The light outside the window was getting gray, and I could hear the wind picking up. Pearl looked uneasy, and her eyes followed me in even small movements.
'I been shrunk so much my skin's about to pucker,' Paul said. 'I know what's happening to me. I know why I feel like I do, and now I need tocome to terms with it. But it still hurts just as if I didn't understand it.'
'And when we find her?' I said.
The reminiscent shrug again.
'Getting past that takes more than understanding,' I said.
'Yeah?' Paul said. 'How about heavy drugs?'
'Always an option,' I said.
A few drops of rain splattered heavily against the window. Pearl's ears went up and she stared at the window, then glanced quickly toward me. I put my hand on her shoulder and left it there. Outside it had gotten quite dark.
'You mean will, don't you?' Paul said.
'Yeah.'
'You mean self-control.'
'Yeah.'
Paul turned slowly away from the window and looked at me seriously. His hands were still in his pockets. Behind him the fat raindrops were spat tering more often against the glass, and the wind was rattling the window and skittering leaves across the blacktop in the parking lot among the economy cars and trucks with hunting caps on them.
'Heavy drugs would be easier,' he said.
'I know,' I said.
Outside, the storm came with a rush, driven by wind and slashed by lightning. It chattered against the window, and when the thunder followed,
Pearl sat bolt upright and leaned against me and swallowed hard.
We were quiet inside the cheap motel room listening to the storm in the gathering darkness.
CHAPTER 20
HE was aging. He still carried himself with the Oeatricality he'd always had, as if there were an audience watching his every move, and he was play ing to it. But he had gotten smaller, and his cheekbones had become more prominent, and his hair had thinned, though most of it was still black.
We were sitting in his office thirty-five floors up at the lower end of
State Street. Behind Broz, through the rain-blurred picture window that covered that whole wall, I could see the harbor. The rain that had started yesterday in Lenox had followed us back, and had been slanting in on Boston uninterrupted for nearly twenty hours.
Joe was wearing a black suit with a matching vest. His shirt was white with cutaway collar, and he wore a gray and white striped tie with a big Windsor knot. Along the left wall was a full bar, complete with brass rail. Leaning against the bar with his elbows resting was Vinnie Morris.
'Usually,' Joe was saying, 'you are in the way, and it surprises me to this fucking moment that I haven't had someone hack you.'
He had a deep phony voice, like the guys that call up and give you a recorded sales pitch on the phone. He spoke as if diction were hard for him and he had to be careful not to speak badly.
'Everyone makes mistakes,' I said.
'And every time I talk to you and listen to your smart mouth it surprises me more.' He leaned back in his high-backed blue leather chair and clasped his hands behind his head. 'This time we might have a common interest.'
'I'd hate to think so,' I said.
'Spenser,' Vinnie Morris said from the bar, 'we're trying to work something out. Whyn't you button it up a little bit.'
'We could take a different approach,' Joe said.
'Like Gerry did,' I said.
'Gerry's got a temper,' Joe said. 'Who worth his salt don't have a temper?
Huh? Tell me that. Guy's going to inherit this.' Joe made an inclusive mo tion with his right hand. 'Guy's got to have some pepper. Right, Vinnie?'
'Like you, Joe.'
'That's right. I always had the fucking pepper. People knew it. Kept them in line. They knew I wouldn't back off. And they know Gerry's a piece of the same work.'
Joe had unlaced his hands from behind his head and placed them flat on the desk where he was leaning over them, looking at me hard when he talked-a picture of intensity. But there was nothing there. It was a performance. Broz didn't believe it anymore. Vinnie and I never had.
Joe was silent for a minute, leaning forward over his desk, staring at me.
