“Oh really,” Susan said.
“What do you mean ‘oh really’?”
“Given what we know about her, and the letter you showed me,” Susan said, “isn’t that exactly what she would want?”
I thought about it.
“Yes,” I said. “But she couldn’t have contrived the rape.”
“No, I’m sure she didn’t. But she has exploited it, consciously or not, to serve what she thinks is her best interest.”
“Which is me.”
“Yes.”
“Because I’m so debonair?”
“Because KC is a cliche. For whatever reasons, she needs a knight to gallop in and save her, and if it’s a debonair one, so much the better.”
“My strength is as the strength of ten…”
“I know,” Susan said. “What did you promise her.”
“What makes you think I promised her anything?”
“Because I have been with you for a very long time, Sir Percival. What did you promise her.”
“That I’d make sure he left her alone.”
“Perfect,” Susan said. “What are you going to do?”
“I spoke with him once,” I said.
“And it didn’t take,” Susan said. “How vigorous are you prepared to be?”
“I gave my word,” I said.
“Perhaps Hawk,” Susan said.
“No. Hawk didn’t give his word. I gave mine. I can’t ask him to do something because I don’t want to do it.”
“No,” Susan said, “I know you can’t.”
We were silent. Pearl put both front paws on the edge of the counter and gazed at the food. I gave her an egg roll and she dropped down and dashed to the couch to eat it.
“Vincent must be in the grip of his own pathologies,” Susan said. “You are able to frighten most people off.”
“I know.”
“You won’t kill him,” Susan said.
It wasn’t a question.
“No.”
“Perhaps you and Hawk could broach the subject to him together.”
I nodded.
“Many white men are more afraid of black men than they are of other whites,” I said. “If he’s one of them we could exploit his racism.”
“My thought exactly,” Susan said.
“Can you do anything to help KC?”
“You mean professionally?”
“Whatever. She sure as hell needs something.”
“I can’t be her shrink,” Susan said. “I’ve known her too long, and I am not, ah, above the fray.”
“You’re not?”
“You may recall a few phrases from the lovely little mash note she stuck in your mailbox: Such as: ‘when you were with me, you might learn things that Susan can’t teach you.’”
“That means nothing to me,” I said.
“It means something to me,” Susan said.
“Are we feeling a little unprofessional jealousy?” I said.
“We are feeling a little unprofessional desire to kick her fat little ass,” Susan said.
I was drinking scotch and soda and eating chicken with cashews and the girl of my dreams was jealous. I smiled happily.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Hawk came into my office at about 9:30 carrying a brown paper bag. With him was a barrel-bodied black man with short, slightly bowed legs and long arms. The black man had gray hair and the kind of amused eyes that Robert Benchley used to have. Hawk put the bag on my desk and pulled one of my office chairs around, and the gray-haired black man sat in it.
“Spenser,” Hawk said. “Bobby Nevins.”
I stood and came around and shook hands with Nevins. Hawk went to the Mister Coffee machine on top of my file cabinet and began to make some coffee. I looked in the paper bag. There was a large square loaf-shaped something wrapped in aluminum foil.
“Corn bread,” Bobby Nevins said. “Hawk always like corn bread.”
Bobby Nevins was a legend. He’d trained fighters for more than fifty years. All of his fighters could fight. All of them were in shape. None left the ring broke. None were strolling queer street. In a business riddled with charlatans his word was good. Hawk had the coffee brewing and came back and sat down in the other client chair.
“Bobby in town to see about how we doing with his kid,” Hawk said.
I nodded, thinking about the corn bread.
“And I got some things you don’t know ‘bout yet.”
“Would everybody like me to open the corn bread up while the coffee’s brewing?” I said.
“Sure,” Hawk said. “Okay with you, Bobby?”
‘“Course,” Nevins said.
His voice came from deep in his chest and seemed to resonate in his barrel body before it emerged. I unwrapped the corn bread and set it on the unfolded foil in the middle of my desk. It smelled good. From my desk drawer I got a large switchblade knife, which I had once taken away from an aggressive but clumsy drug dealer, and now used as a letter opener. With it I cut three squares of corn bread. Hawk brought over the coffee. I took some corn bread. And chewed it carefully and swallowed it and drank some coffee.
“My compliments to the chef,” I said.
“Always liked to cook a little,” Nevins said. “Now I gotten older got more time. Hawk says this thing about my boy is turning into a hair ball.”
“Hawk’s right,” I said. “Thing is I still don’t know quite why he was jobbed on the tenure thing. It seems like the only thing I can’t find out. Meanwhile I’ve got a murder and some blackmailing – which, as far as I know, has nothing to do with your kid.”
“Anybody paying you for this?”
“Corn bread will do,” I said.
“Ain’t right, you not getting paid.”
“I owe Hawk a favor.”
Hawk snorted.
“A favor?”
“A favor or two,” I said.
Nevins nodded. He ate some more corn bread and drank some more coffee. Hawk got up and took Nevins’ cup and refilled it, pouring in a little milk from the mini-refrigerator, stirring in two spoonfuls of sugar. He brought the cup back and set it in front of Nevins on the corner of my desk. Nevins picked it up and took a sip and held the cup.
“Thank you, Hawk,” he said.
Hawk nodded. Nevins looked at me.
“You think Robinson is queer?”
“Don’t know,” I said.
“I don’t either. Hard thing for a boy to tell his father, I imagine.”
I nodded.
“He’s forty years old,” Nevins said, “ain’t never been married.”
“Hawk and I have never been married either,” I said.
“How you know about me?” Hawk said.
“Who would marry you?”
“Okay,” Hawk said. “You got a point.”
Nevins paid no attention.
“Thing is it don’t matter much,” he said. “Still my son.”
“Yes,” I said.
“I was forty-two when he was born,” Nevins said. “Coulda been his grandfather. His mother was only twenty-three, schoolteacher, fresh out of college. I coulda been her daddy.”
Hawk and I were silent, drinking coffee, listening to Nevins. There was no age in Nevins’ voice, no weakness in him.
“She left when she was thirty.”
“Another man?” I said.
“Another one and another one,” Nevins said. “Probably still going on.”
There was no resentment in Nevins’ voice either, nor remorse, nor anger, nor self-pity, only the sound of retrospection.
“Always sent her money for Robinson, and, I say this for her, she never kept me from seeing him on the weekend. But I know she didn’t like boxing, and I pretty sure she didn’t like me, and I don’t believe she kept quiet ‘bout it to Robinson. So be hard for Robinson to feel real close to me. He was a real smart little kid. He loved to read. He was kind of scared of the fighters. I used to take him to the museum and the public library and places, never read much myself, but I knew that was where his life was going to go. Too bad I didn’t know more about things like that. We could never talk much. Spent a lot of money getting him through Harvard College and all those other schools he went to so he could be a professor, and I think he knows that. Probably could tell his mother he was queer, but I don’t think he could tell me.”