"Parker, Robert B. - Promised Land" - читать интересную книгу автора (Parker Robert B)

"Right again. But the guilt, particularly if they have kids, the guilt is killing them. And when they get home things are usually worse than they were when they left."

Susan sipped at her Margarita. "The husband has a new club to beat her with."

I nodded. "Yep. And partly he's right. Partly he's saying, hey, you son of a bitch. You ducked out on us. You left me and the kids in the goddamned lurch and you ran. That's no reason for pride, sweetheart. You owe us,"

"But," Susan said.

"Of course, but. Always but. But she's lived her life in terms of them and she needs a chance to live it in terms of her. Natch." I shrugged and drank the rest of my beer.

"You make it sound so routine."

"It is routine in a way," I said. "I've seen it enough. In the sixties I spent most of my time looking for runaway kids. Now I spend it looking for runaway mommas. The mommas don't vary the story too much."

"You also make it sound, oh I don't know, trivial. Or, commonplace. As if you didn't care. As if they were only items in your work. Things to look for."

"I don't see much point to talking with a tremor in my voice. I care enough about them to look for them. I do it for the money too, but money's not hard to make. The thing, in my line of work at least, is not to get too wrapped up in caring. It tends to be bad for you." I gestured to the waitress for another beer. I looked at Susan's drink. She shook her head.

Across the harbor a 747 lifted improbably off the runway at Logan and swung slowly upward in a lumbering circle before heading west. L.A.? San Francisco?

"Suze," I said. "You and I ought to be on that."

"On what?"

"The plane, heading west. Loosing the surly bonds of earth."

"I don't like flying."

"Whoops," I said, "I have trod on a toe."

"Why do you think so?"

"Tone, babe, tone of voice. Length of sentence, attitude of head. I am, remember, a trained investigator. Clues are my game. What are you mad at?"

"I don't know."

"That's a start."

"Don't make fun of me, Spenser. I don't exactly know. I'm mad at you, or at least in that area. Maybe I've read Ms. Magazine, maybe I spend too much time seeing Mario Thomas on talk shows. I was married and divorced and maybe I know better than you do what this man's wife might be going through."

"Maybe you do," I said. The maitre d' had our table and we were silent as we followed him to it. The menus were large and done in a stylish typeface. The price of lobster was discreetly omitted.

"But say you do," I picked up. "Say you understand her problem better than I do. What's making you mad?"

She looked at her menu. "Smug," she said. "That's the word I was looking for, a kind of smugness about that woman's silly little fling."

The waitress appeared. I looked at Susan. "Escargots," she said to the waitress. "And the cold crab." I ordered assorted hot hors d'oeuvres and a steak. The waitress went away.

"I don't buy smug," I said. "Flip, maybe, but not smug."