Small Vices

"You're going to do it alone, aren't you?"

Susan's head was on my shoulder, my right arm was around her. A Browning 9mm. semiautomatic pistol lay unholstered right beside the alarm clock on the table next to the bed.

"We'll see," I said.

"Is it like being thrown from a horse? You have to get right up and ride it again so you won't be scared?"

"Something like that, maybe."

"Are you afraid?"

"It's not a question I ask myself," I said. "It's sort of like flying. Most people I know, in fact, are a little afraid of flying. But you fly anyway because life's too complicated if you don't, and you don't pay much attention, unless you're phobic, to whether in fact you are afraid."

"Do you intend to kill him?"

"I guess that's up to him," I said.

"You plan to give him a chance to surrender?"

"I'm not sure what I'm going to do, Suze. Some things become self-evident as they develop. Readiness is all."

Susan raised up on her elbow and put her face very close to mine. Her voice was very soft, and very fierce.

"Fuck readiness is all," she said. "And fuck Shakespeare. Don't give the Gray Man a chance. Kill him as soon as you can."

"Fuck Shakespeare?"

"And the whole English Renaissance for that matter," Susan said.

"And you a Harvard grad?" I said. "A resident of Cambridge?"

"This isn't some sort of knightly errand," Susan said. "This is your life, our life. Bring Hawk with you, and Vi

"I'll try to do it the best way I can," I said.

Susan settled back down with her head on my shoulder again. We were quiet.

"Yes," Susan said finally, "you will. Which is the way you should do it."

Pearl got off the bed and went purposefully to the kitchen, where I could hear her lapping water from her dish.

"Have you noticed that I have no clothes on," Susan said.

"This was brought to my attention quite forcefully," I said. "About an hour ago."

Susan ran her forefinger along the line of my bicep. "I suppose, since you've been wounded, and since you are not as young as you were when we first met, that bringing it forcefully to your attention again would be too much."

"Probably," I said. "On the other hand, it seems a shame to waste all that nudity. Maybe we should fumble around a little and see what develops."

Susan reached over and closed the bedroom door.

"Pearl won't like being shut out," I said.

"It'll only be for a little while."

"Maybe it'll be a long while," I said.

"One can only hope."

I heard Pearl return to the closed door and snuffle a little, and sigh and lie down against it. She seemed to have figured out that there were times when we had to be alone. And accepted it philosophically.

"Well, for heaven's sake," Susan whispered. "Something seems to be developing already."

"Strong," I said. "Like a bull."

Susan giggled a little bit.

"The resemblance ends there," she said.

Chapter 44

I TALKED WITH Ellis Alves again, alone, in a small conference room on the thirty-second floor at Cone, Oakes and Baldwin. He was as hostile and interior as he had been the last time. I remembered what Hawk had said: You in for life, hope will kill you. There was nothing on the conference table except a water carafe and some paper cups stacked upside down. Ellis paid no attention to it. He stood motionless, silhouetted against the bright picture window with the early fall light filling the room.

"Where's Hawk?" Alves said.

"Elsewhere," I said. "I have some things to tell you."

He didn't say anything. He simply waited, standing on the other side of the small conference table, for what I might have to say. I imagined in prison you learn to wait.

"I know you didn't kill Melissa Henderson," I said.

Alves waited.

"I can't prove it yet, but I will."

Alves waited.

"You interested in what I know?" I said.

"No."

"You're going to get out," I said.

Alves stood without speaking or moving.

"You got any questions?"

"No."

"Okay, then that's all I got to say."

"Make you feel better?" Alves said.

"No. I just figured you ought to know you're going to get out pretty soon, so you wouldn't do something dumb in the interim."

"Yeah," Alves said.

"Don't try to escape. Don't get into a fight. Don't break any rules. Nobody much wants you to get out, so don't give them an excuse to keep you."

Alves didn't say anything. He was looking at me, but I felt no contact. It was like exchanging stares with a statue.

"You got anything else you want to say before I get the guards?"

"No."

"Okay."

I got up and started for the door.

Behind me, Alves said, "How long it going to take?"

"I don't know, weeks probably, maybe days. I need to make somebody confess."

"What happens they don't?"

"I'll force it," I said.

"Been almost a year," Alves said. "How come you still doing this?"

"I was hired to do this."

"What happens to me, somethin' happen to you?"

"Hawk will finish it," I said.

We stood looking at each other for a minute.

"Couple niggers fighting the system," Alves said.

"Couple niggers and the biggest law firm in Boston," I said.

Alves walked stiffly over to the window and looked out at Boston Harbor.

"I ain't counting on nothing," Alves said.

"Best way to be," I said.

Alves nodded once, his eyes flat and meaningless, his face empty.

"Yeah," he said. "It is."

I knocked on the door and the guards opened it. "All done," I said.

They went past me into the conference room and I walked out to the corridor and punched the button on the elevator. It arrived in time, and I got in it with mail room clerks and young female secretaries and a couple of suits, and down we went.

I stopped in the lobby for a minute and watched the people hurrying freely about. They would have taken Ellis down in the service elevator and out the back. In an hour he'd be back in the joint, looking at life; his only chance to get out in the hands of a white guy he neither knew nor trusted…

breeding/lilacs out of the dead land, mixing/memory and desire… If you're a lifer, hope will kill you…

Was I mixing up my poets? At least no one was calling me the hyacinth girl.

I walked over to the parking garage where they'd found Tommy Miller's body and got in my car and headed for New York.

Chapter 45

PATRICIA UTLEY HAD moved uptown. She had a townhouse on Sixty-fifth Street between Park and Madison with an etched glass front door, which I noticed had been covered with a thick sheet of clear Lexan. On either side of the entrance there were little pillars, like the entrance to some sort of Greco-Roman shrine. Steven opened the door. He was still black and well set up, still moved with a light springiness. His short hair had started to gray. In keeping with the times, he had turned in his white coat and was wearing a blue blazer. He recognized me, though the recognition didn't overpower him.