Small Vices

"Crazy how?"

Kim got up suddenly and walked out of the room. I suspected that my moments were numbered.

"All ways," Pink Rollers said. "Anything you wanted to try, she was ready."

Talking about the woman they had known made them all remember what had happened to her and they were suddenly silent.

"Was she rebellious?" I said.

"Hell, yes," Dark Hair said. "She'd try anything if someone told her not to."

"She have a boyfriend?"

"I think so."

"Know his name?"

"No. Melissa used to call him the Prince. She was kind of cozy about him. She never brought him around."

"He a college guy?"

Nobody knew.

"Might he have gone to Taft?"

Nobody knew.

"Anyone she was unusually close to, a roommate, somebody that might know?"

Nobody knew of such a person. Melissa had roomed alone. She had lots of friends, several among those present. But no especial one friend.

"Tell me more about Crazy," I said.

Behind me a woman said, "Just what is going on here?"

I turned halfway and looked over my shoulder at a woman in her late sixties with silver hair and rimless glasses. She had on a dark flowered dress with a white collar and modest high heels and a string of pearls. She was a housemother if I ever saw one.

I said, "Mrs. Cameron, I presume."

"I'm the housemother here. Off-campus visitors require my permission."

"You sure know how to make a guy feel welcome," I said.

"I'll have to ask you to go."

"How do you know I'm not somebody's professor come down to help them with their paper on Provenqal poetry?"

"Please leave."

"Or somebody's dad. How would you feel coming in here and kicking out somebody's dad who just stopped by to see how you were spending his thirty thousand a year."

"I know who you are. You are not welcome."

I looked at the young women.

"I think Kim has ratted us out," I said. They all laughed.

"Oh, come on, Mrs. Cameron," Pink Rollers said. "We like him. We invited him to stay."

"Take that up with Dean Corcoran, Marsha," Mrs. Cameron said.

She turned to me. Very firm.

"Will you leave or must I call the police."

"He is the police," Dark Hair said.

"He is not. He is a private detective. He's been told already that he's not welcome on campus."

Pink Rollers said, "Hey. A private eye?"

I said, "Here's looking at you, kid."

"Whoa, is that cool or what. A private eye."

Mrs. Cameron turned without a word and walked out of the room.

"Cops will be here soon," I said.

"The campus cops?" Dark Hair said mockingly. "What are you go

"I'll probably go quietly," I said. "I don't think I'll shoot it out with them."

"Oh, damn," Pink Rollers said and we all laughed.

I took several cards from my shirt pocket and handed them around.

"If any of you, ah, undergraduate women have anything to add about Melissa, or think of something later, or want to have a nice lunch paid for by me…"

"You can call us girls," Dark Hair said. "Kim's the only one that's really PC."

The familiar pulsating glow of a blue light showed through the front window and a minute later the front door opened and Chief Livingston came in with two patrolmen. Mrs. Cameron greeted him at the door.

"I ordered him to leave as soon as I discovered he was here," she said. "He basically defied me."

"He probably does that a lot," Livingston said. "Come on, Mr. Spenser, time to go."

"What charge?"

"What charge? Oh, Jesus Christ, excuse me, ladies, it is against college regulations for anyone to visit a domicile without permission of the resident supervisor."

"Oh, that charge," I said.

Livingston gri

"Ah'll be baack," I said.

None of them knew what the hell I was doing. But they liked me. They all waved and hollered "good-bye" as I went out the door with the cops.

Chapter 16

HAWK CAME IN to my office in the morning with some coffee and a bag of donuts.

"Coffee from Starbuck's," he said. "High-grown Kenya, bright and sweet with a hint of black currant."

"They sell donuts?"

"Naw, Starbuck's too ritzy for donuts," Hawk said. "Donuts are Dunkin'."

"With a hint of deep fat," I said.

We divided up the coffee and donuts. Hawk took his coffee and one of the donuts and went and looked down from my window at the corner of Berkeley and Boylston. He was wearing starched jeans and high top Nikes, and a blue denim shirt under a black leather field jacket. He had on a pair of Oakley sun glasses with cerulean blue reflective lenses.

"You think my new shades are cool?" Hawk said.

"Cold," I said. "Can you see, wearing them indoors?"

"No. But they too cool to take off."

I drank some Kenya coffee. "Bright and sweet," I said.

"Told you," Hawk said.

"You come up with anything that clears Ellis Alves?" I said.

"No. You adopt a kid yet?"

"No."

"You been a

"That's sort of my job description," I said. "You wa

"Ain't got the time to cover them all, but somebody's looking to have you killed."

"Moi?"

"Vi

"He want Vi

"Don't know," Hawk said. "That's all Vi

"How much they paying," I said.

"Now that's ego," Hawk said.

"Well, how would I feel if somebody was offering five hundred bucks?"

"Be embarrassing, wouldn't it," Hawk said.

He was still looking down at the street. It was a dandy fall morning, and a lot of people were hurrying around in the Back Bay like they had important things to do.

"Lotta nice looking women walk past your office," Hawk said.

"Hoping to catch a glimpse of me."

Hawk turned and came back and sat down in one of my client chairs. His jacket was open. I could see the butt of a gun under his left arm. I could see myself in his reflective glasses.

"You working on anything but Ellis Alves?" he said.

"Nope."

"So you probably stirring something up that somebody don't want stirred up," Hawk said.

"Unless it's someone I've offended previously and they're just getting around to it."

"Ellis Alves case makes more sense," Hawk said.

"Yes."

"So if it is, it mean maybe there is something wrong with the way Alves went to jail."

"Vi

"I don't think he knows," Hawk said. "He does, I don't think he'll say. Remember Vi