Mortal Stakes by Robert B. Parker Read Free Book Online Page B

announcer?”
    “Yeah. Floyd is his batman.”
    “His what?”
    “Batman, like in the British army, each officer had a batman, a personal servant.”
    “You spend too much time reading, Spenser. You know more stuff that don’t make you money than anybody I know.”
    “‘Tis better to know than not to know,” I said.
    “Aw bullshit, what is it you want to know about Maynard and what’s’isname?”
    “Lester Floyd. I want to know if they bet on baseball and, if they do, what games they bet on. I want the dates. And I need an idea of how much they’re betting. Either one or both.”
    Seltzer nodded. “Okay, I’ll let you know.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN
    AT PATRICIA UTLEY S HOME I returned to the Calvados. Patricia Utley had some sherry.
    “Would you care to see the film, Spenser?” she said.
    “No, thank you.”
    “Why not? I never met a man that didn’t care for eroticism.”
    “Oh, I’m all for eroticism.” I was thinking of Linda Rabb in her Church Park apartment in her clean white jeans.
    “It’s movies I don’t like.”
    “AS YOU wish.” She sipped some sherry. “You were going to mention some names to me.”
    “Yeah, Bucky Maynard—I don’t know the real first name, maybe that’s it—and Lester Floyd.” I was gambling she’d never followed sports and had never heard of Maynard.
    I didn’t want to tie Donna Burlington to the Red Sox, but I needed to know. If she’d ever heard of Bucky Maynard, she gave no sign. Lester didn’t look like a self-starter. If he was in on this, it was a good bet he represented Maynard.
    “I’ll see,” she said. She picked up a phone on the end table near the couch and dialed a three-digit number. “Would you please check the subscription list, specifically on Suburban Fancy, and see if we have either a Bucky Maynard or a Lester Floyd, and the address and date? Thank you. Yes, call me right back, I’m in the library.”
    “How many copies of that film are there?” I asked.
    “I won’t tell you,” she said. “That’s confidential.”
    “Okay, it doesn’t matter anyway. The real question is can I get all the copies?”
    “No, I offered to show you the film and you didn’t want to.”
    “That’s not the point.”
    The phone rang and Patricia Utley answered, listened a moment, wrote on a note pad, and hung up.
    “There is a Lester Floyd on our subscription list. There is no Bucky Maynard.”
    “What’s the address on Floyd?”
    “Harbor Towers, Atlantic Avenue, Boston, Mass. Do you need the street number?”
    “No, thank you, that’s fine.” I finished my brandy and she poured me another.
    “The point I was making before is that I don’t want the films to look at. I want them to destroy. Donna Burlington has a nice life now. Married, kid, shiny oak floors in her living room, all-electric kitchen. Her husband loves her. That kind of stuff. These films could destroy her.”
    “That is hardly my problem, Spenser. The odds are very good that no one who saw these films would know Donna or connect her with them. And this is not eighteen seventy-five. Queen Victoria is dead. Aren’t you being a little dramatic that someone who acted once in an erotic movie would be destroyed?”
    “Not in her circles. In her circles it would be murder.”
    “Well, even if you are right, as I said, it is not my problem. I am in business, not social work. Destroying those films is not profitable.”
    “Even if purchased at what us collectors like to call fair market value?”
    “Not the master. That would be like killing the goose.
    You can have all the prints you want, at fair market value, but not the master.”
    I got up and walked across the room and looked out the windows at Thirty-seventh Street. The streetlights had come on, and while it wasn’t full dark yet, there was a softening bronze tinge to everything. The traffic was light, and the people who strolled by looked like extras in a Fred Astaire movie. Well dressed and good-looking. Brilliant red