Cold Service s-32

by Robert B. Parker

  His voice didn't inflect, but I knew it was a question.

  "Lookin' for anything we could find on Boots," Hawk said. "Ain't no secret to you that we after his ass."

  Leonard nodded.

  "And why wasn't you in the office with Hawk?" Leonard said to me.

  "Parking the car," I said.

  "Whyn't you park it out front?" Leonard said. "Never nobody in that neighborhood anyway."

  "Didn't think it would move our purpose along if Boots's cops gave us a ticket right outside Rimbaud's place."

  Leonard nodded again.

  "Gimme the whole story," Leonard said.

  Hawk told him our version of the events. When he got through, Leonard nodded again.

  "Lucky you were there," he said.

  "What's Tony going to do?" I said.

  "Didn't say."

  "What do you think he'll do?"

  "Didn't say."

  Hawk grinned widely.

  "What would you do," Hawk said, "you was Tony."

  "Whatever Tony tole me," Leonard said.

  "Okay," Hawk said. "I catching on that you Tony's man."

  Leonard didn't say anything.

  "You tell Tony that whatever he plans on doing 'bout Boots, we be prepared to help."

  "Tony want to know first why Boots welshed on the deal," Leonard said.

  "Maybe Rimbaud having too much success," Hawk said.

  Leonard smiled for a moment.

  "Probably not," he said.

  "Tony send up some help?" I said.

  "Brock ain't here."

  "Where'd he go?"

  "Back to Boston."

  "Where Tony can keep an eye on him," I said.

  "Tony got couple people over there."

  "On the wharf," I said.

  Leonard nodded.

  "Bet Jolene likes that," I said.

  "Jolene don't like much," Leonard said.

  46

  "I LET A couple guys beat me at pool," Vinnie said. "And I let a guy cheat me at blackjack. He had a fucking marked deck I could read better than he could."

  "And?" Hawk said.

  "Somebody owes me for the money I lost," Vinnie said.

  We were in a pizza joint in Chelsea, with a nice view of the Mystic River Bridge. The bridge had been renamed the Tobin Bridge about forty years ago, but I remain a traditionalist.

  "I didn't hire you," Hawk said. "Speak to your employer."

  Vinnie looked at me.

  "How 'bout I pay for the pizza," I said.

  "You was going to do that anyway," Vinnie said.

  "What'd you get," Hawk said, "for all that losing?"

  "Town's really organized," Vinnie said. "There's the vendors: dope, numbers, whores. Then there's block sergeants and section captains and the city boss, Ukrainian guy."

  "You got a name?" Hawk said.

  "Sure, but I can't fucking pronounce it."

  "Try," Hawk said.

  Vinnie shook his head.

  "Naw, but I wrote it down. Guy spelled it for me."

  He handed Hawk a cocktail napkin, on which was printed Vanko Tsyklins'kyj. Hawk read it and nodded.

  "Vanko Tsyklins'kyj," Hawk said.

  "Yeah, him," Vinnie said.

  "He's the head of the organization?"

  "On the flow chart he would be," Vinnie said. "Everybody knows it's really Boots."

  We had a large pepperoni pizza on the table and were sharing it, except Leonard, who had a small salad and a Diet Coke.

  "All the Ukes work for Boots. One of them's his bodyguard now."

  "Lyaksandro Prohorovych," Hawk said.

  "Sounds right," Vinnie said. "People I talk to think the other kid, Rimbaud, is a joke."

  "He's a blackberry," Leonard said.

  "Blackberry?" I said.

  "Guy wants to be black," Hawk said. "Even though he look like a slice of Wonder Bread."

  "There's an actual name for guys like that?" I said.

  "Sure," Hawk said. "Guys want to be extra cool like Leonard and me. Natural rhythm, lotta sex drive. Hope their dick gets bigger."

  "Nice they can rebel," I said, "and be down and funky and still not get rousted by suburban cops."

  "Tha's right," Hawk said. "Want to be authentic Africans like me and Leonard, without paying the, ah, price of admission."

  "And you authentic Africans don't welcome converts."

  Leonard was looking at me silently.

  "What the fuck he talking about?" Leonard said to Hawk.

  "I never do know," Hawk said.

  "Just hoping to bridge the racial divide," I said.

  "Oh, that's what you doing," Hawk said.

  "Rimbaud got any following at all?" I asked Vinnie.

  "He's got a straggle-ass Puerto Rican street gang. Thinks he's gonna take over the city."

  "How many."

  "Varies, mostly kids, not reliable. People he can count on? Maybe eight."

  "So Boots could swat him like a fly," I said.

  "Sure," Vinnie said. "He don't have the deal with Tony."

  "And maybe he ain't got that no more," Leonard said.

  "Storefront where he was doing business burned yesterday," Vinnie said. "Somebody torched it."

  "Whole building?" I said.

  "Yep."

  "Tenants?"

  "Couple Marshport cops came through; herded them all out before the fire started."

  "Guess the deal with Tony is void," I said.

  "Hear anything from the Gray Man?" Leonard said.

  Hawk shook his head.

  "So what are we gonna do?" Leonard said.

  Hawk chewed some pepperoni pizza, which seemed like such a good idea that I took another slice. Hawk looked sort of thoughtfully at Leonard while he chewed. Then he swallowed and drank some iced tea, and patted his mouth carefully with a paper napkin.

  "Leonard," he said. "You got to decide something."

  Leonard waited.

  "You either with us or with Tony."

  "I'm with Tony," Leonard said.

  "We probably with Tony, too," Hawk said. "But if it worked out that we wasn't, I'd need to know where you stood."

  "Be sort of depending," Leonard said.

  "Yeah," Hawk said, "it would. I ain't got no problem with Tony. I don't want to kill him or hurt his business."

  Leonard was quiet, watching Hawk.

  "I am going to put this town out of business and kill Boots and the two Ukrainians."

  "What you going to do about Tony's son-in-law?" Leonard said.

  "Nothing," Hawk said.

  "I ain't afraid of you, Hawk," Leonard said.

  "You should be," Hawk said. "You should be afraid of me and you should be afraid of this slick-talking haddock with me."

  "Aw, hell," I said.

  Vinnie seemed totally immersed in the coffee experience. I wasn't sure Vinnie paid attention to anything he wasn't paid to pay attention to.

  Leonard shook his head.

  "Tony told me to stay with you," he said, "and help out any way you needed, and let him know what was going on."

  "And if we got something going on we don't want him to hear about?"

  "Be depending again," Leonard said.

  "Sometimes not letting him know might in the long run be helping out the best way you could."

  "That what it might be depending on," Leonard said.

  Hawk looked at me. I looked back. He shrugged. I nodded.

  "Well, we deal with it when it comes up," Hawk said.

  Leonard was a hard case.

  "If you can," he said.

  "Oh, hell, Leonard," Hawk said. " 'Course we can."

  47

  "IT'S GOING TO go down today," Leonard told us in the parking lot of a donut shop on Route 1A. "Tony say he like you in it, but if that don't work for you, stay the fuck out the way."

  "It work for us," Hawk said.

  "Gray Man working in City Hall?" Leonard said.

  "Yes."

  "Might tell him not t
o," Leonard said.

  "When does it start?" I said.

  "You'll know," Leonard said and got out of Hawk's car and walked to his own. Vinnie sat in the backseat, listening to his iPod. There was no way to tell if he'd even known Leonard was there.

  "Tony going right for it," Hawk said.

  "Seems so," I said.

  "Going right after Boots," Hawk said.

  "We want that?" I said.

  Hawk shook his head.

  "Gotta get the trust-fund money first," Hawk said. "And Boots be all we got for that."

  I drank some coffee.

  " 'Less we can find somebody else to endow the kid's future," I said.

  "Vinnie?" Hawk said.

  I looked at Vinnie, leaning his head against the leather upholstery in the backseat of Hawk's Jaguar. His eyes were closed as he listened to the music.

  "I see your point," I said. "So, we gotta rescue him."

  "Is that a bitch?" Hawk said.

  "It is," I said.

  Hawk smiled and did a flawless Stan Laurel.

  "A fine mess I've got us into this time, Ollie."

  "Well," I said, "unless Leonard had a hidden agenda when he warned us about getting the Gray Man out of harm's way, we can assume it'll start at City Hall."

  "Agreed," Hawk said.

  "So there should be a lot of diversionary activity."

  "Should," Hawk said.

  "Which might work for us," I said.

  "Always see the glass half full, don't you," Hawk said.

  "A cockeyed optimist," I said.

  "We engineered this sucker," Hawk said. "We can't just warn Boots ahead of time. We blow the whole deal."

  "Hoist on our own petard," I said.

  From the backseat, holding his earphones away from his ears, Vinnie said, "You know a petard is a land mine?"

  Hawk and I looked at each other.

  "I did know that," I said.

  Vinnie shrugged slightly and put the earphones back in his ears.

  "Hard to plan anything," Hawk said, "till we know what Tony going to do."

  "We know he's starting at City Hall," I said. "Let's call the Gray Man."

  "Okay," Hawk said. "You in, Vinnie?"

  Vinnie opened his eyes for a moment.

  "Sure," he said and closed his eyes.

  48

  THE GRAY MAN met us in the parking lot of a bait-and-tackle shop near the marina on Ocean Way, a few blocks east of City Hall. He got into the backseat of Hawk's car with Vinnie. Neither one paid any attention to the other.

  "Tony Marcus gonna try for Boots," Hawk said.

  "Where?" the Gray Man said.

  "Probably City Hall."

  "When?"

  "Don't know," Hawk said. "Soon."

  "Are you participating?" the Gray Man said.

  "We gonna get Boots out," Hawk said.

  "Out?"

  " 'Fore he dies," Hawk said, "Boots gonna give me money for Luther Gillespie's kid."

  "Ah," the Gray Man said. "Yes. You want it all."

  "Un-huh."

  "Do you need me to shoot, or can I help you better by remaining covert."

  "Need you to get us in to Boots, or Boots out to us," Hawk said.

  The Gray Man nodded.

  "Without revealing myself," the Gray Man said.

  "Exactly," Hawk said.

  The Gray Man looked past Hawk at the boats in the marina slip. It wasn't much of a marina, and the few boats seemed to be mostly perches for herring gulls.

  "Do we know the timing," the Gray Man said.

  "No," Hawk said. "Boots got a private exit?"

  The Gray Man nodded. He continued to look out past the shabby marina at the dirty harbor. From here you couldn't see the open ocean. You would have thought Vinnie was asleep in the backseat beside the Gray Man, except that his head bobbed very gently in time to the music only he could hear. Probably emblematic of us all, bopping to the tunes only we could listen to. I smiled to myself. Crime buster/ philosopher.

  "When the shooting starts, you think he'll use it?" I said.

  "Boots don't scare easy," Hawk said.

  "He doesn't," I said. "But he's not stupid."

  "We need not decide," the Gray Man said. "I'll show you the route. You wait outside. When the shooting starts, I'll urge him. If he comes out, you take him. If he doesn't come out, you come in."

  "You staying?" I said.

  "Yes."

  "You're more useful to us alive."

  "I have been alive a long time," the Gray Man said. "And I have heard bullets fly quite often."

  "Okay," Hawk said. "Tell us about the entrance."

  "Have you writing materials?"

  Hawk nodded. He took a pad and a ballpoint pen from the glove compartment and handed them back to the Gray Man, who drew silently for a few moments.

  "This is the main entrance," he said.

  "Here?" I said. "Where it says MAIN ENTRANCE, with an arrow?"

  The Gray Man didn't smile.

  "Yes," he said. "Around here, down along the side of the building on Broad Street, an alley cuts through between the old City Hall and the addition they built about ten years ago."

  "Connected by an enclosed bridge at, what, the second floor?" I said.

  "Yes."

  "If he needed to, the mayor would walk across that bridge from his office and go down fire stairs in the new section that leads to a fire door in the cellar, which leads to a fire door that opens on the alley. But if you go down another flight to the basement level, there's a passageway that connects with the parking garage across Broad Street."

  "Where are the garage exits?" Hawk said.

  "One opposite the alley," the Gray Man said. "On Broad Street. One on the opposite side that empties out onto Exchange Street."

  "Which is a main drag," Hawk said.

  "On Exchange Street," the Gray Man said, "you are off and running. West on Franklin, north on Essex, south on Federal."

  "Broad Street would just take you back into the thick of the firefight," Hawk said, looking at the map the Gray Man was sketching. "If there was a firefight, and if they surrounded the building."

  "Only a fool," the Gray Man said, "would fail to surround the building."

  "Tony isn't a fool," Hawk said.

  "No," I said, "he isn't."

  "Though occasionally," the Gray Man said, "I wonder about you two."

  "So do we all," I said. "You haven't shared this information about the tunnel with Tony, have you?"

  "No."

  "Don't," Hawk said.

  The Gray Man smiled gently and without warmth.

  "I wouldn't think of it," he said.

  49

  SUSAN AND I were at a table by the window in the bar at the Ritz, looking across Arlington Street at the Public Gardens where spring was unfurling delicately.

  "I think it was the English writer," Susan said, "E. M. Forster, who said that if he had to choose between betraying his country and betraying his friend, he hoped he'd have the courage to betray his country."

  "The analogy is imperfect," I said.

  "All analogies are," Susan said. "But it's suggestive."

  "If I didn't help Hawk," I said, "I'm not sure he would consider it betrayal."

  Susan nodded. It was 5:10. There was a lot of traffic on Arlington Street. People going home to supper and their families. Some probably happy about it. Some probably not.

  "What would you consider it?" Susan said.

  I poured a little beer from the bottle into the glass, straight in so it would foam. Beer tasted better with a head on it.

  "Betrayal," I said.

  She nodded again.

  "But if you join him in wiping out Boots Podolak, you'll also be betraying something, won't you?"

  A string of giggly young people entered the crosswalk at Newbury Street and froze traffic back to Beacon Street. The kids seemed to enjoy it as they ambled across.

  "Me, I guess."

  "I guess," Susan said. />
  With the cars still backed up, a shabby, long-haired man stumbled along between them, asking for money. He was wearing a red Nike muscle shirt, and his thin, white arms were thick with blue tattooing. Most people ignored him.

  "You have any solutions?" I said.

  "No," Susan said. "But I know what you are going to do."

  I drank some beer and watched a black stretch limo discharge passengers into the solicitous keeping of a doorman.

  "I can't back off," I said. "I have to stay with him."

  "I know," Susan said.

  "So why am I talking about it," I said.

  "Because it's you and me," Susan said. "We talk about everything."

  "What would you do?" I said.

  "In the unlikely event that I were you?" Susan said.

  I nodded.

  "I'd stay with Hawk," she said.

  "And you a Harvard girl," I said.

  "And it would bother me," she said. "And I'd face the fact that I was doing something I thought was wrong rather than betray my friend, which"-she smiled at me-"would therefore make it sort of right."

  "Jesus," I said. "You shrinks are really convolute."

  "Whatever we are," Susan said, "we have talked enough to people who are in big messes to know that whatever you do may make you feel bad, but mostly, in time, if you're tough and don't indulge yourself, it'll pass and you'll forgive yourself."

  "Cynical, too," I said.

  "I think that's hopeful, that unless you're obsessive you'll forgive yourself," Susan said. "It's also the truth."

  "The truth will set you free?" I said.

  Susan nodded.

  "And make you cynical," she said.

  The traffic had thinned on Arlington Street. Most of the people heading home from work were on Storrow Drive by now. Or the pike. Or the expressway. Or the tunnels. Or the Zakim Bridge. Some were home by now, having their first drink before dinner. Maybe looking at the paper. Probably none of them were planning to shoot it out with a bunch of Ukrainian sociopaths. Susan turned her wineglass slowly on the tabletop in front of her. I put my hands out, and she let go of the glass and took them.

  "Thanks," I said.

  "You're welcome," she said. "Now I want to vent, briefly."

  "Fair's fair," I said.

  "If you let yourself get killed, I will want to die, too," she said.

  I nodded. It felt as if I needed more air in my chest. The waiter brought us new drinks. Outside the window, a doorman put two fingers in his mouth and whistled down a cab. I had always wished I could do that whistle, but I never could. I inhaled a lot of air as quietly as I could. I didn't want to be caught sighing.