Sixkill

38

“Why don’t they just shoot you?” Susan said. “Soon as you became an annoyance?”

She was preparing Pearl’s supper, which was mercifully the extent of her cooking, except on rare and vaporish occasions when she decided to make us a meal.

“Not sure,” I said.

Susan spooned some boiled hamburger with broth over the Kibbles ’n Bits in Pearl’s bowl. Pearl sat perfectly still, and watched her intently.

“How much do they know about you?” Susan said.

“I don’t know.”

“If they knew about you, they’d know that a lot of people would expend a lot of effort to find who did it.”

“Including you?”

“Led by me,” Susan said.

She put Pearl’s food down on the floor and patted Pearl on the shoulder as Pearl began to eat.

“Certainly,” she said, “Quirk and Belson would give it special attention. Healy, the FBI person.”

“Epstein,” I said.

“And when Hawk came back from central Asia, he’d put together his own posse, don’t you think?”

“Might,” I said.

“He’d get Vinnie Morris, the Mexican man from Los Angeles.”

“Chollo,” I said.

“Who might bring Bobby Horse.”

“Probably would,” I said.

“I’m sure Tedy Sapp would come up. And maybe even that black gangster, you know, the one with the huge bodyguard,” Susan said.

“Tony Marcus.” I said. “The huge bodyguard is Junior, the jittery little doped-out shooter is Ty-Bop. How come you can’t remember people like Tony Marcus, and you remember Bobby Horse like he grew up with you.”

“I don’t know,” Susan said.

Pearl had cleaned up her supper, and was sitting again, staring at Susan.

“How can you not know?” I said. “You have a Ph.D. from Harvard?”

“Well, I did read somewhere that by adulthood, we are so full of accumulated data that our brain has trouble sorting it.”

“Oh,” I said.

Susan reached into a polished chrome canister on her kitchen counter and came out with an odd-looking item, which she handed to Pearl. Pearl ate it.

“What was that?” I said.

“Duck and sweet potato,” she said.

“Part of our supper?” I said.

“No,” Susan said. “Our supper is being prepared as we speak by the lovely folks at Upper Crust Pizza. It will arrive at seven.”

“Large?”

“Yes.”

“Not broccoli or brussels sprouts on it.”

“No, I’ve put health aside this one time,” Susan said. “What do you think of my theory about why they haven’t shot you?”

“They may know a lot. They may not,” I said. “But what they do know is that the murder of someone connected to the Jumbo Nelson case would fully engage the local cops.”

“So they’ll kill you only if it is less dangerous than letting you live,” Susan said.

“Probably,” I said. “But their success is not a foregone conclusion, you know.”

“I know,” Susan said. “In fact, I can only bear the possibility if I am certain they’ll fail.”

“Everybody has so far,” I said. “Besides, if I can believe Alice DeLauria, my immediate danger is only a savage beating.”

“That’s consoling,” Susan said.

“I was hoping it would be,” I said.

“And you’re not afraid,” Susan said.

“I am afraid,” I said. “It’s overhead, sort of. The price of doing business.”

“And you’re able to push past it.”

“Yes,” I said. “Otherwise I couldn’t do what I do.”

“And you do what you do because?”

I shrugged.

“I’m better at it than I am at anything else?”

Susan nodded.

“And you read Le Morte d’Arthur too early in life,” she said.

“Yeah, that too, I guess.”

“And, I suspect, if you didn’t do what you do, you’d be someone else,” Susan said.

“Maybe,” I said.

“And you won’t let fear make you into someone else.”

“What if I said to you, ‘I love what I do but I’m too scared to do it’?”

“I know,” Susan said. “I know.”

“Yes,” I said. “You do.”

“I wish Hawk were here,” Susan said.

“He’ll be back,” I said.

“Unless he got killed over there,” Susan said.

“Hawk doesn’t get killed,” I said.

“Oh,” Susan said. “Like you.”

“Exactly like me,” I said.

Susan made me a big scotch and soda, and herself an unusually large martini.

“Will Z be all right?” she said.

“Yes,” I said. “He might be quite good.”

“And if he’s not?” Susan said.

“At least he won’t be quite bad,” I said.

“Have you noticed,” Susan said, “that he’s beginning to talk like you?”

“Who better?” I said.

We drank our drinks on the couch. Pearl was too late to get in between us, so she sat on the other side of Susan. Susan finished her drink, which was unusual, and put the empty glass down on the coffee table. She put her head against my shoulder. We sat like that for a time, until she turned farther toward me and buried her face in my chest. I put my arm around her, until the pizza came.