Read Online Stardust by Robert B. Parker - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Robert B. Parker
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detail cop and told him I had an errand.
âSheâll be here all day,â I said, âaccording to the call sheet.â
â âLess she gets into a funk and goes in her mobile home to cry,â Morrissey said.
âIn which case all you have to do is hang around outside,â I said. âItâs better than chasing some crack dancer up a dark alley.â
âYou got that right,â Morrissey said.
It was bright along the waterfront the way it only is when the snow isnât dirty yet, and the sun is out, and the light reflected off the gray ocean and the white snow makes you squint. Even if you are wearing your Ray-Bans. This wasnât a working waterfront. This was a stockbrokersâ and young lawyersâ waterfront. The boats along the dock were sloops and Chris-Crafts, and the long gray granite warehouses had been turned into condominiums with sand-blasted brick interiors and bleached timbers showing. You could buy a blue margarita on ten secondsâ notice down here.
I got my car from where Iâd parked it back of the prop truck, next to a hydrant under a sign that said TOW ZONE. One of the nice things about working for a movie company, you could park in the mayorâs office and people would just walk around your car and smile and say âLove the show.â
I went along under the artery to the South Station Tunnel, and through, and bore right onto the Mass. Pike that cruised along the old railroad right-of-way through, and mostly below, the center of the city. I went under the Prudential Center, which was built on the old railroad yards, and on out past Fenway, and Boston University, past the old Braves Field with its bright ugly carpet of Astroturf, where once the grass had grown. In maybe fifteen minutes I hit 128 and headed south. The roads were thick with surly Christmas shoppers, but there were no shopping centers yet between the turnpike and the Dover exit, and the pace quickened. Route 128 was clear of snow, and the exits were fully plowed and clear. I didnât even need to put the Jeep in four-wheel drive. I rarely needed to put it in four-wheel drive. Sometimes I went out and drove around in snowstorms just to justify it. I took Route 109 and then Walpole Street and I was in Dover.
Dover is a WASP fantasy of the nineteenth century. The streets were arched with trees, bare black limbs now, crusted with snow, but in the summer effulgent with leaves. The houses were infrequent, and often invisible at the far end of winding driveways disguised as dirt roads. The architecture was white clapboard and the voters would probably have supported Caligula. Sheep Meadow Lane was at the far end of Walpole Street, curving off to the right among trees and bushes. Along each side was the kind of white three-board fence that you see around Lexington, Kentucky, and sure enough, pushing the snow aside and grazing below it were horses, oddly shaggy in their winter coats. Parts of the pasture looked like an old apple orchard with the squat trees misshapen in their leaflessness. In several stretches along the winding road, disheveled stone walls, superseded by the neat white fencing, ran parallel to it, no longer functional; now only quaint.
It was nearly 11:00 in the morning and the winter sun was warmer than it should have been. Moisture dripped from the trees, and the plowed road was glistening with snow melt. Around a turn was Rojackâs house. It was one of those places that an architect had been given a free hand with, and too much money. He had decided that he could make a totally postmodern statement without violating the traditional forms implicit in the setting. The place looked like it had been designed by Georges Braque while drunk. It was slabs and angles and cubes and slants in fieldstone and brick and glass and timber, and it flaunted itself against the pastured landscape in self-satisfied excess. Beyond it the pasture land, studded with an occasional apple
âSheâll be here all day,â I said, âaccording to the call sheet.â
â âLess she gets into a funk and goes in her mobile home to cry,â Morrissey said.
âIn which case all you have to do is hang around outside,â I said. âItâs better than chasing some crack dancer up a dark alley.â
âYou got that right,â Morrissey said.
It was bright along the waterfront the way it only is when the snow isnât dirty yet, and the sun is out, and the light reflected off the gray ocean and the white snow makes you squint. Even if you are wearing your Ray-Bans. This wasnât a working waterfront. This was a stockbrokersâ and young lawyersâ waterfront. The boats along the dock were sloops and Chris-Crafts, and the long gray granite warehouses had been turned into condominiums with sand-blasted brick interiors and bleached timbers showing. You could buy a blue margarita on ten secondsâ notice down here.
I got my car from where Iâd parked it back of the prop truck, next to a hydrant under a sign that said TOW ZONE. One of the nice things about working for a movie company, you could park in the mayorâs office and people would just walk around your car and smile and say âLove the show.â
I went along under the artery to the South Station Tunnel, and through, and bore right onto the Mass. Pike that cruised along the old railroad right-of-way through, and mostly below, the center of the city. I went under the Prudential Center, which was built on the old railroad yards, and on out past Fenway, and Boston University, past the old Braves Field with its bright ugly carpet of Astroturf, where once the grass had grown. In maybe fifteen minutes I hit 128 and headed south. The roads were thick with surly Christmas shoppers, but there were no shopping centers yet between the turnpike and the Dover exit, and the pace quickened. Route 128 was clear of snow, and the exits were fully plowed and clear. I didnât even need to put the Jeep in four-wheel drive. I rarely needed to put it in four-wheel drive. Sometimes I went out and drove around in snowstorms just to justify it. I took Route 109 and then Walpole Street and I was in Dover.
Dover is a WASP fantasy of the nineteenth century. The streets were arched with trees, bare black limbs now, crusted with snow, but in the summer effulgent with leaves. The houses were infrequent, and often invisible at the far end of winding driveways disguised as dirt roads. The architecture was white clapboard and the voters would probably have supported Caligula. Sheep Meadow Lane was at the far end of Walpole Street, curving off to the right among trees and bushes. Along each side was the kind of white three-board fence that you see around Lexington, Kentucky, and sure enough, pushing the snow aside and grazing below it were horses, oddly shaggy in their winter coats. Parts of the pasture looked like an old apple orchard with the squat trees misshapen in their leaflessness. In several stretches along the winding road, disheveled stone walls, superseded by the neat white fencing, ran parallel to it, no longer functional; now only quaint.
It was nearly 11:00 in the morning and the winter sun was warmer than it should have been. Moisture dripped from the trees, and the plowed road was glistening with snow melt. Around a turn was Rojackâs house. It was one of those places that an architect had been given a free hand with, and too much money. He had decided that he could make a totally postmodern statement without violating the traditional forms implicit in the setting. The place looked like it had been designed by Georges Braque while drunk. It was slabs and angles and cubes and slants in fieldstone and brick and glass and timber, and it flaunted itself against the pastured landscape in self-satisfied excess. Beyond it the pasture land, studded with an occasional apple
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