Lillian turned right at Nini’s corner and went down Brattle Street to The Casablanca bar and restaurant. When I got inside she was at the bar. It was about 7:20 on Thursday night and the bar was half empty. Or half full depending on how much you’d been drinking. I slid onto a bar stool beside her. She paid no attention to me. But she was aware of at least a male shape beside her because she looked at her watch sort of obviously to let me know she was waiting for someone and was not available. She ordered a glass of white wine, making it a longer process than it might have been by asking what kinds they had and how much it cost. She settled on a modest California chardonnay. I ordered a draught beer. I looked around on the bar, no cashews. They didn’t seem to care about becoming upscale. Maybe they already were upscale. Lillian sipped her wine and looked ostentatiously at her watch again, lest one of the unaccompanied males, made reckless by animal lust, proposition her. She made no eye contact with anyone. Everything in her being vibrated with I’m-waiting-for-someone.

“Excuse me,” I said. “Do you come here often?”

She fixed me with a withering stare, which changed slowly into recognition, which changed slowly into anxiety.

“Oh,” she said, “it’s you.”

“Yes it is,” I said.

“I’m waiting for someone,” she said, and drank some of her wine.

“Really?”

“Yes. Bass, Bass Maitland.”

She said the name as if it would make me slide off the stool and scuttle for the door. I held fast. She drank some more wine.

“While you’re waiting,” I said, “may I buy you a glass of wine?”

“I… I’d… I would rather you didn’t,” she said.

“Okay,” I said.

I sat and looked at her. She looked at me and looked at her watch and glanced around the bar casually, the way a rat does when it’s cornered. I drank a little beer. She finished her wine. I was quiet, still looking at her with a friendly look. Spenser – large but pleasant. She looked at her empty wineglass. She glanced at me and smiled a half smile. And glanced quickly down the bar toward the door to remind me that Bass was imminent. I remained calm.

“Offer still stands,” I said.

“Oh, well, very well. It’s kind of you.”

I gestured to the bartender.

“Martin,” I said, “a glass of white wine, for the lady.”

“You’ve been here before,” she said.

“I’ve been everywhere before,” I said in perfect imitation of Humphrey Bogart.

She didn’t seem to recognize it.

“Really?” she said.

Martin brought the wine and looked at my beer. I shook my head.

“Sure, the other guy is Gary,” I said. “Impressive, isn’t it.”

She smiled politely. Badinage didn’t seem her strongest suit. She drank nearly half of her new glass of wine. Maybe that was her strongest suit. I didn’t say anything. She looked around the bar again. I had a swallow of beer. She drank most of the rest of her wine. I nodded at Martin. She checked the doorway, looked at her watch, finished her wine, and Martin brought her another one.

“Oh, I really couldn’t,” she said.

“Okay,” I said.

She looked at the fresh glass of wine. A trickle of moisture ran down the side of the cold glass.

“I don’t mean to be ungracious,” she said.

“No offense,” I said.

She looked at the wine. I swallowed a little more beer. She picked up the wine and drank some.

“No point in being stubborn,” she said and smiled at me thinly.

She was wearing black sandals and a loose ankle-length black dress with pink and yellow flowers printed on it. Her hair was pulled back tight to her head and culminated in a long braid. Her skin was pale, and she had on no makeup except some pink lipstick.

“How are you doing in your, ah, investigation,” she said.

“Depends on how you define progress,” I said. “I’m no closer to finding out whether Robinson Nevins got jobbed in his tenure bid, but I have found out that Prentice Lamont was a blackmailer, and that he was murdered.”

“Murdered?”

“Un huh.”

“How do you know that?”

“I detected it.”

“And what’s this about blackmail?” Lillian said.

She was nearly finished with her third glass of wine and when Gary went by she gestured him for a refill.

“He was blackmailing homosexuals who would rather not be outed,” I said.

She finished her previous glass and handed it to Gary as he set the new glass down.

“My God,” she said.

“Exactly,” I said.

She looked at me uneasily for a moment.

“Did you come here to talk to me?” she said.

“I followed you here,” I said.

“Followed?”

“Yep. I need to know who told you that Lamont’s suicide was connected to Robinson Nevins.”

“I have already told you that is confidential information.”

“Not anymore,” I said. “I haven’t gone to the cops yet, because I’m trying to save everybody a lot of grief. But if I can’t solve this myself, I will take it to the cops, and you can tell the homicide guys, who, by the way, are nowhere near as charming as I am.”

“Homicide?”

“You are going to have to tell, Professor Temple. You can tell me, now, or you can tell the cops soon.”

She looked at the door again, and around the bar, and at her watch, and drank some wine and turned to me and said, “Difficult choices.”

“Not really,” I said. “One’s easy, one’s hard, same outcome.”

She stared at me for a moment, looked away, looked down at her wine, looked back at me, but couldn’t hold the look.

Staring at the wineglass she said, “Will he have to know I told?”

“Probably not,” I said. “I can’t guarantee it, but I won’t tell if I don’t have to.”

She nodded, still staring into the wineglass.

“Amir,” she said.

“Amir Abdullah?”

“Yes.”

“He told you Prentice Lamont and Robinson Nevins were having an affair?”

“Yes. And that Robinson broke it off cruelly and Prentice killed himself.”

“He say how he knew this?”

“No.”

“And you took it and reported it whole, as he told it.”

“I had no – have no – reason to doubt him. Amir is a very principled man.”

I had some reservations about exactly how principled Amir Abdullah was, but I let them slide, because Bass Maitland had arrived. He was strolling in from the front door. By the way Lillian was looking at him he might have been walking on water.

“Bass,” she said.

“Hi, Lil,” he said in his big round satisfied voice.

He was wearing a seersucker jacket, well-faded blue jeans, a black polo shirt with the collar turned up, and deck shoes, no socks.

Lillian said, “You remember Mr… the detective we talked to.”

“Spenser,” I said.

“Oh, absolutely. How are you?”

He gave me the kind of big firm handshake that a big firm man would give. He was so pleased with himself that it was infectious. I almost liked him.

“Is this a coincidence,” he said with a big smile, “or are you staking us out?”

“Holding your place for you,” I said, and stood up.

“Appreciate it.”

He took my seat and smiled again, like an affable crocodile. He was probably a very principled man, too. So were they all, all principled men. And women. There were few things more annoying than a visibly principled person. Or more troublesome. Most of the ones I’d met could have used a little uncertainty to dilute their principled-ness. But it didn’t seem a fruitful topic to discuss with Bass and Lillian, so I said good-bye and went off to get my dog.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

The call came from KC Roth just after I had settled in to watch the Sox and the Angels from the West Coast.

“Come quickly,” she said. “Please. I need you.”

She sounded teary.

“What’s your problem?”

“Louis.”

“What about Louis?”

“He came back.”

“Really?”

“Oh, please, come quickly. Please.”