Robert B. Parker’s Cheap Shot

34

“How do you manage to so artfully piss off those you work with?” Susan said.

“Gumption,” I said. “Determination.”

We were in bed, wrapped up in the sheets, listening to a cold rain tap against my apartment window. Pearl had given up scratching at the door and returned to her place on my new leather couch. We had already had supper; four mini-apple pies baked in the oven.

“From what you’ve told me about Connor, he is an absolute shit heel,” Susan said.

“True.”

“And dirty.”

“True.”

“But you don’t think his dirtiness will interfere with the investigation?”

“I think his low IQ and lack of talent will interfere.”

“So you and Hawk remain.”

“And Z,” I said. “Don’t forget Z.”

“The Three Caballeros.”

“Which one am I?”

“Why, the fucking duck, of course.”

Susan propped herself up on one elbow, and was bathed in a slice of light from outside Marlborough Street. The air smelled of baking apples and cinnamon.

“Kinjo feels a lot of guilt for returning to practice,” I said.

“If it works for him, it works.”

“Sure.”

“But you find it odd.”

“I don’t find it odd, but apparently he’s taking the heat from the piranhas who now pass as so-called sports journalists.”

“You’re not suspecting him?” she said. “For acting indifferent?”

“No,” I said. “Not at all. He’s broken up very badly. He’s as eaten up and sick with worry as is possible in a man. He walked away from us before the drop yesterday and vomited in the bathroom.”

“But you’re asking if it’s healthy?” Susan said. “Or therapeutic?”

I nodded. My eyes lingered on Susan’s chest. She smiled and settled onto her back, pillow under her head, her body half covered, and stared at the ceiling.

“Doesn’t it help you to work out, pound out frustrations on a heavy bag, whatever it takes for a release?”

“And other things.”

“But violent exercise, too.”

“Even playing in a game this Sunday?”

“If it works for him,” Susan said. “Screw the bloggers and nuts on the radios.”

“That’s the same advice I gave him,” I said. “Should I charge him an extra hundred bucks?”

“I charge one-fifty.”

I resettled against the pillow, reached over to the nightstand, grabbed my watch, and checked how long the pies had been in the oven. We had another five minutes. I turned my head to her. Her curly head lay on her pillow. We stared at each other, smiling.

“Did Nicole tell you anything specifically about why she disliked Cristal?” I said.

“She said she’s a terrible parent.”

“In what way?”

“Absent,” Susan said. “She said that Akira runs wild at their house while Cristal has cocktails with friends or watches television or posts pithy comments about Kinjo on her Twitter feed.”

“Kinjo said Nicole is jealous.”

“I’m sure she is,” Susan said. “But which woman would you trust?”

“But why might she want Akira out of the picture?” I said. “What’s in it for her?”

Susan blinked. Her large brown eyes turned slightly upward in thought. “There are bad stepparents,” she said. “And then there are bad stepparents.”

“If the child is dead,” I said. The words so horrible they seemed to resonate long after I said them in the silent room.

“Is that what you’re now thinking?”

“Five days without contact,” I said. “Doesn’t look good.”

“And you suspect Cristal?”

“She is, as the cops like to say these days, a person of interest,” I said. “Before she met Kinjo, she bedded down with a known pornographer and drug dealer in Dorchester.”

“Women do like bad boys.”

“Is that me?”

“Except for baking,” Susan said, lifting herself out of the bed and striding across my bedroom, completely naked, to my closet. “Baking puts you into a category unto your own.”

“‘She walks in beauty, like the night,’” I said.

Much to my disappointment, she fitted herself into an old navy terry-cloth robe. “Does Lord Byron stock ice cream?” she said.

“I made that, too.”

“Of course you did.”