outside, but it was a harbinger, and it made me feel good. Breakfast was over and I was planning lunch when Quirk called.

"Belson got shot last night," he said. "I'll pick you up outside your office in two minutes."

"He alive?" I said.

"Half," Quirk said and hung up.

I was outside wearing my authentic replica A-2 leather jacket with the collar up when an unmarked black Ford with a buggy whip antenna swung into the curb. Quirk was in the back, and a Homicide d.i.c.k named Malone was driving. I got in the back with Quirk, and Malone pulled away from the curb, hit the siren, ran a red light and headed down Boylston Street.

"Belson was coming home last night, around eight o'clock, and while he was unlocking his front door somebody pumped three nine-millimeter slugs into him from behind," Quirk said. "One broke the left scapula, one punched a hole in his right side and went on through. One is still there, right near his spine, down low."

"He going to make it," I said.

"Probably," Quirk said. "They don't know how soon he'll walk."

"Shooter didn't group his shots very tight," I said.

"We noticed that too," Quirk said. "On the other hand, he apparently hit all three shots he took. We haven't found any other slugs."

"So he's a pretty good shot," I said, "but maybe excited."

"Maybe."

Malone yanked the car dawn Arlington Street and turned left on St. James.

"He conscious?" I said.

"In and out," Quirk said. "But last time he was in, he said he wanted to see you."

With the siren full on we went through Copley Square, and out Huntington Avenue.

"What hospital?" I said.

"Brigham," Quirk said.

"Any suspects?"

"No."

We went out Huntington, turned down Francis and pulled in under the portico at the main hospital entrance, and parked. A fat black woman in a hospital security uniform came toward us as we got out, waving us away. Malone flashed his badge and she stopped and nodded and walked away.

Belson was in the intensive care unit, a sheet pulled up to the middle of his chest. There was an IV into a vein on the back of his right hand. His left arm was in a cast. Lee Farrell was there, with his hips on a windowsill. There was another Homicide cop I didn't know sitting in a chair by Belson's bedside with a tape recorder. The recorder wasn't picking anything up. Belson appeared to be sleeping. I nodded at Farrell.

The cop with the tape recorder said, "He's c.o.ked to the eyeb.a.l.l.s, Lieutenant. He hasn't said a word."

Quirk nodded.

"Frank," he said. "Spenser's here."

Belson made no movement for maybe twenty seconds, then his eyes opened. He s.h.i.+fted his eyeb.a.l.l.s slowly toward Quirk's voice and slowly past Quirk and looked at me. The cop beside the bed turned on the tape recorder.

"Talk... to... Spenser," he said slowly in a very soft voice. Everything he did was slow, as if the circuits weren't connected very well.

I moved a little closer to the bed and bent over.

"What do you need?" I said.

His eyes remained fixed for a moment at the spot where I had been, then slowly they moved and, even more slowly, they refocused on me.

"You... find... her," he said.

"Lisa," I said.