Роберт Паркер - Double Play

“Is there anyone you should call,” Burke said, “tell them you’re all right?”

“Daddy is used to me not coming home,” Lauren said.

“And your mother?”

“She doesn’t care,” Lauren said. “Mostly she’s drunk.”

Burke lit himself a cigarette. The first one of the day, with coffee, was still a good moment.

“Are we going to talk about last night?” Burke said.

“You one of those guys likes talking about it afterwards?” Lauren said.

“I like to know what the hell went on.”

“I think the term is sexual intercourse,” Lauren said.

“Why?”

“Because you’re irresistible?”

“It wasn’t about me,” Burke said.

“Why does it have to be about anything?” she said.

“You’re not the first woman I slept with,” Burke said. “But you’re the first one I slept with who stripped naked in a public park, and did it on the ground in the rain.”

“Well, aren’t we conventional.”

“One minute you can’t stand me, the next we’re fucking in the rain.”

“Must you be coarse.”

“You like coarse.”

“Oh, you know me so well?”

“Tell me about Louis,” Burke said.

“I have.”

“Tell me more,” he said.

“Do you have any aspirin?” Lauren said.

Burke got her some. She took three tablets and washed them down with coffee.

“Louis,” she said.

She paused and took a deep breath. There were dust motes, Burke noticed, drifting in the light where the afternoon sun shone through the window.

“Louis is what happens when money and power combine with weakness and cruelty.”

“The money and power come from his father,” Burke said.

“Yes.”

She gestured at her cup.

“Pot’s on the counter,” Burke said.

“I have a terrible headache,” she said. “Please be a darling.”

“Of course you have a headache, you drank a pint of gin.”

She closed her eyes and shuddered.

“Please,” she said.

Burke got the coffee and poured her some. Then he sat back down across the table from her and waited.

“Louis likes to cause pain,” Lauren said after a time.

Burke didn’t say anything.

“Physical pain,” Lauren said. “Emotional pain. Psychological pain. It makes him hot.”

“So why’d you go out with him?”

“I... I... guess I like pain,” she said.

“So how come you left him.”

“I guess I don’t like it... too.”

“Does he want you back?”

“I don’t know. He may get excited just... stalking me.”

“And the guys with him?”

“I’d guess he’s afraid of you.”

“Does he like that too?”

“Being afraid of you?”

“Yeah,” Burke said. “It happens.”

“I don’t know.”

“How do you feel about him, now?”

“The same.”

“You like pain and you don’t?”

“Yes. I know it’s sick. Louis was making me sicker.”

She sniped out her cigarette and took out another. Burke lit it for her. She drank some more coffee.

“I... this is weird. I never told anybody anything like this before.”

Burke leaned back and hunched his shoulders to relax them.

“That’s okay,” he said. “I never heard anything like this before.”

Lauren inhaled deeply and let the smoke out slowly so it drifted in the air in front of her face.

“Maybe last night had something to do with that,” she said.

“Maybe,” Burke said.

They were in Harlem at the Plantation. When Herb Jeffries finished singing “Flamingo,” Lauren leaned across the table and said they were leaving.

“There’s always just a mob coming out at the end of the show,” she said as they walked out onto Lenox Avenue. The white bouncer held the door and looked at Lauren’s backside as she went by. Burke smiled without showing it.

There are things you can count on, he thought.

They turned uptown and walked to 147th Street where Burke had parked on a hydrant. When he got a ticket, he gave it to Julius and it went away. As they turned onto 147th Street, halfway up the block they could see the black Cadillac, double-parked next to Burke’s car. It would have to move before they could get out. Louis Boucicault was leaning on the right front fender of Burke’s car, smoking a cigarillo. He had on a black cashmere topcoat with raglan sleeves and a military collar. The coat was unbuttoned. The collar was turned up, and a white silk scarf was draped around it. The same two thugs that they’d seen in the Village were standing near the back of Burke’s car. One of them still wore his scally cap. The other man was bareheaded with a crew cut. Both of them wore their overcoats buttoned. Burke heard something that sounded like a tiny squeal from Lauren.

“Stop here for a minute,” Burke said to her.

She stopped and he stepped behind her and, momentarily shielded by her, he took out the big GI .45 and held it in his right hand. Then he stepped out from behind her, putting his right hand against the small of her back.

“Okay,” Burke said. “Walk.”

He could hear her breathing. The dark old brownstones were blank and unseeing while the alien white people passed. Lauren was making small sounds. At a higher volume she had sounded the same way in the rain. They stopped ten feet from their car, Burke’s right arm still around her waist.

“The tough guy and the lady,” Louis said.

With his thumb and the first two fingers, he took the cigarillo out of his mouth and held it in his right hand. There was a full moon, and with the streetlights, it brightened the scene so clearly that Burke could see that Louis’s pupils were very small.

“What do you want, Louis?” Lauren said.

She didn’t sound frightened but her syllable stress was all wrong, like a bad calypso singer.

“She fucked you yet, Burke?”

Burke neither spoke nor moved.

“Better than you,” Lauren said.

The guy with the crew cut glanced at his partner. They both grinned. Louis looked back and saw them.

“You lying bitch,” Louis said. “You begged me for more.”

His voice seemed to be pitched higher than Burke remembered. Lauren walked suddenly toward Louis. Burke let the gun hand drop behind the skirts of his topcoat. Lauren slapped Louis across the face with her right hand and then with her left, back and forth. He stepped back against the car and caught his balance. His face was fish-belly white except for the red marks on each cheek where she’d hit him. He made a sort of whining sound, like a dog in pain, then he jammed the lit end of the cigarillo into Lauren’s face. She screamed and jumped away, her hands pressed to her face, and doubled over.

“Uh,” she said, “uh.”

Burke took the .45 from behind his right leg and carefully shot both the bodyguards. The guy with the crew cut first. The shots were like rolling thunder in the dead empty street. Then Burke aimed the gun carefully at Louis Boucicault’s left eye and stepped close to him until the gun barrel pressed against the eyeball.

“Put snow on the burn,” Burke said to Lauren.

He patted Louis down, found a pearl-handled .22 derringer in the left pocket of his topcoat, and threw it into the street. Lauren scooped a handful of snow from the plow spill in the gutter. Burke looked thoughtfully at Louis for a moment, the gun still pressing against Louis’s left eyeball. No one moved on 147th Street.

“Don’t,” Louis said. “Please. Don’t.”

“Shall I kill him?” Burke said to Lauren.

She was crouching beside the car now, holding the dirty snow against her cheek.

“Make him beg,” she said.

“And then kill him?” Burke said.