"No," I said.

"Just once? Fuck me just once? I really know how."

I sat somewhat forcibly up and got my arms under her and stood up with her, and turned and set her back on the couch. She was still, flopped back as if she were exhausted, looking at me with her eyes half closed.

"You know you want to," she said. "Men always want to."

I looked at her for a moment without speaking.

Then I said, "Thanks for the offer," and turned and left the apartment.

Susan was back from Albany. She smiled when I finished my recitation.

"I guess April didn't want to talk about the case," Susan said.

"You think?"

Susan nodded.

"I do," she said. "And I have a Ph.D. from Harvard."

We had ordered dinner in Excelsior, at a table by the window, looking out over the Public Garden, and we were having cocktails while we waited.

"It's all she knows how to do," I said.

"And quite well," Susan said, "if you were reporting accurately."

"She says she does it quite well," I said.

"It's not terribly difficult to do well," Susan said.

"May I say you've mastered it," I said.

"Must I remind you again of the Harvard Ph.D.?" she said.

"Wow," I said, "they got courses in everything."

Susan took a small sip of her Cosmopolitan.

"It's a refrain I hear often," Susan said. "From patients. Women who are sexually active and have a limited skill set often brag about how good they are at sex."

"It's not really a matter of technique," I said.

"Fortunately for you," Susan said.

"Hey," I said.

She smiled.

"It has much to do," Susan said, "with whether you are happy in the task."

"So maybe she protesteth too much?"

"I'm sure she knows all there is to know," Susan said.

"But most adult women do."

"Not all of them."

"There are a thousand things that can inhibit someone's sexuality. But lack of skill is not a common problem."

"Really," I said. "You didn't learn any of this up in Albany, did you?"

She grinned at me. The big, wide grin, full of things hinted but not exactly said.

"I haven't cheated on you in ages," Susan said.

"Good to know," I said.

"But, I was a grown woman when I met you," Susan said. "Remember? Married and divorced. I had already learned a lot of things."

I nodded.

"And there was that little business out west," she said.

"That was then," I said. "This is now."

She looked steadily at me with no banter. My hand was on the table. She put her hand on top of it.

"Yes," she said. "It is."

We were silent. I drank some scotch. She drank some Cosmopolitan.

"I'm running around this thing like a headless chicken," I said.

"My guess would be," Susan said, "that whatever answers you're likely to get will come out of April."

"She denies all," I said.

"She has a past," Susan said. "Maybe that will tell you something."

I nodded slowly, thinking about it.

"What got her in trouble last time?" Susan said.

"Looking for love in all the wrong places."

"And the time before that," Susan said. "When you first met her?"

"Looking for love in all the wrong places," I said.

"Without some sort of major intervention," Susan said, "people don't change much."

"Cherchez l'homme," I said.

Susan nodded. "Maybe," she said.

"You Ivy Leaguers are a smart lot, aren't you?"

Susan nodded vigorously.

"Wildly oversexed, too," she said.

"Not all of you," I said.

"One's enough," she said.

"Yes," I said. "It is."

I raised my glass toward her. She picked up hers. We clinked.

"Fight fiercely, Harvard," I said.

In New York I stayed at the Carlyle hotel. I could have stayed at a Days Inn on the West Side for considerably less. But I would have gotten considerably less, and I'd had a good year. I liked the Carlyle.

Thus, on a bright, windy day in New York, with the temperature not bad in the upper thirties, I sat with Patricia Utley in the Gallery on the Madison Avenue side of the hotel and had tea. It was elegant with velvet and dark wood. Faintly from the Cafe I could hear piano music, somebody rehearsing for the evening. Barbara Carroll? Betty Buckley? I felt like I was in Gershwin's New York. I was more sophisticated than Paris Hilton.

"A professional thug," I said. "And a whorehouse madam having tea at the Carlyle. Is this a great country or what?"

"We look good," Patricia Utley said. "It covers a multitude."

We did look good. I looked like I always do: insouciant, roguish, and quite similar to Cary Grant, if Cary had had his nose broken more often. Patricia Utley wore a blue pinstriped pantsuit and a white shirt with a long collar. Her short hair had blond highlights, just like April's. Her makeup was discreet. She looked in shape. And the hints of aging at the corners of her face seemed to add some sort of prestige to her appearance.

We ordered the full tea. I like everything about tea, except tea. But I tried to stay with the spirit of it all.

"I've been chasing my tail," I said, "since I started with April."

Patricia Utley sipped some tea and put her cup down.

"And you wish my help?" she said.

"I do."

We both paused to examine our tea sandwich options.

"Let me tell you what I know, and what I think," I said.

"Please."

She listened quietly, sipping her tea, nibbling a cucumber sandwich. She seemed interested. She didn't interrupt. When I was finished, she said, "You think there's a lover or ex-lover somewhere in the picture?"

"I think I should find out if there is."

"What do you need from me?" she said.

"Information."

"Information is problematic," Patricia Utley said. "I am in a business which deeply values discretion."

"Me too," I said.

She smiled.

"So we will be discreet with one another," she said.

"I need to have some names, someplace to start," I said. "Can you give me a list of her clients in the last year, say, when she was with you in New York?"

"Why would you think that I would have such a list."

"You're a woman of the twenty-first century," I said. "You have a database of clients in your computer, or my name is not George Clooney."

"You're bigger than George Clooney," Patricia Utley said.

"Yeah, but otherwise…" I said.

"An easy mistake to make," she said.

"I won't compromise you," I said. "But I need to see if she had a more than, ah, professional encounter with any of them."

She had some more tea, and a scone, while she thought about it.

"I have learned not to trust anyone," she said.

I waited.

"But oddly," she said, "I trust you."

I smiled my self-effacing smile, the one where I cock my head to the side a little.

"Good choice," I said.

"You won't compromise me," she said.

"Of course I won't."

"Of course you won't."

"So I get the list?" I said.

"I'll have it delivered to you tomorrow," she said. "Here."

"Oh good," I said. "I'll pay for tea."