Bad Business

21

No one was in the office at 9:15 in the morning when I showed up at the Templeton Group. No one arrived. I called them on my cell phone. An answering machine told me that they weren't there to receive my call, but that my call was important to them, and I should leave a message. I left my cell phone number. There was a sort of coffee shop-cafeteria on the lobby floor of 100 Summer, so I went down and ate two donuts and drank some coffee. At 10:30 I called Templeton again. Same machine. Same message. I left my cell phone number.

Back at my office, I opened all the windows so that the fresh exhaust fumes from Berkeley Street could dispel the stale air. Then I got the phone book out and looked up Jerry Francis and Mario Bellini. Neither was in Boston. I called information.

That took a while, but eventually I found Jerry Francis in Dedham and Mario Bellini in Revere. I called them. I got two more answering machines. I left my cell phone number.

I was beginning to feel lonely. I called Elmer O'Neill's number in Arlington. I got a machine. I left my cell phone number. After I hung up I stood for a while looking out my window. The weather was good. There were a number of well-dressed women moving past on Berkeley Street. I honed my surveillance skills on them for a while, and then, in the absence of a better plan, I closed up the office and drove out to Arlington to see if Elmer might show up.

The recycled gas station was closed, and locked. There was no back in an hour sign in the window. I sat in my car and did some more work on 411, looking for a home number and address. It was easy. He lived in Arlington, in his office. I got out and went and looked through the office front window. He wasn't in there. On the left wall there was a door to what had probably once been a service bay. I walked around and looked in a small window. It was Elmer's room. He wasn't in it. I drove up to Revere and located Mario Bellini's place on the first floor of a faded three-decker. He wasn't in it. Then I drove down to Dedham and tried Francis's pad in something brick that they probably called a garden apartment. Francis wasn't there. No one answered the door anywhere. Apparently all three lived alone. I called them all a couple more times on the drive back from Dedham. I didn't get anyone. I didn't bother to leave my cell phone number.

I n the detective business when every avenue seems closed, the best thing to do is to find a really good-looking woman and solicit her for sex. Susan was still with a patient when l got there, so I went upstairs to her apartment and sat on the couch with Pearl and drank some beer. Susan was as likely to drink beer as she was to bake a cherry pie. But she always kept a few bottles of Blue Moon Belgian White Ale on my account. Which I took to be strong evidence of her love.

I n Susan's honor I drank the beer from the English pub glasses that she had bought for that purpose, and I was on the third beer when she came in.

"Last of the whack jobs?" I said.

"I try to think of them as patients," Susan said. "But, yes, I have no more customers today."

She came over and kissed me and Pearl, in that order, which I took to be another strong sign. Then she got herself a glass of white wine and sat on the couch with me, on the side away from Pearl.

"How goes the war on crime?" Susan said.

"Not well," I said. "I can't seem to find any of my witnesses."

"Really?" Susan said. "Would you like to tell me about it?"

"Of course," I said. "Why did you think I came here?"

"Sex," Susan said.

"Besides that," I said.

"Tell me about it," she said. I did.

"Do you think anything has happened to them?" Susan said. "There could be a hundred reasons why none of them is at their post," I said.

"But it is somewhat coincidental that all three of them are not at their post simultaneously."

"Yes," I said. "It is."

I got careless with my beer glass for a moment, and Pearl slurped in a fast tongueful before I moved it to a more secure location.

"It's only dog slobber," Susan said.

"Nothing wrong with dog slobber," I said.

"Of course there isn't," Susan said. "What are you going to do now?"

"Finish the beer," I said.

"No." Susan smiled. "I meant about the missing people?"

"I'll keep trying," I said. "Probably talk with Gavin again."

"Think you'll get anything from Gavin?"

"Probably not."

"What do you want to know?" Susan said.

"Ultimately I want to know who killed Trent Rowley. But in order to do that it might help if I knew why Gavin was having people followed."

Susan said, "Perhaps Darrin O'Mara would be worth a talk."

"Matters of the Heart?"

"Un-huh. You mentioned that Ellen considers him her advisor."

"And she might have sought his advice," I said, "on other matters?"

"I believe that Darrin," Susan said, "would argue that all matters are of the heart."

"He would," I said.

Susan turned her palms up in a gesture that said, "Well?" She sipped her wine. I finished my beer. Pearl watched us intently.

"Do you think matters of the heart includes matters of the libido?" I said.

"Of course it does," she said. "The distinction is artificial."

"So love and desire are aspects of the same thing?"

"Um hm."

"And you love me," I said.

"Oh, oh!" Susan said.

I looked at her and waited.

"What about the baby?" Susan said.

"We could let her watch."

"Oh, ick!"

"Or not," I said.

"I do have a soup bone in the refrigerator," Susan said, "that I keep for emergencies such as this."

"So could we leave her here on the couch?" I said. "With the bone, sneak into your bedroom, and reconsider the connection between libido and love? While, oblivious, she gnaws happily away out here?"

"We'd be fools not to," Susan said.