'Here, I suppose,' Tom said. 'Probably watching TV.'
'That your memory, Mrs. Lopata?'
'We weren't watching together,' she said. 'He won't watch my programs.'
'Hell, you won't watch mine, either,' he said.
'I don't want to watch some dumb sports thing,' she said.
'But you were both here, in the house, together that night.'
'Absolutely,' Tom said.
'No,' Buffy said.
I looked at her.
'No?' I said.
'I was here, but he was out gallivanting in his new toy,' Buffy said.
'Toy?' I said.
'She likes to joke,' Tom said. 'I got a new car; I may have taken it out for a spin, see how she handled.'
'Red Cadillac sedan,' I said. 'Leather seats?'
'Yeah,' Tom said.
'Nigger car,' Buffy said. She snubbed out her cigarette and lit a new one. 'Neighbors probably think he's a pimp.'
Tom shook his head sadly.
'Doorman,' I said, 'at the Inn on the Wharf says Dawn was delivered to the hotel in a new red Cadillac convertible.'
Tom stared at me.
'According to the doorman, the driver was a suburban-looking guy, maybe fifty,' I said.
Tom didn't say anything. Buffy turned and stared at her husband. Z and I waited. Tom looked at Buffy.
'For God's sake,' she said, 'you are a pimp.'
'Don't talk to me like that,' he said.
'You delivered your daughter to that pig so he could fuck her to death,' Buffy said.
'For God's sake,' Tom said. 'It's not like I knew.'
'Pimp,' Buffy said.
'She wanted a ride,' Tom said. 'I had the new car. Hell, she was going to have a date with a movie star, for crissake. Who wouldn't take her in?'
'Without telling her mother,' Buffy said. 'Either of you, without telling the mother.'
'She made me promise,' Tom said. 'She knows what you think of her.'
'Her own mother,' Buffy said.
She put her second cigarette out carefully in the ashtray, picked up her cigarettes and a lighter from the table by her chair, stood, and walked out of the room.
'Shit,' Tom said. 'She'll go in her room and pull down the shades and turn on the TV. And she'll sit there and stare at it and chain-smoke for days.'
'She do that when Dawn was bad?' I said.
'Any of us,' he said. 'Except maybe Matthew. She did it less with him.'
I nodded.
'You dropped her and left?' I said.
'Yeah.'
'Any arrangement to pick her up?'
'No.'
'You dropped her and came home?' I said.
'Yes.'
'Wife awake when you got here?' I said.
'No.'
'You sleep together?'
He snorted a little humorless snort.
'No,' he said. 'Any way you mean it.'
When we were driving back to Boston, Z said, 'I've seen Lopata before.'
