“Do you think you need protection?” I said.

“No, not really. I think I’m probably being a bit of a sissy.”

“Anyone threaten you?”

“Oh, no, nothing like that. Conroy said I wasn’t to talk of this matter, but he meant if I wanted a letter of reference for my next job.”

I gave her my card. On the back of it, I wrote Hawk’s name and cell phone number.

“If you feel threatened, call me, at any hour. If you don’t reach me, call the number on the back. It’s a large black man with his head shaved who could protect Australia if he were asked.”

“Will he know who I am?”

“Yes.”

“It’s silly, of course. But I feel better knowing there’s someone I can call.”

“Anyone would,” I said.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

“Do you think she’s in any real danger?” Susan said.

“Probably not,” I said. “She’s a bright young woman. Went to school, got an MBA, and this is the first time she’s been fired.”

“So her ego requires her to invest it with cosmic proportion.”

“Once she’s been fired a few times, she’ll get used to it,” I said.

“The voice of experience?”

“Something like that,” I said.

I was cooking supper and Susan was pitching in by sitting at my kitchen counter drinking white wine and watching.

“Are you sure you’re cooking those scallops long enough?” she said.

“Of what can we be sure,” I said, “in this uncertain world?”

“We’re not going to discuss the nature of being, are we?” Susan said.

“No.”

“Thank God.”

“Or whoever,” I said.

“Stop that,” Susan said.

She sipped her wine. I tossed the scallops in the saute pan one more time and slid them onto a plate.

“They don’t look cooked to me,” she said.

“Suze,” I said, “when you make tea, you burn the water.”

“Do I hear you saying shut the fuck up?”

“At least about cooking,” I said.

“Mum’s the word.”

I also dente’d the pasta and found it correct and poured it through a colander. I added some green peas and the sauteed scallops and tossed it all with some pesto sauce and put it on the counter. We ate at the counter, sitting side by side. Susan broke off a tiny piece from a loaf of French bread and ate it with a minimalist forkful of the pasta.

“You’re right,” she said. “You don’t need my help.”

“Not to cook,” I said.

“Or much of anything else,” she said.

I glanced at her sideways. “What about, you know?” I said.

“I don’t consider that help,” she said.

“Well, you are certainly not a hindrance,” I said.

“Sometimes I think it’s the only thing I’m good at.”

I drank some beer. “Well, if there could only be one thing…” I said.

She didn’t say anything. I could feel us drifting into a more serious corner of the evening.

“I can’t get that kid out of my head,” Susan said.

“The suicide?”

“Yes.”

“Would you expect to, this soon after?”

“No,” she said, “I suppose I wouldn’t.”

“In time,” I said, “the sharp edges round off.”

“I hope so.”

“Seems a shame,” I said, “that so harmless a variation should cause such pain.”

“I know,” Susan said. “People, especially young people, often think the circles they are in are the only circles that matter. They don’t realize that there is a world where nobody much gives a goddamn.”

Susan finished her wine. I poured her some more. She gestured me to stop at half a glass.

“It’s not the condition,” she said, “or whatever. It’s the concealment.”

“Like Watergate,” I said. “It wasn’t the burglary that caused all the trouble; it was the cover-up.”

“Something like that,” Susan said. “Pretending to be what you are not fills people with self-loathing. If they share their secret, even with a sex partner, then others have power over them. They are vulnerable to blackmail of one kind or another.”

I carefully twirled some pasta onto my fork. Susan could eat with chopsticks, but she was nowhere at twirling pasta.

“You know,” I said, “prior to Mary Smith, I cannot find any sign of a sex partner for Nathan Smith.”

“How old was he when he got married?”

“Fifty-one,” I said.

“Children?” Susan said. “With Mary?”

“No. But she told me that he was friendly with a number of young boys.”

“Maybe you’re looking for the wrong kind of sex partner,” Susan said.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

There was a photographer I knew named Race Witherspoon who was gayer than springtime and quite happy about it. He had his studios this year in a fourth-floor loft in South Boston, just across Fort Point Channel.

His studio was cluttered with tripods, and reflector umbrellas, and props, and Diet Coke cans. Curled Polaroid peel-offs were everywhere. A Flintlock musket leaned in a corner. A red feather boa was draped over the edge of an old rolltop desk. A cowboy hat lay on top of a file cabinet, a pair of combat boots stood side by side on an overturned milk carton. Light flooded in through a skylight. On the wall was a huge black-and-white blowup of two naked men. I tried to remain calm about it.

In the middle of the clutter Race was surgically immaculate. His white flannel pants were sharply creased. His turquoise shirt was fitted. His black-and-white shoes were gleaming.

“Oh my God!” Race said. “Man of my dreams.”

“How unfortunate,” I said.

“Well, honey,” he said, “sooner or later they all come back.”

“I need homo info,” I said.

Race grinned and did a small shuffle ball change and spread his arms.

“You’ve come to the right place, Big Boy.”

“If you were an older man,” I said.

“Which I’m not,” Race said.

“Certainly not,” I said. “In all the years I’ve known you you haven’t aged any more than I have.”

“That’s unkind,” Race said. “But go ahead, if I were an older man…”

“Where would you be likely to go to meet young men?”

“How young.”

“Boys.”

“Nellie’s,” Race said. “Third floor. It’s chickenfucker central.”

“Joint in Bay Village?” I said.

“Nice turn of phrase, honey,” Race said.

“I try to be appropriate,” I said. “Bay Village?”

“Where else?”

“Ever go there?”

“Downstairs,” he said. “I don’t like children much.”

I took the picture of Nathan Smith out and held it up for him. “Ever see this guy?”

Race examined the picture. “Not my type,” he said.

“You know him?”

“No.”

“If I took this picture down to Nellie’s and showed it around, you think they’d tell me anything?”

“Nellie’s doesn’t stay in business by telling secrets,” Race said.

“How about I pretended I was in your program?” I said. I shot out my right hip and put my fist on it.

Race said, “They could tell.”

“How could they tell?”

“They could tell, honey.”

“I’m not even sure this guy was gay,” I said.

“And you’re trying to decide?”

“I’m not trying to out him. He’s been murdered.”

Race nodded. “I’ll tell you what, darlin‘. You give me the picture. I’ll find out for you.”

I gave him the picture.

“Isn’t there some saying about set a queer to catch a queer?” Race said.

“I think so,” I said.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Frank Belson, with a fresh shave and his suit pressed, came into my office carrying two cups of coffee. He put one on my desk and sat down in a client chair and took a sip from the other one.

“Know a broad named Amy Peters?” he said.

“Yes.”

“Tell me about her.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m a cop and I’m asking you,” Belson said.

“Oh,” I said. “That’s why.”

Belson waited. I took the lid off the coffee and drank some. Belson was homicide and Amy Peters had been scared. There was a small sinking feeling in my stomach.