Cold Service

42

SUSAN AND PEARL and I were in bed together. I loved Pearl, but my preference had always been a mйnage а deux.

"At least she wasn't in here during," I said to Susan.

"It would not be decorous," Susan said.

"How about postcoital languor with a seventy-five-pound hound on my chest. How decorous is that?"

"We don't wish to exclude her," Susan said.

"We don't?"

"No."

Pearl's head was on my chest, and her nose was perhaps an inch from mine. I gazed into her golden eyes. She gazed back.

"Not a single flicker of intelligence," I said.

"Shhh,"Susan said. "She believes she's smart."

"She's wrong," I said.

"Sometimes illusion is all we have," Susan said.

"Couldn't she settle for being beautiful," I said, "the way I have?"

"Apparently not," Susan said.

We were, all three of us, quiet then. The ceiling in Susan's bedroom was painted green. The walls were burgundy. Her sheets were sort of khaki-colored, and the pillowcases had a small gold trim. I reached around Pearl and held Susan's hand. She turned her head and smiled at me across the dog.

"Shall we have a big Sunday breakfast," she said, "while you tell me what's bothering you?"

"What makes you think something's bothering me?" I said.

Susan tilted her head a little.

She said, "You're dealing with a pro here, pal."

I let go of her hand and patted her belly.

"That's for sure," I said.

"I didn't mean that," Susan said.

I shrugged. Not an easy thing with a dog on your chest.

"What would you like for grub?" I said.

"Could we have apple fritters?"

"If you have the ingredients," I said.

"I have apples."

"Excellent start," I said.

"I don't know what else you need," she said.

"I'll check," I said, and struggled out from under Pearl and on to my feet.

"And put some pants on," Susan said. "I don't want the pity of my neighbors."

"They'd be green with envy," I said.

"Confidence is a good thing," Susan said. "But humor me."

I put on a pair of gym shorts that I kept at Susan's especially for postcoital leisurewear. She had managed to salvage just enough top sheet from Pearl to avoid being nude. I flexed at her.

"Dashing," she said.

I reached over and flipped the sheet off.

"Back at ya," I said.

I think she blushed very slightly, though I'm not sure. I turned and went to the kitchen.

She had apples and bananas and flour, and, amazingly, cornmeal and some oil. I made coffee and started assembling the fritters. I peeled the apples and skinned the bananas and sliced them and tossed each separately in some orange juice to keep them from turning brown. Then I mixed two small bowls of a flour-and-cornmeal batter, put the sliced apples into one and the bananas into the other. If there's plenitude, you may as well exploit it.

Susan came out of the bedroom with some lipgloss on and her hair brushed. She was wearing a short orange silk kimono-looking thing. I was prepared to eat at the counter, or standing up over the stove for that matter, but Susan had other plans. She put a tablecloth on the dining-room table and set it for two, complete with a glass vase of tulips that she brought in from the living room.

"Powdered sugar, honey, or maple syrup?" she said.

"I like syrup," I said.

"I like powdered sugar."

"Put out both," I said.

"God, you're decisive," she said.

I let the oil heat in the pot until it spattered when I sprinkled in water. Then I dropped the fritter batter in carefully, a few at a time, and cooked until I had stockpiled a significant serving of each. Susan drank coffee while I cooked.

When we settled in to eat, Susan said, "So, tell me about it."

"You shrinks are always so cocksure," I said.

"Nice word choice," Susan said. "In the current context."

I shrugged. Susan ate a bite of fritter.

"Wow," she said. "Banana, too?"

"Never a dull moment with Spenser," I said.

"Never," she said.

I had one each fritter with maple syrup and drank some coffee.

"Hawk's got a plan," I said.

Susan nodded and didn't speak.

"It's complicated, and requires people to react as we expect them to, and it will take some doing," I said. "But it's not a bad plan. It might work."

"Can you think of a better plan?" Susan said.

"I can't think of one as good," I said.

"Care to share?" Susan said.

I smiled.

"Sure," I said. "But you have to pay close attention."

"You'll help me with the hard stuff," Susan said.

"Count on me, little lady."

She didn't do anything while I told her but listen. She didn't drink coffee or eat or tap her fingertips together, or frown or smile or move. Susan could listen the ears off a brass monkey. When I got through, she was quiet for a moment.

Then she said, "If it's going to work, a number of people may have to be killed."

"Yes."

"Do you mind if they die?"

"Not too much. These aren't very good people."

"But you mind killing them."

"There are circumstances when I'd be comfortable with it," I said.

Susan nodded.

"But not these circumstances," she said.

"I don't think so," I said.

"You've killed people before," Susan said.

"I always felt I had to."

"But this seems like, what, serial assassination?" she said.

"Something like that."

"And if you walk away?" Susan said.

"I can't walk away."

Susan smiled slightly.

"I know," she said. "The question was rhetorical."

"The problem is not," I said.

I was being churlish and we both knew it, but Susan chose not to comment.

Instead, she smiled and said, "A fine mess you've got us into this time, Ollie."

I nodded.

"This doesn't bother Hawk," Susan said.

"No."

"Or the hideous Gray Man."

"I doubt that either of them has thought about it," I said.

"I wish the Gray Man weren't involved," Susan said.

I shrugged.

"The other day," I said, "I remarked that he was a strange dude, and he said, 'We are all strange dudes. In what we do, there are no rules. We have to make some up for ourselves.' "

"He always said you and he were alike," Susan said.

I nodded.

"Remember in San Francisco? When you and I were separated? And you killed a pimp? Just shot him."

"Yeah."

"Did you have to do that?"

"I had to find you," I said. "I couldn't stay around and protect those two whores from the trouble we got them into. When we left, the pimp would have killed them."

"So you had to kill him."

"Yes."

"To protect the whores from a jeopardy that you caused them."

"I was looking for you."

"So in a sense you did it for me?"

"I guess I thought so," I said.

"You don't lie to yourself," Susan said. "In your world, it had to be done."

I didn't say anything.

"Hawk has to do this," Susan said.

"He does."

"He and you," she said, "for your whole adulthoods, have been a certainty in each other's lives."

Susan ate the rest of her apple fritter, except for the piece she gave Pearl. She drank some coffee and put the cup down.

"In his life," she said, "you may be the only certainty." "May be," I said.

Susan's big, dark eyes seemed intensely alive to me. Pearl rested her long chin on the table, and Susan patted her absently, smoothing Pearl's ears.

"You have to help him," she said.

"I guess I do," I said.