Now and then - By Robert B. Parker Page 0,14

Street on foot.

I walked over and closed my office door and walked back to my desk and sat. I wondered if she knew how to do anything I didn’t know how to do? The options weren’t limitless. Maybe Susan would have a thought.

16 .

It was a bright morning. Early November and people were strolling past my corner as if it were still summer. I was reading the paper, celebrating the return of Calvin and Hobbes with two donuts and an extra coffee. Doherty came into the office.

“I threw her out,” he said.

“Jordan,” I said.

“Yeah, I threw her out of the fucking house.”

“You hurt her?” I said.

“No, I mean I didn’t touch her. I told her to get out and she went.”

“She say where she was going?”

“No,” he said. “It’s over. Gimme your fi nal bill.”

“She take anything with her?”

“I let her pack a suitcase. Gimme your bill.”

“You don’t want me to fi nd Alderson?”

“Fuck him,” he said. “It’s over. I don’t care where he is.”

“It would be a bad idea,” I said, “to go after him.”

Doherty’s face was pale except for redness around his eyes. He nodded.

“I know,” he said.

“There’s life after death,” I said.

“I know that, too,” Doherty said. “I’m going to survive this; I won’t kill him.”

“Good.”

“I’ll always regret it, though,” Doherty said.

“Not killing him?”

“Yeah.”

“Nice to think about,” I said, “on cold winter evenings.”

“Yeah.”

“You might want to talk with someone,” I said.

“A shrink?”

“Might help.”

“I don’t need it,” he said.

“Got a guy if you do,” I said. “Guy named Dix, specializes sort of in cops.”

“I’m not a cop,” he said.

“FBI,” I said. “Close enough.”

“How’d you know that?”

“I’m a trained investigator,” I said. “Plus your wife said so on the tape.”

“I didn’t hear that.”

“Cutting-room fl oor,” I said.

“Maybe I should hear the whole thing,” he said.

“Maybe you should move on from it all,” I said.

He was quiet for a moment. Then he nodded slowly.

“Yeah,” he said. “Maybe I should.”

I wrote out Dix’s address and phone number on a piece of notepaper and gave it to him. He took it and folded it up and stuck it in his shirt pocket without looking at it.

“Anybody at the bureau know about this?” he said.

“No.”

I knew the question would come and I had already decided on my answer. By now Epstein might have figured something out. If he had, there was nothing Doherty could do about it. If he hadn’t, there was no point in him worrying about it.

“Good,” he said. “Doesn’t help, you know, it gets around that there’s trouble at home.”

I nodded. Doherty stood. I waited.

Finally he said, “We didn’t start off so good, but you been pretty decent with all this.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I’ll send you the bill.”

He nodded, and hesitated another moment, then turned and left.

17.

Do you think he’ll be all right?” Susan said.

I was pouring some scotch into a tall glass fi lled with ice. It took concentration to get it just at the right level.

“Doherty?” I said. “Yeah, I think so.”

I added soda precisely to the rim of the glass and stirred the ice around with the handle of a spoon.

“He’s an FBI agent,” Susan said. “He carries a gun. He comes from a culture that puts some premium on machismo.”

I took a sip of my scotch and soda. Perfect.

“He’s pretty tough,” I said. “He’s willing to take the shortterm pain for long-term gain.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning it would be a source of great pleasure for him to shoot Alderson dead,” I said. “But it would probably ruin his life. And the satisfaction of remembering the shooting wouldn’t be enough to compensate.”

“Goodness,” Susan said. “You’ve given this some thought.”

“Yes,” I said. “He’ll move on.”

It was a Friday night. Susan had just come upstairs from her last patient of the week. She was wearing one of her subdued shrink outfits, a dark suit with a white shirt. The kind of outfit that says, It’s about you, not about me. She took the suit jacket off and hung it on the back of a chair. I smiled. She wouldn’t look subdued in a flour sack. The best she could do was to barely avoid fl amboyant.

“So it’s over as far as you’re concerned,” she said.

“The case?”

“Yes.”

She got a bottle of Riesling from the refrigerator and poured some for herself, and came and sat at the other end of the couch from me, with her legs tucked up under her.

“Not entirely,” I said. “I’d like to know what Jordan and Alderson are doing, and whether the FBI has been compromised.”

“Patriotism?” she said.

“I don’t