'He worked for me.'
'Doing what?'
'Doing what I told him.'
I looked at Shirley. Her eyes were dry now, though she still held the Kleenex in both fists, clenched in her lap, just in case.
'Anthony was in the financial part,' she said as helpfully as she could.
I looked at Ventura. He stared back at me.
I said, 'Un huh.'
'He chase women?' I said.
'Oh no,' Shirley said.
'Never. He wasn't like that at all.'
'Gamble?'
Shirley's eyes flicked almost invisibly toward her father and then back at me. It was so quick I wasn't entirely sure it happened.
'No,' she said firmly.
'I mean he'd play cards for pennies with the guys and drink a few beers, and stuff once in like a blue moon, but gamble, no way.'
'Any vices at all?' I said.
'Booze, coke, too much coffee?'
'Oh no. You have the wrong picture of him. Anthony was very nice, and he was crazy about me.'
It went like that for maybe forty minutes more. Me asking questions. Shirley answering, and Ventura sitting like a mean toad giving me the stone stare. At the end of the forty minutes it was clear that Anthony had no reason to take off, and every reason to stay home and drink champagne from Shirley's slipper. Except that Anthony was gone.
Being a trained investigator, I smelled a rat.
CHAPTER 2
Susan and I were running up and down the steps at the Harvard Stadium late on a Sunday afternoon. At the top of section 7, we paused for a moment to breathe. We were the only ones in the stadium. On the circular track out back of the stadium a few people were jogging. At the far end of the athletic complex, where, across the road, the Charles River curved in one of its big rolling bends, there was a pickup soccer game in progress. Susan wore glistening black spandex tights and a luminescent green top. Her thick dark hair was held off her forehead by a green sweatband, and there were green highlights on her state-of-the-art sneakers.
Her thigh muscles moved smoothly under the spandex, there was ' clear muscle definition in the backs of her arms, and sweat glistened on her face. If I hadn't already done so in a guidance office in Smithfield twenty years ago, I would have fallen in love with her right there.
'I don't get why you agreed to look for whatsisname,' Susan said.
'Anthony Meeker,' I said.
'Julius Venture's son-in-law.'
'Yes,' Susan said, 'him. How come?'
We started down the stairs again. It was late September, still pleasant. Along the river the leaves had begun to turn but not very many of them and not very much. The white-lined turf on the football field below us was as green as if it were May.
'It's my profession,' I said.
'A job that Hawk turned down? Where the employer tells you you'll get in trouble if you investigate?'
We reached the bottom step and turned and started up section 6.
'Hawk didn't turn it down,' I said.
'He said he'd do it if I would.'
'His reasoning being?'
'I don't know. I haven't talked to him.'
'But you know him. What would you hypothesize?'
'That it wasn't his kind of work, but if he could get me to do the boring investigation stuff, he'd hang around, maybe hit somebody, and pick up half a fee.'
'But don't you think that Mr. Ventura is lying to you?'
'Oh sure,' I said.
'And is he not dangerous?'
'He employs dangerous people,' I said.
'Do you think the investigation stuff is boring?'
