Valediction

'Yes,' she said. 'That is a danger.'

She was a very large-boned, tall woman, and she had managed to keep her weight up. She was probably fifty- five and wore a loosefitting dress with a small gray print in it, and a large straw hat. For her to find a loose-fitting dress was something of a triumph, I thought. She wore a lot of makeup, badly applied. There was lipstick on her teeth. If she'd been a dancer, it must have been in Fantasia.

'At the commencement, people were asking really tough ones,' I said. 'Who's your broker? Where can I get a deal on Volvo station wagons, that kind of stuff. I felt really humble.'

She laughed. 'I went to Wellesley,' she said. 'I could have answered those questions easily.'

'And now you write for the Globe? My God.'

'Yes, plucky of me, I think.'

The waiter took our order. I had lobster salad. Nancy had the minute steak. We had another round of drinks as well.

'What can you tell me about a dancer named Tommy Banks,' I said.

'Ah-ha,' Nancy said, 'enough with the small talk.'

'Yes,' I said, 'off with the clothes.'

She smiled again. 'Tommy Banks,' she said. Outside our window, on Newbury Street, a man and woman were walking an Afghan hound. The woman's arm was through the man's. He was much taller than she was and occasionally she banged her head against his upper arm as they walked, then looked up at him and laughed about something. Maybe the dog. It's hard not to laugh at an Afghan hound.

'Tommy Banks,' Nancy said. 'If commitment were all it took, he'd have been Nureyev, or Fred Astaire.'

'Talent?'

'Are you a baseball fan, Spenser?'

'Yes.'

'His desire is Cooperstown. His talent is Pawtucket.'

I nodded.

'He was in New York for a while, studied with Cunningham, danced as a chorus boy with some actress in a one-woman show, Debbie Reynolds, I think-you know, the star and four dancers who serve as context. He formed a tap company of his own, and got some grant money and did a few colleges and Summerthing kinds of appearances, Citicorp Center at noon, that kind of stuff; and then he packed it in and came back to Boston. I believe he felt New York commercialism was stifling. Here he has a school, and a company that instructs at the school and is drawn from it and he works at expanding the tap-dance form.'

'Is he being successful?'

She smiled. The waiter brought my lobster salad and Nancy's steak. Susan would have had only an appetizer. Probably smoked salmon. Maybe one glass of white wine, which she wouldn't finish. Nancy ordered a beer. I joined her.

'Successful?' Nancy said. 'No, not very. I can applaud his attempt to enlarge the narrative possibilities of tap, but his actual innovations are less successful than the conception, if you follow what I'm saying. Are you familiar with dance?'

'A little,' I said. 'I have a friend who dances.'

'In some ways Tommy would be best in an academic setting where his experiments wouldn't have to be self- supporting. His imagination is limited.'

'Do you know about him as a person?'

'Not very much. We've met but I don't know him well. I know he's very driven by an ambition that overleaps his skills. He is, I believe, a very tough disciplinarian with his dancers, and people in the business don't like him very much.'

'How about one of his dancers, Sherry Spellman?'

Nancy shook her head. 'No. I don't know her.'

I had finished my lobster salad and my beer. Three whiskies and a beer at midday and I was feeling mushy. Nancy ate the last of her steak. 'Why are you interested in all this?' she said.

'Off the record?' I'd always wanted to say that to a reporter.

'Deep background,' Nancy said.

'Sherry's missing. Banks claims she was kidnapped by the Reorganized Church of the Redemption.'

Nancy raised her eyebrows. 'The Bullies kidnapped her?'

'That's what Banks said.'

'You sound skeptical,' she said.

'Not really skeptical, it's a deep-seated habit I've developed from spending the last twenty years talking with people who speak with forked tongue.'

'Cynical,' she said.

'More than that. The story doesn't make a lot of sense. First of all, it sounds just like the Hearst kidnapping, and second, Banks never called the cops. Says he doesn't want a media circus like the Hearst case.'

'That may be the definition of ego,' Nancy said. 'Imagining yourself worthy of a media circus. The Hearsts maybe, but Tommy Banks?'