'God, he hates her,' she said.
'His mother?'
'Yes,' Mimi shook her head again, and smiled without any pleasure.
'Blackie's a piece of work,' she said.
'Blackie?'
'Gordie's mother.'
'Why is she called Blackie?' I said. 'Her maiden name: Rose Mary Black,' Mimi said. 'Everybody always called her Blackie.'
'Jesus Christ,' I said.
'It's Felton,' I said.
Susan and Hawk and I sat at Susan's counter on Saturday morning, drinking coffee and eating whole-wheat bagels that Hawk had picked up at Fromaggio on his way over.
On the counter was an 8 1/2 X 11 brown manila envelope that Hawk had got from Belson before he made the bagel run. It contained a voiceprint matchup of the two phone messages and a tape of both messages side by side.
Susan took ajar of cherry preserves from the refrigerator under the counter and put it out with the cream cheese. She spread a vaporously thin layer of cream cheese on a small piece of bagel she'd broken off.
She dabbed a minuscule of preserve on it and took a small bite.
'It is, Susan,' Hawk said.
'Yes,' Susan said when she swallowed her morsel of bagel. 'It probably is.'
I stirred a spoonful of sugar into my second cup of coffee.
'It explains the symbolism,' I said. 'The red rose, the black women.
Rose Mary Black, aka Blackie.'
Susan carefully sliced a bagel in two and put both halves in her imported German toaster, which was wide enough to contain two bagel slices. She slid the toast lever down.
'I knew her first name was Rose,' Susan said. 'But he never mentioned his mother's last name.'
'Isn't that unusual?' I said.
'Not really, many patients talk of 'my wife,' 'my mother,' 'my father' particularly parents, whom the patient has never really thought of by their name.'
The toaster popped and Susan took the bagels out and put them on Hawk's plate.
'And he was having trouble with her, wasn't he?' I said.
Susan watched Hawk put cream cheese on his bagel. Like everything else Hawk did, it was done without wasted motion, without mistake, and there was exactly the right amount. When Hawk ate pizza he never got any on his tie.
'If he was in the grip of some sort of unresolved rage at his mother.'
Susan said, 'and his mother's name was Rose Mary Black, and there were other factors that I know, a man might in fact express that rage in a deflected manner on people who could appropriately symbolize Rose Mary Black.'
'Like black women,' Hawk said, 'and leave a rose.'
'Yes,' Susan said, 'and if the object of his rage was infinitely powerful, the rage would be overlaid with fear. And if the rage and fear were sexually inspired and sexually expressed, it might have to be in a kind of surrogation.'
'You mean, he might have to tie them up and rape them with a gun,' I said.
'Yes,' Susan said. She was drinking her coffee, holding the mug in both hands, watching me over the rim.
'Does Felton fit that kind of a profile?' I said.
Susan continued to look at me over the rim of her cup. She sipped a little decaffeinated coffee. She had a faux art clock that ran on a battery, on the coffee table in the living room, and its ticking was loud and metronomic. Hawk poured some more coffee into his cup and then added some to mine.
I looked at Susan. She looked at me and then closed her eyes.
'Yes,' she said. 'He fits it better than you can know.' I said, 'We've got a tape that Belson did a voiceprint on. One's the guy that called and said he was Red Rose and challenged me. The other came after the Jimmy Winston fiasco. Voiceprint says they're the same.'
Susan nodded. 'I'll listen,' she said.
I went to her stereo and put the tape in. Susan listened with her chin in her hand. I played the two conversations three times.
Susan still sat with her chin in her hand, staring at the tape machine.
Hawk and I waited. Susan blew her breath out in a short burst.
