“Because I’m so debonair?”
“Because KC is a cliche. For whatever reasons, she needs a knight to gallop in and save her, and if it’s a debonair one, so much the better.”
“My strength is as the strength of ten…”
“I know,” Susan said. “What did you promise her.”
“What makes you think I promised her anything?”
“Because I have been with you for a very long time, Sir Percival. What did you promise her.”
“That I’d make sure he left her alone.”
“Perfect,” Susan said. “What are you going to do?”
“I spoke with him once,” I said.
“And it didn’t take,” Susan said. “How vigorous are you prepared to be?”
“I gave my word,” I said.
“Perhaps Hawk,” Susan said.
“No. Hawk didn’t give his word. I gave mine. I can’t ask him to do something because I don’t want to do it.”
“No,” Susan said, “I know you can’t.”
We were silent. Pearl put both front paws on the edge of the counter and gazed at the food. I gave her an egg roll and she dropped down and dashed to the couch to eat it.
“Vincent must be in the grip of his own pathologies,” Susan said. “You are able to frighten most people off.”
“I know.”
“You won’t kill him,” Susan said.
It wasn’t a question.
“No.”
“Perhaps you and Hawk could broach the subject to him together.”
I nodded.
“Many white men are more afraid of black men than they are of other whites,” I said. “If he’s one of them we could exploit his racism.”
“My thought exactly,” Susan said.
“Can you do anything to help KC?”
“You mean professionally?”
“Whatever. She sure as hell needs something.”
“I can’t be her shrink,” Susan said. “I’ve known her too long, and I am not, ah, above the fray.”
“You’re not?”
“You may recall a few phrases from the lovely little mash note she stuck in your mailbox: Such as: ‘when you were with me, you might learn things that Susan can’t teach you.’”
“That means nothing to me,” I said.
“It means something to me,” Susan said.
“Are we feeling a little unprofessional jealousy?” I said.
“We are feeling a little unprofessional desire to kick her fat little ass,” Susan said.
I was drinking scotch and soda and eating chicken with cashews and the girl of my dreams was jealous. I smiled happily.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Hawk came into my office at about 9:30 carrying a brown paper bag. With him was a barrel-bodied black man with short, slightly bowed legs and long arms. The black man had gray hair and the kind of amused eyes that Robert Benchley used to have. Hawk put the bag on my desk and pulled one of my office chairs around, and the gray-haired black man sat in it.
“Spenser,” Hawk said. “Bobby Nevins.”
I stood and came around and shook hands with Nevins. Hawk went to the Mister Coffee machine on top of my file cabinet and began to make some coffee. I looked in the paper bag. There was a large square loaf-shaped something wrapped in aluminum foil.
“Corn bread,” Bobby Nevins said. “Hawk always like corn bread.”
Bobby Nevins was a legend. He’d trained fighters for more than fifty years. All of his fighters could fight. All of them were in shape. None left the ring broke. None were strolling queer street. In a business riddled with charlatans his word was good. Hawk had the coffee brewing and came back and sat down in the other client chair.
