Текст книги "Walking Shadow"

Автор книги: Robert B. Parker

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CHAPTER 46

When I got there, Rikki Wu was sitting on the floor in the hall outside my office door. She had her knees pulled up to her chest and her face buried in her folded arms. When I stopped in front of her, she looked up and her eyes were red from crying. Some of her eye makeup had run. I put down a hand and she took it, and I helped her to her feet. I held her hand while I unlocked my door, and led her inside, and put her in the chair in front of my desk.

Then I went around and sat in my chair on the other side of the desk and leaned back and looked at her.

"What do you need?" I said.

She hugged herself a little and shivered.

"Would you like some coffee?" I said.

She continued to hug herself and shiver. She nodded her head slightly. I got up and put coffee in the filter and water in the reservoir and pushed the button. Then I came back and sat down.

Neither of us spoke. The coffeemaker muttered. Rikki continued to hug herself and stare at nothing. The coffeemaker subsided, and I got up and poured some.

"Milk?" I said.

"Sugar?"

"Milk," she said in a small voice.

"Two sugars."

I brought her coffee, placed it on the edge of my desk in front of her. I took mine and went around and sat down again. She picked up the coffee cup with both hands and sipped some coffee.

Her lipstick made a bright crescent on the edge of her cup.

"I don't know who else," she said.

"Un huh," I said.

"There's no one I can trust."

I nodded.

She sipped her coffee again and raised her eyes from the cup and looked straight at me for the first time since I'd arrived.

"Can I trust you?" she said.

"Yeah," I said.

"You can."

"My husband's gone."

"Gone?"

"They've taken him. I know he's dead."

She drank some more coffee, holding the mug with both hands carefully. The mail I had come to check was in a pile on the floor near the mail slot.

"Tell me about it," I said.

Rikki pressed the coffee mug against her cheek as if warming herself.

"My husband always stayed in his office at the restaurant until ten o'clock. Then he would have one scotch and soda at the bar, and come home. Two of the boys would drive him."

"Death Dragon boys?"

"Yes. Last night he did not come home at ten. I called his office. There was no answer. I called the restaurant. My husband had left early, alone. He told the boys to wait there for him, that he would be back. The boys were still there waiting. He did not come back."

"Why do you think he's dead?"

She shrugged.

"If he were not, he would have come home. They have killed him."

"Who?"

"They. The people my husband did business with."

"Do you know any names?" I said.

She shrugged again.

"I did not know about my husband's business. It was not my place to know. But it was a business where a person could be killed."

"Have you been to the police?" I said.

"No. I do not trust the police."

"Why not?"

Rikki shook her head.

"I do not trust them," she said.

"But you trust me," I said.

"Yes."

"Why?"

"I do not know," she said.

"But I do."

I was hoping for a bigger endorsement than that, but one takes what's there.

"How about the Dragons?"

"I don't trust them either."

I nodded.

"Would you like me to come up to Port City with you," I said, "and help you find your husband?"

"Yes."

I nodded. So much for checking the mail. Or looking for Jocelyn. Now I could look for Lonnie. I wondered if his disappearance had to do with Jocelyn's disappearance. Maybe they were sitting in a motel room together, pretending to be kidnapped. This wasn't working like it was supposed to. The more I investigated, the more I learned, the less I understood. I was having trouble even keeping track of who my client was. Was I working for Christopholous, or the Port City Theater Company, or Jocelyn Colby, or Rikki Wu?

Or Susan? Since no one was paying me it was kind of hard to be sure.

"Okay," I said.

"Let me make a call."

I pulled the telephone over and called Hawk.

"Who we been looking for?" I said.

"Jocelyn?"

"Yeah."

"And there someone there so you being cagey."

"Yeah. I think things are not as they appear to be. I think the person is in a motel in the area. Voluntarily."

"She faked it?"

"Yeah."

"So she be in a motel under her own name," Hawk said. "

"Less she got lot of cash."

"Un huh. You and Vinnie see you can find her," I said.

"She could be with somebody else," Hawk said.

"If she is, find them too," I said.

"Don't do anything. Just locate her and let me know."

"Sure. You going to the movies?"

"Lonnie Wu is missing," I said.

"His wife is here in the office.

I'm going to help her find him."

Hawk was silent for a long moment on the phone.

"Maybe Lonnie with Jocelyn," he said after a while.

"Maybe so," I said.

Hawk was quiet again.

Then he said, "This the silliest thing you ever got me involved in."

"Without question," I said.

"Maybe the Death Dragons won't bother you," Hawk said.

"You with Mrs. Wu."

"I'm not worried about the Death Dragons," I said.

"At least I know where I stand with them."

"No small thing," Hawk said, "in Port City."

CHAPTER 47

It was the gang kids that found Lonnie Wu. In the bird-watching pavilion out across the causeway on Brant Island Road, where I had stood in the darkness watching the ghostly Asians immigrating.

When Rikki and I got there, only two of them were around, leaning against a black Firebird with chrome pipes and silver wings painted on the hood. Neither one looked old enough to drive.

They spoke to Rikki in Chinese and nodded toward the pavilion.

She took my arm as we walked toward it.

Lonnie was there. Crumpled in the corner, his back propped against the low railing, his feet stuck straight out in front of him, his argyle socks looking forlorn. You don't have to have seen many corpses to know one when you see one. I heard Rikki's breath go in sharply and felt her hand tighten on my arm.

"No need to look," I said.

She didn't answer, but we kept going until we were standing right above him, looking down. He was facing west, his back to the ocean, and the early afternoon sun hit him full in the face. Before Lonnie died, someone had beaten hell out of him. His nose was broken, one eye was closed. His lip was so swollen it had turned inside out, and several of his teeth were missing. There was dark blood soaked into the front of his shirt. Rikki stared down at him for a moment, then turned away and pressed her face against my chest. I put my arm around her. Several herring gulls swept in on the wind and settled on the pilings of the causeway, reorganizing their feathers as they landed. Road kill was road kill to them. They didn't make fine distinctions.

"Do you have a friend that you could stay with?" I said to Rikki Wu.

With her face still pressed against my chest, she shook her head no.

"Family?"

"My brother will come."

"Okay," I said.

"I'll ask you to sit in the car for a minute or two and then we'll go back together."

She made no reply, but she didn't resist when I turned her and walked back to the Mustang. The two kids looked at me blankly.

They made no finer distinctions than the gulls.

"Either one of you speak English?" I said.

The smaller of the two wore an oversized Chicago Bulls jacket.

He smiled widely. The other one, taller but just as frail, with his long hair blown forward by the wind, showed no expression at all.

"Dandy," I said and went back up the causeway. I heard the doors open and close on the Firebird and then it started up and roared away. Who could blame them. No reason to hang around.

They didn't work for Lonnie Wu anymore.

I squatted on my heels beside Lonnie's body. I didn't like it, but there was no one else to do it. I felt inside his coat and found his holster on his belt near his right hip. The holster was empty. I looked for bullet holes or stab wounds. I saw none. I felt along his rib cage, I could feel some broken ribs. In one instance the fracture was compound. I felt myself grimace. Some of his fingers appeared broken. His flesh was cold, and he was stiff. His hair was tangled, and strands of it, stiffened by hair spray, stuck straight out at odd angles. He was so messed up it was hard to tell for sure, but probably the gulls had already been at him.

I stood and looked down at Lonnie's body. He was as far from China as he could get, on the eastern edge of the wrong continent, on the western edge of the wrong ocean. I looked out at the waves rolling uneventfully in from the horizon. They came a long way to this shore, but not as far as Lonnie had come, and nowhere near as far as he had gone.

I turned away and walked back down to my car and got in beside Rikki. She wasn't crying. She simply sat staring at nothing, her face composed, her hands folded in her lap. I started the car and let it idle.

"We should call the cops," I said.

"No," Rikki said.

"I will call my brother."

"Eddie Lee?"

"Yes. He will take care of everything."

"The body?"

"Everything."

"So why didn't you call him in the first place?" I said.

"Why did you come to me?"

"I didn't want him to know," she said.

"I didn't want him to know that my husband was gone. I didn't know what we'd find out. My brother doesn't, didn't, admire my husband. He thought he was shallow and vain. I didn't want to shame myself."

"Your husband got to be the dai low here because he married you," I said.

"Yes."

"Might the tong have killed him?" I said.

"No. My brother is my brother. He would not allow anyone to kill my husband."

"Even if he were disloyal to Kwan Chang?"

"My brother would not allow someone to kill my husband."

"Someone killed him," I said.

"It was not a Chinese person," she said firmly.

I nodded and handed her the car phone. She dialed and spoke in Chinese while I turned the car and headed back toward town.

When Rikki got through I called Mei Ling.

CHAPTER 48

Two silent Chinese women had come to sit with Rikki Wu at her home, and I was alone with Fast Eddie Lee and Mei Ling in the office behind the restaurant. It was a small room with a rolltop desk and a computer on a roll-away stand. On the wall above the rolltop was a picture of Chiang Kai-shek in his generalissimo suit, the tunic buttoned tight at the neck.

Eddie was a solid old man, not very tall, but thick, with a round face and blunt hands. He had wispy white hair and there were liver spots on the bare scalp that showed through. He was wearing black pants and a white shirt, and he sat on Lonnie Wu's leather swivel chair with both feet flat on the floor and his hands resting on his knees. He looked at me without any expression for a while.

"You have the body?" I said to him.

He nodded.

"You speak English?" I said.

"Some," he said.

"Better Chinese." He turned his head slowly and looked at Mei Ling. She smiled and spoke in Chinese. He answered her briefly and then turned his head back slowly to look at me some more.

"You know what killed him?" I said.

He nodded. He spoke to Mei Ling.

"He says his doctor has examined Mr. Wu," Mei Ling said.

"He was beaten to death."

I nodded.

"Where's the body now?" I said.

Eddie Lee looked at Mei Ling. She translated. He answered.

"He says the body is being properly cared for."

I nodded again. Eddie and I looked at each other some more.

Mei Ling sat beside me on a hassock, her knees neatly together. She was perfectly quiet. The only light was the green-shaded desk lamp behind Eddie Lee. I felt like somewhere there ought to be a guy playing a gong.

"And the cops?"

Eddie spoke to Mei Ling.

"He says this is not police business. He says it is Kwan Chang business," she said.

"It's my business too," I said.

Mei Ling translated. Eddie listened and then looked at me again.

"No," he said.

"Chinese business."

"I understand how you feel," I said.

"It's not only Chinese, it's family."

Mei Ling translated.

"But you need to understand me. I am a detective. It's what I do, and what I do is pretty much who I am."

I waited for Mei Ling. Eddie listened without any response.

"So somebody gets shot in front of me, and me being a detective and all, I figure I should find out who did it."

Mei Ling translated. Fast Eddie listened. He was in no hurry. As far as I could tell he had forever.

"And I can't. I get threatened, and shot at, and lied to, and bamboozled. There are stalkers and not stalkers and connections I don't know about. There's a kidnapping that maybe isn't, and all I get is bewitched, bothered, and bewildered."

I paused for Mei Ling.

"I do not know how to translate bamboozled," she said.

"Hoodwinked," I said.

She translated. Fast Eddie smiled. With his thinning white hair and placid bearing, he looked like a pleasant old man. I knew he wasn't. He spoke to Mei Ling.

"He says he feels sorry for you. He understands how frustrating it must be. He thanks you for helping his sister."

I nodded.

Fast Eddie spoke again.

"But you would do well to leave the killing of Mr. Wu to him," Mei Ling said.

I shook my head.

"No," I said.

"I'm going to find out what's going on here."

Mei Ling and Fast Eddie talked for a moment.

"He says you appear to be a hard man."

"Tell him it takes one to know one," I said.

Mei Ling spoke. Eddie Lee listened and smiled. He looked at me.

"Yes," he said.

"It does."

Eddie took a package of Lucky Strikes out of his shirt pocket and shook one loose from the pack and stuck it in his mouth. He lit it with a Zippo lighter. Then he put his hands back on his knees and looked at me. He would take an occasional drag on the cigarette and exhale without taking the cigarette from his mouth. Otherwise he was motionless.

"I know about the immigrant smuggling," I said.

Mei Ling translated. Eddie took the news calmly.

"So?" he said.

"So here's the deal." I said.

"You stop smuggling the people in.

I don't say anything to the INS. I keep rummaging around until I know what the hell is going on down here. You put a lid on the Death Dragons. I keep you informed."

Mei Ling translated. Fast Eddie sucked in some cigarette smoke and let it out. The ash was growing long on his cigarette.

"Why should I deal?" he said to me.

"Because it's a lot easier than trying to take me out."

Mei Ling translated. Eddie Lee smiled again, one eye squinting as the smoke from his cigarette drifted past.

"You think be hard to kill you?"

"Yeah," I said.

"Be hard."

Eddie Lee dug another cigarette out of his pocket and lit it with the butt of the first one, dropped the butt into a small vase filled with sand, and left the new cigarette smoking in the corner of his mouth. Then he looked at me and spoke in Chinese. I held his look and when he finished Mei Ling translated.

"He says he is a sensible man," Mei Ling said.

"He says he recognizes that killing you now would cause trouble among your friends, some of whom are police. He says this does not mean he can't kill you, but that he has decided not to for now. He says the smuggling of people will not end. But it will end in Port City. And he says if you keep him informed, and do not cause any trouble, you may continue to investigate. No Chinese people will interfere with you."

"Does he know anything that can help me?" I said.

Eddie Lee shook his head before Mei Ling could translate.

"You know anything about a woman named Jocelyn Colby?"

Eddie Lee had to wait for Mei Ling on this. The name probably confused him. When she finished translating, he shook his head., "Ever hear the name?"

He shook his head.

"Was DeSpain in Lonnie's pocket?" I said.

"Yes," Eddie Lee said.

"But you don't want him involved in the case?"

Eddie Lee looked at Mei Ling. She translated. Eddie Lee shook his head.

"Chinese business," Eddie Lee said. Then he smiled suddenly.

"And you," he said.

CHAPTER 49

Hawk was wearing a white leather trenchcoat and aviator sunglasses and leaning on his car when I met him in the parking lot of the Holiday Inn at Portsmouth Circle, just south of the bridge over the Piscataway River. On the other side of the bridge was Maine.

It was cold near the water and Hawk had his collar turned up as he leaned on the white Jaguar.

"Ran a little farther than we thought she would," I said.

"She on the second floor, in the back," Hawk said.

"Vinnie's watching the room from out back. Only other way out is through the lobby and out that door."

"Have any trouble with the desk clerk?" I said as we started toward the lobby.

"Naw. Been watching you close. I think I learning."

"Sometimes the desk clerks are hard to get around," I said.

We went into the small lobby. The dining room was to the right. The desk straight ahead. Behind the desk was a good-looking young black woman, wearing large hoop earrings. She smiled very brightly at Hawk. He nodded at her.

"And sometimes they're not," I said.

On the second floor, Hawk said, "Number 208, down here on the right."

"You got a pass key?" I said.

Hawk grinned and produced one.

"

"Course I do," he said.

"What did you tell her?"

"The sister at the desk? Told her she was the most exciting woman I ever had," he said.

"And?"

"Told her you was my boss and it was your first wedding anniversary and you wanted to set up a nice surprise for your wife."

"And you needed a key to set it up."

"Un huh."

"And then you mentioned again how she was very important to you."

"Un huh."

"This smacks of sexist exploitation," I said.

"Do," Hawk said, "don't it."

We reached 208. Hawk put the key in the lock.

"She got the chain on, we'll hit it together," I said.

Hawk nodded, turned the key, and pushed. The door opened five inches and held against the chain.

"Who is it," a woman said.

Hawk straightened and stepped back.

"On three," I said.

"One, two, three."

We hit the door together. Hawk with his left shoulder, me with my right, and the chain lock tore out of the door jamb, and the door flew open, and slammed against the wall, and we were in the room with Jocelyn.

I closed the door behind us.

Jocelyn Colby, wearing jeans and an oversized tee shirt, was sitting on the bed propped against the pillows with the television on and a copy of Elk magazine open on her lap. She stared at us with her mouth open. I walked past the bed to the windows and looked down and waved Vinnie up from the back parking lot.

Then I turned and rested my hips against the window sill and crossed my arms and looked at Jocelyn.

"We've come to your rescue," I said.

Jocelyn continued to stare with her mouth open. Then she closed it, and swung her feet to the floor.

"Oh, thank God you're here," she said.

She stood and pressed herself against me and wrapped her arms around my waist. I looked at Hawk. He grinned.

"Want me to step outside?" he said.

The door opened as Vinnie came in. He had his Walkman earphones around his neck. When he looked at me, he seemed even more amused than Hawk.

"You getting laid?" he said.

"Vinnie," I said.

"You got the soul of a poet."

"Longfellow," Vinnie said, and chuckled to himself. Hawk liked it.

"Longfellow," he said. And he and Vinnie both laughed.

Jocelyn appeared not to notice. She pressed against me with her head on my chest and her arms tight around me.

She kept murmuring, "Thank God, thank God, you've found me."

I assumed she was stalling while she tried to think up a story.

I looked past her around the room. It was motel standard: beige walls, double bed with a beige spread, bureau with television on it, bathroom and closet in an alcove, bedside table with a beige phone, straight chair.

"One of you poets mind checking the closet and the bureau," I said, "see if you can find a clue?"

Still happy with the Longfellow remark, both of them looked.

Hawk went into the bath closet alcove, and came out with a video camera on a tripod. Vinnie searched the bureau and came up with a black slip, a white silk scarf, and about twenty-five feet of clothesline. Hawk picked up the straight chair, placed it before the blank wall next to the doorway, opposite the window. He put the video camera on its tripod a few feet in front of it. Vinnie draped the black slip and the white scarf over the back of the chair, and put the coiled rope on the seat.

"Jocelyn," I said.

She buried her face harder against my chest. I took hold of her upper arms and separated myself from her and held her away from me at arm's length.

"Jocelyn," I said.

"Cut the crap."

She started to cry.

"Okay," I said.

"Good. Now raise your tear-stained face and gaze beseechingly into my eyes."

She stepped away from me and looked at all three of us. I took the opportunity to get my butt off the window ledge and stand upright.

"One woman," she said, "and three men. And the men standing around laughing. Isn't that typical?"

I didn't know how typical it was, so I let it slide.

"Don't you realize I've been through hell," she said.

"You may have gone through hell, Jocelyn, but you weren't kidnapped."

"I was," she said. She was crying harder now, though it didn't seem to impede her speech.

Hawk went into the bathroom.

"Nope," I said.

"You checked yourself in to this motel with your own credit card. You videoed yourself tied to the chair, you even copied a theater poster when you did it, though you may not know it."

Jocelyn took one step back and sat hard on the edge of the bed.

Hawk came out of the bathroom with a handful of Kleenex. He handed them to Jocelyn. She took them without paying any attention and held them crumpled in her hand.

"Tell me about it," I said.

"What's the use," she said, with the tears rolling down her face.

"You don't believe me, anyway."

"You were the one stalking Christopholous, weren't you?" I said.

She buried her face in her hands and cried louder. Now in addition to tears, there was boo-hoo.

"You had a crush on him, and he didn't respond, and so you began to follow him around."

She turned and lay on the bed and buried her face in the pillow and sobbed.

"We got time, Jocelyn. We got nowhere to go. When you're through crying, you can tell me."

She cried louder and buried her head deeper into the pillow. I waited. Hawk was leaning on the wall watching Jocelyn, the way you'd watch an interesting but not very affecting movie. Vinnie had his arms folded, leaning against the door, looking out the window across the room. His earphones were back over his ears.

He was listening to music. Jocelyn's fists were tightly clenched, the unused Kleenex still held in her right fist. She began to pound on the mattress as she cried. Then she kicked her feet. The crying began to wear down after a time. The pounding stopped and the kicking became desultory. She began to moan, "Oh God, oh God" and twist on the bed as if she were in pain. And finally that stopped and she lay still, her face still in the pillow, as her breathing began to normalize. She needed more air so she took her head out of the pillow and turned it away from us, toward the window. The room was quiet.

"So how come you kidnapped yourself?" I said.

I could see Jocelyn thinking about my question and thinking about her answer, and I could see her body go almost limp in a kind of physiological surrender.

"You wouldn't believe me," Jocelyn said. Her voice was shaky.

"I had to convince you that I needed help."

"Help with what?" I said.

"Oh, God," she said.

"We all need help with him," I said.

"What else."

"It's what…" she paused and struggled with her breath.

"… it's what every woman needs."

"The love of a good man," I said. I was falling into her speech patterns.

"Yes," she said. The final sibilant came out in a long hiss.

"You were everything I ever wanted, but you had her!"

The way she said her sounded like she might have been speaking of Vlad the Impaler.

"Susan," I said.

"Yes. Susan. Susan, Susan, Susan. There's always a goddamned Susan."

"What a drag," I said.

"DeSpain have a Susan?"

Her whole body stiffened. She turned her head toward me and rolled over on her side and looked at me as if I had spoken in tongues.

"DeSpain?"

"Yeah. Didn't you and he have a fling in Framingham? About ten years ago? You were with the Metro West Theater Group.

Somebody was stalking you. He was the investigating officer."

Jocelyn sat up on the edge of the tangled bed. Her eyes were red and puffy, her face was lined with the fabric of the bedspread. She patted at her hair, trying to get her appearance back into line.

"I can barely recall the incident," she said.

"Even though the same DeSpain is now Chief of Police in Port City, where you are working and living when not tying yourself up in hotel rooms?"

"It's something I've put behind me. It was a long time ago and it was very distasteful."

"He was married, wasn't he?"

"Yes. To a hideous travesty of womanhood."

"And he left her for you."

"He wanted me, he needed me."

"So what happened?"

"What do you mean?"

"How come you and DeSpain aren't cheek by jowl ever after?"

I said.

She frowned.

"I told you," she said.

"It's over."

"He turned out not to be everything you ever wanted? He was a pig?"

I waited. She looked at me and past me and past Hawk and Vinnie at things that none of us had ever seen. She took in a deep breath and let it out in a long sigh.

"I wanted love," she said.

"He wanted sex."

"That combo would never work," I said.

"No."

I waited again. She didn't elaborate.

"So how come you both ended up in Port City?" I said.

"I came here to work," she said.

"And DeSpain?"

"You'll have to ask him."

"Who was stalking you in Framingham?" I said.

"I was working part-time at a child care center," she said.

"My supervisor was stalking me."

"They convict him?"

She laughed. It was a surprising laugh, guttural and humorless.

"The old boy system doesn't convict its kind," she said.

"Must be a glitch somewhere," I said.

"Lots of guys doing time."

"You know what I mean," she said.

"Sure."

We were quiet. The day had dwindled into late afternoon. The motel window, facing east, looked out on a darkening parking lot.

There were no lights on in the room except the lamp by the bed and its small yellow illumination served only to make the rest of the room look grayer.

"Tell me about Christopholous," I said.

"It's not like you think it was," she said.

I didn't say anything. Her voice seemed steady; and, though still quite small, gaining strength. I realized she was beginning to warm to her performance. Alone, in the center of three men's attention, she was beginning to like it.

"We were mad about each other," she said.

"It was all we could do to keep from falling into each other's arms in public."

"Why shouldn't you fall into each other's arms in public?" I said.

"He wanted me passionately," Jocelyn said.

"And I loved him more than life itself."

"But now you don't?"

She paused for a long time.

"It's over," she said finally.

"Because?"

"Because he found someone else," she said.

"Another Susan," I said.

Jocelyn nodded so slowly, as to be ponderous.

"Exactly," she said.

"Another goddamned Susan."

"You knew her?"

Jocelyn shook her head.

"But it had to be someone else, didn't it?"

"He adored me," she said, "until some bitch got her claws into him."

"So you had to follow him around, see who it was."

Jocelyn nodded vigorously.

"And to be near him. To be able to look at him even if only from afar. To be there for him if he ever needed me."

"Nothing wrong with making him a little uncomfortable, the sonovabitch," I said.

"The bastard," Jocelyn said.

"Ever find out who the Susan was?" I said.

"I never caught them," Jocelyn said.

"But I had my suspicions.

The way they talked together, the way she looked at him. How she'd leave early from a board meeting or come late to a show case.

And he wouldn't be in his office, the way she wasn't always where she said she'd be. I had my suspicions."

My heart felt like a stone in my chest. I saw where we were going.

"Rikki Wu," I said.

"Absolutely," Jocelyn said.

"She had her hooks into him down to the bone."

"So you made an anonymous call," I said.

She looked a little surprised.

"Like the kind you made to Susan about me," I said.

She looked more surprised.

"You called Lonnie Wu and hinted his wife was fooling around."

"She had to be stopped," Jocelyn said.

"He was everything I ever wanted."

The phrase was like a password. Her eyes were bright and her face had a mild flush to it. The tip of her tongue trembled on her lower lip. A lot of he's had been everything she ever wanted. I wasn't even sure she knew who this he was as she spoke.

"Jesus Christ," Hawk said behind me.

Without turning I nodded yes.

"So Lonnie looked into it and found out you were right. His wife was fooling around, but not with Christopholous. Who was she balling, Hawk?"

"Craig Sampson," Hawk said behind me.

"Bingo," I said.

"So Lonnie send one of the kids up," Hawk said, "and had him sloped."

"Just as he launched into a chorus of' Lucky in Love,"

" I said.

"Lonnie must have liked the symbolism."

"Better than Sampson did," Hawk said.

The room was quiet. The three of us stood looking at Jocelyn.

Outside there was no more daylight. In the darkened room only Jocelyn's face was lit by the bedside lamp. I looked at it for a long time. Pretty in a blurred sort of way, not leading-lady looks, someone to play the maid, maybe, the gangster's girlfriend. Not very old, not very smart. Innocuous, mostly empty, an idle face upon whose blank facade life had etched no hint of experience. She had noticed nothing tangible. She had lived a life of cliched fixations.

If she felt anything about the way things had worked out, she didn't feel it very deeply. Even her obsessions seemed shallow… She heaved a slow sigh.

"You know what's so tragic?" she said.

"After all I've done, all I've been through, I'm still alone."

I didn't say anything. There wasn't anything to say. I just looked at her vapid, empty, uncomprehending face, bottomless in its self absorption a monster's face.

"Get your stuff together," I said to Jocelyn.

"We're going."

She seemed to shake herself from a reverie for a moment, and stared at all of us in the dark room as if she hadn't known we were there. Everything she did seemed done in front of a camera. Vinnie went to the closet and took out her suitcase and opened it on the bed for her. He pointed at it. She made a pulling-herself-together shrug as she stood up and began to gather her things.

"You got a thought on who pounded Lonnie?" Hawk said. In the darkness he was an invisible presence still leaning motionless on the wall.