She handed me the envelope. It was a financial statement from Hall, Peary. Home of that great romantic, Louis Vincent. Boston isn’t all that big, sooner or later cases tended to overlap. The statement showed that Prentice Lamont and Patsy Lamont JTWROS had $256,248.29 in a management account consisting mostly of common stocks and options. I copied down the name and phone number of his financial consultant which was listed at the top. It wasn’t Louis Vincent. It was someone named Maxwell Morgan.
“What is it?” she said.
“It’s a financial statement from a stockbroker.”
“What does it say?”
“It says that your son and you had two hundred fifty-six thousand and change invested in stocks and bonds, which the stockbroker managed for him.”
“You mean Prentice’s money?”
“Yes. Now yours I assume.”
“Mine?”
“Yes, see this, JTWROS? Joint tenants with right of survivorship. It means that now that your son has passed away the money is yours.”
“Mine?”
“Yes.”
“Where would Prentice get two hundred thousand dollars?”
“I was hoping you’d know,” I said. “His father?”
She snorted, in a gentle ladylike way.
“You’ve talked to his father.”
“Yes. I withdraw the question.”
I picked up the envelope. It was addressed to both Prentice and Patsy at Patsy’s address.
“Envelopes like this come here before?”
“Yes. Every month. I just gave them to him.”
“He wasn’t living here.”
“No, he lived in that apartment where they had the newspaper.”
But he had the statements sent here.
“What should I do?” Mrs. Lamont said.
“With the money?”
“Yes.”
“Do you need it?”
“Need it?”
“It’s yours,” I said.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“How do I get it?”
“Somewhere in Prentice’s effects there’s probably a checkbook.”
“He showed me one once.”
“What’d he say?”
“I don’t recall exactly, just something about see this checkbook.”
“If you had it you could simply write a check on this account when you needed to.”
“Maybe in his room,” she said. “It’s not the room he grew up in. We lived in Hingham until the divorce. It’s just the room he used when he came to see me. A child always needs to have a home to come to.”
“Yes,” I said.
“I haven’t been in his room since the funeral.”
“Would you like me to look?”
She was silent, looking into her teacup, then she nodded.
“Yes,” she said very softly.
It was a small room behind the kitchen. Single bed with a maple frame and flame shapes carved on the tops of the bedposts. A braided rag rug, mostly blue and red, that was a little raveled at one edge. A patchwork quilt, again mostly blue and red, covering the bed, some jeans and sport shirts and a pair of dark brown penny loafers in the closet. A maple bureau with an assortment of school pictures on top of it. Prentice Lamont when he was in first grade, looking stiff and a little scared in a neat plaid shirt, and in most of the grades between. His high school graduation picture dominated the collection, a round-faced kid with dark hair and pink cheeks, wearing a mortarboard. His bachelor’s degree was framed on the wall, but no college graduation picture. In the top drawer of the bureau was a checkbook and a box of spare checks and deposit slips and mailing envelopes. Apparently Prentice did his financial planning in Somerville.
There was nothing else of interest in the room. It wasn’t a room that spoke of him, of his sexuality, his fears, why he was dead, or who killed him. It was an anonymous child’s room, maintained by a mother, for an adult to come and sleep in once in a while. I brought the checkbook and the spare checks out to his mother.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Hawk and I were sparring in the boxing room at the Harbor Health Club. There was no ring, just an open space to the left of the body bag and speed bag and the skitter bag that was so hard to nail that even Hawk missed it now and then. We had on the big fat pillow gloves that even if you got nailed wouldn’t hurt much, and we were floating like a couple of butterflies and pretending to sting like a couple of bees.
“So, Lamont is outing people,” Hawk said.
I put a left jab out and Hawk picked it off with his right glove.
“Un huh.”
I turned my head, and rolled back from a right cross and felt the big soft glove just brush past my cheekbone.
“And he got two hundred fifty thousand in his money management account at Hall, Peary.”
I tried a flurry of body punches which Hawk took mostly on his elbows, and then closed up on me and clinched.
“Un huh.”
We broke and moved in an easy circle around the ring looking for daylight.
“I not a thinker like you,” Hawk said, “being the pro-duct of a racist ed-u-cational system.”
“This is certainly true,” I said and threw a lightning fast left hook which Hawk seemed to catch quite easily on his hunched right shoulder. He countered with a whistling right uppercut which I managed to avoid.
“But if I a thinker,” Hawk said. “I be thinking that OUT plus money could equal blackmail.”
“That’s amazing,” I said as I circled him clockwise, bouncing on my toes to demonstrate that I wasn’t getting tired. “And you’re not even a licensed investigator.”
Hawk shuffled in suddenly and threw a short flurry of punches which I bobbed and weaved and rolled and ducked and mostly avoided. I countered with an overhead right which Hawk pulled back from. Hawk stepped back and leaned against the wall of the gym.
“You think we go fifteen and not get a winner?” Hawk said.
“Fifteen for real,” I said, “maybe we’d be trying harder.”
“Have to.”
We walked out of the boxing room and down to Henry Cimoli’s office.
“How long’d you go,” Henry said.
He was in his trainer’s costume, a very white tee shirt and white satin sweatpants. His small upper body looked like it might pop the weave in the tee shirt.
“Half hour,” I said.
“You need mouth to mouth?”
“Not from you,” Hawk said and put his hands out for Henry to unlace the gloves. When we were both glove free, Henry nodded at the small refrigerator next to his desk.
“Trick I learned when I was fighting,” he said. “Keep some good sports drinks handy so as to replenish the electrolytes.”
I opened the refrigerator and took out two bottles of New Amsterdam Black and Tan.
“You can use my office, you want,” Henry said. “I got to go suck around the customers.”
“You too teeny to run a health club,” Hawk said. “The same people come here year after year, since the place stopped being a dump. Nobody lose weight. Nobody put on muscle. Everybody look just like they did when they signed up to get in shape.”
“One difference,” Henry said. “They are a little poorer, and I am a lot richer.”
Hawk grinned at him.
“Maybe you ain’t too teeny after all.”
Henry jumped up and kicked the palms of his outstretched hands with his toes, and landed easily and laughed and went out to the gym floor.
“Agile too,” Hawk said.
“Easy to be agile if you’re the size of a salt shaker.”
“Almost beat Willie Pep once,” Hawk said.
“I know.”
Hawk sat in Henry’s chair and took a pull at the beer. He swiveled the chair so he could look out Henry’s picture window at the harbor.
“You getting anywhere on Susan’s friend’s stalker.”
“I got a guy I like for it.”
“Time for me to go reason with him?” Hawk said.
“No. I’m not sure he’s the one.”
Hawk shrugged. He put his feet up on the windowsill and crossed his ankles and took another drink of beer.