CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Early spring had drifted into late spring and it was still raining the next morning. On my way to work, with my collar up and my hat pulled down, looking dashingly noir, I stopped into a store on Newbury Street called Bjoux, where I had been conspiring with the owner, a tall good-looking woman named Barbara Jordan, about a surprise birthday gift for Susan. Then I went to the office, and took time to clean up a few old business things still unresolved. I answered some mail, looked at my bank statements, and called a guy named Bill Poduska to ask him if he was going to charge me for helicopter services on a missing-child case I’d done last winter. I was hoping he might say it was pro bono, because the client hadn’t paid me, even though I’d gotten the kid back. Bill apparently knew that, because he said there was no charge. I said thank you. Then I made some coffee, looked out at the rain for a while. It was an especially good rain because there was thunder and lightning with it and that always gave the weather a kind of charged tension that I enjoyed.
After watching the lightning and counting the seconds until I heard the thunder and figuring out by doing that how far away the storm was, and wondering if that actually was accurate, and then wondering why I in fact cared, I decided I had stalled on my plan long enough and called Burton Roth with somewhat less confidence than I had felt after two drinks the night before. We talked for half an hour and I had been right after all. He understood the problem and was prepared to help me solve it. Never a doubt in my mind. I told Roth I’d get back to him, and hung up just before Hawk came in with raindrops still bearded on his lavender silk trench coat.
“Got a plan?” Hawk said. “Got a million,” I said. “Or are you talking about a workable plan?”
Hawk unbuttoned his coat and went and stood looking out my office window at the rain falling on the corner of Berkeley and Boylston.
“Bobby worried about his kid,” Hawk said.
“Even after he met me?” I said.
“Bobby don’t know about you.”
“I’m not so sure about me sometimes either.”
“I gave him my word,” Hawk said.
“Yeah. Thanks.”
“So what you got in mind?”
“Well, I was thinking about pitching it in and becoming a caterer – you know? Leftovers R Us. Come in, take whatever there is in the house, fix up a tasty meal?”
Hawk continued to stare at the rain through my window. I went over and stood beside him and looked down. Puddles had formed and the raindrops hitting the puddles made tiny eruptions. The lightning skidded along the arch of the sky and shortly afterward the thunder cracked. It was dandy.
“I’d target the WASP market,” I said.
Hawk nodded. The rain slithered in thick rivulets down the outside of my window. It diffused the lightning flash prismatically for a transitory moment.
“Be about a hundred million white guys in this country,” Hawk said as the electricity crackled in the sky, “I end up with you.”
“Talk about luck,” I said.
“Talk about,” Hawk said. “What we gonna do about Bobby’s kid?”
“Do what we always do,” I said. “Keep dragging on the end we got hold of, see what we pull out of the hole.”
“What end we got hold of?”
“Willie and Amir.”
“So we follow them and see what’s at the other end.”
“Exactly,” I said.
“That your plan?”
“You bet,” I said.
“And you do this for a living?”
“So far,” I said.
“We gonna share?” Hawk said.
“Yes, you take Amir, I’ll take Willie.”
“Okay I give Amir a swat, I get the chance?”
“Long as he doesn’t spot you tailing him,” I said.
Hawk turned from the window.
“How you doing with that other gig, the stalker?”
“I’m working on it,” I said.
“You doing as good with that as you are with this?” Hawk said.
“No.”
Hawk nodded and smiled.
“Leftovers R Us,” he said. “Might catch on.”
On the street below, people were shielding themselves from the rain by various means, including but not limited to umbrellas. A woman went by holding her purse over her head, another used a briefcase. Several Boston Globes and at least one Boston Herald were also deployed.
“I figure I can buy a couple cases of cream of mushroom soup,” I said. “And I’m in business.”
“The basis of WASP cuisine,” Hawk said. “While I walking around behind Amir Abdullah, you got any idea what I’m looking for?”
“We’ll know it when we see it,” I said. “We need to know two things – who threw Prentice Lamont out the window, and why Amir was trying to sink Robinson Nevins’ tenure.”
“‘Cause Amir a creep?” Hawk said.
“Good enough for you and me, maybe not good enough for the university tenure committee.”
“They overrule the English department,” Hawk said.
“They can, Susan told me, and so can the dean,” I said. “Though Susan says neither one likes to.”
“So Robinson got a couple more shots.”
“If we can come up with something,” I said.
“We up against it I can always hold Amir upside down,” Hawk said, “and shake him until something falls out.”
“That’s plan B,” I said. “First we find out what we can by watching. Otherwise while you’re shaking him other people might scoot out of sight.”
“What other people?”
“That’s what we’re watching to find out.”
“Why you think there’s other people?”
“Leads somewhere,” I said. “Assume there aren’t any other people, and we don’t know what to do next.”
“You caterers do be some deep philosophical motherfuckers,” Hawk said.
“We do,” I said.
CHAPTER FORTY
Before we could unleash ourselves on Amir and Willie we had Louis Vincent to attend to. It was a tricky one to time. I had shared my plan with Sgt. O’Connor of the Reading cops. He was keeping an eye on KC and reported that she was home. Burt Roth had given me his beeper number and said he’d be standing by. So it was all in place, at least for the moment, and if Louis Vincent came out to lunch this noontime we might be in business. If he didn’t we’d have to innovate.
He did. I was standing in a doorway on the opposite corner of State and Congress so I could see him whichever door he came out. State Street was one way, so Hawk was idling his Jaguar, on the corner of State and Broad, two blocks down. Vincent walked out onto Congress Street wearing a Burberry trench coat and a tweed hat and turned the corner and headed down State Street toward the waterfront. I let him see me and as soon as he did he ran. It was a panic run. Hawk turned up onto State Street and was idling at the curb when I caught Vincent. Vincent tried to kick me and I turned my left hip and deflected the kick and nailed him on the chin with a right hook. He sagged, I caught him. Hawk was out of his car and had the back door open. I shoved Vincent in, and went in after him. Hawk was back in and behind the wheel by the time I got straightened up, and we were off to Reading. A couple of pedestrians stared after us.