Quirk said, "No, you got a couple plain donuts?"
The waitress said that she had and went to get them.
"You got any history on him?" I said.
"More than you want to read," Quirk said. "Department of Ed's got core evaluations. DYS got counseling reports. There's a file in the Department of Employment and Training, the Probation Commission, Department of Social Services, Public Welfare, probably the Mass. Historical Commission. If there was a state service this kid used it."
"How old is he?"
"Twenty-six. Born in Puerto Rico, came here as a baby. His mother was a hooker, father unknown. Mother was a crack head, committed suicide ten years ago. No record of him finishing school. He was in an outreach program at Merrimack State for a while. Which is probably where he met Lisa. Started in 1990. Lisa was there then."
The waitress returned with the donuts. She refilled Quirk with real coffee and freshened up my decaf.
"Got a picture?" I said.
Quirk nodded and handed me a mug shot, full face and profile. The first thing I noticed was that women would think he was handsome and most men wouldn't. He had a thin face with big dark eyes, and a strong nose. His hair looked longish and he was probably twenty-one or -two in the mug shot. I read his stats on the back: 6'5", 200 pounds. We were in the same weight class, but he'd have reach on me.
"DYS counseling report says he shows signs of incipient paranoid schizophrenia and is deemed capable of sudden violent rages."
"Sounds like you," I said.
"Yeah, I'd probably have incipient paranoid schizophrenia, if I knew what it meant. You interested in the prints we lifted on Lisa?"
"Isn't that cute," I said. "Yes, Lieutenant, I am agog with interest."
"Nice of you to notice that I'm cute," Quirk said. "Prints belong to somebody named Angela Richard." He gave it the French pronunciation. "She was busted in LA in 1982 and again in '85 for soliciting."
"No mistakes?" I said.
"No, they sent us her pictures. It's Lisa."
"Jesus Christ," I said. "Belson know?"
"Not yet."
"You going to tell him?"
"No, you?"
"Not yet," I said.
Quirk picked up his second donut, leaned back in his chair and looked past me out the big plate glass window at Park Square, where the yellow cabs were queuing up near the hotel entrance. The doormen were opening their doors with a flourish and pocketing the tips deftly.
Quirk said to me, "You got some connections in LA, don't you?"
"Cop named Samuelson," I said. "LAPD."
Quirk nodded.
"You decide you want to bust that tenement up in Proctor, gimme a shout."
"Sure," I said.
Quirk finished his donut and left. I watched him as he walked past the picture window, a big, solid, tough guy, whose word you could trust. He swaggered a little, the way cops do, as he walked toward St. James Avenue.
Chapter 16
Susan and I were aboard American flight number 11 when it took off without incident at nine a.m. We ate breakfast on the plane and speculated between ourselves as to what it was. Then Susan put on her earphones to watch the movie. And I settled in to read the rest of my current book, Streets of Laredo, and worry about crashing. I worried less while we were flying along. They didn't usually fall suddenly from the sky.
"It's just a control issue," Susan said. "The drive to the airport is probably more dangerous."
"You think it's too early to start drinking?" I said.
"Well." Susan looked at her watch. "It's about seven a.m. in Los Angeles."
"Right," I said. "The movie any good?"
"Oh God, no," Susan said. "It's hideous."
"So how come you're watching it?"
"So I won't think about how high we are," she said.
"You're scared too."
"Of course I am," Susan said and smiled at me. "But I'm a girl."
Over Flagstaff, Susan took her earphones off and said, "Why was it, exactly, that we are going to Los Angeles?"
"To check into the Westwood Marquis and have sex," I said.
Susan nodded. "Check in, unpack, and have sex," she said.
"Of course."
"Didn't you say there was something to do with Frank's wife?"
"Quirk ran down her fingerprints," I said. "LAPD arrested her for prostitution. Twice, 1982 and 1983. At that time her name was Angela Richard."
"My God, does Frank know this?"
"If he does, he's kept quiet about it," I said. "We haven't told him."
We were just above the San Gabriel Mountains now, so close that it seemed you could step out onto one of the peaks.
State Hospital for Alcohol and Drug Addiction. The director was a psychiatrist named Steven Ito, and he talked to me in his cluttered office overlooking the employees' parking lot.
"My name is Spenser," I said. "I'm a private detective from Boston and I'm trying to find a missing person named Lisa St. Claire, who was apparently treated here in the mid 1980s under the name Angela Richard."
"I got a call from LAPD about you," Ito said. "They asked me to cooperate."
He was a well-set-up Japanese man, with short black hair and strong hands. He had on a white coat over a blue shirt and flowered tie.