"I understand that," I said. "I got no problem with that."

We were all quiet then, the three of us, sipping our drinks at 11:30 in the morning, while it rained outside.

From the window Joe said, "You gotta stay out of Gerry's way, Spenser. He's got to find Beaumont himself. He's got to get the money back. He's got to put Beaumont down. He don't do that, what is he? What kind of man is he to run this thing we got? What do they think of him? What do I think of him?"

Joe's voice had none of the audition-booth resonance now; it was hoarse.

"What the fuck does he think of himself?"

"We got a problem," I said. "I don't say it can't be resolved, but it's a problem."

"We got nothing against the broad," Vinnie said.

"Sure," I said. "But what if she's with him when Gerry finds him, and he puts up a fight and Gerry has to kill him and she sees it? Or what if he's told her all about his deal with Gerry?"

"We guarantee her safety?" Joe said softly.

"You can't," I said.

"You wouldn't take my word on it?" Joe said. "Vinnie's word?"

"I'd take Vinnie's word, but not Gerry's."

"Or mine?"

I shrugged.

"We can't guarantee it, Joe," Vinnie said. His voice was flat, very careful.

Joe nodded slowly.

"You got a suggestion?" he said to me.

"I'll do the best I can, Joe. I don't like you but he's your kid. I find

Beaumont, I'll leave him in place and take the woman. I won't hold Beaumont for Gerry, and I won't tell Gerry where he is, but I'll leave him out there for Gerry to hunt."

"You find him you give him to Vinnie," Broz said.

"And Vinnie will put him where Gerry can find him and Gerry will think he won."

Joe shrugged. I looked at Vinnie. Vinnie was staring past us both, looking at the harbor. There was no expression on his face.

"No," I said. "I won't give Beaumont to Vinnie."

Joe sighed slowly.

"There's an option we ain't spoken of yet," he said. He was tired; the ain't had crept in past his self-consciousness. "We could whack you."

"Maybe you could whack me," I said. "It's been tried. But where would that get you? It'll attract the attention of people you'd rather not attract. A lot of people know what I'm working on."

"Hawk," Vinnie said.

"For one," I said. "And there'd be a homicide investigation."

"Quirk," Vinnie said, as if he were counting off a list.

"So you trade me for them," I said, "maybe some others."

My drink was gone. I didn't want another one. The room was full of harshness and pain and a bitterness that had been distilled by silence. I wanted to get out of there.

"It's my kid, Spenser," Broz said. He sounded as if his throat were closing.

"I'm in sort of the same position, Joe."

"He's got to get some respect," Broz said.

I didn't say anything. Gerry wasn't going to get respect. He couldn't earn it and Joe couldn't earn it for him. Joe was silent, his hands folded, looking at his thumbs. He seemed to have gone somewhere.

After a while Vinnie Morris said, "Okay, Spenser. That's it. We'll talk to you later."

I stood. Broz didn't look up. I turned and walked toward the door across the big office. Vinnie walked with me.

At the door I said to Vinnie, "If Gerry gets in my way I will walk over him."

"I know," Vinnie said. He looked back at Joe Broz. "But if you do, you know who Joe will send."

I nodded. I turned back and looked at Joe.

"Tough being the boss's son," I said.

Joe didn't answer. Vinnie held the door open. And I went out.

CHAPTER 21

PEARL didn't like the rain. She hung back when Susan and I took an after-dinner stroll, even when Susan pulled on her leash. And when we prevailed through superior strength, she kept turning and looking up at me, and pausing to jump up and put her forepaws on my chest and look at me as if to question my sanity.

"I heard that if you step on their back paws when they jump up like that, they learn not to," Susan said.

"Shhh," I said. "She'll hear you."

Susan had a big blue and white striped umbrella and she carried it so that it protected her and Pearl from the rain. Pearl didn't quite get it, and kept drifting out from under its protection and getting splattered and turning to look at me. I had on my leather trench coat and the replica

Boston Braves hat that Susan had ordered for me through the catalogue from

Manny's Baseball Land. It was black with a red visor and a red button.

There was a whiteB on it and when I wore it I looked very much like Nanny Fernandez.

"What will you do?" Susan said.

"I'll try to extract Patty Giacomin from the puzzle and leave the rest of it intact."

"And you won't warn Rich?"

"No need to warn him. He knows he's in trouble."

"But you won't try to save him?"

"No."

"Isn't that a little flinty?" Susan said.

"Yes."

"Officially, here in Cambridge," Susan said, "we're supposed to value all life."

"That's the official view here in Cambridge of people who will never have to act on it," I said.

"That is true of most of the official views here in Cambridge," Susan said.

"My business is with Patty-Paul really. Rich Beaumont had to know what he was getting himself into-and besides I seem to feel a little sorry for

Joe."

Pearl had wedged herself between my legs and Susan's, managing to stay mostly under her part of Susan's umbrella, and while she didn't seem happy, she was resigned. We turned the corner off Linnaean Street and walked along

Mass Avenue toward Harvard Square.

"You are the oddest combination," Susan said.

"Physical beauty matched with deep humility?"

"Aside from that," Susan said. "Except maybe for Hawk, you look at the world with fewer illusionsthan anyone I have ever known. And yet you ire as sentimental as you would be if the world were pretty-pretty."

"Which it isn't," I said.

"You cook a good chicken too," Susan said.

"Takes a tough man," I said, "to make a tender chicken."

"How come you cook so well?"

"It's a gift," I said.

"One not, apparently, bestowed on me."

"You do nice cornflakes," I said.

"Did you always cook?" she said.

Pearl darted out from under the umbrella long enough to snuffle the possible spoor of a fried chicken wing, near a trash barrel, then remembered the rain and ducked back in against my leg.

"Since I was small," I said.

As we passed Changsho Restaurant, Pearl's head went down and her ears pricked and her body elongated. She had found the lair of the chicken wings she'd been tracking earlier.

"Remember," I said, "there were no women. Just my father, my uncles, and me. So all the chores were done by men. There was no woman's work. There were no rules about what was woman's work. In our house all work was man's work. So I made beds and dusted and did laundry, and so did my father, and my uncles. And they took turns cooking."

We were past Changsho, Pearl looked back over her shoulder at it, but she kept pace with us and the protective umbrella. There was enough neon in this part of Mass Avenue so that the wet rain made it look pretty, reflecting the colors and fusing them on the wet pavement.