'There's bad taste everywhere,' I said.
'You going to keep doing it.'
'Yes. I don't like that kid being involved in something like this.'
'Sherry?'
'Yes.'
Hawk smiled again. 'Thought you wouldn't,' he said. 'What kind of shape you in?'
I shrugged. Hawk drank some Dos Equis beer.
'People trying to kill you, you got be able to concentrate.'
I nodded.
'You care if somebody blow you away?'
I watched the bubbles rise in my beer glass. 'No,' I said.
Hawk nodded. The waitress brought us our food. Hawk ordered another Dos Equis. The waitress looked at me. I shook my head. She went away. The room was half empty and not very noisy. I could feel the weight of Hawk's impassive stare. The waitress brought him his beer. He poured half of it into his glass and watched the head form and then drank a swallow and put the glass down.
Looking at Hawk, I knew why he frightened people. The force in his dark eyes was intensified by the absence of any expression.
'You better move on from there,' Hawk said. 'See a shrink, read a book, join a church, talk with me. I don't give a fuck how you do it. That your problem. But you don't move on, you gonna get flushed.'
I sat motionless and didn't want my food. The beer was going flat in my glass.
'And something I won't do is try to explain to Susan how I let that happen.' Hawk said. 'Or Paul.'
I nodded.
Hawk said, 'You want your lunch?'
'No.'
'Hand it over here,' Hawk said.
I passed him my untouched plate.
'I got a date tonight,' I said.
Hawk looked up and smiled a wide smile. 'That's a start,' he said.
I watched him put away my lunch. 'How come you know this stuff,' I said.
'Easy when it not happening to you,' he said.
'It is not happening to a lot of people, but they don't know things you know.'
'I know what I need to know, babe. Sort of a natural rhythm.'
Linda Thomas was five minutes late. Early by the standard Susan had set. She was five foot five and black- haired with eyes that were neither green nor brown but both at different times. She was slim and small-breasted and big eyed with a wide mouth and, especially around the cheekbones, she looked a little like Susan. She was wearing a gray suit with a red print blouse and a kind of full bow at the neck that vaguely suggested a necktie. The print of the blouse was small.
'I'm wearing my power outfit,' she said, and smiled and put out her hand. I stood and shook her hand and held her chair and she sat.
'Very professional,' I said, 'small-print blouse and all.'
'Career,' she said, 'onward, upward. Tell me a little about yourself.'
I did, and as I talked I discovered that I was telling her more about myself than I had expected to. And more about Susan and our estrangement. By seven o'clock in the stillbright summer evening we were sitting on the grass beside the swan boat pond in the Public Garden leaning our backs against each other as we talked, only very slightly drunk, watching somebody's German short-haired pointer hunt the area, scattering pigeons and treeing squirrels.
'Funny,' Linda said, 'having a drink with a detective I thought we'd spend the evening talking about crime and instead we spend it talking about love.'
'Yes,' I said. 'I'm a little surprised at that myself.'
'That you'd talk so much about love?' Linda said.
'That I'd talk so much about myself.'
'You're very open,' she said.
'Apparently. But enough about me. Let's talk about you. What do you think of me?'
She laughed. 'I think that Susan is crazy.'
'Or I am. Is there someone in your life?'
Linda said, 'I'm separated from my second husband. Almost a year. We see each other and maybe it will work out. But I live alone right now. We've been married seven years.'
