courts where several games of mixed doubles were progressing badly.
“Whew,” Lamont said after we’d shaken hands. “She’s starting to push me.”
“Oh, not very hard,” Laura said.
“Racquetball?” I said.
“Yeah. You play?”
“No,” I said.
“Ought to, it’s a great workout.”
“Sure,” I said. “Do you know Robinson Nevins?”
Lamont’s eyes narrowed.
“That’s the jigaboo was supposed to be involved with my ex-wife’s kid.”
“Not your kid?”
Lamont shook his head.
“He made his choice,” Lamont said.
Laura put her hand on top of his on the table.
“You mean he was gay,” I said.
“No need to clean it up with a cute word,” Lamont said. “He was a homosexual.”
“And his choice was you or homosexuality?”
“I’m an old-fashioned guy,” Lamont said. “In my book it’s a shameful and corrupt thing for men to have sex with each other. Makes my damned skin crawl.”
“I can see that,” I said. “So you wouldn’t know if he did in fact have a sexual relationship with Robinson Nevins.”
“No.”
“You ever meet Nevins?”
“No.”
“How long have you been divorced from Prentice’s mother?” I said.
“Six years.”
“When’s the last time you saw Prentice.”
“When I left the house.”
“More than six years?”
“Yes, closer to seven. The divorce took about ten months. Obviously, I wasn’t living there while it processed.”
“So you hadn’t seen your son for what, six, six and a half years before he died?”
“For me,” Lamont said, “he died a long time ago.”
“Was he an issue in the divorce?”
“Well, if she’d brought him up right, maybe he’d be alive now.”
“Maybe,” I said. “You have any thoughts on his suicide, any reason to doubt it, any reason to think it might not have been Nevins who triggered it?”
“As I say, Mr. Spenser, for me Prentice died a long time ago.”
“I wonder if he’d have lasted longer if he had a father.”
“Mr. Spenser!” Laura said.
“That’s a cheap shot, pal. You got kids?”
“Not exactly,” I said.
“Then you don’t know shit.”
“Probably don’t,” I said.
I looked at Laura. “I hope he’s a better father to you, ma’am,” I said.
I didn’t want to scramble his teeth. I wasn’t even mad. I was sad. It was all sad. Families breaking up, people dying, mothers grieving.
For what?
I stood and walked away.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Belson and two other detectives had talked to thirty-five people about Prentice Lamont, and twenty-nine of them
