I told Vinnie to have the other Vinnie call me when Ethan Lowe left the building.
“His name is Ronnie, for fuck’s sake, how many times do I have to tell you?” Vinnie said.
“I’m terribly sorry,” I said. “Have Rocky call me.”
“You ain’t that funny.”
“Am so.”
There was no call while Susan and I dined at Piccolo Nido, nor when we were on our way back to Marlborough Street. My phone was with me when I walked Pearl down Commonwealth and back until she performed her nightly duties.
When we were back inside the apartment, Susan said, “I know you might be expecting a call. But would you mind terribly shutting off your phone while I jump your bones?”
She smiled one of her wicked smiles. “I have these urges.”
“And the world is a better place for them,” I said.
Afterward, once my breathing had returned to normal, I turned the phone back on and saw there was no call from Ronnie, nor would there be one during the night.
Claire Megill knew that either Vinnie or someone working for Vinnie was watching over her, so it wasn’t as if she and Lowe were sneaking around, he’d walked right through the front door for what would have been an innocent visit, except for the fact that he had stayed the night.
She’d had more than one opportunity, especially when I’d asked her about Clay Whitson, to tell me that she was in a relationship with one of the owners of the company, if that was in fact what was going on, even if it turned out not to be the owner with whom Laura Crain had suspected her of having one.
I explained all of this to Susan before she headed off to Cambridge in the morning, having rebuffed my last-ditch effort to elicit more urges out of her.
“Maybe the problems of these two little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world,” I said.
“I’ve asked you to please not do Bogie,” she said. “And for your information, the line is ‘three little people.’ ”
Once Susan was gone, I checked with Ronnie.
“Still in there?” I said.
“Sure.”
He also pronounced it shoo-wah, same as Vinnie.
“I’m on my way,” I said, telling him not to leave until I got there.
Ronnie was in an Audi. I waved at him as I came around from the Colonnade and he pulled away. So I was the one standing in front of Claire’s building when Lowe came out the front door, one whose glass, I saw, had already been replaced.
No car waiting for him, no driver.
Just me.
He stopped a few feet outside the door when he saw me standing at the end of the walk.
“Aren’t you worried about doing the walk of shame at the office?”
“This isn’t what it looks like.”
“Are you sure?” I said. “Because it sure looks like a sleepover to me.”
“It is, but not the way you think.”
“You and Claire?” I said. “I gotta say, Ethan, I did not see that coming.”
“Repeat,” he said. “Not what it looks like, not what you think.”
“Enlighten me, then.”
“Walk with me,” he said.
“Okay,” I said, “but I hope people at the office aren’t going to think I’m the one you spent the night with when they see you in the same clothes you wore yesterday.”
“Could you please cut the shit?”
“You first,” I said. “Shouldn’t Reggie be with you, or one of his guys?”
“I came here alone,” he said.
“I thought you were the one always looking over his shoulder,” I said.
“Trying to quit.”
“Even though two people connected to your company are dead.”
“I’ve decided I can’t live my best life thinking I might be next.”
“Claire’s afraid she might be next,” I said. “It’s why I’ve put some people on her.”
“I know,” he said. “And she has a right to feel that way and you have a right to protect her. I have my people when I need them, as you know.”
We were walking up Huntington by then, on our way toward Copley Plaza.
“Claire and I aren’t having an affair.”
“If you say so.”
“I wouldn’t put her in that position, and I wouldn’t do it to Andrew, knowing how close the two of them are,” he said. “I just needed to talk to her away from the office, and once we started talking we got into the wine pretty good. And before I knew it, she was offering to let me sleep on her couch and I accepted.”
“Must have been a lot of wine.”
“It was, trust me. I haven’t felt this hungover in a long time.”
I figured it was about a fifteen-minute walk to the Hancock. We were already halfway there, but as Lowe was walking at hangover speed, we might not arrive until lunchtime.
“What did you need to talk to her about?” I said.
“We were talking about the merger, what else?” he said. “I should have had Andrew locked down on this long ago. I still don’t. I thought Laura could help me, but she was even more opposed to it than he once was. But now Laura is gone, and I know how much he leans on Claire, maybe now more than ever. So I went there to ask for her help in bringing him around before it’s too late, for all of us.”
“You’re just trying to enlist her now?”
He had picked up his pace just slightly by the time we got to Stuart.
“I’ve tried this approach before,” he said. “But not to the extent that I did last night. This time I offered her a substantial raise, and I do mean substantial, if she could do a better job lobbying Andrew than I have to this point.”
“Is she willing to do that?”
Lowe shook his head. “She told me that what I was offering was too big to be a gift and too small to be a bribe. So then I offered to give her a small piece of the merger, as even more of a sweetener.”
“You really must have been drunk.”
“The money would be a drop in the bucket in the whole grand scheme of things.”
“Did she accept?”
“She did not. She told me that her loyalty was, and always will be, to Andrew. He’d given her and her son a future, and a life after her husband left them.”
“Hard not to respect that,” I said.
We were at Clarendon now, the Hancock dead ahead.
“I begged her one last time before we called it a night to reconsider, that she wouldn’t just be saving the company, but Andrew at the same time. Because if we lose the company, if he loses the company so soon after Laura, I’m not sure what’s going to happen to him.”
“ ‘Lose the company’ sounds a bit over-the-top.”
“There’s a lot of plates spinning, Mr. Spenser. I’ll just leave it at that.”
Lowe turned to face me. His pallor was still gray, his eyes bloodshot. I didn’t know how much sleep he’d gotten on Claire’s couch. But it clearly hadn’t been enough.
“This company is the only child either one of us has ever had,” Lowe said. “What would you do if you were faced with losing the thing in the world that mattered the most to you?”
“Fight like hell,” I said.
“That’s all I’m doing here,” he said. “I just want my partner to fight with me, one last time.”
Then he said, “Have a good day,” in front of the Hancock.
It didn’t sound as if his heart was really in it. The part about me having a good day. But at least he hadn’t taken a swing at me.
So there was that.