'Exactly,' she said.
'Another goddamned Susan.'
'You knew her?'
Jocelyn shook her head.
'But it had to be someone else, didn't it?'
'He adored me,' she said, 'until some bitch got her claws into him.'
'So you had to follow him around, see who it was.'
Jocelyn nodded vigorously.
'And to be near him. To be able to look at him even if only from afar. To be there for him if he ever needed me.'
'Nothing wrong with making him a little uncomfortable, the sonovabitch,' I said.
'The bastard,' Jocelyn said.
'Ever find out who the Susan was?' I said.
'I never caught them,' Jocelyn said.
'But I had my suspicions.
The way they talked together, the way she looked at him. How she'd leave early from a board meeting or come late to a show case.
And he wouldn't be in his office, the way she wasn't always where she said she'd be. I had my suspicions.'
My heart felt like a stone in my chest. I saw where we were going.
'Rikki Wu,' I said.
'Absolutely,' Jocelyn said.
'She had her hooks into him down to the bone.'
'So you made an anonymous call,' I said.
She looked a little surprised.
'Like the kind you made to Susan about me,' I said.
She looked more surprised.
'You called Lonnie Wu and hinted his wife was fooling around.'
'She had to be stopped,' Jocelyn said.
'He was everything I ever wanted.'
The phrase was like a password. Her eyes were bright and her face had a mild flush to it. The tip of her tongue trembled on her lower lip. A lot of he's had been everything she ever wanted. I wasn't even sure she knew who this he was as she spoke.
'Jesus Christ,' Hawk said behind me.
Without turning I nodded yes.
'So Lonnie looked into it and found out you were right. His wife was fooling around, but not with Christopholous. Who was she balling, Hawk?'
'Craig Sampson,' Hawk said behind me.
'Bingo,' I said.
'So Lonnie send one of the kids up,' Hawk said, 'and had him sloped.'
'Just as he launched into a chorus of' Lucky in Love,'
' I said.
'Lonnie must have liked the symbolism.'
'Better than Sampson did,' Hawk said.
The room was quiet. The three of us stood looking at Jocelyn.
Outside there was no more daylight. In the darkened room only Jocelyn's face was lit by the bedside lamp. I looked at it for a long time. Pretty in a blurred sort of way, not leading-lady looks, someone to play the maid, maybe, the gangster's girlfriend. Not very old, not very smart. Innocuous, mostly empty, an idle face upon whose blank facade life had etched no hint of experience. She had noticed nothing tangible. She had lived a life of cliched fixations.
If she felt anything about the way things had worked out, she didn't feel it very deeply. Even her obsessions seemed shallow… She heaved a slow sigh.
'You know what's so tragic?' she said.
'After all I've done, all I've been through, I'm still alone.'
I didn't say anything. There wasn't anything to say. I just looked at her vapid, empty, uncomprehending face, bottomless in its self absorption a monster's face.
