Robert Parker - Rough Weather

He balanced easily on the hind legs of the chair. He seemed confident that he wouldn’t go over backward.

“Know anything about the current escort?” I said. “Guy named Clark.”

“I know you knocked him on his ass,” Epstein said.

“Piece of cake,” I said. “What’s his last name?”

“Morrissey,” Epstein said. “Clark Morrissey. Competed for a while as a bodybuilder. Male stripper. Bouncer at some upscale clubs. Probably where she met him.”

“Can’t fight a lick,” I said.

“Most folks can’t,” Epstein said. “But people like Heidi Bradshaw don’t know that.”

“And he looks good,” I said.

“That’s what I been getting by on,” Epstein said.

There was something a little serpentine about Harden Bradshaw. He was tall and smooth, with a smallish head and dark eyes. His eyelids drooped. His movements were very supple. His handshake was languid. His hand was cold. We talked in a glassed-in section of the wraparound veranda of his home, looking across the marsh grass and the sand at the ocean. He was wearing a black turtleneck sweater and a camel-colored corduroy sport coat with the collar turned up.

“What’s your relationship with Mrs. Bradshaw?” I said.

“Separated.”

“There’s separation that leads to divorce,” I said. “And sometimes, separation that leads to reconciliation. Which are you?”

“It is what it is,” Bradshaw said. “I am hoping for reconciliation.”

“What is the, ah, presenting syndrome for the separation?” I said.

Bradshaw looked at me.

“You been shrunk?” he said.

“In a manner of speaking,” I said.

“What’s that mean,” Bradshaw said.

“I often get to sleep with a shrink,” I said.

“Ah, the woman you brought to Tashtego,” he said.

“Yes.”

“Perhaps if you had paid less attention to her,” Bradshaw said. “You might have been more helpful to Heidi.”

“Perhaps,” I said. “I didn’t see you there.”

“I was supposed to be. At the last minute I simply couldn’t go. Couldn’t stand the civilized pretense, you know?”

A middle-aged golden retriever pushed her way in through the flap on the doggie door and came to my chair. She sniffed me carefully, accepted a scratch behind her ear, then went and lay in a patch of sunlight on the floor. There was no rug. And the chairs we were sitting in were most of the furniture in the glass room.

“Any other men involved?” I said.

“With Heidi, there are always men involved,” he said. “The separation is not, however, about that.”

“What is it about?”

“We each need time to discover ourselves,” Bradshaw said.

“Getting help?” I said.

“I am seeing a therapist,” Bradshaw said. “I don’t know what Heidi is doing.”

“Spend much time in Washington?”

“Information Agency?” he said. “Some. I spend some time overseas as well.”

“Where?”

“Middle East, Central Europe,” he said. “ London.”

“Before you were separated, did Heidi go with you?”

“Sometimes,” he said.

Through the archway behind us I could see that the living room looked sort of empty, too. It had a rug and a couch, but not much else.

“Ever meet a guy named Rugar?” I said.

“No, why do you ask?”

“You’re the first person in this deal that might have,” I said.

“Because of my government service?”

“He’s been in government service, too,” I said.

“Is he the kidnapper?”

“Yes.”

“And you’re suggesting I might be complicit?”

“Somebody had to have access to Rugar.”

“Perhaps you are complicit,” Bradshaw said. “You certainly did nothing to stop the kidnapping.”

“I wish I were,” I said. “Then I could tell myself what I want to know.”

“I see no reason to be flip,” he said.

“Any reason will do,” I said. “Have you ever been involved in covert operations?”

“For God’s sake, I’m a PR adviser. I know nothing about covert.”

“And if you did, you wouldn’t admit it,” I said. “Because then it would no longer be covert.”

Bradshaw smiled a pale smile.

“I assume spies do not go about telling people they are spies,” he said.

“So the fact that you deny it is meaningless,” I said.

“I suppose so,” Bradshaw said.

“Did you get along with Adelaide Van Meer?” I said.

“Heidi’s daughter?” He shrugged. “I thought she was spoiled and childish and somewhat neurasthenic. But we didn’t fight or anything.”

“Did Heidi know you thought that about her daughter?”

“Hell,” Bradshaw said. “She thought that, too, except it was her daughter, and she was sort of required to love her.”

Susan’s idea of a great Chinese meal is a small bowl of brown rice and some chopsticks. But occasionally she indulges my taste for something more exotic, and goes with me to P. F. Chang’s in Park Square, where she nibbles at her rice and watches in understated horror as I wolf down some sweet-and-sour pork. We were doing that on a quiet Tuesday evening, when the Gray Man came to our table and stood.

Susan’s face tightened.

I said, “Care to join us?”

“I would,” he said, and pulled out a chair and sat.

The waitress came over.

“Would you like to see a menu?” she said.

“No. Bring me Stoli and soda,” the Gray Man said. “A double.”

She went for the drink. The Gray Man looked at Susan.

“Dr. Silverman,” he said.

Susan nodded once without speaking. I gestured at my sweet-and-sour pork.

“Bite?” I said.

He shook his head.

“I’m not here for trouble,” he said.

“The management will probably be pleased,” I said.

The waitress brought him his drink. He took some in.

“I would like you to stop looking into the events at Tashtego Island,” he said.

“How come?” I said.

“We have a history, you and I, and it has caused me to hold you in some regard,” he said.

“Aw, hell,” I said.

“I do not wish to kill you,” he said.

“He likes me,” I said to Susan. “He really, really likes me.”

“You are, as usual, flippant. And you are, as usual, involved in something you don’t understand,” Rugar said. “Nothing is as it seems.”

“The old illusion-and-reality issue,” I said. “You’re a heavy guy, Rugar.”

He gestured to our waitress for another drink.

“I will not,” he said, looking at Susan, “do any harm to Dr. Silverman. It would compromise the adversarial dignity of our history.”

The waitress set Rugar’s drink down before him and took his empty glass and left.

“You believe me?” Rugar said.

“Your word is good,” I said.

“Yes,” he said. “It is. And I give you my word that you are blundering about in a situation that you don’t understand.”

“That’s a description of my whole professional life, Rugar.”

He nodded and drank some vodka.

“The world would be less interesting,” Rugar said, “without you in it. The valid adversary. The worthy opponent. The one who keeps me sharp.”

“But…” I said.

“But your present course will lead us to a point where you are intolerable,” Rugar said.

“And?” I said.

“And I will kill you,” Rugar said.

“You tried that already,” I said.

“And would have succeeded if you had been other than who you are. I should have made sure.”

“You should have,” I said.

“I don’t make many mistakes,” Rugar said, “and I never make one twice.”

“You ever run into Harden Bradshaw?” I said.