We were all quiet. The waiter came silently by and poured champagne into our glasses and returned the bottle to the ice bucket. It was a quiet room. The tables were spaced so that everyone had space around them. The conversation was muted. There was thick carpeting on the floors so that the waiters in tuxedos moved as silently as assassins among the patrons, their shirtfronts gleaming in the soft light.
“I can dig it,” I said.
CHAPTER 26
Belson called me at 6:30 in the morning while I was making coffee.
“Piece you gave us doesn’t check out,” he said.
“It didn’t kill the kid and her baby?”
“No.”
“Got a next of kin?” I said.
“No. Only way we ID’d her was that the kid was born at Boston City and they had a footprint.”
“Where’d she live?” I said.
“No address.”
“Baby’s father?”
“Don’t know.”
“Hot on the trail,” I said.
“You bet.”
“Well, she had to live somewhere.”
“Yeah.”
“And there had to be a father.”
“Yeah.”
“So I guess I’ll have to find him.”
“Sure,” Belson said and hung up the phone.
Susan was at the kitchen counter eating some kind of bran cereal with orange segments on it and drinking hot water with a wedge of lemon. Pearl sat on the floor, watching closely.
“The gun you took from the gang kids?”
“Yeah.” I put some cream in my coffee and two sugars. Susan was ready for the day. She had on a gray suit, and her thick black hair gleamed with ogalala nut oil or whatever she had washed it with.
“Full day?” I said.
She put her empty cereal bowl down for Pearl. “Patients all morning, and then I have my seminar at Tufts,” she said.
She stood up. I looked at her. I felt the same feeling I always felt when I looked at her. It was almost a way to monitor my existence. Like a pulse. If I looked at her and didn’t feel the feeling, I’d know I had died.
“Be home for supper?” she said.
“Depends,” I said. “If I find the guy who killed the kid and her baby, and Hawk and I get Double Deuce stabilized, I may be home by midafternoon.”
She leaned forward and kissed me. I patted her on the butt.
“You’ll not take it as a gesture of no-confidence should I go ahead and eat without you?” she said.
“You shrinks are a cynical lot,” I said.
Susan went downstairs to see patients. Pearl went to the door with her and then came back to supervise my breakfast. I was having a turkey cutlet sandwich on an onion roll with a lot of Heinz 57 sauce on it. I gave Pearl a bite.
“Hell of an improvement over bran and orange segments,” I said.
Pearl was too loyal to comment but I knew she agreed.
CHAPTER 27
I picked Erin Macklin up on Cardinal Road in front of the Garvey School. It was raining as she came down the stairs, and she was wearing a short green slicker over tan slacks. On her feet were low-cut L. L. Bean gum rubber boots with leather tops. She was bareheaded. She looked like somebody’s suburban housewife on her way to a Little League hockey game. The fact that she didn’t seem to be worried that her hair was getting wet, however, proved that she wasn’t somebody’s suburban housewife at all.
“Your friend is sitting alone at Double Deuce?” she said when she got in the car.
“He seems calm about it,” I said.
“Ah yes,” she said, “the ironist.”
“You know me that well on such brief notice?” I said.
