Robert B Parker

Small Vices

For Joan: You may have been a headache, but you've never been a bore.

Through tattered clothes small vices do appear;

Robes and furred gowns hide all. Plate sin with gold,

And the strong lance of justice hurtless breaks;

Arm it in rags, a pygmy's straw does pierce it.

–KING LEAR

Chapter 1

THE LAST TIME I saw Rita Fiore she'd been an assistant DA with red hair, first-rate hips, and more attitude than an armadillo. She'd had a drink with me in the downstairs bar at the Parker House, complained about men, and introduced me to a blowhard from the DEA named Fallon, who answered more questions about the cocaine trade than I'd asked. This time we were alone, in a conference room on the thirty-ninth floor of the former Mercantile Building, with a view of the coastline that extended north to Greenland and south to Tierra del Fuego. She still had red hair. She still had the hips. And she was still tougher than Pat Buchanan. But she wasn't a prosecutor anymore. She was the senior litigator for Cone, Oakes and Baldwin, and a member of the firm.

"Coffee?" she said.

"Sure."

I had decided that I was more alert with coffee than without it. So I decided to have a couple of cups each day, to keep my heart rate up. This one would be my third, but my heart was still a little sluggish. Rita sent a female underling for the coffee, and leaned a little back in her chair and crossed her legs. Her skirt was a little short for business, just as her hair was a little long. I knew Rita knew that, and I knew she didn't care.

"Still got the wheels," I said.

"Yeah, and I'm still spinning them."

"Beats the view out of Dedham District Court," I said.

"Oh, yeah. Professionally I'm a big goddamned success. But am I married?"

"Gee," I said. "I wish I could help."

"You had your chance."

I grinned.

"Reminds me of an old joke," I said.

"I know the joke," Rita said. "And never mind."

The female underling came back with two coffees in real cups, with a cream pitcher and sugar bowl on a silver tray. Everything bore the firm's initials.

"Discourages the clients from stealing stuff," Rita said.

I put some sugar in, and some cream, and had a sip. It was lukewarm.

"I thought you got married," I said.

"I did. Twice. Both jerks."

"Probably ought to stop doing that," I said.

"Marrying jerks? Yeah, I should. But you eliminate the jerks, and who you going to marry?"

"A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle," I said.

"How come that's the only feminist remark guys can quote?"

"There's another one," I said, "something about whore to her husband, slave to her children? Have I got it right?"

Rita grinned at me. "Could you maybe just shut the fuck up?" she said.

"Sure."

Rita drank some of her coffee and made a face.

"Limoges china on a silver tray and they can't get the coffee hot," she said.

I looked out the window. The ocean was gray today, and the far sky was the same color, so that the horizon was hard to distinguish and the distance just seemed to fade away. I could see the wake of a nearly indistinguishable power boat as it pushed past one of the channel markers in the outer harbor.

"About a year and a half ago, when I was still prosecuting, we had a guy named Ellis Alves. Charged with the murder of a Pemberton College student named Melissa Henderson."

"I remember," I said. "You got a conviction."

"Yeah, what a challenge. He's black, had two priors for sexual assault. She's white, honor student at Pemberton. Father owns eight banks. Her grandfather was once Secretary of Commerce."

"And?"

"And I did what I was employed to do. I prosecuted. I won. Ellis is now at Cedar Junction. Forever."

"Way to go, Rita."

"Yeah. It was easy. He had a public defender one year out of law school, Yale, I think. Kid named Marcy Vance. Serious. Talbots suits. Just a little lipstick. Knew more law probably than I'll ever know. Knew nothing at all about criminal defense. I could convict Santa Claus if she was defending."

She finished her coffee and put the cup aside.

"You're not smoking anymore," I said.

"The patch worked for me. I been off three and a half years."

"Good," I said.

"What do you care," Rita said. "You're in love with Susan."

"This is true," I said. "But it's not monomania."

"Nice to know," Rita said. "Anyway. I didn't like the case, but it was there to be cleared and I cleared it. While I was clearing it, I was interviewing here, and a couple weeks after I cleared Ellis right over to Cedar Junction, I came to work here and started drinking coffee out of china cups."

"So?"

"So last spring who shows up here, wearing more makeup, but still dressing Talbots? My old adversary, Marcy Vance. And as soon as we get reintroduced she starts in on me about Ellis Alves. He was framed. She was too green to conduct a proper defense. He was the victim of racial discrimination."

"You believe her?"

"I believe Alves had a lousy defense. I believe it is easy to get a conviction on a black man whose victim is a rich white woman."

"You believe he was innocent?"

"Most of the people I've convicted aren't."

"True," I said.

"But Marcy says he didn't do it. She admits freely that he's a bad man and probably a career criminal and probably guilty of a lot of other things. But she says he did not have anything to do with the Henderson kid."

"If she's right it means somebody else did. And got away with it."

"Yeah."

We were quiet for a moment. The power boat was out of sight now, out in the bay somewhere. The gray sky seemed to have lowered, and the panorama had closed in considerably as we talked.

"You think she's right?" I said finally.

"I'm not sure she's wrong."

"Ah ha," I said. "So there's more to this than just the chance to flash your legs at me and remind me of what I missed."