"One of her friends was there, and when I came downstairs from taking a bath the friend teased me about it."
"So she had told," she said.
He nodded. "I…" He stopped and swallowed. He seemed unable to speak.
"You couldn't trust her," she said.
Again he could only nod. It was like his voice was paralyzed. He could breathe okay and swallow okay, but he seemed like he couldn't talk. The silence seemed heavy. The rain chattered against the window behind her.
No fish in this room. Just the waiting room. He breathed through his mouth.
She waited.
"I never said anything," he finally said. His voice sounded reedy and nearly detached from him.
"If you had?"
"She'd have got mad. She never admitted she was wrong.
She just got mad at me if I said anything."
"What happened when she got mad?"
"She didn't love me."
She nodded.
"What kind of love is that?" his voice said. "What kind II is it when you can love me and not love me whenever you feel like it?"
She shook her head gently, and again it was quiet except for the rain.
CHAPTER 16
Hawk took the day shift with Susan. Belson and I went outside with Quirk and sat in his car. Me and Quirk in front, Belson in the back seat. The rain streaked the windows, blurring everything. "No wipers."
I said. "Three guys sitting in a car with the motor running and the wipers on is like putting a flashing blue light on the roof."
"Can you see well enough to identify anyone?" Quirk said.
We were across the street and half a block up from Susan's house.
"No," I said. "But we're not making fine discriminations here. Any white male who looks like he could outrun me." Quirk nodded. "Frank," he said, "you want to take the first one?"
"Sure."
We were quiet. The rain stayed with us. After ten minutes the windows started to fog and Quirk cracked the windows on the side away from Susan's office. At ten of eleven a patient came out of Susan's front door and down the steps.
"How about him?" Quirk said.
"He's the right size," I said. The outlines of the man were blurred and soft through the wet window. "He white?"
"If he's not," Belson said,
"I'll drop him." He got out of the back seat on the sidewalk side and began walking up Linnaean Street toward Garden, parallel with Susan's patient on the other side of the street.
After a moment Quirk said to me, "Okay, he's the right color."
"Now if Belson doesn't lose him," I said.
"Belson won't lose him," Quirk said. "And the guy won't make him."
I nodded. "And if he gets in a car, Frank gets the number."
"And we ID him that way," Quirk said. "When's the next one?"
"Should arrive any minute, and come out about ten of twelve."
"The fifty-minute hour," Quirk said.
We watched the rain slide along the windows. At five of eleven a woman in a tan trench coat with a violet kerchief over her head went up the four steps to Susan's front door, rang the bell, and went iv "Shit."
Quirk said.
"Nothing now until ten of one," I said. "Might as well get some coffee."
We left the car so we wouldn't lose the spot and walked up Linnaean to Mass. Ave. and had coffee in a bakery. Also a bagel each. With cream cheese. By twelve-thirty we were back in the car waiting. At six minutes to one a woman in a belted red raincoat came out and opened a black umbrella on Susan's porch. Quirk and I said nothing.
"If there's many that fit the requirements," Quirk said, "this will take a while. We could use more manpower."
"Not Hawk," I said. "He stays where he is."
Quirk nodded. "I can't use any of my people."
"Unofficially?" I said. "Sort of a favor?"
Quirk shook his head. "It would cost them. I'm excommunicated, until I agree with the official version."
"You and Galileo," I said.
"Didn't he throw his balls off the leaning tower?" Quirk said.
"That too," I said.
At two minutes of one a burly man wearing a fingertip length black leather jacket and a Totes crush rain hat went into Susan's office.
"Charley Mahoney," Quirk said. "Vice."
"Nope," I said. "Too heavy. I could catch him in half a block."
"When you do, you better be ready."
Quirk said.
We lapsed into silence again. The next two clients were women. At two minutes past four a man with an open golf umbrella turned into Susan's front walk and up the steps.
"Could be him," I said.
"Late too," Quirk said. "I'll take him when he comes out."
At 4:53 the guy came out, opened his umbrella, and headed back down Linnaean Street toward Mass. Ave. with Quirk behind him.
At 4:56 a middle-sized tallish guy came along wearing a khaki bush jacket and one of those Australian campaign hats with one side of the brim tied up against the crown. I didn't suspect him of being an Aussie soldier. This was Cambridge.
He came out of Susan's at three minutes to six and started down Linnaean Street toward Mass. Ave. He was on the left side of the street. I got out and headed down the right side, maybe three car lengths back of him.
It was still raining and it was beginning to get darker. I studied his walk through the rain, trying to catch a familiar movement. But walking and running are different movements. He was the right size and he had an easy athletic walk. The rain was coming down as if it planned on staying forever. I had on jeans, white leather Reeboks, a gray Tshirt, a leather jacket, and a felt hat that Paul Giacomin had bought me, which looked like you would wear it in Kenya if you were Stewart Granger. The Reeboks were wet through quickly, but the rest stood up to the rain pretty well. Tailing him was easy because he hunched into the rain with his head down and, except when he crossed Linnaean in front of me to head down Mass. Ave. toward Harvard Square, I didn't have to do anything very wily.
If a guy doesn't know he's being tailed, or doesn't care, tailing is not brain surgery. Mostly it takes a little concentration not to get caught staring at your man in the reflection from a store window, or getting too far behind so that if he gets on a subway, or a bus, you're left standing. Ideally you have a backup so that the tail keeps changing, and you have somebody in a car in case the guy has one or grabs a cab.
I've yet to find a cabbie that responds when you say "Follow that cab."
The last guy I tried slammed on the brakes and slapped down his meter and told me to take a walk. "I look like fucking James Bond to you?" he said.
On the right, Cambridge Common was soggy and unattended. The only movement was a kid in a plaid skirt and a yellow hip-length slicker, walking a big black Lab wearing a red kerchief for a collar. The kid had no hat on and her long black hair was plastered to her scalp and neck. The dog sniffed rapidly in a large circle around the base of the war memorial statue and then lay down on his side in a large puddle, his feet straight out before him, his tongue lolling.
"Othello, you asshole," the kid said.
At Harvard Square, Mass. Ave. turns off east toward Boston. Brattle Street heads west toward Watertown, and John F. Kennedy Street goes on down to the river. In the distorted triangle formed at this point is the famed out-of town newsstand, and the Harvard Square subway entrances. A couple of small round kiosks that look vaguely Byzantine dispense information and theater tickets. The kids who drifted in tattered clusters in and around the triangle were mostly scrawny and pale and very young. They wore silly clothes and ludicrous haircuts and listened to tiring music on portable radios. Occasionally there was a guitar, a kind of nod toward tradition, which for them was the sixties.
They were there, perhaps, because they had nowhere else to be, even in the cold spring rain, sheltered beneath the subway entrance, struggling to look aloof from middle-class values.
My man stopped under the roof of the subway entrance and looked at a group of five punkers across the entrance from him. A thin kid with skinny white arms left the others and came out and spoke with my man.