CHAPTER 28.
It was a long, exploratory, surprising, flung-open afternoon, and when we were through Susan fell asleep on the bed, in her sweater. I got up, took my gun, and went into the kitchen and examined the chicken breasts.
They had not suffered from marinating and might even have benefited. I let them sit and went to Susan's bathroom, put my gun on the toilet tank, moved three pairs of pantyhose, and took a shower. I shampooed with French Walnut Oil, which I found on the tub, and when I was through I put on the green terry cloth robe I keep there and took a bottle of club soda out from under the bathroom sink, where Susan kept it, picked up the gun, and went back to the kitchen. I made a light Scotch and soda and stood in her front window and looked out. The gun was on the coffee table behind me. Trees along Linnaean Street were beginning to bud. They were mostly maples, a few oak, and at least one horse chestnut. Across the street in front of the brick apartment building a Hispanic woman wearing a down vest over a print dress was rocking a baby in its carriage. She rolled the carriage back toward her and pushed it away as she leaned against the building. There was no sound in the apartment. I felt the sense of peace and disconnection that I felt after Susan and I made love. A Federal Express truck pulled up next door and a young woman in the FedEx uniform got out and headed up to the front door with one of those urgent-looking envelopes. Directly opposite me on the ledge outside the second story of the apartment building, four pigeons sat and craned their necks about and teetered like they do. I looked back down in the street. No one came along with a gun and a coil of rope.
"Goddamn," I said aloud in the quiet room.
If he'd make a move at us, I could kill him and it would be over. I didn't think Hawk would lose him and I didn't think Quirk would either.
But it happens. It's very hard to stick with someone who knows you're there and who wants to lose you and doesn't care if you know he wants to lose you. If the guy you're tailing is resourceful, it is in fact impossible. I knew that and Quirk knew and Belson knew it. Hawk knew it, though Hawk never really believed that he could be thwarted.
It was why I wouldn't leave her.
I went back to the kitchen and made another light Scotch and soda, and walked back to the window and looked down some more.
What if he killed me?
I shook my head sharply. Thinking about that was too painful. It wasn't too productive either. To be who I was and do what I did had to assume I'd win.
"Just because he could jump a fence better," I said. There was no other sound in the apartment.
It was like a lot of things: you felt fear not when it was most likely but when it was most awful. If he got past me to Susan… I shook my head again. He had to shake Hawk, and he had to be able to get past me.
And he had to get Susan before she got the gun. Could she shoot? Yes.
She could. If she had to. And if she had to, she'd be calm and steady and the gun wouldn't waver.
I looked down in the street again.
"Come on," I said. "Come on and do it."
I heard my own voice in the room and felt foolish, but my teeth were still clenched hard and the trapezius muscles were bunched up near my neck.
From the bed I heard Susan's voice.
"Hello," she said. It was a very small sound.
I walked down the hallway and into the bedroom. She lay on her back on top of the covers, wearing only her sweater.
I said, "It is wanton and shameless to make love while wearing a sweater." She said, "Tell me there is a Diet Coke somewhere in this house."
"I saw one under the sink in the bathroom," I said. "I assume you want it warm."
"Yes, and at once," she said.
I went and got the Diet Coke and poured it into a large glass and got a lemon from the refrigerator and cut her a wedge and put it in the Coke.
Actually I got a third of a lemon that had dried out slightly, which Susan had left in one of the egg-keeper pockets inside the door. I brought it to the bedroom and put it on the night table beside her bed.
She was still flat on her back. I collected some of the pillows I had cast aside earlier and plumped them around her and put my hand behind her back between her shoulder blades and sat her up and slid the pillows behind her.
"Jesus Christ," she said.
I pushed the Diet Coke an inch closer to her. Her eyes slowly focused on it. She took it from the night table and drank and put it back. She was the only human I've ever seen who liked Diet Coke warm. She breathed deeply and let it out.
"What did you say about a sweater?" she said.
"I said it is wanton and shameless to make love while wearing a sweater."
"Yes," Susan said thoughtfully. "It is, isn't it." She smiled at me.
She said, "It's probably fairly shameless to lay around and drink Diet Coke wearing only a sweater."
"Yes," I said, "but a five-martini hangover thirst tends to humble even the best of us."
"Five?"
"Five."
"Good heavens," Susan said. She pulled her bare legs up toward her chest. "What time is it?"
"Four forty-five," I said. "The cocktail hour is at hand."
Susan shivered. She had her arms around her knees. "Maybe two aspirin," she said.
I got her some and she washed them down with the warm Diet Coke.
"We missed lunch," she said. "It was worth it, I think."
"Of course it was," Susan said. "But now I need food."
"The chicken awaits," I said.
"Well done?"
"I shut it off before I swept you away to sweatered passion," I said.
She smiled at me. "You would," she said. . time to disappear. He had his bag, all his stuff, time to go underground. He had a black turtleneck, black jeans, black running shoes. He adjusted the navy watch cap on his head. People would notice if he blacked his face. Two white guys had joined the black guy. They'd walked around the building and looked at all the entrances. Then the black guy left. The two white guys stayed outside. Sitting in a station wagon across from his building where they could see the front door and the side fire escape.
Dumb bastards thought they had him. Nothing in this place that would help them find him. Nothing in this place anyway. Like living in a fucking toilet stall. He went out the door and down the hall and opened the back window and dropped through it maybe four feet to a roof. He ran along the roof pasta window where a fat guy and his wife were on the couch watching TV and climbed the fire escape that ran up the wall of the next building. The roof door on the next building was open. Works every time. Going down the stairs in the next building, he felt the feeling in his stomach and groin. Like electricity. He had had his stuff, he was dressed for the night. Anything comes my way I can handle.
On the first floor he went to the back and out the door and down an alley, feeling the electricity in his legs, feeling the air running free into his chest. Then he was out on the next street and away in the darkness, fully equipped.