And drank some beer.

THE FIRST TWO PEOPLE I saw when I went into Buddy Fox’s were Ty-Bop and Junior. Ty-Bop was a skinny kid, strung out on something. He did the gun work. Junior was the size of Des Moines but meaner. He did the muscle work.

“Junior,” I said. “How’s it going with Weight Watchers?”

“You looking to see Tony?” Junior said.

Ty-Bop stared at me as he jittered against the back wall of the restaurant, listening to his iPod. He showed no sign of recognition, although he’d seen me probably a hundred times. His eyes were empty. His face was empty. He shot at what Tony told him to shoot at and, as best as I could tell, had no other interests except controlled substances and whatever music he was listening to. I don’t think I’d ever heard him speak. But he could shoot. He might have been as good as Vinnie, maybe even Chollo, who was the best I’d ever seen.

“Wait here,” Junior said.

He went past the bar and down a hall. Ty-Bop looked at me blankly. I grinned at him.

“How are things, Ty-Bop?” I said.

He jived a little and his head might have moved, but it was probably to the music.

“Listening to a different drummer?” I said.

Ty-Bop’s expression didn’t change.

“Good,” I said. “I like an upbeat approach.”

The room showed little sign that the South End had undergone considerable social change in the last twenty years. I was still the only white face in the room. Junior returned and jerked his head at me. I gave Ty-Bop a friendly thumbs-up and followed Junior past the bar. He was so big he could barely fit into the hallway, and both of us were too much. He stepped aside and gestured for me to walk past him.

“You know the door,” he said.

“Like my own,” I said, and walked on down the hall.

Tony’s office was small and without much in the way of ostentation. Tony was in there with Arnold, who was his driver. Arnold didn’t shoot as well as Ty-Bop or muscle as well as Junior. But he was a nice combination of both skills, and he had a little class. He was handsome as hell. And dressed great.

“Arnold,” I said.

“Spenser.”

Arnold was sitting on a straight chair, turned around so he could rest his forearms on the chair back. Tony was behind his desk. A little soft around the neck and jawline. But very dignified-looking, with a scatter of gray in his short hair, and none in his carefully trimmed mustache. As always, he was dressed up. Dark suit, white shirt, maroon silk tie and pocket hankie. He was smoking a long, thin cigar.

“Tony,” I said. “Do you color your mustache?”

Tony Marcus smiled.

“Actually, motherfucker,” he said, “I color my whole body. In real life, I’m a honkie.”

“Nope,” I said. “No white guy can say ‘motherfucker’ like you do.”

Tony nodded.

“Whaddya want?” he said.

“Need a favor,” I said.

“Oh, good,” Tony said. “Been hoping some wiseass snow cone would come in and ask for a favor.”

“You want me to pat him down?” Arnold said to Tony.

“No need,” Tony said.

“He’s got a gun,” Arnold said. “I can tell the way his coat hangs.”

Tony looked at Arnold.

“You done work with him, you think we need to worry ’bout the gun?”

“No.”

“Okay,” Tony said, and turned to me, and raised his eyebrows.

“Know a guy named Chet Jackson?” I said.

“Who wants to know?” Tony said.

“That would be me,” I said. “I look like some kind of bicycle messenger?”

“Why do you want to know?”

“He’s a danger to someone I sort of represent,” I said.

“And you can’t stop him?”

“Not without killing somebody,” I said.

“So?” Tony said.

“Not my style,” I said.

“So have Hawk do it for you,” Tony said.

“Also not my style.”

“But it your style to come ask me,” Tony said. “A simple African-American trying to get along in a flounder-belly world?”

“Exactly,” I said.

Tony smiled.

“I know Chet Jackson,” he said.

“You have any clout with him?”

“I might,” Tony said. “Pretty much got clout wherever I need it.”

“So much for the simple African-American,” I said.

Tony smiled again.

“You knew that was bullshit when you heard it,” he said. “I don’t know if I owe you anything or not. But you done me some favors.”

“Cast your bread upon the waters,” I said.

“Sure,” Tony said. “Tell me a story.”

I told him as much as he needed to know. Tony listened without interrupting while he smoked his cigar. When I was done, he put the cigar out in a big glass ashtray on his desk and leaned back in his chair.

“What the fuck,” he said, “are you doing mixed up in crap like that?”

“I ask myself that from time to time,” I said. “But I’m a romantic, Tony. You know that.”

“Whatever that means,” he said.

We sat. Tony got out a new cigar and trimmed it and lit it, and got it going evenly, turning the cigar barrel slowly in the flame of Arnold’s lighter.

“So how you want to do this?” he said.

ACCORDING TO his police folder, Goran Pappas had graduated in the top quarter of his Richdale High School class and gone on to Wickton College on a basketball scholarship.

Wickton was a small liberal-arts college just across the New Hampshire line, south of Jaffrey. I spent the next day there and worked my way slowly through a host of reticent academics to arrive late in the day in the office of the director of counseling services. According to the plaque on her desk, her name was Mary Brown, Ph.D.

“Dr. Brown,” I said. “My name is Spenser. I’m a detective. I’ve been wandering your campus all day and am in desperate need of counseling.”

She was a sturdy woman with gray hair and rimless glasses. “I can see why you would,” she said. “Please sit down.”

I did.

“I’m trying to learn about a man who attended this college. Everyone who would know agrees he did. But no one will tell me much about him.”

“Because they don’t know much?” she said.

“Because they don’t know, or think it’s confidential, or don’t like detectives.”

“Surely that couldn’t be it,” she said.

“I was being self-effacing,” I said.

“I have been here for more than thirty years,” she said. “Perhaps I can help. What is the man’s name?”

“Goran Pappas,” I said.

She was quiet for a moment. The rimless glasses were strong, and they seemed to enlarge her eyes as she looked at me through them.

“I remember him,” she said.

“What can you tell me?” I said.

She smiled.

“What can you tell me?” she said.

“About anything you want to know,” I said.

“Then do so,” she said.

I told her everything I thought she’d want to hear, omitting only the names, except for Goran. When I was through she sat for a time, frowning.

“My goodness,” she said. “And what is it you are trying to accomplish?”

“To right the unrightable wrong, I suppose,” I said.

“I understand the allusion,” she said. “But specifically, what do you hope to accomplish?”

“I feel a little silly saying it. But… right now everything is coming out badly for pretty much everyone involved, except maybe the college president… I’d like to make everything come out okay.”

She looked at me silently through the distorting rimless lenses for a time and then reached up and tilted them lower on her nose and looked over them at me.

“My God,” she said.

I shrugged and gave her my sheepish smile. She seemed stable enough to risk the sheepish smile. Less stable women were known to undress when I did the sheepish smile. I was right. She remained calm.

“How can I check on you?” she said.