Free Painted Ladies by Robert B. Parker Page A

it,” Quirk said.
    I read on. Quirk rose and got more coffee. When I finished reading, I put the report back in the envelope and got up and poured myself some coffee and sat back down and put my feet on the desk.
    “No ID,” I said.
    “Neither one,” Quirk said.
    “One guy was wearing shoes made in Holland,” I said.
    “That are not exported,” Quirk said.
    “So maybe he’s Dutch.”
    “Maybe,” Quirk said.
    “Both of them are circumcised,” I said.
    “So maybe they’re Jewish,” Quirk said.
    “Lotta goyim are circumcised,” I said.
    “Hell,” Quirk said. “I’m circumcised.”
    “I’m not sure I wanted to know that,” I said.
    “Irish Catholic mother,” Quirk said. “I think she was hoping they’d take the whole thing.”
    I grinned.
    “And both these guys got a number tattooed on their forearm.”
    “Death camp tattoo,” Quirk said. “From Auschwitz. Only camp that did it.”
    “But it’s the same number,” I said. “On both of them.”
    “I know.”
    “And,” I said, “neither one of these guys was anywhere near old enough to have been in Auschwitz.”
    “Both appear to be in their thirties.”
    “So they were born, like, thirty-five years after the Holocaust,” I said.
    “Correct,” Quirk said.
    “Maybe it’s a prison tattoo,” I said.
    “A letter and five numbers?” Quirk said. “And it wasn’t crude. It was professionally done.”
    “Maybe it’s not a prison tattoo,” I said.
    “It’s not,” Quirk said.
    We were quiet.
    “How ’bout an homage,” I said.
    “You mean like in memory of somebody who actually was in Auschwitz?” Quirk said.
    “Yeah.”
    “Possible,” Quirk said.
    “If it is, there may be an actual name attached to that number,” I said.
    “The death camps were liberated more than sixty-four years ago,” Quirk said.
    “Nazis woulda kept good records,” I said.
    “You think the efficient cocksuckers kept a record of the numbers and the names?” Quirk said. “And saved them?”
    “You know what they were like,” I said.
    Quirk nodded.
    “Okay,” Quirk said. “They kept records.”
    “Yes,” I said.
    “So where do we find them?”
    “I don’t know,” I said.

27
    I met Rosalind Wellington outside of a poetry-writing class at the Cambridge Center for Adult Education on Brattle Street.
    “Remember me?” I said.
    “You’re that man who was with my late husband when he died,” she said.
    “Spenser,” I said.
    “Yes,” she said. “I remember you.”
    “May I buy you a drink?” I said.
    She paused for a moment and then nodded.
    “Why?” she said.
    “See how you are, talk about your husband,” I said.
    “I guess we could go to the Harvest, next door,” she said.
    We sat at the bar. The Harvest was a bit elegant for the likes of me. I was probably the only guy in the place wearing a gun. I asked for beer. Rosalind ordered Pernod on the rocks. When it came, she took a considerable swallow of it.
    “So how are you?” I said.
    “Life is for the living,” she said. “I’ve never been one to indulge the past.”
    I nodded.
    “So you’re okay,” I said.
    “Loss is the price we pay for progress,” she said. “Only as we leave things behind do we move forward.”
    “Oh, absolutely,” I said. “I’m glad you are able to be so positive.”
    She had cleaned up her Pernod, and I nodded at the bartender to refill.
    “Life is neutral,” she said. “We can choose to make it positive or negative.”
    “Of course,” I said. “That’s very insightful.”
    “I’m a poet,” she said. “Life is my subject.”
    “And you’ve chosen to make it positive.”
    “I choose every day,” she said.
    Her second Pernod arrived. She seemed positive about that, too.
    “Was your husband as, what, philosophical as you are?”
    She sucked in a little Pernod.
    “My husband was greedy,” she said. “And self-serving and sexually addicted and very concerned with what others thought.”
    “Bad combination for a