Sherry smiled at me.
'Irony is so masculine,' she said. 'Isn't it, Susan?'
'So,' Susan said.
She still had half a bagel to go. Sherry polished off the rest of her second Danish.
'Is it possible that Dolly Hartman had an affair with your husband twenty-something years ago?'
'The whore? Certainly she's capable of it, but twenty years ago? No, Walter and I were very close at that time. The girls were small, Walter was not yet the big success he became. No, we were a happy little family then.'
'Dolly claims that she did.'
'Well, she didn't.'
I saw nowhere to go with that.
'What do you know about Jon Delroy?' I said.
'Very little. Jon was on the business side of things. I never paid any attention to the business side of things.'
'Do you know how long he worked for Three Fillies?'
'Oh, I don't know. He was there before I left.'
'How long have you been gone?'
'Nine years.'
'And what was his job?'
'God, I don't know,' Sherry said. 'He was always around with his storm troopers. So tight. So shiny. So controlled. So anal-retentive. So full of violence.'
I looked at Susan. She was studying the row of people sitting at the counter across the room. 'Are you still with the guitar player?' I said.
'I'm not with anyone,' she said. 'Freedom is best pursued alone.'
The waitress came by and put the bill down on the table.
'Whenever you're ready,' she said.
I had been ready since Sherry Lark sat down, but I'd come all the way to San Francisco to talk with her. I made a final stab.
'Do you have any thoughts on who might have killed Walter?'
'I don't think of death. It's very negative energy. I'm sorry, but I prefer to give my full energies to life.'
I nodded. Susan was still studying the counter, though I thought I could see the corner of her mouth twitch. I picked up the bill and looked at it.
'Would it be rancorous capitalism if I paid this?' I said.
'We both know if you didn't you'd feel threatened,' Sherry said.
I paid. We left.
THIRTY-NINE
'YOUR INSECURITY WAS pathetically obvious,' Susan said when we were alone walking up Powell Street. 'The way you grabbed that check.'
'I feared emasculation,' I said.
'And had you waited for her to pick it up,' Susan said, 'we'd have grown old together sitting there in the booth.'
'You have any thoughts?' I said.
'Based on an hour of observation?'
'This isn't a clinical situation,' I said. 'We have to make do.'
'I have no thoughts,' Susan said, 'but I can give you some guesses.'
'Guesses are good.'
'Well, she's not as stupid as she seems. Brief hints of intelligence slip through the hippie mumbo jumbo.'
'Not many,' I said.
'No. I didn't say she was brilliant. And mostly she recycles things she's heard. But it is not uncommon, for instance, for fathers to encourage their daughters to marry men against whom the fathers can compete successfully. She may have simply heard it said, but she understood it enough to apply it to her husband.'
'If it's true,' I said.
'I told you these are guesses.'
'What else?' I said.
I was trying to breathe normally, as if the climb up Powell Street were easy. And I checked Susan closely. Her
