'What?' Cecile said.
'If I made you coffee,' Susan said, 'I'd burn it.'
'Oh. Then who?'
'I grew up in an all-male family,' I said. 'My father and my two uncles. All of us cooked.'
'No women?'
'None that lived there,' I said.
'So there was no stigma attached?'
'No.'
The moussaka got made. The martinis got drunk. I opened some wine and we sat at the table to eat. Pearl took a position next to Hawk and poked her head in under his elbow and rested her head on his thigh. Hawk broke off a biscuit and gave it to her.
While we were eating I said, 'I've got a plan.'
'Oh, thank God,' Hawk said.
'I need some information on a guy named Darrin O'Mara who runs, ah, sex seminars.'
'Isn't he on the radio?' Cecile said.
'You listen to him?' Hawk said.
'No need,' Cecile said. 'I have you, Chocolate Thunder.'
Hawk grinned.
'What you need?' he said to me.
'I need undercover,' I said.
'At a sex seminar?' Susan said. 'I'll do it.'
'You've been seen too much with me,' I said.
'I'll say.'
'What I need is Hawk and Cecile to enroll, and see what's really up in these seminars.'
Hawk looked at Cecile.
'What do you think?' he said. 'Doctor Covert?'
'What are you trying to find out?' Cecile said.
'I think there's something fishy about everything O'Mara's involved in. I need information.'
'I understand that,' Cecile said. 'But why look into these seminars?'
'Because, at the moment, I have nothing else to look into, and I hate spinning my wheels.'
'And what do you expect to find out?' Cecile was not a fools-rush-in kind of girl.
'I want to know if there's any reason for someone to refer to him as a corporate pimp.'
Cecile thought about it.
'I'd be with you?' she said to Hawk.
'Every moment,' Hawk said.
'And I wouldn't have to do anything I didn't want to do.'
'No,' I said.
''Cept with me,' Hawk said.
'There isn't anything I don't want to do with you,' she said.
I looked at Susan.
'Wow,' I said, 'why don't you ever say things like that to me?'
'You're not Hawk,' she said.
'More deadly than the adder's sting,' I said. 'What do you think? Can you do it?'
Cecile looked at Hawk. 'What do you think, Licorice Stick?' she said.
'Sure,' Hawk said.
L icorice Stick?
34
I met Marlene Rowley for lunch at the new Legal Seafood in Cambridge. The weather was nice so we sat outside in Charles Square. I didn't know whether it meant that widowhood agreed with her or didn't agree with her, but Marlene had porked up a bit. Her face was puffy and her butt was more robust. When we were seated she had a glass of white wine. I ordered iced tea.
