The strain of talking like a homeboy was palpable in Abdullah, you could tell he had to rephrase things in his head so he wouldn’t sound like Clarence Thomas. Leaning against the wall, Hawk looked like he was fighting a yawn.
“You caught me,” I said. “Actually I know you’re on the tenure committee of the English department, I guess I was really wondering why you don’t have an office there.”
“Ain’t my business solvin‘ yo’ problems,” Abdullah said.
“Of course not,” I said. “You ever see Robinson Nevins in a sexual circumstance with the late Prentice Lamont?”
“You ain’t no cop,” Abdullah said.
“How can you be sure?”
“You’da hassled me when you came in.”
“Private cop,” I said.
“And him.” Abdullah nodded at Hawk.
“Amir,” Hawk said. “You refer to me as ‘him’ again and I will slap your skinny ass around this office like a handball.”
Hawk’s voice was calm and his diction was better than Tony Blair’s. Abdullah flushed. He was so light that it was visible.
“Only way you talk to a brother like that, is if you a damned Tom,” Abdullah said.
Without a word Hawk stepped toward Abdullah, who flinched back involuntarily behind his desk.
“Hawk,” I said. “It won’t get us what we’re after.”
Standing directly at Abdullah’s desk, Hawk kept his eyes on Abdullah.
“No white man calls me nigger,” Hawk said quietly, “no black man calls me Tom.”
He leaned across the desk and grabbed a handful of Abdullah’s saffron robes. Abdullah screeched for help and several of the hard young men in dark suits came dashing down the corridor. Hawk slapped Abdullah across the face forehand and backhand, hard enough to rock his head back. Abdullah was all skinny arms and legs scrambling to get away. Hawk slapped him again as the first of the hard young men rushed into the room. Hawk dropped Abdullah, turned, and flattened the hard young man with a left hook. Three more crowded through the door. I took in a deep breath and let it out, and hit one of them on the back of his neck behind his right ear, and the fight was on. There were four of them and two of us, but one of us was Hawk and one of us was me, and they had Abdullah on their side. Having Abdullah on your side was like subtracting one, so the fight was almost even. The young men were all aficionados of some sort of Asian fighting technique, at which they were technically skilled. But they’d used it mostly to frighten college kids and intimidate professors. By the time the university cops arrived, the fight was over, we had won, and the militant Professor Abdullah was trying to crawl out of his office door from behind his desk, before Hawk got hold of him again.
“He assaulted me,” Abdullah shrieked to the first cop through the door. “He assaulted me.”
The university cops were followed in pretty close order by a couple of Boston cops, one of whom I knew. The university cops wanted to arrest us, but I explained what I was doing there and swore that Abdullah had started it, and the Boston cop that I knew interceded and eventually Hawk and I walked, though we were to stay close in case Abdullah pressed charges.
When we left the university police station we headed for the Harbor Health Club. After Henry Cimoli had stopped fighting, and before he opened what at that time he’d called a gym, on the waterfront, he’d worked corners for a while as a cut man. I had a cut under my eye, and a puffy lip and the knuckles on my left hand were scraped and swollen. Hawk had a black eye and a cut on his bald scalp that bled a lot. We needed Henry’s repair service.
“Well,” I said, “a fine mess you got us into this time, Ollie.”
“He hurt my feelings,” Hawk said.
He was pressing a folded paper towel against the cut on his head.
“You don’t have feelings,” I said. “I’ve heard blacks call you Tom, and whites call you nigger, and for all you cared they could have been singing ‘Louie, Louie.’”
“I know.”
“And all of a sudden you have a NO-BLACK-MAN-CALLS-ME-TOM fit and we’re fighting four martial arts freaks.”
“I know. Done good too,” he said. “Didn’t we.”
“We’re supposed to,” I said. “What was all that wounded pride crap.”
Hawk grinned.
“Scrawny fucker annoyed me,” Hawk said.
“Well, of course he did,” I said.
“Hate phonies,” Hawk said.
“Sure,” I said. “It’s the right thing to do. But if it comes up again, could you hate them on your time?”
Atlantic Avenue was generously dug up and intricately de-toured as the Central Artery project lumbered ahead. I pulled in and parked in among some heavy equipment near the Harbor Health Club.
“Can’t promise nothing,” Hawk said.
CHAPTER NINE
So far I was nowhere.
We had annoyed the hell out of Amir Abdullah but hadn’t learned a thing. I had talked with KC Roth and hadn’t learned much about that case, except that KC was a piece of work. I had talked with Belson and gotten nothing to help me. My next appointment was at the university with Professor Lillian Temple of the English department tenure committee, that afternoon at two. Until then I had nothing else to do except watch the swelling subside in my lip, so I decided to go up to Reading and talk with the cops about KC Roth. No grass growing under my feet. Two cases at a time. I thought about having “Master Sleuth” added to my business cards.
I talked to a beefy red-faced Reading police sergeant named O’Connor in the squad room.
“Yeah, we have a car go by there usually about every hour. It’s easy enough, we routinely patrol that stretch anyway.”
“You vary the time?” I said.
“We’re just sort of shit-kicker cops out here, a course,” O’Connor said, “but we did figure out that if we showed up the same time every night people might start to work around us.”
“Good thinking,” I said. “You have any thoughts on the stalker?”
“Like who he is?”
“Un huh.”
“Well, the ex-whatever is usually the one you look at, if there is somebody.”
“You have any reason to think there might not be a stalker?” I said.
“Well, you’ve talked to the lady,” O’Connor said. “What’s your impression?”
“Good-looking,” I said.
“Yeah.”
“Seems as if she might be sexually forthcoming,” I said.
“You bet,” O’Connor said.
“You got any information on that?”
“Nope, just instinct.”
“Nice combo,” I said. “Good-looking and easy.”
“The best,” O’Connor said, “if there wasn’t the next morning to think about.”
“That could be grim,” I said. “But what’s your point?”
“Just that she seems like she ain’t wrapped too snug,” O’Connor said. “Nothing about her bothered you?”
“She seemed a little contrived.”
“Contrived? I heard you was a tough guy. Tough guys don’t say contrived.”
“Probably don’t say sexually forthcoming either,” I said.
“A course they don’t,” O’Connor said.
“Part of my disguise,” I said. “So you haven’t seen any sign of a stalker.”
“No.”
“Telephone records?”
“She hadn’t talked to the phone company when we talked with her. They weren’t keeping track.”
“I suggested she do that,” I said.
“We did too.”
“Damn. She acted like I was smarter than Vanna White when I suggested it.”
“Sure.”
“So why would she make it up?” I said.
“You’ve seen broads like her, probably more than I have. Husband dumps them, they’re alone out in the suburbs, and they want men around. They want to be looked after. So they call the cops a lot. Maybe Mrs. Roth just took it a step farther and hired a guy to look after her.”
“Me,” I said, “after you broke her heart.”
“Could be.”