“He know you’re telling me this?” I said.
“No.”
“You there too?” I said.
“I will be.”
“See you there,” I said.
He hung up. I stood for a moment listening to the empty sound of the incompleted circuit. Then I hung up too. Susan was sitting on the bed with her back against the headboard and her knees hugged up to her chest. She stared at her kneecaps. I reached over with my right hand and softly massaged the back of her neck.
“Worse and worse,” she said.
I was quiet. She reached behind her neck with her left hand and took my right and held it against her cheek.
“You and me, babe,” I said.
She nodded, holding my hand as hard as she could.
CHAPTER 48
AN ASIAN MAN ANSWERED HUGH DIXON’S DOOR. Without any hesitation he said, “Come in, Mr. Spenser,” and I stepped into Dixon’s baronial foyer. It was as I remembered. Polished stone floor, a grand piano in the center. There aren’t that many foyers big enough for a grand piano. The Trump Tower was the only other one I’d seen in recent memory.
“I’ll tell Mr. Dixon you’re here,” the Asian man said, like I dropped in regularly and he’d seen me since 1976.
“Thank you.”
He was gone maybe ninety seconds and came back and said, “This way, please.” It wasn’t the terrace this time, it was the study, or library, or office, or whatever people in Dixon’s income bracket called it. Bookshelves, leather furniture, Oriental rugs, a huge and ornately carved mahogany table with a phone on it and a green banker’s lamp. Behind it Dixon sat in his wheelchair.
“It’s good to see you again,” he said when I came in. The Asian man left silently.
“I need help, sir.”
Dixon nodded his head toward one of the leather chairs. “Sit,” he said.
“I’m afraid I might not find my way out,” I said. “I’ve lived in places smaller than that chair.”
“As you wish,” he said. “What do you need?”
Dixon looked better than he had eight years back. His face was calmer, his eyes had less ferocity in them, and more life. But his massive upper body still loomed in profound stillness in the wheelchair as it had since the bomb blast took his legs and family in London.
“I need money,” I said. “A lot.”
Dixon nodded. His head was grayer than I remembered. “Easy,” he said. “I have more of that than almost anything else.”
“It is better that you not know why,” I said.
“Don’t care,” Dixon said. “When you have little else to care about, you care about yourself, or try to. You care about your word, things like that.”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
“I told you if you ever needed help I’d give it to you. You and the black man.”
“Yes, sir, in Montreal.”
“Is the black man still alive,” Dixon said.
“Yes, sir, he’s in this too. The money is for both of us.”
“How much?” Dixon said.
“Ten thousand dollars,” I said.
Dixon nodded. “Will you have a drink?” he said.
The Asian man had come in. He went to a sideboard and brought a tray from it to Dixon. On the tray was a cut-glass decanter, and two brandy snifters.
“Sure,” I said.
The Asian man poured two glasses of brandy and gave me one. He gave the other to Dixon and left the decanter on his desk.
“Lin,” Dixon said, “I want ten thousand dollars in”-he looked at me-“small bills?”
“Tens and twenties and hundreds,” I said.
Dixon nodded and said, to Lin, “To go.” Lin left. Dixon and I drank some brandy.
“I can’t pay you back, sir,” I said.
“You may or may not be able to,” Dixon said. “I don’t expect you to return the money.”
