I nodded.
"So asking Hawk about Thanksgiving is like asking a fish about a bicycle," Susan said.
"Or asking him about Cecile."
"Does Cecile matter to him?"
"Yes," I said.
"But?"
"But not the way you and I do."
"Who does?" Susan said.
"Good point," I said.
"Do you understand him?"
"Up to a point," I said.
"And then?"
"Hawk's black. He's been outnumbered all his life. I don't know, and probably can't know, quite what that's like."
"Or what it took for him to become Hawk," Susan said.
"And to keep being Hawk," I said. "He didn't choose a Hawk that's easy to maintain."
"But if he doesn't maintain," Susan said, "he'll disappear."
"He'd laugh at you for saying that."
"Yes," Susan said. "But it doesn't mean it's not true."
"Besides," I said. "You have a doctorate from Harvard and you live in Cambridge."
"So I'm used to being laughed at," Susan said.
10
THE WEEK AFTER Christmas, Hawk and I were at the Harbor Health Club. Hawk had been doing twenty-pound curls and hundred-pound bench presses. And resting a lot between sets. Now he was on the bicycle, with the resistance set low and the sweat running down his face.
"After the Gray Man shot you," Hawk said, "how long before you was a hundred percent?"
"A year," I said.
Hawk nodded. Henry Cimoli came over with a bottle of water and gave it to him.
"Thin and flabby at the same time," Henry said. "Reminds me of my first wife."
Henry walked over to me. His small body bulged out of his white T-shirt.
"I could probably kick his ass now," Henry said. "Be my chance."
I nodded.
"Be wise to kill him if you do," I said.
"I know," Henry said. "Eventually he'll get better."
Hawk kept pedaling.
"You so little," Hawk said, "you be punching me in the knee."
"You're so scrawny," Henry said, "that would probably drop you."
Hawk was struggling to keep his breathing normal.
"You… ever knock… anybody down… when you… fighting?" Hawk said.
"I knocked Willie Pep down once," Henry said.
"He stay down?" Hawk said.
"Not for long," Henry said. "It was the last punch I landed."
Hawk got off the bike and sat on a bench, taking in air.
"Doctor say you okay to work out?" Henry said.
Hawk nodded.
"He say do anything I can."
"Which ain't much," Henry said.
"Yet," Hawk said.
Henry nodded.
"Yet," he said.
Henry went away. I finished my set and sat down beside Hawk.
"I have been collecting data," I said.
Hawk wiped his face with a hand towel and nodded.
"I have addresses for our four Ukrainians and for the two lawyers we know about."
"Talk to any of them?"
"No."
"Good," Hawk said.
"We could, though, if you want to," I said.
"Ain't ready yet," Hawk said.
"I could sort of protect you," I said. "Unless you annoyed me."
Hawk shook his head.
"Got to wait," Hawk said.
"I could ask Vinnie to join us," I said.
"Can't have no one protecting me," Hawk said.
I spent a little time thinking about that.
Then I said, "No, you can't."
11
IN MID-MARCH I was sitting in my office, invoicing clients. It was tedious, but it reminded me of why I did what I did. Outside my window the sun was shining. It wasn't spring yet, but the snow was beginning to decay, and the sour smell of long-buried leaves bore the gentle promise of milder times.
Hawk came in. He took off his coat and folded it and put it on my client chair. He took the big.44 Mag off his belt and laid it on top of the coat. Then he dropped to the floor and did ten push-ups with his right arm and another ten with his left. Then he stood.
"Am I to gather that you're ready?" I said.
"I am."
Hawk put the.44 back in its holster and put his coat back on.
"Now?" I said.
"Un-huh."
"You got a plan?"
"Start with Tony," Hawk said.
"Marcus?" I said.
"Want to find out what's been going on since they shot me."
"And Tony will know," I said.
" 'Course he will," Hawk said.
"His interests are the same as ours," I said. "He could help."
"He will," Hawk said. "If we need him."
I heaved a big sigh.
"Back down to the ghetto again," I said.
"Good for you," Hawk said. "Give you a chance to be a minority."
"I like you," I said. "I am a minority."
"Just 'cause I recovered," Hawk said. "Don't get sloppy and emotional."
"My car or yours?" I said.
"I be embarrassed to show up at Tony's place in your ride."
Tony Marcus had an office in the back of a restaurant and nightclub at the edge of the South End, which had been called Buddy's Fox. Then Tony hired a marketing consultant and the place was now called Ebony & Ivory.
"Swell name," I said as Hawk parked across the street. "Implies elegant racial intermingling."
"Except you the only ivory I ever seen in there," Hawk said.
There were booths along both walls, a bar across the back, and a narrow corridor to the right of the bar that led to washrooms and Tony's office. In a booth near the door, Junior and Ty Bop looked at us when we came in. Ty Bop was drinking coffee. Junior simply sat. Neither of them said anything. The patrons ignored us. The bartender nodded as we walked by.
"Hawk, my man," Tony Marcus said when we went into his office. "You are looking buff."
"Lost that unhealthy pallor," I said. "Hasn't he?"
"And you ain't," Tony said to me.
I grinned.
"I back in business," Hawk said. "Want to talk about the Ukrainians."
"Figured the time would come," Tony said. " 'Less you died."
"Time has come," Hawk said. "What you know?"
"I know they here," Tony said. "I know they costing me money. I know the connection runs back to Brooklyn, and probably back to Ukraine, wherever the fuck that is."
"Even further than Brooklyn," I said.
"You not a candy cane," Hawk said to Tony. "Whyn't you chase them out."
"They don't come at you direct, man. They pressure a pimp, or one bookie, or a guy doing drugs in one neighborhood. When the one guy cracks they move in big, and then to get them out you got a damned war. It costs you money. The cops come looking. The feds get involved. Prosecutors are RICO this and conspiracy that. It's still easier to work around them."
"You think they stop?" Hawk said.
"No," Tony said. "They want it all."
"So you going to have to step up sooner or later," Hawk said.
"They also pretty bad," Tony said.
"That so?" Hawk said.
"You should know," Tony said.
"Why Gillespie come to me?" Hawk said. "Why didn't you protect him?"
Tony looked at the ceiling above his desk for a while. He had short salt-and-pepper hair and a big moustache. He had on a tie, as he always did. His shirt was immaculate. His suit fit him perfectly. He was even a little soft around the neck as befits a successful middle-aged executive.
"Luther and I were, ah, in disagreement," Tony said.
"You thought he holding out on you?" Hawk said.
"I did."
"So you left him on his own?" Hawk said.
"I did."
"Mistake," Hawk said.
Tony nodded.
"But I cut a guy off, I can't go bailing him out later, you unnerstand. I do that, pretty soon everybody be trying to fuck with me and I have to do some major bang bang."
"Many of the people they've moved in on been in disfavor?" I said.
"Disfavor." Tony shook his head. "Man, you white folks do talk funny."
"Were they?" Hawk said.
"Couple were," Tony said. "Some of the others weren't mine."
"I thought they were all yours," I said.
Tony smiled.
"They were going to be," he said.
Hawk took out the paper on which I had typed the names of the four Ukrainians that Bohdan had named.