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me pleasantly.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
    When I got to the garage there was a fat guy lingering around the elevator, and Curly had come up quite close behind me. All three of us waited for the elevator. Curly and the fat guy were in competition to see which of them could look more nonchalant. When the elevator doors opened I turned and went past the two men and took the stairs instead of the elevator. Except in high-status buildings, elevators were for sissies.
    I hotfooted it up the stairs and stopped on the fourth-floor landing. I could hear footsteps behind me. I went into the garage and walked toward my car. The fat guy was already there, exiting the elevator. Behind me Curly emerged from the stairwell. There was no one else in sight. The fat guy stepped in front of me.
    He said, “Hold it there, pal.”
    I stopped. Behind me I could hear Curly’s footsteps.
    “You know,” I said, “if you’d use the stairs every time, instead of taking the elevator, you wouldn’t be so fat.”
    “Fuck you,” the fat guy said.
    “Gee,” I said. “I hadn’t thought of it that way.”
    I glanced back. Curly had stopped a few feet behind me. I did a half turn so that I could see both of them.
    “We wanna know what you’re doing,” the fat guy said.
    “Isn’t it obvious,” I said. “I’m talking with a couple of assholes.”
    “You’re a funny guy,” Fatso said. “Ain’t he a funny guy, Bo.”
    “Funny guy,” Curly Bo said.
    “We ain’t funny guys,” Fatso said.
    “I can see that,” I said.
    “And we want to know what you was talking to Brink Tyler about.”
    “Who?”
    “You know who, you was just in his office.”
    “Oh,” I said. “The Brinkster. Yeah. We were talking about diversifying my portfolio.”
    The fat guy didn’t know what to say. He was used to people being scared of him, and it confused him that I wasn’t. Also, he probably didn’t know what a portfolio was. Bo, aka Curly, decided to step in.
    “Okay, pal,” he said. “Let’s not fuck around here. We ask questions. You answer them, and you answer them straight. You understand? Or you get your ass kicked.”
    I spread my hands. “Hey,” I said. “No problem. I didn’t know you guys were serious.”
    “That’s better,” the fat guy said.
    I kicked him in the crotch. While he was sinking to his knees, I swung around and popped Curly Bo with a right hook, and broke his nose. Bo was game. With the blood running down his chin he caught me with an overhand right on the side of the head. I hit him with a left hook and a right hook, and he went down. Fatso, on his knees and in pain, had fumbled a gun out. I kicked it out of his hand and heard it skitter away under one of the cars.
    “You guys been roughing up civilians too long,” I said. “Whatever you had to start with, you’ve lost.”
    “Fuck you,” Fatso said.
    Curly Bo was on his hands and knees, his head lolling, as he tried to clear the buzz from his brain.
    “Who is it wants to know what I’m doing?” I said.
    “Fuck you,” Fatso said.
    “Soldiers Field Development, perhaps?”
    “Fuck you,” Fatso said.
    “Maybe I could beat it out of you,” I said.
    “Maybe you couldn’t,” Fatso said.
    I stood for a minute and thought about it.
    “You’re right,” I said. “Maybe I couldn’t.”
    I went past them and got in my car and drove away. In the rearview mirror I could see them still on the ground as I turned onto the down ramp and headed out.

CHAPTER NINETEEN
    Rita had sandwiches and coffee sent in, and we ate lunch together at a cherry-wood conference table in her office. From where I sat I could look through Rita’s big window and along the south shore to the narrow arch of land on which Hull dangled into the Atlantic.
    “As I recall,” I said, “when you were working in Norfolk County, you had an office with one wooden chair.”
    “And a view of my file cabinet,” Rita said.
    “And a lot of young male ADA’S fresh out of law school hanging around the