“Yeah.”
The waiter cleared the lunch dishes and poured coffee.
“I’m not authorized to go that high.”
I sipped my coffee.
“I can offer one hundred thirty-five dollars a day.”
I shook my head.
Ticknor laughed. “Have you ever been a literary agent?” he said.
“I told you, I don’t do things I don’t like to do if I can avoid it.”
“And you don’t like to work for a hundred and thirty-five a day.”
I nodded.
“Can you protect her?”
“Sure. But you know as well as I do that it depends on what I protect her from. I can’t prevent a psychopath from sacrificing himself to kill her. I can’t prevent a horde of hate-crazed sexists from descending on her. I can make her harder to hurt, I can up the cost to the hurter. But if she wishes to live anything like a normal life, I can’t make her completely safe.”
“I understand that,” Ticknor said. He didn’t look happy about it, though.
“What about the cops?” I said.
“Ms. Wallace doesn’t trust them. She sees them as, quote, ‘agents of repression.’”
“Oh.”
“She has also said she refuses to have, and once again I quote, ‘a rabble of armed thugs following me about day and night.’ She has agreed to a single bodyguard. At first she insisted on a woman.”
“But?”
“But if there were to be but one, we felt a man might be better. I mean if you had to wrestle with an assassin, or whatever. A man would be stronger, we felt.”
“And she agreed?”
“Without enthusiasm.”
“She gay?” I said.
“Yes,” Ticknor said.
“And out of the closet?”
“Aggressively out of the closet,” Ticknor said. “Does that bother you?”
“Gay, no. Aggressive, yes. We’re going to spend a lot of time together. I don’t want to fight with her all day.”
“I can’t say it will be pleasant, Spenser. She’s not an easy person. She has a splendid mind, and she has forced the world to listen to her. It has been difficult. She’s tough and cynical and sensitive to every slight.”
“Well, I’ll soften her up,” I said. “I’ll bring some candy and flowers, sweet-talk her a little … ”
Ticknor looked like he’d swallowed a bottle cap.
“My God, man, don’t joke with her. She’ll simply explode.”
Ticknor poured some more coffee for me and for himself from the small silver pot. There was only one other table occupied now. It made no difference to our waiter. He sprang forward when Ticknor put the coffeepot down, took it away, and returned almost at once with a fresh pot.
“The only reservation I have,” Ticknor said when the waiter had retreated, “is the potential for a personality clash.”
I leaned back in my chair and folded my arms.
“You look good in most ways,” Ticknor said. “You’ve got the build for it. People who should know say you are as tough as you look. And they say you’re honest. But you work awfully hard sometimes at being a wise guy. And you look like everything Rachel hates.”
“It’s not hard work,” I said.
“What isn’t?”
“Being a wise guy. It’s a gift.”
“Perhaps,” Ticknor said. “But it is not a gift that will endear you to Rachel Wallace. Neither will the muscles and the machismo.”
“I know a guy would lend me a lavender suit,” I said.
“Don’t you want this work?” Ticknor said.
I shook my head. “What you want, Mr. Ticknor, is someone feisty enough to get in the line of someone else’s fire, and tough enough to get away with it. And you want him to look like Winnie-the-Pooh and act like Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. I’m not sure Rebecca’s even got a gun permit.”
He was silent for a moment. The other table cleared, and now we were alone in the upstairs dining room, except for several waiters and the maitre d‘.
