Blue Screen by Robert B. Parker Page B

didn’t, he doesn’t care about us.”
    Sol nodded.
    “I know,” he said.
    “And the picture?”
    “He coulda put it there before he let us in,” Sol said.
    “But why would he?”
    “Don’t know,” Sol said. “What I know is that slime-bag motherfucker couldn’t love anybody.”
    I looked at Sol.
    “Is there something personal?” I said.
    “Yes.”
    “Is it my business?” I said.
    “No.”
    I smiled and shook my head. We were nearly downtown now.
    “So many things aren’t,” I said.

22
    R ICHIE HAD DROPPED Rosie off with Spike that afternoon, and she and Spike were in my loft in South Boston when I came home. They both kissed me. Spike settled for one, affectionate and passionless. Rosie inflicted the death of a thousand laps. Spike opened a bottle of Riesling and we sat at my little window alcove and sipped wine together. I had an extra-wide custom chair that I sat in to eat, which allowed Rosie to sit beside me. She sat there now, thrilled to have me home, and hopeful, probably, that we might have something to eat with the wine.
    “Eat on the plane?” Spike said.
    “Something unutterable,” I said, “which contained pasta.”
    “Best not to think of it,” Spike said.
    “Have you been here long?” I said.
    “Richie delivered Rosie around four,” Spike said. “I been here since.”
    “You haven’t been trying on my clothes, have you?”
    “I wanted to,” Spike said. “But there was a size problem.”
    “God, I hope so,” I said.
    “Tell me about LA,” Spike said.
    Which I did. By the time I got through, we had opened a second bottle of Riesling and my coherence was becoming endangered.
    “Erin was a hooker,” Spike said.
    “Yes. I suppose that’s why she pretended that Misty was just her assistant. The rigmarole with names. Keep her origins a mystery.”
    “She seems to keep getting rescued by men and being rebuilt. First the pimp…”
    “Gerard,” I said.
    “Then Buddy Bollen.”
    “She married Gerard,” I said.
    “And she lives with Buddy.”
    I nodded.
    “How’s the pimp?” Spike said.
    “What’s he like?”
    “Yeah.”
    “What you’d expect. Self-important. Soulless. Filled with contempt for women. Except that he claims still to be in love with Erin. It doesn’t fit.”
    “Things don’t,” Spike said.
    “Be easier if they did,” I said.
    “But boring,” Spike said.
    “Still a man who exploits women for money,” I said.
    “Not all whores are exploited,” Spike said.
    I was a woman. I knew the official woman’s view of prostitution. I started to say it.
    “It’s not a victimless crime,” I said. “The whores are victims.”
    “Some,” Spike said. “Perhaps many. Nobody likes giving BJs at truck stops. But you’ve known whores who liked being whores.”
    I drank some wine. I looked at Rosie. She appeared agnostic about the question.
    “I…yes. I have,” I said. “Especially the high-end hookers. They like the good clothes, the nice restaurants, the luxury hotels, the good money. Hell, they like the sex. Don’t tell anyone in Cambridge I said that. I may have to go there someday.”
    “Maybe Erin liked it,” Spike said. “Given the way you describe her situation with Buddy, maybe she still does.”
    “Maybe,” I said.
    “Maybe the pimp really does love her,” Spike said.
    “Maybe.”
    “And while we’re speaking the unspeakable, maybe you did the nasty again with Tony Gault.”
    “It wasn’t nasty,” I said. “You’re just jealous.”
    “I only met him once when he was in Boston,” Spike said.
    “You know how you are,” I said.
    Spike grinned.
    “I know how both of us are,” he said. “You’re easy.”
    “I am not easy,” I said. “But I’m fun.”

23
    P ARADISE, MASSACHUSETTS , in late November was the perfect reentry fix from Southern California. It was gray. Snow was spitting. And the wind off the Atlantic was persistent. I parked in the lot next to the Paradise police station and went in to see the