Everybody except Boc, the Authority Police Chief, hustled after her. Hawk and I watched them silently.
“Don’t pay attention to Albanese,” Boc said. “We need all the help we can get down here, and if you can keep these fucking maggots quiet, you’re not going to get any shit from us.”
Hawk nodded. He was still looking after Marge.
“Good to know,” he said.
Boc turned and went after the rest of them.
After maybe five minutes Jackie came back from the van. Her face was very tight.
“You asshole,” she said to Hawk. “She’s yanking me out of here. I don’t even know if we’re going to do the series.”
Hawk nodded. Jackie got her purse out of Hawk’s car, put her tape recorder in it, and went back to the van. She got in the van. It started up and pulled away. The Housing Authority car and the police car followed and Hawk and I were alone again in the middle of Double Deuce.
We looked at each other.
“How’d you know it was a Donna Karan dress,” I said.
CHAPTER 22
“Did you let her eat that bone on the couch?” Susan said.
It was 9:30 at night. I was reading Calvin and Hobbes in the morning edition of the Globe.
“Yeah,” I said.
“Why didn’t you stop her?”
“I didn’t notice,” I said. “Besides, why shouldn’t she eat a bone on the couch?”
“Because she gets bone juice all over my cushions,” Susan said. “How could you not notice?”
Answering questions like that had never proven fruitful. So I smiled ruefully and gave my head a beguiling twist and started back to Calvin and Hobbes. Then I would move to Tank McNamara, and finish with Doonesbury. I had my evening all planned out.
“It is not funny,” Susan said.
“No,” I said, “that was a rueful smile.”
“I’m serious,” she said. “My stuff means a lot to me.”
“I thought it was our stuff,” I said.
“You know what I mean. I care about it. You don’t.”
“I know,” I said. “I know that a lot of you goes into design and decor. It is part of your art. And the results are in fact artful. It’s just that preventing the dog getting bone juice on your cushions was sort of on the back burner. I was feeling like I could read the paper and relax my vigilance for a bit.”
“You were reading the comics,” Susan said and walked out of the living room. I looked at Pearl, she did not seem abashed. She was vigorously getting bone juice on the rug.
CHAPTER 23
I was in my office evaluating the health hazard of a third cup of coffee, compounded by the possibility of a donut. Outside my window it was overcast with the hard look of rain toward the river. A good day for coffee and donuts.
My office door opened, and there, radiant in a white raincoat and matching hat with a lot of blue polka dot showing at her neck, was Marge Eagen herself, the host of the number-one-rated local show in the country. My heart beat faster.
“Hello,” I said.
“I wasn’t sure whether to knock or not,” Marge Eagen said. She smiled beautifully. “I thought you might have a receptionist.”
“I did,” I said, “but she returned to her first love, neurosurgery, a while back and I haven’t bothered to replace her.”
Marge Eagen laughed delightedly. “I heard you were funny,” she said.
“Lot of people say that.”
“May I sit down?”
“Of course,” I said.
I nodded at the chair. She sat and glanced around my office.
“Great location,” she said. I didn’t comment.
“Is it as fascinating as it seems,” Marge Eagen said, “being a private detective?”
“Better than working,” I said.
“Oh, I’m sure,” she said, “that you work pretty damned hard.”
“So what can I do for you?” I said.
“My, my,” she said. “So businesslike.”
She had unbuttoned her shiny white raincoat and let it fall off her shoulders over the back of the chair. She had
