Cold Service

by Robert B. Parker

  "Part of the deal," I said.

  "But why would he need to keep a bargain with a man like Podolak?" Susan said.

  "Wasn't about Podolak," I said.

  "No," Susan said. "Of course it wasn't."

  "Hawk let him go because he said he would," I said.

  "Yes," Susan said. "I understand. I just forget sometimes."

  "You don't forget a hell of a lot," I said.

  "Other than that, is it over?" she said.

  "Not quite."

  54

  MARSHPORT WAS PEACEFUL. There were still some State Police cars parked at some intersections, and in Boston the legislature was discussing forming a committee to consider authorizing somebody to think about looking into what the hell happened in Marshport. Maybe. But for the moment, the horse parlors were in business. The numbers runners were hustling. The dope dealers were their usual active selves. Cartons of highjacked cigarettes were selling well off the backs of trucks, and somewhere, probably, Icarus was falling into the sea. Hawk and I had walked peaceably into City Hall and up the elegant front stairway to sit with Tony Marcus and Brock Rimbaud in Boots's former office. Ty Bop and Junior stood silently in the hallway on either side of the door. I smiled at them as we went in. Neither of them seemed to notice. One of the big Palladian windows in the office was secured with plywood. The far corner of the big office was draped in polyethylene wrap. There were scorch patterns on the vaulted ceiling. The Gray Man sat behind Boots's former desk. Tony and his son-in-law sat in front of the desk.

  "Mr. Mayor," I said courteously.

  The Gray Man tipped his head.

  "Things under control?" Tony said.

  "For the nonce," the Gray Man said.

  Hawk looked at me and silently repeated the word "nonce?"

  "For whatever," Tony said. "Is it our city now?"

  The Gray Man nodded.

  "You going to run the town?" Tony said.

  The Gray Man had his fingers tented in front of him, tapping his chin lightly.

  "Until the mayor returns…"

  Tony snorted.

  "Or until a new mayor is duly chosen by the electorate."

  "Or the city is in receivership," I said.

  "But for now," the Gray Man said, and smiled faintly, "I am in control here at City Hall."

  "So let's talk about plans," Tony said.

  Sitting beside Tony, Rimbaud was jiggling his knee.

  "You wouldn't be in City Hall," Rimbaud said, "wasn't for us."

  Tony glanced at Rimbaud for a long, silent moment.

  I did my always-popular Bogart impression.

  "All the son-in-laws, in all the world…"

  "What's that mean?" Rimbaud said.

  "Means you need to be quiet," Tony said to him.

  He looked back at the Gray Man.

  "I want Brock to run the street business," he said.

  Again, the Gray Man smiled fleetingly. Things amused him. But not a whole lot. He nodded.

  "You met the supervisor?" Hawk said.

  "You're so sure there is one?" the Gray Man said.

  "You meet him?" Hawk said.

  The Gray Man picked up the phone and spoke into it briefly.

  In a moment, a door opened to the left of the polyethylene drapes and a tall handsome man came in, wearing a good charcoal-gray pin-striped suit. He had a nice short beard with gray in it, and his hair was longish and combed back over his ears.

  "This is Mr. Johnson," the Gray Man said.

  "A fine old Afghani name," I said.

  Mr. Johnson smiled and walked to a couch to the right of the mayor's desk and sat down. He crossed his legs. He was wearing low black boots with silver buckles.

  "It is a name which serves," he said.

  There was no hint of any accent. He spoke English with the regionless precision of a television announcer. He glanced at the Gray Man.

  "Like Mayor McKean's name," he said.

  "Mr. Johnson," the Gray Man said, "represents our Afghani partners."

  "My duties are consultive," he said. "Enhancing the product flow, one might say."

  "How's it been flowing lately," Tony said.

  "It has been a contentious time," Mr. Johnson said. "But the product has flowed."

  "And keeps flowing?" Tony said.

  "So far," Johnson said.

  "Because of you?" Tony said.

  "All of us have helped," Johnson said modestly. "I try to stay in the background, not call attention to myself. As you might well understand. I am not comfortable making myself known to so many people."

  He looked around the room.

  "But the mayor insisted," he said. "And the nature of the current situation…"

  He made a small, graceful gesture with his manicured left hand, the nails gleaming, and dropped it back into his lap, where it resumed being motionless. Calm. There is calm that's dense, full of stuff kept motionless. Like Hawk's. And there's calm which is merely the absence of anything else. Like the Gray Man's. To me, Johnson seemed more like the Gray Man.

  "The current situation is me," Tony said. "My son-in-law is going to run things for me."

  Johnson's dark eyes rested silently on Brock for a time.

  "Really?" Johnson said finally.

  "Really, really, pal," Brock said. "This sucker's going to be a cash-fucking-cow."

  Johnson nodded slowly.

  "That's fine," he said. "Fine."

  "So who do I see about product?" Rimbaud said.

  "You would see me," Johnson said. "I'll have to modify the arrangement slightly." He smiled. "Change the locks, so to speak. Then I'll be back in touch with you."

  As Johnson talked, Tony's eyes shifted back and forth from Rimbaud to Johnson to the Gray Man to me to Hawk and back to Rimbaud. Tony was far too cool to show anything on his face, but I suspected he wasn't comfortable.

  "Then we're in business," Rimbaud said.

  "We certainly are," Johnson said.

  Rimbaud stood and put out his hand and Johnson took it. Tony looked at Hawk. Hawk didn't look back. Rimbaud pumped Johnson's hand for a time and then sat down, looking exhilarated.

  "Will you be moving back into your office?" Johnson said, "on Naugus Street?"

  "You bet your Afghan ass," Rimbaud said.

  "Calloused, no doubt," Johnson said, "from so much camel riding."

  "You fuckers actually ride camels over there?" Rimbaud said.

  Tony looked up at the high ceiling.

  "You'll call us there?" Tony said to Johnson.

  "I will."

  "Ask for me," Rimbaud said.

  "Of course," Johnson said.

  He stood and looked at Hawk and me thoughtfully.

  "You gentlemen are not talkative," he said.

  "No," Hawk said. "We not."

  "The, ah, mayor, however"-he nodded at the Gray Man-"tells me you do good work."

  "Yes," Hawk said. "We do."

  "Well," Johnson said. "Here's to the new partnership."

  "I'll drink to that," Rimbaud said.

  Johnson nodded and smiled and walked out the way he had come in.

  55

  WE WERE ALONE with the Gray Man in the mayor's office. Tony had said not a word when Johnson left. He just jerked his head at Rimbaud and they departed. We all watched them go. "Brock seems a lot more exultant about things than Tony," I said when they were gone.

  "If this actually go down, then the Brockster be actually running it," Hawk said. "Tony knows he can't."

  "But it's not going down," I said, "is it."

  "I suspect Mr. Johnson understands Rimbaud's limitations," the Gray Man said.

  "Ain't gonna see no more of him," Hawk said.

  "Or you," I said to the Gray Man.

  "Unless someone hires me to kill you," he said.

  "Which one," Hawk said.

  "Either."

  "Hope they don'," Hawk said.

  "As do I," the Gray Man said.

  "Jesus," I said, "I may cry."

>   The Gray Man smiled his smile.

  "I have no sentiment," he said, "and if employed to, I would kill you as promptly as possible. But I admire certain traits, and both of you have them in no small measure."

  "Gee," I said.

  Hawk said, "When you found Johnson, wasn't you supposed to kill him?"

  "Ives had suggested that," the Gray Man said.

  "Wasn't that why he gave you to us?" I said.

  "I do speak Ukrainian," the Gray Man said.

  "But you were supposed to use us to find the Afghan connection, and when you found him, you were supposed to ace him," I said.

  "Yes."

  "So," Hawk said. "You going to?"

  The Gray Man shook his head.

  "It would have ruined everything else if I did it sooner," he said. "And now"-the Gray Man shrugged-"he's gone again."

  "And it pleases you," I said. "The way it's going to work out."

  "It does."

  "Hawk gets to clean up the people who killed Luther," I said.

  "Except for Podolak," the Gray Man said.

  "That will come," I said. "The city gets pretty well cleaned up of its, ah, criminal element, and Tony's kid gets to take over."

  " 'Cept there ain't nothin' to take over," Hawk said. " 'Cause the Afghans have moved on, and when they come to ask you 'bout it, 'pears you done moved on, too."

  The Gray Man said, "You sound like a minstrel show."

  Hawk's voice dropped a pitch. With no expression he said, "I speak in many voices, my gray friend."

  "Apparently," the Gray Man said.

  "So there's Brock Rimbaud in charge of a business with no product, and no supplier, in a town that is probably going to be run by the state."

  The Gray Man smiled.

  "And you like that," Hawk said. "You like thinking 'bout the little twerp coming to the office and you ain't there."

  "And trying to find Mr. Johnson, and he ain't there," the Gray Man said.

  He put his hands on the desktop and pushed himself gracefully to his feet.

  "So that's why you didn't shoot Johnson," I said.

  "Certainly," the Gray Man said. "Even if I did, there would shortly be another Johnson."

  I nodded.

  "And Ives?" I said.

  The Gray Man smiled.

  "Ives expects to be disappointed," the Gray Man said. "It is the nature of his work."

  He glanced around the damaged office.

  "And our work here has not been fruitless," he said.

  "No," I said. "It hasn't."

  The Gray Man looked around the room again, then at Hawk and me.

  "Down the road somewhere," he said, and walked across the room and out the same door that Johnson had gone through.

  56

  I SAT IN my car in Roxbury, at the edge of Malcolm X Playground, on a street I didn't know the name of. Across the street, Hawk stood in front of a bench, in the playground, looking down at a very small black boy who was sitting in the lap of a tall black woman I knew to be his grandmother. The boy was the only surviving member of Luther Gillespie's family. His grandmother was maybe forty-five, strong-looking, with careful cornrows, wearing jeans and a freshly laundered man's white dress shirt with the sleeves half rolled and the shirttails hanging out. The boy pressed against her, staring up at Hawk without moving. He held onto her shirt with one hand. Hawk spoke. The woman nodded. Hawk took an envelope out of his coat and handed it to the woman. She didn't take it right away. First, she took the hand that held it, in both of hers, and held it for a minute while she said some animated somethings to Hawk. Hawk nodded. Then she took the envelope and slipped it into her purse on the bench beside her. Hawk continued to look down at the boy. The boy stared silently back. Hawk spoke. The boy didn't answer. Hawk squatted on his heels so that he and the boy were at eye level. The boy turned his face in against his grandmother's breast. The grandmother stroked the boy's head. Hawk stood, nodding to himself. Nobody said anything. For a moment, none of them even moved. Then Hawk nodded again and turned and walked across the street and got into the car.

  "We done?" I said.

  Hawk nodded.

  I put the car in gear, and we drove back toward downtown.

  "First installment on Boots's money?" I said.

  "Kid's money," Hawk said.

  "Is there a grandfather?" I said.

  We turned onto Washington Street. The black neighborhoods stretched out on either side, neither elegant nor decrepit. Simply low-end urban housing that looked like any of the other neighborhoods in the city, except everyone was black. Except me.

  "No," Hawk said. "She lives with her sisters."

  "She work?" I said.

  "Yes."

  "Sisters take care of the kid?"

  "Yes. Kid's great-aunts. One of them is twenty-nine."

  "The aunts okay?" I said.

  "Think so," Hawk said. "They ain't, I'll see about it."

  I nodded.

  "They'll be okay. What was all the conversation about?"

  "I telling her how much she get and when it would come and who to call if it don't."

  "You," I said.

  "Un-huh," Hawk said. "Or you."

  "Me," I said. "Anything I should know?"

  "Kid's name is Richard Luther Gillespie," Hawk said. "I tole him, tole his grandmother really, that he ain't got a father and he ain't got a grandfather. But he got me."

  "Jesus," I said.

  "I know. Little surprised myself. And I say to them, if something happen to me, he got you."

  "He ain't heavy…" I said.

  "Yeah, yeah," Hawk said.

  He handed me a small index card.

  "Grandmother's name is Melinda Rose," he said. "It's all on there. Address. Phone number. She got yours."

  I nodded.

  "I don't want him calling me Grampy," I said.

  "Probably won't," Hawk said.

  57

  IT WAS7: 30 on a chilly overcast Tuesday. We were at a table at Excelsior, with windows on two sides. We had a table in the back, away from everybody else. Cecile in the middle, Susan on one side, me on the other. Hawk across from Cecile. "This is my way of a good-bye, I guess," Cecile said.

  Hawk was watching the bubbles drift up in his champagne glass.

  "I've taken a job at the Cleveland Clinic," Cecile said.

  The menu had a gentleman's steak and a lady's steak listed. The lady's steak sounded better to me.

  "An offer you couldn't refuse?" Susan said.

  "Sort of," Cecile said.

  She glanced at Hawk.

  "And I… needed a change of scenery, I guess," Cecile said.

  I knew Susan was fighting it, and I knew she was going to lose. She couldn't help herself. She had to try to help.

  "Hawk?" Susan said.

  "Yes?" Hawk said.

  "I assume you are not moving to Cleveland," Susan said.

  There was a glitter of self-mockery in Hawk's look.

  He said, "My work be here, Susan."

  Cecile was studying the menu. I wondered what she thought about the gentleman's and lady's steaks.

  "So many to kill," Cecile said softly without looking up. "So little time."

  Hawk looked at me.

  "What that line about honor?" Hawk said. "From a poem?"

  "Richard Lovelace?" I said. " 'I could not love thee half as much, loved I not honor more?' "

  Hawk nodded.

  "Oh, spare me," Cecile said.

  Hawk nodded thoughtfully.

  "Cecile," he said. "You know, and I know, and they know, you got a nice offer in Cleveland, but that you going because you mad at me for not being who you want me to be."

  "I'm not mad, damn it," Cecile said. "I love you, and I can't stand that I can't have you."

  "Not good dinner conversation," Hawk said. "But it's on the table. If you love me, you could have me. You love somebody else and insist I be him."

  "Oh, shit," Cecile said.

  She looked at Sus
an.

  "You understand."

  Susan nodded. I was hoping she would settle for the nod. But she couldn't.

  "I do understand," Susan said. "But I'm not sure that means I agree."

  "You don't think I should go to Cleveland?" Cecile said. She was finishing her second martini.

  "I'm sorry to sound shrinky," Susan said, "but I think you should do what's in your best interest. Given who you are and what you need, it may very well be in your best interest to end it with Hawk."

  "But?" Cecile said.

  "But it's probably important to see that it is your doing, not his."

  "What difference does it make?" Cecile said. "He won't change."

  "Probably can't change; neither can you. But if you blame him, you'll feel victimized all your life."

  Cecile caught the waiter's eye and ordered a third martini. She was silent while he got it. None of the rest of us said anything. Party hearty!

  "I never quite saw that part," she said finally, after she'd gotten under way on the third martini. "He can't be what I want him to be, and I can't not want it."

  Susan nodded.

  "If I could change," Cecile said to Hawk, "what would you want?"

  Hawk shook his head.

  "Nothing," he said. "I don't mind you want me to be things I'm not. You don't change, I don't change. Be fine, long as we don't fight about it."

  Cecile stared at him, then back to Susan. She nodded her head toward me.

  "Would you change him?"

  "Of course," Susan said. "If it were convenient. And I'm sure he would change me."

  She smiled at me.

  "In fact, I guarantee you that right now he thinks I shouldn't be butting in here."

  "Good call," I said.

  "But you don't change each other," Cecile said. "And you do things the other doesn't like. And yet here you are."

  "That's probably why they call it love," Susan said.

  Cecile said nothing. We all joined her. She picked up her martini glass and drank some and looked at the rest of us for a moment and put the glass down. She looked like she might cry.

  "I'm sorry," she said. "I don't mean to be rude. But I have to go."

  Nobody said anything. Cecile stood and patted my shoulder as she went by, and let her hand trail over Hawk's as she passed him, and then she was gone around the corner and down the stairs. Hawk didn't look after her. He took in a long breath and let it out slowly.