God Save the Child

The generator in the garage whined on. The dog had found a bone and was crunching on it vigorously. There was color on Harroway’s cheekbones; he looked as if he had a fever. I was stymied. I wanted to search the place, but I didn’t want to turn my back on Harroway. I didn’t want to have to herd him and the girl around with me. I didn’t want Susan out of my sight. I was trespassing, which bothered me a bit. And I had no reason not to believe them. I didn’t know who might be in the house or behind it or in the garage.

“If at first you don’t succeed,” I said to Susan Silverman, “the hell with it. Come on.”

We backed down the sidewalk to her car and got in. Harroway never took his eyes off me as we went. Susan U-turned on the lawn, and we drove away. Another point for Susan. She didn’t spin gravel getting out of there.

She didn’t say anything, but I noticed her knuckles were white on the steering wheel. When we got back to Main Street, she pulled over to the side of the road and stopped.

“I feel sick,” she said. She kept her hands on the wheel and stared straight ahead. She was shivering as if it were cold. “My God, what a revolting creature he was. My God! Like a... like a rhinoceros or something. A kind of impenetrable brutality.”

I put a hand on her shoulder and didn’t say anything.

We sat maybe two minutes that way. Then she put the car in gear again. “I’m okay,” she said.

“I’ll say.”

“What do you think?” she said. “Did you learn anything?”

I shrugged. “I learned where that place is and what Vic Harroway is like. I don’t know if Kevin is there or not.”

“It seemed like an unpleasant experience for nothing,” she said.

“Well, that’s my line of work. I go look at things and see what happens. If they were lying, maybe they will do some things because I went there today. Maybe they will make a mistake. The worst thing in any case is when nothing is happening. It’s like playing tennis: you just keep returning the ball until somebody makes a mistake. Then you see.”

She shook her head. “What if you hadn’t had a gun?”

“I usually have a gun.”

“But, my God, if you hadn’t, or you hadn’t reached it in time?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “It depends on how good Harroway really is. He looks good. But guys that look like that often don’t have to fight. Who’s going to start up with them? There’s a lot to being strong, but there’s a lot to knowing how. Maybe someday we’ll find out if Harroway knows how.”

She looked at me and frowned. “You want to, don’t you? You want to fight him. You want to see if you can beat him.”

“I didn’t like that ‘slut’ remark.”

“Jesus Christ,” she said. “You adolescent, you. Do you think it matters to me if someone like Vic Harroway calls me a slut? Next thing you’ll challenge him to a duel.” She wheeled the car into the high school parking lot and braked sharply.

I grinned at her boyishly, or maybe adolescently.

She put her hand on my forearm. “Don’t mess with him, Spenser,” she said. “You looked...” she searched for a word, “frail beside him.”

“Well, anyway,” I said, “I’m sorry you had to go. If I’d known, I’d have left you home.”

She smiled at me, her even white teeth bright in her tan face. “Spenser,” she said, “you are a goddamned fool.”

“You think so too, huh?” I said and got out.

11

That afternoon I was in the ID section of the Boston Police Department trying to find out if Vic Harroway had a record. If he did, the Boston cops didn’t know about it. Neither did I.

It was almost five o’clock when I left police headquarters on Berkeley Street and drove to my office. The commuters were out, and the traffic was heavy. It took me fifteen minutes, and my office wasn’t worth it. It was stale and hot when I unlocked the door. The mail had accumulated in a pile under the mail slot in the door. I stepped over it and went across the room to open the window. A spider had spun a symmetrical web across one corner of the window recess. I was careful not to disturb it. Every man needs a pet. I picked up the mail and sat at my desk to read it. Mostly bills and junk mail. No letter announcing my election to the Hawkshaw Hall of Fame. No invitation to play tennis with Bobby Riggs in the Astrodome. There was a note on pale violet stationery from a girl named Brenda Loring suggesting a weekend in Provincetown in the late fall when the tourists had gone home. I put that aside to answer later.

I called my answering service. They reported five calls from Margery Bartlett during the afternoon. I said thank you, hung up, and dialed the Bartlett number.

“Where on earth have you been?” Margery Bartlett said when I told her who I was. “I’ve been trying to get you all afternoon.”

“I was up to the Boston Athenaeum browsing through the collected works of Faith Baldwin,” I said.

“Well, we need you out here, right away. My life has been threatened.”

“Cops there?”

“Yes, there’s a patrolman here now. But we want you here right away. Someone has threatened my life. Threatened to kill me. You get right out here, Spenser, right away.”