Cold Service

by Robert B. Parker

  "Don't think either of them did," Hawk said.

  "You know where the ex-wife is?"

  "I know people who know."

  "Maybe you should ask them."

  "By heavens," Hawk said. "I think I shall."

  "Christ," I said. "One minute Stepinfetchit. The next Noлl Coward."

  "Ah embraces diversity," Hawk said.

  We went over the Anderson Bridge and skirted Harvard Square. In another five minutes we pulled into Susan's driveway, which someone had thoughtfully plowed.

  "She ain't going to cook, is she?" Hawk said.

  "I hope not," I said. "Can Cecile cook?"

  "I don't know," Hawk said.

  "Let's hope for order out," I said.

  23

  IVES WAS IN South Boston now, just across Ft. Point Channel, in the new Federal Courthouse on Fan Pier. Everyone had to go through metal detectors to go upstairs in the courthouse, so I locked my gun in the glove compartment of my car and risked it unarmed. I passed security with high honors and took the elevator to Ives's floor. Black letters on the otherwise blank pebbled glass door saidCOUNSELRY INTEGRATION ADVISERS. Ives had a special sense of humor. When I opened the door, a good-looking silver-haired woman of some seniority was at the reception desk, wearing a deeply serious suit. Her desk was bare. The room was bare. No windows. No paintings. No signs. There was an overhead light.

  "Spenser," I said. "For Ives."

  She smiled noncommittally and picked up the phone and dialed.

  "Spenser, sir."

  She listened for a moment and hung up the phone.

  "He'll be down to get you in a moment, Mr. Spenser."

  "Thank you."

  I would have sat, but there were no chairs. A door behind the woman opened and Ives was there.

  "Well," he said. "Young Lochinvar."

  He invited me to join him by nodding his head, and I followed him through the door and down a corridor past narrow, unmarked doors, to a corner office with a grandiose view of Boston Harbor and the city. He gestured me toward a large black leather chair with a lot of brass nail heads.

  "Drink?" he said.

  I shook my head.

  "Well, my trusty companion," he said. "You look well. Fully recovered, are we?"

  Ives had the unfeigned sincerity of a coffin salesman. He was thin and tallish and three-buttoned and natural-shouldered. His sandy hair, tinged now with gray, was long and combed back. He looked like a poet. If you had never met one. The last time we had done business, I had almost died.

  "I'm fine."

  "So," Ives said, looking out the window at his view, "what brings you to my place of business."

  So much for the small talk.

  "I need a tough guy who is fluent in Ukrainian."

  Ives smiled.

  "Who doesn't," he said.

  "I thought, given your line of work, you might have encountered someone."

  "In my line of work," Ives said, "I have encountered almost everyone."

  I nodded and waited.

  "Ukrainians are a savage people," Ives said. "Did you know that during the Second World War there was a Ukrainian SS unit."

  "I knew that," I said.

  "The Ukrainians one might meet in your line of endeavor hold promise of being the very worst kind."

  "The very worst," I said.

  "How is your African-American colleague?" Ives said.

  "No need to show off," I said. "I already know you don't miss much."

  Ives smiled.

  "It is my profession," he said.

  "Translator?" I said.

  "I know someone," Ives said, "but it is a bit of a, ah, situation."

  "I'll be brave," I said.

  "You recall several years ago you were almost killed by a man calling himself, at the time, Rugar."

  "The Gray Man," I said.

  "Once you recovered, you retaliated, I believe by apprehending him and threatening him with prison."

  "We made a deal," I said.

  "He speaks Ukrainian."

  "Rugar's Ukrainian?"

  "I don't know his nationality. Nor is Rugar his current name. But he speaks many languages, and he is not afraid of Ukrainians."

  "Nor much else," I said.

  "I might be able to arrange a meeting."

  "Do," I said.

  "Your past relationship will not interfere?"

  "Not on my account."

  "And perhaps not on his," Ives said. "The Gray Man is, after all, a professional."

  "Aren't we all," I said.

  24

  THE GRAY MAN wanted a public place, so Hawk and I met him in the central rotunda at Quincy Market. It was a high-domed circular space in the center of the old market building. There were tables and benches for eating. Food stalls occupied both the wings that ran off the rotunda, and the room was normally full of tourists and high-school kids from Melrose. Hawk and I were drinking coffee at a table next to a wall where we could see the whole space. And there he came.

  He was still gray, a gray trench coat, gray slacks, black shoes, his gray hair smoothed back, his gray turtleneck showing at the top of his trench coat. He was still tall, and he still wore an emerald in his right earlobe. He walked straight across the floor of the rotunda and sat down at the table across from Hawk and me.

  "No one has killed you yet," he said to me.

  Hawk looked at him without expression.

  "You've come the closest," I said. "We still calling you Rugar?"

  He shrugged. "Might as well."

  "You speak Ukrainian?" I said.

  "Yes," Rugar said.

  If he was aware of Hawk's stare, he didn't show it. He showed nothing. He seemed to feel nothing. He moved only as required and then with great economy of motion.

  "You know me?" Hawk said to Rugar.

  "Hawk."

  "You scared of trouble?" Hawk said.

  "No," Rugar said.

  "What's your ask," Hawk said.

  "To translate only?" Rugar said.

  "Yes."

  "No other duties?"

  "Other duties be up to you," Hawk said. "I'm hiring you to translate."

  Rugar gave him a price.

  "Okay," Hawk said.

  Rugar looked at me.

  "You're in this?"

  "Yes."

  "You have no problem with me?"

  "No."

  "And I have none with you."

  "We could join hands," I said, "and dance around the table."

  "You got a right to know," Hawk said. "Be a lotta shooting, sooner or later."

  Rugar nodded.

  "Ain't hiring you to jump in," Hawk said.

  "I understand."

  "You want to jump in, be sure it on our side."

  Rugar's face moved slightly. He might have been smiling.

  "Fair enough," he said.

  25

  A WARM RAIN was depreciating the plowed snow, which had long since turned ugly anyway. Hawk parked on a hydrant on Cambridge Street. He and I strolled through the construction near MGH and turned up Charles Street with our coat collars turned rakishly up. Both of us wore raincoats. Mine was glistening black with a zipper front. Hawk was going with the more conventional Burberry trench. I had on a Pittsburgh Pirates baseball cap. Hawk had a San Francisco Giants cap, which he wore backward. "Aren't you a little long in the tooth to be wearing your hat backward?" I said.

  "I was younger," Hawk said, "I be wearing it sideways."

  We turned left and went uphill a block on Revere Street. Like most of Beacon Hill, it was lined with red brick buildings, which were mostly four-story town houses. The one we stopped at had a front door painted a shiny black, with a peephole and a big, polished brass door handle. Hawk rang the bell and stood where he could be seen through the peephole. In a moment the door opened narrowly, on a chain bolt. A black woman wearing big eyeglasses with green frames looked out.

  "Yes?"

  "Natalie Marcus?" Hawk said.

  "
Goddard," she said.

  Hawk nodded and smiled.

  "Natalie Goddard," he said.

  When he really juiced it, the smile was amazing. It created the illusion of warmth and friendship and genuine personal regard.

  "My name is Hawk," he said. "I need to talk with you about Tony's daughter."

  "What makes you think I know anything about her?" the woman said.

  "I know you were once married to Tony. Seemed reasonable."

  "She is not my daughter," Natalie said.

  Natalie had a careful WASP drawl, which seemed odd in someone as clearly not a WASP as she was.

  "Could we come in out of the rain?" Hawk said. "Talk about it in the foyer, perhaps?"

  Hawk is a wonderful mimic, and I thought he might be picking up her accent. She looked at me.

  "And this gentleman?"

  "My assistant," Hawk said. "His name is Spenser."

  Hawk smiled at her again. She did nothing for a moment.

  Then she said, "There's no need to come in. I can talk with you right here."

  "As you wish," Hawk said.

  I knew he was disappointed. He didn't mind the rain, but he hated to have the full smile rejected.

  "So how old is Dolores now?" Hawk said.

  "Dolores?"

  "Do I have it wrong?" Hawk said.

  "I thought you knew her."

  Hawk looked embarrassed.

  "I do, but… names… I'm terribly embarrassed."

  "Jolene," Natalie said.

  "Of course," Hawk said with a big smile. "Dolores… Jolene… an easy mistake."

  Natalie smiled slightly.

  "How old would Jolene be now?" Hawk said.

  "I was with Tony ten years ago…" She did some silent math. "She'd be twenty-four now."

  "She live with Tony?"

  "Not with her mother."

  "They divorced?"

  "Tony and Veronica? I don't think they were ever married."

  "But Tony acknowledges Jolene as his."

  "Oh, yeah," Natalie said.

  The yeah slipped out as if Natalie had shifted into another language.

  "Why 'Oh, yeah'?" Hawk said.

  "Tony never loved anything in his life. And he decides to love Jolene."

  "What's wrong with Jolene?" Hawk said.

  The rain was steady. Everything glistened, including my stunning black zip-front raincoat. Cars moved narrowly past us on Revere Street.

  "Everything is wrong with Jolene," Natalie said. "Drugs, sex, alcohol, rebellion, disdain. He has spoiled her beyond fucking recognition."

  Maybe the foreign language was her native tongue.

  "Where does she live?" Hawk said.

  "With her current husband, I suppose."

  "Heavens," Hawk said. "I didn't even know she was married."

  "Maybe she isn't, but I think she is; either way, she's living with Brock."

  "Brock?" Hawk said.

  "Brock Rimbaud," she said. "I've heard he's worse than she is."

  "Do you know where they live?"

  "On the waterfront somewhere."

  "You wouldn't have an address?"

  "Oh, God, no," she said. "I've had no connection, to Tony or his hideous family, in years."

  I was not buying that.

  Natalie appeared to see that as an interview-ending remark, because she closed the door after she said it.

  "Brock Rimbaud?" I said.

  "Don't sound like no brother," Hawk said "Maybe he changed his name," I said. "Trying to pass."

  "What you think his real name is?" Hawk said.

  "Old Black Joe?" I said.

  "Mostly they ain't naming us that no more," Hawk said.

  We walked back down Revere Street in the melting rain. I hunched my shoulders a little as a drop of water wormed down inside my collar on the back of my neck. Maybe wearing his hat bill backward was more than a fashion statement on Hawk's part. I grinned at him as we reached Charles Street.

  "Smile didn't work," I said. "Did it."

  "Just prove she a lesbian," Hawk said.

  26

  SPENSER'S CRIME-STOPPER TIP number 31: If you have a name and no address, try looking in the phone book. I did, and there they were. Brock and Jolene Rimbaud, it said proudly, with a Rowes Wharf address. Hawk and I went down there. For the second straight day, it was raining. The Big Dig was still everywhere, as they began to dismantle the aging ironwork of the old elevated expressway. The Rowes Wharf condos were part of a big handsome complex on the waterfront that included a huge archway and the Boston Harbor Hotel. In the lobby of Rimbaud's building was a security guy in a blue blazer and striped tie. Hawk asked him for the Rimbauds.

  "May I say who is calling?"

  "Say we from Mr. Marcus," Hawk said.

  The guard dialed the phone and spoke into it and hung up.

  "Through that door," he said, "down the steps, turn right, second condo."

  We went. The door led outside. We were on a boat slip. To our right, a promenade led past the big archway, to the hotel. In good weather, people sat outside on the promenade and drank flavored martinis and ate light meals and listened to live music. In the cold rain, the promenade was empty except for one guy in a fashionable yellow slicker, trying to hold an umbrella over a miserable little white dog whose hairdo was being seriously compromised as they walked toward the archway. We walked up the two steps at the Rimbaud condo and rang the bell. The door opened and it was Brock himself. He looked like the cover of a romance novel. Shoulder-length blond hair, pale blue eyes, chiseled features, pouty lips, his flowered shirt unbuttoned halfway down his manly upper body. He stood so that his right hand was concealed behind the door.

  Hawk said, "My name's Hawk. This is Spenser. We need to talk."

  "Tony send you?" Brock said.

  " 'Course he did," Hawk said. "It's raining."

  "I don't give a fuck what it's doing," Brock said. "You come in when I know why you want to."

  A good-looking young woman with coffee-colored skin appeared behind Rimbaud. Her hair was in an elaborate pattern of tight cornrows. Ethnic as hell.

  "Who is it, Brock?" she said, and pressed her considerable boobs against his left arm.

  "Couple dudes say they from your old man," Rimbaud said.

  Jolene was barefoot and a little big for her clothes. She looked to be a size six. Her jeans appeared to be a size two. They ended well below her navel. Her cropped tank top ended well above. She had a nice, flat stomach, and her arms and shoulders looked strong.

  "I don't know them," she said.

  "Well, my heavens," Hawk said. "Look at how you've grown, girl. I knew Veronica and Tony when you was born, child. And look what you turned out to be."

  I looked at Hawk. He was thrilled to see her. He was folksy. I felt a little nauseous.

  "You know my mom, too?" Jolene said.

  "Huh-unh."

  "Oh, Brock, let them in," Jolene said. "They seem nice."

  Brock nodded us in. Anything the little lady wants. As we came in he put the gun he'd been concealing behind the door into his belt. He saw me see him do it, and he met my look.

  "My line of work," he said. "Pays to be careful."

  Jolene went across the living room to the couch. It was less than a flounce but certainly more than a walk. On the low table in front of the couch there was a bottle of Riesling in an ice bucket, and two glasses, half empty. Or half full. There was some kind of fusion jazz playing on the stereo. I hated fusion jazz. Brock went and stood near Jolene. I stood near the door. Hawk sat on a big, red, tasseled hassock in front of them. Nobody offered us a drink. Nobody turned down the fusion. Through the big picture window, I could see the rain dappling the gray water of the harbor.

  "Tell us about you and Boots Podolak," Hawk said to Jolene.

  "What kind of a fucking question is that," Brock said.

  "Who's Boots Podolak?" Jolene said.

  "Shut up, Jolene," Brock said.

  "Who you telling to shu
t up?" Jolene said.

  "There some other fucking Jolene in here," Brock said. "I don't want you talking to these bozos."

  "Bozos?" I said to Hawk.

  Hawk shrugged. Brock took the gun out of his waistband.

  "Don't you go pointing no gun in my house, you motherfucker," Jolene said.

  "Get out," Brock said, "right now, or I'll blow your mother-fucking heads off."

  "What's goin' on," Jolene said.

  "Keep fucking quiet," Brock said.

  "You the one gonna get your mother-fucking head blown off," Jolene said, "my daddy hear you talk to me like that."

  The gun was a nine-millimeter. He had thumbed the hammer back.

  "Shut up, bitch," he said, and raised the gun.

  Hawk stood.

  "Don't mean to start up no domestic dispute," he said.

  I opened the door. Hawk smiled at them.

  Hawk said, "We'll be seeing you all again real soon, I hope."

  "Fuck you," Jolene said.

  We went out and closed the door. They were screaming at each other behind us.

  "Look at how you've grown, girl," I said.

  "Got us in there, didn't it?" Hawk said.

  "Not for long," I said. "And as we left, I believe I heard a fuck you."

  "I believe she talking to you," Hawk said.

  "No doubt," I said. "Well, we learned there's something up with Boots."

  "And Jolene don't know what."

  "And Brock thinks he's tough."

  "And we was right," Hawk said. "I don't think Brock a brother."

  "By God, you're right," I said. "Mission accomplished."

  27

  IT WAS DARK and wet and grim in the Public Gardens when Hawk and I met Tony Marcus on the small footbridge that spanned the Swan Boat Lake. The lake was drained, and the swan boats huddled miserably against their boarding dock under the mixed drizzle of rain and sleet. Tony had on a big, soft hat with a wide brim. The fur collar on his tweed overcoat was turned up. His hands were pushed down into his coat pockets, and a big, long, black silk scarf wrapped around his neck and hung down along the button closure of the coat. At the Arlington Street end of the bridge, Ty Bop hunched miserably next to Junior, as if he was taking shelter from the weather. Junior was wearing a big fur hat with earflaps. It appeared to be the only concession he had made to the weather. Other than the hat, as far as I could see, he didn't know there was weather. At the Charles Street end of the footbridge was a guy named Leonard, who was Tony's number-two guy. It was hard to see him in the late-afternoon gloom, but I knew that Leonard was very black, with good cheekbones. He shaved his head like Hawk. He wore a moustache and goatee, and he always smelled of very good cologne. He wasn't as good a shooter as Ty Bop, and he didn't have as much muscle as Junior. But he was a very successful combination of both. "The weather sucks," Tony said. "This better be worth it."