a kind of Nazi absolutism.”
“Yeah, she’s all of that. She’s some kind of masochist. Maybe that’s not quite the right term. But when she was tied up and gagged on the bed she liked it. Or at least it aroused her to be tied like that and have us there. She went crazy when Hawk searched her while she was tied.”
“I’m not sure masochist is the right word. But obviously she finds some connection between sex and helplessness and helplessness and humiliation and humiliation and pleasure. Most of us have conflicting tendencies toward aggression and passivity. If we have healthy childhoods and get through adolescence okay we tend to work them out. If we don’t, then we confuse them and tend to be like Kathie, who hasn’t worked out her passivity impulses.” Susan smiled. “Or you, who are quite aggressive.”
“But gallant,” I said. “How do you think Hawk will deal with her?” Susan said. “Hawk has no feelings,” I said. “But he has rules. If she fits one of his rules, he’ll treat her very well. If she doesn’t, he’ll treat her any way the mood strikes him.”
“Do you really think he has no feelings?”
“I have never seen any. He’s as good as anyone I ever saw at what he does. But he never seems happy or sad or frightened or elated. He never, in the twenty-some years I’ve known him, here and there, has shown any sign of love or compassion. He’s never been nervous. He’s never been mad.”
“Is he as good as you?” Susan was resting her chin on her folded hands and looking at me. “He might be,” I said. “He might be better.”
“He didn’t kill you last year on Cape Cod when he was supposed to. He must have felt something then.”
“I think he likes me, the way he likes wine, the way he doesn’t like gin. He preferred me to the guy he was working for. He sees me as a version of himself. And, somewhere in there, killing me on the say-so of a guy like Powers was in violation of one of the rules. I don’t know. I wouldn’t have killed him either.”
“Are you a version of him?”
“I got feelings,” I said. “I love.”
“Yes, you do,” Susan said. “And quite well too. Let us take this last bottle of champagne to the bedroom and lie down and drink it and continue the conversation and perhaps once more you would care to, as the kids at the high school say, do it.”
“Suze,” I said, “I’m a middle-aged man.”
“I know,” Susan said. “I see it as a challenge.” We went into the bedroom and lay close in the bed, sipping the champagne and watching the late movie in the air-conditioned darkness. Life may be flawed but sometimes things are just right. The late movie was The Magnificent Seven. When Steve McQueen looked at Eli Wallach and said, “We deal in lead, friend,” I said it along with him. “How many times have you seen this movie?” Susan asked. “Oh, I don’t know. Six, seven times, I guess. It’s on a lot of late shows in hotel rooms in a lot of cities.”
“How can you stand to watch it again?”
“It’s like watching a dance, or listening to music. It’s not plot, it’s pattern.” She laughed in the darkness. “Of course it is,” she said. “That’s the story of your life. What doesn’t matter. It’s how you look when you do it.”
“Not just how you look,” I said. “I know,” she said. “My champagne is gone. Do you think you are, if you’ll pardon the phrase, up for another transport of ecstasy?” I finished the last of my champagne. “With a little help,” I said, “from my friends.” She ran her hand lightly across my stomach. “I’m all the friend you’ve got, big fella.”
“All I need,” I said.
25
Next day Susan drove me to the airport. We stopped on the way in the hot bright summer morning at a Dunkin‘ Donut shop, and had coffee and two plain donuts apiece. “A night of ecstasy followed by a morning of delight,” I said, and bit into a donut. “Did William Powell take Myrna Loy to a Dunkin’ Donut shop?”
“He didn’t know enough,” I said. I raised my coffee cup toward her. She said, “Here’s looking at you, kid.” I said, “How’d you know what I was going to say?”
“Lucky guess,” she said. We were quiet on the ride to the airport. Susan was a terrible driver and I spent a lot of time stomping my right foot on the floorboards. When she stopped at the terminal she said, “I’m getting sick of doing this. How long this time?”
“Not long,” I said. “Maybe a week, no longer than the Olympic games.”
“You promised me London,” she said. “If you don’t make it back to pay off I’ll be really angry with you.” I kissed her on “I love you, Suze.” She said, “I love you too,” and I got out and went into the terminal. Two hours and twenty minutes later I was back in Montreal at the house near Henri Bourassa Boulevard. It was empty. There was O’Keefe’s ale in the refrigerator along with several bottles of champagne. Hawk had been shopping. I opened a bottle of O’Keefe’s and sat in the living room and watched some of the games on television. At about two-thirty a man knocked at the front door. I stuck my gun in my hip pocket, just in case, and answered. “Mr. Spenser?” The man was wearing a seersucker suit and a small-brimmed straw hat with a big blue band. He sounded American, although so did half the people in Canada. At the curb with the motor running was a Dodge Monaco with Quebec plates. “Yeah,” I said, very snappy. “I’m from Dixon Industries. I have an envelope for you, but first could I see some ID?” I showed him my PI license with my picture on it. I looked like one of the friends of Eddie Coyle. “Yeah,” he said, “that’s you.”
“It disappoints me too,” I said. He smiled automatically, gave me back my license and took a thick envelope out of his side coat pocket. It had my name on it, and the Dixon Industries logo up in the left-hand comer. I took the envelope. The man in the seersucker suit said, “Goodbye, have a nice day,” went back to his waiting Monaco, and drove off. I went in the house and opened the envelope. It was three sets of tickets for all the events at the Olympic stadium for the duration of the games. There was nothing else. Not even a preprinted card that said HAVE A NICE DAY. The world becomes impersonal. Hawk and Kathie returned while I was on my fourth O’Keefe’s. Hawk opened some champagne and poured a glass for Kathie and one for him. “Haw old Suze doing?” he asked. He sat on the couch, Kathie sat beside him. She didn’t say anything. “Fine. She said hello.”
“Dixon go along?”
“Yeah. I think it gave him another purpose. Something else to think about.”
