Sterling widened his eyes and made a humorous snorting sound.
'Well, you are, by God, direct, aren't you?'
'Saves time,' I said.
Sterling had his hands tented in front of him, the fingertips brushing his chin. He tapped his fingertips together a few times while he looked at me.
'Lesson there for me,' he said. 'That would make you the private eye.'
'It would.'
'I've heard about you. Always sort of amused me Susan would end up with… a private detective.'
'Hard to figure,' I said. 'Want to tell me about your troubles?'
'So you can help me?'
'Yeah.'
'Because Susan asked you to?'
'Yeah.'
'How do you feel about helping out your girlfriend's ex?'
'She says I'll like you,' I said.
He grinned. His teeth were very white and even. 'Of course you will,' he said. 'Everybody likes me.'
'Susan says that you're being sued for sexual harassment.'
'So, you're saying that somebody doesn't like me?'
'Tell me about it,' I said.
He smiled and shrugged and leaned back farther in his chair and put his feet on the desk.
'I was running a thing at the Convention Center. Big charity do. Brought in Sister Sass from New York, had a ton of celebarooties. Message from the President. Lot of press.'
'Which charity?'
'Sort of a fund-raiser gang-bang for all the deservings, you know? Care and placement of orphans, shelter for battered women, AIDS research, other intractable diseases, help for the homeless, safe streets programs, everybody in one swell foop.'
'And?'
'And it was a blockbuster. I slept about two hours a night pulling it together, but it was a whizbang when we got it airborne.'
'I sort of meant `and the harassment'?'
'Oh, sure, of course.'
Out the west window I could see the shadow of a cloud drift over Kenmore Square toward Fenway Park.
A little less than a month and baseball would be back. It seemed too early. It always did in March. Too cold to play ball, the ground too soggy. The wind too bold. But April always came and they played. I looked back at Sterling. He was sitting at his desk looking friendly.
'And the harassment?' I said.
'Nothing much, really,' he said. 'All these charities have a ton of volunteer do-gooders around. Mostly women, the kind who think they're important because their husbands are rich. And a lot of them are goodlooking in that rich wife way, you know. Perfect hairdos, expensive perfume, very silky. So I may have flirted with a couple of them, and they took it wrong.'
'How would you define flirting?' I said.
I was almost sure that I opposed sexual harassment. I was less sure that I knew exactly what it was.
'You know, kidding around, telling them how goodlooking they were. Hell I thought- they'd be flattered. Most women are. Cripes, if they weren't married I'd figure them for a bunch of lesbos.'
'Which is it, a `couple,' or a `bunch?' '
'There are four women participating in the lawsuit,' Sterling said. 'One of them is married to Francis Ronan.'
'The law professor,' I said.
'Him,' Sterling said. 'Talk about your luck running bad.'
'You didn't touch these women?'
'Absolutely not,' Sterling said.
'Were you obscene?'
'No, of course not.'
'Did they work for you?'
'Not really. They were volunteers. I mean I was at the top of the pyramid, I suppose, and they were down the slope a bit. But they didn't work for me.'
