Small Vices

"They don't know who you are," I said.

Rugar was quiet.

"They can't match your prints anywhere. You seem to have no arrest record."

Rugar was still quiet.

"You want to bargain?" I said.

"What have I to bargain?"

"The name of the guy who hired you."

"And what have you?"

"My testimony."

"Without your testimony, there is no case against me."

It was my turn to be quiet.

"On the other hand," Rugar said, "even with your testimony there is simply your word against mine."

I waited.

"You can prove that you were shot last year."

Rugar seemed to be thinking out loud. I nodded and let him keep thinking.

"I have been so successful, for so long, I had begun to think I was impregnable," he said.

I waited some more. I didn't say anything. Rugar looked at me as steadily as he had.

"The longer they hold me," he said, "the more chance they have to look into my identity."

"Good point," I said.

"And giving up the man who hired me would cost me nothing."

"Another good point," I said.

He paid no attention. As far as I could tell he was talking to himself.

"I promised him nothing. I never expected to fail, so there was nothing to promise. Had I succeeded, I could not implicate him without implicating myself, and he could not implicate me without implicating himself. Each had to keep the other's secret."

"But that's not how it is now," I said.

"No," Rugar said. "It isn't, and that is my fault. I have failed in my assignment. I am forced to compromise myself."

"There's another way to look at it," I said.

"Yes?"

"You didn't fail," I said. "I succeeded."

"My present situation remains the same," Rugar said.

"It can be changed," I said. "You give me the guy who hired you, and you testify against him, and you walk away from this."

"You are willing to let me go free after I came so close to fulfilling my assignment?"

"Yep."

"Do you fear I will try again?"

"No."

"Really," Rugar said. "Why not?"

He seemed genuinely interested.

"You are a professional. You do this for money. You don't allow ego or fear or compassion to motivate you. If you give me your client, you have no further reason to chase me."

Rugar looked past me for a moment at the cop leaning on the wall outside the cage. Then he shifted his eyes back to me.

"And how do you know this about me?" he said.

I shrugged. He kept looking at me for a moment and then, oddly, he smiled.

"It is because that is also how you are," he said.

"Gimme a name," I said.

"Donald Stapleton," Rugar said.

"That's the right name," I said.

"You knew it."

"Yes."

"But you couldn't prove it."

"Correct."

"Now you can," Rugar said.

Chapter 50

WHEN I CAME back from New York I went straight to the I

"He didn't kill you," she said after a long time.

"Not hardly."

"Did you kill him?"

"He's in jail," I said.

"Will he get out?"

"Maybe, but he's no threat to us anymore."

She stayed with her face against my chest and her arms around my waist under the handsome brass hanging lamp that ornamented her front entry hall. I could feel her body trembling slightly. I didn't say anything. Neither did she. Finally she pulled away and looked at me. Her eyes were red. There were tears on her face.

"You appear to be crying," I said.

"Yes, and it's beating hell out of my eye makeup."

"Doesn't make you look less beautiful," I said.

"Yes, it does," she said. "I had talked myself into it, that maybe this time you wouldn't come back. That this time you met somebody too good for you and you'd been hurt, and I knew you had to do this. I knew I wouldn't even want to be with the man you'd be if you didn't do this and you allowed me to talk you out of it, and I told myself that loving you meant letting you be you, and I was ready when Quirk, or Belson, or Hawk came and told me."

She was holding herself from me at arm's length looking straight at me with the tears washing down her face.

"And when they did I would have been brave and when they left me I would have wanted to die."

I didn't have anything to say.

"And here you come, looking just like you always have, shaved and with your hair cut and your face smelling, good God, is it Club Man?"

"Yes."

She shook her head.

"And we're supposed to be all right again and just like we were."

"Yes."

"Well, maybe I can't rebound that quickly."

"I think you can," I said.

"Who gives a fuck," Susan said, "what you think."

"Good point," I said carefully.

"Yeah, well, maybe I do care what you think."

"I bet you do," I said.

"And maybe I can rebound. God knows I'm glad you're okay."

"Both of us have had to rebound," I said. "We'll be okay."

"Okay?" Susan said. "Just okay?"

"How do you think we'll be?" I said.

"I think we'll be goddamned sensational," she said.

"Would you like me to hug you again?" I said.

"Yes, but there have to be changes."

"Like what?" I said.

"Like you have to get rid of that goddamned Club Man."

I pulled her slowly in against me and held her.

"Would you be able to love the man I'd be if I let you talk me out of it?" I said.

"Oh, fuck you," Susan said and put her face up and I kissed her and she kissed me back so hard that I was grateful I was bigger.

Chapter 51

THE NEXT MORNING, clear eyed, clean shaven, close cropped, and contumescent, I went to see Clint Stapleton again.

He wasn't at his condo. I found him on the indoor practice court at Taft playing against a short red-haired scrambler who kept getting the ball back over the net without looking very good doing it. The te