John Porter looked at Major.
“Go on, John Porter, do what the man say. Put a charge on his head, Homes.”
John Porter was giving this some thought, which was clearly hard for him. Was there some sort of trickery here?
“Come on, John Porter,” Major said. “Man, you can’t fickle on me now. You tol me you going to crate this Thompson first chance. You tol me that, Homes.” In everything Major said there was derision.
John Porter put out a decent overhand left at Hawk, which missed. Hawk didn’t seem to do anything, but the punch missed his chin by a quarter of an inch. John Porter had done some boxing. He shuffled in behind the left with a right cross, which also missed by a quarter of an inch. John Porter began to lose form. He lunged and Hawk stepped aside and John Porter had to scramble to keep his balance.
“See, the thing is,” Hawk said, “you’re in over your head, John Porter. You don’t know what you are dealing with here.”
John Porter rushed at Hawk this time, and Hawk moved effortlessly out of the way. John Porter was starting to puff. He wasn’t quite chasing Hawk yet. He had enough ring savvy left to know that you could get your clock cleaned by a Boy Scout if you started chasing him incautiously. But chasing Hawk cautiously wasn’t working. John Porter had been trained, probably in some jailhouse boxing program, in the way to fight with his fists. And it wasn’t working. It had probably nearly always worked. He was 6’2“ and probably weighed 240, and all of it muscle. He might not have lost a fight since the fourth grade. Maybe never. But he was losing this one and the guy wasn’t even fighting. John Porter didn’t get it. He stopped, his hands still up, puffing a little, and squinted at Hawk.
“What you doing?” he said.
Major stepped behind John Porter and kicked him in the butt.
“You fry him, John Porter, and you do it now,” Major said.
There was no derision in Major’s voice.
“He can’t,” Hawk said, not unkindly.
John Porter made a sudden sweep at Hawk with his right hand and missed. The side door of the van slid an inch and I jumped at it and rammed it shut with my shoulder on someone’s hand, someone yelled in pain, something clattered on the street. I kept my back against the door and came up with the Browning and leveled it sort of inclusively at the group. Hawk had a left handful of John Porter’s hair. He held John Porter’s head down in front of him, and with his right hand, pressed the muzzle of a Sig Sauer automatic into John Porter’s left ear. Jackie had dropped flat to the pavement and was trying with her left hand to smooth her skirt down over her backside, while her right hand pushed the tape recorder as far forward toward the action as she could.
Somewhere on the other side of McCrory Street a couple of birds chirped. Inside the truck someone was grunting with pain. I could feel him struggle to get his arm out of the door. A couple of gang members were frozen in midreach toward inside pockets or under jackets.
“Now this time,” Hawk was saying, “we all going to walk away from this.”
No one moved. Major stood with no expression on his face, as if he were watching an event that didn’t interest him.
“Next time some of you will be gone for good,” Hawk said. “Spenser, bring him out of the truck.”
I kept my eyes on the gang and slid my back off the door. It swung open and a small quick-looking kid no more than fourteen, in a black Adidas sweatsuit, came out clutching his right wrist against him. In the gutter by the curb, below the open door, was an automatic pistol. I picked it up and stuck it in my belt.
“You all walk away from here, now,” Hawk said. No one moved.
“Do what I say,” Hawk said. There was no anger in his voice. Hawk pursed his lips as he looked at the gang members standing stolidly in place. Behind him Jackie was on her feet again, her tape recorder still running, some sand clinging to the front of her dress.
Hawk smiled suddenly. “Sure,” he said.
He looked at me.
“They won’t leave without him,” Hawk said.
I nodded. Hawk released his grip on John Porter’s hair and Porter straightened. He walked away from Hawk with his head down.
“You fucked yourself,” Major said without any particular emotion. “You dead, motherfucker.”
“Not likely,” Hawk said.
Major stood silently for a moment, looking at Hawk, then he looked at me.
“Enjoy yourself, slut,” he said to Jackie. And his face broke into a wide smile.
Then he turned and nodded at the gang. They followed him, and in a moment they were gone and all there was, was the two birds across the street, chirping.
CHAPTER I3
We were back in Hawk’s car. Jackie in back this time, Hawk and I in the front seat. Both of us had shotguns.
“Would you like to reprise all of that for me?” Jackie said.
“Kid’s playing a game,” Hawk said.
“The leader? Major?”
“Un huh.”
“Well, could you explain the game?”
Hawk grinned back at her over his shoulder. “Un uh,” he said.
“Well, I mean, is it turf?” Jackie said.
“Sure it’s turf, but it’s more,” Hawk said.
“I didn’t even understand half what he was saying,” Jackie said.
“Gangs have their own talk,” Hawk said.
“You didn’t understand it either,” Jackie said.
“Not all of it. Got the drift though.”
“I wonder if he’s trying to see how you’ll act?” I said to Hawk.
“He’s heard of me?” Hawk said.
Hawk considered everything genuinely. He had almost no assumptions.
“Maybe,” I said. I looked at Jackie. “I don’t want to hear any of this on The Marge Eagen Show. ”
“No,” Jackie said. “Unless I warn you, it’s background only. Okay?”
I nodded.
“Maybe Major has heard of you. Maybe you are a kind of ghetto legend, like Connie Hawkins was on the New York playgrounds, say, for different reasons…”
“Who’s Connie Hawkins?” Jackie said.
“Basketball player,” Hawk said. He kept his eyes on me. “Yeah?”
“So maybe Major wants to learn,” I said. Hawk nodded slowly and kept nodding.
“Learn how to handle trouble?” Jackie said.
“How a man behaves,” Hawk said. He kept nodding. “That’s why they haven’t just done a driveby and sprayed us.”
“Which is not to say they won’t,” I said.
“But if he want to learn, he will escalate slow,” Hawk said.
“And observe, and if it goes right for him, maybe he can win over his father.”
“Father?” Jackie said.
Hawk grinned again. “Spenser got a shrink for a girlfriend,” he said. “Sometimes he get a little fancy.”
“I try not to use any big words, though. I respect your limitations.”
“Limitations?” Hawk said. “I got no limitations. Why you think I’m a ghetto legend?”
“Beats me,” I said.
CHAPTER 14
“So what’s she like?” Susan said.
We were having a supper, which I’d cooked, and sipping some Sonoma Riesling, in the kitchen of what Susan now insisted on calling “our house.”
“Well, she’s brave as hell,” I said. “When the guns came out this morning, she hit the pavement facedown, but she kept her tape recorder going.”
Susan moved some of her chicken cutlet about in the wine lemon sauce I had made.
“Smart?”
“I think so,” I said. “She asks a lot of questions-but that is, after all, her job.”
Susan cut a becomingly modest triangle of chicken, speared it with her fork, raised it to her lips, and bit off half of it. Pearl sat quietly with her head on Susan’s thigh, her eyes fixed poignantly on the supper. Susan put the fork down and Pearl took the remaining bite quite delicately.