'You're taller,' Henry said. 'Settle for that.'
'Everybody's taller, for crissake.'
'Almost everybody,' Henry said. 'Susan called. Said to tell you that Brad was visiting at her house.'
I said, 'Thank you,' and walked past Henry and out through the health club.
The Central Artery was always problematic if you were in a hurry, and now that it was in the process of being disassembled and placed underground, it was less reliable than Dennis Rodman. I went up Atlantic Avenue as fast as the spillover from the Big Dig would let me. I went past the North Station on Causeway Street, deked down Lomansy Way, and went along Nashua Street past the Suffolk County Jail and the Spaulding Rehab Hospital. I ran the light at Leverett Circle, which annoyed several drivers, and I was loose and in an open field on Storrow Drive.
In one sense, Brad was Susan's problem. And Susan would, if given enough space, solve her own problems. On the other hand, Brad may have killed two people and while he probably was not as tough as Susan, he was a lot bigger. And she had called.
I pulled up in front of Susan's house twenty-one minutes after I had left the Harbor Health Club and parked and let myself in. The door to her waiting room was closed. I opened it and went in. There was a thin-faced woman reading a copy of The New Yorker in one of the waiting room chairs. She had rimless glasses and a pointy nose. The door to Susan's office was closed. The woman did not look up.
I said, 'Excuse me, what time is your appointmement?'
The woman looked at as if I had proposed sodomy.
'Twelve-fifty,' she said and returned huffily to studying 'Talk of the Town.'
It was 12:34. I sat in the chair opposite the door and waited. There was a white sound machine in one corner of the room and it hissed harmonically with the sound of conditioned air moving through the vents. Serenity. I looked at my watch. 12:35. I took some air in through my nose and let it out slowly. The sharpnosed woman didn't look up from The New Yorker, but she managed through body language to convey how boorish she thought I was to breathe deeply this close to the sepulchre. At 12:52 the door to Susan's office opened and a square jawed young man with longish hair came out, and made no eye contact with either me or Needle Nose. Susan was wearing a subdued gray suit. She saw me.
'Please come in, Adele,' she said to Eagle Beak. When Adele had put down her New Yorker and stalked into Susan's office, Susan said, 'I'll be with you in a moment.'
She closed the door and walked over to me.
'Pearl is with me in the office,' Susan said. 'Brad came this morning. He's upstairs. He said he had nowhere else to go. He said he was, quote, at his wit's end, unquote. He's unshaven. He appears exhausted. I think he's been sleeping in parks. When I left, he was asleep on my bed with all his clothes on.'
'How would you like me to handle it?' I said.
'As you think best. Today is my short day. Adele is my final patient.'
'I'll wait for you here,' I said. 'And we'll go up together.'
'Fine,' Susan said and turned back toward her office. With her hand on the doorknob she stopped for a moment and turned and looked at me.
'I'm all right with this,' she said.
'Good,' I said.
And she went into her office.
chapter forty-eight
SUSAN'S OFFICE WAS on the first floor of her house and her apartment was on the second. It was quarter to two when, with Adele stabilized for the weekend, and Pearl somewhat grumpily left behind on the couch in Susan's office, Susan and I went upstairs, and she unlocked her apartment door. There was a radio playing, and I could hear the shower running. Susan went to the kitchen and shut off the radio. Looking through Susan's open door I could see that the bathroom door was ajar. The shower stopped and after a moment the bathroom door opened a little wider.
'It's me,' Susan said.
The door opened fully and Brad came out with a towel wrapped inexpertly around his waist. His hair was wet and he was clean shaven. His skin was pale and sort of inelastic looking, and the hair on his chest was gray, but he hadn't gotten fat. He saw me and jumped about six inches. Not a bad vertical leap for a white Harvard guy.
'Jesus Christ,' he said. 'It's you.'
'Yes it is,' I said.
'You startled me,' he said. 'Lucky I had this towel on.'
'Get dressed,' I said.
'You bet,' he said. 'Suze, can you rustle me up a little grub? I'm totally famished.'
He went into Susan's bedroom and closed the door. Susan was still in the kitchen.
'I didn't know you rustled up grub,' I said.
'I don't.'
'I'll make some coffee,' I said.
'Fine.'
Susan sat on a stool at her kitchen counter and watched me assemble the coffee and water in Mr. Coffee.
