Double Deuce

CHAPTER 2

Susan and I were sitting on her back steps, throwing the ball for Pearl, Susan’s German Short Hair. This was more complicated than it had to be because Pearl had the part about chasing the ball and picking it up; but she did not have the part about bringing it back and giving it to you. She wanted you to chase her and pry it loose from her jaws. Which was not restful.

“She can be taught,” Susan said.

“You think anyone can be taught,” I said. “And you think you can do it.”

“You have occasionally shaken my confidence,” Susan said. “But generally that’s true.”

She had on nearly knee-high black boots and some sort of designer jeans that fit like nylons, and a windbreaker that looked like denim and was made of silk, which puzzled me. I’d have thought it should be the other way around. Her thick black hair had recently been cut, and was now a relatively short mass of curls around her face. Her eyes remained huge and bottomless. She had a cup of hot water with lemon which she held in both hands and sipped occasionally. I was drinking coffee.

“Got any thoughts on gangs?” I said.

“Gangs?”

“Yeah, youth gangs,” I said.

“Very little,” Susan said. Pearl came close and then shied away when Susan reached for the ball.

“You’re a shrink,” I said. “You’re supposed to know about human behavior.”

“I can’t even figure out this dog,” Susan said. “Why do you want to know about gangs?”

“Hawk and I are going to rid a housing project of them.”

“How nice,” Susan said. “Maybe it could become a subspecialty for you. In addition to leaping tall buildings at a single bound.”

“Spenser’s the name. Gangs are the game,” I said. “You know anything about youth gangs?”

“No,” Susan said. “I don’t think many people do. There’s a lot of literature. Mostly sociology, but my business is essentially with individuals.”

“Mine too,” I said.

Pearl came to me with the yellow tennis ball chomped in one side of her mouth, and pushed her nose under my forearm, which caused my coffee to slop from the cup onto my thigh. I put the cup down and reached for the ball and she turned her head away.

“Isn’t that adorable,” Susan said.

I feinted with my right and grabbed at the ball with my left, Pearl moved her head a quarter inch and I missed again.

“I haven’t been this outclassed since I fought Joe Walcott,” I said.

Susan got up and went into her kitchen and came out with a damp towel and rubbed out the coffee stain in my jeans.

“That was kind of exciting,” I said.

“You want to tell me about this gang thing you’re involved in?”

“Sure,” I said. “If you’ll keep rubbing the coffee stain out of my thigh while I do it.”

She didn’t but I told her anyway.

While I told her Pearl went across the yard and dropped the tennis ball and looked at it and barked at it. A robin settled on the fence near her and she spotted it and went into her point, foot raised, head and tail extended, like a hunting print. Susan nudged me and nodded at her. I picked up a pebble and tossed it at the robin and said “Bang” as it flew up. Pearl looked after it and then back at me.

“Do you really think the `bang‘ fooled her?” Susan said.

“If I fired a real gun she’d run like hell,” I said.

“Oh, yes,” Susan said.

We were quiet. In the Globe I had read that coffee wasn’t bad for you after all. I was celebrating by drinking some, in the middle of the morning. Susan had made it for me: instant coffee in the microwave with condensed skim milk instead of cream. But it was still coffee and it was still officially not bad for me.

“I don’t see how you and Hawk are going to do that,” Susan said.

“I don’t either, yet.”

“I mean the police gang units in major cities can’t prevent gangs. How do you two think you can?”

“Well, for one thing it is we two,” I said.

“I’ll concede that,” Susan said.

“Secondly, the cops are coping with many gangs in a whole city. We only have to worry about the gangs’ impact on Double Deuce.”

“But even if you succeed, and I don’t see how you can, won’t it just drive them into another neighborhood? Where they will terrorize other people?”

“That’s the kind of problem the cops have,” I said. “They are supposed to protect all the people. That’s not Hawk’s problem or mine. We only have to protect the people in Double Deuce.”

“But other people deserve it just as much.”

“If the best interest of a patient,” I said, “conflicts with the best interest of a nonpatient, what do you do?”

Susan smiled. “I am guided always,” she said, “by the best interest of my patient. It is the only way I can do my work.”

I nodded.

Pearl picked up the tennis ball and went to the corner of the yard near the still barren grape arbor and dug a hole and buried the ball.

“Do you suppose that this is her final statement on chase-the-bally?” I said.

“I think she’s just given up trying to train us,” Susan said. “And is putting it in storage until someone smarter shows up.”

“Which should be soon,” I said.