As I arched up over the Cape Cod Canal at the Sagamore Bridge, Route 3 became Route 6, the Mid-Cape Highway. In the center strip and along each roadside was scrub white pine, and some taller, an occasional maple tree and some small oak trees. At high points on the road you could see ocean on both sides, Buzzards Bay to the south, Cape Cod Bay to the north. In fact the whole Cape echoed with a sense of the ocean, not necessarily its sight and not always its scent or sound. Sometimes just the sense of vast space on each side of you. Of open brightness stretching a long way under the sun.
Route 132 took me into Hyannis center. The soothing excitements of scrub pine and wide sea gave way to McDonald’s and Holiday Inn and prefab fence companies, shopping malls and Sheraton Motor Inns, and a host of less likely places where you could sleep and eat and drink in surroundings indistinguishable from the ones you’d left at home. Except there’d be a fishnet on the wall. If Bartholomew Gosnold had approached the Cape from this direction he’d have kept on going.
At the airport circle, I headed east on Main Street. Hyannis is surprisingly congested and citylike as you drive into it. Main Street is lined with stores, many of them branches of Boston and New York stores. The motel I wanted was at the east end of town, a big handsome resort motel with a health club and a good restaurant of Victorian decor. A big green sign out front said DUNFEY’S. I had stayed there two months ago with Brenda Loring and had a nice time.
I was in my room and unpacked by nine-thirty. I called Shepard. He was home and waiting for me. Ocean Street is five minutes from the motel, an extension of Sea Street, profuse with weathered shingles and blue shutters. Shepard’s house was no exception. A big Colonial with white cedar shingles weathered silver, and blue shutters at all the windows. It was on a slight rise of ground on the ocean side of Ocean Street. A white Caddie convertible with the top down was parked in front. A curving brick path ran up to the front door and small evergreens clustered along the foundation. The front door was blue. I rang the bell and heard it go bing-bong inside. To the left of the house was a beach, where the street curved. To the right was a high hedge concealing the neighbors’ house next door. A blond teenage girl in a very small lime green bikini answered the door. She looked maybe seventeen. I carefully did not leer at her when I said, “My name’s Spenser to see Mr. Shepard.”
The girl said, “Come in.”
I stepped into the front hallway and she left me standing while she went to get her father. I closed the door behind me. The front hall was floored in flagstone and the walls appeared to be cedar paneling. There were doors on both sides and in the rear, and a stairway leading up. The ceilings were white and evenly rough, the kind of plaster ceiling that is sprayed on and shows no mark of human hand.
Shepard’s daughter came back. I eyed her surreptitiously behind my sunglasses. Surreptitious is not leering. She might be too young, but it was hard to tell.
“My dad’s got company right now, he says can you wait a minute?”
“Sure.”
She walked off and left me standing in the hall. I didn’t insist on port in the drawing room, but standing in the hall seemed a bit cool. Maybe she was distraught by her mother’s disappearance. She didn’t look distraught. She looked sullen. Probably mad at having to answer the door. Probably going to paint her toenails when I’d interrupted. Terrific-looking thighs though. For a little kid.
Shepard appeared from the door past the stairs. With him was a tall black man with a bald head and high cheekbones. He had on a powder blue leisure suit and a pink silk shirt with a big collar. The shirt was unbuttoned to the waist and the chest and stomach that showed were as hard and unadorned as ebony. He took a pair of wraparound sunglasses from the breast pocket of the jacket and as he put them on, he stared at me over their rims until very slowly the lenses covered his eyes and he stared at me through them.
I looked back. “Hawk,” I said.
“Spenser.”
Shepard said, “You know each other?”
Hawk nodded.
I said, “Yeah.”
Shepard said to Hawk, “I’ve asked Spenser here to see if he can find my wife, Pam.”
Hawk said, “I’ll bet he can. He’s a real firecracker for finding things. He’ll find the ass off of a thing. Ain’t that right, Spenser?”
“You always been one of my heroes too, Hawk. Where you staying?”
“Ah’m over amongst de ofays at de Holiday Inn, Marse Spensah.”
“We don’t say ofays anymore, Hawk. We say honkies. And you don’t do that Kingfish dialect any better than you used to.”
“Maybe not, but you should hear me sing ’Shortnin‘ Bread,’ babe.”
“Yeah, I’ll bet,” I said.
Hawk turned toward Shepard. “I’ll be in touch, Mr. Shepard,” he said. They shook hands and Hawk left. Shepard and I watched him from the front door as he walked down toward the Caddie. His walk was graceful and easy yet there was about him an aura of taut muscle, of tight coiled potential, that made it seem as if he were about to leap.
He looked at my ‘68 Chevy, and looked back at me with a big grin. “Still first cabin all the way, huh, baby?”
I let that pass and Hawk slid into his Cadillac and drove away. Ostentatious.
Shepard said, “How do you know him?”
“We used to fight on the same card twenty years ago. Worked out in some of the same gyms.”
“Isn’t that amazing, and twenty years later you run into him here.”
“Oh, I’ve seen him since then. Our work brings us into occasional contact.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“You know, I could sense that you knew each other pretty well. Salesman’s instinct at sizing people up, I guess. Come on in. Have a cup of coffee or something? It’s pretty early for a drink, I guess.”
We went into the kitchen. Shepard said, “Instant okay?”
I said, “Sure,” and Shepard set water to boiling in a red porcelain teakettle.
The kitchen was long with a divider separating the cooking area from the dining area. In the dining area was a big rough hewn picnic table with benches on all four sides. The table was stained a driftwood color and contrasted very nicely with the blue floor and counter tops.
“So you used to be a fighter, huh?”
I nodded.
“That how your nose got broken?”
“Yep.”
“And the scar under your eye, too, I’ll bet.”
“Yep.”
“Geez, you look in good shape, bet you could still go a few rounds today, right?”
“Depends on who I went them with.”
“You fight heavyweight?”
I nodded again. The coffee water boiled. Shepard spooned some Taster’s Choice from a big jar into each cup. “Cream and sugar?”
“No thank you,” I said.
He brought the coffee to the table and sat down across from me. I’d been hoping, maybe for a doughnut, or a muffin. I wondered if Hawk had gotten one.
“Cheers,” Shepard said, and raised his cup at me.
“Harv,” I said, “you got more troubles than a missing wife.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I mean I know Hawk, I know what he does. He’s an enforcer, what the kids on my corner used to call a legbreaker. He freelances and these days he freelances most often for King Powers.”
“Now wait a minute. I hired you to find my wife. Whatever business I’m in with Hawk is my business. Not yours. I’m not paying you to nose around in my business.”
“That’s true,” I said. “But if you are dealing with Hawk, you are dealing with pain. Hawk’s a hurter. You owe Powers money?”
“I don’t know a goddamned thing about Powers. Don’t worry about Powers or Hawk or anybody else. I want you looking for my wife, not peeking into my books, you know?”
“Yeah, I know. But I’ve spent a lot of years doing my business with people like Hawk. I know how it goes. This time Hawk came and talked to you, pleasantly enough, spelled out how much you owed and how far behind you were on the vig and when you had to pay it by.”