'You might,' Cecile said. 'In fact you probably better.'
'You like them feisty colored girls, too?' Hawk said to Cooper.
Cooper looked at the floor and didn't say anything. I gave Hawk the car keys and they left. As they went out of the apartment, Hawk said something to Cecile and I heard Cecile giggle.
48
I t was late when I left Cooper. I caught one of the last cars to leave Kenmore Square on the Green Line, got out of the nearempty train at Park Street, crossed to the Red Line, and got on another near-empty train to Porter Square. It was almost midnight when I walked up Linnaean Street toward Susan's house. I liked the aloneness of the empty street, and the way I could hear my own footsteps.
Y ears of big business and years of political aspiration was a lethal combination. My discussion with Cooper felt like it had lasted longer than my police career. But, finally, I was pretty sure I'd gotten all Cooper had. It was a long time for not so much. But I had a date for the audit. And I had some idea of how O'Mara was fitting in.
The streetlights were on, but nearly all the interior lights were out in the rondos and apartment buildings on either side of the street. Now and then there would be one room with a light on. Someone who couldn't sleep. Worried about money. Health. Love. Children. Someone excited. Frightened. Depressed. Bored. Someone doing homework. Someone having sex. Someone having a pastrami sandwich on light rye. Someone sitting by themselves drinking scotch whisky and watching Letterman.
The lights were on in Susan's living room. I walked up the stairs and rang the bell. In a moment the door clicked and I went in. I had just closed the front door behind me when Pearl came boiling down the stairs all long legs and flappy ears, and attempted to lap me to death. I could see Susan's legs on the top step, with the light behind her.
'You let anyone in who rings?' I said.
'I saw you coming up the street,' she said.
'Sitting in the window all night hoping for me?' I said.
'You did call and say you were coming.'
'Well, yes,' I said. 'If you want to think of it that way.'
I got Pearl sufficiently under control to climb the stairs and kiss Susan. She got me a beer and herself a glass of wine and settled onto the couch beside me in her living room, wearing pink sweatpants and an oversized white tee shirt with The Bang Group printed on it in orange block lettering.
'Tell me about the love nest,' she said. I did.
Two beers later she said, 'So you were able to blackmail him.'
'I was.'
'You are sometimes a heartless bastard,' she said.
'I am, but never with you.'
'That's true.'
'It's all that matters,' I said.
'To you,' she said.
'To me,' I said. 'Who the hell else are we calling heartless.' She leaned over and kissed me lightly on the mouth.
'Tell me about Mr. Cooper,' she said. 'The lecherous bastard.'
'Hard to find a place to start,' I said.
'I have every confidence in you,' Susan said.
'Okay,' I said. 'Cooper knew Gavin since they were both at Yale. After school Gavin joined the CIA and Cooper followed his destiny to the Harvard B School. They stayed friends. When he became CEO at Kinergy he felt the need of a loyal friend in a key position and hired Gavin to be chief of security.'
'To be a CEO?' Susan said. 'Of an energy company? In Waltham?'
'I asked him about that,' I said. 'He told me that he felt the whole team at Kinergy wasn't pulling together. He was getting threats from the no-dependence-on-imported-energy folks. He needed a tough guy, he said, that he could depend on, inside the company and in public. I had a sense he may have wanted some muscle behind him inside the company too, but he never quite said that.'
'Was Gavin really a tough guy?' Susan said. 'I mean a lot of those CIA people are simply information analysts. They never leave their desks.'
'Quirk checked into him after he died. Nobody, of course, will exactly say anything, quite. Quirk says that he was probably a covert operations guy. Which would make him a legitimate toughie.'
Susan smiled, and poured a little wine for herself. I still had beer left.
'Tougher than you?' she said.
'Unlikely.'
'What did he think about the cash problem?' Susan said.
'He said he wasn't a micromanager. He said that was Trent Rowley's domain. After Trent bit the dust, Bernie
