"You deliver the two shooters if I need them."

"Yes."

A patrolman was loading the Death Dragons' guns into a duffel bag. The one in the Australian coat had been carrying an Uzi.

"Okay," DeSpain said. He looked at Mei Ling and tipped his cap, and turned back to his car. Everyone left.

Hawk walked over and stood beside Mei Ling. He held the shotgun loosely at his side, barrel down to keep the rain out. He looked down at her and grinned.

"What you think of that, Missy?" he said.

"I was very scared," Mei Ling said.

"I was glad when you came."

"Me too," I said.

"Saw them coming down the street," Hawk said, "and pulled around the corner. Thought we'd do better coming up behind them."

"Do you think the Ongs called someone when they went out back to study the picture?"

"Yeah," I said.

"They called Lonnie Wu."

"And he sent those boys to kill you?"

"Yep."

"This is terrible business," Mei Ling said.

"If I may say so, sir."

"You may and it is," I said.

"I wouldn't blame you for quitting."

"No, sir, I need the money."

"And?" Hawk said.

Mei Ling looked at him for a moment. She was hugging herself again, and shivering a little. Her face was serious.

"And I know you will protect me," she said.

"Yeah," Hawk said.

"We will."

"That's us," Vinnie said.

"To serve and protect. Can we get in out of the fucking rain?"

"Yes," Mei Ling said.

"I would like that too."

CHAPTER 32

"I have something I want you to hear," Susan said.

I came from her kitchen into her living room, upstairs from her office. Susan's last patient had finished his fifty minutes. The early winter darkness had settled against the windows. There was a fire in her fireplace, courtesy of me, which was the only time a fire ever happened there. Pearl had been fed and was asleep on the floor in front of the fire. A Brunswick stew simmered in Susan's kitchen, courtesy of me, which was the only time a Brunswick stew ever happened there. I was drinking a bottle of Rolling Rock. Susan had some red wine.

"Listen," Susan said, and pressed the playback button on her answering machine.

A voice said, "Dr. Silverman, this is Angela Trickett…"

Susan said, "Nope," and hit the fast forward. She let it run for a moment and hit it again.

A voice said, "Susan, it's Gwenn…"

"Nope." Fast forward.

"This next one is it."

"Dr. Silverman. This will be hard to hear, maybe, but you need to know. Your boyfriend is not faithful to you. I know this from personal experience, which I regret. But you have the right to know. I am not the first one."

There was a pause, then the sound of the phone hanging up.

Susan hit the stop button and looked at me.

I looked sheepishly at her.

"That damned Madonna," I said.

"Can't keep her mouth shut."

Susan smiled.

"I thought I recognized the voice."

"Play it again," I said.

Susan did. We listened.

"Again," I said.

We listened.

"Jocelyn Colby," I said.

"My God," Susan said, "I think you're right."

"I'm right," I said.

"Then there's something else. She has called me two or three times asking if you were there, saying that she'd expected to see you, but you weren't where you were supposed to be."

"What the hell does that mean?" I said.

"Well, first of all, I'm assuming that you've not been balling Jocelyn Colby."

"This is true," I said.

"So she's lying to make me think you're unfaithful. Calling me up looking for you was probably a way of planting suspicion.

"Well, where is he?" I was supposed to say to myself. In fact, since you are often irregular in your hours, I never thought anything about it, and since she had no message for you, I never bothered to say anything."

"She ever speak to you direct?"

"No, always on the machine. I assume she called during office hours, knowing I wouldn't pick up."

My beer was gone. I went to the kitchen and opened another bottle, looked at my stew, poured a little of the beer into it, gave it a stir, and went back into the living room. Susan was sitting on the couch with her shoes off and her feet tucked under her. She held her wine glass in both hands and stared over the rim of it into the fire. I sat beside her on the couch.

"So why is she doing this?" Susan said.

"Last time I saw her she was mad at me, because I told her no one was following her."

"And?"

"And she called me a prick master."

"Prick master? What a dandy phrase. But I meant 'and what resulted from the fact that you said no one was following her?"

" "I was going to stop being her shadow."

"Do you think she knew that no one was following her?"

"Unless she's delusional," I said.

"There was no one there."

"So why would she tell you she was being followed?"

"To get my attention?"

"And eventually your companionship."

Pearl shifted on the floor and made a snurffing sound in her sleep. I drank a little of my beer.

"Just before she was calling me a prick master she was complaining that I was going to spend time with you."

Susan nodded. We were quiet. The flames moved in the fireplace. A bubble of residual moisture, squeezed by the heat, oozed out of the end of one log and vaporized with a barely audible hiss.

"Is this a case of 'hunk city' strikes again?" I said.

"She's jealous," Susan said.

"She has attached to you in some way, and she's jealous of me."

"Well, any woman would be," I said.

Susan went on as if I hadn't spoken. When she began to think about something, she could think it to a crisp.

"You are a powerful man in a protector, rescuer, kind of way."

"She talked about being rescued."

"It's a voguish pop psyche jargon phrase at the moment," Susan said.

"I hear it in therapy all the time. And it's a useful concept, as long as everyone understands that it is shorthand for a much larger and more complicated emotional issue."

"Does she seriously think she can break us apart by anonymous accusations of infidelity?" I said.

Susan smiled.

"Fancy talk for a guy with an eighteen-inch neck," she said.

"I been bopping a shrink," I said.

"Lucky you," Susan said.

"A woman like that reflects her own emotional life. She has no depth of commitment; she doesn't understand it in others. She has no trust; she assumes others don't either. If he doesn't want me, it's because there's someone else; if I can get rid of someone else, he'll want me. It's an adolescent vision of love, which is to say romanticized sexual desire."

"Thank you, doctor."

"Be sure you understand it. I'll be passing out blue books before supper."

"You have any thoughts on what I should do about this?"

"Ignore it," Susan said.

"You think she'll keep calling?"

"Probably, but only on my machine. She won't want to talk with me."