"Uncle Henry," I said. "Not me. He was always a little dippy, Henry was."
The wine was gone. I got another bottle. Beaujolais is new but once a year.
"But even not metaphorically, prostitution is more than. one experience. Some kid doing twenty, thirty tricks a night in hallways and cars isn't having the same experience that someone has who performs once an evening in a good hotel."
"I suppose someone might argue that the acts were morally the same," Susan said.
"Ah, Suze, you're toying with me. We both know what we both think about that."
"I know," Susan said, "I just like to hear how you'll put it."
"Her morality is her business. My business is to get her free so she can take care of her business." "And you think setting her up with a high-priced madam in New York is the way?"
"I think it's possible. I think she has a right to be a whore if she wants to .be. Just like she has the right to stop if she wants to."
"But do you have the right to make the opportunity easy for her?"
"Yes."
"To be a whore?"
"Yes. If she likes the work. I have no business telling her she's not supposed to like it."
"Would you feel the same way about heroin?" Susan said.
"No. I know heroin is destructive to her. I know no such thing about the right kind of whoring."
The fire hissed and a slow bubble of sap oozed from one end of a log. I tried less cheese and two rings of green pepper in my next sandwich.
"I think you're wrong," Susan said. "I think in the long run selling yourself, rather than your product, is destructive. I guess I'm willing to say that metaphorically as well as literally."
"Maybe we're just choosing which kind of destructive experience to offer her," I said.
"Maybe we are," Susan said.
Chapter 29
Hawk wanted in.
"I want to see what this dude Poitras is like, babe," he said. "Always admired that streak of intellectual curiosity in you, Hawk."
"Only go this way, one time," Hawk said.
Susan and I sat side by side on one side of the table and Hawk sat across. We were on top of the Hyatt Regency Hotel on the Cambridge side of the Charles. The room rotated very slowly, and you got a grandiloquent view of Boston half the time.
Susan had a large pina colada with fruit in it and was sipping it sparingly through a straw. It looked good, but I was embarrassed to order one. I had beer. Hawk had a pina colada. Nothing embarrassed him.
"It would be easier with two," Susan said. "And he has been in it from the start. He's got a right to be in at the finish."
"See that," Hawk said. "Suze know. Except for who she hang around with she got a lot of style."
"That's not why he wants to help bust Poitras," I said to Susan. "He's got as much curiosity as a parsnip. He wants to be there to remind Tony Marcus that he's in it with me."
"Which will make Marcus more likely to keep his word," Susan said.
"Yes."
She reached over and patted the top of his motionless hands where they rested beside his glass. "What a darling man you are," Susan .said, her face serious. "Some of my best friends are black." Hawk burst out laughing. Several people turned their heads in mild annoyance and turned them quickly back.
"You like all honky broads," Hawk said. "Sentimental."
Then they both giggled.
"When you get through with the interracial humor," I said, "I have a goddamned plan."
"We listening," Hawk said.
"Okay, when I burgled Poitras's pad…"
"Sexist whitey goyim," Susan murmured, and the two of them got hysterical. "Always talking at us minorities," Hawk gasped. And they giggled even more. I put my chin in my hand and watched them. They were like grade-school kids who had started laughing at something innocuous and then couldn't stop. It was the only time I could recall Hawk out of control about anything. In fact, Susan was the only person I'd ever seen toward whom he showed anything but pleasant disinterest.
I tried twice again before they finally got it under control.
"When I burgled Poitras's pad, I copped a set of keys and had duplicates made," I said. Susan was staring at me with her elbows on the table and both hands pressed against her mouth and her eyes moist.
"Um-hum," she said. Her shoulders shook.
"Christ," I said. "Did George Patton have to deal with Amos and Andrea? We'll go over tonight and walk in unannounced." I said it in a rush.
Hawk nodded.
"And we'll send April out with Susan, and Amy Gurwitz if she wants to go.
Then we check that the dirty movies are still there for evidence and call the cops. Can you handle April, Suze, even if she doesn't want to go?"
She had it under control now. "I think so. If not, Hawk can help me."
"If he's not too busy doing his Pigmeat Markham impressions," I said.
"I bring a stick," he said. " 'Case she get vicious."
"Okay, let's drink up and do it," I said.
"Just like that?" Susan said.
"If it's to be done," I said.
"And April?" Susan said.
"You keep her in the car, and after the cops come, we'll take her back to my place and talk." I shrugged. "It's the best I can think of."
"It's the best I can think of too," Susan said.
We paid the check and went down in the elevator. Susan and I had come in her Bronco. Hawk had met us there. We decided to go in the Bronco and left Hawk's Jaguar in the parking garage.
It was dark, and the lights of Boston across the Charles made elegant starry patterns against the hard early-winter blackness. We crossed the river on the B.U. bridge and Susan turned left onto Commonwealth at the NO LEFT TURN Sign.
"Lawless," I said.
"It's a dumb rule," Susan said. "There's no reason not to turn left there."
"That's true," I said.
Boston University had us surrounded as we drove down Commonwealth.
"Commanding architectural integrity," Susan said as we passed through.
"Better-looking than some Burger Kings," Hawk said.
In Kenmore Square the punk rockers and the college kids were feasting on pizza and subs and hot dogs and doughnuts and cheeseburgers and thick shakes and beer, and being cool. Beyond Kenmore, Commonwealth Avenue became more sedate, and after we dipped under Mass. Ave. it became positively haughty. The wide mall in the middle of Commonwealth Avenue runs flat and straight between Kenmore Square and the Public Garden. There are trees and benches in the mall and on pleasant summer days there are kids and dogs and couples, joggers, and roller skaters and Frisbee players in sufficient number to make things seem lively. Now in the dark three weeks before Christmas it was empty and cold and still.
At Fairfield, Susan turned toward the river, crossed Marlboro Street, and turned onto Beacon.
"Hydrant," I said, and Susan saw it and pulled the Bronco into the space frontward. She began to jockey the truck back and forth trying to get parallel to the curb beside the hydrant. Hawk and I were silent as she went forward and backward, getting very little closer to the curb in the process.
"I know," she said, "I know I'm supposed to back in, but I hate to back in."
Hawk and I were silent. Across the street and two doors up was Poitras's town house. There was no light on at the front door, but I could see light spilling out from around the drawn curtains.
Susan finally parked with one wheel up on the curb and the back end of the Bronco jutting aggressively out into the street.
"The hell with it," Susan said.
Hawk and I were quiet. It had gotten very cold. There were no stars showing in the narrow channel of black sky above Beacon Street as we crossed. At the door I stopped and listened. Faintly I could hear music. I put my ear against the door. The music was a little stronger. I thought I could hear also, maybe, a faint sound of talk and movement, almost as if there were a party.
"Let's cruise around back," I said, "and take a peek in."
We went in single file, no more laughing, very little talk. First me, then Susan, and Hawk a soundless, nearly invisible third.