Nevins shook his head. Hawk looked at me. I shook my head. Hawk came back and sat down.
"Been watching Walt and Willie," Hawk said.
He looked at Nevins.
"They the people inherited OUTrageous I told you about."
Nevins nodded. He was nearly motionless as he sat. Time made no difference to him.
"Might be they knew about the blackmail. Might be they
carrying it on. So I'm watching them, see what develops." "Sneak up on them in the dark better, too," I said.
"Like you could in a snowstorm," Hawk said. "Which one
is the little blond queen?"
"Willie."
"He stepping out on Walt;' Hawk said.
"Walt know this?".
"Don't know. Don't seem mad when he around Willi.
Want to know who he stepping out with?"
"Yes I do."
"Your friend and mine, Amir Abdullah." "Oh ho," I said. "Oh ho?"
"Yes. That's what you say if you're a top-level sleuth and
a clue falls out of a tree and hits you on the head."
Hawk looked at Nevins.
"Honkies are strange people, Bobby."
"What's the clue?" Nevins said.
"The connection between the OUTrageous folks and the tenure folks. Amir's the one who told the tenure committee that Robinson had an affair with Prentice Lamont. OUTra-
do,
geous had a list of possible people to out with your son's
name on it and the phrase 'research continues.'" "So what does that mean?" "Research continues?"
"No, what is the, ah, significance, of all that?"
"Hell, Mr. Nevins, I don't know. It's just more than we knew before. And maybe Abdullah got it from Willie, or maybe Willie got it from Abdullah--which would be my guess."
"Don't help my son get tenure."
"Not yet."
"Strange system," Nevins said. "Keep you for life or they fire you."
"I know."
"Robinson wants to be a professor at the university," Nevins said.
"We going to get that for him, Bobby," Hawk said.
I would have been happier if he hedged it a little, but
Hawk wasn't much for hedging. "I hope so," Nevins said. Me too.
liked to walk along the.river. Today was especially good for that because it was raining pleasantly. It was warm and there was no wind, just the steady moderate rain coming straight down and dimpling the dark surface of the river. I had on jeans and running shoes and a windbreaker and my old Boston Braves baseball hat. Impervious. '. Before I got Robinson Nevins tenure at the universy, I had the issue of Louis Vincent and KC Roth to resolve. I didn't have it in me to walk up and kill him. I'd killed people. And maybe I would again, but I'd always thought it was because I had to. Hawk would do it. He was more practical than I was. He didn't wait until he had to. He'd do it if it seemed a good solution to the problem--which it did. But I couldn't ask Hawk to do things I was too squeamish to do. What I needed to do was figure out what I was not too squeamish to do. I crossed the little footbridge over Storrow Drive and onto the Esplanade and turned west and strolled upriver. The narrow strip of parkland ran along the Boston side of the Charles River all the way out to Watertown and beyond. In good weather it was crowded with people walking and jog 202 P¢rL 5'. Patter
ging and walking dogs and bicycling and Rollerblading and sunbathing. Today, except for a few people who owned intrepid dogs, the space was pretty much mine. Not everyone understobd about a walk in the rain. Pearl, for instance, despite her great hunting lineage, would not walk in the rain. Even for a cookie.
Squeamish was actually the wrong word for my hesitation. I would have, in fact, loved to throw Louis Vincent off a bridge. But it seemed somehow the wrong thing to do, and
. while I tried not to get hung up on abstractions more than I had to, I couldn't seem to get around this one. I could tell the cops he was the man, but as long as KC Wouldn't testify, what could we do that was legal? Hitting him hadn't worked. I could hit him more, and harder. Which would be heartwarming, but if he was as bsessive as he seemed, it might merely wind him tighter. I needed KC to testify.
The racing crews in their eight-man shells were on the river, men's teams and women's teams, which meant, I supposed, that some of the shells were eight-woman shells, or that all of the shells were eight-person shells. The crew coaches, in motorboats, hovered near them like sheepdogs. During rest periods the rowers slumped over their oars as if they were dead, letting the rain beat down on them without regard.
I thought about Susan's analysis. KC's refusal to identify Louis Vincent seemed to be as much about her ex-husband as it was about Louis Vincent.
'At the B.U. Bridge I turned back, my collar up, my Braves hat pulled down over my eyes, liking the feel of.the rain as it came down in a straight easy fall, watching the idea coalesce. By the time I got back to my place the idea was nearly complete, or as complete as it could be.
I stripped off my wet clothes and tossed them in the washer, took a hot shower, toweled off, and put on fresh
clothes. Then I went to the kitchen. It was 5:20 in the evening.
Time enough for the first drink of the day, maybe past time. I
filled a pint glass with ice, put in two ounces of scotch, and
filled it with soda. I took the first sip..The first sip wasn't the
best thing in the world, but it was in the top five. And trying to
recapture the first sip is a reminder that maybe you really
can't go home again. I picked up the glass and inspected my
food supply. It was embarrassingly similar to Susan's. But
there was a bead of garlic and a can of blacl beans and some
linguine and some biscuits left over from breakfast.
I put the biscuits in a low oven to warm. The coalescing
idea unified and I knew what I was going to do. I drank a
toast to my brain. Then I tucked a dishtowel into my belt to
make a little apron, the way my father used to, got out a
knife and separated the garlic head into cloves and peeled
the cloves. I cooked the garlic on low heat with some olive
oil in a fry Pan for a while, and while it was cooking I heated
a large pot of water. When the water boiled I added a dash of
olive oil and a little salt and put the linguine in. When the:
garlic cloves were soft I added some sherry, and as it begafi'
to cook down I opened the can of black beans and drained
off the liquid and dumped them in with the sherry and olive
oil and garlic and put a lid on he fry pan. I toasted my coa lesced idea again and the glass was empty and I mixed
another. It was still good, but it wasn't the first one. The first
one wouldn't be available until tomorrow.
I sprinkled a little cilantro in among the black beans, gar '
lic, olive oil, and sherry. When everything was cooked I
tossed the black beans with the linguine and got out the bis cuits and sat at my kitchen counter by myself and ate the
pasta and sipped the scotch and soda and wondered if my
plan would work. There was a lot I couldn't control, but it
was a better plan than any of the others, except maybe just
204 r¢r' Ii'. srr
shooting Louis Vincent. But since I didn't think I should do that, and wouldn't ask Hawk to do it, and had promised KC that Louis Vincent would bother her no more, and since I had had two scotch and sodas, it seemed a very fine plan indeed, with every chance of succeeding. Of course, a lot depended on Burton Roth. But he'd seemed a solid guy when I'd met him, and I had hopes. On the other hand, if I didn't have hopes what the hell was I doing in this business. I could always make a fine living creating great suppers out of nothing.
still raining the next morning. On my way to work, with my collar up and my hat pulle
d down, looking dashingly noir, I stopped into a store on Newbury Street called Bjoux, Where I had been conspiring with the owner, a tall good-loOking woman named Barbara Jordan, about a surprise birthday gift for Susan. Then I went to the office, and took time to clean up a few old business things still unresolved. I answered some mail, looked at my bank statements, and called a guy named Bill Poduska to ask him if he was going to charge me for helicopter services on a missing-child case I'd done last winter. I was hoping he might say it was pro bono, because the client hadn't paid me, even though I'd gotten the kid back. Bill apparently knew that, because he said there was no charge. I said thank you. Then I made some coffee, looked out at the rain for a while. It was an especially good rain because there was thunder and lightning with it and that always gave the weather a kind of charged tension that I enjoyed.
After watching the lightning and counting the seconds until I heard the thunder and figuring out by doing that how the storm was, and wondering if that actually was
206 Peet" if. Ptrer accurate, and then wondering why I in fact cared, I decided I had stalled on my plan long enough and called Burton Roth with somewhat less confidence than I had felt after two drinks the night before. We talked for half an hour and I had been right after all. He understood the problem and was prepared to help me solve it. Never a doubt in my mind. I told Roth I'd get back to him, and hung up just before Hawk came in with raindrops still beaded on his' lavender silk trench coat. "Got a plan?" Hawk said. "Got a million," I said. "Or are you talking about a workable plan?" Hawk unbuttoned his coat and went and stood looking out my office window at the rain fglling on the corner of Berkeley ahd Boylston. "Bobby worried about his kid," Hawk said. "Even after he met me?" I said. "Bobby don't know about you." "I'm not so sure about me sometimes either? "I gave him my word," Hawk said. "Yeah. Thanks." "So what you got in mind?" "Well, I was thinking about pitching it in and becoming a caterer--you know? Leftovers R Us. Come in, take whatever there is in the house, fix up a tasty meal.*" Hawk continued to stare at the rain through my window. I went over and stood beside him and looked down. Puddles had formed and the raindrops hitting the puddles made tiny eruptions. The lightning skidded along the arch of the sky and shortly afterward the thunder cracked. It was dandy. "I'd target the WASP market," I said. Hawk nodded. The rain slithered in thick rivulets down
207
the outside of my window. It diffused the lightning flash prismatically for a transitory moment.
"Be about a hundred million white guys in this country," Hawk said as the electricity crackled in the sky, "I end up with you."
'Talk about luck," I said.
"Talk about," Hawk said. "What we gonna do about :Bobby's kid?"
"Do what we always do," I said. "Keep dragging on the
we got hold of, see what we pull out of the hole."
"What end we got hold of?'.'
"Willie and Amir."
"So we follow them andee what's at the other end." "Exactly," I said. "That your plan?" "You bet," I said.
"And you do this for a living?"
"So far," I said.
"We gonna share?" Hawk said.
"Yes, you take Amir, I'll take Willie." "Okay I give Amir a swat, I get the chance? "Long as he doesn't spot you tailing him," I said. Hawk turned from the window.
"How you doing with that other gig, the stalker?"
"I'm working on it," I said.
"You doing as good with that as you are with this?" Hawk
Hawk nodded and smiled.
"Leftovers R Us," he said. "Might catch on."
On the street below, people were shielding themselves
by various means, including but not limited to
A woman went by holding her purse over her
208 nr/ er head, another used a briefcase. Several Boston Globes and at least one Boston Herald were also deployed. "I figure I can buy a couple cases of cream of mushroom soup," I said. "And I'm in business." "The basis of WASP cuisine," Hawk said. "While I walking around behind Amir Abdullah, you got any idea what I'm looking for?" "We'll know it when we see it," I said. "We need to know two things--who threw Prentice Lamont out the window, and why Amir was trying to sink Robinson Nevins' tenure." '"Cause Amir a creep?" Hawk said. "Good enough for you and me, maybe not good enough for the university tenure ommittee." "They overrule the English department," Hawk said. "They can, Susan told me, and so can the clean;' I said. "Though Susan says neither one likes to." "So Robinson got a couple more shots." "If we can come up with something," I' said. "We up against it I can always hold Amir upside down," Hawk said, "and shake him until something falls out." "That's plan B," I said. "First we find out what we can by watching. Otherwise while you're shaking him other people might scoot out of sight." "What other people?" "That's what we're watching to find out." "Why you think there's other people?" "Leads somewhere," I said. "Assume there aren't any other people, and we don't know what to do next." "You caterers do be some deep philosophical motherfuckers," Hawk said. "We do," I said.
had Louis Vincent to attend to. It was a tricky one to time. I had shared my plan with Sgt. O'Connor of the Reading cops. He was keeping an eye on.KC and reported that she was home. Burt Roth had givefi me his beeper number and said he'd be standing by. So it was all in place, at least for the moment, and if Louis Vincent came out to lunch this noontime we might be in business. If he didn't we'd ha,,e to innovate.
He did. I was standing in a doorway on the opposite corner of State and Congress so I could see him whichever door he came out. State Street was one way, so Hawk was idling his Jaguar, on the corner of state and Broad, two blocks down. Vincent walked out onto Congress Street wearing a Burberry trench coat and a tweed hat and turned the corner and headed down State Street toward the waterfront. I let i him see me and as soon as he did he ran. It was a panic run. turned up onto State Street and was idling at the curb when I caught Vincent. Vincent tried to kick me and I turned my left hip and deflected the kick and nailed him on the chin with a right hook. He sagged, I caught him. Hawk was out of his car and had the back door open. I shoved Vincent in, and
went in after him. Hawk was back in and behind the wheel by the time I got straightened up, and we were off to Reading. A couple of pedestrians stared after us.
Vincent took a while to get over the right hook, so he was quiet as we went down past North Station and through the old West End. As Hawk went up onto the expressway at
Leverett Circle, Vincent said, "What are you doing?" "Shut up." "You can't..."
I slapped him across the face. It was more startling than painful. He put his hands up in case I was going to do it again.
"Shut up:'
Vincent was a.quick study, one slap was enough. He didn't say another word as we went up Route 93. Hawk dialed Burt Roth's beeper, punched in his car phone number, and hung up. As we were passing Medford Square the car phone rang, Hawk spoke into it a moment, and hung up. Vincent looked worried but didn't Say anything.
"He'll be there," Hawk said to me without turning his head.
Vincent looked more worried when we turned off at the Reading exit and even more Worded when we headed north on Route 28 toward KC's place. A Reading police car was parked out front. Roth was in the parking lot in a green Subaru station wagon. When we pulled in, I got out and waved at the Reading cruiser. Sgt. O'Connor gave me a thumbs-up sign out the window as he pulled away. Hawk had gotten out and was standing by Vincent's door. I went around and
opened it and jerked my head at Vincent.
"Where we going?" Vincent said.
Hawk reached in, got hold of his hair, and dragged him out headfirst.
vk M,ff 211
"Hate a rapist;' Hawk said.
Burt Roth got out of his car and walked toward us. And
in front of us and looked at Vincent. Roth's face had no expression.
"You know each other?" I said.
"Know of," Roth said. "We've never met."
"Who are you?" Vincent said.
/> "Burt Roth."
"Jesus."
"Let's go inside," I said.
"I don't want to go in," Vincent said.
I took his arm and moved him firmly toward the door. As I did so he had half an eye on Hawk.
"Nobody here cares anything at all about what you want,
I rang the doorbell and KC answered. Even here, in the face of what must have been a genuinely shocking event, her reaction had a theatricality about it. She stared and then
Robert B Parker - Spenser 26 - Hush Money Page 13