Part 8 (1/2)

”Who'd tell Paul that you f.u.c.ked his wh.o.r.ey mother? How would he find out you'd been dirty?”

Her voice was shaking and clogged. She was crying.

”You'd tell him when there was a good occasion. Or you'd tell his father and his father would tell him. And besides there's this woman I know.”

Patty Giacomin pressed against me. Her shoulders were heaving, she was crying outright. ”Please,” she said. ”Please. I've been good. I've cooked. I pay you. Please, don't do this.”

I put my arms around her and patted her bare back. She buried her face against my chest and with both hands straight at her sides, stark naked except for her transparent shoes, she sobbed without control for a long time. I patted her back and tried to think of other things. Carl Hubbell struck out Cronin, Ruth, Gehrig, Simmons, and Jimmy Foxx in an all-star game. Was it 1934? The crying seemed to feed on itself. It seemed to build. I rested my chin on the top of her head. Who played with Cousy at Holy Cross? Kaftan. Joe Mullaney? Dermie O'Connell. Frank Oftring. Her body pressed at me. I thought harder: All-time all-star team players I'd seen. Musial; Jackie Robinson; Reese; and Brooks Robinson. Williams; DiMaggio; Mays; Roy Campanella; Sandy Koufax, left-hand pitcher; Bob Gibson, right-hand, pitcher; Joe Page in the bullpen. She was crying easier now.

”Come on,” I said. ”You get dressed, I'll take a cold shower, and we'll have some breakfast.”

She didn't move, but the crying stopped. I stopped patting. She stepped away and squatted gracefully to pick up the peignoir. She didn't put it on. She didn't look at me. She walked away toward her bedroom.

I went into the kitchen and stood at the open back door and took in a lot of late April air. Then I poured a cup of coffee and drank some and scalded my tongue a little. The princ.i.p.al of counterirritant.

It was maybe fifteen minutes before she came out of the bedroom. In the meantime I rummaged around in the kitchen and got together a potato-and-onion omelet. It was cooking when she came into the kitchen. Her makeup was good and her hair was neat, but her face still had the red, ugly look faces have after crying.

”Sit down,” I said. ”My treat this morning.” I poured her coffee.

She sat and sipped at the coffee.

I said, ”This is awkward, but it doesn't have to be too awkward. I'm flattered that you offered. You should not consider it a negative on you that I declined.”

She sipped more coffee, shook her head slightly, didn't talk.

”Look,” I said. ”You've been through a lousy divorce. For sixteen years or more you've been a housewife and now all of a sudden there's no man in the house. You're a little lost. And then I move in. You start cooking for me. Putting flowers on the table. Pretty soon you're a housewife again. This morning had to happen. You had to prove your housewifery, you know? It would have been a kind of confirmation. And it would have confirmed a status that I don't want, and you don't really want. I'm committed to another woman. I'm committed to protecting your son. s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g his mom, pleasant as that would be, is not productive.”

”Why not?” She looked up when she said it and straight at me.

”For one thing it might eventually raise the question of whether I was being paid for protecting Paul or s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g you, of being your husband subst.i.tute.”

”Gigolo?”

”You ought to stop doing that. Cla.s.sifying things under some kind of neat t.i.tle. You're a wh.o.r.e, I'm a gigolo, that sort of thing.”

”Well, what was I if I wasn't a wh.o.r.e?”

”A good-looking woman, with a need to be loved, expressing that need. It's not your fault that you expressed it to the wrong guy.”

”Well. I'm sorry for it. It was embarra.s.sing. I was like some uneducated ginzo.”

”I don't know that the lower cla.s.ses do that sort of thing much more often than we upper-cla.s.s types. But it wasn't simply embarra.s.sing. It was also in some ways very nice. I mean I'm very glad to have seen you with your clothes off. That's a pleasure.”

”I need men,” she said.

I nodded. ”That's where the bucks are,” I said.

”That's still true,” she said. ”But it's more than that.”

I nodded again.

”Women are so G.o.dd.a.m.ned boring,” she said. She stretched out the or in boring.

”Sometime I'll put you in touch with a woman I know named Rachel Wallace,” I said.

”The writer?”

”Yeah.”

”You know her? The feminist writer? Well, that's all right in theory. But we both know the reality.”

”Which is?”

”That we get a lot further batting our eyes and wiggling our b.u.t.ts.”

”Yeah,” I said. ”Look where it got you.” With a quick sweep of her right hand she knocked the half-full cup of coffee and its saucer off the table and onto the floor. In the same motion she got up out of her chair and left the kitchen. I heard her go up the short stairs to her bedroom and slam the door. She never did try my potato-and-onion omelet. I threw it away.

CHAPTER 11.

It was two days after the peignoir that they came for the kid. It was in the evening. After supper. Patty Giacomin answered the doorbell and they came in, pus.h.i.+ng her backward as they came. Paul was in his room watching television. I was reading A Distant Mirror, chapter seven. I stood up.

There were two of them and neither was Mel Giacomin. The one doing the shoving was short and dumpy and barrel-bodied. He was wearing the ugliest wig I've ever seen. It looked like an auburn Dynel ski cap that he'd pulled down over his ears. His partner was taller and not as bulky. He had a boot camp crew cut and a navy watch cap rolled up so that it looked like a sloppy yarmulke.

The short one said, ”Where's the kid?”

The tall one looked at me and said, ”Spenser. n.o.body told me about you in this.”

I said, ”How are you, Buddy?”

The short one said, ”Who's he?”

Buddy said, ”He's a private cop. Name's Spenser. You working, Spenser?”

I said, ”Yes.”

”They didn't tell me you'd be here.”

”Mel didn't know, Buddy. It's not Mel's fault.”

”I didn't say anything about no Mel,” Buddy said.

”Aw, come on, Buddy, don't be a jerk. Who the h.e.l.l else would send you for the kid?”

The short one said, ”Never mind all the c.r.a.p. Parade the f.u.c.king kid out here.”

I said to Buddy, ”Who's your friend with his head in a bag?”