Swan Dive

move around so good. For burglars, you know? Now this thing’s got Eleni so scared, with drugs and all being involved, that I just carry it around the place, make her feel better.”
    I tried to catch Chris’s eyes. I’d have bet money he would scare before she would. But all he said as he brushed past me was ”Hanna gets everything and I lose a ten-thousand-dollar fee. Jeez, if I went into the hat business, kids’d be bom without heads, you know?”
    When we walked back into the reception area, Fotis was standing, the paper folded and stuck in one of his jacket pockets. Something else weighed down the other pocket. The partisans’ mountain stronghold. Fotis said, ”Eleni want to see you.”
    Chris stopped. ”Hey, Fotis, I gotta get going here.” Fotis said, ”Not you. Him.”

    Eleni and a not-quite-twin of Fotis were watching a game show on a nine-inch black-and-white in the kitchen. As I drew near, Eleni said, ”Nikkie,” and the twin reluctantly stood up, clicked off the set, and walked out of the room.
    ”Sit.”
    I rested my butt on a stool across from her. She said, ”I told you that Marsh, he was a bad man.”
    ”Eleni, somebody made it look like I killed him.”
    ”Why somebody do that?”
    ”I don’t know.”
    She let a wise smile crease the side of her face that didn’t twitch. ”I think different.”
    ”What do you mean?”
    ”A bad man, that one. You saw what he done. His own child, a poor little animal. He deserve to die.”
    ”And the girl?”
    ”A whore.”
    ”They were still people.”
    Eleni’s chin jutted forward defiantly. ”A whore is a whore, and that man, he got what God would do.”
    ”What do you mean?”
    ”I understand you, John. I know you. If you kill him, I understand.”
    ”Eleni, I didn’t.”
    She called out ”Nikkie,” then a few Greek words. She looked up to me with the smile again. ”He got what God would do. Nobody should blame you.”

    I drove to Swampscott and spotted the stansfield insurance agency sign centered over the doorway of a large white house on the main drag. I parked on the road and admired the condition of the exterior, down to the green shutters and brass hardware. It looked as if fanatic maintenance had prevented the need for extensive restoration.
    Just inside the door was a waiting area covered with an intricate Oriental rug and proud captain’s chairs, polished and positioned stiffly. It took a minute to register that the setting looked like one of those rooms in a museum that the public can view only through a sashed-off doorway, ”A Typical Sitting Room of the Late Nineteenth Century.”
    ”Can I, uh, help you?”
    I turned around and saw a rangy, fortyish man in a button-down oxford shirt, wool Rooster tie, and twill slacks. He looked harried, with one of those long, almost horsey faces that you see in some of the North Shore towns, too many generations of inbreeding around the polo fields. He did exude a sort of raw-boned physical strength, the kind that would never look good but never go to fat, either.
    ”I’m sorry,” I said. ”I didn’t see any receptionist, so I came on in.”
    ”I’m afraid the agency is, uh, rather closed for the day. We’ve had a, uh, death in the firm.”
    ”I know.” There was a kid in my third-grade class who stammered. I extended a hand to try to help him feel at ease. ”My name’s John Cuddy.”
    We shook, his eyes blinking absently. ”Cuddy, Cuddy? I’m sorry, but you’re not, uh, one of our insureds, are you?”
    ”No, I’m not, Mr...
    ”Oh, sorry about that. Stansfield, uh, Bryce Stansfield’s the name.”
    ”I wonder if I could talk with you, Mr. Stansfield.”
    ”I’m afraid—”
    ”It’s about Roy .”
    ”About Roy ?”
    ”Yes. I’m a detective from Boston , and I’m looking into his murder.”
    ”Uh, well, then.” I expected him to ask for some identification. Instead he said, ”Come in.”
    I followed him into a low-ceilinged office with a bay window looking onto the street from behind discreetly filtering curtains. His desk was covered with an avalanche of paperwork. I recognized some application forms moshed in with slim binders and bulkier policies. A word-processing station with a high-backed leather swivel chair dominated a wall where an executive credenza might otherwise rest. Stansfield swung the chair around to its designed position behind his desk and flipped a switch on the station, causing the monitor screen to sigh and implode the