"We having fun yet?" he said.
58
I WAS HITTING the speed bag at the Harbor Health Club, and Hawk was hitting the body bag. Every few minutes, we would switch. Both of us were wet with sweat and breathing deeply when Vinnie Morris came in. He leaned against the wall, watching us with his arms folded until we took a break.
"I been talking with Gino Fish," Vinnie said. "You know I used to work with him."
"I do," I said.
"You remember that, don't you, Hawk? I was with Gino?"
"Un-huh."
"Used to be with Broz, too, but we didn't get along. Got along with Gino okay."
Hawk was wiping the sweat off his face with a towel.
"That's nice, Vinnie," Hawk said. "Nice that you got along."
"Anyway, what I'm telling you is I don't work with him anymore, but we stay in touch. You know? Sometimes I do a little something for him."
I sat on a bench and draped the towel over my shoulders.
"Every little bit helps," I said.
"Yeah," Vinnie said, "sure. So he tells me stuff, sometimes, when I see him."
"Like what?" I said.
"Like he told me that Boots is around, blowing how he gonna kill Hawk," Vinnie said.
Hawk looked up.
"Boots is saying you ain't got the balls to stand up to him man to man."
"Man to man?" Hawk said. "Christ."
"I know," Vinnie said. "I'm just repeating Boots. Says he gonna kill you. And he's a pretty nasty bastard."
Hawk nodded.
"You got any thoughts?" Hawk said.
"I thought maybe I'd hang around," Vinnie said.
Hawk nodded.
"Now I got two of you," he said. "Spenser been hanging around since Marshport closed."
"All for one," I said. "One for all."
"Oui,"Hawk said. "You think Gino might know where Boots is?"
"Why'd you say 'we'?" Vinnie said.
"French humor," Hawk said. "Think we should talk with Gino?"
"Boots tole Gino-actually, he didn't tell Gino, he tole a guy who knew a guy, you know, and it got to Gino. Boots says you got the balls, he'll meet you any day at the Marshport Mall, early, five A.M., when nobody's there."
"Empty mall on Route One-A?" Hawk said.
"Yeah. Been closed for like eight years."
"I'm supposed to go down there every morning until I see him?" Hawk said.
"Says call his cell phone and leave a message. Tell him what day. Come alone."
"No seconds?" Hawk said.
"Seconds?"
"Like in a duel," I said.
Vinnie nodded as if he'd known it all along.
"Sure, seconds," he said. "I don't think Boots got no seconds. Most people don't like Boots."
"I heard that," Hawk said.
"I figure me and Spenser go along," Vinnie said, "you decide to go, be sure everything is kosher, you know?"
Hawk nodded. He seemed barely to be listening to Vinnie.
"Got the phone number?"
"Gino gave it to me," Vinnie said. "Write it on the back of his business card."
Hawk put out a hand. Vinnie took a card out of his shirt pocket. On the front in small, black lowercase raised lettering, it said GINO FISH. On the back in a small hand was written a phone number. Hawk took the card and walked out of the boxing room to the front desk. He smiled at the young woman at the desk, reached over, picked up the phone, and dialed the number. Vinnie and I came out behind him and listened. He was silent while the phone rang and the voicemail message was delivered and the sound of the tone was heard.
"Tomorrow," Hawk said into the phone. "Saturday, May fifteenth, at five in the morning."
He hung up.
"Man," Vinnie said, "you don't fuck around."
Hawk nodded.
"Early," I said.
Hawk nodded again.
"How you want this to go?" I said.
"I go there at five, he's there, I kill him."
"We could be cuter than that," I said. "We could go down there two or three in the morning, set up. Me and Vinnie, probably Leonard if we wanted. Cut him down the minute he shows."
Hawk shook his head.
"Come down and watch if you want to," Hawk said. "But that's all."
I looked at him for maybe thirty seconds, which is a long look when nobody's saying anything. Then I got it.
"He's got to try and kill you, doesn't he."
Hawk nodded.
"What the fuck you talking about?" Vinnie said.
"He needs to make a run at me," Hawk said.
Vinnie looked at Hawk without understanding.
"Vinnie," I said. "When we had Boots, Hawk made a deal. Boots gives five million to Luther Gillespie's kid, Hawk won't kill him."
"And Boots done that?" Vinnie said.
"Yes."
"So what," Vinnie said. "Everybody knows Boots is a scumbag. You don't have to keep your word to him."
"I can do both," Hawk said. "I can keep my word and kill him, too. All he got to do is make a try on me."
"Might be a little too fine a point being made here," I said.
"Got nothing else to make a fine point about," Hawk said.
59
I LEFT HAWK and Vinnie drinking beer in Henry's office and drove up to Marshport. It was after six when I got there, fighting the commuter traffic all the way. The Marshport Mall sat on a landfill dumped at the edge of the salt marshes where the Squamos River ran into Marshport Harbor. The landfill hadn't been as stable as everyone had hoped, and as it shifted, the buildings of the mall shifted with it, causing cracks and leaks. Doors jammed. Windows didn't open properly. Plumbing leaked. Finally, the place folded and everybody but the people who'd sold them the land lost all they had. No one wanted to build again on the land. No one wanted to spend their money to tear down the mall. So it remained a rotting, ambling, and spectacular eyesore as you entered Marshport from the south.
The hot top of the parking lot was distorted with frost heaves and potholes. I drove across it and parked next to the disreputable south entrance, took a flashlight from the console, and walked over for a look. The big glass doors were stuck ajar. Leaves and litter had blown in through them and fanned out for ten or fifteen feet inside. It was still daylight in mid-May, but inside the empty mall it was dim. I walked through slowly, moving the flashlight around. Some of the ceilings had collapsed. Plaster dust punctuated with pink scraps of insulation covered most of the floor. Glass from broken light fixtures and display windows made the footing uneven and raspy. The skeletal bones of commerce past were all that was left of the various shops that lined the central arcade. There was nothing of value left in any of them. I wasn't the first intruder. There were cobwebs and spiderwebs and empty muscatel bottles. In a corner of one of the empty shops were a couple of torn mattresses and some filthy quilts, where some of my residence-challenged brothers had apparently holed up. Another arcade crossed the one I was in. More of the same. Darkness, litter, filth, emptiness, and a million places to ambush somebody. As I walked, a large rat scuttled across the arcade and disappeared into what was once a shop selling evocative ladies underwear. I saw several others, bigger than squirrels, as I strolled. I spent an hour or so exploring the maze, and learned only that it would be a dangerous place for Hawk to enter. But since I knew he would enter it no matter what, the information didn't do us much good. I shrugged. Readiness is all. I followed my flashlight back to the car and went home.
On Saturday morning, I got up at three. Hawk would be at the mall at five, and I wanted plenty of time to wake up and drink coffee and dip my bullets in curare. At quarter of five, I pulled off of Route 1A and onto the scrambled surface of the Marshport Mall parking lot. It was light, though the sun hadn't yet officially appeared. At the far end of the mall I could see the silver SUV, parked near the north entrance. I drove to the south entrance and parked where I had twelve hours ago. I took a Winchester.45-caliber lever-action rifle from the backseat
and levered a round into the chamber and let the hammer down slowly. I had the Browning nine-millimeter on my belt, but I didn't know how far a shot I might need to make. I leaned the rifle against the passenger seat beside me and waited. In the rearview mirror I saw another car pull into the lot. It wasn't Hawk's Jag. It was a dark blue Camry, and I didn't recognize it. I took the Browning off my belt and held it in my lap. The Camry drove slowly toward me. With the Browning in my right hand, I stepped out of my car and looked over the car roof at the Camry. The driver saw me. The Camry did a U-turn so that the driver's side was away from me and stopped maybe fifty feet from me. The driver got out and looked at me over his car roof. It was Vinnie. Each of us holstered our guns and walked out from behind our cars.
"Come to watch?" I said.
"Yeah," Vinnie said.
He went to the rear of his car and opened the trunk and took out a twelve-gauge Smith & Wesson pump. From a box of shells open in the trunk, he took a handful and put them in the pocket of his safari vest. Then he pumped a round up into the chamber and set the safety.
"Boots in there already?" he said.
"That's his car," I said and nodded at the Volvo.
"Hawk'll be here at five," Vinnie said.
"He said five."
Vinnie nodded.
"Gives Boots time to set up in there," he said.
"Yes," I said. "If you're not finicky, it's ambush heaven."
"I know," Vinnie said.
"You been in there," I said.
"Yeah. You?"
"Yeah."
"When?"
"Last night," I said. "After I left you. About six."
"I was up here 'bout eleven," Vinnie said. "Fucking place is rat heaven."
"Yes," I said.
Hawk's Jaguar pulled in and drove past us halfway to the south entrance. The Jaguar stopped, and Hawk got out and walked to the mall. He stopped before he went in and looked at Vinnie and me. He nodded once and went into the mall.
I looked at my watch. Five o'clock, straight up, as they say.
60
"I THINK I'LL go sit by the other entrance," Vinnie said. "Since we're both here, might as well cover both."
I nodded.
Vinnie got back in his car, put the shotgun on the backseat, and eased the Camry quietly down to the north entrance, parking a few yards from the silver Volvo. I got back in my car.
According to the digital clock on my dashboard, it was 5:04.
The sun was above the far edge of the world now, and the gray light had turned faintly gold. It didn't go well with the Marshport Mall. Hell, sunrise didn't go well with Marshport.
5:05.
A couple of seagulls circled the parking lot without much enthusiasm. Pickings were by now awfully slim, and the gulls seemed to know it.
5:06.
There was a thin fog lingering just over the salt marsh. The traffic on Route 1A was still desultory. Occasionally, a truck would lumber south toward Boston, but mostly it was just quiet. I felt as if Tex Ritter should be singing on a sound track somewhere. "… look at that big hand move along, nearing high noon."
5:10.
I took the Winchester and got out of the car and leaned on the fender. Traffic was picking up a little on 1A. Somewhere, somebody was frying something and making coffee.
5:12.
One of the gulls spotted something it considered edible. It landed and grabbed it. Two other gulls landed beside it and tried to get it away. There was a fair amount of gull squawk and flutter.
5:15.
"… or lie a coward, a craven coward in my grave."
At the other end of the mall, Vinnie was out of his car, cradling the shotgun, leaning on the side of his car. The sun had cleared the horizon now, lingering brightly just above the gray ocean.
5:22.
One of the gulls had successfully wrested the scrap of garbage from the other two and flown off with it. The other two gulls had returned to the area. Maybe there was more where it came from. They circled slowly and low, looking beady-eyed and passionless at the littered surface below them.
At 5:27, Hawk walked out of the south entrance of the mall. He nodded at Vinnie as he passed him and kept on walking. Vinnie opened his trunk, put the shotgun in, closed the trunk, got in the Camry, and drove off. Hawk walked past his parked Jaguar and kept walking toward me.
When he got to me, he stopped and looked at me as if he'd never seen me before. I waited.
Finally, Hawk said, "Done."
"Boots is dead," I said.
"Yeah."
"I didn't hear a shot," I said.
"Weren't no shot," Hawk said.
61
"AND THEN WHAT happened?" Susan said.
"We got in our cars and drove away. I came here. I don't know where Hawk went."
"And you didn't ask him what happened," Susan said.
"No."
"And Vinnie, when he saw Hawk come out, just drove away without a word," Susan said.
"He did."
"So neither of you know what happened in there."
"Boots died," I said.
"But that's all you know."
"All that matters," I said.
We were in bed together with our clothes off. Susan was lying on top of me, her face maybe six inches from mine.
"Will you ever ask him?" she said.
"Probably not," I said.
She nodded slowly, as if I had just confirmed a long-held suspicion of hers.
"Probably not," she said.
She shifted a little, moving her hips.
"I'm having a little trouble concentrating," I said.
"Really?"
"Aren't you going to ask me why?" I said.
"I believe I know," she said, and kissed me hard.
I believe she did.
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Document creation date: 6.8.2011
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Robert B Parker
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Cold Service s-32 Page 17
