SURROGATE

BY ROBERT B. PARKER

Watertown

(Originally published in 1982)

Brenda Loring sat in my office with her knees together and her hands clasped in her lap and told me that last night a man had broken into her home and raped her for the second time in two weeks.

With my instinct for the bon mot, I said, "Jesus Christ."

"It was the same man as before," she said. Her voice was still and clear and uninflected.

I said, "Last night?"

"About ten hours ago," she said. "I've just now left the police." Her face was blank and, without makeup, it looked unprotected.

"You want to talk about the rapes?" I said.

She shook her head slightly and looked down at her clasped hands.

"That's okay," I said. "I can get it all from the cops. You still living in Cambridge?"

She nodded. "My husband's involved," she said, "my ex-husband."

I said Jesus Christ again, but only to myself. I don't like to overwork a phrase. "You want to talk about that?" I said.

She was still looking at her hands, folded motionless in her lap. "The police don't believe me about my husband."

Her stillness was profound. But it was stillness of tension, like a drawn bowstring. I said, "Brenda, whatever this is, I can fix it."

She looked up at me for the first time since she'd started speaking. "Two rapes too late," she said in her lucid monotone.

"Yes," I said.

She looked back down at her hands.

"Tell me a little more about your husband," I said.

"Northrop," she said. "Mrs. Northrop May."

"I was at your wedding," I said.

"The day after I was raped the first time," she said, "Northrop came to see me. He came in and sat down and I gave him a cup of coffee and he said with a . . . not a smile . . . a . . . a smirk," she nodded her head decisively in approval of the word's rightness, "and he said to me, 'So, how's your love life?' and I said, 'My God, don't you know I was raped?' and he said no and asked me about it. And . . ." she thought a minute, concentrating on her hands. "He wanted details: what did he do? what did I do? did he make me undress?" She shivered slightly. "And all the time he had that smirk and he was . . ." Again she paused and looked for the right word. "Avid," she said. "He was avid, listening. And then he said, 'Did you like it?'"

I could feel the muscles across my shoulders bunch a little. She was quiet, still examining her hands.

I said, "Then what?"

"I asked him to leave," she said. She raised her head. "I know he's involved."

"But he didn't do it?"

"No. I saw the man's face. It wasn't Northrop. Besides, this man was able to do it."

"You mean erect?"

She nodded.

"And Northrop couldn't?"

"Not very often and, before the divorce, getting worse," she said.

"You think Northrop knows who did it?" I said.

"As he left last week, he looked at me from the doorway with that hot smirky look on his face and said, 'Maybe he'll be back.'"

"Cops check on him?"

"He was with three other people having late supper at the Ritz Café," she said. "After theater."

"The cops figure you for a vindictive divorcée," I said.

"Probably."

Two stories down on Berkeley Street a car horn honked impatiently. Brenda rummaged in her bag and found a pack of cigarettes. She took one out and lit it and inhaled a long lungful.

"Faulkner," I said. "Novel called Sanctuary. You ever read it?"

She shook her head. The long inhale began to seep out.

"Character in there called Popeye," I said. "He was impotent, had other people do it for him."

"Yes," Brenda said. She was looking right at me now and her voice was richer. "That's what I think," she said.

"What time of day did he come around to smirk last time?" I said.

"After lunch."

I looked at my watch. "Let's go over to your place and see if he comes around this time."

"So you'll be there if he comes?"

I nodded. Two spots of color appeared on Brenda's cheekbones. She got abruptly to her feet. "Yes," she said, "let's go."

Brenda lived on the fifth floor of a wedge-shaped brick building at the Watertown end of Mt. Auburn Street. We were on the second cup of coffee, and almost no conversation, when Northrop May showed up. He rang, Brenda spoke to him on the intercom and buzzed him in. I went into the kitchen. In maybe thirty seconds I heard Brenda open the apartment door.

May said, "How've you been, Brenda?" His voice sounded vaguely British. Half the people in Cambridge sounded vaguely British. The other half sounded like me.

"What do you care?"

"I worry about you, Brenda, you know that. Just because our marriage has ended doesn't mean I no longer care for you. I want to know that you're happy. That you're dating and things."

"I'm fine," Brenda said.

"Good," May said. "Good. How about last night, did you have a good time last night?"

I heard a sudden movement and the sound of a slap and I came around the corner in time to see May holding both Brenda's wrists down. I shifted my weight slightly onto my left foot, did a small pivot and kicked May in the middle of the back with the bottom of my right foot. He let go of Brenda and sprawled forward face first on the floor. When he hit he scrambled on all fours toward the couch and behind it before he used it to help him to his feet. His face was the color of skimmed milk when he looked at me.

"Hiho, Northrop," I said.

"What are you doing?" he said. "She was hitting me. You had no reason to do that. I was just defending myself."

Brenda moved toward May. "You son of a bitch," she said. Her voice hissed between her teeth. "You lousy dickless bastard." He edged away, keeping the couch between him and me. Brenda went after him, swinging at him with both fists closed. He put his arms up and edged away some more. But he was edging toward me and he didn't like that.

"Keep her away," he said. Brenda kicked at his shins.

I reached out and caught Brenda's arm. "Stop a minute," I said. "Let's talk."

Brenda leaned steadily against my restraint. May began edging the other way, toward the door. "I'm not talking," he said. "I'm going to leave right now."

I shook my head, still holding Brenda's steady weight with my left hand. Northrop looked at me. He was about my height but much lighter, angular and narrow with round gold glasses and blond hair combed straight back.

"I'm not going to fight with a pug like you," he said.

"A wise choice," I said. "Sit down. We'll talk."

His face tightened and his eyes moved around the room. I was between him and the only door. He went to the couch and sat down. With his legs crossed and his hands folded precisely in his lap he said, "Very well, what is it? why are you here? why are you detaining me? and why on earth is that woman acting even more insane than usual?"

"Your wife has been raped," I said, "and you're responsible."

He shook his head once, brusquely. "That's absurd," he said. "There are half a dozen people who can testify that I was with them, far from here, both times."

"How do you know it was both?" I said.

"You just . . ."

I shook my head, slowly. May was quiet, and I knew he was running back in his mind what I had said. Then he shrugged impatiently.

"I don't know—once, twice, whatever. I have not raped my wife."

"Ex-wife," Brenda said. "But you had it done." Her voice was clotted with intensity. "You had somebody do it and then you came smirking around afterward like some kind of peeping Tom."

She was arched toward him, her face thrust close to his.

"You can't prove that," he said. His voice was as pale as his face.

"We don't need to prove it," I said. "We only have to know it. We're not the law. We don't have to sweat the rules of evidence, Northrop."

"To do what?" he said. He stayed stiffly in his legs-crossed-I'm-completely-at-my-ease pose.

"I'm perfectly willing to kill you," I said. "I can do it easy and I'd feel no guilt."

He didn't move.

"I have killed people before," I said. "I know how. I could float you out that window like a paper airplane, right now. You deserve to go. Brenda would swear you jumped mad with remorse. That would even the score, Brenda would be safe. I can't see any reason not to do it."

"Do it," Brenda hissed. She went to the window and opened it wide. "Do it."

May's composure went. He looked rapidly around the room. He uncrossed his legs and put both feet on the floor and leaned forward as if to get up. He looked at the door. Looked at me. I could see him give up inside, his body tension changed.

"My God, Spenser," he said. "You . . . my God, you can't . . . Please."

It was late October and rainy. The breeze from the open window was cold.

"Who'd you hire to do it?" I said.

He looked at everything: me, Brenda, the window, a brass candlestick on the end table. He was in way over his head. And he was caught. He'd thought about staving off the law, and provided means. But he hadn't thought about me. He had no way to stave me off.

"Some things you gotta do yourself, Northrop. You can't hire someone for this."

"I'll hire you," he said. "You're a detective. I'll hire you to investigate, to investigate everything. My family has money. I can pay you very well, a lot."

I took a quick step forward, got him by the shirt front, yanked him off the sofa and spun him toward the window. Then I shifted my grip to the back of his collar and the seat of his pants and ran him toward the window.

His head was out in the rain when he screamed, "Hanson! Richie Hanson!"

I held him there, his head out the window, his feet off the ground.

"Where's he live?" I said.

"South End, Clarendon Street, down by the Ballet." May's voice was thin with panic. I pulled him back in and sat him on the couch. He sat shivering. I always hated to see fear. It made me feel lousy, especially when I'd caused it. "What number Clarendon?" I said.

"Nineteen."

I picked up Brenda's phone and punched out a number. On the second ring a voice said, "Harbor Health Club."

"Henry? Spenser. Hawk there?"

"He don't usually come in this early, kid. You know Hawk, probably having breakfast now."

"Yeah. Get hold of him, Henry, and have him call me." I gave him Brenda's number.

"In a hurry?"

"Yes."

"It'll be quick," Henry said.

We hung up and I went and stood against the door. Probably no need to. May sat on the couch without form, limp against the brocade.

"What are you going to do?" he said.

"I'm going to have Hawk bring Richie Hanson over here."

"No," Brenda said.

"It's a way to clean this up," I said. "Might be good, too, for you to get by facing him."

"I don't want to," Brenda said. "I'm afraid."

"No need," I said.

"I don't know this Hawk," Brenda said. "Can he get Richie whatsis?"

"Hawk will bring you Nama the killer whale if he feels like it," I said. "If we get them together we'll know everything. Maybe even understand some of it."

"I understand it," Brenda said softly. She turned back toward May and the angles of her body sharpened. "I understand that he isn't man enough to do it himself. He isn't man enough to do anything." Her voice was hissing again. "Did you ask this guy what it was like? Did you get it up when he told you? Is that what it takes?"

Northrop's face took on some definition as if hatred had disciplined it. "It takes response," he said. "I can feel passion when it's returned."

"Frigid? You have always tried to say that. That's bullshit. I always liked sex. It was you that turned me off, you creepy bastard." A very nasty smile distorted her mouth. "Ask Spenser. Was I cold when we were together?"

I made a small noncommittal gesture with my head.

"I never understood it," May said. "Before we were married . . ." he shook his head and made a helpless measuring motion with his hands. "And afterward it was gone. Now and then you seemed to like it, but mostly it was gone."

"I never turned you down."

"No, you never did. You lay back and gritted your teeth and did your duty like a soldier." May's voice was full of defeat. It had gotten toneless and small as he talked, as if it came from some small recess inside him, out of the light.

Brenda was walking back and forth in front of him, arching toward him as she spoke. "And you, you weird bastard, you always wanted to hear about who else I'd done it with, and what I'd done, and what I'd let them do. It was creepy."

"I wanted all of you," May said. "I wanted to share everything, to have no secrets. Sure, maybe it turned me on a little. That's human, isn't it? But mostly I just wanted us to be closer, and you kept telling me different things, and not telling me anything, and I just wanted the truth. You kept part of you away from me."

"I'm not a goddamned peep show, North. Part of me is mine."

The nickname had crept in. They weren't victim and violator anymore. They were domestic adversaries again, tripping the same old grim fantastic over the same old painful ground.

"I never knew you," he said.

The phone rang. It was Hawk.

I said, "There's a guy named Richie Hanson, 19 Clarendon Street. I need him here as quick as you can get him." I gave him Brenda's address.

Hawk said, "Okay."

I said, "I don't know this guy. It's possible he's dangerous."

Hawk's laugh was liquid. "Me too, babe. I bring him along."

He hung up. While I'd been on the phone the argument had paused like a stop-action replay. When I put down the phone they began again as if in mid-sentence.

"There was that central part of you," Northrop said, "that was remote and arrogant." He spoke smoothly, almost as if he were speaking a part he'd rehearsed.

"Don't you understand that it is my pride to keep part of me private? To have a part of me intact? You're weird, North. You're sick."

May's eyes filled and tears came down his face.

"Sick," he said, and his voice, despite the tears, was still atonal and remote. "Why is that sick? All I ever wanted . . ." His voice shook a little. "All I ever, ever wanted was so simple, so ordinary . . . I just wanted affection. I wanted you to act like you loved me . . . that's all I wanted . . . is that sick? Is that some sort of weird thing to want, simply, gestures of affection?"

"Your definitions," Brenda said. They were so caught up in the argument that they might have been alone. I was watching a marriage that had been driven into the corner. Its meanness was being reported. Hurry up, Hawk.

"Anyone's definitions," May said. He looked at me, almost startled, realizing suddenly that for the first time in all the times they'd had this argument there was a third opinion handy. "If you're making love, do you want response?" he said. I made my noncommittal head gesture. "Do you like your partner to lie quiet and still?" I varied the previous head motion. "She lie quiet and still with you, Spenser?"

Brenda's voice scraped out between her tightened teeth. "You bet your ass I didn't." I thought about blushing. May put his head in his hands.

"The simplest thing in the world," he murmured. "Just love and get it back. Not sick. Not weird. The simplest thing in the world."

The rain spattered against the window, driven by a shifted wind. Somewhere, probably in the kitchen, I could hear a faucet drip.

"Tell me about Richie Hanson," I said.

"Hanson?"

"Richie Hanson. Is he a hood? How's a Brattle Street smartie like you know someone who'd hire out to rape someone?"

"I met him at Concord Correctional Institute," May said. "Isn't that a joke, Correctional Institute. I was giving a poetry and criticism workshop there, part of the University outreach."

"And Hanson was doing time?"

"Yes, when he got out he got in touch with me. Wanted a letter of recommendation."

"Poetry workshop," Brenda snorted. "What the hell do you know about it? You never published a poem in your life, except those things that are mimeographed in Harvard Square."

"You needn't be a cook to judge a soufflé," he said.

Brenda made a spitting sound. "I've heard you say that so often," she said. "Isn't that typical? Always able to describe it; never able to do it. A legless man that teaches running."

Her voice was low, but easy to hear, articulated by her intensity.

The intercom rang, and I heard Hawk's voice when I picked it up: "Mistah Hanson to see Marse Spensah, bawse."

I said, "Considering the years of practice, that's the worst darkie dialect I've ever heard." I pressed the button to let them in and went to the apartment door. In less than a minute Hanson appeared at the door with Hawk behind him. Hanson was a blocky blond guy with scraggly hair, thin on top and long over the ears. There was a slight rim of blood inside one nostril and a darkening bruise under his right eye. In his neighborhood he was probably tough. Compared to Hawk he was butterscotch candy.

Hawk pushed him gently into the room, shut the door and leaned against it. He was Ralph Lauren western this week, snakeskin boots, jeans, denim shirt, western jacket, big hat. He was the only other guy I knew who had an eighteen-inch neck and looked good in clothes. The angular planes of his face gleamed like carved obsidian when he smiled.

"Afternoon, boss," he said.

"Jesus," I said. "Midnight cowboy. Hanson give you any trouble?"

"Nothing that counts," Hawk said.

"Richie," I said, "you know these folks?"

Hanson looked at Brenda. She was motionless, standing near May, hugging herself without seeming to realize it, rubbing her upper arms as if she were cold. He looked at May sitting on the couch. He looked at me and opened his mouth, then shut it and glanced over his shoulder at Hawk. Hawk smiled his glistening pleasant smile.

"Mr. May here on the couch tells us you raped his wife," I said.

"Ex-wife," Brenda said without affect.

Hanson looked at May again, and, half turning his head, out of the corner of his eye, again at Hawk.

"We'd like to know why you did that," I said.

Hanson said, "I don't know what's going on here. Who the hell are you?"

Hawk leaned effortlessly forward from the door and hit Hanson a six-inch punch over the left kidney. Hanson gasped and went to his knees. Hawk leaned back against the door.

"He paid me," Hanson said. He got slowly to his feet and moved a little away from Hawk. "The professor paid me. He came to my place and give me five C's. Said not to hurt her bad, just do it and I'd get the other five when I give him the pictures."

I said, "Pictures?"

Brenda looked at the floor. I glanced at May. He was staring at the fist his two hands made between his knees.

"He wanted pictures of her . . . ah . . . you know, disrobed. Said it would be proof that I done it."

There was no sound for a moment in the room except that rattle of the fall rain against the window.

"We'll want those," I said.

"I give them all to the professor."

I looked at Hawk. He shook his head. I nodded. "Creep like you would keep a couple," I said. "We'll toss your place later. How about you, Northrop? Where's your copies?"

"I burned them," he said.

Hawk grinned broadly. I nodded again. "Yeah. We'll look through your desk too, Northrop."

Brenda had not changed position. She was still rubbing her upper arms, looking at Hanson the way she had been looking at May.

"How could you do it?" she said.

Hanson looked at her blankly. "Huh?"

"How could you rape someone like that, for money?"

Hanson looked puzzled. "Hey," he said, "you're a nice-looking broad."

Brenda's face was bunched in concentration. "But what about me? What about how I felt? It's like I was a . . . a mechanism and you were a mechanic. Didn't you ever think about how I might feel?"

Hanson looked even more confused. "A grand," he said. "A grand's a lot of dough, lady."

Brenda stared at him. Her breathing was getting more rapid.

Hanson looked at May. "How about you, you pansy bastard, what'd you do, get lovey dovey and feel bad and confess?"

May didn't look up.

"I should never have hooked up with a goddamned pansy like you. You don't know how to act."

Without moving from the door Hawk said, "Shh." Hanson stopped as if a lock had clicked.

"Jail," Brenda said, her breathing heavy, like she'd been running. "You are both going to jail forever, don't you care?"

Neither man looked at her.

"Don't you care? Doesn't either of you care how I felt?"

She looked at me and Hawk, a woman alone in a roomful of men. "How would you like it?" she said. "How would you like this pig to walk into your house and strip you naked and rape you? How would you like to be lying on the floor, the floor for crissake, with his sweat all over you, and have him take your picture?"

Hawk's face was impassive and pleasant. For all you could tell he might have been listening to the beat of a different drummer.

"Doesn't anyone care about that?" Brenda said.

"Hanson can't," I said. "Lot of guys like him in the joint. Sometimes, I suppose, it's the joint makes them like that. Sometimes being like that gets them into the joint in the first place. He doesn't care about you; he doesn't even care about himself. Hell, he doesn't understand the question."

"How about you, North? Do you understand the question?" Brenda had turned, still hugging herself, and leaned toward May again.

May pressed his clasped hands against his forehead, his body bent forward. His voice was very small. "I'm sorry, Brenda. I was crazy. It's just that I wanted so little. It seemed so little to ask. I guess it drove me a little crazy."

"What you wanted, 'North,' was total possession," Brenda said.

He nodded. His face against his hands.

"I couldn't give you that," Brenda said, almost gently.

"I know," May said. "I guess, I loved not wisely but too well."

Tears suddenly appeared in Brenda's eyes.

I said, "May, you're not Othello nor were meant to be. It's not her fault that she got raped."

Brenda straightened, turned away from May and said quite briskly to me, "How long will they be in jail?"

"Hard to say, depends on the sentence, and that depends on judges and lawyers and jurors," I shrugged.

"If they go," Hawk said.

"What's he mean?" Brenda said.

"It's an imperfect system," I said. "Hanson will fall. He's done time. They'll mail him right back, express. But Northrop . . . he's a professor; he's got money. He might not go. If he does he might get out soon."

"You mean he could do this to me and get away with it?"

"Not everyone who's bad gets punished," I said.

"I'm still walking around," Hawk murmured.

Brenda stared at me. "He might not even be punished," she said. She didn't seem to be talking to me. "And they're not even sorry." She didn't seem to be talking to anyone.

"I could whack them out for you, if you'd like," Hawk said.

Brenda looked at him a little startled. She smiled. "No," she said. "No thank you."

The room was quiet again. Brenda closed her eyes, put her palms together, and placed the tips of her pressed fingers against her lips. She stood that way for maybe twenty seconds. Then she went to the sideboard and took a small silver automatic pistol from her purse. Holding the gun in both hands as I'd taught her to a long time ago, she began to shoot. The first two rounds got Northrop in the face. The third shattered the lamp behind him on the end table. The fourth thudded into a big gold pillow in the wing chair, and the fifth, after she steadied and aimed, drilled Richie Hanson through the upper lip just below his left nostril. The .25-caliber Colt had made small snapping noises as she fired, like an angry poodle. But in the silence that settled behind the shots, May and Hanson were exactly as dead as if she'd used a bazooka.

Hawk was still leaning against the door. "Dyn-o-mite," he said.

Brenda put the gun down on the sideboard, got a package of Merit cigarettes out of her purse, lit one with a butane lighter, and dragged a third of it in. She looked at the just- created corpses and let the smoke drift slowly out through barely parted lips.

"If they had been sorry," she said.

I looked at Hawk. "Yeah," he said. "I can take care of it."

"Good," I said. "Come on, babe, we're going to go visit Susan Silverman."

Brenda frowned. She spoke slowly now, tiredly: "We're going to . . . cover this up?"

"Yes."

"But what will you do with . . ." She gestured at the dead men.

Hawk said, "I know a man with a salvage yard."

"You came to me for protection," I said. "Directly from the cops this morning. We went straight to Susan's and have been there ever since. It'll be a few days before they even know Northrop's gone. Nobody'll look for Hanson."

Brenda looked at the apartment.

"Brenda, one of the things Hawk is best at in all the world is covering up a death. You wish you hadn't shot them?"

"No," she said. Her voice was very firm.

I picked up the small silver gun and slipped it in my pocket. I offered her my arm. She took it and we left. As I closed the door behind us I could hear Hawk whistling softly to himself, "Moody's Mood for Love," as he punched out a number on the phone.

In a half an hour we were in Smithfield, and Susan was helping Brenda feel better. Me too.