The staked Goat

money.”
    ”Sure. Your bank’ll think you’re dead, so you can’t cash a check.”
    ”Right. Assuming I still had a checkbook.”
    ”How much?”
    I cleared my throat. ”Seven or eight hundred dollars.”
    She cleared hers. ”What do you want that kind of money for?”
    ”I’m going to have to buy some information.”
    ”You going to buy anything else?” she asked cautiously.
    ”Nancy, I believe that whoever blew up my building is still around. As long as he thinks he killed me, I’ll be pretty safe. As soon as he realizes he didn’t, I’m going to need protection. I’ve got a firearms card, remember? I won’t be breaking any laws buying a gun.”
    As she considered it, I realized that I should have said I was issued a firearms card, since my wallet was probably ashes, either burned by Curl or with him.
    ”O.K.,” she relented. ”Just don’t let this get out. I’d hate to have people know I was a shy for a private eye.”
    ”Ogden Nash would be proud of you.”
    ”Where are you staying?”
    Her question made me realize that I couldn’t be quite over the effects of Ricker and Jacquie. I had less than carfare left in my pocket, and nowhere to sleep.
    ”I’m going to try the Pine Street Inn,” I said, a genuine charity that housed and fed homeless, often derelict, men.
    ”Forget it,” she said. ”In cold weather it’s full by three P.M. Y OU can stay at my place. Where are you now, I’ll pick you up.”
    ”Nancy, you don’t—”
    ”No arguments. Where are you?”
    I told her I’d be in the doorway of Elsie’s, a Mt. Auburn Street restaurant and the most famous of the Harvard College hamburger hang-outs.
    ”I’ll drive by in thirty minutes. Red Honda Civic.”
    ”I remember.”
    ”See you then.”
    ”Nancy?”
    ”Yes?”
    ”Thanks.”
     
    When I got into her car, she smiled, her eyes no redder than a winter’s evening should have made them. I felt the glow again as she squeezed my left forearm, then returned her right hand to the stickshift and kept it there.
    ”Put your seatbelt on,” she said.
    We got onto Memorial Drive, toward Boston.
    ”You look pretty shabby,” she said.
    ”Borrowed clothes.”
    She moved her head in concurrence.
    We drove on in silence, halted at the Stop & Shop traffic light.
    ”What do you like for breakfast?” she asked, glancing at the supermarket.
    ”Oh,” I said, ”whatever you have in the house will be fine.”
    The light changed. We eased forward with the surrounding traffic.
    ”What happened to the wise-ass PI who nearly gave me heart failure today?”
    ”He got nervous.”
    ”About what?”
    ”About being a houseguest.”
    She laughed, then caught herself. ”I’m sorry, John. It’s just that... well, your place has been blown up, three or four people killed around you, and—” She shook her head. ”Staying with me shakes you up.”
    I squirmed a little under the seatbelt. ”I’m an odd one, all right.”
    ”Pity there aren’t more like you.”
    She negotiated the corkscrew ramps up and over the Longfellow Bridge, then down behind North Station. We drove along Commercial Street to Atlantic Avenue via the nameless byway under the Southeast Expressway. The Honda crossed over the Commonwealth Pier access road and then onto Summer Street toward South Boston.
    I told her she was good at avoiding traffic.
    She began to say, ”Avoidance is...” then dropped it.
    South Boston is one of the few residential neighborhoods in the city where residents can find a parking place on the street in front of their houses. Nancy maneuvered into a space, and we went inside and up the stairs.
    At our footsteps, the door on the second landing opened.
    ”Hi, Drew,” said Nancy cheerily.
    ”Nancy,” said Lynch in reply, closing his door.
    She opened her apartment door, and I followed her in.
    ”Make yourself comfortable in the living room.”
    ”Fine,” I said, walking by her.
    ”Would you like something stronger than ice water this time?”
    ”Do you have any vodka?”
    ”Yes.”
    ”Then vodka and anything will be fine.”
    ”Do you prefer orange juice or grapefruit juice for breakfast?”
    ”Orange.”
    ”Then it’s vodka and grapefruit tonight.”
    ”Fine,” I repeated, collapsing into her throw pillows, registering the aches in joints and organs from drugs and batterings and train and bus rides. I felt the way over-thirty quarterbacks have described themselves at the end of the season. I closed my eyes.
    I opened them