I looked at the three pols and found my eyes pulled toward the middle, into Mulkern’s black stare. “And?” I said.

“Jenna was the cleaning woman for my office. Brian’s too.” He shrugged. “As jigs go, I had no complaints.”

Mulkern was the kind of guy who said, “jigs,” when he wasn’t sure enough of the company to say, “niggers.”

“Until...,”I said.

“Until she disappeared nine days ago.” “Unannounced vacation?”

Mulkern looked at me as if I’d just suggested college basketball wasn’t fixed. “When she took this ‘vacation,’ Pat, she also took those documents with her.”

“Some light reading for the beach?” I suggested.

Paulson slapped the table in front of me. Hard. Paulson. “This is no joke, Kenzie. Understand?”

I looked at his hand, sleepy eyed.

Mulkern said, “Brian.”

Paulson removed the hand to check the whip marks on his back.

I stared at him, still sleepy eyed dead eyes, Angie calls them and spoke to Mulkern. “How do you know she took the... documents?”

Paulson dropped his eyes from mine, considered his martini. It was still untouched, and he didn’t take a drink. Probably waiting for permission.

Mulkern said, “We checked. Believe me. No one else is a logical suspect.”

“Why is she?”

“What?”

“A logical suspect?”

Mulkern smiled. A thin one. “Because she disappeared the same day the documents did. Who knows with these people?”

“Mmm,” I said.

“Will you find her for us, Pat?”

I looked out the window. Perky the Doorman was hustling someone into a cab. In the Garden, a middle-aged couple with matching Cheers T-shirts snapped picture after picture of the George Washington statue. Sure to wow them back in Boise. A wino on the sidewalk supported himself with one hand on a bottle; the other he held out, steady as a rock, waiting for change. Beautiful women walked by. In droves.

“I’m expensive,” I said.

“I know that,” Mulkern said. “So why do you still live in the old neighborhood?” He said it like he wanted me to believe his heart still resided there too, as if it meant any more to him now than an alternative route when the expressway got backed up.

I tried to think of a response. Something to do with roots, and knowing where you belong. In the end, I told the truth: “My apartment’s rent-controlled.”

He seemed to like that.

TWO

The old neighborhood is the Edward Everett Square section of Dorchester. It’s a little less than five miles from the center of Boston proper, which means, on a good day, it takes only half an hour to reach by car.

My office is the bell tower of St. Bartholomew’s Church. I’ve never found out what happened to the bell that used to be there, and the nuns who teach at the parochial school next door won’t tell me. The older ones plain don’t answer me, and the younger ones seem to find my curiosity amusing. Sister Helen told me once it had been “miracled away.” Her words. Sister Joyce, who grew up with me, always says it was “misplaced,” and gives me the sort of wicked smile that nuns aren’t supposed to be capable of giving. I’m a detective, but nuns could stonewall Sam Spade into an asylum.