The next morning I was out front of Perry Lehman's house. I had a large cardboard placard nailed to a piece of 1 by 2 that I jammed into the ground near the end of his driveway. The placard said WHO'S WARREN? It was almost ten o'clock in the morning before Perry came down the driveway in his limo. The limo stopped by the sign and the chauffeur, in the same three-piece gray suit that the bodyguards wore, got out and pulled the sign out of the ground. He went around to the trunk and opened it, put the sign in and closed the trunk and came around to the front and spotted me and leaned back inside to speak to Lehman. Then he got in the car. The car sat motionless in the driveway for maybe five minutes before the two gray-suited bodyguards appeared. They looked across the street at me. I waited. They got in the limo. The guy with the scarred lip got in back with Lehrnan. The other got in the front with the driver. I must be making an impression, three bodyguards. How flattering.
Off we went toward Boston. It took only about fifteen minutes, outside of rush hour. When the limo pulled into the alley in front of the club, the two bodyguards got out first. I stopped well up the alley. It was getting to where they'd assault me on this and I wasn't ready for that yet. I wanted to keep pressuring Lehman until he did something profoundly stupid that might prove useful to me. t trusted him to do that if I had enough time.
With the guards watching me Lehman got out and walked to the club. There was a sign posted on the wall by the door. It said WHO'S WARREN? Lehman tore it off and went into the building. The bodyguards got back in the limo and it pulled away down the alley and made a U-turn. I backed into the street and pulled away first. I turned right on Boylston and right on Tremont and went around the block. The limo didn't chase me. I came through Park Square and back onto Boylston and pulled in and parked at the edge of the alley, and took residence on my front fender again. A few customers came and went. Some noticed me. At about noon I went up to the corner and called the Crown Prince Club and asked for Perry Lehman.
"Who's calling, please?"
"My name is Spenser."
"One moment, please."
Then Lehman's voice, sounding stiff and edgy. "What the fuck is this, Spenser?"
"I was wondering if you could help me, Perry."
"I'll help you, I'll help you right into the fucking ground," he said. "You think you can fuck with me like this? You're fucking with the wrong dude, pal; lemme tell you that."
"Gee, Perry, all I wanted to know was if you happened to know a guy named Warren, member of the club…"
Lehman hung up.
I went back to the corner and leaned against my car some more and looked at the Crown Prince Club and let the Crown Prince Club look at me. Since yesterday when I talked with him I hadn't laid eyes on Hawk. I hadn't been looking for him, but it was still as puzzling as it always was that a guy as visible as Hawk could become entirely invisible whenever he needed to. Maybe he was really Lamont Cranstan.
Perry must have decided to wait me out because for the rest of the day I was undisturbed. When the limo came to pick Lehman up in the late afternoon they paid me no rnind. Lehman got in without even looking. The doorman when he opened the door ignored me and the two bodyguards did the same. They got out and flanked the car and never once glanced my way. Then they got in and the limo went to Chestnut Hill with me behind it.
I didn't go into the drive. I was trying to fine-tune this just short of violent confrontation. So I parked out on Beacon Street again, and nobody came and looked at me until it got dark and I went home.
Rejection.
The next day I went through the routine. At noon that day Lehman got a telegram inquiring about Warren, and at four that afternoon a special delivery letter came for Warren, c/o The Crown Prince Club. I continued to be ignored. Perry's people were big aggressive guys but they weren't shooters. That kind of trouble would come from the people who owned Perry. It was getting toward the time when I figured it would come, and I wanted it to come. I needed to have a run-in with the pros and win, before I took my next step. I didn't have a plan exactly but I had some sort of inchoate sense of where I wanted this to go. It was much more than I was used to having.
29
The pros appeared on Monday afternoon as I was following Perry home. A brown Dodge sedan stayed two or three cars behind me out Beacon Street to Chestnut Hill. They did a decent tail job, but it's hard, with one car, to tail a guy who's expecting it. Lehman's limo swung into his driveway and I parked on the street in front. The Dodge turned off into a side street before it reached me. They wouldn't hit me outside Lehman's house. I sat for a while and thought about where I wanted them to hit me. Someplace where Hawk would have room to operate, somewhere that had open space so I could see them coming before they got in range.
I put the Subaru in gear and U-turned and headed back down Beacon Street to Chestnut Hill Avenue. I drove at an easy speed out Chestnut Hill Ave. through Brighton to Soldiers Field Road, along the Charles River near the Public Theater. The river in this section was bordered with open parkland, punctuated by hot-topped parking areas. People picnicked here and launched boats and walked dogs and jogged and threw Frisbees and rode bicycles. Across the river Watertown merged with Cambridge and on my side the road curved on past Harvard Stadium and became Storrow Drive.
I got out of the car and looked aimlessly around the area. It was not crowded, most people were eating supper. The commuter traffic heading out toward Newton was thinning. I had my gun out and held it at my side hidden behind the car. It was heavy artillery for me. An S&W .357 magnum in case one of the hit men was a Cape buffalo. The brown Dodge came into the parking area and I moved down toward the front of my car for a better look at the water. Whichever side they came on I could move to the other. The Dodge swung in on the driver's side of the Subaru and parked. Without looking at it I moved a couple of steps around to the other side of my car, staying near the front where the engine made a better shield than the passenger compartment. The driver and two other guys got out. I hadn't seen any of them before. One of them went to the trunk and opened it, and two others looked across the river at the apartment building being completed. Hawk's white Jaguar pulled in off the roadway and pulled in beside the Dodge. The guy at the trunk stared at it and then looked toward me. I moved another step behind the car. The two gunnies near the front of the car produced handguns and began to move around my car toward me. The guy at the trunk produced a double-barreled shotgun and stepped toward the rear of my car. I crouched.
Hawk stepped out of his jag with a .12 gauge pump and hit the guy with the doublebarrel a horizontal butt stroke on the back of his head. He went down, the double-barreled shotgun went sliding along the ground toward me and Hawk leaned over the roof of the Dodge and pointed the pump gun at the two gunnies in front.
"Y'all freeze," he said.
The two handguns stopped still, I straightened up behind the Subaru and pointed my gun at them. The lead gunnie turned his head carefully and stared at Hawk.