“Alimony.”
“Enough?”
“Enough to be independent,” KC said.
“Or dependent.”
“Sure, men always say things like that. You have no idea what it is like to have been a married housewife forced suddenly to take care of herself.”
“You’re right,” I said.
She sipped her wine. The restaurant was busy. Legal Sea Foods are always busy.
“You think I should get a job?” she said.
“I think if you supported yourself and didn’t take money from your ex-husband, in the long run you’d feel better about things.”
“I wonder if he’s seeing anyone.”
I didn’t say anything.
“He was there for me,” KC said.
“And he urged you not to misunderstand,” I said. “He reminded you that you and he had different lives to live.”
“Of course you’d stick up for him. Men always stick up for each other. The old boys’ network.”
“I’m not so old,” I said.
“Oh pooh,” she said. “You know what I mean.”
The waitress brought chowder for KC and lobster salad for me. KC took the opportunity to order another glass of wine. We each had a taste of our lunch. KC’s wine came and she had some.
“But,” she said, “I didn’t ask you to lunch to complain.”
“Oh,” I said.
“I just wanted the chance to let you know that I understand how much you’ve done for me.”
“My pleasure,” I said.
“Is he-whose-name-shall-not-be-mentioned going to be in jail a long time?”
“Ask me after his trial,” I said.
“What if he doesn’t go to jail?”
“He will.”
“But what if there’s, you know, a miscarriage of justice?”
“Then we’ll take the necessary steps,” I said.
“You’ll still be there for me?”
“It’s sort of what I do, KC.”
“But I haven’t even paid you.”
“I know.”
“What if he comes back and I still can’t pay you?”
“We’ll work it out,” I said.
“I… I just don’t think I can cope if I don’t know you’re there.”
“Where?” I said.
“You know, there for me.”
“As I said, that’s sort of my profession.”
“You mean you’re there for anyone who hires you.”
“More or less,” I said.
She was taking in more wine than chowder, which was a shame because the chowder at Legal was very good. I finished my lobster salad.
“When you were sitting by my bedside,” KC said, “after the… that awful thing happened to me, I thought maybe I might be more than just someone who had hired you to be there.”
I didn’t like the way this conversation was going.
“Part of the service,” I said.
She put her hand out and placed it firmly on top of mine, and stared into my eyes.
“God damn it,” she said, “can’t you see I love you?”
I felt like I’d wandered into a remake of Stella Dallas.
“I don’t think so,” I said. “I rescued you from a bad situation. And you need to be in love with someone to feel secure and you don’t have anyone else to love at the moment, and I’m handy and you think I’m it.”
“Don’t tell me what I feel,” she said.
“Are you still seeing the therapist Susan recommended?”
“Drive all the way to Providence twice a week to talk about my father? I don’t think so.”
“Susan can get you someone up here.”
“You think I’m crazy?”
“I think you need help in figuring out who to love and who to trust and what you need.”
“Talk talk talk. Why can’t men ever simply feel?”
“You need help in not generalizing, too,” I said.
She stood up so suddenly that she knocked over her empty wine glass. She came around the table and threw her arms around me and kissed me on the mouth. I sat stock still feeling like a virgin under siege. Flight seemed unbecoming. KC was pushing the kiss as hard as a kiss can be pushed. I remained calm. When she broke for air she leaned her head back and stared into my eyes some more.
“I love you, you bastard,” she said. “Don’t you understand that I love you.”
“If you don’t let go of me,” I said, “and sit back down, I will hit you.”
She straightened up as if I actually had hit her, and stared at me, and began to cry. Sobbing loudly, she turned and ran from the restaurant. Everyone in the place watched her leave, and then looked at me with either disapproval (almost all of the women, some of the men) or sympathy (several of the men, one woman). My waitress remained unperturbed. She brought me the check.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
The post office in Beecham, Maine, was located in one corner of a variety store in a small weathered-shingle building at the top of a short hill which led down to the harbor. The coast of Maine was tourist country, and a lot of shopkeepers had adopted a kind of stage Yankee persona in order to fulfill expectations.
“I’m looking for Last Stand Systems,” I said.
The shopkeeper/postmaster was a fat old guy wearing a collar-less blue and white striped shirt, and big blue jeans held up by red suspenders.
“In town here,” he said.
As he answered me he eyed Hawk. The look wasn’t suspicious exactly, it was more the look you give to an exotic animal that has unexpectedly appeared. The way he might have looked if I’d come in with an ocelot on a leash.
“Where in town?”
“Out the Buxton Road,” he said.
“Does it have an address?” I said.
“Beecham, Maine.”
The shopkeeper was seated on one of four stools bolted to the floor in front of a marble-topped soda fountain, his fat legs dangling, his fat ankles showing sockless above a pair of moccasins. There were donuts under a glass dome, and straws and napkins in chrome dispensers.
“Does it have a number on it?” I said.
“Nope.”
“If I went out the Buxton Road how would I recognize it?”
“See the sign out front.”
“The one that says Last Stand Systems, Inc.?”
“Yep.”
“That should help us,” I said.
“Might.”
“How do we get to the Buxton Road?” I said.
“Right out front. Turn right.”
“You been working on this act for a long time?” Hawk said.
The old fat guy almost smiled for a moment, but fought it off and stayed in character.
“Yep,” he said.
“Real hay shakers wear socks,” Hawk said.
“Some do,” the old fat guy said.
Hawk grinned. We turned and went back out and got into Hawk’s car and turned right. Nearly all the houses were white and set on low foundations. Many had long porches that wrapped around the front and one side where people could sit in rocking chairs and look across the street at people sitting in rocking chairs looking across the street. The Buxton Road barrel-arched over a fast-moving little river and then flattened out between tall pines on the right and the sea-foamed boulder-scattered coastline on the left. The sea birds seemed livelier on this coast. There was very little of the effortless gliding that gulls did in Boston. Here, they flashed above the waves, and dove into the foam, and scooted over the rocks and snapped food out of the tidal ponds that formed among the rusty-looking granite chunks. About a mile out of town there was a narrow drive off into the pine trees. A small sign, black letters on white wood, read Last Stand Systems, Inc. Hawk U-turned and pulled up onto the shoulder at the opposite edge of the road above the ocean fifty yards down past the sign.
“We could be bold,” Hawk said.
“And if it’s the outfit that sent the well-dressed shooters,” I said,
“we could be dead.”
“Or, we could be guileful.”
“Guileful?”
“Guileful.”
“I vote for guileful,” I said.
“Good,” Hawk said, “what you suggest?”
“You don’t have a plan?”
“I come up with the strategic concept,” Hawk said.
“Is that what that was?” I said. “I thought you were just showing off you knew a big word.”
“That too,” Hawk said.
“Okay, let’s sneak around in the woods and see what we can see.”
“Covertly,” Hawk said.
“Of course,” I said. “Covertly.”
Hawk and I were both in work clothes, which meant jeans, sneakers, tee shirt. I wore a blue oxford dress shirt with the tails out to hide the Browning on my belt. Hawk mostly used a shoulder holster. To conceal it he was wearing a gray silk sport coat. He took it off and folded it carefully on the backseat. He had a big.44 Mag under his arm.
“Doesn’t the weight of that thing make you tip to the side?” I said.
“It do,” Hawk said. “But you never know when you might have to shoot an elephant.” Hawk put the car keys over the visor.
“Case we need wheels real quick,” Hawk said. “Don’t want to be looking for the keys.”
“‘Course this could be an outfit of pleasant people who make umbrella stands,” I said.
“With an unlisted number and a private jet,” Hawk said.
“Just a thought,” I said.
We crossed the road and went into the woods. It had that bittersweet scent that the woods often have on a hot day. Except for the whine of locusts, and the occasional movement of the wind off the ocean, it was very still. Pine needles were six inches thick underfoot. We made very little sound as we walked. We walked in a wide circle aiming to come to Last Stand Systems, Inc. from a direction other than the road. It was easy going. There was very little underbrush. It was as if the land beneath the high pines had been carefully cleared. In about twenty minutes we saw the compound. Not much to see. It looked like it might once have been a manufacturing facility that had been recycled. There were three cinder block buildings with those high glass windows that nineteenth-century industrial buildings used to have, the kind that have a fine wire mesh running through them. The buildings were painted flat white. The compound was surrounded by a high chain link fence with razor wire on top.
I climbed a tree. From there I could see that the buildings faced onto an open area about the size of a football field. An American flag was on a flagpole in front of one building. A couple of men in dark suits and white shirts came out of the building by the flagpole and walked across the open area and went into the building across the way. I looked down. Hawk had taken a seat under the tree with his back against the trunk and his ankles crossed and appeared to be asleep, though he probably wasn’t.
I sat in my tree some more. There’s something about sitting in a tree when you’re a grown man that makes you feel like a doofus. But it was a feeling I understood, I’d had it before. I sat, doofus-like, and looked at the layout. To my left was a gated entrance with a guard shack manned by a guard. The gate was open, folded back out of the way against the chain link fence. The central building with the flagpole was directly opposite the gate. It was clearly the administrative place. The suits continued in and out of there. The other two buildings seemed to be a barracks and maybe a supply warehouse. A couple of green Jeeps and a black Lincoln stretch limo with tinted windows were parked in front of the administration building. They all had Maine plates. I noted the plate numbers.
As I watched, a man in starched fatigues and wearing a pistol belt strolled slowly along the fence. There was a radio on his belt on the hip opposite the pistol, and a microphone clipped to his epaulets. At the corner he stopped and spoke to another guy with the same equipment who had obviously walked down his length of fence. One of them leaned his hand against the chain link as they talked. Which meant the fence was not electrified. The other two lengths of fence were hidden by the buildings. I watched as my guy turned smartly and strolled back along his fence and, sure enough, met another guard at the other corner. Being a trained observer I concluded that the perimeter was guarded by four men. I watched some more. The guards went back and forth. After about a half hour a squad of four other men in starched fatigues came out of the far building under the direction of another guy and they marched out to change the guard. I sat some more. In the next hour and a half I counted at least twenty men in starched fatigues and sidearms either guarding the perimeter or marching about in the compound in something resembling close order drill. My left knee was beginning to hurt where I’d gotten shot once. I wasn’t sure I could stand the excitement of another guard change, so I climbed back down the tree and stood and stretched out my knee a little. Hawk tilted his head back and looked at me.
“So, Hawkeye,” he said. “What’d you see.”
“Looks like something between an IBM retreat and Parris Island,” I said.
“Got a perimeter guard,” Hawk said.
“I counted about twenty guys in fatigues and sidearms,” I said.
“Don’t seem necessary for a bunch of pleasant umbrella stand makers,” Hawk said.
“No,” I said. “It doesn’t.”
“We tough enough to go in there and roust twenty guys?” Hawk said.
“Of course we are,” I said.
“How ‘bout stupid enough?” Hawk said.
“Sure, but then what? I don’t even know what we’re looking for in there.”
“Same thing we looking for when we drove way the fuck up here,” Hawk said. “We trying to figure out the connection between Amir and this outfit.”
“Oh yeah,” I said. “And we’re doing that because we think it might help us figure out who threw Prentice Lamont out the window.”
“Exactly,” Hawk said.
“Shooting it out with twenty guys may not be the best way to get that information.”
“Specially if only one guy’s got the information and you kill him.”
“A definite possibility.”
“Or we might both get shot to pieces and then the thing wouldn’t ever get solved,” Hawk said.
“Unlikely,” I said. “But not impossible.”
We both looked at the gleam of the white cinder block buildings through the lacy distraction of the trees. The high locust whine was so much a part of the woods that it had become nearly inaudible. The bittersweet smell of the woods was stronger as the sun had gotten higher.
“I think guile is still our best option,” I said.
“So what the guileful thing to do?” Hawk said.
“Go back home, maybe have a couple beers, and think about it,” I said.
“Works for me,” Hawk said.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
Heading back to the car we were maybe twenty yards from the highway when we both stopped short at the same time.
“You smell it?” I said.
“Cigarette,” Hawk said.
I nodded. Hawk took his elephant gun from the shoulder holster and stuck it into his belt at the small of his back. He shucked off the shoulder rig and dropped it and moved off to the right. I went left. We emerged onto the highway bracketing the car, Hawk ten yards beyond it, me ten yards this side. There were four of them leaning on the car. They had on uniforms and carried side arms. An unmarked blue Jeep was parked behind Hawk’s Jag. I sauntered toward them with a big friendly smile.
“Hi,” I said. “You waiting for me?”
One of them turned toward me. He was still wearing his hornrimmed glasses and it still made him look smart. Of course, appearances can be deceiving.
“This your car?” he said. After he said it, he stared at me and I could see recognition begin to form behind his lenses.
“Actually it belongs to my Negro friend,” I said.
They had not planned on being approached by two people at the same time from opposi
te directions. They should have divided the chore. Two look at me. Two look at Hawk. But they hadn’t decided in advance, and therefore didn’t know, which two should look at whom. Training is good, but sometimes innovation is better.
“I know you,” Horn Rims said.
“And a better man for it,” I said.
Hawk and I kept coming. Horn Rims put a hand on the radio at his belt and turned his head and spoke something into the microphone clipped to his epaulets. Then he unsnapped the flap of his holster.
“Stop right where you are,” he said.
“Here?” I said.
For a moment all four of them were looking at me. When two of them looked back at Hawk, he had put the car between him and them and was resting the big.44 on the roof with the hammer back.
One of them said, “Jesus Christ” and all four looked for a moment at Hawk. When two of them looked back at me I had the Browning out and cocked and pointed.
“You guys got to be better organized,” I said. “Move away from the car.”
Horn Rims glanced toward the driveway. He was expecting reinforcements. I stepped closer and hit him with a left hook that staggered him into the road. Then I got in the car and fumbled the keys down from the sun visor. Hawk remained with his gun on the security guards.
“You’re a dead man,” Horn Rims screamed at me. “Wherever you run, whatever you do, even if you kill some of us, we’ll run you both to ground and kill you.”
From up the long driveway I could hear the sound of cars coming. More than one. I started the Jaguar.
I heard Hawk say, “Watch this.”
There were two big booms from the.44 and in the rearview mirror I could see the Jeep settle forward on its rapidly deflating front tires.
I heard Hawk say, “All of you on the ground, facedown.”
Then Hawk was in the front seat. I stomped on the accelerator and the Jag lunged forward spinning up gravel from the road shoulder. We lurched up onto the road surface and screeched away. I could smell the tires scorching and there was some small-arms fire, but nothing hit us. Hawk slammed the door shut as the car stabilized and smoothed out.
“We going to have to do something about these guys,” Hawk said.
I was driving as fast as the Buxton Road would let me back toward Beecham. Hawk had the cylinder of his.44 open and was feeding in two fresh rounds that looked about the size of surface to air missiles.
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