When I was through Patricia Utley said, "And you have noted her father's name?"

"Vern Buckey," I said.

"And where he lives."

"Lindell, Maine," I said.

She smiled. "And you won't forget it."

"No."

She smiled more. "You are a piece of work," she said.

"Un huh."

"Oh, I know you won't race up to Maine burning with a pa.s.sion to right old wrongs. You are in your own idealistic way as cynical as I am. But you'll store that up and maybe, someday, if you have occasion to go to Maine..."

I shrugged. "One never knows," I said.

"Perhaps the most charming part of it all is that it's not just because he was b.e.s.t.i.a.l to his child. It's that. But it's also because you would want to find out if he really is the toughest man in Lindell, Maine."

"For a person I see every ten years you seem to know a lot about me," I said.

"I know a great deal about men," she said.

"And I'm typical?"

"No, you are entirely untypical. You're not like other men and it makes you interesting and I think about you."

"Jeepers," I said.

"Filing away Vern Buckey's name for future reference is perfect you. You feel compa.s.sion for her suffering and anger at his cruelty and compet.i.tion in his toughness. You want to save her, punish him, and prove you're tougher. Man/boy. Lover/killer. Savior/ bully."

"When I run into Vern Buckey," I said, "I'm going to bust his a.s.s for him."

Patricia Utley put her head back and laughed with pleasure. "I'm sure you will," she said. "And what I like best of all, is after you've done it, you'll feel kind of bad for him."

"So what shall we do about April Kyle?" I said.

"Let her go," Patricia Utley said. "She loves this guy. She's having a good time. She's making a lot of money."

"Ginger said fifty to a hundred thousand," I said.

"Certainly," Patricia said. "If the girl is attractive and willing, she can make excellent pay. Even more if she is black or oriental."

"Black and oriental?"

"Yes. They are perceived as exotic and are in greater demand."

"Exotic," I said.

"There are not many jobs at which a woman, or a man for that matter, can make a hundred thousand a year," she said.

"For a while," I said.

"Certainly for a while. That's true of baseball players and ballet dancers as well."

"And then what. Ginger says there's a place in Miami where the girls never get out of bed."

"A slaughterhouse," Patricia Utley said. "Certainly. There are such places. There's one in Paris, too. But such places are not necessarily the elephant graveyards of old wh.o.r.es. Some go into management." She smiled slightly and glanced at her library with its bookshelves crowded and the spring sun sprawling across her Afghan carpet. "Some marry and lead ordinary lives. You remember Donna Burlington."

"Aka Linda Rabb," I said. "Sure. It's how we met."

"Not all wh.o.r.es are full-time. There are many part-timers. Housewives who turn tricks in the afternoon while the kids are in school and the hubby is at work. Sometimes the husband knows. Sometimes he doesn't. There are college girls and actresses and models and computer programmers. I've employed all of the above and some others."

"Why do they do it?"

"Besides the money?"

"Yes."

"The money matters," Patricia Utley said. "I know it doesn't matter very much to you. But you have enough, and you're so self-sufficient that most things don't matter very much. But money matters a great deal to a lot of people, including me. It is power. It is freedom. It is a support and a security and a sense that you have tangible worth."

"I understand that, but what else?"

"Most wh.o.r.es don't like men very much," she said. "They are quite scornful of them."

"And the men?"

"I would say that most men who patronize wh.o.r.es don't like women very much."

"Intimate distaste," I said.

"s.e.x and power are pretty tightly connected," she said. "In ways I'm not sure even I understand. And I've had a close-up view for quite some years now."

"It doesn't explain why April loves Robert," I said.

"Or thinks she does," Patricia said.

"Maybe he could love her," I said. Patricia Utley simply stared at me.

"Love comes in odd shapes sometimes," I said.

"Spenser," she said, "I don't know very much about love. But I know a h.e.l.l of a lot about wh.o.r.es and pimps. April Kyle is in the machine. The machine will process her. When the process is through it won't have mattered whether she and Robert Rambeaux love each other or not. You are a man, and you are a romantic-which is probably two ways of saying the same thing. You think love is something. A thing. A force in human affairs. It is not a force in wh.o.r.e-pimp affairs. It's just another word for f.u.c.king."

"So why does April think she's in love?" I said.

"I don't know. I don't even care. I'm sick of the word. Isn't your girlfriend a shrink? Ask her."

The croissants were gone. So was the coffee. I sat quietly for a while.

"I can tell April what I know about Rambeaux," I said. "But..."

"She knows it already," Patricia said.

"Yes."

"It's all you can do," she said.

"Yeah."

She stood and put out her hand. "It was good to see you again."

I took her hand. "You too," I said.

We walked to the door. She opened it. "I'll pay you for your time," she said.

"Better than paying me for results," I said.

10.

April wasn't around. I tried Tiger Lilies Escort Service and they said she was not there. I asked where she was and they said they were sorry but they were not able to give me that information. I said I wanted to speak with the manager and they hung up. I looked her up in the Manhattan directory. There were twenty-seven Kyles but none named April. Perhaps Robert could help me locate her.

I cabbed up to 77th Street and rang his bell at three-thirty. It was after lunchtime and he was probably still in bed. I rang again and heard a voice badly m.u.f.fled on the intercom. I said, "It's me," into the speaker. In a moment the door buzzed open. I knew he didn't know who "It's me" was any more than I'd recognize his voice. The sound was so distorted that you might be able to distinguish species and gender but no more than that.

I took the elevator to the fifth floor and looked at myself in the mirrored wall of the elevator till we got there. The hall was short. There were maybe four apartments to the floor. Opposite the elevator door was a stairwell, rimmed with a dark oaken railing. Rambeaux's apartment was to the left, in the front of the building. I knocked. I could hear a small rustle behind the door. And the peephole darkened. Then silence. I knocked again. No, answer. I knocked again. The door opened a crack, held narrow by a chain.

"What the f.u.c.k you want?" Rambeaux said. I could see just the strip of him that showed through the narrow door.

"Ah, you syrup-tongued dandy," I said. "No wonder you're h.e.l.l with the ladies."

"Whyn't you get f.u.c.king lost, huh?"

"I'm looking for April. She's not at Tiger Lilies and they won't say where she is."

"She's not here. I don't know where she is. Maybe out with a john."

"No," I said, "the way they said it was that she wasn't there. Like she wouldn't be there later, either."

"Maybe she don't want to see you."

"How cruel," I said, "but even if it were true, they didn't know who I was. I could have been a customer." I had leaned my shoulder against the door as I talked. I was wearing the gray Nikes with a charcoal swoosh, and putting my foot in the door didn't seem like the best way to deal with it. It was Nikes' only flaw.

Rambeaux pushed back. "I don't know where she is and I don't want to," he said. "I got nothing to do with her anymore."

"What about tuition?" I said.

"Just get the f.u.c.k away from me, man." Rambeaux was pushing harder. "I got a gun." He shifted behind the door and I saw the other side of his face through the opening. His left eye was closed and his cheek was swollen and discolored.

"Somebody beat you up?" I said.

"n.o.body done s.h.i.t," he said. "Please, man. Get the f.u.c.k away from me."

I relaxed my lean on the door for a minute and he closed the opening again. Then I pressed my right foot flat against the wall behind me and lunged the door inward. The chain pulled out of the doorjamb, screws and all, and the door flew open. Rambeaux bounced back against the wall, on the other side of the door, and I was in. I pulled the door away from him and closed it. Rambeaux did in fact have a gun. A squat blue shortbarreled S&W .32 that he held in front of him with both hands like they do on the cop shows.

I said, "Robert, if you need to steady that thing two-handed to hit me from eleven inches away you better think about a strength program."

"I'll use it, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d."

"I'm sure you would if you needed to," I said. "But you won't need to."

I turned and walked into his apartment. It was one room with a stand-up kitchen and a bathroom. Most of the bed-sitting-room was occupied by an unfolded sofa bed unmade with dark maroon silk sheets and a pale gray puff comforter.

Rambeaux still stood against the wall by the door with the short gun held in front of him. He was in his underwear, stretch bikinis with gray and maroon stripes. He was wiry and looked in shape but he was no bigger than a tall middleweight. In addition to the black eye, his lower lip was swollen. There was a purple blotch on his rib cage on the right side and a reddish welt on his forehead above his right eye.

"What's going on?" I said. Rambeaux shook his head.

"I look for April, she's not around. I come here, you say you don't know where she is and you got nothing more to do with her. Day before yesterday you told me to stay away from your 'lady'-always one of my favorite expressions. Now you don't know where she is, don't want to know where she is, and you look like you were in a hatchet fight and didn't have a hatchet. There are inferences to be drawn."

Rambeaux let the gun drop to his side, holding it in his right hand. He walked into the room and sat on the bed and looked at me, the gun resting on his thigh. He shook his head, and it must have hurt, because he stopped in midshake and began to ma.s.sage the back of his neck with his free hand.

"Listen, man. Two days ago I was doing fine. I had a nice little connection for myself. Had some ladies working for me. Then you show up and everything is f.u.c.ked up. You keep hanging around and we both gonna get killed and I done s.h.i.t to deserve it."

"I try to use this power wisely," I said. "Who's going to kill us?"

Rambeaux shook his head. "I won't tell you nothing," he said. "I don't know where April is. I ain't going to know tomorrow neither. You can keep coming around and f.u.c.king with me but I still ain't going to know."

"But if you're seen with me it'll cause trouble?"

Rambeaux looked straight at me. His eyes were dark and shiny. "Stay away from me, man. Honest to G.o.d, I don't know nothing about April and you just going to get me killed for nothing."

He had the gun pointed at me again. "Maybe not for nothing," I said.

"Jesus, man, she's just quiff, you know. I go out and in an hour I collect ten more just as good."

"So how come somebody punched your lights out over her and how come you're scared of dying over her, and how come I can't find her?"

"Ain't her, man, it's who..." He shook his head. "No, you get out of here or I swear to G.o.d I'll shoot. I will waste you right f.u.c.king here."

I stood with my hands in my hip pockets and my back to the windows, with the light from the windows brightening the rumpled silk sheets, on the unfolded bed. Rambeaux had the gun up now in both hands again, pointed at the middle of my stomach. He was shivering.

"Okay," I said. "I'm going to leave you my card, in case you need to talk with me."