“I’m in Central Square,” I said. “I’ll be there shortly.”
Which I was.
Susan had a spare room and full bath on the ground fl oor across the hall from her office. She occasionally used it for conferences, or now and then when she was teaching a seminar. But mostly it was empty. Hawk and Vinnie had set up in there. Susan and Pearl were in there with them. Pearl came and jumped up on me like we’d taught her not to do, and I bent low enough for her to lap my face for a while.
“Deja vu,” Hawk said. “Again.”
“Yeah,” I said. “The first go-round with the Gray Man, as I recall.”
“Was,” Hawk said.
Pearl tired of lapping and went back to the couch and jumped up beside Susan.
Hawk looked at Chollo.
“Chollo,” Hawk said.
“Hawk,” Chollo said.
Chollo looked at Vinnie and nodded. Vinnie nodded back. He had earphones on and was listening to an iPod.
Susan said, “Hello, Chollo.”
She had a drink. It looked like vodka on the rocks.
“Is that vodka?” I said.
“On the rocks,” she said.
I wasn’t sure I had ever seen her drink vodka on the rocks. No one else was drinking.
“In honor of your adventure?” I said.
“Want to hear about it?” she said.
She was slightly drunk, which is generally as drunk as she ever gets. She wasn’t slurring her speech or anything. It was more something about the eyes, some change in their look that I could never quite explain, but I knew it when I saw it.
“I do,” I said.
Chollo went over and leaned on the jamb of the doorway that was open to the hall. Vinnie listened to his iPod. Hawk sat on the couch beside Susan with Pearl in between them. I pulled a chair around and straddled it backward and rested my forearms on the back.
Susan sipped some vodka.
“I went to dinner with my friend Anne Roberts,” Susan said.
“At the Harvest.”
She sipped her drink. There were window bays on the two exterior walls of the room. Outside in late November, the afternoon had already begun to darken. There was something almost formal in the way we had composed ourselves around her in the bright room. Four rather tarnished knights and a beautiful lady in the center. Actually, the world being what it is, even the lady was maybe a little tarnished.
“Hawk and Vinnie came along behind,” Susan said. “I asked them to remain discreet. Ann might have been, ah, ill at ease with a couple of bodyguards.”
Pearl shifted on the couch between Hawk and Susan so that she could rest her chin on Susan’s thigh. I smiled without showing it. Pearl, at least, was untarnished.
“So they stayed at the bar. After dinner we came out. Ann went to Brattle Street to walk home, and I went down the alley toward Mt. Auburn Street to get my car. There were two men at the ATM machine near the end of the alley, you know, there on the right?”
“I know,” I said.
I could feel the center of my stomach begin to pinch. Susan was stroking one of Pearl’s ears as she spoke.
“At the end of the alley there was a big van with a slidy side door,” she said. “The door was open. When I passed the two men they suddenly grabbed me and tried to drag me into the van.”
I felt the muscles in my chest and shoulders begin to clench.
“I punched one, and kneed the other one in the crotch, but it wasn’t hard enough, I guess. They had me halfway into the van when Hawk and Vinnie arrived.”
She looked at Hawk.
“After that it got a little confusing,” she said. “I know Hawk grabbed me away from them and shoved me against the wall and pressed against me like a shield.”
Hawk nodded. Susan sipped her drink, playing absently with Pearl’s ear. Then she smiled.
“Actually I kind of liked that part,” she said.
“They all do,” Hawk said.
Vinnie remained blank, listening to his iPod.
“I get her away from them,” Hawk said. “And one of them comes out with a piece and Vinnie drills him. The other one dives into the van and the van boogies with the door still open.”
