Now and then - By Robert B. Parker Page 0,50

may marry him.”

“If he’ll have you,” I said.

“There’s that,” she said.

It was dark out, and when I looked out the window all I could see was my own reflection. I didn’t look old, exactly, maybe a little weathered, sort of. Like a guy who’d seen too many bodies. Heard too many lies. Fired too many shots. Swapped too many punches.

“He talk about stuff that would interest me?” I said.

“He talks mostly about his father,” Susan said.

“What’s he say?”

She was silent for a time. I could almost hear her sorting through what she thought she had a right to tell me.

“He has admitted that he sometimes uses his father’s exploits in the counterculture, as if they were his. He says it increases his credibility and allows him to pursue his father’s goals more fully.”

“Credibility with whom?” I said.

“He brags that he is partnered with an international revolutionary enterprise.”

“His language?” I said.

“Yes,” Susan said. “An international revolutionary enterprise.”

“He say how they are partnered?”

“He implied that they finance his part of the revolutionary enterprise,” Susan said.

“Last Hope?”

“Yes.”

“What do they get back?” I said.

“He says they like the prestige of associating with him, and implied that he was also a source of intelligence for them.”

“As in spying?” I said.

“That was my understanding.”

“Do you know the name of the people who help fi nance him?”

“No.”

“Why would he tell you all this,” I said. “This is very close to a confession.”

“He cannot keep himself from bragging,” Susan said. “From trying to impress me.”

“And since you have a client-therapist relationship,” I said,

“your testimony would probably not be admissible, if it ever got to court.”

“Probably not,” Susan said. “And, if you are correct about him, he may think I’ll not be available to testify against him.”

“Does he ever wonder why I let him slide? Why I just don’t blow the whistle on him and turn the tapes over to Epstein?”

“I don’t know,” Susan said. “I could speculate that he still assumes your goal is blackmail, and that if you turn over the tapes, you’ll lose all the money you are trying to extort.”

“That would be my surmise, as well,” I said.

“Surmise,” Susan said. “Do you speak more elegantly to me than to others?”

“Yes,” I said. “Except sometimes.”

“When you speak very inelegantly to me.”

“Yes.”

“At those times,” Susan said, “I am a bit inelegant, myself.”

“I’ll say.”

“I wish it were one of those times,” she said.

“Yes,” I said.

“Will you come home soon?”

“I got some cops to talk with tomorrow, and then, unless they open something up for me, I’ll come home.”

“Yay!” Susan said.

“You think he’s telling you the truth about his father?” I said.

“He seems to be speaking of an actual person,” Susan said.

“Feds looked pretty hard back along the counterculture path,” I said. “You’d think if they came across a guy named Alderson they’d record it. Even if it wasn’t Perry.”

“His father’s name was Brad,” Susan said. “Bradley Alderson.”

I was quiet for a moment.

“What?” Susan said.

“Before he changed it,” I said, “Perry’s name was Bradley Turner.”

We were both quiet. I imagined the silence hovering above the small dark towns of Ohio and Pennsylvania, New York and Massachusetts.

“Which means what?” Susan said fi nally.

“Damn,” I said. “I was hoping you’d know.”

55.

The laurel heights police station was across the town square from an upscale shopping mall. It was like it was a detached part of the mall, with the kind of pseudo small-town America décor that you find in theme parks. I parked in a visitor’s slot out front and went inside.

The cop on the front desk directed me to the detective squad room on the second floor. I sat down in a straight chair beside the desk of a detective named Coley Zackis.

“Name’s Spenser,” I said. “I called you yesterday.”

We shook hands.

“After you called,” Zackis said, “I got out the Turners’ fi le.”

He patted a thin manila folder on his desk.

“Not much,” he said.

“You want to show it to me,” I said, “or you want to tell me.”

“You been a cop?” Zackis said.

“I have.”

“Then you know what a file looks like,” he said. “Be easier if I tell you.”

“Illegibility is one of the first things you learn on the job,” I said.

Zackis grinned. He was a heavy guy with a noticeable belly and thick hands.

“And you got to spill coffee on them,” he said.

“What’s in this one?” I said.

“Hardly enough to spill coffee on,” Zackis said. “Turners stopped paying the mortgage. Eventually the bank sent somebody over there. Place looked deserted, so they called us. Patrol guys went up and took