“Here’s how I fi gure,” Hawk said.
“Uh-huh?”
“You a detective and I’m not. I don’t detect as well as you. Could be a detective, a course, if I wanted. But I don’t. On the other hand I can bust somebody’s ass, ’bout as well as you, maybe better.”
“So I should go to Cleveland,” I said.
“Yes.”
“I’m not buying the equality-of-ass-busting argument,” I said. “But you are certainly in the top two.”
“We know that one of us be the best,” Hawk said. “Just don’t agree on who.”
“You have to be with her every day, all day, every night, all night. You can never be any further away from her than you areright now. Vinnie and Chollo do wonderful work. But they are backup. You’re the one.”
“I know,” Hawk said.
We both looked at her. She finished a story with her arms out and raised toward the ceiling. The table burst into laughter. Hawk smiled.
“I’ll stay as close as you do,” he said.
“Almost as close,” I said.
“Almost make all the difference,” Hawk said. “Don’t it?”
“It does,” I said. “But I suppose if I were truly enlightened I’d say that would all be pretty much up to her.”
“But you not that enlightened,” Hawk said.
“No,” I said.
“Me either,” Hawk said.
We were quiet again, watching the table of women. Women seemed so much more at ease in social groups than men did. Men were okay in project groups, where they had a common goal and vocabulary. Sports teams. Combat units. Construction crews. Guarding Susan. But six guys all dressed up having dinner together was usually a sorrowful sight.
“I know we talked ’bout it before,” Hawk said. “And I know you not going to go for it. But . . . any one of us, Vinnie, Chollo, me, be happy to clip Alderson for you. Chollo could do it and be back in Bel Air for cocktails before the cops found the body.”
“I gotta do it,” I said.
“Clip him?”
“No, I gotta even this up.”
“Nothing says even like two in the head,” Hawk said.
“Not my style.”
“’Less you has to,” Hawk said.
I nodded.
“I’ve had to,” I said. “So far, not this time.”
“This ain’t just about Doherty,” Hawk said.
“Whatever it’s about,” I said, “I’m going to clear it.”
“It about Susan and the guy she took off with two hundred years ago,” Hawk said.
“Whatever it’s about,” I said, “I’m going to clear it.”
44.
It took two hours to fly to Cleveland, and thirteen hours to drive there. I drove. Route 90 all the way. There is nothing to equal a long boring drive alone for clearing the head. And mine needed clearing. Out the Mass Pike. Through the Berkshires. Onto the New York Thruway. Through Buffalo. Down along the eastern shore of Lake Erie. Through Erie. To Cleveland. It was dark when I got there, and my head was so clear as to be empty. I checked in, unpacked, went to the bar and had a sandwich and a couple of beers, went back up to my room, and, exhausted from the excitement, went to bed.
In the morning I went out and looked for Red’s shelter. I had a list of shelter addresses I’d gotten by phone Monday, from the Department of Public Health. Epstein had supplied head shots of Red and of Alderson, blown up and enhanced, from surveillance photos. I was wearing a Red Sox hat to be provocative, and a leather jacket to be warm. I was alert. I had a gun. I was everything a slick Boston private eye should be when patrolling the street shelters in Cleveland.
I liked Cleveland. It was no longer the mistake on the lake, when the river caught fire, and so did the mayor. There was a new ballpark, and a new arena. The downtown was alive. The flats were more so. There had always been a kind of magisterial, real city architectural dignity about Cleveland. It was still dignifi ed, but now it was also lively. Where I was looking, however, the liveliness, if any, was chemically induced. Mostly there was torpor. Except for the people who staffed the shelters. They seemed sincere and sufficient. Though most of them seemed sort of tired, too. My third day in Cleveland was bright and hard cold, with a wind off the lake. In mid-afternoon, some distance out Euclid Avenue, in the basement of a dingy church that might once have been a furniture store, I found a shelter where a staffer recognized Red when I showed his picture. Her name was Cora. Black. Kind. Tired. Pretty tough.
“I don’t know his real name,” she said. “We called him Red. He was a kid, really, big as he was. There was something forlorn about him. Did he make it?”
“He’s sober,” I said. “Gainfully employed.”
“How come you’re asking about him?”
“I’m investigating someone who might have counseled him,”
I said, and showed her Alderson’s picture.
“Oh, sure,” she said. “Dr. Alderson.”
“Tell me about him,” I said.
We were in a large empty basement filled with cots. On each cot was a pillow and a folded blanket. In the far corner of the room was a small kitchen setup: stove, refrigerator, sink, cupboards. Something in an industrial-sized pot was simmering on the stove. A man in a white T-shirt was sweeping up. Tattoos covered his skinny arms.
“Dr. Alderson was a professor at Coyle State. Psychology. He used to come by couple evenings a week. Talk with some of the shelter folks. He spent a lot of time, I remember, with Red.”
“You pay him?” I said.
“No, no. We got no money for paying,” Cora said. “Everybody volunteers here, ’cept me. I’m full-time staff.”
“How big a staff is it?” I said.
She smiled.
“Me,” she said.
“Place looks pretty good,” I said.
“We got rules. Blankets have to be folded. Floors have to be swept. Plates and stuff have to be washed, and if you don’t take your turn, you’re out.”
“Ever have any trouble here?”
“No,” she said. “Couple of cops come in every night, have coffee, look around. I don’t tolerate no trouble.”
“What else can you tell me about Dr. Alderson?” I said.
“It’s been a while,” Cora said. “Don’t remember much to speak of. Just that he was good. He come regular. Would sit and talk with some of these people. Listen to what they had to say.”
“He save many besides Red?” I said.
“Not much that’s savable,” Cora said. “Time they here most of them pretty far down the chute. Even if you could get them straight, they got substance-abuse problems, dementia, liver problems, cancer. They not going anywhere.”
“Did he spend as much time with those kinds of people?”
“I don’t know. Evenings are pretty busy here. Helped Red, though. I can remember that.”
“Can you give me an address for Coyle State?” I said.
“Cabbie’ll know,” she said.
“I’m driving.”
“Rental car?”
“Nope, my own. I drove out here.”
“From Boston?” she said.
“Yep.”
“You ’fraid to fly?”
“Nope.”
“Why you drive here from Boston.”
“Gave me time to think,” I said.
“I’ll bet it did,” she said.
She wrote out an address on the top sheet of a small yellow pad, tore off the sheet, and gave it to me.
“You getting rich here?” I said.
She smiled again.
“Not hardly,” she said.
“So why do you do it?”
“Might as well be me,” she said.
“Nobody better,” I said, and put out my hand.
45.
Ilay on my bed in the Holiday Inn and talked with Susan on the phone.
“Hawk on the job?” I said.
“If he stayed any closer we’d be having sex,” Susan said.
“Yikes,” I said.
“Sort of a metaphor,” Susan said. “He’s very conscientious.”
“Vinnie and Chollo?”