"The goods. The smoking pistol. Take your choice."

"Don't be evasive."

I smiled sincerely. "I will if I want to," I said.

Browne took his hands from where they were clasped behind his head and folded them across his chest.

"All right," he said. "Enough. I am a U.S. congressman and I've been here a long time and I've got one hell of a big clout around here. You are about to get yourself in trouble that's deep, wide, and permanent."

"If the walls were real mahogany," I said, "I'd probably buckle. But…" I spread my hands.

Browne was getting mad, and trying not to let it show, and not succeeding. "Do you, by any chance, know who that young man's father is?"

I nodded.

"Then perhaps you have some idea of the kind of pressure he can bring to bear, in case mine is not enough."

"There's no in-case to it, Congressperson. Yours is not enough."

"I am not going to argue with you, Spenser. I want you to stay away from Gerry Broz. You've been warned. If you persist, let it be on your head."

"Does Joe know about Gerry?" I said.

"Know what? How would I know what Gerry Broz's father knows? What kind of a question is that?"

"One I think I can answer," I said. "If Joe knew, then Gerry would have gone to him, not you, and some people that might be able to do damage would have showed up, not those two computer salesmen you sent."

Browne was deciding to stonewall it. He stared at me with his face empty. Probably his only genuine look.

I shook my head. "Joe doesn't know," I said.

Browne kept looking at me. Behind the empty look was fear. This wasn't how he'd wanted it to go.

"Who called this meeting anyway?" I said.

"Enough," he said. "It is over. Good day, sir."

I stood. "Good day, Congressperson," I said.

He stood up suddenly. "I am not a goddamned congressperson," he said. His voice was raspy. "I am a congressman, goddamn it, congressman."

I stopped at his door and halfway out leaned back in.

"We are all God's persons," I said.

Susan and I spent all day Saturday at the National Gallery. We looked at the special Rodin exhibit and we cruised through the various galleries, looking at the French impressionists and, briefly, cubists and whatever the hell Jackson Pollock was; but I spent the most time, as I always did, in among the low-country painters like Rembrandt and Vermeer and Frans Hals. Saturday night we drove up to Baltimore and ate crab cakes in Harbor Place. And Sunday we stayed mostly in bed and read newspapers and tested room service.

I left her at work Monday morning. She kissed me goodbye and we both had a sense, I think, of incompleteness, of something left out. As if we stepped to the tune of different drummers. Jesus Christ. I shook my head angrily, alone in the car, and stepped to the tune of mine out to National Airport.

I ditched the rental car and took an Eastern flight back to Boston. At quarter of two I was pulling up in front of an office building on State Street. Before I went into the office building I looked up to the top of State Street where the old South Meeting House stood, soft red brick with, on the second floor, the lion and the unicorn carved and gleaming in gold leaf adorning the building as they had when the Declaration of Independence was read from its balcony and, before it, the street where Crispus Attucks had been shot. It was a little like cleansing the palate. Washington 's federal grandeur faded.

I took the elevator to the eleventh floor and walked down the marble wainscotted corridor to the far end, where a frosted glass door had CONTINENTAL CONSULTING CO. lettered on it in gold leaf that had begun to flake. I went in. The same Utrillo prints were on the walls. A perky-looking receptionist with a plaid skirt and a green sweater smiled at me and said, "May I help you?"

"Joe Broz please."

"May I say who's calling?"

I told her. She spoke into the phone. Then she turned to me. Her face serious. Her nose, I noticed, turned up slightly at the end. Her brown hair was cut short and very neatly groomed. Her nail polish was fresh and dark, almost brown.

"May I ask concerning what matter, Mr. Spenser?"

"Gerry," I said. She relayed the message.

The door behind her opened and Vinnie Morris stood in it. His face was blank, but he was looking at me very hard. He jerked his head and I went in. Everything was the same. The room all in white. The big black desk. The wide picture window that looked out over the waterfront. The dark blue rug. But Broz had changed. Ten years had made him old. His hair was white. He seemed smaller. He was still overdressed and immaculate but much of the theatricality had left him. He didn't seem on camera anymore.

Amazing. And here I was as youthful and vigorous as ever.

"What the fuck do you want?" Broz said.

"Ah, Joe," I said. "It's what makes you special, that little spike of real class."

"I asked you a question."

In addition to Vinnie, Ed was there leaning against the padded bar, an open copy of People on the bar in front of him. There was another member of the firm sitting in a black leather chair with his feet up on the coffee table. He had longish black hair and a vandyke beard. He had on a pink cashmere sweater that was stretched to a gossamer web around his upper arms and his waist. Fat, but hard fat. A bodybuilder gone bad.

"This is family talk, Joe. You want them around?"

Without taking his eyes off me he said, "Ed, you and Roger wait in the other office."

They went at once, without question or comment. When they were gone Vinnie leaned against the door, his arms folded.

Broz leaned back. His face was tanned and full of lines. He still had a big mouthful of white teeth and he still wore a diamond pinky ring. And his eyes were without humanity. He nodded his head once for me to begin.

"I can put your kid in the pokey, Joe."

Broz made no movement. It was like staring deep into the eyes of a turtle.

"He's selling cocaine. He's involved in sex orgies with underage children. He's distributing pornographic materials. I know that and I can prove it."

Vinnie was immobile against the door. Broz's eyes were barely open. Nothing moved.

"What I don't know, but I can guess, is how much of this is performed as your agent."

Still nothing moved.

"I say he's not. I say he's out on his own and trying to be a success on his own to impress the old man."

I paused. There was a crystal stillness in the room. Broz seemed to have gone deeper inside his own silence.

"I say he's also blackmailing Meade Alexander with dirty pictures of Mrs. Alexander."

The sky through Broz's picture window was a clean blue, no clouds, some pale winter sunshine. Below and at a distance I could see the curve of the harbor and the shoreline south past Columbia Point.

Broz's voice when he finally spoke seemed barely connected to him; it seemed to ease out of something deep and remote.

"Tell me about it," he said.

I told him about the death threats to Alexander. I told him about the two kids that got shoved around in Springfield. I told him about Louis Nolan. I told him about the blackmail threat and about the films. I told him that one of the actors in Mrs. Alexander's film was Gerry. I told him about burglarizing Gerry's apartment. About the two teenyboppers, and the cocaine delivery route and the granny party and the talk I had with Bobby Browne in his office with the fake mahogany paneling. Throughout the whole recitation Joe's eyes were barely visible through the lowered slits of his eyelids. He might have been made of terra cotta as he sat tanned, old, and impeccable, without even the signs of breath stirring him. Behind me, at the door, Vinnie was no different.