Hawk said, 'Sean on his way to a costume party, you think?'
'I told you, he's a computer geek,' I said. 'To him that's dress-for-success.'
We loitered in the hall another twenty minutes, while Sean Reilly practiced his black arts. Hawk took the opportunity to brush up on his surveillance skills by watching the receptionist in the design office across the hall.
'Are you objectifying that young woman?' I said.
'Absolutely not,' Hawk said. 'I thinking about her with her clothes off.'
'Oh,' I said. 'No problem there.'
My office door opened, Reilly came out, carrying his ugly briefcase.
'Files are open. Bill's on your desk,' he said and walked off down the corridor.
'Nice talking to you,' Hawk murmured.
We went back into the office and I sat down at my computer. I put in the hard disk copy I had made and clicked open a folder marked 'Addresses.' It blossomed before me as if kissed by a summer rain. Susan's address was there, and mine, and Carla Quagliozzi and someone named Lisa Coolidge, who may or may not have been worried about being another notch on Brad's gun, and a number of people whose names meant nothing to me. And Richard Gavin.
'I go see Carla Quagliozzi,' I said to Hawk, who was still leaning back in my chair with his feet up and his eyes closed. Hawk could sit motionless, as far as I knew, for days.
'She's the president of Civil Streets. And Richard Gavin shows up and leans on me. I get a list of directors of Civil Streets from the AG's office and Richard is on it. We open up Sterling's address book and there's Richard.'
'Say what he does?' Hawk said.
'Apparently he's a lawyer.'
'Oh good,' Hawk said.
'Yeah, not many of them around,' I said.
I went back to the computer. Jeanette Ronan was there and all the other women who were alleging sexual harassment. There was a woman named Buffy, no last name, there were a number of women. I took some notes.
When I finished with the addresses, I closed them and opened a folder titled 'Finance.' Some of it was simple. There was a list of names under the heading: Monthly Nut. The name Buffy was listed and beside it $5,000/mo.
Cask and Carafe, $600/mo.
Matorian Realty, $1,100/mo.
Import Credit, $575/mo.
DePaul Federal, $4,000/mo.
Foxwood School, $22,000/year.
Then there was a notation, 'Galapalooza-see blue disk.'
'So why would he bother to lock this information,' I said.
'What's a blue disk?' Hawk said.
'No idea,' I said.
'Maybe stuff on blue disk was on this disk once,' Hawk said. 'And he coded it. Then later on he change it onto the blue disk and didn't take the code off.'
'Be nice if we had the blue disk,' I said.
'Be nice if we had lunch,' Hawk said.
'Well, hell,' I said. 'There's something we can find.'
And we did.
chapter twenty-five
SUSAN AND I went up to Essex and had some fried clams at a place called Farnham's. We got the clams, and some onion rings to go, and ate them in the car looking out over the tidal marshes toward Ipswich Bay. It was still raining. And it was cold enough to leave the car running and the heater on low. I had brought with me some Blue Moon Belgian White Ale in a cooler, and a jar of tartar sauce. Farnham's sold beer and they gave you little cups of tartar sauce for free. But Blue Moon Belgian White was a little exotic for Farnham's, and it always took too many little cups for the proper clam-to-tartar-sauce ratio. Susan watched me as I arranged the tartar sauce and the Belgian White, to be ready at hand.
'You don't leave much to chance, do you?' she said.
'Proper provisioning is the mark of a good eater,' I said.
I had a large order of clams. Susan had chosen the small. We shared an order of rings. Sharing with Susan was always good because she consumed slowly and not too much. We ate for a time in silence. The evening had darkened and the windshield wipers were off so that we couldn't see much of the scenery and what we could see was blurred. But the lights from the clam shack made dark crystal patterns out of the rain that sluiced on the windshield, and the steady sound of the rain made the dark interior of the car seem like the perfect refuge.
