Robert Parker - Rough Weather

“You think he married her to help her out?” I said.

“I don’t know. I mean, I wasn’t around. I was pretty busy here. Classes and dating and all,” Valerie said. “Hell, he was queer, she might have been a lesbian, maybe they thought they could be each other’s beard. You know?”

I nodded. Hawk and I had finished our beer. Valerie was almost through her second wine. She looked at Hawk.

“Are you a detective, too?” she said.

Hawk smiled at her.

“No, ma’am, ah jess come along to carry his luggage,” Hawk said.

“He doesn’t seem to have any luggage,” Valerie said.

“Easy job,” Hawk said.

Valerie smiled again, staring at him directly now.

“You spending the night in town?” she said.

“Uh-uh,” Hawk said.

“Want to buy me dinner?” Valerie said.

“How old are you?” Hawk said.

“I’ll be twenty in the spring,” she said.

“And I won’t,” Hawk said.

“So what?” Valerie said.

Hawk smiled at her again and shook his head.

“You good-looking and you nice,” Hawk said. “But you too young.”

“You’d be surprised,” Valerie said.

“No doubt that I would,” Hawk said. “And I thank you for the offer. But I be having dinner with my age mate here. He’s boring, but he’s boring about things I know.”

She shrugged.

“No harm trying,” Valerie said.

“None,” Hawk said.

“Boring?” I said to Hawk.

I was back in Boston, in my office, discussing with Hawk the official weekday start of the cocktail hour.

“You don’t have to wait for no damn time,” Hawk said. “You want a drink, have a drink.”

“At ten in the morning?” I said.

“That when you want it, yes.”

“How uncivilized,” I said.

“I is of African heritage,” Hawk said. “’Course I uncivilized.”

“True, while I am a descendant of Irish kings.”

“Which be why you wanting a drink at ten in the morning,” Hawk said.

“Not always,” I said.

“So what we talking about?” Hawk said.

“It’s four-thirty,” I said. “Half-hour to go.”

Hawk shook his head.

“Weird,” Hawk said.

“How about yesterday?” I said. “You wouldn’t respond to a good-looking college girl who came on to you.”

“Too young,” Hawk said.

“She’s a full-grown woman, almost twenty, anatomically correct. What’s too young.”

“She talked funny,” Hawk said. “You know, like they all do. High voice, nasal, talk very fast. Grating.”

“Well, yeah. But how much talking were you expecting?”

“She say dinner,” Hawk said. “That be chitchat. She say want me to come to your room now? Be different.”

“Man,” I said. “I didn’t know you had limits.”

“Like to have sex with women who was at least born when John Carlos and Tommie Smith was in Mexico,” Hawk said.

“Wow,” I said. “And here I am thinking you required only a pulse.”

Hawk grinned.

“Also depends what else I got on my plate at the time,” he said.

“Glad it’s going well for you,” I said.

“Yowzah,” Hawk said, with the accent on the zah .

My phone rang. It was Bradshaw.

“I gotta see you,” he said. “Now.”

“Where are you?” I said.

“Wagner Motel on One twenty-eight in Burlington,” he said. “Across from the mall.”

“What do you need?”

“I need help,” he said. “I’m in danger. You need to come right now.”

“Okay,” I said.

“I’m in room two-oh-three, under the name Bailey.”

“Here we come,” I said.

“We?”

“My associate Hawk will be with me. Big man, black, don’t panic if you see him.”

“Nobody else,” he said. “No one knows I’m here.”

“Mum’s the word,” I said.

“Hurry up,” he said. “Just get here quick.”

I hung up. And looked at Hawk.

“Gotta go rescue Bradshaw,” I said.

“From what?”

“Don’t know,” I said. “He said to hurry.”

“There go the cocktail hour,” Hawk said.

“We can stop in a packy,” I said. “Maybe buy a couple of nips for the car.”

“Pathetic,” Hawk said.

“I know,” I said. “I thought so when I said it.”

The Wagner Motel was an undistinguished suburban motel on a major highway near a big shopping center. It had a central building where the front desk, bar, and restaurant were. There was a wing on each side. Hawk and I went in the side door of one of the wings and up the stairs without passing the front desk. We were at room 323. Room 203 was at the other end. When we got there the privacy sign was hanging on the door-knob. Hawk stepped to the side. I knocked on the door. Nobody answered. I knocked a couple more times. It seemed pretty clear that there were no plans to open the door.

I put my ear to the door. The television was playing loudly. I looked at Hawk. He shrugged.

“Call the manager or kick it in?” he said.

“Call,” I said.

We were at the end of the corridor. I went to the house phone on the small lamp table. In a minute or two a nervous-looking young guy with an ineffective combover got out of the elevator and walked down the hall to us. He looked uneasily at Hawk. Then at me.

“You the man that called?” he said.

“Yes,” I said.

“Are you guests of the hotel?” he said.

“No. We were invited here by the occupant of this room,” I said. “We fear something untoward might have happened.”

The desk guy was wearing a white shirt with a green tie and a green vest. The collar on the shirt was curled up at the tips.

“Untoward?” he said.

I had a sense he might not be on the fast track.

“I’m a detective,” I said. “Working on a case. We need the door opened.”

“I can’t just override his privacy sign,” the desk guy said.

From outside the motel there was the dim sound of a siren being turned off.

“Ah,” I said.

“I took the liberty of calling the police,” the desk guy said. “I will wait for them, if you don’t mind.”

In maybe a minute, two Burlington cops came out of the elevator and walked down to us. Both were young guys who looked at if they got a lot of exercise. They were carrying their nightsticks.

“What’s the deal,” one of them said.

“My name is Spenser,” I said. “I’m working with a state police captain named Healy on a case.”

“I know Healy. What’s the case?”

“Has to do with the kidnapping a while ago on Tashtego Island.”

“Yeah,” the cop said. “I remember that. No progress is what I heard.”

“We might make some,” I said, “if we can get this door unlocked.”

The cop looked at Hawk.

“Who’s this,” he said.

“My partner,” I said.

Hawk had no expression.

“Tell me more,” the cop said.

His partner had taken a few steps away and stood quietly watching Hawk and me. Especially Hawk.

“Guy called me and said he was in trouble and needed to see me right away.”

“Guy in this room?”

“Yeah. He’s registered as Bailey, but his real name is Bradshaw.”

“Like the Bradshaw broad on Tashtego?”

“Estranged husband,” I said.

The cop nodded at the desk guy.

“Open the door,” he said.

The desk guy did. The door opened a couple of inches and held.

“Security chain,” the desk guy said.

“Mr. Bradshaw?” the cop said. “It’s the police, Mr. Bradshaw.”

Nothing.

“Kick it in,” the cop said.

“Me?” the desk guy said.

Hawk grinned.

“Me,” he said.