watched her.
'Trying to lose some weight?' Hawk said in a neutral voice.
'Yes. I have three or four pounds of disgusting fat that I want to get rid of.'
Hawk said, 'Un huh.'
'I know, maybe you can't see it, but it's there.'
Hawk looked at me.
'I've missed it too,' I said.
'And I'm a trained detective.'
'Remember where we are,' Susan said.
'I could have you both arrested for sexual harassment.'
'I counter with the charge of racial insensitivity,' Hawk said.
'Yes,' Susan said.
'That would be appropriate. Then we join forces against our common oppressor.'
They both turned and gazed at me.
'The white guy,' I said.
CHAPTER 5
Susan and I met Christopholous in the conference room upstairs, where board members and invited guests milled thirstily around the open bar.
'Please call me Jimmy,' Christopholous said.
'It's the English version of Demetrius. I try not to be too ethnic.'
'Christopholous kinda gives it away though,' I said.
He smiled.
'Well, all one can do is one's best,' he said.
'Thank you for agreeing to meet with us. I've not seen your black man.'
'He's been there,' I said.
'Really? He's very elusive.'
'So's your shadow,' I said.
'There's been no sign of him.'
'Perhaps this terrible business has frightened him away,' Christopholous said.
'Susan, you look as radiant as you always do.'
'It's the board meeting,' she said.
'I get so excited.'
'Of course,' he said and turned to an older woman in a flowered dress and took both her hands in his. Susan and I moved away.
'Trying times, Dodie, trying times. You look radiant, anyway, as you always do.'
We were in a meeting room upstairs from the theater having cocktails and buffet. The room was crowded with board members, members of the acting company, directors, stage managers, set designers, important guests, like me, and assorted kids from the caterer in tuxedo shirts and cummerbunds moving adroitly through the jam, passing trays of hors d'oeuvres. I saw the tall actress, who had been next to Craig Sampson. I smiled at her. She nodded.
'What's her name?' I said.
'Jocelyn,' Susan said.
'Jocelyn Colby.'
I got a beer from the bar set on a table in front of the windows.
Around the walls of the conference room were galleried posters of past theatrical productions: two swordsmen in Elizabethan dress; a partially dressed woman bound elegantly to a chair; the backlit outline of two people, heads close together, framed by a gigantic white moon; a white horse's head, nostrils distended, eyes wild, against a black background. The posters paraded in several rows along every wall. En masse they were diverse and yet the same; all had the theater poster look. I mused on what that was for a while until I had drunk my beer. Then I stopped thinking about the order and diversity of theatrical posters and, instead, thought about getting another beer. I decided in favor of it, and did.
'Do they usually have the actors come to the board meetings?'
I said with my new bottle of beer cold in my grip. I tried to hold it lightly so as not to warm it with my hand.
'There's usually a few to shmooze the board members. Tonight is special though.'
'Because I'm here?'
