Pastime

by Robert B. Parker

  "Me too."

  "More than Diane Sawyer?"

  "Well, of course not," I said.

  Susan had recently acquired one of those turbocharged Japanese sports cars, which she drove like a New York cabbie, flooring it between stoplights and talking trash to other motorists. We made the fifteen-minute drive from

  Susan's place to Icarus Restaurant in about seven minutes. And gave the car to the valet kid and went in.

  Icarus is very voguish and demure and the sight of Hawk waiting for us at a table was enough to cheer me for the evening. He looked like a moose at a gazelle convention. He stood when he saw Susan and she kissed him. There was a bottle of Krug in an ice bucket beside the table. When we sat, Hawk took it from the ice, wiped it with the towel, and poured champagne into

  Susan's glass, then mine.

  Susan raised her glass and said, "To us." We clinked and drank. The corners of Susan's eyes were crinkled with amusement.

  "I can't tell you," she said, "how out of place you two look in here."

  "Not our fault we big," Hawk said.

  "Of course not," Susan said. "Have you seen pictures of Pearl?"

  "Not yet," Hawk said.

  Susan rummaged in her purse. Which was quite tricky, since the purse wasn't much bigger than a postcard. She was wearing a white suit with gold braid and epaulets, and she seemed, as she always did, to occupy the center of the room. Everything else seemed to group around her and be ordered by her, like a jar in Tennessee. When you were with Susan you could remain anonymous. No one would notice you.

  Even Hawk was less apparent when he was with Susan.

  Tonight he was all in black. Suit, shirt, tie. I was even more daring in a blue blazer, tan slacks, a white oxford button-down shirt, and a maroon tie with tiny white dots in it.

  "You the world's oldest preppie," Hawk said to me. "You got on wing-tipped cordovans?"

  "Like hell," I said and stuck my foot out so he could check the loafers.

  "Note the stunning little kiltie, as well as the hint of a tassel."

  "Probably got an argyle gun," Hawk said.

  "In a chino holster," I said. "With a little belt in the back."

  Susan found her folder of pictures of Pearl and put them on the table in front of Hawk. He looked at them silently as Susan provided commentary.

  "There she is her first day with us," Susan said. "And there she is with her ball. There she is on the bed with himself."

  Hawk looked at me. "A dog?" he said.

  I shrugged. "I like dogs," I said.

  Hawk nodded. "Sure you do. Known that long as I've known you."

  We were silent for a moment, looking at the menu. The waiter appeared. We ordered. The waiter departed.

  "How long have you known him?" Susan said to Hawk.

  Hawk grinned. "You remember?" he said to me.

  "Shouldn't smile like that," I said. "Spoils the monochromatic look."

  "Whites of my eyes a problem there, too," Hawk said.

  "Do you remember?" Susan said to me.

  "Sure. We were fighting a prelim at the Arena."

  "We on the card so early, the ushers still dusting off the seats," Hawk said.

  "The Arena? That's not the Garden."

  "No, the Boston Arena. These days it's a hockey rink. All cleaned up and presentable. Northeastern University owns it now."

  "Did you fight each other in this preliminary bout?" Susan said.

  "Yeah," I said.

  "Well?" Susan said.

  "Well what?" I said.

  "Hawk?" Susan said.

  Hawk looked at her and smiled and raised his eyebrows.

  "What?" he said.

  "Who won?" Susan said.

  "I did," we both said simultaneously.

  Susan stared at us for a moment and then smiled. "Of course you did," she said.

  "Mostly white fighters in Boston in those days," Hawk said.

  "Hawk was the great black hope," I said.

  "Night me and Spenser fought, lotta people didn't like a black fighter on the card."

  The first course arrived. The waiter put it down and then refreshed our champagne glasses.

  "After, ah, one of us won the fight," Hawk said, "I got cleaned up and dressed and I'm coming out of the Arena and I run into a group of young white guys. They drunk. Lot of people go to the fights at the Arena are drunk. And one of them spoke loudly, and unkindly of… I believe the phrase was jigaboos. At which I took some offense."

  "How many were there?" Susan said.

  "Enough so they brave," Hawk said. "Six, maybe, eight. Anyway, ah expressed my resentment to the guy who had called me a jigaboo, and it caused him to spit out some of his front teeth. And so his friends jump in. Normally me against eight drunks is probably about even. But I'm a little winded from fighting your friend, and winning-"

  "Losing," I said.

  "And I'm beginning to give a little ground when Spenser comes out and sees the fight and jumps in on my side and their side calls him a nigger lover and Spenser throw him through a window."

  "Open?" Susan said.

  "No."

  Susan winced.

  "Who won?" Susan said. I knew she knew the answer, but she was kind enough to feed it to us.

  "We did," Hawk and I said simultaneously.

  Susan laughed. "I knew you would," she said. "Did you ever fight each other again?"

  "No," I said.

  The appetizers went away and the entree came, pork tenderloin with sour cherry sauce, and polenta. I was so pleased with it that I never even noticed what Hawk and Susan were eating.

  "But you stayed in touch," Susan said.

  "In a manner of speaking, Lollypop," Hawk said.

  "We'd go shopping together," I said. "Take in some matinees, have a sundae at Bailey's, after."

  "I feel that I am being made sport of," Susan said, "by a pair of sexist oinkers."

  "You got that right," Hawk said.

  "How did you stay in touch, Porkies?"

  "Our work tended to bring us in contact," Hawk said. "First when we fighting, we'd be on the same card sometime, changing in the same back room in some gym."

  "And later?" Susan said.

  "Our professional lives continued to intersect," I said. "Still do."

  "We both involved in the matter of, ah, crime," Hawk said.

  "From varying perspectives," I said.

  "You are each other's best friend," Susan said. "In some genuine sense you love each other. But you never show it, never speak of it. One would never know."

  "You know," Hawk said.

  "Only because I know you so well."

  "We know," Hawk said.

  "And nobody else much matters," Susan said.

  Hawk smiled and didn't say anything. Susan looked at him then at me.

  "Peas in a pod," she said.

  CHAPTER 16

  I left Pearl with Susan in the morning when Hawk picked me up in his forest green Jaguar sedan. "She can't go with you?" Susan said.

  "Hawk hates dog drool on the leather seats," I said.

  "You don't care about that," Susan said. "And neither does Hawk. You think it might be dangerous going to see Gerry Broz and you don't want her to get hurt, or you to get hurt and her to be left alone." Susan was wearing a kimono with vertical black and white stripes, and she hadn't put her makeup on yet. Her face was shiny and vulnerable in its morning innocence.

  "Gerry's a weird dude," I said.

  She nodded and held up her face and I kissed her, and patted Pearl and went on to Hawk.

  "Gonna come by someday, see a tricycle on the porch," Hawk said as he slid the Jag away from the curb in front of Susan's house.

  "Maybe Paul will have a kid," I said.

  "Get you one of those bumper stickers say ASK ME ABOUT MY GRANDCHILD," Hawk said.

  "There's a Dunkin' Donuts in Union Square, Somerville " I said. "You could get me coffee instead."

  Which we did, and drank it as we drove on 93 and 128
to Beverly. We were meeting Gerry in an Italian restaurant called Rocco's Grotto on Rantoul

  Street. The front of Rocco's was done in fake fieldstone. A big neon sign in the window advertised PIZZA, PASTA, MORE. There was a bicycle repair shop next door and across the street a billiard parlor. Hawk and I got out of the car and went to the front door. There was a stock sign in the window that said CLOSED on it. I tried the door. It opened and we went in. There were booths down the left-hand wall, a bar down the right, and tables in the space between. Most of the tables had chairs upside down on them. Past the end of the bar was a swinging door to the kitchen, with a pass-through window to the left of it. Beyond that was a short corridor to the rest rooms. Behind the bar was a guy with straggly blond hair and a skinny neck. He was brewing coffee. He looked up when we came in.

  "You here for Gerry?" he said.

  I said yes.

  He jerked his head toward a booth.

  "He'll be along," he said.

  He had probably been a thin guy once, but as time passed he had gotten sort of plump until the only remnant of his former self was his thin neck.

  Hawk ignored the head gesture toward a booth and took the barstool nearest the kitchen. Hemoved it away from the kitchen door and sat on it, leaning against the back wall. I sat at the other end, near the door. No sense bunching up. The guy with the skinny neck shrugged and looked at his coffee maker. The water had nearly stopped dripping through the filter. He leaned his hips against the inside of the bar and crossed his arms and studied it as it dripped more and more occasionally. Finally it stopped altogether. The round glass pot was full.

  The guy with the skinny neck got a round bar tray from under the bar and put a coffee mug on it, a small cardboard carton of heavy cream, and a bowl filled with paper packets of Equal. He put a teaspoon on the tray beside the coffee mug. Then he put the tray up on the bar top and went into the kitchen. He came back in maybe two minutes with a plate of Italian pastries. I saw raisin cake, biscotti, hazelnut cake, and cannoli. He put the plate on the tray and then he leaned back against the bar again and folded his arms again, and looked at nothing.

  Which was what I was looking at.

  Then the door opened and a big guy came in wearing a tan Ultrasuede thigh-length coat. He had very big hands, and even though everything seemed to fit him fine, his hands were so big that it made him look like his sleeves were too short.

  He looked first at Hawk in the back, and then at me. And then moved on into the restaurant leaving the door ajar and leaned on the wall near Hawk.

  Gerry Broz came in next, and after him two more bodyguards. One wore a tan corduroy sport coat over a dark brown sport shirt. The sport coat had brown leather elbow patches but fit him so badly that I could see the bulge on his right hip where he wore a gun. The other bodyguard wore a dark blue three-piece suit.

  He had on a blue and red figured tie with a very wide knot, and a trench coat worn like a cape over his shoulders. As he came through the front door, he reached back with his left hand and pulled it shut. Then he produced a double-barreled shotgun with the barrels sawed off and the stock modified, and held that, muzzle down, in his right hand.

  "That it for backup?" I said to Gerry. "Nobody on the roof?"

  "Hey, asshole, you asked for this meet," Gerry said.

  "One of your many good qualities, Gerry," I said. "You are a master of the clever riposte."

  The tall guy with the two big hands said from the back, "Why don't you just shut your fucking mouth."

  "Barbarians," I said to Hawk. "We have fallen among barbarians." I looked at the guy behind the bar. "And this seemed like such a nice place too," I said.

  He ignored me. He picked up the tray he'd prepared and went over to the booth along the left wall, near the door, where Gerry had slid in by himself. It was getting harder and harder for Gerry to slide into booths.

  Every time I saw him he seemed to have gained another ten. He wasn't a big guy, and he obviously didn't work out, so that everypound he packed on looked like twice that and very flabby. Moreover his wardrobe hadn't caught up to his poundage, so that everything seemed tight and you had the sense that he was very uncomfortable.

  The bartender poured him some coffee, and left the pot. Gerry poured some heavy cream in, added four packets of Equal, and stirred slowly while he ate a biscotto. His hair was cut long in the back and short on top, where it was spiked. He had a camel's hair topcoat on, which he wore open with the belt hanging loose. He wasn't too much older than Paul and already there were small red veins showing on his cheeks. He swallowed the last of his first biscotto, and drank some coffee, and put the mug down.

  "Okay, asshole," he said. "Hawk told Lucky you wanted to ask me something."

  He nodded his head toward the guy with the sawed-off so I should know which one was Lucky.

  "What are you and Rich Beaumont doing?" I said.

  Nobody said anything. Gerry gazed at me without expression for a long time.

  The bartender cleared his throat once, softly, turning his head away and covering his mouth as if he were in church.

  Finally Gerry said, "Who?"

  "Rich Beaumont," I said. "You and he are involved in some kind of scam which has gone sour and now you and everybody else is looking for Rich. I want to know what the scam was."

  Gerry looked at me stonily some more. It was supposed to make the marrow congeal in my bones.

  Then he ate a cannoli, drank some more coffee, looked around the room with what passed in Gerry's life for a big grin.

  "Any you guys know Rich Beaumont?" He made a point of mispronouncing it, putting the emphasis on the first syllable.

  "You, Lucky?"

  The guy with the shotgun shook his head.

  "Maishe?"

  Maishe was the guy with the oversized hands. "Never heard of him," he said.

  "Rock?"

  The bartender shook his head.

  "Anthony?"

  "Never heard of no Rich Beaumont." The guy in the corduroy coat mispronounced Beaumont just as his boss had.

  "You got any other questions, asshole?"

  "Yeah," I said. "How many more times you think you can screw up like this before your father won't let you play anymore?"

  The silence in the restaurant gathered like a fog. Gerry's face got red.

  His breath rasped. He leaned suddenly forward over the table. An elbow knocked over his mug and coffee puddled on the table top.

  "You cocksucker," he said. "You can't talk that way to me."

  "Why not?" I said. "You think these four guys are enough?"

  "Nobody, nobody…" He seemed to run out of air and stopped and took in a deep breath.

  "Lucky," he said.

  The guy with the shotgun half turned toward me and suddenly there was a gun in Hawk's hand. No one had seen any movement, but there it was. Everyone froze for a moment on the big.44, with the long barrel and the hammer thumbed back.

  "Gerry goes first," Hawk said.

  The focus turned back to me. I had managed to get the Browning out and cocked. Lucky had the shotgun leveled at me. Maishe had a hand under his coat and Anthony stood motionless with his hand half raised toward a shoulder holster. Behind the bar Rocco's hands were out of sight. I kept the gun on Lucky. Nobody moved. It was very close quarters and if the balloon went up it was going to be a mess. I could hear Gerry's breath laboring in and out. The kitchen door swung open and Vinnie Morris walked into the dining room.

  "What the fuck?" he said.

  Nobody moved. Vinnie walked over to Lucky and casually put a hand on the shotgun and pushed the barrels down. Then he turned toward the booth where

  Gerry was sitting.

  "What the fuck, Gerry?" he said. He gestured with one hand toward Maishe, and with the other toward Anthony. They let their hands drop. I put the

  Browning back under my arm. Hawk's gun disappeared.

  "What are you doing here?" Gerry said finally.

  "Joe asked me to hang around, kee
p an eye on things."

  "He knew about this meeting?"

  "Sure."

  Gerry looked at the guy behind the bar.

  "Rocco?" he said.

  Rocco shrugged. "Joe's bar," he said.

  "You fucking snitch," Gerry said.

  "I work for Joe," Rocco said. "No need to give me a batch of shit about it."

  "I'll give you any batch of shit I want to, you squealing cocksucker."

  "Vinnie?" Rocco said.

  Vinnie nodded. To Gerry he said, "Shhh."

  "So my father knew. So what?" Gerry said. "What the fuck he have to send you for? He thinks I can't handle this?"

  "He don't want you getting hurt," Vinnie said. "He says, Vinnie, go down, stay out of the way. Just keep an eye on things. Make sure nothing goes bad."

  "Hurt? Hurt, I'm fucking thirty-one, Vinnie. I'm a fucking grown man."

  "Joe wanted to be sure," Vinnie said.

  Gerry's voice was shaking. "Stay the fuck away from me, Vinnie. You and him both, stay the fuck out of my life, you unnerstand? I don't need you. I was handling this, for crissake. I don't need you fucking wet-nursing me. I can handle it. I can handle any fucking thing. Stay the fuck away from me…

  His voice broke. He got up suddenly and pushed past Vinnie and went out the front door. Vinnie watched him go. He shook his head slowly. Then he turned and in a gesture that included all three bodyguards he jerked his head at the door. Theywent out after Gerry. Rocco stayed behind the bar. Hawk remained motionless and silent at the back of the room.

  Vinnie walked over and sat on a barstool next to me.

  "You want some coffee?" he said to me.

  "Sure," I said.

  "Hawk?"

  "Un huh."

  "Rocco, give us three coffees," Vinnie said.

  Rocco poured and served, bringing a mug back to Hawk, who accepted it silently. When he got through, Vinnie said, "Leave the pot, Rock, and go on out in the kitchen for a while."

  Rocco put the coffeepot on the bar where Vinnie could reach it and went through the swinging doors. Vinnie leaned his elbows back on the bar.

  "I thought we was going to cooperate on this thing," Vinnie said.

  "I don't remember anything about not asking Gerry questions."