Chapters 1 through 6 Summary

Spenser is in his new office at the corner of Boylston and Berkley, having been among those evicted from his previous office along with a bookie and a fortune teller. He notes that he's now directly over a bank where the employees do exactly the same things the bookie and fortune teller had done, but dress better while doing it. On his desk is a photo of Susan Silverman, Spenser's girlfriend. A woman named Patty Giacomin arrives and asks to hire Spenser to retrieve her son, Paul. She says the police are barely interested in the case of a fifteen-year-old though Patty says that Paul has been abducted by his father, Mel. Spenser asks where Mel might be holding the boy and begins figuring how to find them.

The next morning, Spenser is in his car outside Elaine Brooks' apartment building...