The staked Goat

knew where he was going that evening. The final autopsy report confirmed death by smothering, no further information. I thanked Daley and told him I would be in Pittsburgh for a few days and would call in once in a while. I rang off and walked into the front hall.
    I went to the closet and pushed most of the garbage aside. I pulled out the old Samsonite three-suiter, even though I would have to pack only one outfit. A dark, somber one.
    After I packed, I carried the suitcase to the door and looked down at the envelope. I pocketed it and went downstairs.
    I walked to the rental and returned it to the agency. I carried my burdens to the Szechuan Chinese restaurant in the next block. The decor was red leather with faintly illuminating Chinese lanterns. There were few patrons. I was shown to a small booth by a hostess in a cocktail dress, slit discreetly up the side. I ordered a vodka and orange juice.
    One screwdriver makes me thirsty for two. Two make me hearty and gregarious. Three make me unnecessarily aware of little things, like the exact shade of a woman’s lipstick. Four make me morose.
    I stopped at three and ate my dinner. I also decided not to mail the tape envelope. I settled up and stepped out into a howling wind. I hailed a cab, giving Nancy’s address in Southie.
    The taxi driver had country and western music on the radio. The back seat was black vinyl with little tufts of white, puffy stuffing poking through. I thought of Craigie’s body after the fire, then made my mind change the subject.
    Her building in South Boston was a three-decker on a clean street, sort of a wooden version of the D’Amicos’ place. Like the Italian North End, the Irish and Italian neighborhoods in Southie had been stable, if stubborn, for generations. A Lithuanian section, dating mostly from the end of World War H, straddled Broadway a little farther west.
    There were three buzzers arranged vertically on the outside doorjamb. Each would signify a different floor of the three-story house. The bottom and middle name plates said ”M. Lynch” and ”A. Lynch.” The top one said ”N. Meagher.” I pushed it. Strains from some detestable C&W song reached me through the cabbie’s half-open window, something like ”I’m breaking my back putting up a front for you.”
    I heard footsteps tripping down the stairs inside the door, and a fight flicked on over my head. No intercom and buzzer systems in this part of town. The door opened on a chain, and I heard her laugh.
    ”Well, well,” she said, slipping the chain and swinging open the door. ”A pleasure call, I hope.”
    She was wearing a gray Red Sox T-shirt and white tennis shorts. A bath towel, draped clumsily, covered her left hand from the wrist down.
    I said, ”I’m sorry to bother you at home, but I have a plane to catch, and I wanted to talk with you before I left.”
    She went up on tiptoes and saw the cabbie over my shoulder. She shivered a bit. ”Pay off your cab and come on up. I’ll freeze in this doorway, but I’d be glad to drive you to Logan afterwards.”
    As I turned back toward the cab, I heard her say, ”It’s okay, Drew.” Someone moved on the second landing and a door closed.
    I settled with the driver and lugged my suitcase to her stoop. She tapped ahead of me in sandals up the two flights to her apartment.
    Her door opened from the staircase into a big kitchen, perhaps fifteen by fifteen. A screened-in but sealed-off porch lay behind the kitchen. Once inside, I dropped my bag on the floor, and we turned left into a corridor that led to the front of the house. She had a cozy living room with a small bay window. There were throw pillows on the floor, and brick-and-board bookcases along both walls. Two low tables and some indirect lighting completed the furnishings.
    She laid the towel carefully on one of the tables and asked me if I wanted a drink.
    ”Ice water?” I said, feeling the dehydration of the Chinese food and the screwdrivers.
    ”I have stronger,” she said.
    ”Thanks, just water.”
    She lowered WCOZ just a bit on the stereo under a shelf of mystery paperbacks. ”Let me take your coat,” she said.
    I shrugged out of it, and she left with it for the kitchen. Her bottom looked firm in the shorts, her legs straight and slim beneath them.
    She was back in a flash. ”One ice water,” she said, handing me a tall, expensive-looking glass. ”Pull up a pillow.”
    She collapsed naturally into one near a table with a tumbler of amber