Someone to Watch Over Me Read online

  THE SPENSER NOVELS

  Robert B. Parker’s Someone to Watch Over Me

  (by Ace Atkins)

  Robert B. Parker’s Angel Eyes

  (by Ace Atkins)

  Robert B. Parker’s Old Black Magic

  (by Ace Atkins)

  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 Fool’s Paradise

  (by Mike Lupica)

  Robert B. Parker’s The Bitterest Pill

  (by Reed Farrel Coleman)

  Robert B. Parker’s Colorblind

  (by Reed Farrel Coleman)

  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

  Robert B. Parker’s Grudge Match

  (by Mike Lupica)

  Robert B. Parker’s Blood Feud

  (by Mike Lupica)

  Spare Change

  Blue Screen

  Melancholy Baby

  Shrink Rap

  Perish Twice

  Family Honor

  THE COLE/HITCH WESTERNS

  Robert B. Parker’s Buckskin

  (by Robert Knott)

  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

  penguinrandomhouse.com

  Copyright © 2020 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.

  Title: Robert B. Parker’s someone to watch over me / Ace Atkins.

  Other titles: Someone to watch over me

  Description: New York : G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2020. | Series: The Spenser novels

  Identifiers: LCCN 2020042102 (print) | LCCN 2020042103 (ebook) | ISBN 9780525536857 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780525536871 (epub)

  Subjects: GSAFD: Mystery fiction. | Suspense fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3551.T49 R65 2020 (print) | LCC PS3551.T49 (ebook) | DDC 813/.54—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020042102

  LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020042103

  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.

  Cover art by Lisa Amoroso

  Cover images: (umbrella under rain) Lucadp / Shutterstock; (hook) Jeffrey Coolidge / The Image Bank / Getty Images

  pid_prh_5.6.1_c0_r0

  For Mel Farman:

  Keeper of Bob’s memory and Spenser’s spirit. A true friend.

  Contents

  Cover

  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

  Cha
pter 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

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  About the Authors

  1

  It was early evening and early summer, and my bay window was cracked open above Berkeley Street. I had a half-eaten turkey sub on my desk and the sports page from The Globe splayed out underneath. Dan Shaughnessy proclaimed Mookie Betts to be overrated. I’m sure many said the same thing about me. But I was pretty sure being overrated was better than being underrated. A mistake few made twice.

  I contemplated Mookie’s situation as I heard a knock on the anteroom door.

  “Second door on your left,” I said.

  Mattie Sullivan entered my office.

  “Still having trouble with the advertising firm?”

  “Bad advertising to list their own address wrong.”

  “Freakin’ morons,” Mattie said.

  Like me, Mattie suffered few fools. And as my occasional secretary, part-time assistant, and sleuthing apprentice, she didn’t take kindly to the two-person agency that had rooms down the hall. Mattie leaned into the doorframe. She’d grown into a tall girl with long limbs, long red hair, and a heart-shaped Irish face full of freckles. When she smiled, she could light up a room. But Mattie rarely smiled and wasn’t smiling now.

  “You need anything else today?” she said.

  “Nope.”

  “I paid the rent, deposited the checks, and talked to the painters about next week.”

  “What happens next week?”

  “They paint,” Mattie said. “This place hadn’t had a touch-up since 1982.”

  “What do you know about 1982?”

  “That’s the year my mother was born.”

  “Ouch.”

  “Yeah,” Mattie said. “Truth hurts, big guy.”

  Mattie hung in the doorway, green eyes lingering on me as I turned the page of the newspaper. I still bought a physical copy at the newsstand around the corner. I was old-fashioned that way. In fact, Susan reminded me I was old-fashioned in most ways, from my music to my movie choices. But who doesn’t enjoy a little Django Reinhardt before their Thin Man triple feature?

  “Something on your mind?” I said.

  “I don’t know.”

  I looked up from where I’d spread out the newspaper and reached for my coffee mug. Taking a sip, I realized it had grown cold. Mattie, having noted my expression, walked forward, plucked the mug from my hand, and dumped out the cold contents into the sink. She refilled the mug from the Mr. Coffee atop my file cabinet, slid it before me, and took a seat in one of my clients’ chairs.

  “Sugar?”

  “Nope.”

  “So there’s this girl.”

  “Okay.”

  “She’s a friend, but not a great friend,” she said. “Just the younger sister of a girl I know. She was a Gatey girl, too.”

  “Gatey girl?”

  “Gates of Heaven church in Southie,” Mattie said. “Christ. Keep up, Spenser.”

  I nodded and took a sip of coffee. Mattie demanded a keen mind and reflexes firing on all cylinders.

  “So this girl, her name is Chloe Turner by the way, not that it matters to the story, but there you are,” Mattie said, leaning forward from the chair. “Chloe comes to me because of the stuff I used to do in the neighborhood. You know, running favors for friends. Asking questions to the right people. Finding shit.”

  “Sleuthing.”

  “I call it finding shit out,” Mattie said. “But sure. Sleuthing. Chloe wanted me to sleuth for her.”

  “And what does she wish you to sleuth?”

  “Chloe lost her backpack and her laptop at some fancy- schmancy club off the Common,” she said. “And she wants it back.”

  “Sounds simple,” I said. “Why does she need to enlist your services?”

  “Because they wouldn’t let her back in,” Mattie said. “They threatened to call the cops if she didn’t leave. And Chloe had everything on that laptop, not to mention some personal shit in the bag.”

  “Personal shit is hard to come by.”

  “And so I went to the club and got the whole ‘fuck off’ thing from some guy working the door,” Mattie said. “Not only did they say they’d never heard of Chloe Turner, they told me that if I, or anyone connected to her, came back, they’d call the cops. How do you like that?”

  “Not at all,” I said. “What club?”

  “Place called the Blackstone Club,” Mattie said. “Down toward Chinatown in some crummy brick building. No sign. Just a big door and a buzzer. What kind of freakin’ club doesn’t have a sign?”

  “One that wishes to be elite and confidential,” I said, starting to stand. “Shall we?”

  “Sit down, Spenser,” Mattie said. “You know the rules. When you need help, you ask. When I need help, I ask.”

  “So what do you need?”

  “Advice.”

  “I am an open book of knowledge.”

  Mattie nodded. I nodded. I took a sip of coffee. It tasted much better hot, but I still missed the cream and sugar. Small steps.

  “Here’s what happened,” Mattie said. “Chloe doesn’t want to cause any trouble and, more than anything, doesn’t want to go to the cops. Her mother would go bullshit if she knew what Chloe’d been up to.”

  I leaned back from the desk. Outside, down on the street, I could hear the whine of an industrial drill and planks of wood tossed against the pavement. A car without a muffler passed and headed out of earshot. A symphony of the Back Bay.

  “Chloe knows a girl who knows a girl who promised her an easy five hundred bucks.”

  “To meet a man at the club?”

  “And give him a massage,” Mattie said. “Chloe says she was promised that was all there was to it.”

  “Had she ever met him?”

  “Nope.”

  “Did she have any expertise as a massage therapist?”

  “Christ, no,” Mattie said. “She’s just a kid.”

  “How old?”

  Mattie tossed her head to the side and leveled her eyes at me. “Fifteen.”

  I felt the hair raise up my neck. My stomach turned a bit.

  “I know,” Mattie said. “But part of what I promise is confidentiality.”

  “This sounds like a felony.”

  “Hold on,” Mattie said. “Only gets worse.”

  I listened.

  “Chloe says when she first got there, a woman met her at the club and gave her an envelope stuffed with cash,” Mattie said. “The woman told her the guy was some big-time executive hotshot. She didn’t need to speak unless spoken
to, had to wear this special outfit, pay attention to his feet.”

  “His feet.”

  “All creeps are into feet,” Mattie said. “Anyway, she goes in there, the room all dim with scented candles and all that. And there’s the man, laying on his back with a sheet covering the lower half of his body. Chloe says she was so nervous her hands were shaking. She starts to rub the man’s feet like she’d been told. The man makes some small talk with her. What’s your name? What music do you like? Do you have a boyfriend? All that kind of stuff. She said he was nice. And not bad-looking for an old dude. She said he was polite until things got weird.”

  “Massaging a grown man’s feet is the definition of weird.”

  “Chloe said she thought the whole thing was legit until at one point the man raised up, threw off the sheet, and started going to town on himself.”

  I felt my face flush. I wasn’t comfortable talking about such matters with Mattie. I remembered when she was fourteen, coming to see me with a collection of crumpled bills in the hope of finding her mother’s killer. She was tough as old boots but would always be a lost little girl to me.

  “Chloe said she just froze up,” Mattie said. “She couldn’t scream. She couldn’t talk. She couldn’t move. She just stood there as the man got finished with his business.”

  “Ick,” I said.

  “Yep,” Mattie said. “That’s when she bolted from the room and the club and left her clothes, her laptop inside that backpack. She doesn’t want any trouble. She doesn’t want to see that man again. All she wants is her stuff.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Let me help.”

  “Advice,” Mattie said. “I only want advice.”

  “I’d much rather assist.”

  “Maybe I shouldn’t have told you.”

  “You made the right move.”

  “You want to beat the hell out of this guy,” she said. “Don’t you?”

  “Chloe should file a complaint with the police.”

  “She can’t.”

  “Why?”