Her voice was calm and pleasant and implacable. Occasionally she raised her coffee cup with both hands and took a sip.
'We're maybe not married anymore, sure, but hell, we're still family.'
'No, Brad, we're not family. That's what divorce means.'
'We meant something to one another, Suzuki. We meant quite a lot.'
'Brad, think about this for a moment. There was a reason why I divorced you.'
'Well, sure, I made some mistakes.'
'We both did, but finally after all that is taken into account, and to oversimplify a little perhaps, for effect, there's more to it than that. I divorced you because I didn't like you.'
Brad straightened as if he'd been stuck with a pin. He frowned and opened his mouth and closed it and opened it again and said, 'I can't believe you said that.'
'One of the biggest problems you have, Brad,' Susan said, 'is you can only believe what you want to or need to. I didn't like you. I don't like you. The first time you came to see me I thought you were asking for help and I felt enough guilt to try to get you help.'
'Him?' Brad said.
'Now I realize you were asking me for money,' Susan said. 'But I was not sufficiently, ah, evolved, and I misunderstood. I tried to save you.'
'By sending me him? Thanks a lot.'
'It was my mistake and it is my responsibility that he's involved with you. But I'm not going to compound that mistake by lying to you or to myself.'
'What are you saying?'
'I'm saying that when you have finished your coffee and we're through talking, you'll have to leave.'
'And go where?'
'Probably to hell.'
'And you don't care?'
'You'll get there anyway,' Susan said. 'Whatever I do.'
'That's cold, Sue, that's really cold.'
'Yes,' she said.
'I'm just trying to stay alive, Susie.'
'I wish you success,' Susan said.
'And what happens if I won't leave? Your bully boy throws me out?'
I smiled courteously.
'You'll have to leave,' Susan said.
'Well, let me tell you right, damned, now, Suzie Qu-sie, I've dealt with tougher guys than him.'
'There's no need to put it to the test,' Susan said. 'I'll simply call the police.'
'Susan, for God's sake, I can't let the cops find me. If I have to leave here, I've got no place to go. If they find me, they'll kill me.'
'The cops?'
'Of course not.'
'Who?'
She said it so gently, and it slipped into the flow of the argument so easily that Brad answered it before he knew he'd been asked.
'Wechsler and Gavin,' he said in the exasperated tone one uses to explain the obvious to an idiot. Susan was looking at him over the rim of her cup. She sipped a little of the whisky-laced coffee and then slowly lowered the cup, and sat back a little.
'Why?'
'Why for crissake…'
In mid-sentence Brad realized that he had said too much. He stopped and shut his mouth and his face had a set look to it.
'Why are Gavin and Wechsler after you?'
Brad shook his head. Susan was silent, waiting. Brad tried to match her silence but he couldn't.
'They think I got something they want,' he said.
'What?'
Brad clamped his mouth shut and shook his head.
Susan waited. Brad shook his head. Susan looked at me.
'Would you like to contribute?' she said.
