Timmy and I looked at each other, and both our lips moved.

Aroma was on Main Street, just south of downtown. We had a booth that was private and remarkably quiet. Great Barrington on Friday night felt like SoHo or the Via Veneto on a weekend, with determinedly jolly diners and shoppers tramping up and down the small town’s streets by the hundreds or perhaps thousands. They came from all over, to what Furst said were Great Barrington’s many dozens of cafes and restaurants. Twenty years earlier, she said, “ethnic” food in Great Barrington meant pizza. Now, with the tourist and second-home boom, there was Japanese, Indian, Thai, even Finnish, and a couple of places that offered jazz, cocktails, and what Furst described as “high-priced grandmother food.”

Before dinner, I had walked over to the Triplex, where the Friday-night throngs were descending on the place like hajjis at the Dome of the Rock. I spotted Myra Greene in the lobby surrounded by what looked like outraged and sympathetic admirers. They all but hoisted her on their shoulders and carried her around town like a Mexican saint at Candelaria, Santa Myra de la Cinema. It looked like a crowd that could have hanged Thorne Cornwallis in effigy. Bud Radziwill had told me Cornwallis rarely ventured south of Pittsfield, and I could see why.

In our cozy retreat, Furst said, “This is so nice, eating here, even if we’re going to talk business. Shall we share a lamb vindaloo, another meat dish and a veggie dish? Or is either of you vegetarian?”

I said, “Timothy eats nothing that casts a shadow larger than Mount Washington. Otherwise, we’re happy carnivores.”

“My thirteen-year-old is vegan,” Furst said. “It gets complicated in the kitchen. And when I’m in a place like this, I tend to pounce on the odd steer or fowl running loose and plunge my fork into it.”

Timmy said, “You must be good in a courtroom.”

“I am,” Furst said. She was still in her courthouse dark business outfit, and she hadn’t unwound all the way, despite the dent she had made in her whiskey sour.

I said, “You have kids. And a husband too?”

“Two kids, Jessica, thirteen, and Howie, eleven. My ex has them this weekend. They’re great. It makes some other things about the marriage okay to forget about.”

I saw now that Furst’s lustrous auburn hair might not have been nature’s own shade, and I wondered why most women who colored their hair usually looked fresh and new, and men who did it, no matter who they were, usually came across as Dick Clark.

Timmy said, “How long were you married, Ramona?”

“Too long,” she said and caught the eye of the waiter, a somber man of late middle age who looked as if he could have been a professor of accounting in Jalalabad. We ordered an assortment of zesty savories.

“Thanks for turning over your Friday night to us,” I told Furst. “To us and to Barry Fields. I’m sure you’d rather be out on a date, taking your mind off all this.”

“I’m actually not dating right now,” Furst said. “I’m just coming out of a relationship with a woman who was too high maintenance, and I’m taking a break from all that.”

Timmy said, “Oh, you’re gay?”

“Bi,” Furst said and dipped a celery stick in some tamarind sauce. “I like men, too, if they meet certain criteria.”

“Like, if they have large breasts?” Timmy said jocularly, and to my relief Furst laughed.

“No, Timothy. I go for men with really nice asses. Like Don’s here. You’re a little skinnier than I generally go for. But you are pretty cute otherwise.”

“Timmy’s bi, too,” I said. “Bipolar. Would that do?”

“Been there, done that,” Furst said. “No, what I look for in a man is a shred of decency. And it constantly amazes me how often I find it.”

“Why is that so surprising?” I asked gingerly.

“Too many men are so angry. It’s as if they resent not being able to spend their time roaming the forests spearing things. It’s women who more often have reasons to be mad as hell, but most women take life as it comes. It’s always a relief to find a man who’s like a woman in that regard.”

“But has an ass like Don’s,” Timmy said.

“Now you’re talkin’.”

I said, “Your client seems to be one of those angry men. Barry Fields is full of rage, but I don’t think it’s because he isn’t allowed to go hunting.”

“No,” Furst said. “And it’s not the anger of a gay man who’s still stewing over being forced to conform and date Debbie Dewdrop in junior high. It’s more than that. I don’t know exactly what Barry’s problem is, but I feel certain he came out of some horrendous family situation.”

“He won’t talk about it to anybody,” I said. “Except apparently Bill Moore and Bud Radziwill. Have you heard from Moore?”

“No. There was just a message he left in my office saying he’d be back in town for the dangerousness hearing on Monday. I asked Radziwill about Barry’s anger after the altercation in Guido’s on Wednesday – I was looking for some mitigating circumstances for the blow-up – and Bud just said Barry’s whole family is like that, and Barry is actually the calmest, least dangerous person in his whole brood.”

“Where did the two of them meet?” I asked. “Bud the phony Kennedy cousin has his own mysterious past, and I wonder if the key to Barry’s troubled history lies with Bud’s.”

“They met in college or just before college,” Furst said. “Bud told me that much. When I asked him where that was, he just said ’the Emerald City,’ and laughed. He wouldn’t tell me any more. Bud would only say that they weren’t wanted by the law anywhere, and not to worry about that.”

Timmy said, “They must have followed the yellow brick road.”

We looked at him.

“To the Emerald City.”

I said, “I’ll bet you’re right, Timothy. But what does that mean? As a practical matter.”

He looked blank. He brightened then and said, “Maybe they’re from Kansas.”

“Bud sounds as if he’s from Texas,” I said.

“So maybe they didn’t follow the yellow brick road. They took I- 10.”

Our assorted meat platter arrived, and we helped ourselves to the aromatic morsels.

Furst told me she had arranged my visit with Fields at the Berkshire County House of Correction in Pittsfield Saturday morning at ten. “But,” she said, “I’m not sure what you’re going to get out of Barry that’ll be of any use. He claims not to have known Jim Sturdivant well enough to have any idea who would want to kill him, and I tend to believe him. Sturdivant and Gaudios were both icky guys, but the kind that inspire annoyance rather than homicide. I take it you’ve checked out the guys who borrowed money from Jim at below market rates in return for blowjobs. Anything there?”

Timmy examined his mint sauce. I said no, I hadn’t come up with anything, except Gaudios, as co-lender, had called in the loans within the last two days, and this had upset some of the borrowers. I said, “Ramona, doesn’t Sturdivant’s murder look to you a bit like a mob hit? I’m talking methodology.”

She said, “It does. I wondered about that.”

“What do you know about Sturdivant’s background? I mean, before he became a precious Sheffield homosexual.”

“I don’t know anything, really. He’s from Pittsfield. I grew up in Lowell. I came out here to be a post-hippie and somehow ended up in law school. So Pittsfield is relatively new to me. And Gaudios is from… where?”

“ Springfield, someone said.”

“A sad town. Pittsfield is an old industrial city that’s trying to make a comeback with cultural tourism and the quality of life that comes with the natural surroundings. Springfield is an old industrial city that’s been sinking for decades and has nothing to grab on to. Gaudios is lucky to have fled when he did.”

I said, “I want to check out if Sturdivant and Gaudios might have had mob ties. Unlikely as that sounds. They used lending money not for profit but for sex with otherwise unattainable attractive men – a kind of ugly twist on loansharking. The murder looks like a gangland hit job. And Gaudios told me he made his money in what he called financial services, though he was adamant in not explaining to me what that meant.”