“You ask him any of that?”
“I’ll get to it.”
“We going to talk with her?” I said.
“We? All of a sudden it’s we?”
“I want to make sure you don’t start whacking her in the face,” I said.
“I’m going to call her attorney,” Quirk said. “Have her come in with Mrs. Smith for a dignified interview.”
“Homicide commander doesn’t usually get down to this level of nitty-gritty,” I said. “Does he? Or she?”
“In this case, he,” Quirk said. “Lotta people been killed. And the suspect is worth a large amount of money.”
“So you’re hearing about it.”
“Mayor’s up for reelection,” Quirk said. “He’s been bragging about the crime rate.”
“So you’re showing a laudable hands-on interest.”
Quirk nodded. He might have almost smiled a little.
“And there are personnel issues,” he said.
Belson kept his eyes on the road as he spoke over his right shoulder.
“I told Quirk I’d take early retirement,” he said, “before I’d go one-on-one with Mary Smith again.”
“The power of dumb,” I said.
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
When I got back to my office there were two calls on my answering machine. One was from Hawk asking if I still needed backup. The other was from a secretary at Kiley and Harbaugh. Mr. Kiley would like to have breakfast with me in the coffee shop of his building the next morning and could I call to confirm. I called Hawk at the Harbor Health Club and left a message with Henry that since everybody seemed to have skedaddled, and whatever was going on had stopped, I figured there was no further need to kill me and Hawk could therefore go back to his career of crime. Then I called the secretary at Kiley and Harbaugh and confirmed, and, at 7:30 the next morning, I met him there. He was already seated when I came in.
“Don’t have the bagels,” Kiley said. “Cranberry muffins.”
I went to the counter and got orange juice, coffee, and a cranberry muffin and brought it to Kiley’s table, and sat. Kiley didn’t say anything. I drank some juice. Kiley had a muffin, too, and some juice. Same breakfast I was having, except I was eating mine.
“I been practicing criminal law around here for most of my adult life,” Kiley said.
I drank some orange juice.
“I known you sort of here and there and roundabout for a long time,” Kiley said.
I nodded and drank the rest of my orange juice.
“Everything I know about you says your word is good.”
“For something,” I said.
“I checked on you, cops, DA, lotta people.” Kiley smiled. “Some of them clients. The consensus is that you’re a hard-on, but I can trust you.”
I had mixed feelings about the consensus, but I had nothing to add.
“Before we talk,” Kiley said, “I need your word that it goes no further.”
“I can’t promise, Bobby, until I know what I’m promising.”
Kiley looked at my face for a moment and pursed his lips. His cranberry muffin lay on his plate unmolested.
“It’s about my daughter,” he said.
I put a little milk in my coffee and stirred it. “I’ll protect your daughter,” I said carefully, “if I can.”
“What makes you think she needs protection?” Kiley said.
“Come on, Bobby.”
He nodded. “Yeah. That was dumb. Okay. You gimme your word?”
“I’ll do the best I can,” I said.
“Your word?”
“Yes.”
“The kid you killed,” Kiley said.
“Kevin McGonigle.”
“Yeah. We represented him once.”
I raised my eyebrows. I could raise one at a time, but I saved that for women.
