"Yes," I said.

Outside my bedroom window, in the oblique bluish glare of the street lamps, I could see snow falling. It was falling lightly, a spring snow, the flakes s.p.a.ced wide apart. It was the best kind of snow, because this far into March you knew it wouldn't last. Baseball season opened in nineteen days.

"So, you grew up in Swampscott," I said.

"Now it matters?" Susan said.

"It matters to you," I said.

She was quiet. With her forefinger she traced on my chest the outline of a bullet wound that I'd survived.

"I guess everyone has scars," Susan said. "Yours, at least, show."

"I got shot in the a.s.s once in London," I said.

"I always suspected you were mooning the shooter," she said.

Outside the window the snowflakes were smaller, and coming faster, and straight down. Susan stopped tracing the scar on my chest and put her hand down flat over it.

"So, I grew up in Swampscott," Susan said.

"I knew that."

"My father was a pharmacist. Hirsch Drug on Humphrey Street. My mother was a housewife."

"No sisters or brothers," I said.

"They were childless until me. My father was forty-one when I was born. My mother was thirty-eight."

"How'd that happen?" I said.

"I don't think it was intentional," Susan said. "My mother never talked much about that kind of thing. Actually, my mother probably didn't know too much about that kind of thing."

"Being born late could work either way for you," I said.

She laughed, though I didn't hear humor in it.

"Actually it went both ways. My father was ecstatic. My mother was not."

"Feeling displaced?"

"I'm afraid so."

"Easy thing to feel," I said. "If she'd been the sole object of your father's affection for what, ten, fifteen years?"

"Eighteen."

"Then she is suddenly faced with compet.i.tion at the precise moment when she is least able to compete."

"Because she's tired most of the time," Susan said. "Stuck home with the baby, and Papa comes home after a pleasant day at the drug store, plays with the baby for an hour and says 'ain't it great.' "

"And your mother feels like there's something unwomanly about her because she doesn't think it's so great."

"In fact, she resents the baby," Susan said.

"Which makes her feel worse, which makes her resent the baby more."

"My G.o.d," Susan said, "I'm naked in bed with a sensitive male."

"Man of the nineties," I said.

"No matter how often," Susan said, "it is always surprising that you know the things you know."

"You hang around," I said, "you learn."

"Depends on who you hang around with," Susan said.

"I spend a lot of my life with people in trouble," I said. "I think some of them would have been in trouble if they'd been brought up by Mother Teresa, but a lot of them come from homes where the family didn't work right for them."

"We meet the same kinds of people, don't we."

"Except the kind you meet have managed to get themselves to a shrink."

"Unless they are a shrink," Susan said.

"Then they give themselves a referral," I said.

We were quiet. Enough snow had collected on Marlborough Street to reflect the street lights, and the darkness outside my bedroom window had become somewhat paler. Susan still had her hand flat over the pale scars on my chest.

Susan said, "We're skating very carefully on the surface here, aren't we."

"Yes."

"That's because we're on very thin ice."

"I know."

"It's not like you to be so oblique," she said.

"It's not like us to be on thin ice," I said.

"I... I'll get past this," Susan said.

"I know."

"But you'll have to bear with me," she said. "Right now this is the best I can do."

"I'll bear with you," I said, "until h.e.l.l freezes over."

"There would be some really thin ice," Susan said.

She took her hand off my scars and put it against my face and raised up and kissed me hard. h.e.l.l could freeze solid if it wanted to.

chapter seven.

I PICKED RITA Fiore up at Cone, Oakes and Baldwin, where she was their senior litigator, and took her to lunch at the Ritz Cafe. The maitre d' got her a table by the window and let me sit there too.

"Is this a three-martini lunch?" Rita said.

"If you can control yourself," I said.

"I have always controlled myself," Rita said. "Except maybe with that a.s.sistant DA when I was in Norfolk County."

We each ordered a martini. I had one made with vodka, on the rocks, with a twist. Rita was a cla.s.sicist. She had it straight up with gin and olives. Outside our window on Newbury Street the snow that had fallen last night had melted except in corners where there was always shade. Rita drank her first drink and held it in her mouth for a minute and closed her eyes. Then she swallowed.

"Good," Rita said. "What do you need?"

"Maybe I've missed you," I said.

"Yeah, and maybe you're going to guzzle down two martinis and come on to me."

"In the Ritz Cafe?" I said.

"Of course not," Rita said. "So what do you want?"

"Francis Ronan," I said.

Rita paused with her gla.s.s halfway to her lips. She leaned back in her chair and looked at me.

"You're not going to law school."

"No."

She kept looking at me. Then, as if she finally realized that she was holding it, she raised her martini gla.s.s and took another swallow and put the gla.s.s down.

"Working for or against?" she said.

"Probably against," I said.

"That figures," Rita said.

"Why does that figure?" I said.

"Sir Lancelot asks you about a dragon, you don't figure they're working together."

"I'm Sir Lancelot?"

"You think you are."

"Which makes Francis Ronan a dragon."

"Not so loud," Rita said.

"He has people everywhere?" I said.

"He knows a lot of people and some of them are the kind that have lunch here."

"Like us," I said.

"No," Rita said. "Not like us."

"So, tell me about him?"

"First, none of this is for attribution," Rita said.

She had lowered her voice, though I don't think she realized it.

"What am I, Newsweek?" I said.

"I mean it. You'll have to promise me that you will not tell anyone that I talked to you about Francis Ronan."

"You sound scared, Rita."

"I am."

"I didn't think you were scared of anything."

"I'm scared of him," Rita said. "You should be too."

"Me? Sir Lancelot?"

"You promise or no?" Rita said.

"I promise."

"Okay. I'll tell you everything I know about him. But first some free advice."

"Free?" I said.

"You sure you're a lawyer?"

"Stay away from Francis Ronan. You have a case that brings you into conflict with him, get off the case."