Cold Service

by Robert B. Parker

  "Neither worldly nor smart," I said. "Boots is living testimony to what simple meanness can achieve."

  Hawk put the yellow pad down and looked out the window.

  "And good aim," the Gray Man said. "But he is more than mean."

  "More?"

  "He enjoys cruelty and the power that comes from being able to inflict it."

  "You know him that well already?" I said.

  "I have known him most of my life," the Gray Man said.

  Hawk turned back from the window.

  "Okay," he said, "we in business."

  "You have a plan?" I said.

  "I do," Hawk said.

  42

  SUSAN AND PEARL and I were in bed together. I loved Pearl, but my preference had always been a mйnage а deux. "At least she wasn't in here during," I said to Susan.

  "It would not be decorous," Susan said.

  "How about postcoital languor with a seventy-five-pound hound on my chest. How decorous is that?"

  "We don't wish to exclude her," Susan said.

  "We don't?"

  "No."

  Pearl's head was on my chest, and her nose was perhaps an inch from mine. I gazed into her golden eyes. She gazed back.

  "Not a single flicker of intelligence," I said.

  "Shhh,"Susan said. "She believes she's smart."

  "She's wrong," I said.

  "Sometimes illusion is all we have," Susan said.

  "Couldn't she settle for being beautiful," I said, "the way I have?"

  "Apparently not," Susan said.

  We were, all three of us, quiet then. The ceiling in Susan's bedroom was painted green. The walls were burgundy. Her sheets were sort of khaki-colored, and the pillowcases had a small gold trim. I reached around Pearl and held Susan's hand. She turned her head and smiled at me across the dog.

  "Shall we have a big Sunday breakfast," she said, "while you tell me what's bothering you?"

  "What makes you think something's bothering me?" I said.

  Susan tilted her head a little.

  She said, "You're dealing with a pro here, pal."

  I let go of her hand and patted her belly.

  "That's for sure," I said.

  "I didn't mean that," Susan said.

  I shrugged. Not an easy thing with a dog on your chest.

  "What would you like for grub?" I said.

  "Could we have apple fritters?"

  "If you have the ingredients," I said.

  "I have apples."

  "Excellent start," I said.

  "I don't know what else you need," she said.

  "I'll check," I said, and struggled out from under Pearl and on to my feet.

  "And put some pants on," Susan said. "I don't want the pity of my neighbors."

  "They'd be green with envy," I said.

  "Confidence is a good thing," Susan said. "But humor me."

  I put on a pair of gym shorts that I kept at Susan's especially for postcoital leisurewear. She had managed to salvage just enough top sheet from Pearl to avoid being nude. I flexed at her.

  "Dashing," she said.

  I reached over and flipped the sheet off.

  "Back at ya," I said.

  I think she blushed very slightly, though I'm not sure. I turned and went to the kitchen.

  She had apples and bananas and flour, and, amazingly, cornmeal and some oil. I made coffee and started assembling the fritters. I peeled the apples and skinned the bananas and sliced them and tossed each separately in some orange juice to keep them from turning brown. Then I mixed two small bowls of a flour-and-cornmeal batter, put the sliced apples into one and the bananas into the other. If there's plenitude, you may as well exploit it.

  Susan came out of the bedroom with some lipgloss on and her hair brushed. She was wearing a short orange silk kimono-looking thing. I was prepared to eat at the counter, or standing up over the stove for that matter, but Susan had other plans. She put a tablecloth on the dining-room table and set it for two, complete with a glass vase of tulips that she brought in from the living room.

  "Powdered sugar, honey, or maple syrup?" she said.

  "I like syrup," I said.

  "I like powdered sugar."

  "Put out both," I said.

  "God, you're decisive," she said.

  I let the oil heat in the pot until it spattered when I sprinkled in water. Then I dropped the fritter batter in carefully, a few at a time, and cooked until I had stockpiled a significant serving of each. Susan drank coffee while I cooked.

  When we settled in to eat, Susan said, "So, tell me about it."

  "You shrinks are always so cocksure," I said.

  "Nice word choice," Susan said. "In the current context."

  I shrugged. Susan ate a bite of fritter.

  "Wow," she said. "Banana, too?"

  "Never a dull moment with Spenser," I said.

  "Never," she said.

  I had one each fritter with maple syrup and drank some coffee.

  "Hawk's got a plan," I said.

  Susan nodded and didn't speak.

  "It's complicated, and requires people to react as we expect them to, and it will take some doing," I said. "But it's not a bad plan. It might work."

  "Can you think of a better plan?" Susan said.

  "I can't think of one as good," I said.

  "Care to share?" Susan said.

  I smiled.

  "Sure," I said. "But you have to pay close attention."

  "You'll help me with the hard stuff," Susan said.

  "Count on me, little lady."

  She didn't do anything while I told her but listen. She didn't drink coffee or eat or tap her fingertips together, or frown or smile or move. Susan could listen the ears off a brass monkey. When I got through, she was quiet for a moment.

  Then she said, "If it's going to work, a number of people may have to be killed."

  "Yes."

  "Do you mind if they die?"

  "Not too much. These aren't very good people."

  "But you mind killing them."

  "There are circumstances when I'd be comfortable with it," I said.

  Susan nodded.

  "But not these circumstances," she said.

  "I don't think so," I said.

  "You've killed people before," Susan said.

  "I always felt I had to."

  "But this seems like, what, serial assassination?" she said.

  "Something like that."

  "And if you walk away?" Susan said.

  "I can't walk away."

  Susan smiled slightly.

  "I know," she said. "The question was rhetorical."

  "The problem is not," I said.

  I was being churlish and we both knew it, but Susan chose not to comment.

  Instead, she smiled and said, "A fine mess you've got us into this time, Ollie."

  I nodded.

  "This doesn't bother Hawk," Susan said.

  "No."

  "Or the hideous Gray Man."

  "I doubt that either of them has thought about it," I said.

  "I wish the Gray Man weren't involved," Susan said.

  I shrugged.

  "The other day," I said, "I remarked that he was a strange dude, and he said, 'We are all strange dudes. In what we do, there are no rules. We have to make some up for ourselves.' "

  "He always said you and he were alike," Susan said.

  I nodded.

  "Remember in San Francisco? When you and I were separated? And you killed a pimp? Just shot him."

  "Yeah."

  "Did you have to do that?"

  "I had to find you," I said. "I couldn't stay around and protect those two whores from the trouble we got them into. When we left, the pimp would have killed them."

  "So you had to kill him."

  "Yes."

  "To protect the whores from a jeopardy that you caused them."

  "I was looking for you."

  "So in a sense you did it for me?"

  "I gue
ss I thought so," I said.

  "You don't lie to yourself," Susan said. "In your world, it had to be done."

  I didn't say anything.

  "Hawk has to do this," Susan said.

  "He does."

  "He and you," she said, "for your whole adulthoods, have been a certainty in each other's lives."

  Susan ate the rest of her apple fritter, except for the piece she gave Pearl. She drank some coffee and put the cup down.

  "In his life," she said, "you may be the only certainty." "May be," I said.

  Susan's big, dark eyes seemed intensely alive to me. Pearl rested her long chin on the table, and Susan patted her absently, smoothing Pearl's ears.

  "You have to help him," she said.

  "I guess I do," I said.

  43

  HAWK AND I were in Marshport, in a badly stocked bodega a half block up from the mouth of a weed-thick alley that ran between two paintless tenements. The alley opened at its far end directly across the street from Rimbaud's office. "What story was the Gray Man going to tell?" I said.

  "Don't know. I just told him get a Ukrainian down here at three, and let no one know he'd done it."

  An uninteresting-looking gray Chevy pulled around the corner and parked by the alley.

  "Well, he thought of something," I said.

  Hawk nodded, looking at the car. A big man got out.

  "Guy with Boots," I said, "at Revere Beach."

  "Fadeyushka Badyrka," Hawk said.

  "Anybody else in the car?" I said.

  "We'll find out," Hawk said. "I'll watch Fadeyushka."

  We went out of the bodega and walked across the street. The Ukrainian watched us come. No one moved in the car.

  When we were maybe five feet away, Fadeyushka said, "What?"

  Hawk shot him in the forehead with a nine-millimeter Colt. The Colt had a silencer on it and made only a modest noise. Fadeyushka went down without a sound. So easy. I stepped to the car with my gun out. No one was in it. Hawk unscrewed the silencer and slipped it into his pocket. Then he stowed the Colt and picked up Fadeyushka and moved him without any apparent effort into the alley, down between the houses, and deposited the body behind some trash cans right across from Rimbaud's big plate-glass window. I knelt down and felt over his cooling body and found Fadeyushka's gun stuck in his right hip pocket. It was some sort of European semiautomatic nine-millimeter pistol. There was a round in the chamber already. Hawk studied the dead man for a time.

  "I come in the alley," Hawk said. "He's there shooting in the window. I shoot, get him in the head. He fall back there behind the trash. Gun falls out of his right hand," Hawk nodded, "lands there."

  "That's where it'll be," I said.

  "Okay," Hawk said. "I'll go in. I stand right in front of the front window, where you can see me. And I stay there until things are right. When I move out of sight, you shoot."

  I nodded.

  "The window is dead glass walking," I said.

  "Then you head up the alley lipity-fucking-lop," he said, "scoot 'round the block and come running up saying, 'What happened?' "

  "You already told me this once," I said.

  "Never lose money," Hawk said, "underestimating your intelligence."

  "Yeah, but I'm fun to be with," I said.

  Hawk was looking at the office.

  "Wait'll I move aside," he said

  "Boy," I said, "you ruin everything."

  "Don't call me boy," he said, and started across the street.

  I stood beside Fadeyushka's mortal remains, holding his gun, and waited. Hawk went in the front door of Rimbaud's office. A moment later I saw his back through the window. There was no one on the street. No one but me and Fadeyushka in the alley. The people who referred to teeming slums maybe hadn't been to this one. I saw Hawk's back move left and he disappeared from view. I raised Fadeyushka's gun and fired three shots, as fast as I could pull the trigger, into the upper right-hand corner of the window. The plate glass shattered. The whole window disappeared in a cascade of shards. I put the gun near Fadeyushka's dead hand and sprinted down the alley. Out on the next street, I turned left. As I ran the block, I heard a gunshot. I knew it was Hawk. I turned left again and reached the end of the alley as Rimbaud and his two Hispanic cohorts reached it. One of them, Nuncio, whirled on me with a gun.

  "I'm on your side," I said. "What happened."

  Out of sight in the alley, Hawk said, "He with me."

  Nuncio lowered the gun, but both he and Jaime watched me closely.

  I stepped into the alley's mouth. Rimbaud was there with his gun in hand, standing just behind Hawk, who had his gun out.

  "Tried to gun Mr. Rimbaud," Hawk said. "From the alley. Shot right through the window."

  "Who killed him," I said.

  "I did," Hawk said.

  "My man was quick," Rimbaud said.

  He looked a little rattled. So did Nuncio and Jaime.

  "Was out the door 'fore I could even get my gun out, man," Rimbaud said.

  "He was shooting from behind those trash cans," Hawk said. "He saw me coming and he, like, froze."

  "Buck fever," I said.

  Hawk looked at me.

  "Don't call me buck," he said.

  "Sho'," I said.

  "So I able to drill him once in the head," Hawk said.

  "You know who it is?" Rimbaud said.

  He didn't seem eager to look closely at the corpse.

  "Name's Fadeyushka Badyrka," Hawk said. "Works for Boots Podolak."

  "The sonovabitch works for Boots."

  Hawk nodded.

  "Maybe Boots and Tony had a falling out," I said.

  "You think Boots put him up to this?"

  "Fadeyushka don't take a leak," Hawk said, "Boots don't tell him to."

  "You don't even know him, do you?" I said.

  Rimbaud looked cautiously at the dead man.

  "Shit," he said, "I do. I seen him with Boots."

  "I rests ma case," Hawk said.

  Rimbaud stared at Hawk.

  "Boots sent him," he said.

  "Be my guess," Hawk said.

  "Must have," I said.

  "That mother fucker," Rimbaud said. "Wait'll I tell Tony. Tony will be bullshit."

  Hawk smiled.

  "I expect he will," Hawk said.

  44

  THE GRAY MAN, wearing a snap-brimmed hat with a wide brim, was leaning on the wall at the Wonderland MBTA station, reading the Boston Herald. Across from the dog track, Wonderland was the last subway station on the blue line, running north from Boston. Hawk and I walked down the platform and stood next to him. He paid us no attention. It was midmorning, and the station wasn't crowded. "So far, so good," Hawk said.

  The Gray Man kept reading his paper.

  "Fadeyushka is dead?" he said.

  "Yeah, and Rimbaud is blaming Boots."

  The Gray Man nodded.

  "When they find him," the Gray Man said, "the police will come at once to Podolak."

  "And with a little help from you," I said, "Boots will blame Rimbaud."

  "Describe the details," the Gray Man said.

  Hawk told him.

  "The window could have shattered in the exchange of gunfire," the Gray Man said.

  Hawk nodded.

  "This won't stand up if there's a real investigation by some good cops," I said.

  The Gray Man smiled and looked up from his newspaper.

  "Where would we find them?" he said.

  "Good point," I said.

  "Is the body easily visible?" the Gray Man said.

  "No," Hawk said.

  "Then discovery may not be imminent," the Gray Man said.

  "Perhaps an anonymous tip," I said.

  The Gray Man smiled his evanescent smile.

  "Any theory on Boots's reaction?" I said.

  The Gray Man shrugged.

  "He cannot let it go," the Gray Man said.

  He looked at Hawk.

  "And the Ukrainians," he said, "wh
ose number have depleted, will require revenge."

  "You know that," I said.

  "I know Ukrainians," he said.

  "Racial profiling?" I said.

  "I know Ukrainians," the Gray Man said. "And Marcus?"

  "He don't like Rimbaud," Hawk said. "But it's his daughter's husband."

  "I understand that she is not a particularly savory daughter," the Gray Man said.

  "Still his daughter," Hawk said. "Tony can't let it happen."

  "Besides," I said. "Both of them will think they've been double-crossed by the other one."

  Hawk smiled.

  "When in fact they double-crossed by us," he said.

  "Which would annoy them both, should they discover it," the Gray Man said.

  "And unite them in a common purpose," I said.

  "Which would be?" the Gray Man said.

  "Us," Hawk said.

  "Fortunately," the Gray Man said, "at my end of the thing, we are not dealing with terribly smart people. How about Marcus."

  "Tony pretty smart," Hawk said.

  The Gray Man nodded, gazing across the platform at a young woman in a short, flowered dress.

  "Well," he said. "That would be your end of the thing."

  45

  IT WAS MAY, and the weather was nice. Hawk and I sat with Leonard on the seawall that ran along Ocean Drive in Marshport, where the dark ocean stretched out to the east until it merged along the far horizon with eternity. "Amazin'," Hawk said. "Dump like Marshport got such a nice ocean view."

  "Nice," Leonard said. "Tony wants to know what you know about Boots trying to have Rimbaud capped."

  Leonard spoke very softly.

  "He tell you 'bout it?"

  "He wants to hear your story," Leonard said.

  "Lucky we was there," Hawk said.

  I knew how fast Hawk's mind had moved between the question and the answer. Would Rimbaud admit that it was Hawk who had shot Fadeyushka? Or would he claim credit? Hawk decided that Rimbaud would be so scared that he probably wouldn't lie to Tony. It was the right response. Leonard didn't say anything, and his face showed nothing, but I could feel him ease up slightly.

  "You the one aced him," Leonard said.

  "Yes."

  "You both up there to see Rimbaud," Leonard said.

  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."