I nodded. “She’s something else, yeah.”

Angie walked up beside him, Mae’s hand in hers. “What time you have to be at work?”

“Noon,” he said. He looked at me. “Guy I’m working for now’s an artiste in the Back Bay, got me ripping up his entire duplex, ripping up nineteenth-century parquet floors so we can inlay it all with black—black—marble. You believe that?” He sighed and ran his hands through his hair.

“I was wondering,” Angie said, “if maybe you wouldn’t mind pushing Mae on the swings with me?”

“Oh, I dunno,” he said, looking at Mae, “my arm’s kinda sore.”

“Don’t be a big baby,” Mae said.

“Can’t be called a big baby now, can I?” Phil said as he scooped her up with one arm and settled her on his hip and the three of them crossed the avenue toward the playground, waving brightly to me before they walked up the steps and headed for the swing sets.

21

“You’re going to go see Alec Hardiman,” Bolton said without looking up as I walked into the confeRenee room.

“I am?”

“You have an appointment this afternoon at one.”

I looked at Devin and Oscar. “I do?”

“This office will be monitoring the entire visit.”

I sat down in a seat across from Devin, a deep cherrywood table the size of my apartment between us. Oscar sat to Devin’s left and a half dozen Feds in suits and ties filled the rest of the table. Most of them were talking on telephones. Devin and Oscar didn’t have telephones. Bolton had two in front of him at the other end of the table, regular and special Batphone, I guessed.

He stood up and came down the table toward me. “What did you and Kevin Hurlihy discuss?”

“Politics,” I said, “the current value of the yen, things of that nature.”

Bolton put his hand on the back of my chair and leaned in close enough for me to smell the Sucrets in his mouth. “Tell me what you talked about, Mr. Kenzie.”

“What do you think we talked about, Special Agent Bolton? He told me to back off the Warren investigation.”

“So you fired a round into his car.”

“Seemed an appropriate response at the time.”

“Why does your name keep coming up on this case?”

“I have no idea.”

“Why does Alec Hardiman want to talk only to you?”

“Again, no clue.”

He snapped the chair back as he walked around the table, stopped behind Devin and Oscar and put his hands in his pockets. He looked like he hadn’t slept in a week.

“I need answers, Mr. Kenzie.”

“I don’t have any. I faxed Devin copies of my case files on the Warren case. I sent over photos of the guy with the goatee. I told you everything I remember about my meeting with Kara Rider. Beyond that, I’m as in the dark as you guys.”

He pulled a hand out of his pocket, rubbed the back of his neck. “What do you, Jack Rouse, Kevin Hurlihy, Jason Warren, Kara Rider, Peter Stimovich, Freddy Constantine, District Attorney Timpson and Alec Hardiman have in common?”