Invasion of Privacy

professional coming to consult with another, and instead, I . . The expressive wave again.
    I picked up my pen. “We need to talk about my retainer and how you want me to stay in touch with you.”
    She looked at me. “You will try to help, yes?”
    “I’ll try.”
    A sense of relief came into her voice. “Thank you so much.” Evorova thought my usual rate was fine, giving me her home number but asking that I use her voice-mail at the bank, “just in case Andrew is... might be at my apartment.”
    “And where do you live?”
    She reeled off the street address. “A condominium of my own, on Beacon Hill.”
    Which triggered an idea. I said, “You told me Mr. Dees lives in a condominium too.”
    “Yes. Unit number 42 at Plymouth Willows in—”
    “ Plymouth Mills.”
    Evorova seemed pleased that I’d remembered the name of her Andrew’s town.
    I said, “He has neighbors close by, then?”
    “Exactly, yes. Townhouses on either side. In little ‘clusters,’ he calls them.”
    “How big a complex is it?”
    “ Plymouth Willows? A total of perhaps fifty units, sixty?” Good. “So there’s some kind of property company that manages it?”
    “I believe so.” Evorova’s eyes seemed to search inside for a moment. “Yes. I remember Andrew saying once the name of it, when he was writing his monthly maintenance check.”
    “Do you remember the name?”
    More searching. “No, I am sorry.”
    I put down the pen and smiled at her. “Can you find out?” Olga Evorova smiled back, but I could tell she wasn’t sure why.

2

    K nocking lightly on the jamb of the open door, I said, “Mo, got a minute?”
    Mo Katzen glanced up at me. He was sitting behind a desk that looked roughly like the Charles River Esplanade after the July Fourth fireworks’ concert. Pieces of waxy sandwich paper jockeyed for position with empty soda cans, the straws still bent at the angle Mo preferred while drinking from them. Discarded stories were scattered around the old manual typewriter he wouldn’t consign to the junk heap despite the fact that every other reporter at the Boston Herald had computerized years ago. A halfsmoked, unlit cigar was jammed in the corner of his mouth, the eyes sad beneath an unruly wave of snow-white hair. Seventy-something and looking every day of it, the man himself was in his standard uniform, the vest and pants of a three-piece suit, the jacket nowhere to be found. Only this time, the suit was black instead of the usual gray. “John, John.” Mo motioned listlessly. “Come on in.”
    I took the seat across his desk. “Something wrong, Mo?”
    He shrugged, the cigar doing a sit-up. “Nothing much. Just the passing of a generation, that’s all.”
    “Somebody died?”
    “Of course somebody died. People die every day, John. Every minute, probably every second, you want to stretch the net wide enough. Why do you think I’m in this outfit?”
    “Sorry, Mo. Someone close?”
    A smaller shrug, the cigar rising only halfway. “Close enough. Guy I went to school with, back in Chelsea .”
    The city north of Boston . “How did it happen?”
    “How? How. I’ll tell you how.” Mo came forward, some animation flowing back into him. “Freddie—that was his name, Freddie Norton—Freddie was walking by the McCormack Building downtown. He was trying to figure out where the feds had hidden the Social Security offices so he could ask them a question, since of course trying to get them on the phone is just this side of establishing radio contact with Mars. Well, Freddie looks the wrong way stepping off the curb and gets pasted by this truck, pedal to the metal in third gear trying to pass a police car on the right. I mean, what kind of jerk does that? Pass a cruiser, and in the slow lane, yet. Anyway, Freddie gets thrown fifty feet—he was always just a little guy, and he hadn’t grown any lately—and despite the cops already being there and calling for an ambulance and all, he’s DOA at Mass General, like seven blocks away.”
    “I’m sorry for your troubles, Mo. ”
    “Huh, tell me about it. People dwell on how they’re afraid to ride planes or even cars in this city. You know how dangerous it is just to walk around here?”
    “I have some idea—”
    He pulled the cigar out of his mouth and gestured with it. “I called this guy I know over in the Transportation Department—those guys you can reach by phone, account of nobody ever makes calls about safety, you know?—and he told me