Susan nodded toward me.
"You will want him to help you."
"Up to him," Hawk said.
"Are you going to help him kill four people?" Susan said to me.
"I'm going to help him find them, and I'm going to help him not get killed. He'll kill who he kills," I said.
"Isn't that sort of a fine line?" Susan said.
"Very fine," I said. "But it's a line."
Susan nodded.
"That troubling to you?" Hawk said.
"Yes," she said. "It is very troubling."
"He don't have to."
"Yes," Susan said. "He does."
She looked at Hawk, holding her warm vodka in one hand and a green grape in the other. I knew she had forgotten both.
"He does have to," she said.
We were quiet. I put my hand on her thigh and patted softly. She never disappointed. She always knew.
"Ain't happening for a while," Hawk said.
Susan ate her grape and sipped more vodka.
"I know," she said brightly. "Want some chicken?"
8
HAWK WASN'T RUNNING yet. But he could walk a ways. So, in the week before Thanksgiving, we were walking with Pearl along the river in back of where I lived. Actually, Hawk and I were walking. Pearl was tearing around, looking for something to hunt or eat or sniff or bark at.
"Like you," I said. "Dark, slick, and full of energy."
"I still dark and slick," Hawk said.
It hadn't been cold enough long enough for the river to freeze, and the gray surface was ruffled with small whitecaps.
"Two out of three," I said.
We weren't passing a lot of people, but Hawk wasn't bent over anymore, and he didn't move anymore like an elderly man with bad feet.
"The blood count is creeping up," I said.
"Slow bastard," Hawk said.
Two young women ran by in luminescent tights and wool hats pulled down over their ears. They both glanced at Hawk as they passed.
"That's a good sign," I said.
"Lucky they didn't stop," Hawk said. "Best I could do is talk dirty for a minute."
Pearl had located an old french fry beside a trash barrel. She ate it proudly and came over and jumped up and gave me a kiss that smelled vaguely of fryalator.
"Tracked it down and ate it," Hawk said. "Dog's a savage."
"It's in the genes," I said.
It was midday. Traffic on both sides of the river was easy. The sun was almost above us in the southern sky. It was a pallid winter sun, and it shed little heat. But it was cheery enough.
"Quirk called me," I said. "Bohdan got it."
"Good," Hawk said.
"They were taking him from his cell down to the visiting area to see his lawyer. Two guards. They were moving some other prisoners in from the exercise yard. They passed each other. It got a little crowded for a minute."
"And somebody shanked him," Hawk said.
"In the throat," I said.
"And nobody saw nothing," Hawk said.
"All of a sudden there's lots of blood and Bohdan is down," I said. "And you're right. Nobody and nothing."
"Same lawyer come to see him 'fore he changed his story?" Hawk said.
"Quirk says yes."
"Bunch of dumb foreigners, they got some reach," Hawk said.
"They knew when the exercise was over. So they knew when the corridor would be crowded. And they had a guy there ready and able to cut Bohdan's throat."
"And they knew which guards going to be on the scene," Hawk said. "They knew they'd cooperate."
"You're not cynically suggesting," I said, "that the keepers are sometimes as corruptible as the kept?"
"Jug is its own place. Got no connection with how people live anywhere else. Everybody in the jug a prisoner. The guards just get to go home nights."
"Well," I said, "it's not like we're surprised."
"Nope."
"Leaves us four more," I said.
"If Bohdan was telling the truth."
"Instead of lying about some friends of his to get himself a deal?" I said.
"Hard to trust people these days," Hawk said.
"In which case," I said, "instead of killing him because they didn't trust him, they might have killed him because he framed them."
"Need to know," Hawk said.
"Well, we got a list," I said.
"And we'll be checking it twice," Hawk said.
9
SUSAN HAD SPENT the better part of two days making a pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving. Obviously she was exhausted, so I agreed to cook the rest of the meal, which I began at nine Thanksgiving morning. Susan sat at the kitchen table and drank a cup of coffee.
"If you hadn't forced yourself upon me," Susan said, "you could have begun preparations much earlier."
"I know," I said. "But after dinner I'd have been too full to force myself upon you."
"Oh good," Susan said. "I can rest easy."
I had the small turkey all rinsed and patted dry.
"Will you make that stuffing with the apples and onions and little cut-up sausages?"
"Yes."
I had coffee, too, and drank some.
"Would you like to look at my pie again?" Susan said.
"I beg your pardon?"
"The pumpkin pie."
She got up and walked to the refrigerator and opened the door. The pumpkin pie was on the top shelf.
"Ta-da," Susan said.
"Did you really take two days on that thing?"
"Don't call her that thing, " she said. "What if she hears you."
"She looks worth every moment spent on her."
Susan went back to her seat at the table. I sliced up eight small breakfast sausage links into my stuffing mix.
"What is Hawk doing for Thanksgiving?" Susan said.
"I don't know," I said. "I don't think he's got much appetite yet."
Pearl got her front feet onto the kitchen counter next to me and pushed her nose into the stuffing mix. I put her back on the floor.
"How'd she know the recipe called for dog slobber," I said.
"What recipe wouldn't," Susan said.
Pearl walked over and rested her head on the table beside Susan and gave a gimlet eye to the plate of buttermilk biscuits I had made for us to nibble. Susan broke one in half, and handed one half to Pearl.
"Whole-grain," she said to Pearl. "Healthful."
Pearl sniffed it, accepted it carefully in her mouth, and took it into the living room and onto the couch. Susan put a minute dollop of honey on the other half and popped it into her mouth.
When she had chewed and swallowed and drunk some coffee, she said, "Is he seeing Cecile?"
"I don't know."
"Did you ask?"
"No."
Susan smiled and shook her head.
"Amazing," she said.
"What?"
I peeled two Granny Smith apples and cored them and sliced the remains into my stuffing.
"He has risked his life for you and you for him."
I turned on the water faucet and began to peel onions in the stream of descending water so they wouldn't make me cry. I didn't want Susan thinking I was a sissy.
"And," Susan said, "you are planning to risk it again."
"Prudently," I said.
"And you don't even ask him what his plans are for Thanksgiving, or if he's spending it with anyone."
I had the first onion peeled. Pearl padded back in from the living room and sat near Susan and looked hopeful. I put the onion on the cutting board and turned and leaned against the kitchen counter and looked at Susan.
"I was walking along the river with Hawk, couple of weeks ago," I said. "And he remarked that life in prison had no connection with how people live anywhere else."
"He's probably right," Susan said.
"He's nearly always right," I said. "Not because he knows everything. But because he never talks about things he doesn't know."
"Not a bad idea," Susan said.
"No," I said. "Quite a good one."
"But what's that got to do with not knowing what he was doing for Thanksgiving?"
"I digressed," I said. "And it misled you. Go back to the thing he said about prison."
Susan poured herself half a cup of coffee and emptied in a packet of fake sugar.
"Analogy," Susan said. "Hawk's world is not like anyone else's."