VINNIE MORRIS WAS a middle-sized ordinary-looking guy who could shoot the tail off a buffalo nickel from fifty yards. We weren’t exactly friends, but I’d known him since he walked behind Joe Broz, and while he wasn’t all that much fun, he was good at what he did. He kept his word. And he didn’t say much.

We were in my car, parked at a hydrant on Beacon Street beside the Public Garden, across the street from where Beth lived with Gary Eisenhower.

“Her name’s Beth Jackson,” I said. “We’ll sit here and watch. If she comes out and gets in a car, we’ll tail her. If she comes out and starts walking, you’ll tail her.”

“’Cause she knows you,” Vinnie said.

“Yes.”

Vinnie nodded.

“And that’s it?” he said. “You want me to follow this broad around, tell you what I see?”

“Yep.”

“I don’t have to clip her?”

“No,” I said.

“I don’t like to clip no broad, I don’t have to,” Vinnie said.

“You won’t have to,” I said.

He looked at her picture.

“Nice head,” he said.

“Yep.”

“How long we gonna do this?” Vinnie said.

“Don’t know.”

“She takes a car and I just ride around with you,” Vinnie said.

“Correct,” I said.

“Okay,” he said.

“You care why we’re tailing her?” I said.

“Nope.”

One of Vinnie’s great charms was that he had no interest in any information he didn’t need. We sat with Beth for several days. Mostly she walked. So mostly I stayed in the car and Vinnie hoofed it.

“She goes to Newbury Street,” Vinnie said. “Meets different broads. They shop. They have lunch. Today it was in the café at Louis.”

“Must be an adventure for you,” I said.

“Yeah. I thought Louis was a men’s store.”

“All genders,” I said.

“You buy stuff there?”

“Don’t have my size,” I said.

“Got my size,” Vinnie said.

“See anything you like?” I said.

“Most of it looks kinda funny,” Vinnie said.

“That’s called stylish,” I said.

“Not by me,” Vinnie said.

“She spot you?”

Vinnie stared at me.

“Nobody spots me, I don’t want to be spotted,” Vinnie said.

“I don’t know what I was thinking,” I said.

We did that for most of a week, with Vinnie doing all the legwork and me twaddling in the car. On a white, dripping, above-freezing Friday in late February, I called it quits.

“You stick with her till I call you off,” I said to Vinnie. “Or you can’t stand it anymore. You don’t need me. She’s obviously a walking girl.”

“I won’t get sick of it,” Vinnie said. “I like looking at her ass.”

“Motivation is good,” I said.

Vinnie got out of the car, and I drove home.

GARY EISENHOWER came to see me. I was in my office with my feet up, listening to some Anita O’Day songs on my office computer and thinking lightly.

“Who’s the broad singing,” Gary said when he came in.

“Anita O’Day,” I said.

“I need to talk,” he said.

I turned Anita off and swiveled my full attention to him.

“Go,” I said.

He sat in one of my client chairs.

“I…”

He shifted a little and crossed one leg over the other.

“I… I feel really bad,” he said. “About Estelle.”

I nodded.

“And I… I… I got no one else to talk to about it,” he said.

“Happy to be the one,” I said.

“I mean, I been with Estelle for, like, ten years,” Gary said.

“Long time,” I said.

“I… I cared about her.”

“Through all the philandering” I said.

“Sure, I told you. She liked it, too. We were in that together.”

I nodded.

“For crissake, who would want to kill Estelle,” Gary said.

I shook my head. I wanted to go where he wanted to. I suspected he was circling it. He shifted in his chair and crossed his legs in the other direction. He tapped out a little drumbeat on his thighs for a moment.

“The thing is,” he said. “The thing that kills me is… did I do something to cause this?”

I looked interested.

“I mean,” he said, “did I, like… did I bring her into contact with someone who would kill her?”

I waited. He didn’t say anything else. I waited some more. He interlocked his fingers and worked his hands back and forth. Clarice Richardson had been wrong, I thought. Gary was not devoid of something like a moral or ethical sense. Whatever it quite was, it was nagging at him now. He looked at me. The sense had apparently taken him as far as it was going to. Probably wasn’t a very robust sense to begin with.

“I mean, why would someone kill her?” he said again.

“Money,” I said. “Love and the stuff that goes with it.”

“What stuff?” he said.

“Passion, jealousy, and hate,” I said.

“Estelle didn’t like Beth living with us,” Gary said.

I nodded.

“I mean, she did at first,” he said. “You know, she liked the money, and the truth of it is, she liked the three-way for a while.”

“And you said you liked it okay,” I said.

He smiled briefly, and for a moment the old Gary shone through.

“Hell,” he said. “I like everything.”

“Beth like the three-way?” I said.

He looked startled.

“Beth?” he said.

“Uh-huh.”

“She never said she didn’t,” he said.

“So why didn’t Estelle like Beth living there?” I said.

“I don’t know,” Gary said. “I mean, women are a pretty weird species.”

“One of the two weirdest,” I said.

Gary looked blank. Then he kind of shook it off.

“Anyway, Estelle started saying stuff like Beth was getting too bossy, and how we couldn’t get any privacy.”

“She say that to Beth?”

“I don’t think so,” Gary said. “She said it to me quite a bit toward the end. But I never heard her talk to Beth about it.”

“You say anything to Beth?” I said.

“Me? No. I learned a long time ago to stay out of a catfight.”

“You think Beth might have killed Estelle so she could have you to herself?” I said.

“We was at the big Community Servings event, at the Langham,” Gary said. “Cops told us when she died. Beth couldn’ta done it.”

He said it too fast. Like he’d rehearsed it.

“The Hotel Langham affair your idea?” I said.

“Me? No. Beth wanted to go. Said she knew a lotta people went to it. Said she wanted them to see her boyfriend.”

“You say anything about being Estelle’s boyfriend?”

“Hell,” Gary said. And there was no bravado in his voice.

“I’m everybody’s boyfriend.”

“And Estelle’s dead,” I said.

Gary didn’t speak. He nodded his head slowly, and as he did, tears began to well in his eyes.

HAWK CAME TO MY PLACE to babysit Pearl, and Susan went with me to New York for fun. We stopped for a tongue sandwich at Rein’s deli on the way down. I made several amusing tongue remarks while we ate, which Susan said were disgusting. That night we stayed uptown at The Carlyle, had dinner at Café Boulud, and went to bed before midnight.

I was prepared for several hours of wild abandon when I got into bed. But by the time Susan got through with her nocturnal ablutions, I had nodded off. I woke up in the morning with Susan’s head on my chest. I shifted a little so I could look at her. She opened her eyes and we looked at each other. She moved a little so we were facing.

“You’ve always been an early riser,” Susan said.

“Is that a double entendre?” I said.

“I think so,” Susan said.

“Shall we take advantage of it?” I said.

“Right after we shower and brush our teeth,” Susan said.

“By then it may be too late,” I said.

She smiled. And got out of bed.

“Not you and me, big boy,” she said. “For us it’s never too late.”