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maybe, someday, if you have occasion to go to Maine…"
    I shrugged. "One never knows," I said.
    "Perhaps the most charming part of it all is that it's not just because he was bestial to his child. It's that. But it's also because you would want to find out if he really is the toughest man in Lindell, Maine."
    "For a person I see every ten years you seem to know a lot about me," I said.
    "I know a great deal about men," she said.
    "And I'm typical?"
    "No, you are entirely untypical. You're not like other men and it makes you interesting and I think about you."
    "Jeepers," I said.
    "Filing away Vern Buckey's name for future reference is perfect you. You feel compassion for her suffering and anger at his cruelty and competition in his toughness. You want to save her, punish him, and prove you're tougher. Man/boy. Lover/killer. Savior/ bully."
    "When I run into Vern Buckey," I said, "I'm going to bust his ass for him."
    Patricia Utley put her head back and laughed with pleasure. "I'm sure you will," she said. "And what I like best of all, is after you've done it, you'll feel kind of bad for him."
    "So what shall we do about April Kyle?" I said.
    "Let her go," Patricia Utley said. "She loves this guy. She's having a good time. She's making a lot of money."
    "Ginger said fifty to a hundred thousand," I said.
    "Certainly," Patricia said. "If the girl is attractive and willing, she can make excellent pay. Even more if she is black or oriental."
    "Black and oriental?"
    "Yes. They are perceived as exotic and are in greater demand."
    "Exotic," I said.
    "There are not many jobs at which a woman, or a man for that matter, can make a hundred thousand a year," she said.
    "For a while," I said.
    "Certainly for a while. That's true of baseball players and ballet dancers as well."
    "And then what. Ginger says there's a place in Miami where the girls never get out of bed."
    "A slaughterhouse," Patricia Utley said. "Certainly. There are such places. There's one in Paris, too. But such places are not necessarily the elephant graveyards of old whores. Some go into management." She smiled slightly and glanced at her library with its bookshelves crowded and the spring sun sprawling across her Afghan carpet. "Some marry and lead ordinary lives. You remember Donna Burlington."
    "Aka Linda Rabb," I said. "Sure. It's how we met."
    "Not all whores are full-time. There are many part-timers. Housewives who turn tricks in the afternoon while the kids are in school and the hubby is at work. Sometimes the husband knows. Sometimes he doesn't. There are college girls and actresses and models and computer programmers. I've employed all of the above and some others."
    "Why do they do it?"
    "Besides the money?"
    "Yes."
    "The money matters," Patricia Utley said. "I know it doesn't matter very much to you. But you have enough, and you're so self-sufficient that most things don't matter very much. But money matters a great deal to a lot of people, including me. It is power. It is freedom. It is a support and a security and a sense that you have tangible worth."
    "I understand that, but what else?"
    "Most whores don't like men very much," she said. "They are quite scornful of them."
    "And the men?"
    "I would say that most men who patronize whores don't like women very much."
    "Intimate distaste," I said.
    "Sex and power are pretty tightly connected," she said. "In ways I'm not sure even I understand. And I've had a close-up view for quite some years now."
    "It doesn't explain why April loves Robert," I said.
    "Or thinks she does," Patricia said.
    "Maybe he could love her," I said. Patricia Utley simply stared at me.
    "Love comes in odd shapes sometimes," I said.
    "Spenser," she said, "I don't know very much about love. But I know a hell of a lot about whores and pimps. April Kyle is in the machine. The machine will process her. When the process is through it won't have mattered whether she and Robert Rambeaux love each other or not. You are a man, and you are a