"Do you know how much you've inherited?" I said.

Mary shook her head. "Nathan always said we didn't talk about our money. That it wasn't dignified."

"It might be dignified to know how much you had," I said.

She looked helplessly at Larson Graff.

"Mary, I'm sorry. I'm in no position to know your finances."

"Well," Mary said. "Certainly your bill is always paid on time, Larson."

"Oh yes. It certainly is," Larson said.

The waitress brought lunch, which consisted of three salads and a sandwich. I got the sandwich.

"So, just so I understand," I said to Mary. "You don't know what your financial situation is, or you know, and feel it's undignified to say?"

Mary looked down at her salad. She speared a small slice of avocado and put it delicately in her mouth and chewed it more vigorously, I thought, than it required. When she had swallowed it, she took another sip of her champagne c.o.c.ktail. Mary was dumb. But she moved very slowly. She looked at me and laughed as if she might be embarra.s.sed.

"I don't really know, Mr. Spenser."

"Do you object if I find out?" I said.

"Well, I really."

She looked at Larson. Larson wasn't helpful. She looked at Rita. Rita nodded firmly.

"Well, I really think it's kind of, I don't want to be offensive, but I really think it's kind of nosy."

"G.o.d forbid," I said.

Rita smiled.

"You never got a call from Brink Tyler last Tuesday asking if Spenser could look at the investment statements?"

"Oh, Rita, I'm just so sure he didn't."

Rita looked at me. I looked at Rita.

"So who'd he call?" Rita said.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT.

Hawk was in my office when I returned. He was sitting in my chair with his feet up on my desk, reading Simon Schama's History of Britain.

"You interested in British history?" I said when I came in.

"Naw. Read this dude's book on Rembrandt. I like him."

"Lot of big words," I said.

"Thought you could help me."

"White man's burden," I said. "Gimme my chair."

Hawk grinned and dog-eared his page and closed the book and got up and came around and plonked in a client chair. I sat at my desk.

"There," I said. "You looking for a place to sleep?"

"Nope. Since I ain't following anybody for you at the moment, and since somebody tried to shoot your a.s.s the other night, I thought maybe I should hang around with you, case somebody try again."

"Plus," I said, "you could learn a lot."

"Be a privilege," Hawk said. "Whyn't you bring me up to date on what you doing, so I'll know who to shoot."

I did. Hawk listened without expression, his face the pleasantly impenetrable blank it always was.

"You got more information than you can handle," Hawk said when I got through.

"I do," I said.

"'Course it easy for you to have too much information."

"How about yourself," I said. "You make anything out of it?"

Hawk grinned at me. "I'm just a simple thug," he said. "I ain't supposed to make nothing out of it."

"That may be true of me," I said.

"Simple thug?"

"Yeah."

"Thing is, all of the stuff you know doesn't add up to who done what."

"That is the thing," I said.

"You tell Mary her husband was gay?"

"No."

"Rita gonna find out about Smith's finances for you?"

"Yes."

"When she do you'll have more information."

"And I still won't know anything."

"Be used to that," Hawk said. "You think Mary lying, or you think the Brinkster call himself?"

"If he did," I said, "it would be sort of a stopgap. He had to know I'd ask her myself pretty soon."

"Maybe he figure you ain't around, pretty soon."

"Because he knew somebody would hit me," I said.

Hawk nodded. "Or maybe he did call her," he said. "And she lying when she say he didn't."

"Which might mean the same thing," I said. "Except she's so G.o.dd.a.m.ned dumb."

"Dumb enough to think you wouldn't check on her?"

"She gets by with dumb," I said. "She uses it. She may even rely on it."

"There got to be some money in here someplace," Hawk said.

"See, that's just the reason you're a hooligan and I'm a detective," I said. "You jump to conclusions. I search for clues."

"Here's a clue," Hawk said. "A banker, a financial guy, a real estate developer, and a lawyer. All connected in some way to a homicide."

"Gee, you think there's money involved?"

"How I know. You the detective. I is just a hoo-li-gan."

"At least we're clear on that," I said. "Maybe we should revisit Jack DeRosa."

"The jailbird? Why him?"

"Can't think of anybody else?" I said.

Hawk grinned.

"'Least he fit on the list," hawk said. "Right after lawyer."

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE.

I called Frank Belson and asked him if we could arrange to talk with DeRosa again. He called me back in an hour.

"DeRosa's been out of jail for a week," he said. "Eyewitness couldn't pick him out of a lineup."

"Charges dropped?"

"Yep."

"Got an address for him?"

"Got the one he had when they busted him," Frank said, and gave me the name of a street off Andrews Square.

In half an hour Hawk and I were crossing the bridge on Southampton Street. We were in Hawk's Jaguar. Hawk parked it behind a place that sold orthotics, where it was about as inconspicuous in South Boston as Hawk was. We walked across the street to a brick duplex, which had a tiny front yard that had been carpeted with gray stone and surrounded by a chain-link fence. The downstairs windows were grated. There was a peephole in the front door.

"DeRosa don't seem interested in botany," Hawk said.

"He's probably just a renter," I said.

"Landlord's a geologist?" Hawk said.

Above the doorbell b.u.t.ton beside the right-hand door was a small hand-lettered card that said DeRosast.McDermott. I rang. No one answered. I rang again. Same thing. Hawk reached over and rang the doorbell on the left-hand door. n.o.body answered. I looked through the peephole the wrong way, like I always did, and I found that I couldn't see anything in that direction. Like I always did. I tried the door. It was locked. Hawk nodded and walked back across the street to the Jaguar and opened the trunk, took out a big red gym bag, and came back across the street with it. He set it down on the steps and took out a flat bar and handed it to me.

"Why do you have one if you can't use it?" I said.

"I use it when I haven't got an Irish-American laborer handy."

I took the flat bar and got it wedged in against the doorjamb where the lock tongue would be and heaved and there was some doorjamb splintering and then the bolt tore loose and the door popped free. I put the flat bar back in the red gym bag and handed it to Hawk.

"Tote that bale," I said.

He took it back to the Jaguar. No one in the neighborhood seemed interested that I had just performed the B part of a B and E. I pushed the door open. The lock I had jimmied was the kind that locked behind you when you went out. The house was silent. And hot. And stuffy. Lights were on in the hallway. I smelled a bad smell. Hawk came in behind me from his bale-toting ch.o.r.es. I could hear him breathe in.

"Whoops," Hawk said.

I nodded and, breathing through my mouth, started through the front hall toward what was probably the living room. I knew what I would find. Hawk walked beside me. Inside the living room archway we both stopped.

"Jesus," I said.

"Un-huh," Hawk said.

The distorted remains of a man and woman lay together on the floor, their bodies disfigured by the slow flame of decay. The woman sprawled diagonally across the man. Someone had shot them many times, probably with an automatic weapon, maybe more than one. They had, in the process, chopped the room up pretty good. Pieces of chair backs, sc.r.a.ps of upholstery, bits of lamp shade, shards of gla.s.s, and fragments of plastic, and plaster, and human tissue clung to the walls. The blood covered the floor, black by now, and hardened like a vast scab. Insects had found them both. The room was very hot and flies buzzed thickly in the stinking air.

I had seen it before, but I never liked it. And this was worse than most. Except that I could hear him breathing through his mouth, Hawk showed no sign that it bothered him. For all that showed on his face, he could have been looking at a lawn tractor.

"DeRosa?" he said.

"I a.s.sume so," I said. "And maybe McDermott as well."

Hawk walked over to the corpses and looked down at them.