"So she sit and listen to him and nod and let him talk and she don't know for sure he won't stick a handgun in her and pull the trigger."
Hawk said.
"Which is why she has one of us baby-sitting twenty four hours a day," I said. "She's getting sort of rock-jolly too."
Hawk nodded. "Time to review the evidence again?"
"Yeah. The hurdler has an ex-wife," I said. "Maybe I'll go talk with her."
"Take my picture along," Hawk said. "Tell her she can meet me if she cooperate."
"And if she doesn't," I said, "she meets you twice."
CHAPTER 23
Mimi Felton lived in a condo in a vast assemblage of town houses clustered around a man-made pond in Concord. That morning on the phone she told me that she worked the makeup counter at Bloomingdale's and didn't go to work until four. I got there at 2:10 and she answered my knock wearing a white ribbed-cotton halter and black jeans, which she must have zipped lying down. She was barefoot. She had a lot of blond hair combed so as to show me she had a lot of blond hair. She had rings on eight fingers, and her earrings dangled like Christmas ornaments from her ears.
"Hi," she said. "Mr. Spenser, come in."
She had a lot of good makeup expertly applied and false eyelashes. Her nails, finger and toe, were painted some tone of dark purple. Her bare midriff was firm and tan and flat.
"So you're a detective?"
"Yes," I said. "I need you to tell me what you can about Gordon Felt on."
"Could I see your badge, or license, or whatever they give you," she said. She had a little-girl voice that stopped just this side of lisping. I showed her my license.
"Why do you want to know about Gordie?" she said.
"Routine," I said. "Since he works for a security firm, the bonding company occasionally runs a check on the employees they're bonding."
"That's like insurance," she said in her little voice. It was the kind of voice that went with a curtsy.
"Yeah."
"Well, you look like you could bond anyone you wanted, Mr. Spenser."
"Sure," I said. "What happened to cause your divorce, Mrs. Felton?"
"Here, sit down," she said, and we walked into her small living room.
There were avant-garde art prints on the walls, and all the colors were lavender and gray. The little picture window gave us a glimpse of the artificial pond. She sat on a chair made of lavender canvas on a triangular black iron frame. There were two others grouped around a massive Mediterranean coffee table that must have come from the house in Swampscott.
"I'll stand, thanks. What about the divorce?"
"Gordie," she said. "Gordie, Gordie, Gordie…"
"That was it?" I said.
"What?"
"How come you got divorced?" I said.
She shook her head. "He was such a little boy," she said. "Always acting so macho and being such a sissy."
"Like what?" I said.
"Well, he wouldn't go anywhere alone, without me," she said.
"How about the macho stuff?" I said.
"He used to carry a gun. He wanted to be a policeman, but I don't think he ever really applied for a police job. He always talked about it. He was like a police groupie, you know. Had the scanner radio, and hung around the cops in Swampscott when we were married. And anytime he'd hear some crime, something on the scanner, he'd get in the car and go to the scene, he was weird."
"Family?" I said.
"We never had children," Mimi said.
"How about his family?" I said.
"How come you're not writing all this down?" she said.
I tapped my temple. "Once it's in the computer," I said, "it's there for eternity."
She nodded. "His father's dead," she said. "His mother's still alive.
Lives in Swampscott." Mimi shook her head.
"Why the head shake?" I said.
"God, he hates her," she said.
"His mother?"
"Yes," Mimi shook her head again, and smiled without any pleasure.
"Blackie's a piece of work," she said.
"Blackie?"
"Gordie's mother."
"Why is she called Blackie?" I said. "Her maiden name: Rose Mary Black," Mimi said. "Everybody always called her Blackie."
"Jesus Christ," I said.
CHAPTER 24
"It's Felton," I said.
Susan and Hawk and I sat at Susan's counter on Saturday morning, drinking coffee and eating whole-wheat bagels that Hawk had picked up at Fromaggio on his way over.
On the counter was an 8 1/2 X 11 brown manila envelope that Hawk had got from Belson before he made the bagel run. It contained a voiceprint matchup of the two phone messages and a tape of both messages side by side.
Susan took ajar of cherry preserves from the refrigerator under the counter and put it out with the cream cheese. She spread a vaporously thin layer of cream cheese on a small piece of bagel she'd broken off.
She dabbed a minuscule of preserve on it and took a small bite.
"It is, Susan," Hawk said.
"Yes," Susan said when she swallowed her morsel of bagel. "It probably is."
I stirred a spoonful of sugar into my second cup of coffee.
"It explains the symbolism," I said. "The red rose, the black women.
Rose Mary Black, aka Blackie."
Susan carefully sliced a bagel in two and put both halves in her imported German toaster, which was wide enough to contain two bagel slices. She slid the toast lever down.
"I knew her first name was Rose," Susan said. "But he never mentioned his mother's last name."
"Isn't that unusual?" I said.
"Not really, many patients talk of 'my wife," 'my mother," 'my father' particularly parents, whom the patient has never really thought of by their name."
The toaster popped and Susan took the bagels out and put them on Hawk's plate.
"And he was having trouble with her, wasn't he?" I said.
Susan watched Hawk put cream cheese on his bagel. Like everything else Hawk did, it was done without wasted motion, without mistake, and there was exactly the right amount. When Hawk ate pizza he never got any on his tie.
"If he was in the grip of some sort of unresolved rage at his mother."
Susan said, "and his mother's name was Rose Mary Black, and there were other factors that I know, a man might in fact express that rage in a deflected manner on people who could appropriately symbolize Rose Mary Black."
"Like black women," Hawk said, "and leave a rose."
"Yes," Susan said, "and if the object of his rage was infinitely powerful, the rage would be overlaid with fear. And if the rage and fear were sexually inspired and sexually expressed, it might have to be in a kind of surrogation."
"You mean, he might have to tie them up and rape them with a gun," I said.
"Yes," Susan said. She was drinking her coffee, holding the mug in both hands, watching me over the rim.
"Does Felton fit that kind of a profile?" I said.
Susan continued to look at me over the rim of her cup. She sipped a little decaffeinated coffee. She had a faux art clock that ran on a battery, on the coffee table in the living room, and its ticking was loud and metronomic. Hawk poured some more coffee into his cup and then added some to mine.
I looked at Susan. She looked at me and then closed her eyes.
"Yes," she said. "He fits it better than you can know." I said, "We've got a tape that Belson did a voiceprint on. One's the guy that called and said he was Red Rose and challenged me. The other came after the Jimmy Winston fiasco. Voiceprint says they're the same."
Susan nodded. "I'll listen," she said.
I went to her stereo and put the tape in. Susan listened with her chin in her hand. I played the two conversations three times.
Susan still sat with her chin in her hand, staring at the tape machine.
Hawk and I waited. Susan blew her breath out in a short burst.
"It sounds like him," she said. "No certainty, it could be someone else, but it could be him."