Yeah, I thought. He's not a fool. Or a sucker.

"I went to school with him until eighth grade," she said. "He was the kind of kid who used to set off firecrackers in the boys' room."

The conversation died out. I didn't mind hearing Barbara talk. I had opened the door about the affair and I didn't mind hearing what she had to say about the man who had been with my wife. The man I thought I knew. "Then what?" I asked.

"Then I went off to Tabor Academy and he went to Barnstable High."

"Tabor, huh?"

"I liked to sail. Thought I was good at it. Turned out a lot of people were better."

A picture of Barbara Belbonnet sailing came into my mind. The perspective was all wrong. She was sitting straight up in the c.o.c.kpit of a Laser. Half as tall as the mast. "Ever sail with the Gregorys?" In my vision they were little people. Lilliputians. But there were hundreds of them. Scattered all over the deck of the Laser.

"I've done it, sure. We were all members of the yacht club."

"Sail with Ned?"

"I have."

"Peter Martin?"

"I know Peter. I don't think I've ever sailed with him."

"Done the Figawi race?"

"Every sailor in these parts has, sooner or later. But I haven't done it with the Gregorys."

"But you've partied with them. Figawi parties, I mean."

"I have." She inspected the ash, tapped it, made sure the tobacco was still burning. "Tyler, my almost ex, used to work on their boats. The Senator would sail someplace like the Caribbean and then he'd fly home or to D.C. or wherever, and Ty would sail the boat back for him."

Barbara's almost ex was all things nautical. That, she told me one time, was the problem with him. He loved the sea more than her. More than the kids. I thought about my ex and what she loved more than me. Apparently everything.

I heard a voice in the neighborhood, a mother shouting at her son. I heard a car door slam shut. An engine gunned to life. The car took off. Barbara and I exchanged looks, but said nothing.

"How did you find out about the affair?" she asked, after we had smoked in silence for a while.

"Buzzy."

"He told you? Why would he do that?"

"There are people who want him to run for D.A. against Mitch. He's afraid the affair will be exposed." I had not expected to come right out and tell her. I heard the words and wondered why I had. I wondered if it had anything to do with her being friends with the Gregorys. Run home and tell them, Barbara. Let them squish Buzzy like a bug.

But "Huh" was all she said. She put the cigar in her mouth, did it expertly, and squinted her eyes against the smoke. And then she added, "Why would somebody pick him to run?"

"From what I understand, it has to do with his family connections."

She took out the cigar, waved it around, and said, "Then why not come to me? My family is as established as his. My background is probably a lot cleaner."

Probably, I thought, because your family is established a little differently than Buzzy's.

"Maybe they're s.e.xists," she said. The idea seemed to get her worked up, made her suck hard on the cigar. "Who are 'they'?"

"McBeth, McQuaid. Those guys."

"Get out!"

"No. Why?"

"McBeth and McQuaid want to take Mitch down? What on earth for? So they can build stuff without permits? Wait, wait, wait, wait." She held up one hand, the non-smoking hand. Her eyes brightened. "This have anything to do with the Indians over in Mashpee? The ones who are trying to get a casino?"

"I don't think so."

"Why not?" Barbara turned in her seat. She had lost interest in her cigar.

"There are people out there," I said, not looking at her, "who are convinced the Gregorys were involved in the murder of Heidi Telford." Take that back to the compound, Barbara.

I tapped my cigar ash, watched it fall. "They think that Mitch is protecting the family rather than investigating them."

Barbara bounced. Her cigar apparently was in her way because she threw it onto the pavers. "You're talking about old Bill Tel-"

"No, I'm not, Barbara. If anything, Bill's become a p.a.w.n for these people."

Her chin tucked into her neck. "Is this, like, a political thing?"

I said no, it was more of a personal thing.

"How do you know them? These people?"

At almost any other time I probably would not have told her. But I had been lying in bed for about twenty hours, feeling miserable about myself and my life and the world and everything in it; and now this woman, this gorgeous woman, had come to see me and brought me a cigar and was sitting on my back patio acting as if what I had to say really mattered to her.

"Barbara, did you ever wonder how I got my job?"

"No. Yes. Well, I sort of figured it was like me. You had someone who pulled a few strings-"

"Yeah. The Senator. Because I had once done him a favor. Well, not him so much, but one of his nephews. Him, too, I guess, if you really get right down to it."

"Which nephew?"

"You already mentioned him. Or one of us did, anyhow."

"Ned? Peter?"

I motioned with my head, probably tried to raise my eyebrows in affirmation. "Peter."

"Oh, my G.o.d ... you're talking about the thing down in Florida?"

"I helped cover it up."

"He really did it? Peter the doctor? Peter, who works with AIDS patients out in San Francisco?"

"He did some nasty stuff, Barbara, and I was there, and a few months later the girl was dead."

"Oh, G.o.d."

I wanted her to understand the depth of my depravity. Of the Gregorys'. Maybe even of her own for being friends with them.

For a long time we just sat there, me smoking, Barbara staring off into the yard. Then, very softly, she said, "Why did you ask about the Figawi race?"

"Heidi Telford was killed the night the race ended in 1999. Bill Telford thinks she was at the Gregorys' that night. I think he's right."

There, Barbara, what are you going to do with that information? Perhaps you could pa.s.s it along to Cory, or Jamie, or whoever else comes over to your father's house for big hunks of meat grilled by hired help. Then they could send Chuck-Chuck by to have a talk with me. Better yet, Pierre Mumford. He could squeeze my head between his fingers. Make it pop like a blister.

"You think it was Peter?" she said, jerking my thoughts back to the moment.

"I think Peter is a sick, twisted misogynist. I've seen what he can do."

"So ... like ... are you helping these people? The ones who want to get the Gregorys?"

Yes, you would like to know that, wouldn't you, Barbara? Let your hair down, pull on a pair of tight jeans, give me a cigar, and I'll tell you anything and everything. Because that's the kind of guy I am, the kind who can be bought for a cigar and a glimpse of paradise.

"I'm not sure what I'm doing," I told her. "I'd like to help Mr. Telford, I know that. And these people, as you call them, they're using me just like they're using him and even poor dumba.s.s Buzzy to get what they want."

"And is that so bad? If it's going to lead to the truth, I mean."

Wait. That wasn't what she was supposed to say.

I had a sudden, terribly cold feeling. The idea came into my head that Barbara Belbonnet, my office-mate with a world of problems of her own, had shown up at my house without her kids and her cell phone not because the Gregorys had sent her, but because Roland Andrews had. My breath caught in my chest and I turned my head slowly to look at her.

Barbara's eyes were on me. Big yellowish-brown eyes. She didn't look devious, nefarious, manipulative. She didn't look anything other than beautiful. "Isn't that what we're supposed to do?" she asked. "As prosecutors? Go after the truth?"

"I'm not prosecuting this case," I answered. "As Mitch has taken pains to remind me."

"Mitch, who has his own interests to guard."

"So what are you saying, Barbara?" I spoke carefully, deliberately. "You think I ought to do what these people want?"

"I think"-and then she took her time telling me what she thought. She did it by watching me intently, making sure I really was listening. "I think you ought to decide what's right and then go ahead and do it. No matter what."

No matter if I lost my job and never worked again. No matter if I was vilified throughout the country, the world, for betraying the Gregorys. "Yeah?" I said harshly. "Well, these people we're talking about want me to track down everyone who could have been at the Gregorys' that night."

"Hasn't anyone done that yet?"

If she was with Andrews, she would know they hadn't. If she was with the Gregorys, she would know they had ... sort of. Chuck Larson had said a detective had talked to Cory Gregory's brother and cousins. A detective who had put nothing about the Gregorys in his file.

I lofted a cloud of cigar smoke straight above my head. "That's one of the great unresolved questions," I said.

"n.o.body's investigated Peter?"

"It doesn't appear they have."

She thought about it. "Tyler still sees him, you know."

Tyler, the ex. The almost ex.

"He's living in Sausalito. Tyler, I mean. Peter still sails out there on San Francis...o...b..y. He gets Ty to crew for him sometimes. If you want, I could get Tyler to put you in touch. He's more than happy to do little things like that for me. As long as I don't try to get him to come home, help me take care of the kids."

It was time to stop this dance. I tossed my cigar next to hers on the pavers and sat up straight. "You realize you're telling me I should be going after your old friends."

"What I'm telling you is what I said before. Decide what's right and then do it. And as for going after old friends, well, they're friends because I know them. Because I grew up with them. Not because they've ever done anything for me."

"And if they had? If they had done something great and wonderful for you?"

Barbara threw up her hand. "Look, George, I don't know what more to tell you, but you're obviously torn up by this. So what I'm suggesting is maybe you ought to stop worrying so much about other people and what their motivations are and just do something because it's the right thing to do. That's all."

I did not agree or disagree. It was easier just to stare at the tree where I had seen the squirrel go. Try to figure out where he was hiding, when he would come out next.

MITCH WAS NOT EXACTLY SANGUINE ABOUT MY DAY OFF.

"You think I can't fire you?" he screamed at me.

"I think it would be awfully awkward if you did."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means you would have some explaining to do." I was not being forceful or even c.o.c.ky. Half of me did not care if I was fired; the other half just wanted to inflict a little damage on Mr. White. "It means it just may be that the card I'm holding is worth more than the one you have."

Mitch was unnerved. His eyes did the bulging thing behind his gla.s.ses. "Are you threatening me?"

"Not at all."

"Because I'm still the boss here."

The boss whose b.u.t.t had come out of his chair, who was now leaning across his desk, his weight on his bare forearms. Once again, he was wearing a short-sleeved shirt that severely impaired the authority he was trying to exert.

"You think you're already at the bottom doing OUIs, Becket?" he bellowed in his little man's voice. "Well, I can make it even worse for you. I can put you in juvie. I can have you going after deadbeat dads. I can give you nothing whatsoever to do if I feel like it."

"Or the two of us can work together in what you might call our common interest."

Mitch's face had gone blotchy. Like his pipe-cleaner arms, it was not a pleasant sight.