"Doctor?" His receptionist's voice.
"Is everything okay?"
He'd been shouting. "Out in a minute," Tegg replied in a friendly voice to the closed door. How much had his employee heard? How could everything come down around you so quickly?
Maybeck whispered, "I'say we zoom the girl we kidnapped and take our chances with Wong Kei."
"Is that what you say?" Tegg asked, standing and approaching him, daring to put his face up against Maybeck's. Breath like an open sewer. "I'm not terribly interested in what you have to say, Donald. But you had better be interested in what I have to say. Extremely interested." He whispered, "Connie, then the laptop, the van: That's your order of business, your priorities. If Connie won't play along ... well ... Use your imagination." "No problem," Donnie said.
Was he actually condoning such a thing? He felt a disturbing pressure in his head, like a tire taking too much air. He wondered why he couldn't just step away from it all? Let it go. How far would he go in order to make up for that mistake of his? He didn't like himself; he didn't even know himself. He had studied the psychology of cornered animals in college; only now that he was experiencing it did he begin to understand.
Only now did he see clearly what exactly was to become of the black man out in the kennel. He too was a liability, one that at this point they could certainly not afford.
But not for long.
LO With the surveillance a complete disaster, with no one to be mad at but himself, with no appetite, Boldt left work and headed directly to the back door of The Big joke. He didn't want Liz to see him like this-he wasn't sure what he wanted. Had he been a drinker, he would have gotten drunk, but booze only gave him a sour stomach and a bad case of the blues. The blues themselves seemed the best way out-eighty-_ eight keys of refuge, where voices sang in his head and drove out all thought. The club was closed to the public by order of the Treasury Department, but since Bear Berenson lived upstairs, access was still available through the back. The piano had never been confiscated-just the financial records-and only two of the six screws intended to lock it shut had violated it. , Boldt let himself in, found the piano in the dark, and started playing. A while later Bear settled himself into a chair at the table farthest from the stage, because Boldt hated the cigarette smoke and because this table sat immediately under a light which Bear needed to read his trade paperback, How to Beat the IRS, a gift from Boldt. He studied it like a preacher with a Bible, his reading punctuated by grunts of disapproval and sighs of supplication. A captain going down with the ship, he paused and looked up only to relish a particular phrase from Boldt's piano or to roll himself another joint.
it had been several days since Boldt had played, and he took to it hungrily, tuning all else out. His pager-switched off-his holstered weapon, his shield and his wallet all occupied a leathery heap by the glass of milk that Bear occasionally refreshed on his way back from the bar.
The investigation would occasionally surface, like a prairie dog lifting its head from its lair, but Boldt would send it into retreat with the stomp of a foot or the stabbing of a dissonant note.
Bear disappeared sometime during the marathon. Boldt didn't look to see what time it was. He heard the phone ring several times, glad it wasn't his. A while later, needing the bathroom and unable to use the club's because of the dark, he found his way upstairs. Bear was asleep in front of the television. With that much pot in him he wouldn't be worth trying to awaken and put to bed, so Boldt left him.
He was back at the piano and into one of his better renditions of "All The Things You Are" when he detected movement out of the corner of his eye.
He turned to see Liz standing in the darkness. Like him, she had entered through the back door. Arms crossed, she observed him solemnly, in quiet contemplation. No telling how long she might have been there: Liz was not one to interrupt his playing. "Bad day," he offered. "They happen," she reminded.
A wind moved through the room carrying the scent of her with it.
Perhaps this was what had stopped him in the first place. She smelled gorgeous. She explained, "We need you, Miles and I. We need you even when you feel like this-especially when you feel like this. I worried. I was picturing a hotel room. Something like that."
"Not likely."
"But possible. Anything is possible. Have I let you down? Have you let me down? Can I blame it on your work? Can I blame it on you? I want to. I try to./I "I miss the music, that's all. I miss you more, you and Einstein. Where is he?"
"Emma is pulling emergency duty." Their neighbor. She pinch-hit when they needed her. "You don't get it, do you?" she asked. "Maybe not."
"I love you." When he failed to reply she added, "I want to be your piano. I want to be the one you turn to when you feel like this. I want to be the one to help."
"You do.
It's not you, it's me," he said. "It's both of us. It always is."
"I screwed up a surveillance this afternoon."
"Do you see what this stuff does to you?"
"Please."
"But do you? He's killing you, too. He is! And me and Miles. What about your son? I hate this. It's as if we never worked any of this out. But we did, once."
"I love this work. I live to stop guys like this."
"But when you don't? Look at you."
He glanced at the piano. "This is the other me."
"No, Lou: This is the same you. I won't give you permission to love your work more than your family." "Who said anything about that?" ,,I did.,, "I'm talking about me."
"You never talk about you.
That's one of our problems."
"One of our problems?"
"Things are far from perfect," she advised him.
There was a spider in one of the spotlights, searching its web for food, seemingly supported by nothing. Boldt felt like that at times: alone, hanging by a thread, caught at the focal point of all that heat. "People die. You see enough of it, it makes you think. "Shit happens," she said. She was angry. "Do you wish I hadn't signed back up?"
"I wish you were happy. You're not. Not with me. Not with yourself. I want to understand that. I want to help."
"Do you want me to quit?"
"Do you?"
"I will."
"You need an excuse? I'll give you one if you want."
Sometimes she knew him better than he knew himself. Boldt shifted on the bench. "Maybe there's a way to balance the two." "Which two?" Was she asking about Daphne? Was she haunted by that? "Music and work. Friends and family. Work and family."
She forced a smile. "Honesty is a good place to start. "I love you," he said. "I need some evidence, Sergeant."
He stood, crossed the room, and offered his arms. She folded into him naturally and wrapped around him like a vine. "More evidence," she said, and he hugged her tighter. He slipped his hand inside her skirt and cupped a buttock. She purred. Her hair caught in his unshaved face. it tickled. "I'll try to be there for you."
"Me too."
"It's hard," she said. "That's because it hasn't felt you this close in a while." That made her laugh, which was good. "We need more laughter."
"We need a lot of things," she said softly into his shoulder, and giggled self-consciously.
It felt fresh, wonderfully fresh, as if he had never touched her before. Each movement of hers, each probe, carried a tingling electricity. She pulled out his shirttail; her hands felt hot on his skin. She was fully off the floor, hanging off him. Her lips smeared him with lipstick, her smell invaded him. He groped for the door, stumbling with her along as baggage. She unfastened his belt-how he wasn't sure-and went for the button to his pants. He kicked out the door's stopper. She threw the bolt, as if they had practiced this.