Robert B. Parker’s Revenge Tour

Sixty-Four

Spike went on Melanie Joan’s morning walk with her. He said he’d offered that exciting opportunity to Hawk, who’d told him that walking was part of his exercise routine only when he was making his way from the weights to the heavy bag at Henry Cimoli’s gym.

Spike said he’d take that as a no and Hawk said, “More like a fuck no.”

Before they’d left, and while Melanie Joan was upstairs trying to decide which pair of Lululemon pants to wear, I asked Spike if Melanie Joan had set the plan yet for her and Samantha to leave for New York.

He laughed.

“Melanie Joan making a plan?” he said. “Good one there, Sunny, no shit.”

An hour later I was at my desk, making my way through the hell of trying to find out what might have happened to a child given up all that time ago without even knowing if the child had been given up for adoption, without even knowing the sex of the child, or the state in which it might have been given up for adoption. I kept thinking about a case Jesse Stone had worked on a couple years ago when a baby a mother didn’t want had been left in a dumpster.

If I wanted to do a really deep dive on this, without it occupying all of my waking hours, I might need to hire a hotshot lawyer. Maybe Rita Fiore, red-haired hellcat, might be willing to help me out if I could get her to stop bopping Jesse long enough.

At a little before noon, I called Hawk and asked him if he wanted to have lunch with me.

“Where?” he said.

“You pick.”

“Capital Grille on Boylston,” Hawk said.

“Do we need a reservation?” I said.

“You might, missy,” he said. “I don’t.”

I was getting ready to take the long walk from the office across the Common and the Public Garden down Boylston, all the way to where the Capital Grille was, next to the Hynes Convention Center, when my mail was delivered.

The letter from Dr. John Melvin was included.

After reading it I called Hawk and told him I was going to need a raincheck on lunch.