Walking Shadow

CHAPTER 21

I stayed close to Jocelyn Colby for the rest of the week. Every morning when she came out of her apartment I was lurking somewhere out of sight: parked in my car up the street; strolling aimlessly by in the other direction; at a pay phone on the corner, talking animatedly to my answering machine. And all the time I did this, Hawk and Vinnie sat at a distance in Hawk's car and kept me in sight. I knew it was pointless. If there had been a shadow, Hawk would have spotted him. And the shadow would not have spotted Hawk. Hawk could track a salmon to its spawning bed without getting wet. But to make it work I had to pretend there was a shadow. So there I was in the rain, with the collar of my leather jacket turned up, and my hands in my pockets, and my black Chicago White Sox baseball cap pulled down over my forehead, staying alert for assassins, and pretending to shadow a shadow who didn't exist. My career did not seem to be taking off.

Friday, when Jocelyn came home from the theater, I didn't tail her. I walked with her. If Port City downtown was ever going to look good, which it wasn't, it was now. Mid-October, late afternoon when the light was nostalgic, and the endless drizzle made everything shiny. As we walked, Jocelyn put her hand lightly on my arm.

Ill "How nice," she said.

"I haven't been walked home in a long time."

"Hard to imagine," I said.

"Oh, it's brutal out there," she said.

"Most men are such babies.

The good-looking men you meet, the ones with manners and a little style, are gay. The straight ones are cheating on their wives.

Or if they're single, they want to whine to you about their mother.

Or their ex-wife."

"Where are all the good ones?" I said.

"God knows. Probably aren't any."

"I protest."

She laughed.

"I got a friend," she said, "insists that men are only good for moving pianos."

"They make good fathers, sometimes."

"And, the truth is," Jocelyn said, "I wouldn't mind if one galloped up and rescued me."

"From what?"

"From being a divorced woman without a guy," she said.

"From being alone."

"Alone is not always such a bad thing," I said.

"You're not alone."

"No."

"You have Susan."

"Yes."

"So what the hell do you know," she said.

"I haven't always had Susan," I said.

"Yeah, well, I bet you didn't like that as much as you think you did."

"I prefer having her," I said.

We turned up Jocelyn's street. The cement sidewalk was buckled with frost heaves. The three-deckers crowded right up against the sidewalk, with no front yards. The blinds were drawn in their front windows. Their living rooms were a foot away from us as we walked along. She rummaged in her shoulder bag as we approached the house where she lived. It took her half a block of rummaging, but by the time we got to her door she had found her key.

"Thank you," she said.

"You don't need to be here until ten tomorrow morning. I sleep late on Saturdays and Sundays."

"You don't need me here at all," I said.

"There's no one following you."

She stopped with her key half into the lock. Her eyes were very wide.

"You have to come," she said.

"No," I said.

"There's no one. If there were, Hawk or I would have caught him."

"He's not around because you are," she said.

"If you leave, he'll be here."

"He didn't spot us," I said.

"We're good at this."

"So what have you got going?" She sounded like an angry child.

"You going away with Susan?"

"We're working on a house," I said.

"Fine. You're working on a house with Susan." She made the name sound like it had many syllables.

"And you don't give a goddamn what happens to me."

"You'll be swell," I said.

"There's no one shadowing you."

"So." She stood with her hands on her hips now, the key dangling untended in the lock.

"You think I made it up."

"You tell me."

She was like a fourteen-year-old who'd been grounded. She talked with her teeth clenched.

"Prick master," she said.

"Wow," I said.

"Prick master. I don't think anyone has ever called me that before."

"Well, you are a prick master," she said and turned the key in her door and wrenched it open and went in and slammed it shut.

Up the street Hawk pulled the Jaguar away from the curb and cruised up to the house and stopped. I got in the back. Vinnie was sitting up front beside Hawk with a shotgun between his knees.

Hawk pulled the car away from the curb. The wipers moved at intervals back and forth across the windshield of the Jaguar. Hawk had the radio on softly playing.

"Still got that magic touch with the broads," Vinnie said to me.

"Don't you."

"Just a spat," I said.

"She don't like it that you not coming tomorrow?" Hawk said.

"She called me a prick master," I said.

Vinnie half turned in the front seat and looked at me.

"Prick master?" he said.

"I never heard that. Broad's pretty colorful."

At Hill Street, Hawk turned and headed up Cabot Hill. Vinnie was faced around front again and was looking out the car window at the near-empty street as we climbed away from the waterfront in the rain. He was chuckling to himself.

"Prick master," he said.

"I like it."