“He assaulted me,” Abdullah shrieked to the first cop through the door. “He assaulted me.”

The university cops were followed in pretty close order by a couple of Boston cops, one of whom I knew. The university cops wanted to arrest us, but I explained what I was doing there and swore that Abdullah had started it, and the Boston cop that I knew interceded and eventually Hawk and I walked, though we were to stay close in case Abdullah pressed charges.

When we left the university police station we headed for the Harbor Health Club. After Henry Cimoli had stopped fighting, and before he opened what at that time he’d called a gym, on the waterfront, he’d worked corners for a while as a cut man. I had a cut under my eye, and a puffy lip and the knuckles on my left hand were scraped and swollen. Hawk had a black eye and a cut on his bald scalp that bled a lot. We needed Henry’s repair service.

“Well,” I said, “a fine mess you got us into this time, Ollie.”

“He hurt my feelings,” Hawk said.

He was pressing a folded paper towel against the cut on his head.

“You don’t have feelings,” I said. “I’ve heard blacks call you Tom, and whites call you nigger, and for all you cared they could have been singing ‘Louie, Louie.’”

“I know.”

“And all of a sudden you have a NO-BLACK-MAN-CALLS-ME-TOM fit and we’re fighting four martial arts freaks.”

“I know. Done good too,” he said. “Didn’t we.”

“We’re supposed to,” I said. “What was all that wounded pride crap.”

Hawk grinned.

“Scrawny fucker annoyed me,” Hawk said.

“Well, of course he did,” I said.

“Hate phonies,” Hawk said.

“Sure,” I said. “It’s the right thing to do. But if it comes up again, could you hate them on your time?”

Atlantic Avenue was generously dug up and intricately de-toured as the Central Artery project lumbered ahead. I pulled in and parked in among some heavy equipment near the Harbor Health Club.

“Can’t promise nothing,” Hawk said.

CHAPTER NINE

So far I was nowhere.

We had annoyed the hell out of Amir Abdullah but hadn’t learned a thing. I had talked with KC Roth and hadn’t learned much about that case, except that KC was a piece of work. I had talked with Belson and gotten nothing to help me. My next appointment was at the university with Professor Lillian Temple of the English department tenure committee, that afternoon at two. Until then I had nothing else to do except watch the swelling subside in my lip, so I decided to go up to Reading and talk with the cops about KC Roth. No grass growing under my feet. Two cases at a time. I thought about having “Master Sleuth” added to my business cards.

I talked to a beefy red-faced Reading police sergeant named O’Connor in the squad room.

“Yeah, we have a car go by there usually about every hour. It’s easy enough, we routinely patrol that stretch anyway.”

“You vary the time?” I said.

“We’re just sort of shit-kicker cops out here, a course,” O’Connor said, “but we did figure out that if we showed up the same time every night people might start to work around us.”

“Good thinking,” I said. “You have any thoughts on the stalker?”

“Like who he is?”

“Un huh.”

“Well, the ex-whatever is usually the one you look at, if there is somebody.”

“You have any reason to think there might not be a stalker?” I said.

“Well, you’ve talked to the lady,” O’Connor said. “What’s your impression?”

“Good-looking,” I said.

“Yeah.”

“Seems as if she might be sexually forthcoming,” I said.

“You bet,” O’Connor said.

“You got any information on that?”

“Nope, just instinct.”

“Nice combo,” I said. “Good-looking and easy.”

“The best,” O’Connor said, “if there wasn’t the next morning to think about.”

“That could be grim,” I said. “But what’s your point?”

“Just that she seems like she ain’t wrapped too snug,” O’Connor said. “Nothing about her bothered you?”

“She seemed a little contrived.”

“Contrived? I heard you was a tough guy. Tough guys don’t say contrived.”

“Probably don’t say sexually forthcoming either,” I said.

“A course they don’t,” O’Connor said.

“Part of my disguise,” I said. “So you haven’t seen any sign of a stalker.”

“No.”

“Telephone records?”

“She hadn’t talked to the phone company when we talked with her. They weren’t keeping track.”

“I suggested she do that,” I said.

“We did too.”

“Damn. She acted like I was smarter than Vanna White when I suggested it.”

“Sure.”

“So why would she make it up?” I said.

“You’ve seen broads like her, probably more than I have. Husband dumps them, they’re alone out in the suburbs, and they want men around. They want to be looked after. So they call the cops a lot. Maybe Mrs. Roth just took it a step farther and hired a guy to look after her.”

“Me,” I said, “after you broke her heart.”

“Could be.”

“On the other hand, you look like her, you probably don’t have to hire anyone,” I said.

“After they get dumped,” O’Connor said, “they’re pretty crazy. Ego’s fucked. Maybe she don’t know she’s good-looking.”

“She knows,” I said.

O’Connor thought about it for a minute. “Yeah,” he said. “She does.”

“And there’s at least two ex-whatevers,” I said.

“Boyfriend?” O’Connor said.

“Yep. Way she told me,” I said, “she left her husband for the boyfriend and the boyfriend dumped her.”

“Fucking her was one thing,” O’Connor said. “Marrying her was another.”

“I guess,” I said. “You know the other thing that bothers me, her husband’s got the kid.”

“She got a kid?”

“Yep.”

“And the kid’s with the husband.”

“Yep.”

“Doesn’t fit with your usual stalker,” O’Connor said.

“Custody of the kid?”

“Yeah.”

“No it doesn’t. But you never know. He could love his kid and still be crazy.”

“I got seven,” O’Connor said. “The two may go together.”

“You going to stay on this for a while?” I said.

“Yep. We’ll keep a car checking her, keep the file open. ‘Bout all we can do.”

“I’ll talk to the ex-husband, and the ex-boyfriend,” I said. “I learn anything I’ll let you know.”

“Thanks,” O’Connor said. “You learn who it is you might try dealing with him one to one. We can help her get a restraining order and we can warn him he’s subject to arrest. And sometimes if it’s done right he can get hurt resisting arrest. But it usually works better if you get his attention before we’re involved.”

“I’ll keep it in mind,” I said.

CHAPTER TEN

I got to Lillian Temple’s office in the university English department at two o’clock exactly, hoping to impress her with my punctuality. It proved an ineffective approach, because she wasn’t there and the office was locked. I leaned on the wall outside her office until ten minutes past two when she hurried down the hall carrying a big blue canvas book bag jammed with stuff. She didn’t apologize for being late. She was, after all, a professor, and I was a gumshoe. Apology would have been unbecoming. At first glance I figured that Hawk had called it on her appearance, but when we got seated in her small office and I looked at her a little more, I wasn’t so sure.

She was plain, and she was plain in the Cambridge way, in that her plainness seemed a deliberate affectation. Had she chosen to treat her appearance differently, she might have been pretty good-looking. She was in the thirty-five to forty range, tallish, maybe 5’8“, brown hair worn long, no makeup, loose-fitting clothes straight from the J. Crew catalog. Large round eyeglasses, quite thick, with undistinguished frames, a mannish white shirt, chino slacks, white ankle socks, and sandals. She wore no jewelry. No nail polish. Her most forceful grooming statement was that she seemed clean.