“Why?” Hook asked her. “Why am I that?”

“Because you are, that’s all. Because you won’t let go. You won’t ever let go.”

“Wouldn’t you, Mrs. Rubin? In my place?”

“Anyone would! Anyone sane!”

“If he’d been your son?”

Her eyes suddenly reddened, and for a moment Hook thought she was about to break. But he was wrong.

“Well, this isn’t getting us anywhere, is it?” she said. “If you insist on waiting for Jack, I suggest you do it in the reception room. I have work to do.”

She began to shuffle papers, pretending that the matter was settled and that he would automatically obey her and get up and leave. But he did not. Almost mesmerized by her gross proximity, he kept thinking how easy it would be to reach across the desk and take her plump throat in his hands and squeeze. And he thought of the lie, her lie, how painstaking she had been in showing Sergeant Rider exactly how Chris had taken his life. He knew it was all there in front of him, the answer to every question he still had. The problem was how to get it out of her.

“What you said about Liz,” he tried. “The sex thing. Is it true? She pick up a lot of hitchhikers? Bring them home?”

“Any age, any color, it doesn’t matter to her. As long as it’s warm. As long as it moves.”

“You must put up with a lot.”

“You could say that, yes.”

“So my son wasn’t all that unusual.”

She looked wary for a moment. Then came a cold smile of triumph. “Except he failed, remember? He couldn’t get it up. He couldn’t satisfy the slut. So if you’ll excuse me.”

“The night it happened,” he kept on. “After Liz had locked herself in her room, you were alone with him for quite a while, weren’t you?”

Her look of triumph faded. She pushed back her chair and got up. “I want you to leave now, Mr. Hook. I insist.”

Hook got to his feet slowly, not letting his eyes leave hers. “I keep wondering,” he said. “I keep asking myself what he could have done to make you hate him so.”

She was trembling now. “Get out. Now.”

Hook looked down at the stout cylinder of her body, at the heavy arms and shoulders, the broad Slavic face under the grotesque beehive hairdo, and all the jewelry and makeup and perfume, and suddenly it was there, came to him like the high keen stench of putrefying flesh in a summer woods. And he saw in her eyes that he was right.

“Did he turn you down, Mrs. Rubin? Did he laugh?”

Her face was melting wax now, character running.

“No, of course not,” he went on. “Chris wouldn’t have laughed. That wasn’t in him. It must have just been his look, the way he looked at you. He was probably embarrassed for you. It probably never even occurred to him that someone like you—”