Foursome Read Online Free Page B

chairs with the sword and scales of New England School of Law on them. “Almost too nice, John, you want to know the truth. When I left the public defenders up here, I bought a retiring lawyer’s practice, and this office came along with it. A great place to spend time, but it’s kind of hard to get clients to leave it.”
    “Like Ms. T-shirt?”
    “Cinny? Yeah. She got caught practicing hand relief.”
    “Hand relief?”
    “Genital massage.”
    “You mean prostitution?”
    “No. Just hand relief. As long as there was no intercourse, it used to be legal all over the state.”
    “You’re kidding?”
    Lacouture shook his head. “Then the massage places started spreading out from Portland, and a lot of communities like Saco and Biddeford got nervous and banned the practice. A town around here decided to jump on the ‘banned’ wagon, and the cops picked up Cinny.”
    “Spelled with a ‘C,’ I hope.”
    “Spelled … ? Oh, ‘Cinny’ right.” Lacouture laughed silently. “She says to me—this is technically a client confidence, John, but you’ve got to hear it—she says to me, ‘Gil, they want to see I’m responsible, how about I wear these earrings in front of the judge?’ And she shows them to me, and they’re condoms, John.”
    “I saw an article about them.”
    “Well, up here, they don’t read those kind of magazines.”
    “It was in the New York Times .”
    “Like I said.”
    Lacouture grinned, letting me know he was extending the joke. I wasn’t so sure I liked a lawyer who revealed one client’s secrets to an investigator he’d never met who might end up working for another client.
    Lacouture turned in his chair and brought an accordion file to center stage on the desk. “So, Nancy tells me you’re a crack private eye back in Boston.”
    “Nancy’s prejudiced.”
    Lacouture looked up at me. “She told me why. I want this to sound right, John. Especially after joking around about Cinny. I’ve known Nancy from first year of law school. She’s the best, in every way. If Nancy Meagher’s with you, you must have a hell of a lot right with you. I’m going to assume that includes your professional competence, unless you give me reason to think otherwise.”
    It was as though Lacouture had changed personality. In one sentence, he went from locker room to board room.
    I said, “I’m listening.”
    His hand slid the band off the accordion file in an assured way. “I’m going to let you read this at your leisure, but let me give you the condensed version first.”
    “Before you do, I’m not licensed up here. Nancy said—”
    “—that I’d fix that, and I have. There’s a clerk waiting for you at the Department of Public Safety Annex in Gardiner. The commissioner and I went to college together at Orono.”
    Another classmate. “So I’ll be licensed in Maine?”
    Lacouture said, “Provisionally. Usually it takes about sixty days for your application to be processed, to schedule you for a written test—”
    “Test?”
    “On the Maine criminal statutes, the private investigator law, and so forth. But we’re going to be spared the test so long as we post a fifty-thousand-dollar bond on you, which I’ve already arranged for, and so long as you agree to one other condition.”
    “What’s that?”
    Lacouture paused. “You won’t be getting a certificate of firearms proficiency or a permit to carry a concealed weapon.”
    “What’s the difference?”
    “With the certificate, you could carry a gun while you were on the job as a licensed private investigator.”
    “Provisionally licensed.”
    “Right. With the permit, you could carry a gun any time, even if you weren’t exactly working.”
    I thought about it. “Since I wasn’t licensed up here, I didn’t expect to be able to carry in Maine anyway.”
    Lacouture exhaled. “Good. For the rest of this conference today, the district attorney has given me his word that he won’t try to go around the attorney-client