“Someone thinks it wasn’t suicide?”

“Me,” I said.

“So tell me.”

I told him why I thought it was murder.

“For obvious reasons, I catch most of the gay squeals,” Farrell said. “If you’ll pardon the expression. I caught this one. So as soon as you got something that won’t give giggle fits to an assistant DA, let me know.”

The bartender came down the bar and put a fresh bowl of peanuts in front of us. While he was handy, we ordered two more beers.

“You think there was something wrong with OUTrageous?” I said.

“Nothing I can prove,” Farrell said.

“But?”

“But there’s some blackmail involved.”

“There is,” I said.

“Got anyone that will testify to it?”

“No.”

“We don’t either,” Farrell said.

“So, what’s your take on ‘outing’?” I said.

“You start treating people as the means to an end, it’s a slippery slope.”

“That’s what I think. You sure you’re gay?”

“Gayer than laughter,” Farrell said.

“And younger than springtime.”

“You could of got all this from Belson, or Quirk,” Farrell said. “Probably did. The gay aspects of this case bothering you?”

“It’s a pleasure to watch the work of a trained investigator,” I said.

“Yeah, cops are us. What’s bothering you?”

I told him about the case.

When I finished, he said, “Guy made a move on Hawk?”

“When Hawk was a kid,” I said.

“I didn’t know Hawk was ever a kid,” Farrell said.

“I knew him when he was a kid,” I said. “And I find it hard to imagine.”

“You and Hawk were kids together?”

“We fought on the same card when we were eighteen. But Hawk isn’t what’s bothering me.”

“You straight guys are simple tools,” Farrell said. “Lemme tell you what’s bothering you. You’re chasing along after whatever it is that you can’t quite catch, and every gay person you encounter is sleazy, crooked, second rate, and generally unpleasant.”

“Or so it has seemed,” I said.

“And, being a basically decent guy, despite the smart mouth, you fear that maybe you are prejudiced and it’s clouding your judgment.”

“Also true, except for the smart mouth part.”

“Same thing happens to me with blacks,” Farrell said. “I spend two months on a drug-related homicide and everybody’s black, and everybody’s a vicious sleazebag, and I begin to wonder, is it me?”

“Neither one of us gets to deal with the best parts of a culture,” I said.

“No. We deal with the worst. You got a case involving murder and blackmail, most of the people you meet are going to be scumbags.”

“Regardless of race, creed, or color,” I said. “Or sexual orientation.”

“And not because of race, creed, color, or sexual orientation,” Farrell said.

“You mean homos aren’t any better than the rest of us?” I said.

“Most of us are,” Farrell said, “but not all of us.”

“How disappointing.”

“I know,” Farrell said.

There was a big picture window in the front of the bar. The sun was west of us now and throwing long shadows onto the street outside. Men in suits carrying briefcases sidled in for a few fast ones before they got the train to Dover. It wasn’t a place where women came much.

“Shall we have another beer?” I said.

Farrell grinned at me.

“We’d be fools not to,” he said.

CHAPTER THIRTY

I spent the rest of the afternoon in my office with a pad of lined yellow paper drawing little connection diagrams among the principals in the Prentice Lamont case. None of them seemed very useful, but that just made the exercise like all the other ones I had been through. Maybe it was time to get the cops into it. I knew Quirk when he tried the window Lamont had jumped from would agree with me that the suicide smelled bad. But with the cops came the press, and Robinson Nevins would be frequently mentioned in connection with the murder of a gay man. This was not, I was pretty sure, what he’d wanted when Hawk brought him to me.

Twice the phone rang, and both times, when I answered there was nothing but the sound of someone not talking at the other end. I did business with enough wackos that it could be one of several, but at the moment my money was on KC Roth. After the second one I dialed *69 and the phone rang for a while but no one answered, which meant nothing. KC could have shut off her answering machine. She could be refusing to answer. She could have called from a phone booth which was now ringing to the empty sidewalk. Or it could have been someone else doing these things.

It was after six when I left the office and walked down Berkeley Street toward my apartment. When I turned right onto Marlborough Street I saw her hiding behind a tree across from my apartment. When I got to my apartment entry I turned and looked over at the tree.

“KC,” I said. “You’re slightly larger than the tree trunk. I can see you.”

She came out from behind the tree and walked toward me. She was dressed in black. She wore a large black hat, and her face, pale in contrast to her outfit, was tragic.

“I can’t stay away from you,” she said.

“Work on it,” I said.

“I think of you all the time.”

“How about the stalker,” I said. “He come back?”

“No. I need to talk with you.”

“Go ahead.”

“Can we go upstairs?”

“No.”

“Afraid?”

“Yes.”

She looked up at me with her head lowered. She looked like an old Hedy Lamarr publicity still.

“Of me or yourself?” she said.

“You,” I said.

“Damn you, can’t you understand how desperate I am. I’ve been abandoned, betrayed, my husband has left me, I’m being stalked.”

“I don’t think you’re being stalked anymore,” I said.

“You caught him?”

“Yep.”

“And?”

“I reasoned with him.”

“Who?”

“Louis Vincent,” I said.

“Louis?”

“Sorry.”

“Louis – oh my god,” she said and fell forward into my arms.

I held onto her and waited while she cried a little. When she stopped crying I let her go. She stayed where she was, leaning hard against me.

“Stand straight,” I said.

“I can’t,” she said. “It’s too much, too awful.”

I gave her a couple of seconds and when she didn’t stop leaning in to me, I stepped suddenly back away from her. She lurched forward and caught herself, and got her balance.

When she was on her own balance again her face darkened and she looked at me.

“You unutterable bastard,” she said, and turned and strode away.

Her hips swung angrily as she headed toward Arlington Street.

Unutterable, I thought. Not bad.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Hawk and I were drinking draught beer in a joint across from the Fleet Center. The Fleet Center had replaced the old Garden, and I could tell that the joint was trying to go along with the upscale clientele, because there was a bowl of cashews on the bar. I had several. So did Hawk.

“Usually it’s a fight to see who gets the six cashews in a bowl of mixed nuts,” I said.

“Kind of ruins the competition,” Hawk said. “When they all cashews.”

We drank some beer.

“You got that stalker thing worked out?” Hawk said.

“Yes, I identified the stalker and explained to him why he should stop it.”

“Firmly,” Hawk said.

“Quite.”

“Good,” Hawk said. “Don’t like stalkers.”

“Only problem is now getting rid of the stalkee.”

Hawk turned his head slowly and looked at me and his eyes were bright with pleasure.

“She taken a liking to you?”

“You might say.”

“Hear victims do that sometimes.”

“Sometimes,” I said.

“You say she good-looking?”

“Un huh.”

“And, you ain’t available, being as how you in love and all.”

“True.”

“Maybe you can divert her my way,” Hawk said. “She’ll thank you for it.”