"Here?" I said. "Where it says MAIN ENTRANCE, with an arrow?"
The Gray Man didn't smile.
"Yes," he said. "Around here, down along the side of the building on Broad Street, an alley cuts through between the old City Hall and the addition they built about ten years ago."
"Connected by an enclosed bridge at, what, the second floor?" I said.
"Yes."
"If he needed to, the mayor would walk across that bridge from his office and go down fire stairs in the new section that leads to a fire door in the cellar, which leads to a fire door that opens on the alley. But if you go down another flight to the basement level, there's a passageway that connects with the parking garage across Broad Street."
"Where are the garage exits?" Hawk said.
"One opposite the alley," the Gray Man said. "On Broad Street. One on the opposite side that empties out onto Exchange Street."
"Which is a main drag," Hawk said.
"On Exchange Street," the Gray Man said, "you are off and running. West on Franklin, north on Essex, south on Federal."
"Broad Street would just take you back into the thick of the firefight," Hawk said, looking at the map the Gray Man was sketching. "If there was a firefight, and if they surrounded the building."
"Only a fool," the Gray Man said, "would fail to surround the building."
"Tony isn't a fool," Hawk said.
"No," I said, "he isn't."
"Though occasionally," the Gray Man said, "I wonder about you two."
"So do we all," I said. "You haven't shared this information about the tunnel with Tony, have you?"
"No."
"Don't," Hawk said.
The Gray Man smiled gently and without warmth.
"I wouldn't think of it," he said.
49
SUSAN AND I were at a table by the window in the bar at the Ritz, looking across Arlington Street at the Public Gardens where spring was unfurling delicately.
"I think it was the English writer," Susan said, "E. M. Forster, who said that if he had to choose between betraying his country and betraying his friend, he hoped he'd have the courage to betray his country."
"The analogy is imperfect," I said.
"All analogies are," Susan said. "But it's suggestive."
"If I didn't help Hawk," I said, "I'm not sure he would consider it betrayal."
Susan nodded. It was 5:10. There was a lot of traffic on Arlington Street. People going home to supper and their families. Some probably happy about it. Some probably not.
"What would you consider it?" Susan said.
I poured a little beer from the bottle into the glass, straight in so it would foam. Beer tasted better with a head on it.
"Betrayal," I said.
She nodded again.
"But if you join him in wiping out Boots Podolak, you'll also be betraying something, won't you?"
A string of giggly young people entered the crosswalk at Newbury Street and froze traffic back to Beacon Street. The kids seemed to enjoy it as they ambled across.
"Me, I guess."
"I guess," Susan said.
With the cars still backed up, a shabby, long-haired man stumbled along between them, asking for money. He was wearing a red Nike muscle shirt, and his thin, white arms were thick with blue tattooing. Most people ignored him.
"You have any solutions?" I said.
"No," Susan said. "But I know what you are going to do."
I drank some beer and watched a black stretch limo discharge passengers into the solicitous keeping of a doorman.
"I can't back off," I said. "I have to stay with him."
"I know," Susan said.
"So why am I talking about it," I said.
"Because it's you and me," Susan said. "We talk about everything."
"What would you do?" I said.
"In the unlikely event that I were you?" Susan said.
I nodded.
"I'd stay with Hawk," she said.
"And you a Harvard girl," I said.
"And it would bother me," she said. "And I'd face the fact that I was doing something I thought was wrong rather than betray my friend, which"-she smiled at me-"would therefore make it sort of right."
"Jesus," I said. "You shrinks are really convolute."
"Whatever we are," Susan said, "we have talked enough to people who are in big messes to know that whatever you do may make you feel bad, but mostly, in time, if you're tough and don't indulge yourself, it'll pass and you'll forgive yourself."
"Cynical, too," I said.
"I think that's hopeful, that unless you're obsessive you'll forgive yourself," Susan said. "It's also the truth."
"The truth will set you free?" I said.
Susan nodded.
"And make you cynical," she said.
The traffic had thinned on Arlington Street. Most of the people heading home from work were on Storrow Drive by now. Or the pike. Or the expressway. Or the tunnels. Or the Zakim Bridge. Some were home by now, having their first drink before dinner. Maybe looking at the paper. Probably none of them were planning to shoot it out with a bunch of Ukrainian sociopaths. Susan turned her wineglass slowly on the tabletop in front of her. I put my hands out, and she let go of the glass and took them.
"Thanks," I said.
"You're welcome," she said. "Now I want to vent, briefly."
"Fair's fair," I said.
"If you let yourself get killed, I will want to die, too," she said.
I nodded. It felt as if I needed more air in my chest. The waiter brought us new drinks. Outside the window, a doorman put two fingers in his mouth and whistled down a cab. I had always wished I could do that whistle, but I never could. I inhaled a lot of air as quietly as I could. I didn't want to be caught sighing.
"So far, so good," I said.
Susan smiled.
"Yes," she said. "So far, very good."
50
"SHOOTING START TODAY," Hawk said.
"Leonard tell you?"
"Yep."
"Tell you the time?"
"Nope."
We were in Hawk's car, parked at the curb in the little square that fronted City Hall. It was 7 A.M. on a May morning, and even Marshport had a fresh May morning quality as we sipped our coffee and watched the few people employed in Marshport straggle along to work.
"My guess is soon," I said.
"Ford Expedition?" Hawk said. "On the corner?"
"Yes."
"Best I could see through the tinted glass," Hawk said, "there be several aggressive-looking brothers in there."
"Car's black, too," I said.
"As it should be," Hawk said.
"Bet there's some more around," I said.
"Blue Town Car over there," Hawk said. "Other corner."
"And maybe a couple back of the building."
"Pretty sure," Hawk said. "Vinnie's back there, case things go that way."
"With cell phone?" I said.
"Un-huh."
"How did we crime busters function without them all those years?"
"Yelled loud," Hawk said.
"You know what I like here?" I said. "There's a bunch of black guys waiting in cars to shoot it up with a bunch of white guys, and it's not about race."
"Be about power and money, mostly," Hawk said.
"Race can't hold a candle," I said.
"What can?" Hawk said.
We drank some coffee. Nobody did anything. The Expedition and the Town Car sat quietly.
"Gray Man know?" I said.
"Un-huh."
At eight o'clock, a few public servants began to drift into City Hall.
"They waiting for Boots to arrive," Hawk said.
"If they don't spot him when he arrives, how will they know he's there?" I said. "He might come in through his private tunnel."
"Whenever go time is, they go," Hawk said. "He ain't in there, they shoot somebody else. Be an object lesson."
"Lot of people to shoot," I said.
Hawk shook his head.
"Leonard running this," Hawk said. "He pretty slick. He know Tony don't like to shoot civilians. Civilians stay down and out the way, they be safe enough."
"Hiding behind a desk in the middle of a shootout is not what everyone would consider safe."
Hawk smiled.
"Things be relative," he said.
"Tony has Leonard running it," I said.