She opened the window and flicked her cigarette out. City girl to the core. I waited for a summer schooler to scream or a nun to come hauling ass up the staircase, the wrath of God in her eyes, a burning cigarette butt in her hand. Neither happened. Angie turned from the open window, and the cool summer breeze creased the room with the smell of exhaust fumes and freedom and the lilac petals which littered the schoolyard.

“So,” she said, leaning back in the chair, “we employed again?

“We’re employed again.”

“Ya-hoo,” she said. “Nice suit, by the way.”

“Makes you want to jump my bones on the spot, doesn’t it?”

She shook her head slowly. “Uh, no.”

“Don’t know where I’ve been. That it?”

She shook her head again. “I know exactly where you’ve been, Skid, which is most of the problem.”

“Bitch,” I said.

“Slut.” She stuck her tongue out at me. “What’s the case?”

I pulled the information about Jenna Angeline from my inside breast pocket and tossed it on her desk. “Simple find-and-a-phone-call.”

She perused the pages. “Why’s anyone care if a middle-aged cleaning lady disappears?”

“Seems some documents disappeared with her. State-house documents.”

“Pertaining to?”

I shrugged. “You know these politicians. Everything is as secret as Los Alamos until it hits the floor.”

“How do they know she took them?”

“Look at the picture.”

“Ah,” she said, nodding, “she’s black.”

“Evidence enough to most people.”

“Even the resident senate liberal?”

“The resident senate liberal is just another racist from Southie when he ain’t residing in the House.”

I told her about the meeting, about Mulkern and his lapdog, Paulson, about the Stepford wife employees at the

Ritz.

“And Representative James Vurnan what was he like in the company of such Masters of State?”

“You ever see that cartoon with the big dog and the little dog, where the little dog keeps panting away, jumping up and down, asking the big dog, ‘Where we going, Butch? Where we going, Butch?’“

“Yes.”

“Like that,” I said.

She chewed on a pencil, then began tapping it against her front teeth. “So, you gave me the fly-on-the-wall account. What really happened?”

“That’s about it.”

“You trust them?”

“Hell no.”

“So there’s more to this than meets the eye, Detective?”

I shrugged. “They’re elected officials. The day they tell the whole truth is the day hookers put out for free.”

She smiled. “As always, your analogies are splendid. You’re just a product of good breeding, you are.” Her smile widened as she watched me, the pencil tapping against her left front tooth, the slightly chipped one. “So, what’s the rest of the story?”

I loosened my tie enough to pull it over my head. “You got me.”

“Some detective,” she said.

THREE

Jenna Angeline, like me, was born and raised in Dorchester. The casual visitor to the city might think this would serve as a nice common denominator between Jenna and myself, a bond however minimal forged by location: two people who started out of their separate chutes at identical hash marks. But the casual visitor would be wrong. Jenna Angeline’s Dorchester and my Dorchester have about as much in common as Atlanta, Georgia, and Russian Georgia.