“Hey, Officer Largeant,” I said, “give me a call sometime. Really, it’s been great. Have a good one. Best of luck.” I opened the passenger door. “Keep up the good work. Hope everything works out. Bye-bye.”

I slid in, shut the door.

“Drive,” I said.

“Pushy, pushy,” Angie said.

We pulled away from Largeant and Manny and John and the Pods and turned left on Arlington, past the three patrol cars parked in front of Grief Release’s corporate offices, their lights bouncing off the windows like ice afire.

Once we were reasonably sure no one had followed us, Angie pulled over behind a bar in Southie.

“So, honey,” she said, turning on the seat, “how was your day?”

“Well—”

“Ask me about mine,” she said. “Come on. Ask.”

“Okay,” I said. “How was your day? Sweetie?”

“Man,” she said, “they were there in five minutes.”

“Who? The police?”

“The police.” She snorted. “No. Those freakazoids with the glandular problems. The ones who were standing around you and the cop and the guy with the busted face.”

“Ah,” I said. “Them.”

“No shit, Patrick, I thought I was dead. I’m in the back office clipping some computer discs, and then, bang, the doors are flying open all over the place, alarms are going sonic on me, and…well, it wasn’t pretty, partner, lemmee tell ya.”

“Computer discs?” I said.

She held up a handful of 3.5 diskettes, bound by a red elastic.

“So,” she said, “besides busting some guy’s face and almost getting arrested, have you accomplished anything?”

Angie had made her way into the back office just before Manny arrived to take me over to the Therapeutic Center. She waited there as Ginny shut off the lights, turned off the coffeemaker, pushed chairs neatly into their desks, all the while singing “Foxy Lady.”

“By Hendrix?” I said.

“At the top of her lungs,” Angie said, “complete with air guitar.”

I shuddered at the image. “You should get combat pay.”

“Tell me about it.”

After Ginny left, Angie went to step out of the rear office and noticed the thin beams of light shafting across the main office. They crisscrossed one another like wires, and rose from the wall at several points, some as low as six inches off the ground, some as high as seven feet.

“Hell of a security system,” I said.

“State-of-the-art. So now I’m stuck in the back office.”