Now and then - By Robert B. Parker Page 0,8

We could say I was helping you look for your keys . . . A drink first? . . . Maybe a short one while I fl uff up . . .” The bag bumped on the fl oor . . . a sound that 38 might have been a shower . . . The sound of intimacy . . . Jordan screamed . . . and giggled . . . “What are you doing to me? . . . I think I should give you a blow job.”

I shut it off.

“That’s all there is,” I said.

Doherty was rigid. His face was flushed. He looked past me out the window. His eyes fi lled.

“ ‘I think I should give you a blow job,’ ” he said.

“Hard to hear,” I said.

“You ever hear anything like that?”

“No.”

“Then how the fuck do you know how hard it is?”

“I’m guessing,” I said.

“Who is he?”

I expected the question. It was possible he’d go looking for Perry with a gun. It was possible he’d use the gun on himself. Or on his wife. I couldn’t make those judgments for him. He had a right to know.

“Name’s Perry Alderson,” I said.

“How’s she know him.”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“What’s he do?” Doherty said. “He work there?”

“I don’t know.”

There were things I suspected about Perry, but they didn’t seem like things that Doherty had a right to know. At least until I knew.

“Find out,” Doherty said.

I nodded.

“You going to be all right?” I said.

“I don’t know.”

He stood suddenly and walked past my desk and looked out my window.

“What are you going to do?” I said.

“I have no idea,” Doherty said. “I have absolutely no idea what to do.”

His voice had thickened. His shoulders began to shake. He was crying. Without another word he turned from my window and left my office.

I sat for a while after he left, looking at nothing, breathing deeply, trying to locate exactly what it was I was feeling.

11 .

It was about three in the afternoon. The rain had stopped, and the day was bright and not very warm when I walked down Cambridge Street to the Government Center Holiday Inn. I was meeting the special agent in charge of the Boston FBI office. His name was Epstein and he was at the bar with a Coke when I got there.

“That’s tempting,” I said.

“The Coke?” Epstein said. “Bureau is really pissy about having the SAC drunk during business hours.”

I ordered a scotch and soda. Epstein turned his glass slowly on the bar in front of him.

“Sure,” Epstein said. “Rub my nose in it.”

“What do you know about an organization called Last Hope?”

Epstein stared at me.

“What am I, Public Information?”

Epstein didn’t look like too much. He was balding and kind of scrawny, and he wore round dark-rimmed glasses that looked sort of stark against his pale skin.

“The bureau have any interest in them?” I said.

My drink arrived.

“As far as I know, the bureau never heard of them.”

“Which means you never heard of them,” I said.

“Same thing,” Epstein said. “But I’ll check.”

“How about a guy named Alderson?”

“Who he?” Epstein said.

“He appears to be the head of Last Hope.”

“Again,” Epstein said, “I’ll check, but as far as I know, we don’t know him or his outfit and we have no interest. Should we?”

He continued to turn his half-drunk glass of Coke slowly on the bar in front of him, using just the tips of his fi ngers, watching the procedure as if it were interesting.

“Don’t know yet,” I said.

I took a drink. Epstein looked up and watched me sadly as I drank.

“How about Operation Blue Squall?”

The glass kept turning. Epstein continued to look at me sadly.

“What about Blue Squall?” Epstein said.

“I understand it’s an anti-terrorism project,” I said. “Which is currently interested in an outfit called Freedom’s Front Line.”

Epstein stopped turning his glass and sat back in the highbacked bar stool.

“FFL,” Epstein said. “You want to tell me how you know about this stuff?”

“I want to tell you some of it,” I said.

“I may want all of it.”

“Cross that when we come to it,” I said.

Epstein nodded.

“I’m working on a divorce case,” I said. “Husband thinks the wife is cheating on him, wants me to fi nd out if she is.”

“Exciting work,” Epstein said.

“Right up there with investigating subversives like Dr. King.”

“Okay,” Epstein said. “Okay. We did do some work in Mississippi, too.”

I nodded.

“So I find out that the husband’s fears are justified, and for proof, I bug the love nest and listen to them.”

The excitement of the