CHAPTER 20
Bald's white Chevy was registered to Paultz Construction Company. My finely honed investigative instincts began to sniff the aroma of rat. Bald and his partner were hoods. They didn't do construction and they didn't do Bible study. They did kneecaps. I'd seen too many guys like Bald and his partner to be wrong on that. And it meant that Paultz Construction was dirty. And it meant that the connection between Paultz and the Bullies was something that people wanted to keep secret. "So what?"
Nobody had hired me to investigate anything like that. Tommy Banks had hired me to rescue his girlfriend and she didn't want to be rescued. I was just killing time. Killing time with Paultz Construction could get me killed. I don't care.
Across the street my art director was back, bending over her board. She looked up as I looked at her and smiled and waved at me across the street. I waved back. She bent back to her work.
I took the phone book off the window ledge where I kept it and looked up the number of the ad agency and dialed it and asked for the art director. I watched across the street as she picked up the phone and tucked it against her face with her left shoulder.
"Linda Thomas." She continued to work on the board as she spoke.
I said, "My name is Spenser, I'm across the street smiling a winning smile out my window."
She looked over.
"My God," she said. "It's like talking to a pen-pal."
"Would you care to have a drink with me after work?" I said.
"That would be lovely," she said. "Where and when?"
"Ritz bar, this evening when you get through."
"Five thirty," she said.
"I'll meet you there," I said.
She waved across the street again and we hung up. It would feel a bit silly to sit there the rest of the day looking across the street. I got up and went out. It was good weather and I had Susan's book. I went to the Public Garden and sat on a bench near the swan boat pond and read.
A man and woman in their forties came and sat down on the grass near the pond under one of the willows. They had lunch in a big paper bag and shared it, leaning against the tree trunk, their shoulders touching. I dogeared my page and stood up and walked away, across the Public Garden, toward Arlington Street.
Sherry Spellman didn't belong in an outfit that had connections with Bald and his friend. I couldn't spend the rest of my life reading in the park. I couldn't take her away from the church, but maybe I could take the church away from her. I had one end of someone's dirty laundry and I was going to pull it all out, it was a way to kill time. And it was better to kill time than have it kill me.
From my office I called Marty Quirk. Neither he nor Belson had ever heard of the Paultz Construction Company.
"They're dirty," I said. "I know it."
"Lot of people are dirty. Because I'm a cop I'm supposed to know every one of them?"
"Another idol crumbles," I said.
"I'll ask around. I hear anything, I'll let you know."
"Thanks."
"You okay?" Quirk said.
"I don't know," I said. "I'm working on it."
"You need something, you call me."
"Yes."
We hung up. I called Vinnie Morris.
"What do you know about Paultz Construction Company?" I said.
"Why ask me?" Vinnie said.
"Because they're crooks and so are you. Figured you might have crossed paths."
"Spenser," Vinnie said. "You got a big pair of balls. Last year Joe Broz and I discussed aceing you. Now you call me up and ask for a favor."
"What are friends for, Vinnie?"
Vinnie laughed a little. "I don't know a goddamned thing about the Paultz Construction Company."
"Ask around," I said. "You hear anything, let me know."
"Maybe."
Hawk came into my office. I hung up the phone.
I said, "Hawk."
He said, "Want to eat? Or start drinking early?"
"Eat," I said.
Hawk was wearing a pink suit with a pale blue shirt and a pink and blue small-dotted tie. A blue show handkerchief was tucked into his breast pocket and his head gleamed in the sun. As we walked along Berkeley Street no one made any comment on his appearance. No one seemed to think a pink suit was sissy.
We turned up Newbury. "How about Acapulco," I said. "Mexican cuisine."
"Tex-Mex," Hawk said. "I like it."
"It's no Lucy's El Adobe," I said.
"On the other hand," Hawk said, "it's no Guadala Harry's either."
We went up Newbury Street past the galleries and boutiques and stores that sold Danish modern waterbeds.
"You know anything about Paultz Construction Company?" I said.
"Nope."
"Two people driving a Paultz company car came by and told me that if I don't stop looking into the Reorganized Church of the Redemption, they would punch my ticket for me."
Hawk smiled happily. "You faint or anything?"
"Almost, but I managed to get my gun out and point it at them."
"So they decided not to do it right then."
"True," I said.
Acapulco is a small informal restaurant downstairs on Newbury Street that serves decent Mexican food and splendid Carta Blanca beer. We went in. People stared covertly at Hawk.
"The Reorganized Church has loaned the Paultz Construction Company three and a half million in construction mortgages," I said. "What does that sound like to you?"
"That sounds like laundering money," Hawk said.
"Yes."
"I'll see what I can find out about Paultz," Hawk said. "There's people talk with me that don't talk with you."
"There's bad taste everywhere," I said.
"You going to keep doing it."
"Yes. I don't like that kid being involved in something like this."
"Sherry?"
"Yes."
Hawk smiled again. "Thought you wouldn't," he said. "What kind of shape you in?"
I shrugged. Hawk drank some Dos Equis beer.
"People trying to kill you, you got be able to concentrate."
I nodded.
"You care if somebody blow you away?"
I watched the bubbles rise in my beer glass. "No," I said.
Hawk nodded. The waitress brought us our food. Hawk ordered another Dos Equis. The waitress looked at me. I shook my head. She went away. The room was half empty and not very noisy. I could feel the weight of Hawk's impassive stare. The waitress brought him his beer. He poured half of it into his glass and watched the head form and then drank a swallow and put the glass down.
Looking at Hawk, I knew why he frightened people. The force in his dark eyes was intensified by the absence of any expression.
"You better move on from there," Hawk said. "See a shrink, read a book, join a church, talk with me. I don't give a fuck how you do it. That your problem. But you don't move on, you gonna get flushed."
I sat motionless and didn't want my food. The beer was going flat in my glass.
"And something I won't do is try to explain to Susan how I let that happen." Hawk said. "Or Paul."
I nodded.
Hawk said, "You want your lunch?"
"No."
"Hand it over here," Hawk said.
I passed him my untouched plate.
"I got a date tonight," I said.
Hawk looked up and smiled a wide smile. "That's a start," he said.
I watched him put away my lunch. "How come you know this stuff," I said.
"Easy when it not happening to you," he said.
"It is not happening to a lot of people, but they don't know things you know."
"I know what I need to know, babe. Sort of a natural rhythm."
Linda Thomas was five minutes late. Early by the standard Susan had set. She was five foot five and black-haired with eyes that were neither green nor brown but both at different times. She was slim and small-breasted and big eyed with a wide mouth and, especially around the cheekbones, she looked a little like Susan. She was wearing a gray suit with a red print blouse and a kind of full bow at the neck that vaguely suggested a necktie. The print of the blouse was small.