"I don't recall asking you to do that," I said.

"Well, don't keep bringing up my marriage."

"Suze, for crissake, you came to me."

"I asked for your help, I didn't ask for your approval," she said.

She was a little nuts right now. She hadn't been until a moment ago. And she wouldn't be in a while. But right now there was no point talking.

"Okay," I said. "Here's the deal. I'll help Brad Sterling and I won't tell you about it unless you ask."

"Good."

"And now, I think I'll go home."

"Fine."

Pearl followed me with her eyes as I walked from the kitchen, and her tail wagged slowly, but she didn't lift her head. I reached down and patted her and went to the front door.

"Good night," I said.

"Good night."

I stopped on my way home to pick up some Chinese food and when I got to my place the message light on my machine was flashing. I put the food, still in cartons, in the oven on low and went and played the message.

Susan's voice said, "I'm sorry. Please call me tomorrow."

I poured a little Irish whisky in a gla.s.s with a couple of ice cubes. Scotch and beer were recreational, and now and then a martini. Irish whisky was therapeutic. I stood at my front window and drank the whisky. The apartment was very silent. Outside there was a wind, which was unusual-normally the wind died down at night-and it blew a couple of Styrofoam cups around on Marlborough Street. The argument made me feel lousy, but I'd get over it and so would she-the connection between us was too strong to break. What bothered me more was that I couldn't figure out what caused us to argue. Below me, a woman in a long coat was walking a yellow Lab toward Arlington Street. The dog, eager on his leash, had his head down into the wind. But his tail was moving happily and he sniffed at everything. I took a little whisky. In Susan's anger there was something else besides anger. Under the brisk annoyance was a soundless harmonic that I hadn't heard in a long time. She wasn't afraid of much. And when she was afraid it made her furious. The dog paused at Arlington Street and then crossed when the light changed without any sign that I could see from the woman holding the leash. Something about Brad Sterling scared her. It wouldn't be Brad as Brad. The only thing Susan was ever really scared of was herself. It would have to be something that Brad stood for. If it were someone else, I could ask her about it. But it was her. The dog was out of sight now, in the dark of the Public Garden, probably off leash at this time of night, rushing about tracking rats along the edges of the swan boat pond, having a h.e.l.l of a time. I drank some more whisky. This thing showed every sign of not working out well for me.

chapter five.

IF THERE WERE four women suing somebody and one of them was married to Francis Ronan, she figured to be the point person in the deal. So I went to see her first.

Jeanette Ronan lived with her husband in an important, old, vast, gray-shingled house on the outer side of Marblehead Neck, with the Atlantic Ocean washing up over the bra.s.sy rock outcroppings at the bottom of their backyard. There was a low fieldstone fence across the front of the property with short fieldstone pillars on each side of the entrance. The property was hilly and scattered with old trees, still unleaved in late winter. The driveway, which curved up to the right and out of sight behind the house, was covered with red stone dust, and there were a lot of flower beds, inert in the loveless March sunlight. I parked at the top of the hill in a big turn-around, beside a red Mercedes sport coupe and a silver Lexus sedan. There was enough room left over to park a couple of tour buses and a caviar truck.

The house had a wide veranda that wrapped around three sides. I walked up the low steps from the driveway and rang. Through the double gla.s.s doors I could see a central hallway, with Persian scatter rugs on the polished oak floor, and bright bra.s.s fixtures on the walls. Didn't look like faculty housing to me. A woman with a lot of blonde hair and a good tan walked down the hallway and opened the door. She was very nice looking. I handed her my card.

"Mrs. Ronan?"

"Yes, you're Mr. Spenser."

I agreed that I was and we went in.

"My husband is in the conservatory," she said.

I had made the appointment with her, but I didn't comment. We walked the length of the hallway, which gave me a chance to examine her hip movement in case I ever had to follow her covertly. I wondered if that were s.e.xual hara.s.sment. Is there s.e.xual hara.s.sment if the victim doesn't know it? If a tree falls in the forest... We turned right at the end of the hallway and went into a gla.s.s room. The room overlooked the Atlantic, thirty feet below, and the spray from some of the waves breaking on the rocks spattered onto the gla.s.s. The effect was pretty good.

Francis Ronan was having coffee. He put his cup down on the mahogany coffee table and got up from his brown leather arm chair. A copy of the New York Times lay open on the floor beside the chair.

"Mr. Spenser," Jeanette said, "my husband, Francis Ronan."

Ronan was obviously older than his wife, but not much bigger. I put out my hand. Ronan didn't really shake hands. He simply handed you his and allowed you to squeeze it for a moment. He was a thin guy with a bald head and a deep tan. I was running into a lot of tans lately. I tried not to look pallid.

"Coffee?" Ronan said.

"That would be nice," I said.

"Jeanette," Ronan said, and his wife stepped around to the coffee table and poured some coffee from a silver pitcher into a white bone china cup.

"Cream and sugar?"

I said yes and she put some of each into the cup and handed it to me. Apparently I was expected to drink it myself. Ronan nodded at another brown leather chair across from him, and I sat. Jeanette Ronan took a chair to her husband's left. Unless she had a special deal with G.o.d, she obviously worked out a lot. And effectively. Ronan studied me over his coffee cup for a time. He wore gla.s.ses and it made his eyes seem bigger than they were, though it would have been hard for them to be smaller.

I think I was supposed to shift uneasily in my chair under Ronan's gaze, but I had been gazed at by a lot of people, and I was able to remain calm. I drank some coffee. It was good coffee. Ronan would have good coffee. Below us I could hear the surf. It sounded just right. Ronan would have quality surf. And fine cigars. And a grand home. And the best brandy. And a slick-looking wife. And some dandy white bone china cups to stare over. Finally he took a sip and put the cup down.

"Well," Ronan said. "Go ahead."

"I was hoping to talk with Mrs. Ronan about her s.e.xual hara.s.sment suit against Brad Sterling," I said.

"Go ahead."

"Tell me about the s.e.xual hara.s.sment," I said.

She smiled courteously and looked at her husband.

"Mrs. Ronan would prefer not to go over that again," Ronan said.

"Did he touch you?" I said.

"You are impertinent, sir," Ronan said.

"That's widely acknowledged," I said.

"It is not a quality I admire."

"What can you tell me about your relationship with Brad Sterling?" I said to Jeanette.

She shook her head before the question was even finished.

"I had no... "

"I am afraid this interview is over," Ronan said.

"Hard to tell," I said.

"Jeanette, perhaps you can excuse yourself," Ronan said.

She smiled and nodded. She stood. I stood. Ronan remained seated. She put out her hand. I took it. It was much firmer and warmer than her husband's.

"Nice to have met you, Mr. Spenser," she said.

"You're just saying that."

Her smile remained polite as she left the gla.s.s room. I looked at Ronan. He had poured himself a little more coffee from his silver coffee carafe into his white bone china cup, and was adding a single cube of sugar with a small pair of silver tongs.

"You had no intention of telling me anything," I said. "Why did you agree to see me?"

Ronan made a thin lip movement that he probably thought was a smile.

"I like to get the measure of people," he said.

"And you think you can do it in this amount of time?"

"I believe I can," he said. "And I want them to get the measure of me."

"Sure," I said. "About five foot six. Right?"

"I have no interest in jokes, Spenser. Nor, frankly, any further interest in you. I have learned what I need to know. Granted, you, are physically imposing. You would probably make a good bouncer. But in any way that matters, you are a lightweight. I can reach into every crevice of this state. Should you become an irritant, I can have you squished like an insect. You are way out of your league here, and it would be in your best interest to recognize that."

"Squished?" I said.

Ronan didn't answer. He seemed entirely satisfied with his a.s.sessment of me and had nothing to add.

"You college professors are a tough bunch," I said.

Ronan smiled almost indulgently.

"I am at the moment a.s.sociated with a university," he said. "But surely you know my career."

"Not as well as I will."

Ronan laughed out loud. "Well, really?" he said. "Was that a threat?"

"I guess so," I said. "You are, after all, an annoying little twerp."

I thought Ronan might have colored a little under his tan, but his voice revealed nothing. He stood.

"As I said, you would make a good bouncer. Let me show you the way out."

Driving back across the causeway toward the rest of Marblehead, I wondered what there was in a simple hara.s.sment suit to make Ronan lean on me so hard.

chapter six.

I WAS WITH Susan. We were lying in bed at my apartment with my arm under her shoulders and her head on my chest. Pearl was in exile somewhere outside the bedroom door.

"One of us should probably get up and let the baby in," Susan said.

"Absolutely," I said.

We lay still.

"Well?" Susan said.

"I thought you were volunteering," I said.

"You're closest to the door."

"True," I said.

"And you're a guy," she said.

"That clinches it," I said.

I got up and opened the bedroom door. Pearl bounded into the room, gave me a sidelong look which might have been reproachful, and hopped up on the bed in my spot.

"This didn't work out exactly as I'd hoped," I said.

"She'll move," Susan said, and, in fact Pearl did. She moved huffily down to the foot of the bed and turned around three or four times and lay down. I put my arm back under Susan's shoulders. She put her head back on my chest. Pearl put her head on my right shinbone.

"My mother would never allow the dog anywhere but outside or in the kitchen," Susan said.

"Barbaric."

"I think that was a more general rule in those days," she said.

"How long have we been together?" I said.

"Roughly since the beginning of time," she said.

"Or longer," I said. "And I barely know where you grew up."

"Never seemed to matter."

"No," I said. "It didn't. I guess we kind of liked the sense of living in the immediate present."

"It was a way to symbolize that what happened before we met didn't matter."