"What better way," I said.
Cecile sat in a chair in front of my desk and crossed her splendid legs. She was wearing high-heeled leather boots, which would be almost as good as bare feet in a snowfall. I offered coffee. She accepted. I got it for her and some for myself. Who cares about sleeping. Then I sat behind my desk and admired her knees.
"Are you looking at my legs?" Cecile said.
"I am," I said. "I'm a firm believer in racial equality."
"And sexism," Cecile said.
"In its place," I said.
Cecile smiled.
"Hawk and I are seeing one another again," she said.
"Good," I said.
"How do you think he is?"
"Fine," I said.
"He seems just the same to me," she said.
"Yes," I said.
"But he shouldn't be," Cecile said.
"Because?"
"Because he was badly hurt, almost killed, and, what to call it, professionally compromised, I guess."
"Stuff happens," I said.
"But there's no sign that it affected him."
"It affected him," I said.
"And how would you know that?"
"It would affect me," I said.
"And you're just like him?"
"No one's just like Hawk," I said. "But I'm less unlike him than many."
"And you wouldn't have a moment or two of- why me?"
"You can't do what I do, let alone what Hawk does, and go around saying why me? You're a surgeon. You must know about dying."
Cecile nodded.
"What was it like for you?" she said.
"Well, the thing about almost dying," I said, "is that a lot of the time, you don't know that you almost died until a long time after you didn't. When Hawk came into the hospital, he was unconscious. He was in surgery for something like twelve hours. And in intensive care something like ten days. Most of that time he was unaware."
"Intensive care can be a very brutal experience," Cecile said.
"It is," I said. "But most of the time you don't know it. You wake up for a moment and something awful is going on that you'd rather not remember and then you're gone again. And even after you start being awake, you're so whacko that it's aimless to evaluate anything you might be thinking. I thought there were dioramas in the overhead lights."
"The nurses call it ICU syndrome," Cecile said. "Trauma, extended anesthesia, painkillers, sleep deprivation…" She waved her hand.
"I was paranoid delusional," I said, "even after I got out of ICU. I pulled all the hookups out one night, because I thought I was escaping something. Paul Giacomon was in from Chicago, and after that, he and Hawk and Susan took turns spending the night with me. They were the only ones I trusted not to be in on the conspiracy."
"Did you know you were crazy?"
"I did, I knew I was in the hospital. And I knew I was in a freezing cold railroad station in New Bedford, being stalked by somebody."
"Both realities equally," Cecile said.
"And simultaneously."
"So by the time you are awake and rational," she said, "you are pretty much out of danger. In effect, though you've had a miserable time, you did not experience almost dying. You only heard about it afterwards."
"That's exactly right," I said.
"Do you think that's Hawk's experience?"
"Yes."
"Have you talked about it with him?"
"No."
"And the weakness?" she said. "The dependence?"
"Don't they teach you this stuff in med school?" I said.
Cecile smiled.
"There might have been something one semester," she said, "sophomore year. It was an eight o'clock class, and it wasn't crucial, you know, like suturing, so a lot of us probably rested."
"You feel like shit for a long time. And if you're a big, strong, tough guy like Hawk, you're not used to it, and you hate it. And you hate being hooked up to the hat rack, and you hate that you can't walk to the bathroom alone. But you know that will pass. You know you'll get it back. All it takes is patience and work. And you know you can wait and you know you can work. So you know, in a while, you'll be what you were."
"So you shut up about it," Cecile said. "And do what you can and wait."
"I recall that I whined some to Susan," I said.
"And when you got well enough you put the matter right," Cecile said.
"Hawk and I."
"And then you were whole."
"Something like that."
"And that's what you and he are doing now," Cecile said.
"Yes."
Outside my office window the snow was coming fast now, swirling a little as the wind eddied down Berkeley Street. We both looked at it quietly for a while.
"He's never talked to me about this."
I nodded.
"Have you ever talked to Susan about this?"
"Yes."
"Why can't he talk to me about these things? For Christ's sake, I'm even a damned doctor."
"It's not a medical matter," I said. "My identity, if I may be permitted the tired phrase, is me and Susan. Hawk's is still Hawk."
"You're saying he doesn't love me."
"No. If I thought he didn't love you, I'd have said, 'He doesn't love you.' We talked about this before. Hawk and I grew up different. I grew up in Laramie, Wyoming, in a house where my father and my two uncles loved me and looked out for me. Hawk grew up on the streets in a ghetto, and for a long time he looked out for himself, until Bobby Nevins found him when Hawk was fifteen. He ever tell you about Bobby Nevins?"
"No."
"Ask him to. It's interesting."
"Are you actually explaining the black experience to me?" Cecile said.
"I'm explaining Hawk. Nevins trained him, but no one, as far as I know, ever loved him. Hawk is what he is because he has found a way to be faithful to what he is, since he was a kid."
"I love him," Cecile said.
"For him, that's a learning experience."
"And he won't change," Cecile said.
"If he changed he might cease to exist," I said. "He's with you now."
"Not all of him."
"Probably not."
"Do you think I'll ever have all of him?"
"Maybe not," I said.
"And if I want to be with him, I have to accept that possibility," Cecile said.
I smiled at her as encouragingly as I could and nodded my head. The snow was coming so hard now that it was difficult to see the FAO Schwarz store across the street.
"Yes," I said. "You do."
19
HAWK AND I sat with a State Police captain named Healy in his office at 1010 Commonwealth, talking about Marshport.
"Bohunks run it since the Pilgrims," Healy said. "Then after the war it began to shift. All that's left is one Ukrainian neighborhood, where Boots is from. The rest is mostly black, mostly Caribbean black. We think of them all as Hispanic. Or black. But they don't. They think they're Puerto Rican, Jamaican, Haitian, Costa Rican, Dominican, Guatemalan."
"So even though they a majority, they don't have think so because they don't think they all the same."
Healy nodded.
"So the Bohunks still in charge," Hawk said.
"It's more specific than that," Healy said. "Boots Podolak is in charge."
"Tell us about Boots," I said.
"Boots's grandfather took Marshport away from the Yankees," Healy said. "And his father inherited it and passed it on to Boots."
"They control it."
"Completely," Healy said. "Cops, firemen, probation officers, district court judges, aldermen, state reps, congressmen, school superintendents, restaurant owners, car dealers, liquor distributors, junk dealers, dope, whores, numbers…" Healy spread his hands. "Everything."
"And you can't close him down."
"I can't because I'm the homicide commander and it ain't my job," Healy said. "But it's a closed corporation and nobody will talk. Witnesses die. Informants disappear. Undercover cops disappear. Judges get intimidated."
Healy's office was on the top floor, and through the window behind his desk I could see the snow still falling evenly, and the plows lunging fitfully along Commonwealth Avenue, trying to stay ahead of it.
"You met Boots?" Healy said.
"Yes," Hawk said.