Rose and Jane left as furtively as they’d come. They were hooked. I might pull it off. Jane hadn’t even kicked me.
“It’s going to work,” I said to Pam Shepard.
“Are they going to get hurt?”
“That’s my worry, not yours.”
“But I’m like the Judas goat if they are. They are trusting you because of me.”
We were driving back into Boston passing the outbound commuting traffic. “Somebody has to go down,” I said, “for the bank guard. It isn’t going to be you and that’s all you have to concentrate on.”
“Damnit, Spenser, am I selling them out?”
“Yes,” I said.
“You son of a bitch.”
“If you kick me in the groin while I’m driving a traffic accident might ensue.”
“I won’t do it. I’ll warn them now. As soon as I get home.”
“First, you don’t know how to reach them except through an ad in the paper, which you can’t do right now. Second, if you warn them you will screw yourself and your husband, whose troubles are as serious as yours and whose salvation is tied to selling out Rose and Jane.”
“What’s wrong? What’s the matter with Harvey? Are the kids okay?”
“Everyone’s okay at the moment. But Harv’s in hock to a loan shark. I didn’t want to tell you all this but you can’t trust me if I lie to you. You kept asking.”
“You have no right to manipulate me. Not even for my own good. You have not got that right maybe especially for my own good.”
“I know. That’s why I’m telling you. You’re better off not knowing, but you have the right to know and I don’t have the right to decide for you.”
“So what in hell is going on?”
I told her. By the time I got through we were heading down Boylston Street through Copley Square with the sun reflecting off the empty John Hancock Building and the fountain sparkling in the plaza. I left out only the part about Hawk shoving one of the kids. Paternalism is hard to shake.
“Good Jesus,” she said. “What the hell have we become.”
“You’ve become endangered species among other things. The only way out for you is to do what I say. That includes throwing Rose and Jane off the back of the sleigh.”
“I can’t… double-cross them. I know that sounds melodramatic but I don’t know how else to put it.”
“It’s better than saying you can’t betray them. But however you put it, you’re wrong. You’ve gotten yourself into a place where all the choices are lousy. But they seem clear. You’ve got kids that need a mother, you’ve got a husband that needs a wife. You’ve got a life and it needs you to live it. You’re a handsome intelligent broad in the middle of something that could still be a good life.” I turned left at Bonwit’s onto Berkeley Street. “Somebody has got to go inside for that old cop. And I won’t be crying if it’s Rose and Jane. They snuffed him like a candle when he got in their way. And if we can hook King Powers on the same line, I say we’ve done good.”
I turned right onto Marlborough Street and pulled into the curb by the hydrant in front of my apartment. We went up in silence. And we were silent when we got inside. The silence got awkward inside because it was pregnant with self-awareness. We were awkwardly aware that we were alone together in my apartment and that awareness hung between us as if Kate Millett had never been born. “I’ll make us some supper,” I said. “Want a drink first?” My voice was a little husky but I didn’t want to clear my throat. That would have been embarrassing, like an old Leon Errol movie.
“Are you having one?” she said.
“I’m having a beer.” My voice had gone from husky to hoarse. I coughed to conceal the fact that I was clearing it.
“I’ll have one too,” she said.
I got two cans of Utica Club cream ale out of the refrigerator.
“Glass?” I said.
“No, can’s fine,” she said.
“Ever try this,” I said. “Really very good. Since they stopped importing Amstel, I’ve been experimenting around.”
“It’s very nice,” she said.
“Want spaghetti?”
“Sure, that would be fine.”
I took a container of sauce from the freezer and ran it under hot water and popped the crimson block of frozen sauce out into a saucepan. I put the gas on very low under the pan, covered it and drank some Utica Club cream ale.
“When I was a kid, I remember being out in western Mass some and they used to advertise Utica Club with a little character made out of the U and the C. I think he was called Ukie.” I coughed again, and finished the beer. Pam Shepard was leaning her backside on one of the two counter stools in my kitchen, her legs straight out in front of her and slightly apart so that the light summer print dress she wore pulled tight over the tops of her thighs. I wondered if tumescent could be a noun. I am a tumescent? Sounded good. She sipped a little of the beer from the can.
