"I understand."

"But I don't want to do this over the phone."

"Okay," he said, thinking, You're wasting both our time, lady. "Maybe you can just give me some idea what it's about."

"One of Terry's clients. I think it was more than a professional relationship."

"Uh-huh."

"But the thing is you already made an arrest, so it's probably nothing...."

And you're right. But he said, "Let me get the file with the client list."

"I don't think you'll need that."

After a long pause, he heard her say, "It's Neil French."

"Neil French?"

"Yes. But you may already know they were involved, right? I'm not telling you anything you already don't know, am I? I mean, I don't want to get anybody in trouble or anything."

"Sergeant French has made us aware that he and Terry were friends."

"I didn't know. From what I could tell, they kept their relationship pretty quiet."

Steve felt his brain suddenly take focus. "What are you saying?"

"It's not just me. Michelle San Marco, another trainer, she knows more about it than I do because she and Terry talked a lot. I think maybe you should talk to her, too."

"Okay." He jotted down the address and telephone numbers she recited.

"I don't mean to impose on you, but we're wondering if we can do this pretty soon? I'll be free after eleven this morning."

"I'll meet you then."

"That would be great." She hedged again. "It's just that I don't want to cause any problems."

"What kind of problem?"

"I'm kind of nervous telling you this because he's a police officer and you've already made an arrest, but you said if I knew of any personal relations she had to let you know."

She was worried about repercussions from Neil, possibly from a perceived notion of "blue wall" damage control specialists who might make her regret calling. "You did the right thing."

More silence of the open line. Then she said, "Except that..."

"Except what?"

"Well, it's just that I think he's got something of a temper."

"Uh-huh..."

He could hear her hemming and hawing. "It probably means nothing, but I...well...they had a fight one day at the club. I didn't even know they were seeing each other."

"And...?"

"And...well, they had some words inside then went out to the parking lot. I couldn't hear what they said, but I could see them through the window, and it got pretty heated because he said something she didn't like and she slapped him in the face. Then he grabbed her by the neck and pushed her against a car. If someone hadn't pulled in I don't know what would have happened. He took off and she came in crying, didn't say anything, just got her things and left."

"When was this?"

"About two months ago. Just before he quit coming to the club."

"Have you seen him or talked to him recently?"

"Just to say hello at the funeral. All I'm saying is that they were friends, which is what you asked."

"I'm sure that it's nothing more than what it seems." They agreed on a place to meet and she said she would bring Michelle. "In the meantime I think it's best to say nothing to anyone else."

"No, of course."

When he hung up he stared blankly at the photo of Terry Farina in the file on his lap.

Jesus!

46.

Steve arrived a few minutes before the women and took a booth at the rear of the restaurant, which was up the street from the health club.

He didn't know what they had. He didn't know if this was a legitimate lead, implicating Neil French. He didn't know if he himself had anything to do with the death of Terry Farina. What he did know was that he'd best shift into neutral, play detective as if he had never laid eyes on Terry Farina. If this turned out to be a dead end, then he'd go to Reardon.

The place was called Fazio's, vintage Italiana with red-and-white-checked tablecloths and basket-bottomed Chianti bottles, serving as candleholders. One wall was a mural of Pompeii, its streets glittering with shops and villas, the surrounding countryside an idyllic world of flowers, cypress trees, grazing sheep, and young men and women in idle play while in the distance rose the cone of Vesuvius, a dark curlicue of smoke rising from its vent like a fuse.

The place was empty except for the staff preparing for the luncheon crowd. They saw him and joined him in the rear booth. Michelle, who gave her age as thirty-three, was petite and wiry and had black hair, dark eyes, and thin features. Something about her face made Steve wonder if he had seen her before. She didn't recognize him, so he let that pass. They ordered coffee and pastries. The women were nervous, so Steve tried to put them at ease with small talk.

When the coffee arrived, Michelle opened up. "I don't think he knew she was dancing, at least not in the beginning."

"Did you know?"

"Yeah, I got her the job. The general manager, Mickey DeLuca, is my cousin. He mentioned you talked to him the other day."

"Yes, we did." He could see the resemblance in her face.

"She said she needed the money and was looking for a waitressing job. Mickey hired her, and after a while she started dancing because it paid more. I think she had danced in the past. Neil joined the club and she became his trainer. Then, I don't know, maybe after a few weeks they started seeing each other. That went on I think for maybe three or four months."

The waitress came with the desserts, but nobody made a move on them.

"I think he took to her pretty fast," Michelle continued. "And Neil was good for her. When she started at Kingsbury, she was in a bad relationship with a guy."

"Do you remember his name?"

"Phillip something. I don't remember his last name."

"Phillip Waldman?"

"Yeah, Waldman. He played in a band and taught guitar on the side, but I think he spent more time watching TV and smoking dope. She got tired of him and wanted to end it. So she asked Neil to help get him out of the apartment, which I think he did."

"After Waldman left, did Neil and Terry continue seeing each other?"

"Yeah. I don't know all the details, but I think Neil started getting serious and wanted more of a commitment. But Terry wasn't ready to settle down, especially right after Phillip."

"Did Neil know she was stripping?"

Alice shook her head and deferred to Michelle. "Not until he began to push her to commit. That's when I think she told him."

"Did she say how he took it?"

"Pretty hard. I think for him it was a question of morals. Also he was worried about her being hit on by a bunch of creeps, maybe somebody slipping her a drug and raping her. I guess he was pretty protective."

"Yeah."

"They had a real blowout. He wanted her to quit, but she needed the money. Then she caught him going through her phone messages and mail and figured he was becoming like Phillip. That's when she said she wanted to end it. That was a blow because he'd lost his wife, and now her."

"Did she ever say that Neil hurt her physically or ever threatened her?"

"She never said that he hit her. But she did say he had a temper and felt a little afraid of him."

"This isn't going to get back to him, is it?" Alice asked.

"No."

"See why I called?"

"Yes, and you did the right thing."

They were quiet for a moment, then Alice asked, "Do you think, you know, that he did it?"

"Do I think he killed her? No, I don't," he said, trying to put conviction behind his words.

Alice nodded and Michelle just looked blank. They had only picked on the desserts. When it was time to go, Steve paid and they left the restaurant together.

He thanked the women and headed for his car, feeling as if he were stuck halfway through a Lewis Carroll looking glass, hoping that his partner was the killer and not himself.

47.

Neil lived in a condo on Park Drive between Beacon Street and the intersection at Heritage Place. It was in walking distance to Fenway, and Steve said to meet him at noon at the little bridge across from the Museum of Fine Arts. The day was cool and overcast, feeling more like October than June.

Steve arrived first and headed for the bridge, a stone arch with wrought-iron rails. In the water below Canada geese bobbed, their butts point-up in the air. More geese spread across the lawn munching grass and honking. In the distance he saw Neil approach and he felt his blood charge. This could be one of those defining moments-a tipping point from which the rest of his life would be forever altered. In police culture you and your partner were like blood brothers. You didn't cross each other. On the contrary, you went to the wall for each other. You looked the other way if your partner appeared dirty. The problem was that when he did, Steve saw himself.

Because it was his day off, Neil was dressed in a black windbreaker over jeans. "The place is goose-shit city." He scraped the bottoms of his shoes on the bridge rail. He looked at Steve. "So what's up?"

Centuries ago people saw a correlation between a person's facial features and character traits. That you could read one's soul and predict behavior according to face-parsing rules. Narrow eyes belonged to liars and cheats; round foreheads to the brave; long foreheads and narrow chins to the cruel; bulbous noses, the obtuse; sharp-tipped noses, the irascible. Today such rules are considered ridiculous. Yet at the moment Steve found himself trying to parse Neil's face. It had gotten down to that-ancient physiognomy because he could no longer trust his interpretation of reality. Is this the face of a killer? he asked himself.

Is mine?

"We have to talk."

Neil's eyebrows twitched. "Sounds serious. There's a Starbucks up the street."

He was not wearing his weapon on his belt, and the windbreaker was too loose to detect a shoulder harness. Steve's was under his jacket. "No, because there may be shouting." He started walking down the path toward the basketball court where a few kids were shooting hoops.

"Shouting?"

"I was talking to people and I find out you were dating Terry Farina."

Neil stopped in his tracks and glared at Steve, his eyes shrunk to dark beams. "What people?"

"That's not important. You never told me this. You said you knew her from the club, that she was your trainer."

"She was."

"Yeah, but you said nothing about being involved with her."

"Okay, I was involved with her."

"So, why the hell didn't you tell me?"

"It was in the past and it had no bearing on the case."

"For Christ's sakes, Neil, we're partners. We're supposed to trust each other. You were dating a murder victim and that technically makes you a person of interest. But you purposely didn't tell me. Instead you let me go chasing down a lot of people and find out on my own."

Steve was stunned by his own hypocrisy. He could not believe his glibness. But a voice kept telling him, It's him or you, Bubba. Him or you. Pendergast is scapegoat meat on a hook.

"Did you tell Reardon?"

"I wanted to talk to you first."

Neil nodded, maybe in gratitude. "My relationship with her ended months ago."