Epstein looked at me, thoughtfully. Then he shook his head slowly.
“You actually believe that,” he said.
“You don’t kill someone you love,” I said.
Epstein shrugged.
“Besides,” I said. “Looks like you know who killed the woman.”
“Doesn’t mean Doherty didn’t contract him.”
“You think he did?”
“No,” Epstein said. “Doherty was much too straight ahead. He was going to kill her he’d have done it himself.”
I nodded.
“He had it under control last time I saw him,” I said. “Said he wouldn’t kill the guy either. Said he wouldn’t let them flush his life.”
“You think it was real?” Epstein said.
“We talked about it. He’ll go to his grave wishing he’d put a couple into Alderson. But he’ll know he was right not to.”
Epstein gave me the long thoughtful look again, but he didn’t comment.
Instead, he said, “They been having trouble for long?”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “Or maybe they had, but he refused to know it.”
“So this would have come as a shock.”
“Yeah.”
“I gather you weren’t tailing the broad any longer,” Epstein said.
“No,” I said, “I wasn’t.”
“You give Dennis the audiotape you played for him?” Epstein said.
“Yes.”
“I don’t remember it being inventoried,” he said.
“You’ve tossed his place?”
“We’ve looked around,” Epstein said. “We’ll look again.”
He got up and went to the fi le cabinet and got more coffee.
“Got any thoughts on whether he got compromised?” Epstein said.
“Nothing I didn’t tell you at the Holiday Inn bar,” I said.
“Anything about Alderson?” Epstein said.
I shook my head.
“Wasn’t that interested in Alderson,” I said. “I was hired to be interested in Jordan Richmond.”
“You got any idea why she got killed?” Epstein said.
“No.”
“Or who the killer was?”
“No.”
“Or if somebody hired him?”
I shook my head just for a change of pace. It was as if Epstein was running down a checklist in his head.
“And if somebody did hire him,” Epstein said, “who that might be?”
“Nope.”
“Or where Dennis Doherty is?”
“Not a clue,” I said.
“Sadly,” Epstein said, “me either.”
20.
It had been an odd fall. It rained every day for about six weeks, and now, two weeks before Thanksgiving, it was sunny, and temperate enough to sit on a bench in the Public Garden and have lunch. Some of the trees were leafless, but many of them still had a full complement. Yellow mostly, with some red and now and then some green.
“You should drop Alderson for the moment,” I said to Hawk.
“Epstein will be all over him.”
