Paulo wordlessly indicated to his brother that he was going after Mr. Savarese, handed his crowbar to his brother, and left the room.
He returned in two minutes, politely ushering Mr. Savarese into the room ahead of him. Mr. Savarese stood perhaps six feet from Ketcham, his delicate, fragile-looking hands folded together in front of him. He nodded his permission to Paulo to commence the conversation.
Paulo reclaimed his crowbar from his brother and walked across to Ketcham. He extended the crowbar to Ketcham’s groin, gently touching both his penis and his scrotum with it.
“Oh, Jesus Christ!” Ketcham said.
“Okay. Now we’ll talk,” Paulo said. “Tell me about drugs.”
“What drugs?” Ketcham responded, sounding genuinely confused.
Cassandro’s crowbar touched Ketcham’s scrotum and penis again, somewhat less gently.
“Tell me what you want to know, and I’ll tell you,” Ketcham said, sounding desperately determined to be agreeable.
“You know fucking well what I want to know,” Paulo said. “I want to hear it from you.”
There was a long pause.
“I swear to God,” Ketcham finally said, “that I had nothing to do with the cops being there.”
“Bullshit,” Cassandro replied.
“I swear to God,” Ketcham repeated. “They must have followed, been following, Williams.”
“Bullshit,” Paulo repeated.
Mr. Savarese held up his hand to signal the conversation should be interrupted. Paulo went to Mr. Savarese, who, very softly, asked, “Williams?”
“I think a dinge drug dealer. I’ll make sure,” Paulo whispered in Mr. Savarese’s ear.
“I had no reason to go to the cops,” Ketcham said.
“But you would turn in a drug dealer like Amos Williams to save your miserable ass, wouldn’t you?” Paulo asked reasonably.
“I didn’t turn him in. I swear to God, I didn’t. We had a long-standing business relationship.”
“So you tell me what happened, then.”
“I don’t know. All of a sudden, there’s cops all over the motel.”
“Why do you think that was?”
“I swear to God, I don’t know. Except they must have been following Williams.”
“What was the name of this motel?”
“You don’t know?” Ketcham blurted.
Paulo picked up Ketcham’s scrotum with his crowbar.
“I ask, you talk,” he said.
“The Howard Johnson on Roosevelt Boulevard,” Ketcham said quickly.
“Maybe your girlfriend turned you both in, is that what you’re saying?”
“No. Christ no! She didn’t even know what was going on.”
“She was there with you, wasn’t she?”
“She didn’t even go in the motel. She waited outside in the car.”
“You expect me to believe your lady didn’t even know what the fuck you were doing?”
“She didn’t,” Ketcham said firmly.
“Right. Like she don’t use shit herself, right?”
“She doesn’t. I mean, every once in a while, a couple of lines, but she’s not addicted.”
“Bullshit!”
“She doesn’t. She’s a nice girl, from a good family.”
“Who does a couple of lines every once in a while, right, and goes with you to meet with this drug dealer? Bullshit.”
“It’s the truth, so help me God!”
“Maybe we’re talking about two different people,” Paulo said. “What’s this lady’s name?”
“Cynthia Longwood,” Ketcham said.
Paulo turned to look at Mr. Savarese, who was sadly shaking his head from side to side.
“If she was waiting outside in the car, and didn’t set you and the dealer up with the cops, then what’s she so upset about?”
“Why do you think?” Ketcham blurted.
This earned him a short but painful jab in the scrotum, which caused him first to double over in agony, then fall backward into a sitting position on the floor. Paulo then kicked Ketcham in the head.
“Answer the fucking question, motherfucker!”
“What the hell was I supposed to do?” Ketcham said.
“The cop had just ripped me off of twenty thousand dollars, and I was handcuffed to the toilet. You think I liked what the cop did to her?”
“What cop? Did he have a name?”
“I don’t know what his name is,” Ketcham replied.
“He was an undercover narc. Probably from that special squad of narcs.”
“And what did he do to your lady that made her so upset?”
“He made her blow him,” Ketcham said.
Cassandro looked at Mr. Savarese. His face was expressionless, but tears ran down both cheeks. When he saw Paulo looking at him, he gestured with his hand for him to continue.
“He made her what?” Cassandro asked.
“First he made her take off her clothes, and then he made her blow him.”
“What did this cop look like?” Paulo asked.
“I don’t know,” Ketcham began, and then, quickly, to ward off another kick to the head or jab at his scrotum, went on. “White guy. Thirty years old. Average size—”
“What’s his name, motherfucker?”
“I told you, I don’t know. I never saw him before.”
Paulo Cassandro, sensing movement, turned to look at Mr. Savarese. Mr. Savarese was walking out of the room.
Cassandro went after him. Mr. Savarese stopped walking halfway down the corridor, took the white Irish linen handkerchief from the breast pocket of his suit, and dabbed at his eyes and cheeks with it.
“What do you want me to do with this bag of shit, Mr. S.?”
“Nothing,” Mr. Savarese replied.
“Nothing?” Cassandro parroted incredulously.
“Get Pietro. Make sure we will leave nothing behind that belongs to us, and then close the door.”
“Whatever you say, Mr. S.,” Paulo said.
Mr. Savarese nodded, then walked down the corridor toward the door and the Ford flat-tire truck outside.
They were almost back at Classic Livery, Inc., before Paulo finally understood what Mr. S. had in mind for Ketcham.
Nothing didn’t mean nothing. Nothing meant that the miserable fucking cocksucker who had dishonored Mr. S.’s granddaughter would have a long fucking time in the fucking dark to think over what he had done before he died. And there wasn’t even anything in that fucking room he could use to kill himself, unless maybe he could bang his fucking head against the fucking wall until his brains came out.
That’s really better than what I was going to do to the bastard.
Paulo Cassandro had taken the crowbar with him, thinking it would be the thing to use to break Ketcham’s fingers and arms and kneecaps and legs before he put an ice pick in his ear.
He considered Mr. Savarese’s decision on how to properly deal with Ketcham one more proof of Mr. Savarese’s profound wisdom.
SEVENTEEN
After a long time in the bathroom—much of it looking at her reflection in the mirror, as if there was going to be some kind of answer there—Susan finally came out, wrapped in a hotel-furnished terry-cloth robe.
Matt was propped up against the headboard of the bed, naked except for a corner of the sheet over his groin, the telephone to his ear.
Matt said “Thank you” into the telephone and hung it up and looked at her.
“Who were you talking to?” Susan asked.
“Room service. You were in there so long, I got hungry. I told them to send up oysters and a bottle of champagne.”
Been watching a lot of Cary Grant movies, have you, Matt? A little elegant counterpoint to hot and heavy sex?
“Oysters and champagne?”
“Yeah. It seemed appropriate under the circumstances.”
“I don’t like oysters,” Susan said.
He reached for the telephone and dialed. The sheet over his g
roin was dislodged.
He either didn’t notice or doesn’t care.
“This is Mr. Payne,” he said. “If it’s not too late, make that one dozen oysters.”
He hung up and moved back to his propped-up-against-the-headboard position and looked at her. He did not pull the sheet over his nakedness.
Why does that annoy me so much? What is he doing, exposing himself like that? Saying, “Now that I know what a hot-blooded bitch—what a good fuck—you are, why worry about decency?”
“You apparently have a lot of experience in circumstances like this,” Susan heard herself say.
“Actually,” he said wryly, “I have absolutely no previous experience in a circumstance even remotely like this one.”
“Would you mind covering yourself?” she heard herself ask in the voice of a bitch.
“Sorry,” he said, and grabbed for the sheet.
“I can’t believe I did this,” she said.
Matt shrugged. The shrug—his whole attitude—infuriated her.
He made it worse by asking, “You ever hear the expression ‘These things happen’? Or, ‘Sex is what makes the world go around’?”
“Goddamn you!” Susan said.
He looked at her without expression.
“What if I’m pregnant?” she heard herself blurting.
That surprised him.
“You’re not on the pill?”
She felt herself blushing as she shook her head, “no.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t need it.”
“That was an admission, in case you weren’t aware of it, that there is no good ol’ Whatsisname, the boyfriend your parents can’t stand.”
“Yes, there is—”
“Stop the bullshit, Susan,” he interrupted her rather unpleasantly. “We don’t have time for it. It’ll only make things worse than they are. If that’s possible.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she challenged.
He patted the bed beside him.
He’s ordering me to shut up and get back in bed! Goddamn him!
“What makes you think we’re going to do that again? Ever?”
“I told you we don’t have time for bullshit. Sit down,” he said, and then went on, “I said ‘sit,’ not ‘lay.’ ”
Not knowing why she decided to give in, Susan went to the bed and sat on the edge. Matt took her hand in his.
For a moment, thinking he was going to put her hand on him under the sheet, she debated jerking her hand free. But she sensed, somehow, that having her fondle him was not—at least for the moment—on his mind.
“You were a little surprised about this, right?” Matt asked seriously. “What’s happened to us?”
“That’s the understatement of the century,” she said.
“Well, me, too, fair maiden. This is the last thing I expected to happen, or wanted to happen.”
“That’s not the impression you gave me.”
“The cops are onto you, fair maiden.”
“And what the hell is that supposed to mean?”
He shrugged again, and again it infuriated her.
“Truth time,” Matt said, “For example, to clear the air: When you were not in your room in the Bellvue with the nonexistent boyfriend, you were off meeting a guy named Bryan Chenowith and/or one or more of his fellow fugitives.”
“Oh, my God!”
“Yeah,” Matt said. “In other words, the jig is up. You are what is known in the criminal statutes, state and Federal, as an accessory after the fact. And actually, I want to be sure about the after the fact.”
“You son of a bitch! You went to my house! You had dinner with my parents. And all the time—”
“You left out ‘made love to me.’ Guilty on all counts. And I’m going to take great pleasure in seeing your pal and his friends hauled off to the slammer without possibility of parole for the rest of their natural lives. My problem is what to do about you.”
She looked at him with horror in her eyes, but didn’t speak.
“I don’t want you to go to the slam, fair maiden. That would distress me terribly.”
“Why should that bother you, Mr. Detective?” Susan flared, and started to get off the bed. She wondered if she was going to throw up.
He held her wrist, and he was too strong for her.
“I’m not through,” he said, not very pleasantly.
“What are you going to do now? Rape me before you arrest me?”
“Come on, Susan, you know better than that. Get it through your head that right now I’m the best friend you’ve got.”
“How often have you used that line? What do they call that, putting the suspect at ease?”
“That’s what they call it,” Matt agreed. “The difference is, this is the first time I’ve used the technique on an interviewee I think I’m in love with.”
Her heart jumped when he said that.
“In love?” she asked, witheringly sarcastic. “You don’t expect me to believe that, do you?”
“Well, maybe what happened affected me more than it affected you, but that’s how I’m forced to look at it.”
“Oh, come on, Matt!”
“If I didn’t come to realize, when you were in the bathroom all that time, that what’s wrong with me is that I’m in love with you, then what would have happened was that we would have torn off another couple of pieces, had our dinner, and I would have taken you home and been not at all upset about the inevitability of you going off to the slam.”
“My God, you’re serious!”
“Were you listening when I said we don’t have time for bullshit?”
There was a knock at the door.
“Who’s that?” Susan asked, as if frightened.
“Probably the waiter. When I checked in, I told them to cool a couple of bottles.” He raised his voice. “Just a moment, please, I’m in the shower.”
He let go of her wrist and got out of bed.
“Is there another one of those in there?” he asked, making reference to the hotel’s terry-cloth robe and gesturing toward the bathroom.
“I only saw this one,” Susan said.
“Then you better give me that one,” Matt said. “And wait in the bathroom. Or get under the blankets.”
She looked at him doubtfully, then looked around for her discarded clothing.
“Where’re my clothes?”
“I kicked them under the bed,” he said matter-of-factly, then smiled and went on. “Come on, give me the robe. The cow already got out of the barn. I know what you’ve got hidden under there.”
She turned her back on him, unfastened the robe, and, aware that she was blushing again, shrugged out of it and ran to the bathroom.
“What do you want to eat?”
“What do I want to eat?” she parroted incredulously. “Eat?”
“They do a nice standing rib,” he said. “Okay?”
“I just don’t give a damn,” she confessed, and closed the bathroom door.
Feeling dizzy and a little faint, but no longer nauseous, Susan leaned against the closed bathroom door. This gave her a view of herself in the mirrors over the sink.
For a moment, she seriously considered that she might be having a bad dream. That was obviously not the case.
But I can’t believe any of this is happening! Either what happened in the car, or that I came to the room, or what happened here. Anything that happened here, from letting him undress me through what happened after he did, to that clever little unbelievable line, “The cops are onto you, fair maiden.”
She was vaguely conscious of hearing him order dinner—New England-style clam chowder, not the kind with tomatoes, medium-rare beef, baked potatoes, asparagus, and a large pot of coffee—and couldn’t believe that, either.
How the hell can he even think of food at a time like this?
And then he was trying to push the bathroom door open against the weight of her body.
“Hey, you all right, Susan?”
he asked, and there was concern in his voice.
“What do you want?”
“I thought you might want the robe back.”
“Just a minute,” she said, and pushed herself off the door and went after a towel.
Before she reached it, he had pushed the door open. Susan tried to cover herself modestly with her hands.
“Ta-ta!” Matt cried. “The Mad Flasher strikes again!”
Using both hands, he pulled the bathrobe open wide.
Under it, his private parts were now concealed by his shorts.
“You’re insane,” she said, but she smiled and reached for the robe as he shrugged out of it.
“Your maidenly modesty is really a waste of effort, you know. I have seen what I have seen, and it is burned indelibly for all eternity on my brain.”
“You really are insane, aren’t you?” Susan said.
Why am I pleased that he liked what he saw? And for that matter, why am I not really all that embarrassed about him seeing me naked?
Matt went back into the bedroom, and as she fastened the robe around her, she saw him going into the sitting room. She combed her hair as best she could, then went into the bedroom.
Where she found that he had indeed kicked her clothing under the bed. The first thing she retrieved was her brassiere.
And saw he had torn it off: the buttonhole on the strap between the cups was ripped open.
She found her underpants and pulled them on under the terry-cloth robe and went into the sitting room.
He was pouring champagne. He picked up both glasses and held one out to her.
“I’m not sure I want this,” she said.
“What shall we drink to?” he asked, ignoring her.
“What is there to celebrate?”
“Us, maybe? Or am I really alone in thinking that something really special happened to both of us in the last twenty-four hours?”
“Matt, I’m afraid to believe you about . . . what you said,” she said.
“I told you I think I love you after I told you that bullshit time is over,” he said. “You can believe that.”
“I don’t know what happened to me,” Susan said.
“The question is was it special for you? Half as special, maybe, as it was for me?”
“What do you think?” she asked softly.
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