'Professionally,' Susan said, 'I'm not at all sure that love, as such, is not simply a complex of human impulses: need, identification, possessiveness, fear of loneliness, impulse to replicate the family from which you sprang, sexual desire, anger, the desire to punish, the desire to be punished.'
I didn't say anything. The Cherokee had tinted glass and with the windows closed the interior was quiet and cool. There weren't many cars out on a Sunday midday in late March, and the hum of the car's passage was all there was for sound.
'On the other hand . . .' I said.
'On the other hand I love you so much I could swoon,' Susan said.
'Swoon?'
'Swoon.'
'And the fact that Dwayne feels swoonie over Chantel,' I said, 'means he's capable of forming healthier attachments than the one with Deegan.'
'I only said I was swoonie over you,' Susan said. 'I can't speak for Dwayne or Chantel. But the rest of it is right.'
'Chantel says he needs white approval,' I said.
'Yes, so a white male authority figure may even be more important to him than it would be to some,' Susan said.
'What do you recommend?'
'Let Chantel work on him,' Susan said. 'Let him think about what's happened to him, and let him come to it himself. You don't want him to feel pushed or he's very likely to clam up and if you push him hard enough you can push him right back to Deegan. Deegan says things Dwayne likes to hear. You keep telling him unpleasant stuff.'
'I keep telling him to grow up,' I said.
'And that he's risking jail, and that he can't read, and that he should testify against a man who makes Dwayne feel like he's more important than oxygen,' Susan said.
'Are you suggesting he doesn't enjoy that?'
'Only a suggestion,' Susan said.
We went off at the Allston/Cambridge exit and wove through the silliest exit ever devised to Soldiers Field Road.
I looked at my watch. Susan glanced at hers and then turned to look out at the red brick Harvard buildings.
'Two minutes faster than my way,' I said. She turned and smiled at me a smile of infinite sweetness.
'Shut up,' I said.
31
I was in Lt. Martin Quirk's office at Homicide. Quirk was there, and Frank Belson, and a young cop from Walford named Stuart Delaney, a former state cop named LeMaster, who was the Chief of the Taft U. police, and a guy from the Middlesex D.A.'s office named Arlett. Quirk was sitting square in his chair behind his desk, his forearms resting on the desktop, his thick hands motionless on his blotter. Belson sat in a straight chair, tipped back against the wall to Quirk's left, smoking a cheap narrow cigar, with his hat on and tilted down over his forehead. The rest of us ranged in straight chairs in a semicircle facing Quirk. Quirk was looking at me.
'Why, you are perhaps asking yourself,' Quirk said to me, 'did Lt. Quirk invite me to his office at this time with these other gentlemen?'
'I assumed you were holding a crime stoppers seminar and wanted me to lecture,' I said.
'Well, that's close,' Quirk said. 'Actually these gentlemen all wish to learn from you what the fuck is going on with Dwayne Woodcock?'
'So where do you come in?' I said.
'Because the Walford police asked me to pick you up and hold you for them, and I thought it might make more sense if we all got together and shared our thoughts on this matter.'
'You're Homicide,' I said.
Quirk looked at Belson. Belson looked up from under his hat brim.
'Man knows his cops, Marty,' Belson said.
'Who's dead?' I said.
'We'll ask the questions,' Arlett said to me, 'if you don't mind.'
I looked at Quirk. 'We'll ask the questions?' I said.
Quirk shook his head.
'Kid named Danny Davis,' Quirk said.
I felt a tickle of relief. It wasn't Dwayne.
'Lieutenant,' Arlett said, 'I'll conduct this interrogation.'
Quirk looked at him for a moment. Nothing appeared to change in Quirk's face, but the room seemed very quiet. Then Quirk looked back at me.
