The tall blonde woman in the minimal dress got up from her table and walked toward the ladies' room. She walked as if she were balancing a book on her head and everyone were watching to see if she could do it.
'She went to the ladies' room,' Hawk said.
'Uh huh.'
'Which mean she will be coming back.'
'Stay alert,' I said.
Hawk drank some beer and ate two oysters and patted his lips with a linen napkin.
'So it ain't Haskell and it ain't Gavin, who you got in mind for it?' Hawk said.
'Well, it could be person or persons unknown,' I said.
'A perennial favorite,' Hawk said.
'Or it could be Sterling.'
'Wondered when you'd come 'round to him.'
'I'm not happy with it,' I said.
'Don't blame you,' Hawk said.
'How could a guy that Susan would marry kill his ex-wife and cut out her tongue?' I said.
'Well, Susan seen something in him,' Hawk said.
The white dress paraded back from the ladies' room. We watched her, listening for a flourish of trumpets. She was listening too.
'You've been talking to Rachel Wallace,' I said after the blonde had sat down.
'We had a drink couple weeks back,' Hawk said. 'Faculty club at Taft.'
I had a moment of quiet contentment as I imagined Hawk at the Taft University Faculty Club.
'And she shared her theory,' I said, 'that Susan is drawn to men whose faults appeal to her.'
'Would explain you,' Hawk said.
I drank some beer and looked out the window at the tops of city buildings arranged appealingly across the line of sight.
'You take the scenario I painted for Gavin,' I said, 'of why he or Haskell would want to kill Carla Quagliozzi, it would work pretty well for Sterling too, if he feared she might tell. The cut tongue could be a message to Gavin.'
'But he got a secret, why does he ask you to help him with the harassment suit?'
'Because he was afraid it would shed too much light on his life and the other stuff would show.'
'So why didn't he just flash the nude pictures to Jeanette Ronan's hubby?' Hawk said. 'That would stop the harassment suit.'
'Chivalry?'
'A dude who will kill a woman and cut out her tongue?'
I shrugged.
'You show the pictures to Judge Ronan?' Hawk said.
'Jeannette,' I said.
''Cause you didn't want to get her in trouble,' Hawk said.
'I figured she'd find a way to call it off.'
'You soft hearted for a guy with no neck.'
'I have a perfectly good neck,' I said. 'I just wear my collars high, like Tom Wolfe.'
'Sure,' Hawk said. 'So what you going to do now?'
I shook my head.
'I have no idea,' I said.
chapter forty-five
I WAS SITTING ON a round bench with Susan in the center space of the Chestnut Hill Mall, which was swankier than Ivana Trump. There were several shopping bags around me on the floor, each of which had things in them that Susan had bought and I carried.
'Do you like that white silk jacket?' Susan said.
'Breathtaking.'
'And you don't think it makes me look fat?'
'No I don't.'
I had learned over the years not to give smartass answers to the kinds of dumb questions Susan asked when she shopped. It was nothing she could help, and no amount of smart talk on my part could dissuade her from it.
