Hawk's voice dropped a pitch. With no expression he said, "I speak in many voices, my gray friend."
"Apparently," the Gray Man said.
"So there's Brock Rimbaud in charge of a business with no product, and no supplier, in a town that is probably going to be run by the state."
The Gray Man smiled.
"And you like that," Hawk said. "You like thinking 'bout the little twerp coming to the office and you ain't there."
"And trying to find Mr. Johnson, and he ain't there," the Gray Man said.
He put his hands on the desktop and pushed himself gracefully to his feet.
"So that's why you didn't shoot Johnson," I said.
"Certainly," the Gray Man said. "Even if I did, there would shortly be another Johnson."
I nodded.
"And Ives?" I said.
The Gray Man smiled.
"Ives expects to be disappointed," the Gray Man said. "It is the nature of his work."
He glanced around the damaged office.
"And our work here has not been fruitless," he said.
"No," I said. "It hasn't."
The Gray Man looked around the room again, then at Hawk and me.
"Down the road somewhere," he said, and walked across the room and out the same door that Johnson had gone through.
56
I SAT IN my car in Roxbury, at the edge of Malcolm X Playground, on a street I didn't know the name of. Across the street, Hawk stood in front of a bench, in the playground, looking down at a very small black boy who was sitting in the lap of a tall black woman I knew to be his grandmother. The boy was the only surviving member of Luther Gillespie's family. His grandmother was maybe forty-five, strong-looking, with careful cornrows, wearing jeans and a freshly laundered man's white dress shirt with the sleeves half rolled and the shirttails hanging out. The boy pressed against her, staring up at Hawk without moving. He held onto her shirt with one hand.
Hawk spoke. The woman nodded. Hawk took an envelope out of his coat and handed it to the woman. She didn't take it right away. First, she took the hand that held it, in both of hers, and held it for a minute while she said some animated somethings to Hawk. Hawk nodded. Then she took the envelope and slipped it into her purse on the bench beside her. Hawk continued to look down at the boy. The boy stared silently back. Hawk spoke. The boy didn't answer. Hawk squatted on his heels so that he and the boy were at eye level. The boy turned his face in against his grandmother's breast. The grandmother stroked the boy's head. Hawk stood, nodding to himself. Nobody said anything. For a moment, none of them even moved. Then Hawk nodded again and turned and walked across the street and got into the car.
"We done?" I said.
Hawk nodded.
I put the car in gear, and we drove back toward downtown.
"First installment on Boots's money?" I said.
"Kid's money," Hawk said.
"Is there a grandfather?" I said.
We turned onto Washington Street. The black neighborhoods stretched out on either side, neither elegant nor decrepit. Simply low-end urban housing that looked like any of the other neighborhoods in the city, except everyone was black. Except me.
"No," Hawk said. "She lives with her sisters."
"She work?" I said.
"Yes."
"Sisters take care of the kid?"
"Yes. Kid's great-aunts. One of them is twenty-nine."
"The aunts okay?" I said.
"Think so," Hawk said. "They ain't, I'll see about it."
I nodded.
"They'll be okay. What was all the conversation about?"
"I telling her how much she get and when it would come and who to call if it don't."
"You," I said.
"Un-huh," Hawk said. "Or you."
"Me," I said. "Anything I should know?"
"Kid's name is Richard Luther Gillespie," Hawk said. "I tole him, tole his grandmother really, that he ain't got a father and he ain't got a grandfather. But he got me."
"Jesus," I said.
"I know. Little surprised myself. And I say to them, if something happen to me, he got you."
"He ain't heavy…" I said.
"Yeah, yeah," Hawk said.
He handed me a small index card.
"Grandmother's name is Melinda Rose," he said. "It's all on there. Address. Phone number. She got yours."
I nodded.
"I don't want him calling me Grampy," I said.
"Probably won't," Hawk said.
57
IT WAS7: 30 on a chilly overcast Tuesday. We were at a table at Excelsior, with windows on two sides. We had a table in the back, away from everybody else. Cecile in the middle, Susan on one side, me on the other. Hawk across from Cecile.
"This is my way of a good-bye, I guess," Cecile said.
Hawk was watching the bubbles drift up in his champagne glass.
"I've taken a job at the Cleveland Clinic," Cecile said.
The menu had a gentleman's steak and a lady's steak listed. The lady's steak sounded better to me.
"An offer you couldn't refuse?" Susan said.
"Sort of," Cecile said.
She glanced at Hawk.
"And I… needed a change of scenery, I guess," Cecile said.
I knew Susan was fighting it, and I knew she was going to lose. She couldn't help herself. She had to try to help.
"Hawk?" Susan said.
"Yes?" Hawk said.
"I assume you are not moving to Cleveland," Susan said.
There was a glitter of self-mockery in Hawk's look.
He said, "My work be here, Susan."
Cecile was studying the menu. I wondered what she thought about the gentleman's and lady's steaks.
"So many to kill," Cecile said softly without looking up. "So little time."
Hawk looked at me.
"What that line about honor?" Hawk said. "From a poem?"
"Richard Lovelace?" I said. " 'I could not love thee half as much, loved I not honor more?' "
Hawk nodded.
"Oh, spare me," Cecile said.
Hawk nodded thoughtfully.
"Cecile," he said. "You know, and I know, and they know, you got a nice offer in Cleveland, but that you going because you mad at me for not being who you want me to be."
"I'm not mad, damn it," Cecile said. "I love you, and I can't stand that I can't have you."
"Not good dinner conversation," Hawk said. "But it's on the table. If you love me, you could have me. You love somebody else and insist I be him."
"Oh, shit," Cecile said.
She looked at Susan.
"You understand."
Susan nodded. I was hoping she would settle for the nod. But she couldn't.
"I do understand," Susan said. "But I'm not sure that means I agree."
"You don't think I should go to Cleveland?" Cecile said. She was finishing her second martini.
"I'm sorry to sound shrinky," Susan said, "but I think you should do what's in your best interest. Given who you are and what you need, it may very well be in your best interest to end it with Hawk."
"But?" Cecile said.
"But it's probably important to see that it is your doing, not his."
"What difference does it make?" Cecile said. "He won't change."
"Probably can't change; neither can you. But if you blame him, you'll feel victimized all your life."
Cecile caught the waiter's eye and ordered a third martini. She was silent while he got it. None of the rest of us said anything. Party hearty!
"I never quite saw that part," she said finally, after she'd gotten under way on the third martini. "He can't be what I want him to be, and I can't not want it."
Susan nodded.
"If I could change," Cecile said to Hawk, "what would you want?"
Hawk shook his head.
"Nothing," he said. "I don't mind you want me to be things I'm not. You don't change, I don't change. Be fine, long as we don't fight about it."
Cecile stared at him, then back to Susan. She nodded her head toward me.
"Would you change him?"
"Of course," Susan said. "If it were convenient. And I'm sure he would change me."
She smiled at me.
"In fact, I guarantee you that right now he thinks I shouldn't be butting in here."