I oiled the griddle and turned the heat on under it.
"And there was a black kid about fifteen screwing some middle-aged white guy in a chemical suit on a bare mattress in an empty room. He took off when we showed up looking for April, and the kid wanted to know if I was interested."
I put four small circles of batter on the hot griddle and watched them spread and begin to rise. When the bubbles began to show through I flipped them and after another minute I put two on Susan's plate and two on mine. Susan put on butter and homemade maple, syrup and took a bite. "Yum," she said.
"Only one yum?"
"I don't want you to get arrogant."
I ate a pancake. "Carbohydrate replenishment," I said. "After the exhausting run."
"It wasn't the run that exhausted you," Susan said.
"Maybe I should have scalloped some oysters."
We ate two pancakes apiece and I put on four more.
"It makes you feel helpless," Susan said.
"Yeah."
"Hawk have any reaction?"
I shook my head. "Far as I can tell, the world amuses the hell out of Hawk."
"What fools these mortals be?"
I put two more corn cakes on each plate. "Yeah," I said, "him and Puck." "Does the fact that so many of these women are black make you feel more of an outsider? More… narve's not the right word, but somewhere in that area."
"Possible," I said. We ate. Susan poured me some more coffee. I put on another quartet of corn cakes. "How many do you suppose we can eat before we hurt ourselves?"
"I can't speak for you," Susan said. "I'll stop with these two."
"But mostly," I said, "it's spending time in a world where fifteen-year-old girls are a commodity, like electrified dildos, or color-coordinated merkins, and crotchless leather panties. It's a world devoted to appetite, and commerce." I sipped some coffee."I think we are in rats' alley," I said, "where the dead men lost their bones."
"Well," Susan said, "we are bleak about this. You want to stop?"
"No." I said.
"I know you're doing this for me. I care more about you than about April Kyle. If you drop it, I'll understand."
I shook my head.
"You can't," she said.
"No." We were quiet. "Maybe just two more," I said.
Susan nodded. She looked at me with that power of concentration that she had. "Why can't you?" she said.
I shrugged. "It's what I do," I said.
"Even when it bothers you like this?"
"If you only do it when it's easy, is it worth doing'?"
She smiled. Her mouth was wide, and when she smiled her whole face smiled and her eyes gleamed.
"You never disappoint," she said. "You and Cotton Mather."
I kept looking at her smile. It made up for a lot of things. Maybe it made up for everything.
"I'm not sure," I said, "that I could make it without you."
"You could," Susan said, "but you'll never have to."
Chapter 13
I went back to work Sunday afternoon. At four o'clock I was having a drink with Hawk at J.J. Donovan's in the North Market.
"You want me to come along and keep you from getting mugged?" Hawk said. He had white wine. I had beer.
"No, I'll risk that alone," I said. "I want you to look into things from the other end."
"Tony Marcus?"
"Yeah. '
"That's the top end."
"True." I said. "You start there and I'll keep rooting around down here at the bottom. Maybe if I work up and you work down we'll meet somewhere and know something.-"You care how I do it?" Hawk said. He sipped some wine.
"No. You know Marcus. You know the people around him. See if anything is up. All I want is the kid."
Hawk nodded. He sipped some more wine. "You going back and look around the Zone again."
I nodded. My beer was gone. The bartender drew me another.
Hawk was looking at me. "You know Marcus," Hawk said.
"Yeah."
"You know if something is up, it is something very heavy."
..Yeah."
"There be a lot of weight to take," Hawk said. "I don't mind. But you sure you ready?"
"What's bothering you, Hawk?" I said.
"This thing is queer," he said. "Since Friday I been asking around-a few pimps, a few hookers, some people I know. Everybody tight on this. Everybody don't know a thing. Everybody changes the subject. Everybody awful careful about some sixteen-year-old high school kid going home to her mommy."
"See what you can get from Marcus," I said. "And try not to make him mad."
Hawk smiled his antediluvian smile and left. I paid the bill and headed for the Zone.
It was jumping on a late Sunday afternoon, glowing like rotten wood. Somebody had said that about the English court once. Raleigh? I couldn't remember. I drifted south along Washington Street looking for a young white whore. I saw some, but they weren't April. Near Stuart Street I saw a white Jaguar sedan that might have been Trumps's. I felt the weight of my gun in its hip holster. A pleasing weight. Comforting. The Jag pulled away from the curb and disappeared in the traffic. I saw the black whore with the crescent-shaped scar that I'd seen with Trumps my first night in the Zone. She was standing in front of a club that advertised ALL BOTTOMLESS on several cardboard signs in the window. She was wearing a white dress with a fluffy white fake fur collar. She spoke to a man walking past. He shook his head and walked faster. I stood beside her and said, "How much for the night?"
She looked at me and opened her mouth and then closed it. "I know you," she said.
"To know me is to love me," I said. "How much?"
"No deal, mister. Just stay away from me."
"Two bills," I said. "We'll go to my place."
"Trumps would kill me," she said.
"He doesn't need to know. I'm just across the Common. We'll spend a couple of hours and then you're back. He doesn't have to know. Two hundred bucks."
She shrugged. "Sure, why not," she said.
We caught a cab at Boylston Street. It was maybe a ten-minute walk to my place, but she was wearing three-inch heels and could barely stand. In my apartment she checked herself in the hall mirror and looked around.
"You want a drink?" I said.
"Gin and Seven-Up," she said. I controlled a shudder.
"I don't have any Seven-Up," I said. "Gingerale?"
"Sure."
I went into the kitchen to make her drink. When I came back she had taken off her dress. She had on scanty rayon underclothes. K mart erotica. "You like to undress me or you want I should strip all the way?" she said.
"I just want to talk," I said. "I'm very lonely."
She shrugged. "Long as I get the bread," she said. "You gonna give me the bread?"
I handed her the gin and ginger ale, put my bottle of Rolling Rock extra pale on the coffee table, took out my wallet, and extracted two hundred-dollar bills. That left me $5, but I didn't let her see. I held them out. She took them, folded them over, and slipped them inside her underpants. Then she sat on the couch, put her feet on the coffee table, leaned back, and took about a third of her drink.
"Talk," she said. "Tell me about your life."
There were bruises on her ribs.
"I'm interested in finding this kid, April Kyle," I said. She drank some more of her drink. Her face was empty. "That's nice," she said.
"There'd be a good reward."
"Uh-huh."
"What harm if I find her? Who cares? Why not help me?"
Her drink was gone. I got up and made her another one. When I came back she was looking at the picture of Susan on the bookcase.
"Yours?" she said, and pointed her chin at the picture. "Yes."
"Married?"
` No." "That why you just wanna talk?"
"One reason."
"What else, I don't turn you on?" "Oh, yeah, you get my attention sitting around with your ass sticking out.
It's just that I'm working, and I sort of need to concentrate on that."