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authenticity.”
    The aggressive squirrel returned and looked at Hawk, sitting up on its hind legs, balancing on its disproportionate tail.
    “Give a squirrel a peanut and you feed him for a moment,” I said. “But teach him to grow peanuts…”
    “You and Amir going to get along so good,” Hawk said. “Can’t wait to watch.”
    “How about Ms. Temple,” I said, “I don’t suppose you know her.”
    “How I going to know her?” Hawk said.
    “Well, for a while you were running a sub-specialization in female professors,” I said. “She coulda been one of them.”
    “Good-looking female professors,” Hawk said.
    “How do you know Prof. Temple isn’t good-looking?”
    “Don’t,” Hawk said. “But the odds are with me.”
    “Just because she’s an academic?” I said.
    “Where she live?” Hawk said.
    I checked my notes. “Cambridge,” I said.
    Hawk smiled.
    “Well, it doesn’t actually prove she’s not a looker,” I said.
    Hawk continued to smile.
    “This is bigotry,” I said. “You’re generalizing based on profession and residence.”
    “Yowzah,” Hawk said.
    “She might be a beauty,” I said.
    “What you figure the chances of that are?” Hawk said.
    I shrugged.
    “Slim and none,” I said.
    Hawk smiled more widely.

CHAPTER SEVEN
    I went to visit KC Roth. She was living in one unit of a brick complex of what used to be called garden apartments, on Route 28 in Reading. Across the street was a liquor store and a fish place called The Friendly Flounder. Up the street was what may have been the last drive-in movie theater in Massachusetts. Next to the garden apartments was an Exxon gas station and convenience store.
    KC’s apartment was neat enough, but it had been built for the builder’s profit. The doors were hollow core. The finish work was minimal, mostly quarter round molding. The floors were plywood, covered wall to wall with inexpensive tan carpeting which didn’t wear well, but showed the dirt easily. The furniture was fresh from the warehouse at Chuck’s Rent-All, Everything for the Home.
    “Well,” KC said when I introduced myself, “so that’s what you look like.”
    “This is it,” I said.
    “Susan spoke of you a lot, but I never knew what you looked like.”
    “But from the way she talked, you were picturing Adonis,” I said.
    “I guess,” she said. “Come on in.”
    KC was wearing a man-tailored white shirt and blue jeans. She was amazingly good-looking. Thick black hair worn a little too long, large green eyes, wide mouth, flawless skin.
    “You are so nice to come by,” she said when we were sitting in her ugly living room. “How about a nice cup of coffee, or a drink? Do private eyes drink before lunch? I have some vodka.”
    “I don’t need anything,” I said. “Tell me about your problem.”
    “Oh boy, all business,” she said.
    She was sitting on the couch with her feet tucked up under her. I sat across in an uncomfortable barrel-shaped gray plush armchair.
    “Well,” I said, “not all business.”
    She smiled brilliantly. There was something about her that seemed to require flirtation. And when the requirement was filled, it pleased her.
    “I’ll keep it in mind,” she said.
    “So how about the harassment?” I said.
    “The son of a bitch won’t give up,” she said. “Can you make him stop?”
    “The son of a bitch being whom?”
    “Burt, the bastard – I hope you don’t mind swearing, I can’t help it, I have a terrible mouth.”
    “I’ll be all right,” I said. “Burt is your husband?”
    “Ex-husband,” she said.
    “And you know he’s doing this?”
    “Who else.” She leaned forward and her voice became a little girl’s. “Could you beat him up for me?”
    She had more affect than a Miss America contestant. Her voice went from contralto to soprano in an easy glissade. Her eyes widened and narrowed as she spoke. Everything she said, she dramatized. She went from seductress to child in an exhale. I was willing to