God Save the Child

“She said they were going to punish my mother for screwing her ass off all over town,” Dolly said. She offered Punkin a Nutter Butter cookie. He sniffed it and refused. My respect for him increased. “Then the girl said that about shooting her down there. Isn’t that gross?”

“Gross,” I said.

“Don’t tell my mother I told you.”

“I won’t. Did the girl say anything else?”

“No.”

“Do you think what she said about your mother was true?” That was a nice touch; grill the kid about her mother’s sex habits. Nice line of work you’re in, Spenser.

“Oh sure. Everybody knows about my mother except maybe Daddy. She screws with everybody. She screws with Mr. Trask, I know.”

I wanted to know who else but couldn’t bring myself to ask. Instead I said, “Does it bother you?”

“Yeah, of course, but,” she shrugged, “you get used to it, you know?”

“I guess you would, wouldn’t you.”

“Used to drive Kevin crazy, though. I don’t know if he ever got used to it like I did.”

“It’s harder for boys to get used to, maybe,” I said. It wasn’t too easy for me to get used to. Maybe I should become a florist.

She shrugged again.

Her mother came back into the kitchen, her eyes puffy, with fresh makeup around them. Earl Maguire came with her. Was she screwing with him? Screwing with Mr. Trask? Christ.

Marge Bartlett said, “Dolly, go in the den and watch TV, please, darling. Mommy is upset. It will be better for you to go in there now.” She kissed her daughter on top of her head. Dolly picked up the package of cookies. “Come on, Punkin,” she said, and the dog followed her out of the kitchen.

“Well, Mr. Spenser, I see you’ve met my Dolly. Did you and she have a nice talk?”

“Yep.”

“Good. Chief Trask has left a patrolman here to guard the house. But I’d feel much safer if you’d stay too.”

Earl Maguire said, “We’d expect to pay you extra, of course. Mrs. Bartlett has already talked to her husband, and Rog has authorized payment to you.”

“What can I do the cops can’t?”

“You can stay close to me,” Mrs. Bartlett said. “You can go with me when I shop and go to parties and play rehearsal and things. You can be right here in the house.”

“We’d be employing you as a bodyguard,” Maguire said.

“While I’m guarding your body, I can’t be looking for your kid,” I said.

“Just for a little while,” she said. “Please? For me?”

“Okay. I’ll have to go home and pack a suitcase. You’ll be all right with Marsh here. Just stay close till I come back. This may just be a crank call, you know. Kidnappings and disappearances bring out a lot of crank calls.”

12

One of the good parts of living alone is when you move out no one minds. It’s also one of the bad parts. I went home, packed, and was back at the Bartletts’ in an hour and a half.

Roger Bartlett was home from work, and he installed me in a bedroom on the second floor. It was a big pleasant room, paneled in pine planking stained an ice-blue. The ceiling was beamed in a crisscross pattern; there was a wide-board floor and a big closet with folding louvered doors and a bureau built in behind them. There was a double bed with a Hitchcock headboard and a patchwork quilt, a pine Governor Winthrop desk, and a wooden rocker with arms and a rush seat that had been done in an antique-blue and stenciled in gold. There was a blue and red braided rug on the floor, and the drapes on the windows were a red and blue print featuring Revolutionary War scenes. Very nice.

“You eat supper yet?” Roger Bartlett asked.

“No.”

“Me either. Come on down and we’ll rustle up a litle grub. Gotta eat to live, right?” I nodded.

“Gotta eat to live,” he repeated and headed downstairs.

A portable TV on the kitchen counter was showing a ball game. The Sox were playing the Angels, and neither was a contender. It was nearly the end of the season, and the announcers and the crowd noise reflected that fact. There is nothing quite like the sound of a pointless ball game late in the season. It is a very nostalgic sound. Sunday afternoon, early fall, car radio, beach traffic.

Bartlett handed me a can of beer, and I sipped it looking at the ball game. Order and pattern, discernible goals strenuously sought within rigidly defined rules. A lot of pressure and a lot of grace, but no tragedy. The Summer Game.

“What do you think about this stuff, Spenser? What’s going on?” Bartlett was cutting slices of breast meat from a roast turkey. “I mean, where’s my kid? Why does someone want to kill my wife? What the hell have I ever done to anybody?”

“I was going to ask you,” I said.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean this whole thing smells of revenge. It smells of harassment. It just doesn’t feel right as a kidnapping. The time between the disappearance and the ransom demand. The peculiar note. The peculiar phone call. The trick with the coffin — someone put a lotta work into that. Now the threatening phone call — if it’s not just a crank. Someone doesn’t like you or your wife or both.”