She was very fat, wearing some sort of robe or housedress. It was hard to tell, and in truth, I didn’t look very closely.

“My name is Spenser,” I said, and handed her a card. She didn’t take it, so I put it on the table.

“You’re Elizabeth Boudreau’s mother,” I said.

Her glass was empty. She picked up the bottle of port with both hands and carefully poured it into the jelly glass. She put the bottle down carefully, and picked up the glass carefully with both hands and sipped the port. Then she looked at me as if I hadn’t spoken.

“Could you tell me a little about Elizabeth?” I said.

“Elizabeth.”

“Your daughter.”

“Gone,” the woman said.

“Elizabeth’s gone?”

Mrs. Boudreau nodded.

“Long time,” she said.

“What can you tell me about her?” I said.

“Bitch,” her mother said.

I nodded. If Beth was thirty-six, this woman was probably sixty, maybe younger. She looked older than Angkor Wat.

“Why bitch?” I said.

“Whore.”

This wasn’t going terribly well.

“How about Mr. Boudreau?” I said.

She drank port and stared at me.

“He around?” I said.

“No.”

“Dead?”

“Don’t know.”

“Can you tell me anything about him?” I said.

“Bastard,” she said.

“Could you tell me where to find him?”

“No.”

I had hung around in this reeking trash bin as long as I could stand it. There was nothing I could find out that would be worth staying any longer.

“Thank you,” I said, and turned and went out.

I took in some big breaths as I walked to my car. The air felt clean.

BOLEY LABONTE OWNED a bowling alley and lounge called Kingpin Lanes, which sat in the middle of a big parking lot on South Tarbridge Road. There were two pickups and an old Buick sedan parked outside. Inside, four guys were bowling together. In the lounge three other guys were sitting at the bar, drinking beer and watching a woman with few clothes on dancing at a brass pole to music I neither recognized nor liked. It was two o’clock in the afternoon.

I sat at the bar and ordered a beer. The bartender was a red-haired woman with an angular face and skin you could strike a match on.

“Boley around?” I said.

“Who wants to know?” the bartender said.

I gave her my card, the understated one, where my name was not spelled out in bullet holes. She looked at it.

“A freaking private eye?” she said.

“Exactly,” I said.

“Why you want to talk with Boley?”

“None of your business,” I said.

“Yeah, I guess not,” she said, and took the card and walked down to the end of the bar and ducked under, which was not easy given how tight her jeans were. She opened a door marked Office and went in; a moment later she came out and ducked back behind the bar.

“Boley says he’ll be right out,” she said.

I nodded and sipped my beer. The girl on the pole was a kid, maybe eighteen, nineteen, looking deadly serious, starting her long climb to stardom. A man came out of the office and walked down the bar and sat on the stool next to me.

“How ya doin’,” he said. “I’m Boley LaBonte.”

We shook hands.

“I’m looking into a case involving Elizabeth Boudreau,” I said. “I understand you were married to her.”

He had dark, curly hair, worn sort of long and brushed back. He had a thin mustache. His flowered shirt was unbuttoned to his sternum, showing a hairy chest and a gold chain. The material of the shirt stretched a little tight over his biceps.

“That was a trip,” he said.

“What can you tell me about her?” I said.

“Jesus,” he said, and looked at the bartender. “Mavis, gimme a Coke.”

She put it in front of him, and he drank some and looked at my beer bottle.

“You okay?” he said.

I said I was.

“Beth Boudreau,” he said. “I heard she’s doing good.”

“Married money,” I said.

“Good for her,” Boley said. “You know anything about where she come from?”

“I talked with her mother this morning,” I said.

“Alberta?” Boley said. “She still alive?”

“Sort of,” I said. “Is there a Mr. Boudreau?”

“Nope,” Boley said. “Never was. Alberta got knocked up.”

“Jesus,” I said.

“Yeah,” Boley said. “Hard to think about.”

I nodded.

“Anyway,” Boley said. “Alberta Boudreau was always fat and homely, and my old man says never had a date. Then one day she comes up pregnant. It was a joke in town, Alberta was one for one, you know?”

“Who was the father?”

“Don’t know. Nobody seems to,” he said.

He drank some more Coke.

“This ain’t Boston,” he said. “Or Cambridge. Everybody’s like shocked back, what? Thirty-six years ago, something like that. But goddamn, Alberta has the kid. Everybody thought she had it to prove she’d gotten laid.”

“Could be other reasons,” I said.

“Could be,” Boley said.

He finished his Coke, and the bartender delivered a second one without being asked.

“How they get along?” I said.

“Beth and her mother?” Boley said. “Don’t know. Don’t know anybody was ever in the house.”

“I was,” I said.

Boley made a face.

“I don’t want to know,” he said.

“No,” I said. “You don’t. How about school. Beth catch any grief about all this in school?”

“I dunno. I’m ten years older than her. But…” He drank some Coke. “You know how school is.”

“I do,” I said. “How’d you meet her?”

“She was working the pole here,” Boley said. “At the time, I’m the bouncer. Used to box a little-Golden Gloves and stuff.” He shrugged. “Good enough for here.”

“And now you own it,” I said.

“Yeah,” Boley said. “Guy owned it was a lush, he was going under. My old man died, left me a little insurance dough. I got it cheap.”

“Great country,” I said.

Boley was looking at me.

“You used to fight,” he said. “Am I right?”

“Yep.”

“It’s the nose, mostly,” Boley said. “And around the eyes. Ever fight pro?”

“Yep.”

“Heavy?”

“Uh-huh.”

“You good?” Boley said.

“I was good,” I said. “Not great.”

“So you was never gonna be champ,” Boley said.

“No.”

“But I bet you ain’t lost many on the street,” Boley said.

“Not many,” I said.

“Thing about boxing,” Boley said, “you know. You may not win, but you got a plan.”

I nodded.

“And,” Boley said, “when you box, you learn that getting hit ain’t the end of the fucking world.”

I nodded again.

“Just another day at the office,” I said.

He grinned. We were quiet for a time, watching the girl making love to the brass pole.

“Beth was like that kid,” Boley said. “She come here thinking she was a performer, you know? Thinking this was her ticket out of Palookaville.”

“But it wasn’t,” I said.

“Not from dancing,” he said.

“You sleep with her?” I said.

“Course,” Boley said. The bartender brought him another Coke. “Sleep with them all, part of the deal. I hire ’em to strip for the customers and fuck the owner.” He grinned. “Which is me.”

“You sleeping with this kid?” I said.

“Sure.”

“How old is she?”

“She’s eighteen,” Boley said. “Gotta be eighteen to do this, and I’m careful about that.”

“Any of the dancers freelance with the clients?”

“On their own time,” he said. “Not on mine. Don’t look like much now, but most nights we’re jumping. It’s a nice business for me. I’m not gonna hire anybody underage. I’m not gonna serve anybody underage. I’m not gonna allow no soliciting on my premises.”

I nodded.

“You still bouncing?” I said.

He shook his head.

“I hire it done now,” he said.

“How was the marriage?”

He shrugged.

“She was hot enough,” he said. “And she tried to be nice to me. I mean, I was not only her husband, I was her income, you know?”