'And I know you will protect me,' she said.
'Yeah,' Hawk said.
'We will.'
'That's us,' Vinnie said.
'To serve and protect. Can we get in out of the fucking rain?'
'Yes,' Mei Ling said.
'I would like that too.'
CHAPTER 32
'I have something I want you to hear,' Susan said.
I came from her kitchen into her living room, upstairs from her office. Susan's last patient had finished his fifty minutes. The early winter darkness had settled against the windows. There was a fire in her fireplace, courtesy of me, which was the only time a fire ever happened there. Pearl had been fed and was asleep on the floor in front of the fire. A Brunswick stew simmered in Susan's kitchen, courtesy of me, which was the only time a Brunswick stew ever happened there. I was drinking a bottle of Rolling Rock. Susan had some red wine.
'Listen,' Susan said, and pressed the playback button on her answering machine.
A voice said, 'Dr. Silverman, this is Angela Trickett…'
Susan said, 'Nope,' and hit the fast forward. She let it run for a moment and hit it again.
A voice said, 'Susan, it's Gwenn…'
'Nope.' Fast forward.
'This next one is it.'
'Dr. Silverman. This will be hard to hear, maybe, but you need to know. Your boyfriend is not faithful to you. I know this from personal experience, which I regret. But you have the right to know. I am not the first one.'
There was a pause, then the sound of the phone hanging up.
Susan hit the stop button and looked at me.
I looked sheepishly at her.
'That damned Madonna,' I said.
'Can't keep her mouth shut.'
Susan smiled.
'I thought I recognized the voice.'
'Play it again,' I said.
Susan did. We listened.
'Again,' I said.
We listened.
'Jocelyn Colby,' I said.
'My God,' Susan said, 'I think you're right.'
'I'm right,' I said.
'Then there's something else. She has called me two or three times asking if you were there, saying that she'd expected to see you, but you weren't where you were supposed to be.'
'What the hell does that mean?' I said.
'Well, first of all, I'm assuming that you've not been balling Jocelyn Colby.'
'This is true,' I said.
'So she's lying to make me think you're unfaithful. Calling me up looking for you was probably a way of planting suspicion.
'Well, where is he?' I was supposed to say to myself. In fact, since you are often irregular in your hours, I never thought anything about it, and since she had no message for you, I never bothered to say anything.'
'She ever speak to you direct?'
'No, always on the machine. I assume she called during office hours, knowing I wouldn't pick up.'
My beer was gone. I went to the kitchen and opened another bottle, looked at my stew, poured a little of the beer into it, gave it a stir, and went back into the living room. Susan was sitting on the couch with her shoes off and her feet tucked under her. She held her wine glass in both hands and stared over the rim of it into the fire. I sat beside her on the couch.
'So why is she doing this?' Susan said.
'Last time I saw her she was mad at me, because I told her no one was following her.'
'And?'
