Hush Money

“This is very good,” she said.

“You deserve it,” I said.

“Because I’m deeply insightful?”

“Sure,” I said. “And you also balled my ears off about an hour ago.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

I had a couple of ways to go in chasing down Louis Vincent. I could talk to the cops in Hingham where he lived. Or I could talk to people at Hall, Peary where he worked. Hall, Peary was closer, so I called over there and talked with Phyllis Wasserman, the human resources director. She told me that of the five complaints of sexual harassment they’d had in the past year, one involved stalking and remained unsolved. Two others, she said, were much closer to angry disagreement than they were to sexual harassment, and the last two had been resolved by firing the harasses I asked who was involved in the stalking, and she said she was not at liberty. I asked if she would give my name to the victim and ask her to call me. She said she would.

While I was waiting hopefully, I called the Hingham police. It took a little while but I got to the chief, whose name was Roach. They’d had two stalking complaints in the last year. In one case the stalker had been in violation of a court order, and they had been able to arrest him and urge him to change his ways.

“You give me the name?” I said.

“Not without a good reason,” Roach said.

“Well, was the stalker a Hingham resident?”

“No.”

“Was he a stockbroker?”

“Hell no.”

“Okay,” I said. “What about the other one?”

“Never caught the guy.”

“But the stalking stopped?”

“Yep. My guess is he found someone else.”

“That’s my guess too,” I said. “Can you give me the name of the victim?”

“Nope.”

“Can you give her my name and number, and remind her that I’m trying to help some other woman who’s going through what she went through?”

“I can do that,” Roach said.

“Thanks.”

I hung up and sat. The phone was quiet. I swiveled my chair so I could look out my window at the corner of Berkeley and Boylston. I opened the window so I could listen to the traffic. People were already in summer clothes although we were only about half done with May. There was a Ford Explorer waiting for the light on Boylston Street. The sunroof was open and there was heavy metal music thundering up. As I watched, someone stuck a sign out of the sunroof that said Brendan Cooney for King. The light changed. The Explorer moved on, its exuberant sign still deployed. The young are very different than we are, I said to myself. Yes, I responded, they have more time. What if you could be young again and were able to undo the things that were done that made you into the person you would later become. But then who would you be. Would Hawk have been Hawk if he hadn’t met Professor Crawford/Abdullah? Maybe this wasn’t a useful avenue of inquiry. Maybe I should run over a list of the women I’d slept with and see if I could remember how each of them looked with their clothes off.

I was up to Brenda Loring, who had looked excellent with her clothes off, when the phone rang.

“This is Meredith Teitler,” a woman said. “Phyllis Wasserman gave me your number.”

“I’m a detective,” I said. “I represent a woman who is currently being stalked.”

“I understand,” Meredith said. “What do you wish to know?”

“You worked at Hall, Peary?”

“Still do,” she said.

“You were a stalking victim.”

“Yes.”

“Is it still a problem?”

“I am no longer being stalked,” she said.

“Did you ever identify the stalker?”

“No.”

“Did you ever date anyone at Hall, Peary?”

“Yes.”

“Who?”

“He wouldn’t have been the stalker.”

“How can you be sure?”