'Sluggers?' She wrinkled her nose at the word. 'My husband?' She was horrified. 'My husband certainly wouldn't…'
'I'll take that as a no,' I said. 'Ever hear of an organization called Civil Streets?'
She said, 'Certainly.'
At last an answer.
'It's one of the beneficiary organizations for Galapalooza,' she said proudly.
'Know what it does?'
'I believe it is a rehabilitating agency for criminals.' She corrected herself. 'Former criminals.'
'Know how much they received from Galapalooza?'
'It was all pre-allotted,' she said, 'by share. How many tables everyone sold, that sort of thing.'
'But you don't know how much they actually got.'
'No.'
'You know how much anyone got?' I said.
'I heard that the costs were so high that they weren't able to distribute as much to charity as they had hoped.'
'I heard that too,' I said.
We sat quietly. She had never touched her coffee. I had drunk all of mine and was thinking maybe she'd had the better idea.
'Anything else you can tell me?' I said.
'About what?'
'About Brad Sterling or Galapalooza or the guy got killed in Brad Sterling's office, guy named Cony Brown, or a woman named Carla Quagliozzi or what you plan to do about the sexual harassment suit?'
'I don't know… What do you mean about the sexual harassment suit?'
'You can't press it,' I said. 'I have your letters and your pictures. You take it to court and you'll lose, quite publicly.'
'But I can't tell my husband,' she said in a tone that suggested that I was an idiot for suggesting otherwise.
'Well, you don't have to right now. Until we find Brad, you can probably sit tight and keep your mouth shut.'
'But what if you find him?'
'Well, maybe he won't come back,' she said hopefully.
'Then the lawsuit becomes moot, doesn't it,' I said.
She nodded slowly. 'Yes. I… guess… so.'
'But take a worst-case scenario, maybe I'll find him.'
She shook her head and looked at the tabletop and didn't speak.
'If,' I said, 'anything happens that prevents him from coming back. And if you had anything to do with it, I will tell everyone everything I know,' I said.
'You don't think I… My God, you must think I'm simply awful.'
'Yeah,' I said. 'I guess I do.'
chapter thirty-two
HAWK HAD BEEN bored outside of Civil Streets for nearly a week. No one had showed up there. Quirk had the accountants poking into the books, but they were having difficulty, mostly because there wasn't much in the way of books to poke into. The corporation appeared to consist entirely of some stationery and the empty store front in Stoneham Square. I wanted to know the connection between Gavin and Carla, which logically, would help explain the connection between Gavin and Sterling. Logic was less common and considerably less useful than it was cracked up to be. But it was a place to start. I could hang around Carla, and if Gavin spotted me he'd come by and terrify me again, and maybe feel, this time, he had to back it up, which wouldn't get me what I was after. It would be hard to stake Carla out covertly where she lived on the Somerville waterfront. And she showed no pressing need to drop in on Civil Streets and flaunt her presidency. The better bet was probably to follow him around, and maybe he and Carla would cross paths. If Gavin was a mob guy, he might take a little more tailing than if he was an account manager at Smith Barney. So I rescued Hawk from Stoneham Square.
We picked Gavin up on a rainy morning in Winthrop Square where Gavin and Warren had offices. We tracked him unseen and relentless to Starbuck's, where he had a coffee and a big bun. Then we tracked him back to Winthrop Square and stood in doorways alert for every development until about 6:45 that night when he came out and walked over to the Waterfront and went into his condo on Lewis Wharf. Hawk and I stood around for maybe half an hour more, to be sure the rain had soaked through evenly, and then we went over to the bar in the Marriott.
'Feel like a fucking haddock,' Hawk said.
He ordered a Glennfidich on the rocks. I had a tall Courvoisier and soda.
'You see any clues?' I said.
