Now and then - By Robert B. Parker Page 0,4

little chance that linguine or Dover sole was forthcoming soon, so I watched the rain patterns on my windshield and thought about sex. Kendall Square at night is not lively. Now and then someone in rainwear would trudge past me. Occasionally a car, its wipers arcing slowly, would move along Broadway. The rest of the time it was just me, and the bright traffi c lights refl ected on the rain-shiny street.

At about ten of ten the silver Mercedes pulled up and parked next to the parking lot. The tall stranger got out and went around and opened the passenger door. Jordan Richmond got out wearing some sort of cowboy-looking rain hat. They held hands as they walked to her car. He waited while she unlocked the door. Then she swept her hat off and turned into him and they kissed good night. It was a long kiss, enough, probably, to straggle her hair, and it involved a lot of body English. Finally they broke and she got into the car, and then got back out again and they kissed again. Thank God the rain blurred it some. I tilted my head back and stretched my neck and looked for a long moment at the roof of the car. When I looked again she was getting into her car for the second time. This one took. He waited until her door was closed and her car was running before he walked back to his. She pulled out of the parking lot and headed for the Longfellow Bridge. I stayed put. When she was safely on her way, the tall stranger went west on Broadway, and I followed him.

He pulled into a garage on University Road, off Mt. Auburn Street. I lingered outside near the corner, where I could see both Mt. Auburn and University Road. He didn’t reappear. The garage serviced a large condominium building under which it was located, and my guess was that the tall stranger lived there and had accessed it by an elevator in the garage. There was nothing more to see there. I decided to go home and reread my collection of Tijuana Bibles.

6.

The silver mercedes was registered to Perry Alderson, whose address was in fact the Mt. Auburn Street building, unit 112, a condo above the garage where he’d parked. I got out my brown Harris tweed jacket, put it on over a black turtleneck, added a notebook and a camera, and drove over to Cambridge. I left my car with Richie the doorman at the Charles Hotel, and walked through the light rain over to Perry Alderson’s building. There was a woman at the concierge desk in the lobby. I smiled at her. A smile rich with warm sincerity.

“Hi,” I said.

She was red-haired and pale-faced and, had she allowed any of it to show, she might have had a good body. But she was shrouded in one of those voluminous ankle-length dresses that seem to be part of the municipal code in Cambridge. So the condition of her body remained moot.

“Hello,” she said.

“I’m writing a piece on urban living for Metropolis magazine,”

I said. “I was in Chicago last week, Near North, you know. And next week I’m in DC doing Georgetown.”

“Really?” she said.

“Boston this week,” I said. “Cambridge and the Back Bay.”

“And you want to write about this building?”

“I sure do. It’s a beauty.”

“I’m afraid I can’t let you bother the residents,” she said.

“Oh, God no,” I said. “Of course not. I don’t need to. I was a guest here once, Mr. Perry Alderson, and I have pictures of his apartment and a lot of stuff I can use. But the fact-checkers are on my case. I remember I was on the first floor, number onetwelve, but I can’t remember, was it the last one at the end of the corridor?”

“That’s all?” she said.

“Absolutely,” I said. “I have that, and I’m in business. Take a few exterior shots. Be out of your hair.”

“Mr. Alderson is the last door on the left,” she said. I looked down the corridor past the elevators.

“On the left,” I said. “I would have sworn it was at the end.”

“Mr. Alderson is on the left, sir,” she said fi rmly.

“What a memory,” I said. “Some journalist. May I take your picture?”

She almost blushed.

“Photography is not permitted, sir, in the lobby, without permission of the condominium board.”

“Of course,” I said. “Of course. Can you do me one small favor?”

“Well, that would depend,” she said. “Wouldn’t it?”

“I’m going to sort of