The staked Goat

liquid on it. I sat down a little less gracefully.
    She scooped up her tumbler and mock-toasted. ”Welcome to my parlor.”
    ”Said the spider to the fly,” I finished.
    She smiled and sipped.
    ”It’s nice... comfortable,” I said. ”Even with the security.”
    She tilted her head in question.
    ”Drew,” I said. ”On the landing, short for Andrew, as in ‘A. Lynch’?”
    She laughed. ”Drew’s a cop. He and his wife live on the second floor. She’s expecting, and he’s just sort of protective. His parents—this is their house—they live on the first floor. Do you want to take your jacket off? The Lynches have to keep the heat up because of her mother. She’s pushing eighty and needs to have it warm.” She ran her nondrink hand down her T-shirt, neck to navel. ”That’s why I lounge around like this, even in February.”
    Her nipples were subtly more defined for a moment under the shirt as her hand moved. She took another sip. I downed half my ice water.
    ”Under the towel,” I said, ”revolver or automatic?”
    Broad smile but sad eyes. ”I knew the assistant DA who was shot in his car in Cambridge last year. He was a class ahead of me at New England.” She clenched and unclenched her fist. ”But, to answer your question, revolver.”
    I shook my head. ”Revolver is a more reliable weapon, but the hammer could get caught in the towel. You should switch to an automatic or change camouflage.”
    This time she shook her head. ”It’s a five-shot Bodyguard. With the shrouded hammer. Drew helped me pick it out.”
    I pictured a revolver with high, thin steel walls enclosing the hammer and a small, scored steel button on top that could be thumbed back but wouldn’t get caught on clothing. Or towels. I finished my ice water. ”Where are you off to?” she asked.
    I gave her three sentences about Al.
    ”Boy,” she said in a low voice after condolences, ”this is not how I was hoping our next meeting would go.”
    ”The next one after this won’t,” I said.
    She wanted to smile but didn’t. ”Are you here about your friend?”
    ”No, the Coopers.” I summarized the phone calls, both Marco’s and mine, and my visit to the D’Amicos. I dug out and handed her the envelope containing the tape.
    Nancy swirled her drink but didn’t put the glass to her lips. She laid the envelope carefully on the table next to her. If she wore any make-up, it didn’t show.
    ”Joey comes up for sentencing in two weeks,” she said. ”Smolina may not be telling the parents, but I’m sure Joey’ll get fife. I bet Marco knows it, too.” She sipped now. ”Any chance of getting the Coopers out of town for a bit?”
    ”I don’t think so. No family they mentioned. Or friends. Or money to do it with either.”
    Nancy sighed. ”A year ago, I might have told you I’d see they were watched over. But not after Teresa Alou.” She clenched her fist again. ”You remember the case?”
    ”Yes.” Tough one to forget after the Globe series. The DA had a squeeze on Alou, a young Hispanic who lived in the South End and knew a lot about the drug trade from her brother. The squeeze was her brother, who wouldn’t talk and would go to a bad prison if he didn’t. Teresa talked for him. To save him. The brother went to a good prison, a farm, a safe one. He lasted three days. First they’d blinded him with some barbed-wire goggles. Then they beat him to death. With rolled up newspapers. It would have taken a long time.
    The DA put Teresa under witness protection in a hotel. Just before the permanent relocation funding was approved by the appropriate bureacracy, somebody slipped down a rope and into the hotel room. The somebody bashed the female operative and did Teresa. By the time the guys outside in the hall realized the inside operative should have answered their knock, the somebody was gone. Along With Teresa’s eyes, ears, and tongue. He left the rest. Alive, sort of.
    ”Sixteen,” Nancy said, bringing me back. ”She was sixteen.” She shivered for the second time since I’d come in. Nancy looked up at me. ”The Coopers weren’t really part of our case, but I’ll ask McClean. And Drew, too. But I can’t promise.”
    ”I know.” I checked my watch. ”I better call a cab.”
    She shook her head vigorously and hopped up. ”No way. It’d take forever, and I said I’d drive you. I’ll be out in a minute.”
    She disappeared for more like two and a half minutes. She reappeared in an L. L. Bean