“Sure,” I said.
An hour and a half later Susan was wearing a vibrant blue blouse and a black skirt and we were sitting across from each other at a table in Toscano Restaurant eating tortellini and drinking some white wine, for lunch.
“Did you hear anything from the police?” Susan said. “About Jill?”
“No,” I said. “Not about Jill.”
I broke off a piece of bread and ate it. “Wilfred Pomeroy killed himself.”
“The one Jill was married to?”
“Yeah. Came down to Boston, left a note for me, and drove off a pier.”
“Why?”
“Press got hold of his story,” I said. “He couldn’t stand it, I guess. As if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen.”
“Maybe,” she said. “And maybe it was his chance to make the beau geste, to die for her, rather than let his life be used against her.”
“And a chance to say, simultaneously, See how I loved you, see what you missed, see what you made me do. ”
“Suicide is often, see what you made me do,” Susan said. “It is often anger coupled with despair.” I nodded. Susan nibbled on one of the tortellini. She was the only person I knew who could eat one tortellini in several bites.
“Is tortellini better than sex?” she said.
“Not in your case,” I said. “If you eat only one at a time of tortellini, are you eating a tortellenum?”
“You’ll have to ask an Italian,” Susan said. “I can barely conjugate goyim.”
We were quiet for a time. Concentrating on the food, sipping our wine. As always when I was with her, I could feel her across the table, the way one can feel heat, a tangible connection, silent, invisible, and realer than the pasta.
“Poor man,” Susan said.
“Yeah.”
“Will you find her, you think?”
“Yeah,” I said.
Susan smiled at me and the heat thickened. “Yes,” she said, and leaned across the table and put her hand on top of mine, “you will.”
Chapter 33
AFTER lunch I dropped Susan at Harvard, where she taught a once-a-week seminar on analytic psychotherapy.
“You’re going to stumble into the classroom reeking of white wine?” I said.
“I’ll buy some Sen-Sen,” Susan said.
“You consumed nearly an ounce,” I said, “straight.”
“A slave to Bacchus,” she said. “Drive carefully.”
She got out and I watched her walk away, until she was out of sight.
“Hot damn,” I said aloud, and pulled out into traffic.
I went through Harvard Square and down to the river, and across and onto the Mass. Pike. In about an hour and forty-five minutes I was in Waymark again. It took me a couple of tries but I found the road leading into Pomeroy’s cabin. There had been snow here, that we hadn’t gotten in eastern Mass., and I had to shift into four- wheel drive to get the Cherokee down the rutted road.
The cabin door was locked when I got there, and inside I heard the dogs bark. I knocked just to be proper and when no one answered but the dogs I backed off and kicked the door in. The dogs barked hysterically as the door splintered in, and then came boiling out past me into the yard. They stopped barking and began circling hurriedly until they each found the proper spot and relieved themselves, a lot. Inside the cabin there was a bowl on the floor half full of water, and another, larger bowl that was empty. I found a 25-pound sack of dry dog food and poured some into the bowl and took the rest out and put it in the back of the Cherokee. Finished with their business, the dogs hurried indoors and gathered at the food bowl. They went in sequence, one after another until all three were eating at once. While they ate I found some clothesline in the cabin and fashioned three leashes. When they were done I looped my leashes around their necks and took them to the car. They didn’t leap in easily, like the dogs in station wagon commercials. They had to be boosted, one after the other, into the back seat. Once they were in I unlooped the rope and dropped it on the floor of the back seat, closed the back door, got in front and pulled out of there.
On the paved and plowed highway I shifted out of four-wheel drive and cruised down to police headquarters. The patrol car was parked outside. It looked like a cop car designed by Mr. Blackwell. I left the dogs in the Cherokee and went on in to see Phillips.
He was behind his desk, his cowboy boots up on the desk top, reading a copy of Soldier of Fortune. He looked up when I came in, and it took him a minute to place me.
“You went out and hassled him, didn’t you?” I said.
Phillips was frowning, trying to remember who I was.
“Huh?” he said.
