Paper Doll Read Online Free PDF Page B

table-hopping. At the table next to us he paused long enough to hear the end of Buffy’s adventure, and laughed and said something in an undertone to the story teller. The whole table laughed excessively. It was clannish laughter, the laughter of insiders, us-boys. It was almost certainly laughter about the aptly named Buffy. Men never laughed quite that way about anything but women in a sexual context. And it was sycophantic laughter, tinged with gratitude that a man of the Senator’s prominence had shared with them not only a salacious remark but a salacious view of life.
    “Old enough to bleed,” the Senator said, “old enough to butcher.”
    The table was again frantic with grateful hilarity as the Senator turned toward us. The pinkness in his face had given way to a darker red. A tribute perhaps to the dark scotch and soda. He was nearly bald but had combined his hair in the bald man’s swoop up from behind one ear, arranged over the baldness, and lacquered in place with hair spray. A smallish man, he looked in good shape. His three-piece blue suit fit him well, and his vest didn’t gapno mean achievement in a politician. When he turned toward us, his expression was grave. He put a hand on Tripp’s shoulder.
    “Loudon,” he said. “How you holding up?”
    Tripp looked up at the Senator and nodded. “As well as one could expect, Senator, thanks.”
    The Senator looked at me, but Tripp didn’t introduce us.
    “I’m Bob Stratton,” the Senator said, and put out his hand. I said my name and returned his handshake. If he really saw me at all, it was peripherally. In his public self he probably saw everything peripherally. His focus was him.
    “Any progress yet in finding the son of a bitch?”
    Tripp shook his head.
    “Not really,” he said. “Spenser here is working on it for me.”
    “You’re a police officer?” the Senator said.
    “Private,” I said.
    “Really?” he said. “Well, you need any doors open, you call my office.”
    “Sure,” I said.
    “You have a card?” the Senator said. “I want to alert my people in case you need help.”
    I gave him a card. He looked at it for a moment, and nodded to himself, and put the card in his shirt pocket. And put his hand back on Tripp’s shoulder.
    “You hang tough, Loudon. Call me anytime.”
    Tripp smiled wanly.
    “Thanks, Senator.”
    The Senator squeezed Tripp’s shoulder and moved off toward another table, slurping a drink of dark scotch and soda as he went.
    “Fine man,” Tripp said. “Fine Senator, fine man.”
    “E pluribus unum,” I said.

chapter ten
    I NEVER SAW Susan without feeling a small but discernible thrill. The thrill was mixed with a feeling of gratitude that she was with me, and a feeling of pride that she was with me, and a feeling of arrogance that she was fortunate to be with me. But mostly it was just a quick pulse along the ganglia which, if it were audible, would sound a little like woof.
    She was as simply dressed tonight as she ever got. Form-fitting jeans, low black boots with silver trim, a lavender silk blouse partly buttoned over some sort of tight black undershirt. She had on jade earrings nowhere near as big as duck pins, and her thick black hair was short and impeccably in place.
    “You look like the cat’s ass tonight,” I said.
    “Everything you say is so lyrical,” Susan said.
    She had a glass of Iron Horse champagne, and had already drunk nearly a quarter of it, in barely twenty minutes.
    “What’s for eats?”
    “Buffalo tenderloin,” I said, “marinated in red wine and garlic, fiddle head ferns, corn pudding, and red potatoes cooked with bay leaf.”
    “Again?” Susan said.
    Pearl the wonder dog was in the kitchen with me, alert to every aspect of the buffalo tenderloin. I sliced off an edge and gave it to her.
    Susan came and sat on a stool on the living room side of the counter. She drank another milligram of her champagne. She took the bottle out of the glass ice bucket on the