KC was staring at him as if she’d never seen him or anything quite like him. I wasn’t sure how much of what he was saying he believed, but he was saying it well.

“And I’m determined,” Roth went on, “that you will not have to suffer as you’ve suffered for making honest mistakes.”

“God,” KC said, “I have suffered.”

“And if we don’t put this creep where he belongs.” He nodded at Vincent and paused.

I admired how clever he was at avoiding specifics.

“If we don’t,” Roth said, “will he rape you again? Who else will he rape?”

He paused again, and looked steadily at KC.

“Maybe one day he’ll rape Jennifer,” Roth said softly.

KC made kind of a moan, and stepped back again and sat down on the edge of her couch as if her legs had given way. Again I believed her sincerity, without missing the contrived quality of it. Maybe she was simply an endless series of contrivances and when they had all been peeled away she could cease to exist.

I said, “Did Louis Vincent rape you, KC?”

She stared at Roth for a time as if I hadn’t spoken, then, for the first time, she looked at Vincent.

“Yes,” she said.

Behind her eyes hatred crackled, for a genuine moment, like heat lightning.

“Yes he did,” she said.

Vincent started to speak, looked at Hawk, and didn’t. His gaze shifted rapidly around the room, as if he could find a place to run. He couldn’t. I walked over to the end table beside the couch and picked up her phone and called Sgt. O’Connor. Roth sat down on the sofa beside KC. She put her hand out and he took it. Hawk looked at Roth and nodded his head once in approval. For Hawk that was the Croix de Guerre.

O’Connor came on the line.

“Spenser,” I said. “We have your rapist if you’d like to come up and get him.”

I hung up the phone and turned. Vincent was staring at me. Suddenly his eyeballs rolled back in their sockets and he fell backward. Hawk stepped aside and let him fall against the wall and slide to the floor. He lay on his back with his eyelids open over his white eyeballs and his mouth ajar. We all looked at him.

“Rapist appears a little vaporish,” Hawk said.

Faintly I could hear the police sirens coming our way.

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

I met Robert Walters of Walt and Willie in the late afternoon at a gay bar in the South End near the Ballet.

“Well, the world’s straightest straight boy,” Walt said when I came in.

He was drinking red wine. And I could tell that he’d been doing it for a while.

“Good to be the best at something,” I said.

The bartender had bright blond hair and an earring. The bar had Brooklyn Lager on draught. I ordered one.

“So what you want to talk about, Mister World’s Straightest?”

I saw no reason to vamp on the subject.

“I’d like to talk about the blackmail doodle you guys were running with OUTrageous.”

“Huh?”

“I’d like to talk about the blackmail doodle you guys were running with OUTrageous.”

“Doodle?”

“You guys were discovering closeted gay people and threatening to out them if they didn’t give you money. I’d like us to talk about that.”

Walt finished the rest of his wine and motioned to the bartender.

“I’m going to switch to martinis, Tom.”

“Belvedere,” the bartender said, “up with olives.”

“You got it,” Walt said.

I waited. Walt watched as the bartender mixed his martini and brought it to him. The bartender put out the little napkin, set the martini on it, and went away. Walt picked up the martini carefully and took a sip, and said “ahh.” Then he looked at me, and as I watched him, his eyes began slowly to fill up with tears.

“Whose idea was it?” I said.

Tears were running down Walt’s face.

“Willie and I have been together for seven years,” he said.

His voice was shaky.

“Long time,” I said.

Susan and I had been together for more than twenty, with a little time out in the middle. So I didn’t actually think seven was a long time, but it seemed the right thing to say at the moment.

“I never cheated on him,” Walt said.

He drank most of his martini and then stared wetly into the glass, twisting it slowly by the stem as he talked.

“And here he is stepping out with Amir Abdullah,” I said.

Walt looked at me as if I’d just leaped a tall building at a single bound.

“I’m a detective,” I said. “I know stuff.”

Walt finished his martini and gestured for another.

“That son of a bitch,” he said. “He used to be Prentice’s boyfriend, you know that?”

Walt was monitoring the construction of his second martini, and when it arrived he sampled it immediately. He wasn’t paying much attention to me.

“So what about the blackmail?”

“Willie and I didn’t know anything about it. We were serious about OUTrageous.”

He studied his martini again for a time. His face was wet with tears.

“Then when Prentice died, Amir came to Willie and me. He explained what Prentice had been doing. He said that it had a wonderful justice to it, that queers without the courage to come out of the closet could at least be made to contribute to those of us who were loud and proud about it.”

“Good to take the high road,” I said.

“He said Willie and I ought to continue it,” Walt said. “Said that it was a proud tradition.”

“He want a cut?” I said.

“No. He said he didn’t need the money.”

Walt ate the single big olive from his martini, in several small bites.

“Willie loved it,” Walt said. “He’s always been more rebellious than me. Always ready to give the finger to the straight world.”

“What’s this got to do with the straight world?” I said.

“During Gay Pride he’d march in outrageous drag,” Walt said. “Once he went as a priest with the collar and everything, only wearing a skirt, holding hands with two altar boys.”

“That ought to shock them in Roslindale,” I said.

“I was always kind of embarrassed by it,” Walt went on.

He was having more trouble now, talking, because periodically he’d have to stop and get control of his crying enough to continue.

“Willie used to tell me I was just playing into the straight guilt trap, that I was ashamed of my sexuality. I guess I’m pretty conservative. Willie was always much more out there than old stick in the mud Walt. It’s probably why it happened.”

He was nearly to the bottom of his second martini. His speech was slurring. I didn’t know how much wine he’d drunk before I arrived. Considerable was a fair guess. Right now it was working for me. He was drunk and garrulous and had someone to talk to about his pain. But I didn’t know how long I had before he would get too drunk to talk. I wanted to push him, but I had the feeling that if I pushed I’d remind him that he was admitting to a felony and, drunk or not, he might shut up.

“Why what happened?” I said carefully.

“Why Willie started fucking Amir,” Walt said and started to cry full out.

The bartender looked at me. I shrugged. The bartender went to the other end of the bar and began to reorganize some clean glasses.

“Who would blame him?” Walt said, snuffling and gulping. “Got this uptight homophobic gay lover. Who wouldn’t want somebody more interesting, for crissake. Who wouldn’t want somebody with more…” He stopped and tried to get his breathing under control. “With more… I don’t know what, just more.”

“I don’t know a lot about this,” I said, “but I do know that in a situation like this if you can blame yourself it gives you hope. He’s out of your control, but if it’s your fault, maybe you can fix it.”

“I can change,” Walt said.

He had some trouble with the ch sound.

“Sure,” I said. “You think Amir had anything to do with Prentice going out the window?”

“Amir?”