In her beige pantsuit and careful blond hair, Mary looked a little pallid next to Rita. Larson looked like Larson and I remained dashing and ineffable. Mary had a champagne cocktail. The rest of us sipped Perrier.

“Why didn’t you authorize me to see your husband’s investment statements?” I said to Mary.

“Whaat?”

“Brink Tyler called you from his office and asked you if you’d authorize him to show me your husband’s investment statements,” I said.

“He did?”

I nodded.

“I don’t remember that.”

“Last week,” I said. “About three-thirty in the afternoon, on a Tuesday.”

“I get so many calls,” Mary said.

Rita was sitting to my right at the table. She was sort of sideways to the table, half facing toward me with her legs crossed. She smiled when I looked at her and carefully hitched her skirt hem up another inch on her thigh.

“I was there when he called you,” I said.

“I don’t remember,” she said.

I looked at Rita again.

“Mary,” Rita said, “we’re all on the same side here. If you can help him, you should.”

“Oh, Rita, I know. I know that. I really, really do. But you wouldn’t want me to lie about something. I absolutely can’t remember Brink Tyler calling me up last Tuesday.”

“When’s the last time you talked with him?” I said.

Mary had some champagne cocktail to help her think. Any help was welcome.

“I can’t really recall. Larson? Do you recall when I talked with Brink last?”

“I believe you and he spoke shortly after Nathan’s death. He was handling the estate.”

“Yes. That’s right. Brink came over. He was so kind. He said he’d take care of everything.”

“The broker’s handling the estate?” I said.

“He’s an attorney as well,” Rita said.

“Renaissance man,” I said. “Aren’t you ashamed, Rita, just doing law law?”

“And that badly,” Rita said.

“And how is your estate?”

Mary looked a little vague. “Fine.”

She looked at Rita.

“Estate’s in a kind of legal limbo,” Rita said. “Until the cause of death gets clarified a little.”

“Do you know how much you’ve inherited?” I said.

Mary shook her head. “Nathan always said we didn’t talk about our money. That it wasn’t dignified.”

“It might be dignified to know how much you had,” I said.

She looked helplessly at Larson Graff.

“Mary, I’m sorry. I’m in no position to know your finances.”

“Well,” Mary said. “Certainly your bill is always paid on time, Larson.”

“Oh yes. It certainly is,” Larson said.

The waitress brought lunch, which consisted of three salads and a sandwich. I got the sandwich.

“So, just so I understand,” I said to Mary. “You don’t know what your financial situation is, or you know, and feel it’s undignified to say?”

Mary looked down at her salad. She speared a small slice of avocado and put it delicately in her mouth and chewed it more vigorously, I thought, than it required. When she had swallowed it, she took another sip of her champagne cocktail. Mary was dumb. But she moved very slowly. She looked at me and laughed as if she might be embarrassed.

“I don’t really know, Mr. Spenser.”

“Do you object if I find out?” I said.

“Well, I really.”

She looked at Larson. Larson wasn’t helpful. She looked at Rita. Rita nodded firmly.

“Well, I really think it’s kind of, I don’t want to be offensive, but I really think it’s kind of nosy.”

“God forbid,” I said.

Rita smiled.

“You never got a call from Brink Tyler last Tuesday asking if Spenser could look at the investment statements?”

“Oh, Rita, I’m just so sure he didn’t.”

Rita looked at me. I looked at Rita.

“So who’d he call?” Rita said.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

Hawk was in my office when I returned. He was sitting in my chair with his feet up on my desk, reading Simon Schama’s History of Britain.

“You interested in British history?” I said when I came in.

“Naw. Read this dude’s book on Rembrandt. I like him.”

“Lot of big words,” I said.

“Thought you could help me.”

“White man’s burden,” I said. “Gimme my chair.”

Hawk grinned and dog-eared his page and closed the book and got up and came around and plonked in a client chair. I sat at my desk.

“There,” I said. “You looking for a place to sleep?”

“Nope. Since I ain’t following anybody for you at the moment, and since somebody tried to shoot your ass the other night, I thought maybe I should hang around with you, case somebody try again.”

“Plus,” I said, “you could learn a lot.”

“Be a privilege,” Hawk said. “Whyn’t you bring me up to date on what you doing, so I’ll know who to shoot.”

I did. Hawk listened without expression, his face the pleasantly impenetrable blank it always was.

“You got more information than you can handle,” Hawk said when I got through.

“I do,” I said.

“‘Course it easy for you to have too much information.”

“How about yourself,” I said. “You make anything out of it?”

Hawk grinned at me. “I’m just a simple thug,” he said. “I ain’t supposed to make nothing out of it.”

“That may be true of me,” I said.

“Simple thug?”

“Yeah.”

“Thing is, all of the stuff you know doesn’t add up to who done what.”

“That is the thing,” I said.

“You tell Mary her husband was gay?”

“No.”

“Rita gonna find out about Smith’s finances for you?”

“Yes.”

“When she do you’ll have more information.”

“And I still won’t know anything.”

“Be used to that,” Hawk said. “You think Mary lying, or you think the Brinkster call himself?”

“If he did,” I said, “it would be sort of a stopgap. He had to know I’d ask her myself pretty soon.”

“Maybe he figure you ain’t around, pretty soon.”

“Because he knew somebody would hit me,” I said.

Hawk nodded. “Or maybe he did call her,” he said. “And she lying when she say he didn’t.”

“Which might mean the same thing,” I said. “Except she’s so goddamned dumb.”

“Dumb enough to think you wouldn’t check on her?”

“She gets by with dumb,” I said. “She uses it. She may even rely on it.”

“There got to be some money in here someplace,” Hawk said.

“See, that’s just the reason you’re a hooligan and I’m a detective,” I said. “You jump to conclusions. I search for clues.”

“Here’s a clue,” Hawk said. “A banker, a financial guy, a real estate developer, and a lawyer. All connected in some way to a homicide.”

“Gee, you think there’s money involved?”

“How I know. You the detective. I is just a hoo-li-gan.”

“At least we’re clear on that,” I said. “Maybe we should revisit Jack DeRosa.”

“The jailbird? Why him?”

“Can’t think of anybody else?” I said.

Hawk grinned.

“‘Least he fit on the list,” hawk said. “Right after lawyer.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

I called Frank Belson and asked him if we could arrange to talk with DeRosa again. He called me back in an hour.

“DeRosa’s been out of jail for a week,” he said. “Eyewitness couldn’t pick him out of a lineup.”

“Charges dropped?”

“Yep.”

“Got an address for him?”

“Got the one he had when they busted him,” Frank said, and gave me the name of a street off Andrews Square.

In half an hour Hawk and I were crossing the bridge on Southampton Street. We were in Hawk’s Jaguar. Hawk parked it behind a place that sold orthotics, where it was about as inconspicuous in South Boston as Hawk was. We walked across the street to a brick duplex, which had a tiny front yard that had been carpeted with gray stone and surrounded by a chain-link fence. The downstairs windows were grated. There was a peephole in the front door.

“DeRosa don’t seem interested in botany,” Hawk said.