The bottle of Dom Perignon was empty. Susan said, “I bought some too,” and went to the kitchen to get it. I got another log out of the hammered-brass wood bucket on the hearth and settled it on top of the fire. Susan returned with the champagne. Mumm. Good. I was more than a domestic champagne date. Next time, she’d said. Tuesday, at my house. Hot-diggity. She sat down on the couch beside me and handed me the bottle. I twisted the cork out and poured.
“I always thought you had to pop it and make a mark in the ceiling and spill some on the rug,” she said.
“That’s for tourists,” I said.
“Where are you now, Spenser? What do you make of everything?”
“Well, I know that Kevin is with Vic voluntarily. I know Vic is a homosexual.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I haven’t proved it, but I know it. I heard it from people I trust. I don’t need to prove it.”
“That’s an advantage you have on the police, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, one. Okay, so Harroway’s gay and Kevin’s staying with him. You told me that Kevin had unresolved sexual identity problems...”
“I said he might have...”
“Right, he might have sexual identity problems, so the relationship between them might be romantic. Agree?”
“Spenser, you can’t just say things like that; there’s so much more that goes into that kind of diagnosis. I’m not qualified...”
“I know, I’m hypothesizing. I don’t have the luxury of waiting to be sure.”
“I guess you don’t, do you?”
“I figure Vic and Kevin are living together, and he finds in Harroway a combination of qualities he misses in his parents. I figure the kid ran off with Harroway and then afterward, out of hatred or perversity or boyish exuberance, they decided to put on the straights and make some money to boot. So they rigged the kidnapping, and they sent the notes and made the phone calls and shipped the guinea pig after it died. Then they went, maybe to get some things of Kevin’s, maybe to steal the old man’s booze, maybe to play a new trick, and broke into the house. Actually Kevin probably had a key. And Earl Maguire caught them and they panicked, or Harroway did, and he killed Maguire. You saw Harroway; you can imagine how he could hit someone too hard, and if he did he could make it permanent.”
“But what do you suppose Doctor Croft has to do with all this?”
“Maybe nothing, maybe just doing a favor for his buddy, Fraser Robinson. Maybe he’s no more than a satisfied customer. Or maybe he’s a convenient source of drugs. An M.D. has a better shot than most people at getting hold of narcotics. I can’t see the mob doing business with the likes of Harroway.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Well, I was thinking of putting my hand on your leg and quoting a few lines from Baudelaire.”
“No, dummy, I mean what are you going to do about Vic Harroway and Doctor Croft and Kevin?”
“One thing I’ll do right now. Where’s your phone?”
“In the kitchen.”
I got up and called Boston Homicide. “Lieutenant Quirk, please.” Susan came out with me and looked at the cassoulet in the oven.
“Who’s calling?”
“My name’s Spenser.”
“One moment.” The line went dead and then a voice came on.
“Spenser, Frank Belson. Quirk’s home asleep.”
“I need a favor, Frank.”
“Oh, good, me and the Lieutenant spent most of today hanging around thinking what could we do to be nice to you. And now you call. Hey, what a treat.”
“I want to know anything you can find out about a medical doctor named Raymond Croft, present address...” I thumbed through the Smithfield phone book on the shelf below the phone, “Eighteen Crestview Road, Smithfield, Mass. Specializing in internal medicine. I don’t know his previous address. Call me here when you can tell me something.” I gave him Susan’s number. “If I’m not here leave a message.”
“You’re sure you don’t want me to hand-carry it out there?”
“Maybe I can do you a favor sometime, Frank.”
“Oh, yeah, you could do everybody a favor sometime, Spenser.”
The conversation wasn’t going my way, so I let it go and hung up. “How’s the cassoulet?” I said.
“On warm,” she said. “It’ll keep. I think we need more wine.”
“Yes,” I said, “I believe we do.”
We went back into the living room and sat on the couch and drank some more. My head felt expanded, and I felt very clever and adorable.
“Darling,” I said, leaning toward Susan, “je vous aime beaucoup, je ne sais pas what to do.”
“Ah, Spenser, you romantic fool,” she said and looked at me over the rim of her champagne glass while she drank. “Are you really a detective, or are you perhaps a poet after all?”
“Enough with the love talk,” I said, “off with the clothes.”
She put the champagne glass down and looked at me full face and said, “Be serious, now, please. Just for now.” My throat got tight, and I swallowed audibly.
“I am serious,” I said.
She smiled. “I know you are. It’s funny, isn’t it? Two sophisticated adult people who want to make love with each other, and we don’t know how to make the transition to the bedroom. I haven’t felt this awkward since college.”
I said, “May I kiss you?” and my voice was hoarse.
She said, “Yes, but not here. We’ll go in the bedroom.”
I followed her down a short corridor and into her bedroom. There was a spool bed with a gold-patterned spread. An air conditioner hummed softly in the far window. The walls were covered in a beige burlap paper, and there was a pine sea chest at the foot of the bed.
She turned toward me and began to unbutton her blouse. “Would you turn the spread down, please?” she said. I did. The sheets were gold with a pattern of coral flowers. As I undressed I looked at Susan Silverman on the other side of the bed. She unhooked her bra. There is something enormously female in that movement. I stopped with my shirt off and my belt unbuckled to watch her. She saw me and smiled at me and let the bra drop. I took a deep inhale and finished undressing. We were naked together then, on opposite sides of the bed. I could see the pulse in her throat. She lay down on her side of the bed and said, “Now you may kiss me.”
I did. With my eyes closed, for a long time. Then I opened my eyes and discovered that she had hers open too and we were looking at each other from a half inch away. With her eyes wide open she darted her tongue into my mouth and then giggled, a rich bubbling half-smothered giggle that I caught. We lay there pressed together kissing and giggling with our eyes open. It was a different beginning, but a very good one. Then we closed our eyes again, and the giggling stopped.
23
We ate cassoulet and drank Beaujolais at 2:15 in the morning in the dining room with candles and didn’t get to sleep till four. In the morning she called in sick, and we stayed in bed till almost noon. We had a cup of coffee together and cleaned up the dining room and kitchen. It was two o’clock in the afternoon before I was back to work.
Dr. Croft had an office in a medical building on one side of a small shopping center in the middle of Smithfield. Two stories, brick, pastel plywood panels, a flat roof, and maybe ten offices. Inside there was the cool smell of air-conditioned money. There were four people in Croft’s office, three women and a man. Well, you see, Doctor, I’m horny but my spouse thinks I’m a creep. Oh, yes, of course, I’ll make an appointment for you with Doctor Harroway, my horniness consultant.
The office was paneled in light plywood and carpeted in beige. A dark-faced girl with an enormous bouffant hairdo and a starched white uniform eyed me from behind a counter in the far wall. I said, “I’d like to see the doctor, please.”