Free Hundred Dollar Baby by Robert B. Parker

shrugged. The suburban Rotarian veneer was getting thin.
    "I guess so," he said.
    "So," I said, "tell me about your friendship with Lionel Farnsworth."
    "I don't know him," Ollie said.
    "You do," I said. "You were in Allenwood federal prison with him in 1998."
    "I was there, yeah, on a bad rap, by the way, but I didn't know anybody named Farnswhatever."
    "And when he needed some arm-twisting done for him up here," I said, "seven years later, he called you."
    "I ain't doing no strong-arm work for Farnsworth."
    Belson was tilted back slightly in his chair, one foot cocked on the edge of Ollie's desk.
    "Ollie," he said. "You are making a liar out of me. I said you didn't need a lawyer, and now you are shoveling so much shit at us that, maybe you keep doing it, you are going to need one."
    "For what?" Ollie said.
    Without the glad-handed good-guy disguise, Ollie's natural stupidity began to dominate. He even sounded different. Bullshit is only skin deep.
    "Just listen to me for a minute," I said. "You sent some guys over to the mansion, and Hawk and I kicked their ass. Then you sent four guys to chase me off the case, and Tedy Sapp and I kicked their ass. Now I know who hired you to do it, and when I confront him with these facts, he'll claim it was all your doing and he just wanted you to talk with April."
    "At which time," Belson said, "we in the Boston Police Department will feel obligated to protect and serve your ass right into the fucking hoosegow."
    "Or," I said, "you can flip on old Lionel now, while the flipping is good, and tell us your side of the story before we even talk with Lionel."
    "What about the assault stuff," Ollie said.
    "I don't need to press charges on those," I said. "Hell, I won both fights anyway."
    "Okay," he said.
    He stood suddenly and walked to his office door and closed it.
    "Okay," he said again.
    He walked back to his desk and sat down. The jolliness was back. He wasn't confused now. He knew what to do.
    "I'll tell you about Farnsworth," he said.

25
     
    My last serious talk with April had ended badly, so this time I talked with her in the front parlor of the mansion, with Hawk and Tedy Sapp present in case she attempted to seduce me again. She had been sulky since I'd rejected her, and she was sulky now.
    "I've located Lionel Farnsworth," I said.
    She had no reaction.
    "You know him, don't you?" I said.
    "No."
    "He was with you twenty-three times in the year before you came up here," I said.
    She shrugged.
    "They're all johns," she said.
    I nodded.
    "I've had a talk with Ollie DeMars," I said.
    "Who?"
    "The gentleman who's been managing the harassment," I said. "He tells me that he was hired to do that by a gentleman he once knew in Allenwood prison, a man from New York named Lionel Farnsworth."
    "I thought it was someone with an offshore bank account," April said.
    "Ollie made that up," I said. "It was his old prison pal Lionel."
    April didn't say anything.
    "What we have here," I said, "is a remarkable coincidence. The guy who is extorting you is a guy you have known professionally at least twenty-three times."
    She shrugged again.
    "I have prevailed upon Ollie to leave you alone," I said.
    "You think he will?" April said.
    "Yes."
        "Then I don't need you anymore," April said.
        "That depends on how earnest Lionel is," I said.
    "I told you I don't know Lionel."
    "April," I said. "What the hell is going on?"
    "Nothing," April said. "This Ollie person has been stopped. Thank you. That's all I need."   
    Hawk stood up.
    "Our work here is done," he said to Tedy Sapp.
    Sapp grinned.
    "Ollie was no match for us," Sapp said.
    He turned to April.
    "I'll pack and be gone in an hour," he said. "Nice doing business with you."
    "Say good-bye to the ladies," Hawk said.
    April nodded. She didn't say anything. Hawk and Sapp left. April and I sat. The silence continued.
    She cannot have lived the life she's led, Susan had said, without suffering a lot of damage. Under stress, she had said, the