”Or because they want to get even with their husbands, or they were just separated and want to prove they’re still attractive,“ I said.

”Or because they heard about how once you go black you never go back,“ Hawk said.

”I never believed that one,“ I said.

”But Jill.“ Hawk shook his head. ”Jill wants to fuck me for reasons got nothing to do with me, got nothing to do with pleasure. Jill wants to fuck me ‘cause I’m black and it be a bad thing to do, you follow?

“Sure,” I said. “Help her feel bad about herself.”

“Un huh,” Hawk said.

“But it’d help her feel comfortable with you,” I said. “If you’d tag somebody as bad as she is, you’re not such a big deal either, and if she can get you to do it, then she’s still got the power, the only one she can count on.”

“Sigmund Spenser,” Hawk said.

“You think I’m wrong?”

Hawk grinned and did a paradiddle on the speed bag.

“Think you right on target,” he said. “You got no natural moves like me, but you learn pretty good.”

“So where’d she go?” I said.

“Meet some man,” Hawk said.

“That’s the easy part,” I said. Hawk began again on the speed bag. “Which man? Where?”

“You know some of the men in her life,” Hawk said.

“That’s about all there were,” I said.

“Check them out.”

I was hooking the heavy bag, three left hooks, one right. The bag bounced and swayed on the heavy chain. The shock of the punches went up my forearms. It had been one of my first surprises when I began to box, all that long time ago, punches hurt the wrists and forearms, you have to build up both to hit hard. Until you build them up you get not only arm weary, but arm sore.

“Cops are doing that,” I said. “They got more manpower and clout than I have. They can do it quicker.”

“They know all the names?” Hawk said.

“Sure,” I said. “Almost.”

“Figured you’d get sentimental ’bout one or two people.”

“Guy out in the Berkshires, be too tough on him,” I said. “Besides, she wouldn’t go with him.”

“Un huh.”

“Guy in L.A., married, he wouldn’t have her.”

“Un huh.” Hawk moved around the speed bag, hitting it in changing combinations like a man playing an instrument. “Maybe she threaten to tell the wife,” he said.

“She’s not that crazy,” I said.

“Bad man?”

“He’d take Joe Broz with a Q-tip.”

“Hell,” Hawk said, “we can do that.” I hit the bag.

“I don’t think she’s that crazy,” I said.

“She pretty crazy,” Hawk said.

We both worked on our punches for a bit. The room was hot, there was light coming in through an ocean-facing window, and dust motes danced in its bright stream. Outside there were people tightening the upper abs, expanding the cardiovascular piping, firming up the pecs. In here there were only two guys beating hell out of simulated opponents. It seemed sort of silly, in that perspective. But it felt good.

“I was wondering,” I said, when we were finished and the hot water was sluicing over us in the shower room, “how come you’re so sure she went amok when you turned her down.”

Hawk raised his head and stared at me. “You can’t be serious,” he said.

Chapter 31

I had my feet up on the window sill in my office. I Across the way they had torn down the building where Linda Thomas had once worked. I used to watch her through the window, bent over her art board, then she’d been in my life, then she’d been gone. She was still gone, and now the building was gone. Sic transit the whole caboodle.

The phone rang behind me on the desk. I swiveled and answered. It was Quirk.

“Got a possible suicide you might be interested in,” he said. “I’ll pick you up outside your office in about two minutes.”

“Okay,” I said and hung up.

I had on my down-lined leather jacket and my Chicago Cubs baseball hat and was on the corner of Berkeley and Boylston with more than a minute to spare when Frank Belson wheeled the gray Chevy in toward me and backed up traffic on the green light while I climbed in the back. Belson hit the siren through the intersection and left it on.

“Cuts right through the holiday traffic,” Belson said.

“Can’t you get one that plays ‘Silent Night’?” I said. “Whoop whoop just isn’t jolly-sounding.”

“Security guard saw a car go into the water off the pier behind the Army base,” Quirk said, “across from Castle Hill Terminal.”

We went into town on Boylston and tumed right on Arlington. The store windows were full of red ribbon and spray-on snow. The streets were full of slush.

“Area C got a truck out there with a winch and hauled it out. It’s a rental from Western Mass. There’s a stiff in it.”

“I.D. the stiff yet?” I said.

“No,” Quirk said. “But there’s a note for you.”

Belson went under the expressway and up and through the South Station Tunnel with his siren whooping and his blue lights flashing. He slid off onto Atlantic Avenue and turned out Summer Street at the South Station.

The Boston Army Base is shabby, half used, dilapidated and full of nostalgia for most of us who processed through it on the way to wars someplace, quite some time ago. It had been the first stop on my long trip to Korea. At the end of the pier, there were three white cruisers with the blue stripe on the sides, a big tow truck with a crane arrangement on the back, the Fire Department rescue truck, and a couple of pickup trucks with diver’s gear in the back. Belson flicked off the siren and lights and pulled in behind the rescue truck. Another nondescript municipal car pulled up behind us.

“Lupo,” Belson said. “Medical Examiner.”

We all got out and walked toward the red Chevette that sat on the hot top in a puddle of water. Water dripped from the open doors. The body was streaked with salt water, and in the front seat, still strapped with a safety belt, was a sodden dark mass of someone. Lupo, the assistant M.E., went briskly over and squatted on his haunches by the open side door and looked at the sodden someone. Quirk and I walked over and stood behind Lupo. Belson leaned on the car and began to look at the crime area, not looking for anything, just cataloguing.

Lupo straightened and spoke to Quirk. “He’s dead.”

“I’m with you so far,” Quirk said.

Lupo was a mild-looking man with a plain horsey face and prominent teeth. He had a pronounced widow’s peak on his forehead and his hair was jet black though his face looked sixty-five. He wore a gabardine storm coat with a dark brown fur collar and lapels.

“Neck’s broken,” Lupo said. His upper teeth looked even and shiny as if they’d been capped. “Might have killed him, might have been dead when it got broken. He’s pretty banged up.”

“You want to look?” Quirk said to me.

“Oh, boy,” I said.

I leaned in past Lupo and looked at the sodden thing. It had been Wilfred Pomeroy. His head lay on his shoulder at an odd angle. There was blood crusted in his nostrils. Some sort of sea sludge had clung to his cheek as the car was hauled out of the water. He was wearing a gray crew sweater and corduroy slacks that had probably been white, and a pair of cheap sneakers. His bare ankles were grey, the skin puckered a little by the seawater.

“Full rigor,” Lupo was saying to Quirk.

I took in a long breath of cold sea air. It was mixed with the taste of gasoline slick, and garbage and the exhaust from the motors idling in the Area C prowl cars.

“Name’s Wilfred Pomeroy,” I said. “Was married to Jill Joyce once.”

“Good how you knew him and we didn’t,” Quirk said.

I nodded. The wind off the water was hard, aml in the twenty-degree air it felt arctic. Some seagulls who didn’t appear to give a rat’s ass about the wind or the temperature squalled and swooped around us, lighting on some of the pilings and then swooping off again almost as soon as they’d landed. Like most of the gulls on the east coast they were herring gulls, white and gray, with webbed feet and big wings. Their beaks were sharp and their eyes glittered as they rode the winds about us.