I said, "Sort of embarrassing, huh?"
He let his fist drop to his side. "Now what?" he said.
"I don't feel like shooting you," I said. "I don't feel like taking your brass knuckles away and knocking you down and kicking out the rest of your teeth. All I want is to leave you in peace and good health and go see the people that Ginger Buckey left you for."
"I'll get in trouble," he said.
"They won't know," I said.
"How do I know you won't tell them?"
"Because I said I wouldn't."
"And if I don't tell you?"
"I blow the whistle on this place so loud that the people you're bribing won't be able to help, and the ownership will get in trouble and be mad as hell at you."
"For crissake, man, she was already a pro when we got her."
"She was fourteen," I said. "White slavery, babe. Film at eleven."
"I passed her on to a guy from Boston," he said.
"Who?"
"Guy named Art Floyd."
"And what did he do with her?" I was still holding the gun in a sort of random way, not exactly pointing but not really hanging at my side either.
"How the fuck do I know, man. Probably put her in a house up there. You think we had a long talk about it?"
"Did Ginger want to go?"
The tall guy laughed. "Something else we didn't have a long talk about."
"Finder's fee," I said.
"Sure," he said. "She's product, man. You know? You raise cattle, you give the cows away?"
"So you sold her to a guy from Boston named Art Floyd."
"Yeah."
"Okay," I said. "I'll see if I can locate Art. If I can't I'll come back."
"Hey, man, he said he was from Boston. What can I tell you?"
I nodded. "Give me your gun," I said. I leveled my gun as he took his knuckles off and put them in his pocket again and took a Browning automatic out of his shoulder holster and handed it to me.
"Cost me $475," he said.
"I'll give it to you outside," I said. "I just don't want you shooting me while I walk away."
"I wouldn't backshoot you, man."
"Course you wouldn't," I said, and went out of the room and through the reception area. The tall guy followed me. The threat of him was gone. He wanted his gun back. I got in my car and opened the window. I took the clip out of the gun and checked the action once to make sure there was nothing in the chamber. I thumbed the bullets out of the clip. Put the clip back in the gun and handed it to him.
"You gonna keep the bullets?" he said.
"Oh, hell," I said, and put my hand out. He cupped his hand and I let the bullets fall into it.
"You won't tell Floyd, will you?" he said.
"No," I said, "I won't."
16
The only Arthur Floyd in the Boston phone book was a retired pediatrician. It didn't prove he wasn't a whorehouse recruiter, but it cut down on the probability enough for me to look elsewhere.
I called a vice squad cop named McNeeley. He had never heard of Arthur Floyd. It was possible that the cowboy in Portland had been jiving me, but I didn't think so. He had been so worried about getting his gun back that he'd have told on his mother.
Just because Arthur Floyd wasn't in the Boston phone book didn't mean he wasn't around. He might be in the Worcester phone book, or Lynn, or Fall River. Or Tucson or Detroit. I had a lot of options. If I went through every phone book for every city in the country, I'd be sure to find him. Unless he had an unpublished number. Or had moved to Toronto. I could open my office window and shout down at the people going by on Berkeley Street, and ask them if they knew anyone named Arthur Floyd. Maybe I should just ask for Floyd, since Art might be a nickname. On the other hand Floyd might be an alias. Maybe I should just yell down and ask if they knew anyone. Or maybe I should go work out.
I chose the last course and went down to the Harbor Health Club. When I had begun working out there, the Harbor Health Club had been appropriate to the waterfront. As the waterfront went upscale so did the Harbor Health Club. Only Henry Cimoli's influence kept the boxing room from being turned into a boutique. There was one speed bag, one heavy bag, and a jump rope pressed into a narrow corner by the steady spread of steam rooms and sauna and eucalyptus inhalant rooms and sun-tanning rooms and juice bars and a heated pool and an overgrowth of hanging plants that made the place look like a Henri Rousseau painting. Hawk was there to add to the illusion. His shaved black head gleamed among the potted ferns as he walked toward the Nautilus room. He was wearing a magenta tank top and white satin warm-up pants and a white terry sweatband with a thin magenta stripe in it.
"Christ," I said. "Designer sweats."
Hawk grinned. "Clothes make the man, babe."
"Don't people call you a sissy when they see you dressed like that?"
Hawk's grin widened slightly. "No," he said. He took the handles at the pull-up station and began to do pull-ups with his legs held parallel to the ground. The muscles in his arms and shoulders swelled and relaxed as he went up and down as if they were separately alive. People, as they always did, peeked at him when they thought he wasn't looking, glancing out of the corners of eyes and in reflections in the glass. Hawk knew it. He always knew everything that went on around him. It made no impression on him. Almost nothing did. He didn't enjoy it. He didn't mind it.
I was doing curls. Hawk said, "How you and Susan doing?"
"Love is lovelier," I said, "the second time around."
"Worth the scramble," Hawk said.
"Yes."
Hawk shifted from pull-ups to dips. He whistled to himself through his teeth, his lips together so one barely heard the small internal melody. He was whistling "On the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe." We both finished on the Nautilus equipment and went to the boxing room. I jumped rope, Hawk played games on the speed bag. Now he was whistling "Sweet Georgia Brown."
I said, "You still on good terms with Tony Marcus?"
Hawk said, "Sure."
I said, "I think I need some help from him."
"Nothing Tony like better," Hawk said, "than to do favors for some honkie who punched him in the mouth the only time he met him."
"It's why I asked about your terms," I said. "If he liked me I wouldn't need you."
"If you need me 'cause people don't like you, babe, you need me bad. What you want from Tony?"
I crossed and uncrossed the rope as I jumped. "I'm looking for a guy named Art Floyd. He recruited a kid for a whorehouse in Boston."
"You looking for the kid?"
"No. I'm looking for him. The kid's dead."
"Well, Tony the man," Hawk said. "Nothing much happens in the whore business that Tony don't follow. Floyd kill the kid?"
"No, I doubt it. I'm looking for April Kyle again."
"The little blond kid from Smithfield."
"Un huh."
"Man," Hawk said, "you do hang in there. Tell me about it, maybe we work something out with Tony."
I told him about April and about Ginger Buckey.
"So you figure you find out what happened to Ginger Buckey you maybe find out what happened to April," Hawk said.
"April's gone, Ginger's dead, and Rambeaux is scared. There's got to be a connection."
"Well, I see what I can do. But Tony don't remember you fondly."
"I'm not asking him to dance."
"Good to know," Hawk said. "What Tony get out of this?"
I shrugged. "A favor to me?"
"Besides that," Hawk said.
"A favor to you?"
"Tony usually looking to get favors more than he looking to give them," Hawk said.
"Okay, we'll owe him one," I said.
"What this `we' shit, white man?"
17
Hawk and I met Tony Marcus at a Chinese restaurant called Ming Garden on Route 9 across from the Chestnut Hill Mall. Marcus was maybe my age with a modified Afro and a thick mustache. The mustache had some gray in it, but his face was smooth and unlined. He sat in a booth alone toward the far end of the restaurant. At a table next to him four other black men sat with menus closed in front of them. All of them wore suits. One of the guys sitting with his back toward us was too heavy for the suit and where it pulled tight across his back I could see the faint line of a shoulder-holster strap.