Robert B. Parker’s Revenge Tour

Fifty

On my way back to Boston I called Spike. He said he was at the restaurant, working on next week’s staff schedule, but that Hawk was looking after Melanie Joan.

“So you gave the two of them a proper introduction,” I said.

“So I did.”

“And how did Melanie Joan, ah, react to him?”

Spike said, “Almost with a sense of wonder.”

“Hawk must have found that amusing,” I said.

“Just going off my limited exposure to him,” Spike said, “Hawk would probably find a gun pointed at him amusing.”

Samantha Heller was in Washington for a day. Before she’d left she told me that as impossible as it was for Melanie Joan to believe sometimes, she actually did have other clients. And now had one, a writer of spy thrillers, who needed some hand-holding, being so far past when the latest book should have been delivered that the publishing house was starting to act like the Mob, especially because the author’s sales had dipped recently.

“Male or female?” I said.

She told me the name.

“Wait a second,” I said. “You never told me you repped that hack.”

“You never asked,” she said. “And by the way? One girl’s hack is another girl’s big-assed earner.”

“How does Melanie Joan feel when you have to devote your time and attention to another?” I said.

“How do you think?” Samantha said.

I told her my theory about Melanie Joan seeing herself as an only child.

“Bingo,” Samantha Heller said.

“Somebody will be watching you even in our nation’s capital?” I said.

“Every move I make,” she said. “Every step I take.”

I was taking the exit ramp off Storrow and considering calling Richie Burke and asking him to dinner if he could get a babysitter on short notice when Holly Hall called to tell me that her husband had died.