Read Online Stardust by Robert B. Parker - Free Book Online Page A

careless.”
    â€œPerhaps this will have been good for him.”
    â€œI surely hope so,” I said.
    Profile looked past me at Jill Joyce.
    â€œI’ve been trying to reach you, Jill,” he said.
    She didn’t look at him.
    â€œYou’ve not returned my calls.”
    â€œCome on,” Jill said to me. “We’re late already.”
    I straightened.
    â€œI won’t be put off, Jill,” the Profile said.
    Jill started to walk away. I straightened from the window.
    â€œSee you around,” I said.
    â€œYes, you will,” the Profile said.
    â€œTell Randall,” I said, “that hip throw went out about the same time buzz off did.”
    â€œPerhaps he knows that now,” the Profile said. “I’m sure you’ll see him again too.”
    I followed Jill and got there in time to hold the door for her. As I pulled out around the Town Car, I saw the Profile getting out and walking around toward where Randall sat on the cold bricks.
    We drove out past the Kennedy School and right onto JFK Street and headed out across the Larz Anderson Bridge.
    â€œWhat was that in the car?” I said. “Darryl F. Zanuck?”
    â€œI have no idea,” she said.
    â€œAbout many things, I think that’s true,” I said. “About the guy in the car—I don’t believe you.”
    The Anderson Bridge looks like a bridge that would connect Cambridge to Boston. It is short. The river here was maybe a hundred yards wide. The bridge arched the way bridges do over the Seine, and was made of brick, or seemed to be, having enough brick dressing to fool your eye. To the right the river was broad and empty up as far as Mt. Auburn Hospital where it meandered west and out of sight. Downstream, looking left, it was spanned by the Western Avenue Bridge and the River Street Bridge before it meandered east near Boston University. The ice on the river still held, but the warmer weather would have its way and by late afternoon there would be water on top of the ice.
    â€œReally—fans. They think they know you, and they are so insistent sometimes.” Jill stared out the window of the Cherokee as she talked. They were shooting on location today, in the Waterfront Park near the Marriott Hotel. I turned east onto Soldiers Field Road in front of the Business School. Jill stared at the big snow-covered lawn and the red brick Georgian buildings in a self-important cluster around it.
    â€œWhat’s that?”
    â€œBusiness School,” I said.
    â€œWhich one?”
    â€œHarvard Business School,” I said. “There are people in there who would suffer dyspepsia if they heard you ask which one. They don’t even use its abbreviated name. Mostly they call it the B School. Graduates platoons of people each year who are Captains of Industry at once.”
    â€œDon’t sound so critical,” Jill said as we slid under the Western Avenue overpass. “What are you captain of?”
    â€œMy soul,” I said. “Who’s the guy in the Lincoln?”
    â€œWhy won’t you believe what I tell you,” she said. “I probably met him at some reception when we were slugging the series, and he thinks he’s in love with me.”
    â€œWe’ll see him again,” I said.
    â€œI’m sure you can take care of that,” Jill said. “You certainly hit that other man hard enough.”
    â€œThat guy’s better than he looked,” I said.
    â€œHow can you tell?”
    â€œHe was very confident. He was used to winning.”
    â€œWell, he certainly underestimated you,” she said.
    â€œNext time he won’t.”

10
    F ROM a pay phone on Atlantic Avenue, I called a guy I knew named Harry Dobson at the Registry of Motor Vehicles and got a name and address to go with the plate number I’d lifted from this morning’s Lincoln Town Car: Stanley Rojack, Sheep Meadow Lane, Dover. Then I found Morrissey the