He smiled.

“Abigail, Beth, Nancy, Regina,” he said. “The gang of four.”

“Are they the only ones with whom you are at the moment practicing your profession?”

“Not hardly,” Gary said.

“Maybe you should plan to stick with them,” I said. “And leave my gang alone.”

He picked up a butter knife and tapped a little beat on the table with it while he looked at me.

“I got no reason to change my plans,” he said.

“I’m supposed to give you a reason,” I said.

He shrugged.

“What are you gonna do?” he said. “These ladies are willing to pay because they don’t want their husbands to know. That hasn’t changed. None of them will press charges. If you tell the cops or whatever, every one of them will deny that they ever had anything to do with me.”

“I could keep punching your lights out,” I said, “until we reach an agreement.”

“Yeah, maybe,” he said. “I have a sense that it might not be your style. But say it was. If you did it once, okay, I’m sore for a few days. I might be tougher than you think I am. And when I felt better, I’d get hold of your employers and they’d call you off, for fear I’d expose them.”

“And if they didn’t?” I said.

“I’d expose them,” he said. “They’re not the only fish in my creel, you know?”

“I don’t seem to terrify you,” I said.

“I been living this life for a long time,” he said. “I’m pretty light on my feet.”

“And the cops don’t terrify you,” I said.

“Nothing much does,” he said. “You got the tab on this?”

“Sure,” I said. “Expense account.”

“Sort of like me,” he said, and stood up.

“See you around,” he said.

“Yep,” I said.

He picked up his shopping bags and strolled out of the lounge. I watched him go and smiled. I kind of liked him. I picked up his butter knife by the blade and slipped it into my coat pocket. Then I paid the bill, tipped handsomely, and strolled out of the lounge, too.

GOT SIX E. HERZOGS,” Quirk said to me. “None of them named Elliot. Got no Gary Eisenhowers.”

“There’s a surprise,” I said.

We were having lunch at Locke-Ober.

“How come you know everybody?” I said.

“Been coming here a long time, most of them are politicians or lawyers.”

“That you met in your work,” I said.

“Yep,” Quirk said.

He grinned.

“Arrested some of them,” he said.

“Not enough,” I said.

“Everybody got arrested that should get arrested,” Quirk said, “we wouldn’t have no place to put them.”

“How about the butter knife?” I said.

Quirk nodded.

“There were prints on the butter knife,” he said. “Yours were on the blade, and there were two others.”

“One would be whoever set the table,” I said.

“Young woman named Lucille Malinkowski,” Quirk said.

“Why have you got her prints on file?”

“Don’t know, nothing criminal. Maybe she was in the army, maybe she has a gun license, maybe she used to work someplace where she had to have clearance. I didn’t know you’d care.”

“And the other one?

“Belongs to a guy named Goran Pappas,” Quirk said.

“ ‘Goran’?”

“Aka Gary Pappas,” Quirk said.

“Why is Gary in the system,” I said.

“He did three in MCI-Shirley for swindling,” Quirk said.

“From a woman?” I said.

“Yes.”

“What’d Gary look like?” I said.

“Six feet one inch, one hundred seventy pounds, dark hair, brown eyes, even features, age thirty-eight at the time of his arrest.”

“Which was?”

“In 2002,” Quirk said.

He produced a computer printout of Gary Pappas’s mug shot. It was Gary Eisenhower.

“Anybody want him now for anything?” I said.

“He’s not in the system,” Quirk said. “Course, the system’s imperfect.”

“It is?” I said. “How did that happen?”

Quirk didn’t bother to answer.

“You want to discuss Gary with me?” he said.

“He’s blackmailing a bunch of women,” I said.

“Tell me about it,” Quirk said.

I told him most of it, leaving out the names.

“Not a bad gig,” Quirk said. “Banging good-looking women every day, getting money for it.”

“It might get boring,” I said.

Quirk looked at me.

“Or not,” I said.

Quirk nodded.

“So they hired you to make him stop,” Quirk said.

“Yes.”

“You got any evidence?” Quirk said.

“Got no evidence we can use.”

“Women won’t testify?”

“No.”

“So what are you supposed to do?” Quirk said. “Scare him?”

“I tried that,” I said.

“How’d that work for you?” Quirk said.

“It didn’t,” I said.

“Disappointing,” Quirk said.

“Makes me feel old,” I said.

“Want me to stop by and have a talk with him?” Quirk said. “Unofficially?”

I shook my head.

“Don’t think he’d care,” I said.

“About the homicide commander?” Quirk said.

“I don’t think cops worry him,” I said.

“Now I feel old,” Quirk said.

“This is a pretty cool guy,” I said. “He knows what he’s doing, and he doesn’t seem to scare.”

“Like you and me,” Quirk said.

“Yeah, but he’s better-looking,” I said.

“Than you and me?” Quirk said. “How is that possible?”

SUSAN AND I made love on Sunday morning at her place with the bedroom door closed and Pearl grumbling unhappily outside it. When we were through, Susan whisked the covers up over us, as she always did, and we lay quietly on the bed for a while.

“You know, don’t you,” Susan said, “that I was a cheerleader at Swampscott High School?”

“I do know that,” I said.

Susan flipped the covers back and rolled out of bed, and stood naked beside it.

“Sis-boom-bah,” she said, and jumped into the air and kicked her heels back.

“Is that in honor of my performance?” I said.

“Ours,” she said. “And us.”

I nodded.

“Sis-boom-bah,” I said.

Susan opened the bedroom door and Pearl bounded in, jumped on the bed, turned around maybe fifteen times, and flopped down where Susan had been. I looked at her. Then I looked at Susan.

“There’s a definite difference,” I said.

“ Pearl was never a cheerleader,” Susan said.

We showered and dressed, which took me considerably less time than it took Susan. She was just snapping her bra when I headed for the kitchen to start breakfast. Pearl stayed where she was.

By the time I had made my whole-wheat blackberry pancakes and put them on the plates, she came out with her face on and her clothes in place. It was weekend informal, a scoop-neck black T-shirt, jeans, and loafers. But everything fit her so perfectly and she was so beautiful that I felt the same rush of amazement and triumph I always felt in moments like these.

She sat at the table and sipped her orange juice. I put the pot of coffee on the table and sat across from her and looked at her. She looked back at me, and finished her orange juice, and said something that sounded like “hum,” which I knew to be positive. I drank some orange juice and poured us some coffee. Pearl sat attentively beside the table. I would have been quite willing to discuss the particulars of what Susan and I had just done together, but I knew it violated some inward standard of privacy that she maintained. Sex is good; talking about it afterward is not good. So I shut up. Shutting up rarely leads to anything bad.

“I was thinking about your person,” she said.

“You’re my person,” I said.

“No, no, I mean the Gary Eisenhower person. Did you tell me he has sex every day?”

“Seems to,” I said.

“With people he doesn’t love,” she said.

“That’s my impression,” I said.

“What do you think of that?” she said.