Mattie continued to walk toward me, milling in with the crowd, taking pictures of the bridge, the swimming ducks, and tulips poking up from the manicured grounds. When she got within five yards, I motioned toward Arlington Street with my head. She winked back and continued in the same steady gait.
The men weren’t far behind, walking past me, and the one in the hat elbowed the bald guy as Mattie exited through the iron gates. I turned and began to follow.
By the time I got to Arlington, Mattie was already across the street at the Old Ritz and then moving toward Marlborough where I used to live. Unfortunately, some years ago, an arsonist had decided to burn me out of my building, gutting the place and much of the two buildings on each side.
It was an unusually cool morning for June, and I wished I’d grabbed my windbreaker from my car. I watched as Mattie turned down Marlborough, Mutt and Jeff trailing, picking up the pace out of the Garden, not seeming to care if they were spotted.
My .38 dug into my hip as I began a slow jog.
As I turned the corner, the men had stopped Mattie in front of my old building. Her back pressed against the wrought-iron fence.
“How about you two go fuck yourselves,” Mattie said.
“What language,” I said. “If I were wearing pearls, I’d be clutching them.”
“Get lost, old man,” said the guy in the Pats cap.
I snatched the Pats cap off his head and tossed it into the middle of Marlborough Street. A speeding car soon appeared, smashing the hat into a pancake.
“Asshole,” the bald guy said. He shoved Mattie’s shoulder and turned his attention to me. “This ain’t none of your goddamn business.”
“Double negative?” I said. “And you two coming from the Blackstone Club?”
The men exchanged glances, for the first time registering the distinctive height and size advantage I had on both of them.
“Amateurs,” Mattie said. “Fucking amateurs.”
They were both white, pale, and pockmarked. The Pats fan had narrow black eyes, big floppy ears, and a little scruff of a goatee. His pal had a sloped face, like a shovel, with wide-set eyes and the thinnest trace of a beard. They smelled like cigarettes and BO.
“Listen, Shaggy,” I said. “I’ll give you two Scooby Snacks if you guys tell me why you’re following this young lady.”
“None of your fucking business,” he said. “Now get lost if you don’t want to go and get yourself shot.”
The man opened his jacket to show an automatic tucked into his jeans. I reached out, snatched the gun, and slapped the man across the face.
“What the hell?” he said.
I looked to his buddy. “You have a gun, too?”
“No,” he said, backing away. “I don’t.”
I slipped the gun into my right front pocket, opened the bald guy’s jacket, and patted him down. He was telling the truth. Mattie eyed both of them and shook her head. “Christ,” she said. “What a shitshow.”
“Who sent you?” I said.
“Guy from the club,” Shaggy said.
“Why?”
“They wanted to scare the girl,” Baldy said.
I looked to Mattie. “You scared?”
“Fucking frightened,” Mattie said. “My knees won’t quit knocking.”
“You work at the club?” I said.
They shook their heads.
“Know anything about a man who likes to get massages from kids?”
“No,” the bald guy said. “That’s sick.”
“’Tis.”
“Why’d they want you to scare this young lady?”
They both shrugged, looking convincingly stupid and ignorant of the situation.
“My brother knows Luther who works the door for that place,” Baldy said. “Sometimes they get trouble with someone getting drunk and smart. People pound on that door, piss all over that back alley. You know. We rough ’em up and get paid. That’s it. That’s all. I don’t know jack about this girl. Okay? Can we go? Can I please have my gun back?”
“Don’t tell the club what happened here.”
Both men shook their heads.
“Tell them you chased this girl through the Public Garden and lost her.”
They nodded. I pulled out the man’s gun, a cheap little .32-cal, and ejected the magazine. I thumbed out the bullets and handed it back.
“We don’t want no trouble,” Shaggy said.
“Follow this girl again . . .” I said.
“And I’ll kick your fucking teeth in,” Mattie said.
The bald guy started to answer. But I pursed my mouth and shook my head. He shut up and turned back toward Arlington. We watched the two men go and disappear around the corner.
“Morons,” Mattie said again, shaking her head. “You really think they’ll keep quiet?”
“Nope.”
“How are we gonna get that backpack?”
“Let me make some calls,” I said. “And perhaps change my clothes.”
“You going back there?”
I shrugged. “Okay by you, boss?”
Mattie thought about it for a moment. She then nodded back and said, “Sure. Okay. But don’t expect a big cut of the reward.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.”
4
“Mr. Spenser, we are delighted to have you at the Blackstone Club,” T. W. Shaw said, sweeping his hand into a wood-paneled lounge the size of an airplane hangar with lots of dark brown leather furniture and floor-to-ceiling shelves stuffed with old books. “You were highly recommended by two of our top members.”
“I got a smoking jacket for Christmas,” I said. “And no place to wear it.”
A thin smile crossed his lips “Well, we do have a large smoking room with a walk-in humidor. Two saunas, a dining room, and an exercise facility.”
“And the club is men only?”
“But of course.”
“No women at all?”
“Except for staff,” he said. “We are quite old-fashioned in our membership.”
“Mother will be so pleased,” I said.
Shaw looked perplexed for a moment before placing his right hand against an onyx side table that looked as if it might weigh as much as a mastodon. He was a smallish round guy with slick black hair and a thin mustache. The hair and mustache were as dark as shoe polish. His suit was navy single-breasted with a baby-blue bow tie. Few men could carry off a bow tie. Shaw wasn’t one of them.