He finished his second sandwich and went to the sink to rinse his hands and face. I could see that he had a small gun in his right hip pocket. I took mine off my hip and put it on the counter top and rested my right hand on it, shielded discretely by the refrigerator. Brad dried his hands and face on a paper towel and refilled his cup and came to the counter where we sat and leaned his forearms on it.
"Wow," he said. "Nothing like getting inside a shower and outside of some strong Joe to make you feel brand new."
"So where have you been?" Susan said.
"Round and about," Brad said. "I ran out of money three-four days ago."
"And you came to me," Susan said. "Do you think I'll give you money?"
"I had nowhere else to go, Suzie-Q."
"Why didn't you go home?" Susan said.
Her voice was calm and pleasant and implacable. Occasionally she raised her coffee cup with both hands and took a sip.
"We're maybe not married anymore, sure, but hell, we're still family."
"No, Brad, we're not family. That's what divorce means."
"We meant something to one another, Suzuki. We meant quite a lot."
"Brad, think about this for a moment. There was a reason why I divorced you."
"Well, sure, I made some mistakes."
"We both did, but finally after all that is taken into account, and to oversimplify a little perhaps, for effect, there's more to it than that. I divorced you because I didn't like you."
Brad straightened as if he'd been stuck with a pin. He frowned and opened his mouth and closed it and opened it again and said, "I can't believe you said that."
"One of the biggest problems you have, Brad," Susan said, "is you can only believe what you want to or need to. I didn't like you. I don't like you. The first time you came to see me I thought you were asking for help and I felt enough guilt to try to get you help."
"Him?" Brad said.
"Now I realize you were asking me for money," Susan said. "But I was not sufficiently, ah, evolved, and I misunderstood. I tried to save you."
"By sending me him? Thanks a lot."
"It was my mistake and it is my responsibility that he's involved with you. But I'm not going to compound that mistake by lying to you or to myself."
"What are you saying?"
"I'm saying that when you have finished your coffee and we're through talking, you'll have to leave."
"And go where?"
"Probably to hell."
"And you don't care?"
"You'll get there anyway," Susan said. "Whatever I do."
"That's cold, Sue, that's really cold."
"Yes," she said.
"I'm just trying to stay alive, Susie."
"I wish you success," Susan said.
"And what happens if I won't leave? Your bully boy throws me out?"
I smiled courteously.
"You'll have to leave," Susan said.
"Well, let me tell you right, damned, now, Suzie Qu-sie, I've dealt with tougher guys than him."
"There's no need to put it to the test," Susan said. "I'll simply call the police."
"Susan, for God's sake, I can't let the cops find me. If I have to leave here, I've got no place to go. If they find me, they'll kill me."
"The cops?"
"Of course not."
"Who?"
She said it so gently, and it slipped into the flow of the argument so easily that Brad answered it before he knew he'd been asked.
"Wechsler and Gavin," he said in the exasperated tone one uses to explain the obvious to an idiot. Susan was looking at him over the rim of her cup. She sipped a little of the whisky-laced coffee and then slowly lowered the cup, and sat back a little.
"Why?"
"Why for crissake…"
In mid-sentence Brad realized that he had said too much. He stopped and shut his mouth and his face had a set look to it.
"Why are Gavin and Wechsler after you?"
Brad shook his head. Susan was silent, waiting. Brad tried to match her silence but he couldn't.
"They think I got something they want," he said.
"What?"
Brad clamped his mouth shut and shook his head.
Susan waited. Brad shook his head. Susan looked at me.
"Would you like to contribute?" she said.
"It's a blue floppy disk," I said. "For a computer."
"Shut up," Brad said.
"What's on the disk?" Susan said.
Brad shook his head. Susan looked at me.
"I'd guess it was the record of his scam with Gavin," I said, "and indirectly, Wechsler."
"Is that right?" Susan said to Brad.
"Of course not," Brad said. "But you'll probably believe him anyway."
"I probably will," Susan said. "Go ahead."
"This is how I think it went," I said to Brad. "Feel free to correct me. I think you were looking for money and, being the way you are, you went to Carla Quagliozzi, your ex-wife, and tried to get some. She wouldn't give you any, but she sent you to her boyfriend, Richard Gavin, who is Haskell Wechsler's lawyer."
"I don't have to stand around here and listen to this tripe," Brad said to Susan.
"No," Susan said, "you don't."
"Gavin arranged for you to borrow some money from Haskell," I said, "and of course you couldn't pay it back, and of course you got behind on the interest. Maybe Gavin expected that. Maybe Gavin baited you with the loan so they could squeeze you later. I don't know how clever he is."
Brad tried looking out the window as if he were bored.
"But I know how clever you are," I said. "So after they threatened you enough to scare you, they made you a proposition. Haskell accumulates a lot of cash, being a loan shark, and he needed to launder it. You run fund-raising events. So they'd finance the fundraisers, like Galapalooza, and you would then donate their costs, plus maybe a little extra for your vig, back to them through a dummy charity called Civil Streets."
"See." Brad said. "See, Susan, how he is? If what he said was true, then Gavin and Wechsler would love me. Why would they be after me?"
"Because you, being you, skimmed on them. You were supposed to pay off the other charities too, to make it look right. But you didn't. From Galapalooza you gave them what you agreed to, but you kept the rest, and stiffed the other charities."
"You were supposed to be helping me with that harassment case," Brad said. "How come you been snooping around in my other business?"
"It fell in my lap," I said. "And I admit I stirred it up a bit, and maybe because I did, Gavin found out that you were cheating on the other charities. But it would have happened sooner or later. The charity groups talk to each other. Anyway, Gavin looked into it himself and was very unhappy to find that you'd cheated everyone else, because it meant sooner or later someone would complain and the AG's office would look into it, and everybody's fat would be in the fire."
"Suze, do you believe all this?" Brad said.
"Yes."
"Well, I suppose you would, wouldn't you," he said.
"So Gavin sent over a guy he'd once represented, guy named Cony Brown, to persuade you to cough up the money you'd skimmed. And of course you couldn't because you didn't have it, because you spent it as soon as you got it. And Cony got aggressive and you shot him, and took the disk-I assume you figured it would protect you if they didn't know where it was-and you scooted."
"I should have sent you packing," Brad said, "the minute she sent you to me."
"I probably hurried things along," I said. "But you'd have gotten yourself into this rat's alley anyway."
"What I don't understand," Susan said, "the sexual harassment suit really started the unraveling of this whole thing. Why didn't you just show the pictures of Jeanette to her husband. It would have stopped him in his tracks."
"I don't kiss and tell," Brad said.
"Chivalry?" Susan said.
"Whatever you think of me," Brad said, "there are things I believe in."
Susan looked at me. I shrugged.
"Hitler liked dogs," I said.
"What the hell's that supposed to mean," Brad said.
"People are inconsistent," I said.
"Then why in heaven's name did you let him in?" Susan said.