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smiled.
    “Your mother gets a good idea,” he said, “she likes to hang on to it.”
    “So what did you think of the latest Mr. Right?” I said.
    “Another Ivy League jerk,” my father said.
    “Your fault,” I said. “You sent her to Mount Holyoke.”
    “To major in jerks?” my father said.
    “Elizabeth’s specialty,” I said. “Including Hal.”
    My father shook his head. “At least she divorced him,” he said.
    “See,” I said. “Good parenting shows.”
    We both smiled. He didn’t mention my own divorce. He didn’t ask about my love life. He knew that if there was something I wanted him to know, I’d tell him. My father was quiet. He wasn’t shy. His quietness didn’t make you feel compelled to talk. It was just a sort of bone-deep peacefulness that made me feel safer when I was with him. Richie had been like that.
    “I’m on an odd case,” I told him.
    He nodded.
    “Do you know who Erin Flint is?”
    “Some kind of movie star,” he said.
    I knew my father never watched anything but ballgames and Western movies.
    “Very good,” I said. “She’s also planning to play major-league baseball.”
    My father nodded.
    “Do you think a woman could play?” I said.
    “In the big leagues? Regularly? Not one time as a stunt?”
    “Yes.”
    “Probably not,” my father said.
    “Sexist pig,” I said.
    He shrugged.
    “That’s probably it,” he said.
    “Well, I’m now working for her,” I said.
    “Erin Flint?”
    “Erin Flint.”
    “You going to tell me about it?” my father said.
    “Yes,” I said.
    My father listened completely, as he always did. And ate his breakfast. When I got through, his plate was empty. He sat back and finished his second cup of coffee. A waiter hustled over with a pot. My father nodded. The waiter poured him a fresh cup and topped off mine.
    “Police up there mind you being along on this?” he said.
    “I don’t think they mind.”
    “Anybody up there know what they’re doing?”
    “The police chief seems pretty good,” I said. “He used to work Robbery Homicide in Los Angeles.”
    “Retired?” my father said.
    “From LA? No, he’s young. He’s, like, my age.”
    “So what’s he doing here?” my father said.
    “Change of pace?” I said.
    My father shrugged.
    “I’ll ask Healy,” he said. “He lives up around there. He may know him.”
    I smiled.
    “He does,” I said. “The chief asked Healy about me.”
    “Nice to know he’s thorough,” my father said.
    We drank our coffee.
    “Big money,” my father said, “is access. That would include access to criminals.”
    “And Buddy Bollen is big money.”
    “That’s my understanding,” my father said.
    My father was sitting with his back to the window. I could look past him at Newbury Street where well-dressed people walked by briskly on important and obviously upscale missions.
    “You think he’s connected?”
    “No way to know,” my father said. “But most people with his kind of wheeler-dealer money know what the papers call ‘underworld figures.’”
    “Follow the money,” I said.
    “People mostly get killed over money, or love,” my father said.
    “Or hatred,” I said.
    “Back side of love,” my father said.
    “I wonder if Misty had a love life?” I said.
    “Good-looking woman in her thirties,” my father said.
    “And Buddy’s got money,” I said.
    “See,” my father said. “You already have a couple of clues.”

11
    I TALKED ON the phone with Tony Gault, again.
    “Do you know if Erin Flint has an agent?”
    “I don’t think so,” Tony said. “I think Buddy Bollen takes full care of her.”
    “Manager?”
    “Same answer,” Tony said.
    “She must have had an agent or a manager at some time.”
    “You don’t have a prayer in the business without one,” Tony said.
    “By which you mean the industry,” I said.
    “Exactly.”
    “Do you think you could find out who it was?” I said.
    “Tony Gault, mega-agent? Sees all, knows all?”
    “I