"You happily married to Hunt?" I said.

She shrugged again.

"Hunt's got a good future," she said.

"You get along?"

"He cares about me, but he's not as, ah, physical as I am."

"And you take care of that problem by, ah, branching out," I said.

"Most of the time I'm luckier than I was with you."

"I don't think luck's got much to do with it," I said.

She smiled a little but didn't say anything.

"You love your husband?" I said.

She was quiet for a moment watching her toe circles.

"We get along," she said. "If I have a little adventure like this one, it doesn't mean we don't get along."

"Hell, Glenda," I said. "Maybe it means that you do."

"You can understand that?"

"I can understand that it might," I said.

"But not for you?"

"No, not for me."

"Why not."

"I'm in love," I said.

"Oh," she said.

I stood up. I knew she hadn't seen a black man pull anyone into his car. I also knew she wasn't going to make a court-useful admission of that fact, so I saw no reason to press the point. Besides that, my id was locked in grim combat with my super ego, and was going to prevail if I didn't get out of there.

"Thanks for showing me your body," I said.

"I had hoped to do more."

"Yeah," I said.

I tried not to sound wistful. She stood, and walked with me to the door.

"Would you kiss me good-bye?" she said.

"Of course," I said.

We kissed. It was a nice kiss, but I didn't quite know what to do with my hands.

When the kiss was over I opened her door behind me. She made no attempt to conceal herself. If anyone in the hall wanted to look, apparently Glenda didn't mind. I stepped into the hall and closed the door. The hall was empty. Walking out of the building toward my car, I did some deep breathing, trying to get my blood flow back into its normal pattern.

Chapter 30

BY NOW THERE were several things pretty obvious about the death of Melissa Henderson. One was that it probably wasn't Ellis Alves who killed her. Another one was that there was a lot of pressure being exerted to let him take the rap for it anyway. I felt it was time to report these findings to my client, so I went and had breakfast with Rita Fiore at the Bostonian Hotel.

The dining room at the Bostonian was on the low rooftop of the hotel. It was mostly glass and from where we were you could look down at Quincy Market and Faneuil Hall, and watch the upwardly mobile hurrying through the Market carrying coffee and a bun on their way to work. Rita's mobility was so far up by now that she could watch them run while she ate sitting down. I looked around the room. It was full of suits, mostly male.

"Are we having a power breakfast?" I said.

"Yes."

"I was feeling kind of electric," I said.

"Of course," Rita said. "You confer with people at breakfast, and it makes them think you're too busy for lunch. It also gives you an excuse for coming in late."

The waiter poured us coffee, offered us juice, which I accepted and Rita declined, and presented us menus.

"If we were eating at Charlie's Kitchen," I said, "would it still be a power breakfast?"

"Certainly not," Rita said. "Don't you know anything? You read Boston magazine and they tell you where it's a power breakfast."

"Oh," I said. "Seems a high price to pay for knowing."

"Things don't come free," Rita said. "What have you got for me on Ellis Alves."

I told her what I knew, and what I thought, interrupting my discourse once to order some corned beef hash with a dropped egg, and a couple of more times to take bites of it when it came. I was slightly nonspecific when I reported my talk with Glenda. Rita listened quietly, sipping her coffee and eating the plain bagel, toasted, no cream cheese, which she'd ordered. It was the sort of breakfast Susan would have ordered, except that Rita ate both halves of the bagel. When I got through, Rita leaned back so that her white blouse stretched tight across her chest. It was a nice look.

"Cone, Oakes has a lot of clout in this city," Rita said, "and judges give us more leeway than some guy working out of his cellar in Weymouth Landing, but even we can't go into court with a case that consists of you standing up in front of the judge and saying that Alves's conviction doesn't make any sense."

"I understand," I said. "I just wanted to keep you, ah, abreast of the case."

"Nice phrasing," Rita said. "And you're right. It doesn't make sense."

She reached across and took a forkful of my hash and ate it.

"Oh, yum!" she said. "Don't you ever have to worry about your weight?"

"Just keeping it up."

"You bastard," she said.

We ate in silence for a moment. Rita finished her dry bagel and washed it down with her black coffee and looked distracted for a moment.

"A cigarette would taste good now," she said.

"Eventually you won't miss it," I said.

"How long for you?"

"Twenty-seven years."

"And you don't miss it?"

"Not a bit."

"How long before you didn't miss it?"

"Ten years."

Rita stared at me and said, "Oh, God!"

There was another silence while Rita gazed out window and mourned her smoking habit. It was spitting rain mixed with snow, and the streets around the Market gleamed like polished ebony.

Finally, still staring out at the weather, Rita said, "You can quit this case, you know."

"I know."

"I don't want you to get killed for Ellis Alves. Maybe he didn't do this, but he's done a lot. You'd be a bigger loss than he is."

"I know."

"Susan want you to quit?"

"No."

Rita's eyes widened. "No?" she said.

"No."

Rita was silent for a while.

"She's a pretty smart broad, isn't she?" Rita said finally.

"Yes."

"I didn't think you'd quit, but I wanted to be sure you knew where we stood on it."

"Thanks."

"Okay, we can establish the relationship between the eyewitnesses and Melissa's boyfriend easily enough. And I guess we can establish that Clint Stapleton was her boyfriend. That's just time and money. Send some paralegals over to Taft and ask enough questions of enough undergraduates."

Rita paused and looked out the window at the Market some more, then she shifted her gaze to me.

"I think that talking to Trooper Miller would pay off."

"If he'll talk. Which I don't think he will."

"You can pressure him with whatsisname's testimony."

"Bruce Parisi," I said. "He won't repeat it unless I'm punching him in the kidney."

"Okay, so you still can't take it to court. But you can threaten to take it to court and see what happens. I got some weight with the local DEA."

"Phil Fallon?" I said.

"My God, what a memory."

"What's Fallon going to do for me?"

"He could get Medford to pick up Parisi and hold him for a bit if that would do you any good," Rita said. "And make sure Miller knows it."

"Just because you ask him to?"