“Thank you, Bricky,” he said. “I owe you lunch.”

He hung up and turned to me.

“Cash money,” Morgan said. “In hundreds, ninety of them. Several times a week. Each time he’d get a bank check made out to him.”

“How often did he deposit with you?”

Morgan looked at his screen for a few moments.

“Averaged about twice a month.”

“So what did he do with the rest?”

“Wine, women, and song?” Morgan said.

“Probably not women,” I said.

Morgan shrugged.

“Cigarettes, whiskey, and wild, wild men?” he said.

“I don’t know,” I said. “If he was going to spend it, why did he convert it to bank checks?”

“Maybe put it in his checking account.”

“Why not just deposit the cash?” I said.

Morgan shrugged.

“Hey, I’m a simple stockbroker,” he said. “You’re the fucking sleuth.”

“Thanks for reminding me,” I said. “Sometimes it’s hard to tell.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

When I got back from Hall, Peary, KC Roth was waiting in the hall outside my office door wearing an ethereal-looking white summer dress. She appeared not to be wearing stockings. Her legs were tanned. She had on white high heels with no back. Even in the harsh fluorescent light she looked like a slumming angel.

“We must talk,” she said.

I unlocked my door. KC preceded me into the office. As soon as the door closed behind us, KC turned and pressed herself against me and put her arms around my neck and kissed me urgently.

“Kiss me back,” she murmured.

After a while she moved her mouth away and whispered, “Hold me.”

She moved her body against mine in several different directions. I had never figured out how women did that. On the other hand I’d never actually hugged a man. Maybe they did it too and I didn’t know it.

“I’ve wanted you since I saw you,” KC whispered.

“Don’t blame you,” I muttered.

“Put your hands on me.”

“They are on you.”

“They’re on my shoulders,” KC said.

“It’s a start,” I said.

She pushed against me more insistently. I would have said more insistent was not possible, but she managed. She bent her head back and looked up at me, and her lips brushed mine as she spoke.

“Have you ever made love in this office?” she said.

“No,” I said, “I was waiting to get a couch.”

“You could take me now, here, on the floor.”

“I think we’ve gone through this,” I said.

“Come on, you want to.”

“Of course I want to,” I said. “But I’m not going to.”

“You have to,” she said. “You have to.”

“You left your husband for a guy and didn’t end up with the guy,” I said. “You’re being stalked. You’re feeling shaky. You need affirmation, and here I am, the guy who’s going to rescue you from the stalker.”

“That’s just talk,” she said. “You’re a man and I’m a woman.”

There wasn’t much room to maneuver around that, so I left it alone. I didn’t have a lot of experience fighting for my virtue.

“You ever fuck Susan here?” she said, her face almost touching mine.

“I’m impressed,” I said. “The question is intrusive, annoying, coarse, and voyeuristic, that’s quite a lot to get into a simple question.”

“Well, did you? I’ll bet you didn’t. I’ll bet she wouldn’t. She wouldn’t want to do it in a chair,” KC’s voice got very flutey, “because it wouldn’t be ladylike. And she wouldn’t want to do it on the floor because she’d be afraid she’d mess her clothes.”

“Enough,” I said.

I took a somewhat firmer grip on her shoulders and walked her backward toward one of my client chairs. She thought I was succumbing. I could feel her shoulders relax. I sat her down in my client chair and held her there. She raised her face with her eyes closed and her mouth open.

“You and I are not going to have sex,” I said. “I don’t like that much better than you do, but it’s a fact.”

She reached out and began to rub my thigh. I slapped her hand. The action was involuntary, but effective. She pulled her hand away and burst into tears. I went around my desk feeling completely idiotic and sat down, and breathed in and out as quietly as I could. She cried for a little while and rubbed her hand where I’d slapped it.

“You hit me,” she said.

“Not very hard,” I said.

“It was too hard,” she said.

“Hard is in the eye of the beholder, I guess,” I said, and wished I hadn’t said it quite that way.

KC rubbed her hand some more, and sniveled a little. It didn’t seem to me like a good time to tell her that Louis Vincent was almost certainly the guy who was stalking her. Or that she was but one of a fairly long list of women he stalked. Perhaps there was another way to approach that problem.

Then she said, “I don’t understand you, most men would jump at the chance to fuck me.”

“Of course they would.”

“Don’t you think I’m beautiful?” KC said.

“Absolutely,” I said.

“As beautiful as poopie old Susan?”

“No less,” I said.

“You’re not even married to her.”

“I know,” I said.

“I need a man to hold me.”

“Maybe you just want one and think it’s need.”

“What’s that mean?”

I shrugged.

“Just a thing to say.”

“Well, I’ve been through hell,” KC said with a breathy sorrowful catch in her voice.

I nodded.

“And I don’t need a lot of holy-than-thou crap from some guy I’ve hired.”

“I think that’s holier,” I said, “holier than thou.”

“And don’t patronize me.”

Lucky I was a liberated guy and perfectly correct in my sexual attitudes or I might have said something under my breath about women.

“KC,” I said. “I’m trying, with some difficulty, and against most of my genetic programming, to avoid sex with you in a pleasant fashion. Maybe it can’t be done. Maybe the closest I can get to it is to patronize you.”

She sat and looked at me and thought about that. She was gorgeous. I knew virtue was its own reward, but sometimes I wondered if the same might be true of vice.

“So tell me about Susan,” she said. “What is it she does to make you like this?”

“It has to do with love, I think.”

“But how does she get you to do what she wants?”

“She doesn’t,” I said. “I want to do what she wants.”

“But she must do something.”

“What she does,” I said, “is she tries not to want me to do things I don’t want to do.”

“I’m serious,” KC said.

“Me too,” I said.

KC stared at me, she crossed her bare legs and stared some more. Finally she said, “I don’t get it.”

“No,” I said. “You don’t.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

I took a rosewood-paneled elevator up to the top floors of the State Street Building where Hall, Peary flourished. There were five guys in striped shirts and red suspenders riding up with me. For a guy who kept all his money in his wallet, I was spending a lot of time with stockbrokers. When I went into Louis Vincent’s big corner office I closed the door behind me. Louis was contemplating his computer screen, breathless with adoration.

“Hello there,” I said. Spenser, the genial gumshoe.

Vincent looked up.

“Oh, hi. Come on in, or, well, you are in, aren’t you.”

“I bring you greetings,” I said, “from KC Roth, and Meredith Teitler, and a woman in Hingham whose name I do not know, but whose significant other is a large fierce man named Al who says he will remove your head if he ever encounters you.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Vincent said.

“Don’t dick around with this, Vincent. You’ve stalked a number of women in the past and you are stalking KC Roth currently.”

He got to his feet.

“You’re crazy,” he said.

I walked around the corner of his desk and put a good short left hook in under his rib cage on the right side. He gasped and staggered back, and began flailing at me with both hands. He was so inept that his fists weren’t fully closed and if he’d hit me it would have been more of a slap than anything else. But he didn’t hit me. It had been a long time since somebody who punched like he did had hit me. I hit him again, same punch, same place, and he gasped again.