Brock said, "So?"
"Come by to see how you doing with Boots," Hawk said.
"Boots who?" Rimbaud said.
He was absently fondling the gun on his desk.
"Brock," Hawk said. "Mind if I call you Brock?"
Rimbaud rolled his hand in a small, impatient circle.
"Brock," Hawk said again. "You know and we know that you up here trying to move in on Boots Podolak's operation."
"And what's that?" Rimbaud said.
"Marshport," Hawk said.
Rimbaud looked at his two companions and rolled his eyes. They both laughed. One of them brushed his open shirt away from his belt so we could see the gun he wore on his left side, butt forward.
"Look at that," I said to Rimbaud. "Just like your gun. You get a buy on them. You know, buy two, get one free?"
"You got something on your mind," Rimbaud said, "or you just come here to crack wise?"
Hawk grinned and looked at me.
"You doing that again?" he said.
"Cracking wise is my game," I said.
Hawk nodded and turned back to Rimbaud.
"You want Podolak out of business," Hawk said. "So do we. I'm looking to see if we can help each other."
"I don't need no help," Rimbaud said.
"Sure you do," I said. "Your father-in-law didn't have a deal with Boots to let you operate up here, you'd be, ah, cracking wise with the fishes."
Hawk smiled.
"Tony?" Rimbaud said.
Hawk said, "Un-huh."
Rimbaud's face flushed.
"Tony ain't got no deal with Boots," he said. "I'm in here because Boots isn't tough enough to keep me out."
Hawk smiled. He had a great smile. Even white teeth in his smooth, black countenance. The smile was bright and clean and handsome… entirely devoid of feeling.
"Son," Hawk said, "Boots had a parakeet, the parakeet would be tough enough to keep you out."
"You think so?" Rimbaud said.
The flush on his face was bright now and widespread. His voice had gone up an octave. He picked up the gun and pointed it at Hawk. The minute Rimbaud raised his gun, the other two men took out theirs.
"You think maybe I'm not tough enough," Rimbaud said, "to shoot your fucking ass right now?"
I hadn't been shot as recently as Hawk. But it isn't something you forget. Funny thing was, I never thought of the bullets hitting me. I thought of the hospital, of the lights and tubes and sounds. I remembered the weakness, the craziness, the paranoid delusions. I thought of the smells. It didn't control me; I was always able to put it away, but the memory lurked in my cell structure.
Slowly Hawk put one foot up on the edge of Rimbaud's desk. He smiled and tilted his chair back so that he was rocking gently on the back legs. He held the smile and said nothing as he rocked.
"Nothing to say, Big Mouth?" Rimbaud said.
"You need an army to shoot it out with Boots," Hawk said. "And I don't think you got one."
"We can keep nibbling at his business until we got it all," Rimbaud said.
"You nibble enough to threaten him and the deal with Tony won't hold," Hawk said.
"I don't know nothing about no deal," Rimbaud said. "He gives us trouble and we'll take him out. I'll take him out, me, personal."
Hawk nodded.
"And another guy will take over who won't want you nibbling at the business, either."
Rimbaud didn't say anything, a rare moment of relief.
"Brock," I said. "He's got an army; you got a squad, maybe. Tony may help you for a while, but if it comes down to it, he's not going to go full-bore to the mattresses twenty-five miles from his own turf. My guess is he'd throw you to the Ukrainians and take his daughter home."
Rimbaud said, "She ain't going noplace."
Neither Hawk nor I said anything. Rimbaud sat, trying to think. The gun was still raised, but I think he'd forgotten it. After a while he put it down. His two pals put theirs away. Hawk continued to rock.
"You got a plan?" Rimbaud said.
"Nope, we sort of looking for one," Hawk said.
"I got ten men," Rimbaud said. He nodded at the other two. "Nuncio and Jaime, and eight other guys. I make eleven."
"You know how many Boots has got?" Hawk said.
"I don't know. Fuck him. I don't even care."
"Better if you knew," Hawk said. "Why here?"
"You mean why try to take over Marshport?"
"Yeah."
"I'm looking for a place to do business, see. And I figure to do it smart. So I look for a place ready to blow up, you know? And here it is, Marshport, a black and Latin city run by a bunch of white Bohunks, like, ah, you know, like ripe and ready."
"Except there's a lot of the Bohunks," I said, "and all of them are tougher than Donald Trump's agent."
"I'm white," Rimbaud said. "But only on the outside. I mean, I grew up black. I'm like black inside. I know about black. I can bring these people around."
"Okay, bro," Hawk said. "You keep on doing what you're doing and we'll check in with you once in a while, let you know what we're doing."
"What are you doing now?" Rimbaud said.
He didn't sound black inside.
"Collecting data," Hawk said.
"That's all?"
"Un-huh."
"What you going to do when you get enough data?" Rimbaud said.
"Depend on what the data tell us," Hawk said. "Tha's why we gathers it."
Rimbaud leaned back in his chair.
"I guess we're after the same thing," he said. He took a cigar from the leather humidor and began to trim the end with a small penknife.
Expansive.
Hawk nodded.
"Give him a card," Hawk said to me, "case he care to call us."
"Sure," I said.
I stood, took a card from my card case, and bent over the desk to put it in front of Rimbaud. Rimbaud was too cool to look at it while we were there.
"I have anything," he said, "I'll let you know."
Hawk stood.
"Have a nice day, bro," Hawk said.
Then we turned and went out the front door.
"Bro?" I said as we walked across the street.
"You heard him," Hawk said. "He say he black inside."
"Rimbaud isn't anything inside," I said.
Hawk grinned.
"You honkies always badmouth a brother," he said.
34
SUSAN SAT WITH Hawk and me at the downstairs bar in a restaurant Susan liked, called Upstairs on the Square. "Do you guys have any plan at all?" she said.
Hawk smiled at her.
"Was thinking of getting drunk," he said. "First time since I got shot."
"I've never seen you drunk," Susan said. "Do you get witty and elegant, like my honey does?"
"Never been that drunk," Hawk said.
In honor of the conversation, I took another swallow of my Blue Label and soda.
"Well," Susan said, "before you are, tell me a little more about Marshport."
Hawk's grin widened.
"You gonna help us?"
Susan had returned to drinking white wine. Her favorite was now Riesling. She drank a very small amount of it. We were at one end of the bar, sitting at the turn, with Susan between us.
"You think you have to be some sort of big ugly thug to think about things like this?" Susan said.
Hawk studied his champagne cocktail for a moment.
"Big handsome thug," Hawk said, without looking up.
"That's what I meant," Susan said. "As far as I can tell, you know what you want to do up there. But have no idea how to do it."
Hawk looked at me. I shrugged.
"You know how to do it?" I said.
"No," Hawk said. "You?"
"No."
I looked at Susan.
"Step right up, little lady," I said.
"What if I actually help you?" Susan said.
"Be humiliated," Hawk said. "But we work through it."
The bar was crowded. There was a small space next to Hawk, but no one crowded into it. An attractive woman stopped to speak to Susan. Susan introduced us. The woman's name was Chris Lannum.
"We do Pilates together," Susan said.
"The rest of us just struggle to keep up with Susan," Chris said.
She smiled and moved on toward her table. As she went she gave Hawk a fast appraisal. On the Cambridge bar scene, Hawk is somewhat atypical.
"You want to kill the Ukrainian men who shot Luther and his family."
"And me," Hawk said.
"And you wish to destroy the entire Ukrainian mob structure in Marshport. Root and branch, so to speak."
"So to speak," Hawk said.
"In addition," Susan said, "you wish to provide a lifetime of financial security for Luther's surviving child."
"Yes."
"Currently," Susan said, "you are in an uneasy alliance with Tony Marcus, who, on behalf of his daughter and son-in-law, is in an uneasy alliance with… what's that man's name?"
"Boots," I said. "Boots Podolak."
She nodded.
"Do you wish to kill Boots?" she said to Hawk.
"Yes."
"If you kill Boots, would you eliminate one candidate to fund the Gillespie boy's trust fund?"
"Yes," Hawk said.
"Is there any other source?" Susan said.
"Tony got jing," Hawk said.
"Would he or Podolak voluntarily invest it in the child?"
"No."
"You'll have to force it."
"Yes."
Susan paused to drink some wine. At her table across the room, Chris Lannum threw her head back and laughed at something. The room was quite amazing, with a vast, high ceiling, a fireplace, and elegantly over-the-top dйcor. Good place to drink. On the other hand, there were few bad places to drink.
"Some of what you want you can accomplish with relative ease, of course. We all know you can kill the Ukrainians and Podolak."
"Anybody can kill anybody," Hawk said.
"But that wouldn't eliminate the Marshport mob, and it wouldn't do anything for the Gillespie child."
"Name's Richard," Hawk said.
"Richard," Susan said.
She looked at me.
"The Gray Man is involved," she said.
I nodded.
"Do you trust him?"
"No."
"Do you think he's up to something?"
"I have no idea," I said. "It would just be foolish to trust him."
"And you have established contact," Susan said, "with the man married to Tony's daughter."
"Brock Rimbaud," I said. "Daughter's name is Jolene."
"Brock Rimbaud is his real name?"
"Don't know," I said. "My guess would be he invented it. He's that kind of guy."
"And how can he help you?" Susan said.
"Don't know," Hawk said. "Just keep poking around, see if something flies out."
"And the police are no use to you," Susan said.
"No," Hawk said.
"This has to be you," Susan said.
"Maybe a few friends," Hawk said.
Susan nodded. She drank more Riesling.
"Of course you know I hate this whole enterprise," she said.
Hawk and I both nodded.
"But you'll do what you're going to do," she said, "so I might as well help as best I can." She paused. "I know far too much about shrinkage and life to try psychotherapy at the bar, drinking white wine."
"Oh, good," Hawk said.
Susan smiled.
"But you need to understand that you are in unfamiliar territory here. You have always in the past known what to do. It may have been a hard, dangerous thing. But you're good at that, and you alone had to accept the consequences of doing it or not doing it."
Hawk nodded at me.
"Ain't so different than him," he said.
"There are similarities," Susan said. "But here you have Cecile to think about, and Richard Gillespie, and Tony Marcus and his daughter are in here somewhere, and one thing you want to do contradicts another thing."
"I hate when it do that," Hawk said.
"And no one," Susan said. "Not even you, can go through being shot and nearly dying and spending days in the ICU and weeks in the hospital without being affected. You're smart enough to know that."
Hawk and I looked at each other. It had happened to both of us and we both knew she was right… about both of us.
"So, how that affect my plans?" Hawk said.
"More than anything, it makes it harder for you to have one. For maybe the first time in your, ah, professional life, you are being pushed by emotion."
"Spenser ain't got no plan, either," Hawk said. "He ain't being pushed by emotion."
"But he won't impose. You know him nearly as well as I do. He will stay with you, let you run it, go where you want to go."
Hawk nodded.
"He do that," Hawk said.
"He do that with me, too," Susan said. "It drives me fucking crazy."
"Gee," I said, "I was liking it better when we were talking about Hawk's problems."
Susan smiled.
"Of course," she said. "And it's very decent to be that way, but sometimes it's not useful. You need to know what you know, what you don't know, and what you have to know. And you need to have it in mind. You need to know what part of what you want to do can be done now, and what needs to wait, and what it needs to wait for. Is there anything you don't understand in this situation? Anything missing?"
I drank some scotch. Susan looked at me. Hawk looked at me. The bartender looked at me. I gestured for another round. No one said anything. I looked at Chris Lannum over at her table, having a nice time. The bartender came with the fresh drinks. I finished my first scotch just in time.
"Okay," I said. "Thing's been bothering me from the moment his name popped up. Boots Podolak. He's nasty. But he's got no stature. And he's dumber than a candlepin."
"You wonder why he's the big boss in Marshport," Susan said.
"Yeah. Boss Tweed he ain't."
"You think maybe somebody proppin' him up?" Hawk said.
"Be something to find out," I said.
"I been so busy thinking 'bout killing him…"
"Be a place to start," I said.
"Would," Hawk said. "Might be nice to find out for sure what happened to that lawyer, Duda, that went to Miami."
"Would," I said. "Might be wise to talk with Rita Fiore, know what arrangement we could actually make for Luther's kid."
Hawk nodded and grinned at Susan.
"See, tole you we could help you," he said, "we put our mind to it."
Susan smiled back at him and put her hand on top of his.
"I'm very grateful," she said.
35
WE HAD DRINKS with Rita Fiore in the late afternoon at a table by the window in the Ritz Bar on Arlington Street. Rita's interest in Hawk was radiant, but she was in her professional mode and she kept it under control. She did manage to sit sideways in her chair for a while and stretch out her legs in such a manner that Hawk could admire them. Which he did. Me, too. "Sure," Rita said. "We can set up an escrow account for this kid and it can be funded by anybody that wants to."
"Confidential?" Hawk said.
"Sure."
"Who manages it?" Hawk said.
"I do criminal law," Rita said, and smiled, "so I'm at ease with you guys. But I don't do stocks and bonds. I'll have it managed by one of our stocks-and-bonds people."
"I want you," Hawk said.
"And I want you too, darlin'," Rita said. "But it's not in your best interest to have me manage the thing. I could lose money on insider trading. What I can do, though, is I'll godfather it. It will scare the hell out of the stocks-and-bonds people, and they'll give the account especially good service."
The waiter brought Rita a fresh martini. Up, with olives. The classic. No p
ink drinks or flavored vodka for Rita. An old-fashioned girl. She took a happy sip.
"This is unlike you, Hawk," Rita said.
"Sometimes I jess let it all go," he said.
"Mr. Soft Heart, here"-Rita nodded toward me-"I'd expect it. But you?"
"Boy's an orphan," Hawk said.
"You have something to do with that?" Rita said.
"I was supposed to protect his father," Hawk said.
"Ah," Rita said. "When you got shot."
"You keepin' track," Hawk said.
"I am a great track keeper," she said. "And you're doubly interesting; great potential as a sex partner, and very likely to need a first-rate criminal lawyer."
"One-stop shopping," Hawk said.
"And top of the line," Rita said.
Hawk grinned.
"Keep it in mind," he said.
"You feel responsible for this little boy?" Rita said.
"Yes."
"What could you have done?"
"Kept his father from getting killed."
"Hell, Hawk," Rita said. She leaned forward slightly, as if, for the moment, she seemed to have forgotten her libido. "They shot you in the back; how can it be your fault?"
"I ain't supposed to get shot in the back."
"For crissake," Rita said. "You're a man, like other men. You can be hurt. You can be killed."
"Ain't supposed to be like other men," Hawk said.
Rita looked at him for a moment.
"Jesus," she said. "It must be hard being you."
Hawk was quiet for a time, then he smiled at her, which was nearly always a startling sight.
"Worth it, though," he said.
36
LOCKOBERS WAS shiny and good under new ownership after some years of decline. Now it was once again the place for power lunches, which I must have been having, because I was there, eating with the Special Agent in Charge of the Boston FBI office. His name was Nathan Epstein. He was thin and balding, with round, dark-rimmed glasses and pale skin. He didn't look like an FBI agent. In fact, he didn't look like much of anything. But he was smart, and I had heard that he knew how to shoot.
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