Free Pastime by Robert B. Parker

no hint of eagerness. Masterful."
    "I am, after all, a performer," Paul said. "I assume the guy that came asking was that short one we saw in Revere, the one with the huge fat pal, the ones with Vinnie Morris."
    "I assume," I said. "Means Vinnie is getting nowhere too."
    Paul had the mail in his lap. He handed it to me.
    "I don't feel right reading her mail," he said. "What if there's letters there with stuff in them I don't want to see?"
    "Love letters?"
    "Yeah, explicit stuff. You know? `I'm still thinking about when I bleeped your bleep.' You want to read stuff like that about your mother?"
    "Remember," I said, "I never had one."
    "Yes, I forget that sometimes."
    We were quiet for a while.
    "Mothers are never only mothers," I said.
    "I know," Paul said. "Christ, do I know. I've had ten years of psychotherapy. I know shit like that better than I want to. I still don't want to read about my mother boinking some jerk."
    I nodded.
    "I don't know why I should worry about reading it," Paul said. "She's probably been doing it since puberty."
    I nodded again. I always thought people had the right to boink who they wanted, even a jerk, if they needed to. But that probably wasn't really
    Paul's issue and shutting up never seemed to do much harm.
    "I'll read the mail," I said.
    Most of it could be dispensed with unread: catalogues, magazines, direct mail advertising. Paul took the batch and walked across the parking lot and dumped it in a trash barrel. The rest were bills, no boinking. The bills produced nothing much, except finally, the very last entry on her American
    Express bill, a clothing store in Lenox. I turned to the individual receipts and located it. Tailored Lady, Lenox, Massachusetts, Lingerie. It was datedafter her mail had been put on hold. I handed it to Paul.
    "Know anything about this?"
    "No," he said. "All I know about Lenox is the Berkshires, Tanglewood. I don't think I've ever been there."
    "That your mother's signature?" I said.
    "Looks like her writing. I rarely see her signature. When I got money it was usually a check from my father. But it looks like her writing."
    "So," I said. "She was probably in Lenox ten days ago.
    "Should we go out there?"
    "Yes," I said. "We should. But first Hawk and I want to speak with Gerry
    Broz."
    "About my mother?"
    "Yeah."
    "Both of you?"
    "It's always nice to have backup when you talk with Gerry."
    "For god's sake what is she mixed up in when even you need backup to talk to people about her?"
    "Doesn't need to be awful," I said. "She probably doesn't even know Gerry."
    "Well, it sounds awful and everything we learn about it makes it sound worse."
    "We'll find out," I said. "In a while we'll know whatever there is to know."
    "I'm getting scared," Paul said. "Scared for her."
    "Sure you are," I said. "I would if I were you."
    "I don't like being scared."
    "Nobody does," I said.
    "But everybody is," Paul said. "At one time or another," I said. "You?"
    "Sure." "Hawk?" I paused. "I don't know," I said. "You never can be sure with Hawk."

CHAPTER 15
    PEARL looked painfully resentful as Susan and I left her. Susan had left the television tuned to CNN.
    "She likes to watch Catherine Crier," Susan said.
    "Me too."
    "More than Diane Sawyer?"
    "Well, of course not," I said.
    Susan had recently acquired one of those turbocharged Japanese sports cars, which she drove like a New York cabbie, flooring it between stoplights and talking trash to other motorists. We made the fifteen-minute drive from
    Susan's place to Icarus Restaurant in about seven minutes. And gave the car to the valet kid and went in.
    Icarus is very voguish and demure and the sight of Hawk waiting for us at a table was enough to cheer me for the evening. He looked like a moose at a gazelle convention. He stood when he saw Susan and she kissed him. There was a bottle of Krug in an ice bucket beside the table. When we sat, Hawk took it from the ice, wiped it with the towel, and poured champagne into
    Susan's glass, then