"Okay, Man of Steel," Long Hair said from tile doorway. "Ollie says bring you in."

I followed him down a short corridor and into another room. There was another large television, a desk, and several office-type chairs with arms. There was a phone on the desk, and a computer. On the right-hand wall there was a couch. Behind the desk was a guy who looked like an Ollie. He had sandy hair and a wide, friendly face. When I came in he stood and came around the desk.

"You gotta be Spenser," he said. "I'm Ollie DeMars." I looked at Long Hair.

"See?" I said. "I told you I had a rep."

He snorted.

"Be okay, Johnny," Ollie said to him. "You can leave us."

Long Hair nodded and went back down the short corridor to his reality show.

"Have a seat," Ollie said.

He had on a blue-checked shirt and a maroon knit tie, and a rust-colored Harris tweed sport coat. He looked like he might sell real estate.

"You've done me a hell of a favor," Ollie said. "I send out guys like Tank and Eddie with the expectation they can get things done."

"Eddie the weight lifter?"

"Yes, and you showed me that they couldn't."

"All part of the service," I said.

"So I canned their ass," he said, and grinned at me like we were pals. "My way or highway, you know?"

"Are you planning to send somebody else?" I said.

He grinned. His teeth seemed unnaturally white.

"Not at these prices," he said. "I gotta deal with you and the schwartza, I need to get paid accordingly."

"Schwartza's name is Hawk," I said. "Who's paying you."

"Tell you the truth," Ollie said, "I don't even know."

"How come you don't know."

"Got a phone call, guy says he wants me to do some work over at a cathouse in the Back Bay. Says have I got a checking account. I say I do. He says he'll wire money to my account. And he does."

"What was the work?"

"Just keep pressuring them until he tells us to stop."

"Pressuring them to do what?"

"Pay up," Ollie said.

"Pay who?" I said.

Ollie shrugged.

"Don't know," he said.

"For what?"

Ollie shook his head.

"Same answer," he said.

"Where'd the wire transfer come from?"

"None of your business," Ollie said.

"Actually, it is," I said.

"Okay," Ollie said. "I still won't tell you."

"Yet," I said.

"Yet?" Ollie said. "Confident bastard, aren't you."

"Optimistic," I said.

"Might want to be a little careful," Ollie said. "I'm fairly optimistic myself."

"Sure," I said. "How's he know you're doing your job? Might be some people who would take the money and do nothing."

"I'm not like that," Ollie said. "I got a reputation."

"You too," I said. "But how does he know?"

Ollie shrugged and shook his head. Multitasking.

"You plan to keep earning the money?"

"I plan to ask for more. I didn't agree to do business with you and Hawk."

"Yet," I said.

Ollie smiled.

"You know Hawk?" I said.

"I been doing this work for a long time," he said. "Of course I know Hawk. Know you, too."

"So you're going to renegotiate," I said.

"Yep."

"How will you get hold of him."

"I'll sit tight until he gets hold of me," Ollie said.

"If you bother April Kyle again," I said, "I'll ruin your life."

Ollie smiled as he spoke. "I said I knew who you were. I didn't say I prayed to you."

He took a silvery semiautomatic pistol out of his desk drawer and pointed it at me sort of informally.

"Could pop you right here, get it done," he said. "But I'm not getting paid to do it, yet."

"So I'm spared," I said.

"Until I renegotiate," Ollie said.

"When you renegotiate," I said, "charge a lot."

Ollie grinned again, still pointing the gun more or less at me. He nodded his head slowly. Then he put the gun down on his desk.

"Well, that fucking terrified you," Ollie said. "Didn't it."

"Iron self-control," I said.

"Attaboy," Ollie said.

6

I sat and had coffee with Hawk and April in the front parlor of the mansion. The furniture was men's-club leather. There was a fire in the fireplace. On the walls were reproductions of Picasso's nude sketches.

"You don't know Ollie DeMars," I said.

"No," April said.

"I know Ollie," Hawk said.

"I'm startled," I said.

"Got a crew in Southie," Hawk said. "They steal stuff, hire out to bigger outfits for rough work. Ollie's pretty bad."

"As bad as you?" April said.

Hawk smiled. "'Course not," he said.

"And your only contact with Ollie's employer is by anonymous phone call," I said.

"Yes."

"And he wants a percentage of your operation."

"Twenty-five percent," April said.

"How does he know how much that would be?" I said.

"I don't know."

"How much would it be?" I said.

"All of my markup," she said.

"You have a lot of overhead," I said.

"This is not a half-hour in a cheap hotel," April said.

I nodded. Hawk sipped his coffee. He was expressionless. And, except for drinking the coffee, he was motionless. It was as if nothing interested him, as if he saw nothing and heard nothing. Except that later, if it mattered, it would turn out that he had seen and heard everything.

"How do you suppose he knows about you?" I said.

"Maybe he was a customer," April said.

"Or is," Hawk said.

April looked startled, and then uneasy.

"You think he might still be coming here?" she said.

"No way to know," I said. "How do people find you?"

"Most of it is referral," April said.

"Satisfied customers?"

"Yes."

"And how did they get to you?" I said.

"We have some contacts in good hotels, limousine services, some of the big travel agencies. And of course there's the Internet."

"The Internet," I said.

"Look up `escort services' on one of the search engines," April said.

Hawk said, "I explain to you later what a search engine is."

"No need for scorn," I said. "I have a cell phone, too."

"Ever use it?" Hawk said.

"I'm thinking about it," I said. "What will I find under escort services."

"About three million hits," April said. "Nationwide."

"So if I'm going to, say, Pittsburgh," I said, "I look up escort services in Pittsburgh and there's a list."

"A big list," April said.

"And that's true of Boston?"

"Heavens," April said, "that's true of Stockton, California."

"And you're listed in Boston?"

"Sure," April said. "And about two hundred thousand others. We feel that it's in our best interest to put our name in play. But we don't rely on the Internet, and we screen the Internet customers very carefully."

"What are you screening for?"

"We are looking for repeat business," she said. "We want grown-ups who value discretion and top-drawer accommodations. We are looking for people who travel first-class."

"How can you tell?" I said.

"One learns," she said and smiled.

"I show up, they let me in," Hawk said to me. "You show up, they don't."

"Hawk," April said, "we probably wouldn't even charge YOU."

"So this guy could be a local customer, or somebody who found you on the Internet," I said. "He could, I suppose, be one of the people that shill for you."

April hunched her shoulders as if the room were cold.

"I don't like to think that," she said. "And I don't like to call them shills."

"Sorry," I said. "How about referral associates."

She smiled.

"Better," she said.

"Could be more than just April," Hawk said.

"Maybe," I said. "Either way, it needs to be somebody that would know how to find Ollie DeMars. Ollie probably doesn't have a website."

"So we looking for someone can find the right whorehouse-excuse me, April-and the right enforcer."