CHAPTER FIFTY


I had the mystery ride all put together. Until I figured out exactly what Hawk and I were going to do about Last Stand Systems, Inc., I wanted the time I spent with Susan to be covert. I was in a profession where getting threatened was part of the deal. So was Hawk. But Susan was not. So I left Hawk to look out for himself for a long weekend and took Susan for a few days to Lee Farrell’s empty condominium at Sanibel Island on Florida’s west coast. It was late June, and as out of season as you could get. But I was pretty sure no one would shoot at us while we were down there.

It was all right on the plane, and in the car rental office, and the car we rented was air-conditioned. The walk from the car to the elevator and the ride up in the elevator was not air-conditioned, and we were near collapse by the time I got Farrell’s door unlocked. The condo was roasting. It had been closed since Farrell’s last vacation. I staggered to the thermostat and turned the air-conditioning on high. In a few minutes the crisis had passed and we were breathing normally again.

“I don’t want to disappoint you,” I said to Susan after she had unpacked and hung up all her clothes and joined me at the little bar in the living room for a cocktail. “But Farrell made me promise there would be no heterosexual carnality in here.”

“Is this your way of telling me you want me to dress up in a man’s suit again?” Susan said.

“Lee says it’s in the bylaws of the condo association – hetero-sexuality is prohibited.”

“Oh boy,” Susan said. “Finally a real vacation.”

“Gee,” I said. “Usually when someone tells you that you can’t do something, you want to do it immediately.”

Susan sipped on the Bellini I had made her and looked at me and frowned thoughtfully.

“You know,” she said, “you’re right. That is how I am. The hell with the condo association. Let’s fuck.”

“That’s the Susan I know,” I said. “Did you say something about a man’s suit?”

“Just a little humor,” she said.

“How about maybe just the shirt and a tie,” I said.

“Stop it,” Susan said and got up and walked toward the bedroom. I followed.

“How about just the tie?” I said.

Susan unzipped her shorts.

“How about less talk and more action,” she said.

–«»-«»-«»-

LATER THAT NIGHT we had dinner at The Sanibel Steak House. The dining room was small and pleasant with glass at the far end looking out over some greenery. We both had martinis. They were excellent. We both ordered steak. For Susan to order steak was a breach of self-discipline comparable to masturbating in public. Salads arrived first. They were excellent. The steaks arrived shortly thereafter. Susan recovered herself sufficiently to cut her steak into halves and put one half aside.

“I guess we showed them,” Susan said as she chewed on a small piece of steak. “Sex, martinis, and steak. How much more carnality is possible.”

I took a bite of my steak. It was excellent.

“That can be our project while we’re here,” I said. “See how much carnality is possible.”

“Would you care to tell me exactly why we are here?”

“Haven’t been away in a while,” I said. “Lee offered.”

“Lee’s a cop,” Susan said. “He doesn’t spend all winter here either. Why now at the end of June?”

“Sure it’s out of season,” I said. “But everything’s air-conditioned.”

“I’m not complaining about the heat,” Susan said. “And so far I’m having a lovely time. But I think that there’s something lurking behind the arras.”

“A rat, maybe?”

“Or Polonius,” Susan said. “Shakespeare aside, I know you nearly as well as you know me. What’s up?”

I finished my martini, and in a burst of unbridled carnality, Susan finished hers. The waitress noticed our situation and came over. We ordered red wine. She went to get it. And brought it back and left.

“You remember Beecham, Maine?” I said.

She shook her head. I told her, all of it. She listened as I talked as she always did, with full attention, her eyes fixed on me. I could feel the charge in her. I could feel the energy between us. It made talking to her a lush experience.

“And you obviously believe them,” Susan said when I finished.

“That they’ll try for Hawk and me? You remember Clausewitz on war?”

“I should,” Susan said, “by now. You keep quoting him.”

“And what is the quote?”

“Something like ‘you must prepare for the enemy’s capability, rather than his intentions.’”

“Yes.”

“So you have to assume they might try.”

“If I assume they might try and I’m wrong, I’m inconvenienced. If I assume they won’t try and I’m wrong, I’m dead.”

“Which is why you brought me here. Because if we were to spend time together you wanted it where I wouldn’t be in danger by proximity.”

“Yep. I figure they follow us down here in late June and their bullets will melt.”

“And you still don’t know their connection with Amir?”

“Only that they sent a plane for him. And warned us away from him.”

“It’s the first time in this case that you’ve run into people who seem like they could have killed Prentice Lamont,” she said.

“Yeah, I noticed that too. Don’t know if they did, but at least we can assume they would.”

Susan had another bite of steak. I sipped some red wine. I had finished my steak and was keeping track of what happened to the half of her steak that she had put aside. It was still aside. I remained hopeful.

“So what are you going to do?”

“Keep pushing,” I said. “Something will pop out.”

“The police can’t help you?” Susan said.

I shrugged.

“We say they threatened us, they say they didn’t, what are the cops going to do?”

“You wouldn’t go to the police anyway,” Susan said. “And certainly Hawk would not.”

I didn’t say anything. Susan put her knife and fork down, and folded her hands under her chin and gazed at me in silence.

“Don’t let them kill you,” Susan said.

“I won’t,” I said.

She thought for a minute, looking at me, and then said, “No, you won’t, will you.”

“No.”

We sat and our eyes held like that for a long minute.

Finally I said, “You going to eat the rest of that steak?”

She kept staring at me and then began to smile and her eyes filled up, and then she began to laugh and the tears spilled onto her cheeks.

She managed to say, “No.”

“Good,” I said.

I forked the steak onto my plate and sliced off a bite.

“Do you have a plan for tomorrow?” Susan said.

She had herself back under control but her face was still flushed the way it gets when she cries, or laughs, or both, and there was still some wetness on her completely sensational cheekbones.

“I thought we could sleep late, have a leisurely breakfast, once again defy the condo association for much of the afternoon, have a swim and go for dinner at a place called the Twilight Cafe. I hear they have a steak with black beans that you won’t be able to finish…”

She was laughing again. There was a slivered edge of fear behind the laugh, but it was real laughter.

“As I think about it,” she said, “I don’t think anything can kill you.”

“Nothing has,” I said.

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