"Other things?"

"Oh, I don't know." She laughed. "Nathan was always up to something."

"Do you know what they were?"

She shook her head.

"Are you sure you won't have coffee?" she said.

I shook my head. I was sure I needed a drink.

"Do you stay in touch with any other people from your high school days?" I said.

"Well, Roy."

"Anyone else?"

"Not really." She smiled again. "I've reached out to them, but they aren't, um, comfortable in my, ah..." She made a circular gesture with her hands.

"Circles," Rita said.

"Oh, yes, thank you. Sometimes I have such trouble thinking what I want to say."

"Lot of that going around," I said. "You know Felton Shawcross?"

"Felton? I don't think so."

"CEO of a company called Soldiers Field Development Limited."

"I don't really know anything about companies," she said.

"He was on the list of friends you had Larson give me."

"Oh, well, mostly Larson keeps that list. They are people who contribute money to things and when I have a big charity event, Larson invites them."

"So you don't know Shawcross?"

She shook her head sadly.

"Would Larson have consulted your husband on that invitation list?" Rita said.

I could tell she was getting bored. She didn't like being bored. Her voice had a small edge to it.

"I don't really know. They were certainly pals," she said. "They might have."

"Larson come to you through your husband?" Rita said.

Asking questions was better than sitting around crossing her legs.

"Yes," Mary said. "He's so really nice, isn't he?"

"Really," Rita said.

"How did he know your husband?"

"Oh G.o.d, I don't know. Some businessy thing."

Hard questions made her panicky. I moved on.

"Could you tell me how much your husband left you?" I said.

"Money?"

"Yes."

"Oh I couldn't possibly imagine," she said. "You'd have to ask Brink."

"Brink?"

"Yes."

"Who is Brink," I said.

"Our financial advisor."

"What would be his full name?" I said.

"Oh, I'm so used to him just being Brink. He's a really old friend."

"His name?"

"Brink Tyler. I think Brink is short for Brinkman."

"And where would I find him?"

"He's got an office in town here," she said.

"Under his own name?"

"No he works for a big company."

"Called?"

"Excuse me?"

"The name of the company," I said.

"Oh, Something and Something," she said. "I don't know." She frowned for a moment. "I have his phone number though."

"That would be fine," I said.

She stood gracefully and walked regally out of the room.

"I need a drink," Rita said.

"Right after we leave," I said.

Mary came back into the room with a pale green sheet of notepaper, on which she had written a phone number in purple ink. Her handwriting was very large and full of loops. I folded the paper and tucked it into my shirt pocket.

"Are you familiar with Marvin Conroy?" I said.

"Marvin?"

"Conroy," I said.

The little frown came back. She thought about the name.

"No," she said. "I'm really not."

We talked for a while longer. Mary remained eager and impenetrable. Finally neither Rita nor I had anywhere else to go. We thanked Mary and a.s.sured her that we were making good progress, which was a lie. We were making so little progress that I would have been pleased with bad progress. Mary walked us to the door and said she really hoped she'd been a help. We said she had, and left and went to the Ritz bar and had two martinis each. From our seat in the window I could see a black Lincoln Town Car, double-parked with its motor running, on Arlington Street.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

Susan and I and Hawk and a woman named Estelle Raphael were having dinner at a place called Zephyour in the Hyatt Hotel on the Cambridge side of the Charles River. There was a lot of gla.s.s on the river side of the room and you could look at the river and across it and see the glare of a night game at Fenway Park.

They made many kinds of martinis here and would serve you a small sampling of three if you wished. Susan and Estelle both wished. Hawk and I stuck with the old favorite.

"I love how they look in the gla.s.s," Estelle said.

Hawk smiled and didn't say anything. Hawk could be comfortable not saying anything for longer than anyone I've ever known. Oddly his silence didn't make you uncomfortable. It was somehow natural to him. Susan was silent, too. That didn't make me uncomfortable either, but it wasn't natural to her. She had already drunk the first little martini, which was sort of a pale green, and had begun on the pink one. This, too, wasn't natural to her. Normally she would nurse those three little martinis for the night. It looked like the conversation was up to me and Estelle.

"You're a doctor?" I said.

"Yes. I run a fertility clinic in Brookline."

"Been running one of those most of my life," Hawk said.

"I know," Estelle said. "And it's fine work that you do."

The waitress came and took our order. Susan seemed not very interested in the menu. She said she'd have what I had. The black river glistened in the light sprawl from the city. I could see the Citgo sign, which had become famous solely by being visible behind the left-field wall at Fenway. To the right the gray towers of Boston University stuck up too high.

"You okay," I said to her softly.

She shook her head.

"Want to talk about it?"

She shook her head again.

"Want to go home?"

Shake.

I patted her thigh. She picked up the pink martini and finished it. There were tears in her eyes.

I said, "Hey." And put my arm around her shoulders. Probably the wrong move. She'd been holding it together before that. Now she began to cry. There was no noise. Just tears on her face and her shoulders shaking. I tried to pull her a little closer so she could cry against my chest. She didn't want to. We sat for a moment with my arm around her, patting her far shoulder.

"You like to be alone?" Hawk said.

Susan shook her head.

We were quiet. Susan took her napkin from her lap and wiped her eyes.

"Is my makeup f.u.c.ked?" she said.

Estelle looked at Hawk. Hawk smiled.

"She coming out of it," he said.

"You look fine," I said.

"I'm sorry to be such a jacka.s.s," Susan said.

"Is there anything I can do?" Estelle said.

"No. Thank you."

"You want to talk?" I said. "You want to leave it be?"

"I don't want to talk," Susan said, "but I fear that I must. You can't suddenly burst into tears in the middle of dinner and offer no explanation."

"You can if you want to," I said.

Susan shook her head. "I lost a patient today," she said.

No one said anything. Estelle looked like she might, but Hawk put his hand on her thigh and she didn't.

"A boy, nineteen years old. He killed himself."

"Did you know he was suicidal?" I said.

"Yes."