"It couldn't be permanent," she said.
The words were getting away from her. She could feel them start to bubble carelessly out, before they'd been thought about, before they'd been sanitized.
"Because you never saw me when you looked at me. You saw a fucking bowling trophy. Some sex, some fun, to lock up in the trophy case when not in use. Like now, like I am in your goddamned camera."
He inhaled slowly and let the smoke drift back out. He smiled at her dreamily, leaning back in his chair, turning his wine glass slowly by the stem.
"Angel, I have loved you since I met you. It is I who am locked up-in your eyes, in your lips, by your body."
"That's exactly the flowery bullshit that you used to smother me with. And the more I tried to be an actual goddamned human being, the more flowery bullshit you shoveled. It has never been about me. It is always about you and how I make you feel."
The skin around his eyes looked stiff, as if someone had pulled it too tight. She seemed unable to stop the words as they tumbled out, she was frightened to be saying them, but she couldn't stop. If she could just pause, get a breath, get control.
"Frank takes me seriously," she said.
"And I…" he said, appalled at what he was hearing. "I do… not… take you seriously. I… who nearly died when you left me. Who spent every moment since you left looking for you? I who am nothing without you. I do not take you seriously?"
She felt the shaky feeling spread from the pit of her stomach and dart along her arms and legs and up her spine. And yet, at the center of herself there was starting to be something else, an ill-formed kernel of self that would not yield. That would not, or, the thought skittered briefly past her consciousness, could not, cease to be Lisa. She would fight him, as best she could, with whatever she had. She had come too far, been through too much, before finally becoming Lisa. She would not go back. She would rather die than go back. She stared at him for a moment leaning intensely toward her.
"No," she said. "You take yourself seriously."
His face seemed to crumple and then recompose. He puffed on the cigar for a moment and there was something flickering in his eyes that frightened her intensely.
"And so shall you," he said.
Chapter 5
I was in my office. Outside my window it was a bright hard spring day, not very warm, but no wind and a lot of sunshine. There were spring clothes in the shops along Newbury Street, and somebody had put a few tables outside some of the cafes. It was still too brisk for anyone to sit outside, but it was a harbinger, and it made me feel good. Breakfast was over and I was planning lunch when Quirk called.
"Belson got shot last night," he said. "I'll pick you up outside your office in two minutes."
"He alive?" I said.
"Half," Quirk said and hung up.
I was outside wearing my authentic replica A-2 leather jacket with the collar up when an unmarked black Ford with a buggy whip antenna swung into the curb. Quirk was in the back, and a Homicide dick named Malone was driving. I got in the back with Quirk, and Malone pulled away from the curb, hit the siren, ran a red light and headed down Boylston Street.
"Belson was coming home last night, around eight o'clock, and while he was unlocking his front door somebody pumped three nine-millimeter slugs into him from behind," Quirk said. "One broke the left scapula, one punched a hole in his right side and went on through. One is still there, right near his spine, down low."
"He going to make it," I said.
"Probably," Quirk said. "They don't know how soon he'll walk."
"Shooter didn't group his shots very tight," I said.
"We noticed that too," Quirk said. "On the other hand, he apparently hit all three shots he took. We haven't found any other slugs."
"So he's a pretty good shot," I said, "but maybe excited."
"Maybe."
Malone yanked the car dawn Arlington Street and turned left on St. James.
"He conscious?" I said.
"In and out," Quirk said. "But last time he was in, he said he wanted to see you."
With the siren full on we went through Copley Square, and out Huntington Avenue.
"What hospital?" I said.
"Brigham," Quirk said.
"Any suspects?"
"No."
We went out Huntington, turned down Francis and pulled in under the portico at the main hospital entrance, and parked. A fat black woman in a hospital security uniform came toward us as we got out, waving us away. Malone flashed his badge and she stopped and nodded and walked away.
Belson was in the intensive care unit, a sheet pulled up to the middle of his chest. There was an IV into a vein on the back of his right hand. His left arm was in a cast. Lee Farrell was there, with his hips on a windowsill. There was another Homicide cop I didn't know sitting in a chair by Belson's bedside with a tape recorder. The recorder wasn't picking anything up. Belson appeared to be sleeping. I nodded at Farrell.
The cop with the tape recorder said, "He's coked to the eyeballs, Lieutenant. He hasn't said a word."
Quirk nodded.
"Frank," he said. "Spenser's here."
Belson made no movement for maybe twenty seconds, then his eyes opened. He shifted his eyeballs slowly toward Quirk's voice and slowly past Quirk and looked at me. The cop beside the bed turned on the tape recorder.
"Talk… to… Spenser," he said slowly in a very soft voice. Everything he did was slow, as if the circuits weren't connected very well.
I moved a little closer to the bed and bent over.
"What do you need?" I said.
His eyes remained fixed for a moment at the spot where I had been, then slowly they moved and, even more slowly, they refocused on me.
"You… find… her," he said.
"Lisa," I said.
"Can't… look… now. You… look."
"Yeah," I said. "I'll find her."
Belson was silent for a while. His eyes were on me, but they didn't seem to be seeing me. Then he moved his lips carefully. For a moment no sound came.
Then he said, "Good."
Everyone was quiet in the room. Belson kept his blank eyes on me. Then he nodded faintly and let his eyes close and didn't move. The cop with the tape recorder turned it off.
In the corridor, Quirk said, "You chase the wife, we'll chase the shooter. They turn out to be connected, we'll cooperate in our common endeavor."
"He say anything I can use?"
"He hasn't said anything anybody can use. Even if he was lucid, I don't think he knows what hit him. He got it in the back and he never cleared his piece."
"A real pro," I said, "would have made sure it was finished."
"A real amateur wouldn't have hit all three shots," Quirk said. "Maybe something scared him off."
"If something did, be nice to find out what it was and talk to it."
"We're looking," Quirk said.
"Doctors give you any idea how long before he can talk more than he's doing now?"
"No. They've shot him full of hop right now, and they say he'll need it for a while."
"So I'm on my own," I said.
"Aren't you always?" Quirk said.
We walked slowly through the hospital corridors to the elevator.
"You want to look through Frank's house?" Quirk said.