"How about the wife?"
"Don't know much about her. She's not his first wife. She's a lot younger, and the couple of times I've seen her she was a knockout."
"So why is he so dangerous?" I said.
"Because in any adversarial circumstance he will do anything to win. He is very wealthy and he is hugely connected, including all the bad guys he's defended."
The waiter came with Rita's salad and my lobster sandwich, with mayo, on sourdough bread. Rita ate some salad. I had a bite of my lobster sandwich.
"Pig," she said.
I nodded modestly.
"So how come you are involved with Ronan?" Rita said.
"His wife and three other women are suing Susan's ex-husband for sexual harassment."
"Susan's ex-husband?"
"Yes. Guy named Brad Sterling. He changed it from Silverman."
"Yeah. Swell. I was thinking of changing mine to Fire."
"Fire Fiore?" I said.
"No, idiot, Rita Fire, attorney-at-law. So what's your deal with Sterling Silverman?"
"Susan asked me to see if I could help him out. She says he's on the brink of dissolution."
Rita stared at me. "Susan asked you to save her ex-husband?"
"In a manner of speaking."
"And you're doing it?"
"I'm looking into it."
"And you have to go against Francis Ronan to do it?"
"Maybe."
Rita stared at me some more.
"Are you out of your fucking mind?" Rita said.
"Not yet."
Rita started to speak and stopped and started again and stopped without saying anything. She sat silently shaking her head.
"You told Hawk about this yet?" she said finally.
"Yeah."
"He have any comment?"
"He said, `Umm."'
"You got any idea what he meant by that?"
"I think he was implying that this enterprise fraught with peril."
"Umm," Rita said.
"Maybe," I said.
"You say you've met Ronan?"
"Yeah."
Rita smiled. "And did you get along?"
"Not really well," I said.
She smiled wider. "Were you properly respectful?"
"I told him he was an annoying little twerp," I said.
Rita laughed out loud, and a couple of people in tweed clothing looked up from their scrod and stared at her. Rita met their look and held it, and they looked quickly back at their scrod.
"I don't mean to laugh," Rita said. "It is actually quite serious, but goddamn! You and Francis Ronan." She shook her head still smiling. "A match made in heaven," she said. "You're as arrogant as he is."
"And taller," I said.
"Be careful with him," Rita said. "Be carefuller than you have ever been with anybody."
"Sure," I said. "And maybe he needs to be careful of me."
Rita looked at her glass, discovered a little undrunk martini in the bottom. She picked it up and drained it and put the glass down carefully in the exact same spot where she had picked it up.
"Maybe," she said.
chapter eight
ACCORDING TO THE list Sterling's secretary had given me, there were three other women in the harassment suit: Olivia Hanson, Marcia Albright, and Penny Putnam. Penny Putnam lived in an apartment on the water where the Charlestown Navy Yard used to be. I decided to visit her first. It was close and I like alliteration.
Penny's address was a big rambling gray clapboard while-trim apartment complex on Pier 7. There was parking under, and the front door was a flight up. A big pretty woman answered the door. I asked if she were Penny Putnam, and she said that she was. She smiled. She was friendly. I could tell she liked me. I asked if I could ask a few questions about the sexual harassment suit she was involved in, and the valves of her attention closed like a stone.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I have no comment."
"Why not?" I said.
The door closed more firmly than the valves of her attention. So the trip shouldn't be a complete waste of time, I stood for a moment and looked across the harbor at the downtown waterfront. Nice view. Then I turned and went back to my car and drove away. I was still sure she liked me. Her rejection was circumstantial.
I went across the Charlestown Bridge and picked up the Central Artery near North Station. They had built a third tunnel under the Harbor and were in the process of dismantling the Central Artery and putting it underground. The result was that City Square had disappeared and there were convoluted detours from Charlestown to Mattapan. It was always exciting to see where you would end up.
Marcia Albright lived in Quincy, and Olivia Hanson lived in Malden. I figured I'd get the Southeast Expressway over with, so I headed for Quincy. Marcia's place was very much like Penny's-an apartment complex with a water view, only Marcia's was brick. I never did find out what Marcia looked like. I got as far as the intercom and was told that she had no comment and the line went dead. Only because I'm methodical, I went back up the expressway, over the Mystic River Bridge, and a short haul up Route 1 to another apartment complex. This one, in Malden, designed to look like, I guess, a Moorish castle. If you got in just the right place, there was a view of the Saugus River.
Olivia Hanson was much nicer than Penny or Marcia. She actually came out into the vestibule and spoke with me.
"Oh, no," she said. "I'm terribly sorry. But I really couldn't comment on the lawsuit."
"On advice of counsel?" I said.
"Whatever," she said and gave me a lovely smile. She was smallish and perky and had a lot of blonde hair. "Are you a lawyer?"
"No," I said. "I'm a detective."
"Really? Can I see a badge or something?"
I showed her my license.
"Wow," she said. "You're a private detective. Do you have a gun?"
"Yes," I said. "But it's kind of small."
She widened her eyes at me. "Is that like an off-color remark?" she said.
I opened my jacket and let her see the short-barreled Smith & Wesson.38 I was wearing.
"Oh it is small, isn't it?" she said.
I grinned.
"But sufficient," I said. "Did Brad Sterling make some off-color remarks?"
"Don't try and trick me," she said. "I told you I'm not supposed to talk about that with anyone."
"Who says?"
She smiled at me and shook her head. "No, no, no," she said.
We did about five more minutes of that in the vestibule until even my killer charm was beginning to wear Ihin. I looked at my watch. Maybe bribery.
"Care for some lunch?" I said.
She shook her head again. My killer charm was apparently threadbare.
"No, I don't think I better."
"My loss," I said, ever gallant.
"But maybe sometime, once the legal stuff is over," she said. "I'll take a rain check."
I wrote "lunch-rain check" on the back of one of my business cards and handed it to her. We shook hands and I left the vestibule and got in my car and went back to Boston.
chapter nine
FOR DINNER AT Chez Henri, Susan was wearing a gray top with gray pants and a wide black belt. It was one of my favorite outfits. Chez Henri was in Cambridge, just off Mass Ave, a nice informal room, open and high ceilinged, with a plate-glass window across the front that looked out on Shepard Street. I suppose it would be less egocentric to remark that it also looked in on the restaurant from Shepard Street. But from my perspective, it looked out. And I had no real wish to avoid egocentricity. I was eating baked oysters with some spinach on them. Susan had chicken and mashed potatoes. I was helping her with the mashed potatoes.
"You remember the first time you ate out?" I said.
"Sure," she said. "And you?"
"Yeah, some diner outside Laramie, I think. One of my uncles took me. I had a ham and egg sandwich."
She smiled. "My father used to take us to dinner every Friday night at the dining room of the Hotel Edison in Lynn."