Robert B. Parker's Someone to Watch Over Me (Spenser #48)
Ace Atkins & Robert B. Parker
1
IT WAS EARLY evening and early summer, and my bay window was cracked open above Berkeley Street. I had a half-eaten turkey sub on my desk and the sports page from The Globe splayed out underneath. Dan Shaughnessy proclaimed Mookie Betts to be overrated. I’m sure many said the same thing about me. But I was pretty sure being overrated was better than being underrated. A mistake few made twice.
I contemplated Mookie’s situation as I heard a knock on the anteroom door.
“Second door on your left,” I said.
Mattie Sullivan entered my office.
“Still having trouble with the advertising firm?”
“Bad advertising to list their own address wrong.”
“Freakin’ morons,” Mattie said.
Like me, Mattie suffered few fools. And as my occasional secretary, part-time assistant, and sleuthing apprentice, she didn’t take kindly to the two-person agency that had rooms down the hall. Mattie leaned into the doorframe. She’d grown into a tall girl with long limbs, long red hair, and a heart-shaped Irish face full of freckles. When she smiled, she could light up a room. But Mattie rarely smiled and wasn’t smiling now.
“You need anything else today?” she said.
“Nope.”
“I paid the rent, deposited the checks, and talked to the painters about next week.”
“What happens next week?”
“They paint,” Mattie said. “This place hadn’t had a touch-up since 1982.”
“What do you know about 1982?”
“That’s the year my mother was born.”
“Ouch.”
“Yeah,” Mattie said. “Truth hurts, big guy.”
Mattie hung in the doorway, green eyes lingering on me as I turned the page of the newspaper. I still bought a physical copy at the newsstand around the corner. I was old-fashioned that way. In fact, Susan reminded me I was old-fashioned in most ways, from my music to my movie choices. But who doesn’t enjoy a little Django Reinhardt before their Thin Man triple feature?
“Something on your mind?” I said.
“I don’t know.”
I looked up from where I’d spread out the newspaper and reached for my coffee mug. Taking a sip, I realized it had grown cold. Mattie, having noted my expression, walked forward, plucked the mug from my hand, and dumped out the cold contents into the sink. She refilled the mug from the Mr. Coffee atop my file cabinet, slid it before me, and took a seat in one of my clients’ chairs.
“Sugar?”
“Nope.”
“So there’s this girl.”
“Okay.”
“She’s a friend, but not a great friend,” she said. “Just the younger sister of a girl I know. She was a Gatey girl, too.”
“Gatey girl?”
“Gates of Heaven church in Southie,” Mattie said. “Christ. Keep up, Spenser.”
I nodded and took a sip of coffee. Mattie demanded a keen mind and reflexes firing on all cylinders.
“So this girl, her name is Chloe Turner by the way, not that it matters to the story, but there you are,” Mattie said, leaning forward from the chair. “Chloe comes to me because of the stuff I used to do in the neighborhood. You know, running favors for friends. Asking questions to the right people. Finding shit.”
“Sleuthing.”
“I call it finding shit out,” Mattie said. “But sure. Sleuthing. Chloe wanted me to sleuth for her.”
“And what does she wish you to sleuth?”
“Chloe lost her backpack and her laptop at some fancy-schmancy club off the Common,” she said. “And she wants it back.”
“Sounds simple,” I said. “Why does she need to enlist your services?”
“Because they wouldn’t let her back in,” Mattie said. “They threatened to call the cops if she didn’t leave. And Chloe had everything on that laptop, not to mention some personal shit in the bag.”
“Personal shit is hard to come by.”
“And so I went to the club and got the whole ‘fuck off’ thing from some guy working the door,” Mattie said. “Not only did they say they’d never heard of Chloe Turner, they told me that if I, or anyone connected to her, came back, they’d call the cops. How do you like that?”
“Not at all,” I said. “What club?”
“Place called the Blackstone Club,” Mattie said. “Down toward Chinatown in some crummy brick building. No sign. Just a big door and a buzzer. What kind of freakin’ club doesn’t have a sign?”
“One that wishes to be elite and confidential,” I said, starting to stand. “Shall we?”
“Sit down, Spenser,” Mattie said. “You know the rules. When you need help, you ask. When I need help, I ask.”
“So what do you need?”
“Advice.”
“I am an open book of knowledge.”
Mattie nodded. I nodded. I took a sip of coffee. It tasted much better hot, but I still missed the cream and sugar. Small steps.
“Here’s what happened,” Mattie said. “Chloe doesn’t want to cause any trouble and, more than anything, doesn’t want to go to the cops. Her mother would go bullshit if she knew what Chloe’d been up to.”