Bad Business

25

Darrin O'Mara broadcast from a studio on the seventh floor of an ugly little building near the Fleet Center. I met him when he got off the air, and we went around the corner to a big faux Irish pub for a drink. The Celtics and the Bruins were through for the year, so the place was nearly empty and we were able to sit by ourselves at one end of the bar. O'Mara ordered a pint of Guinness. I didn't want to seem inauthentic, but I couldn't stand Guinness. I ordered a Budweiser.

O'Mara took a sip, and looked pleased. He turned a little toward me, with one elbow on the bar, and said in his soft rich radio voice, "How can I help you?"

"Tell me about Marlene Rowley," I said.

"Marlene Rowley?"

"Yep."

"Why would you think I would have anything to tell you about her?"

"We were talking about, ah, relationships," I said, "and she began to sound like Chretien de Troyes."

"Really," O'Mara said.

"She was expounding the same flapdoodle about courtly love that Ellen Eisen espouses," I said. "I assumed she got it from the same place."

"I don't believe that the principles of courtly love are flapdoodle," O'Mara said. "Sometimes clients misstate or misunderstand those tenets. But that does not invalidate them."

The bartender was a firm-looking redhead in tight black pants. She was slicing lemons at the other end of the bar. There was a gray-haired couple drinking rye and ginger and chainsmoking in a booth near the door. They didn't talk, or even look at each other.

"Do you know Marlene Rowley?" I said.

"I do, professionally."

"And her husband?"

"Yes," O'Mara said. "They were both in my seminar."

"And the Eisens?" I said. "Same seminar?"

"Yes."

"And, of course the Rowleys knew the Eisens."

"Of course, the husbands were colleagues at Kinergy."

"What kind of seminar is it that they were in?" I said.

"Love and Liberation, it's called."

"Yippee," I said. "Did you know that Ellen Eisen and Trent Rowley were having an affair?"

"They had developed a relationship. It is part of the seminar. Marlene and Bernie were developing a relationship as well."

"A sexual relationship?"

"Of course."

I nodded. I squeezed my eyes shut trying to concentrate. "So," I said slowly, "were they, in the language of courtly love, wife swapping?"

"They were developing cross-connubial relationships," O'Mara said.

"I'll bet they were," I said.

"My presence here is voluntary, Spenser. I don't have any obligation to sit here and listen to your misinformed disapproval. "

I looked at the gray-haired couple in the booth. They each had a fresh rye and ginger. He was staring out the front window of the pub. She was looking at the bottles stacked up behind the bar. Both were smoking. They didn't seem close. Probably rebelling against coercive love.

"Did all four members of this tag team know of the situation?" I said.

"Of course. Everything took place within seminar guidelines."

"So why did Marlene hire me to follow her husband?"

"I have only your word," O'Mara said, "that she did."

"Take as a premise that she did," I said. "Speculate with me." O'Mara signaled the bartender for another Guinness.

"And a pony of Jameson's," he said. "Beside it."

The bartender looked at me. I nodded yes to another Bud.

"Were that the case," O'Mara said, "perhaps it would indicate that Marlene had failed to transcend the material plane."

"Meaning that if Trent became enamored enough of Ellen to stroll off into the sunset," I said, "Marlene wanted to be sure she'd get hers."

O'Mara was watching the bartender pour the whisky. He seemed relieved when she started back down the bar with it. "Hypothetically," O'Mara said.

"Any sign that was happening?" I said.

"I am not a dating service," O'Mara said. "I instruct people in a certain philosophy, and I help them understand its implications."

"Do you know anyone named Gavin?" I said.

"Not that I can think of," O'Mara said.

He took a sip of the whisky and washed it with Guinness. He looked happier.

"Bob Cooper?" I said.

"No, I don't believe I know him either," he said.

"And you don't know any reason somebody might shoot Trent Rowley?"

"God no," he said.

"Eisen didn't mind his wife and Trent."

"Absolutely not. Any more than Trent minded Bernie and Marlene."

"And why would anyone," I said.

"Why indeed," O'Mara said.

The Irish boilermaker was cheering him greatly. "You ever read Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde?" I said.

"If I did," O'Mara said with a smile, "I've forgotten it. Why do you ask?"

"Character named Pandarus," I said. "I was going to ask you about him."

O'Mara polished off the rest of the Irish whisky and gestured at the bartender for another one.

"I fear that you may be misled," he said. "The references to courtly love are metaphoric, if you see what I mean."

The whisky arrived. He took a fond sip and let it trickle down his throat. Then he drank some Guinness.

"My field is not literature," he said. "Though literature is surely a stimulus to my thinking."

He had swung fully around on his barstool, facing the big nearly empty room, with both elbows resting behind him on the bar. I felt a lecture lurking.

"My field," he said, "is human interaction."

"You and Linda Lovelace," I said.

I left O'Mara at the bar. As I came out, I saw a guy with shoulder-length black hair round the corner onto Causeway Street and disappear.

I only saw his back, but the hair looked like the guy I'd seen at Bob Cooper's club.