Robert B. Parker's Old Black Magic (Spenser) Read online

  THE SPENSER NOVELS

  Robert B. Parker’s Little White Lies (by Ace Atkins)

  Robert B. Parker’s Slow Burn (by Ace Atkins)

  Robert B. Parker’s Kickback (by Ace Atkins)

  Robert B. Parker’s Cheap Shot (by Ace Atkins)

  Silent Night (with Helen Brann)

  Robert B. Parker’s Wonderland (by Ace Atkins)

  Robert B. Parker’s Lullaby (by Ace Atkins)

  Sixkill

  Painted Ladies

  The Professional

  Rough Weather

  Now & Then

  Hundred-Dollar Baby

  School Days

  Cold Service

  Bad Business

  Back Story

  Widow’s Walk

  Potshot

  Hugger Mugger

  Hush Money

  Sudden Mischief

  Small Vices

  Chance

  Thin Air

  Walking Shadow

  Paper Doll

  Double Deuce

  Pastime

  Stardust

  Playmates

  Crimson Joy

  Pale Kings and Princes

  Taming a Sea-Horse

  A Catskill Eagle

  Valediction

  The Widening Gyre

  Ceremony

  A Savage Place

  Early Autumn

  Looking for Rachel Wallace

  The Judas Goat

  Promised Land

  Mortal Stakes

  God Save the Child

  The Godwulf Manuscript

  THE JESSE STONE NOVELS

  Robert B. Parker’s The Hangman’s Sonnet (by Reed Farrel Coleman)

  Robert B. Parker’s Debt to Pay (by Reed Farrel Coleman)

  Robert B. Parker’s The Devil Wins (by Reed Farrel Coleman)

  Robert B. Parker’s Blind Spot (by Reed Farrel Coleman)

  Robert B. Parker’s Damned If You Do (by Michael Brandman)

  Robert B. Parker’s Fool Me Twice (by Michael Brandman)

  Robert B. Parker’s Killing the Blues (by Michael Brandman)

  Split Image

  Night and Day

  Stranger in Paradise

  High Profile

  Sea Change

  Stone Cold

  Death in Paradise

  Trouble in Paradise

  Night Passage

  THE SUNNY RANDALL NOVELS

  Spare Change

  Blue Screen

  Melancholy Baby

  Shrink Rap

  Perish Twice

  Family Honor

  THE COLE/HITCH WESTERNS

  Robert B. Parker’s Revelation (by Robert Knott)

  Robert B. Parker’s Blackjack (by Robert Knott)

  Robert B. Parker’s The Bridge (by Robert Knott)

  Robert B. Parker’s Bull River (by Robert Knott)

  Robert B. Parker’s Ironhorse (by Robert Knott)

  Blue-Eyed Devil

  Brimstone

  Resolution

  Appaloosa

  ALSO BY ROBERT B. PARKER

  Double Play

  Gunman’s Rhapsody

  All Our Yesterdays

  A Year at the Races (with Joan H. Parker)

  Perchance to Dream

  Poodle Springs (with Raymond Chandler)

  Love and Glory

  Wilderness

  Three Weeks in Spring (with Joan H. Parker)

  Training with Weights (with John R. Marsh)

  G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS

  Publishers Since 1838

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  375 Hudson Street

  New York, New York 10014

  Copyright © 2018 by The Estate of Robert B. Parker

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Atkins, Ace, author. | Parker, Robert B., 1932–2010.

  Title: Robert B. Parker’s old black magic : a Spenser novel / Ace Atkins.

  Description: New York : G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2018. | Series: Spenser ; 47

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017054781| ISBN 9780399177019 (hardback) | ISBN 9780698413078 (ebook)

  Subjects: LCSH: Spenser (Fictitious character)—Fiction. | Private Investigators—Massachusetts—Boston—Fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Mystery & Detective / General. | FICTION / Mystery & Detective / Traditional British. | GSAFD: Mystery fiction. | Suspense fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3551.T49 R626 2018 | DDC 813/.54—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017054781

  p. cm.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  For my Plymouth pals,

  Bill, Vicki, and Dixie Barke

  CONTENTS

  Also by Robert B. Parker

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Map

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapt
er 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  1

  I’M DYING, SPENSER,” the man said.

  I nodded, not knowing what else to say. An early-summer rain beaded down my office window, dark gray skies hovering over Berkeley and Boylston as afternoon commuters jockeyed for position out of the city. Their taillights cast a red glow on slick streets. Somewhere a prowl car hit a siren, heading off to another crime. The man sitting before me smiled and nodded, his hands withered and liver-spotted. His name was Locke.

  “How long have we known each other?” Locke said.

  “A long time.”

  “But oddly never worked together?”

  “Our work as investigators seldom crossed paths,” I said. “Different peepholes.”

  “Recovering stolen art isn’t really your thing.”

  “I’ve done it,” I said. “Once. Or twice.”

  “You’re familiar with the theft at the Winthrop?”

  “Of course,” I said. “It made all the papers. And TV. Biggest theft in Boston history.”

  “Biggest art theft ever,” he said. “Next year will mark twenty years. I’ve chased those paintings most of that time, traveling from Dorchester to Denmark with not so much as an inkling of where they ended up. It’s beyond frustrating. Maddening, really. And now, well, with things the way they are—”

  “One was a Picasso?”

  “That was the least valuable of the three,” he said. “Picasso, Goya. But the prize of the Winthrop was also stolen, the El Greco. The Gentleman in Black. Are you familiar with the painting?”

  “Some,” I said. “I recall seeing it years ago. When I was young.”

  “When we were both young,” Locke said.

  He smiled and reached into his double-breasted suit jacket and pulled out a slick photocopy of a very serious-looking dude with a pointy black beard. The man wore a high-necked lacy shirt and a heavy black cloak. His eyes were very black and humorless.

  “He looks like a guy who used to kick field goals for the Detroit Lions,” I said. “Benny Ricardo.”

  “The subject is reputed to be Juan de Silva y Ribera, third marquis of Montemayor and the warden of the Alcázar of Toledo.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Him.”

  “El Greco painted him in 1597,” he said. “Well before the Pilgrims set foot in America. Long regarded as unimportant by the romantics, El Greco found new appreciation and fame among the impressionists and surrealists. Picasso in particular was a great admirer of El Greco. You see the distorted length of the man’s neck, the off-kilter perspective?”

  “Some have noted my own perspective is off-kilter,” I said. “Although I admit to having more of an affinity for the Dutch Masters.”

  “I spotted your Vermeer prints when I walked in,” he said. “You also have many fans at the Hammond. You helped recover, what was it? Lady with a Finch.”

  I nodded and offered him something to drink. It was that time of the day when I could bend to either whiskey or coffee. Locke, being a man of the arts, approved of the whiskey. I pulled out a bottle of Bushmills Black gifted to me by Martin Quirk and found two clean coffee mugs left to dry upside down beside the sink.

  “Without being trite, that painting you recovered from the Hammond is nothing but a Rembrandt footnote,” he said. “This work is something altogether different. A cornerstone of Spanish and art history.”

  “How much?”

  “One can’t always put a price on the priceless,” he said. “But somewhere in the neighborhood of sixty or seventy million.”

  Like any serious art connoisseur, I gave a low whistle.

  “I wanted to recover the piece myself,” he said. “But now? I have to understand the realities of my situation.”

  “I’m very sorry.”

  “And I’m sorry to march into your office with such maudlin conversation,” Locke said. “But my doctor told me to get my affairs in order, whatever the hell that means. I figured this was the first order, have someone to pass along my files, endless notes, and potential leads. I grew too old for this case two years ago. The Winthrop continues to push, with the anniversary coming up next week and these letters arriving every other week.”

  “Letters?”

  “Yes,” Locke said, sipping the whiskey. “Not really ransom notes. But from someone who claims to have knowledge of the theft.”

  “Do you think they’re real?”

  “Perhaps,” Locke said. “The letters were very specific about details of the theft. The writer was also aware of an arcane detail of the painting. El Greco himself had written on the back of the canvas in his native Greek.”

  “Have they asked for money?”

  “No,” Locke said. “No demands have been made. And no means of communication has been offered. The letters have been addressed to the museum’s director, Marjorie Ward Phillips. Have you and Susan ever met Marjorie at a fund-raiser?”

  I shook my head and picked up the coffee mug. The mug advertised Kane’s Donuts in Saugus, a place I considered to have made many fine works of art.

  “Marjorie is a determined, if altogether unpleasant, person,” Locke said. “Her staff calls her Large Marj.”

  “A big personality?”

  “How do I put this?” he said. “She has an ass the size of a steer and the disposition of a recently castrated bull.”

  “Lovely,” I said. “Can’t wait to meet her.”

  “Oh, she’ll charm you,” Locke said, chuckling. “At first. There will be martinis and long talks of art’s value to the city of Boston. But don’t ever disagree with her. Or challenge her in front of the board. Once that’s done, you will be visited by the hatred of a thousand suns.”

  “If you’re trying to talk me into this,” I said. “You’re failing miserably.”

  “You must take this case, Spenser,” Locke said. “You must. If not, they’ve threatened to offer the contract to this British investigator. A young man from London who, recent successes aside, has all the earmarks of a four-flusher.”

  “At the moment, I’m working two separate cases,” I said.

  “Did I mention the five-million-dollar reward, plus covering your daily rate and all expenses?”

  I smiled and turned over my hands, offering my palms. “Perhaps I could find time to meet with Large Marj.”

  “I know you’re joking,” he said. “But for God’s sake, don’t let her ever hear you say that.”

  “Hatred of a thousand suns?”

  “And then some.”

  Locke smiled, straightening in his chair, and buttoned the top button of his jacket. Both eyes stared at me, one slightly off and one roaming my face with deep sadness and intelligence. His face sagged, his blue eyes drained of much color and life.

  “It might be months,” he said. “But probably weeks. I have a driver. He’s waiting for me downstairs now.”

  “May I help you out?”

  “First,” he said. “Will you accept an old man’s dying wish?”

  “Damn, Locke,” I said. “You do go for a hard sell.”

  “I don’t have time to mince words,” he said. “I really think they’re onto something now. And the last thing the museum needs is an amateur, unfamiliar to Boston, skulking about. This other detective is of the worst sort. He’s trying to charm the board into letting him take the case. But they need someone who understands thuggery and violence well beyond red-velvet walls.”

  “I should add that to my business card.”

  Locke laughed and reached for the Irish whiskey. He drained it quickly and replaced the mug on my desk.

  “Wh
y did you stay on this long if you felt like it was hopeless?”

  Locke smiled. “There’s something almost mystical about this painting,” he said. “Believe me, you’ll see. Maybe a way of touching the past. We are all just passing through this world. We’ll be gone soon enough. But this painting has remained for more than five hundred years. Perhaps recovering it would have been my shot at immortality?”

  I nodded. I refilled our glasses.

  “To immortality.”

  We sat and drank the rest of the whiskey in silence. After a bit, he stood, shook my hand, and without a word walked out the door.

  2

  LARGE MARJ?” SUSAN SAID.

  “Do you know her?”

  “I’ve met Marjorie Ward Phillips from the Winthrop,” she said. “But I’ve never heard her called that horrible name.”

  Susan and I stood at my kitchen island in my Navy Yard condo as I stirred a fork in my cast-iron skillet simmering with kale, onions, and hickory-smoked bacon. The sprawling brick building had once been a dockside warehouse with big picture windows looking onto the harbor and across to Boston. Pearl snuggled in a ball on the couch as the rain continued in the night. Every few minutes, she’d lift her head and sniff for the bacon scent.

  “I understand the nickname is only whispered by museum staff.”

  “I don’t know her all that well,” Susan said. “We’ve met socially. She gives to both Community Servings and Jumpstart. As far as I know, she is both well-liked and respected in the art scene. She seems like a perfectly lovely woman.”

  “Tomorrow morning, I meet with her and the head of the museum board,” I said. “A man named Topper.”

  “Oh, no.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “It’s going to be hard not to ask.”

  “If he’s being haunted by the ghosts of Cary Grant and Constance Bennett?”

  I saluted her with my Sam Adams.

  “What could possibly go wrong?”

  “Hard to turn down Locke.”

  “How bad?”

  “The worst,” I said. “He said it could be weeks. Months at best.”

  “God.”

  I added a bit of sea salt and cracked pepper to the pan. As I worked, Susan walked over to my record player and slipped on a Sarah Vaughan album. In a Dutch oven, I’d already cooked two organic chicken breasts with heirloom tomatoes to serve over white beans. The beans came from a can. Everything else from the Boston Public Market. Living on the east end of town had widened my choices in the city. Besides a few small markets in Beacon Hill, I didn’t have many options on Marlborough Street. Less still after my apartment was destroyed by an arsonist.