“And I don’t need a lot of holy-than-thou crap from some guy I’ve hired.”
“I think that’s holier,” I said, “holier than thou.”
“And don’t patronize me.”
Lucky I was a liberated guy and perfectly correct in my sexual attitudes or I might have said something under my breath about women.
“KC,” I said. “I’m trying, with some difficulty, and against most of my genetic programming, to avoid sex with you in a pleasant fashion. Maybe it can’t be done. Maybe the closest I can get to it is to patronize you.”
She sat and looked at me and thought about that. She was gorgeous. I knew virtue was its own reward, but sometimes I wondered if the same might be true of vice.
“So tell me about Susan,” she said. “What is it she does to make you like this?”
“It has to do with love, I think.”
“But how does she get you to do what she wants?”
“She doesn’t,” I said. “I want to do what she wants.”
“But she must do something.”
“What she does,” I said, “is she tries not to want me to do things I don’t want to do.”
“I’m serious,” KC said.
“Me too,” I said.
KC stared at me, she crossed her bare legs and stared some more. Finally she said, “I don’t get it.”
“No,” I said. “You don’t.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
I took a rosewood-paneled elevator up to the top floors of the State Street Building where Hall, Peary flourished. There were five guys in striped shirts and red suspenders riding up with me. For a guy who kept all his money in his wallet, I was spending a lot of time with stockbrokers. When I went into Louis Vincent’s big corner office I closed the door behind me. Louis was contemplating his computer screen, breathless with adoration.
“Hello there,” I said. Spenser, the genial gumshoe.
Vincent looked up.
“Oh, hi. Come on in, or, well, you are in, aren’t you.”
“I bring you greetings,” I said, “from KC Roth, and Meredith Teitler, and a woman in Hingham whose name I do not know, but whose significant other is a large fierce man named Al who says he will remove your head if he ever encounters you.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Vincent said.
“Don’t dick around with this, Vincent. You’ve stalked a number of women in the past and you are stalking KC Roth currently.”
He got to his feet.
“You’re crazy,” he said.
I walked around the corner of his desk and put a good short left hook in under his rib cage on the right side. He gasped and staggered back, and began flailing at me with both hands. He was so inept that his fists weren’t fully closed and if he’d hit me it would have been more of a slap than anything else. But he didn’t hit me. It had been a long time since somebody who punched like he did had hit me. I hit him again, same punch, same place, and he gasped again.
Then he hollered, “Betty.”
I punched him in the solar plexus with my right hand and he sagged. He tried to yell Betty again but he had too little breath. Behind me the door opened.
A woman’s voice said, “My God.”
“Call cops,” Vincent gasped.
I stepped away. He tried to straighten up, still struggling to get air in, and I clipped him on the jaw with a good professional right cross and he sat down hard on the floor and stayed there.
“Stop it,” Betty screamed, “stop it.”
“Done,” I said.
Betty turned and ran toward her desk. Vincent was staring at me from the floor. He was about half functional.
“Can you understand me?” I said.
He nodded.
“If anything even slightly annoying, anything at all happens to KC Roth, ever again, I will come back and knock every tooth out of your head.”
He continued to stare.
“And maybe I’ll tell Al where you are.” I could see that he heard me.
“You understand that?” I said.
