Double Deuce

by Robert B. Parker

  Belson nodded.

  “Sort of dangerous being the only eyewitness against Tony Marcus,” he said.

  “We’ll protect him,” I said.

  “You and Hawk?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Still, it’s his word against Tony’s. Tony ain’t much, but neither is the kid.”

  “Thought of that,” I said.

  “You got a plan?”

  I smiled.

  “Surely you jest,” I said.

  Belson pushed the undrunk martini away from him and leaned his elbows on the bar.

  “Tell me,” he said.

  I did.

  CHAPTER 43

  International Place nestles in the curve of the High Street off-ramp from the Central Artery, right across the street from the new Rowe’s Wharf development on the waterfront. It’s about forty stories tall, with a four-story atrium lobby full of marble and glass. In the lobby is a dining space, and at one end of the dining space is a croissant shop. Hawk and I were sitting at one of the little tables in front of the croissant shop, having some coffee and acting just like we belonged there. The glass walls let in the sun and the movement of urban business outside. It was 10:20 in the morning and most of the tables were empty. A roundish young woman at the next table was enjoying black coffee with artificial sweetener, and a chocolate croissant. “Tony know the spots, don’t he?” Hawk said.

  He was wearing a teal silk tweed jacket over a black silk T-shirt, with jeans, and black cowboy boots. He leaned back in his chair, his legs straight out, his feet crossed comfortably at the ankles. I had on a blue blazer and sneakers. If there were a GQ talent scout in the building, our careers would be made.

  “Major’s okay?” I said.

  “Yeah. I told him Tony’s answer when we said Major had to take the fall.”

  “‘Plenty more where he came from’?”

  Hawk grinned. “What Major hate was not so much that Tony would let him take the rap, but that he didn’t matter. Major like to think he important.”

  “Here’s his chance,” I said.

  We each had a little coffee. We examined some of the secretaries on coffee break. There was one with sort of auburn hair whose dress was some kind of spring knit and fit her very well. We examined her with special care.

  “You talked with Jackie?” I said.

  “Un huh.”

  “How was that?”

  “Jackie don’t like shooting,” Hawk said.

  “Nothing wrong with that,” I said.

  “Except that I’m a shooter,” Hawk said.

  The woman with the auburn hair and the knit dress got up and walked out of the dining area. We watched her go.

  “She said she couldn’t love no shooter,” Hawk said.

  I nodded.

  “I said did she want me to get a paper route?”

  “Nice compromise,” I said.

  Hawk grinned.

  “Jackie said that maybe there was a third alternative. She talks like that, third alternative. I said I was a little long in the tooth for third alternatives.”

  “Never too late,” I said.

  Hawk was silent for a moment. His face showed nothing, but his gaze was very heavy on me.

  “Yeah, it is,” Hawk said. “Too late for me to be something else a long time ago. Anything but what I am is a step down.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “You’re smart,” Hawk said. “You could do other things.”

  I shrugged.

  “How come you do this?” Hawk said.

  “It’s what I know how to do,” I said. “I’m good at it.”

  Hawk grinned.

  “You want to be good at selling vinyl siding?”

  “Rather die,” I said.

  “Jackie don’t quite get that,” Hawk said.

  A new coffee break shift appeared. Hawk and I were alert to it, but no one compared to the one with the auburn hair.

  “Tony’s late,” Hawk said.

  “Surprising,” I said, “seeing there’s some kind of sweet glop to be eaten.”

  A blonde woman in pale gray slacks went up and got a cappuccino and a whole-wheat roll and came back past us. She was wearing a nice perfume.

  “So Jackie’s gone?” I said.

  “Un huh.”

  “Too bad,” I said.

  Hawk shrugged.

  “You care?” I said.

  “Don’t plan to,” Hawk said.

  “She was a nice woman,” I said.

  “Un huh.”

  “You love her?” I said.

  “You really bored?” Hawk said, “or what.”

  “No, I just figured Susan would ask me, and if I said I hadn’t asked she would have shaken her head without saying anything. Now, if she does it, she’ll be implying something about you, not me.”

  Hawk grinned again.

  “You believe in love,” he said.

  “I have reason to.”

  “Yeah, maybe,” Hawk said. “But you have reason to because you believe in it, not the other way around.”

  “How’d we end up,” I said, “talking about me?”

  Hawk made a self-deprecating gesture with his hands as if to say, It was easy.

  “It never seemed a good idea to believe in it,” Hawk said. “Always seemed easier to me to stay intact if you didn’t.”

  We were quiet. The coffee was gone. The sun that had slanted in and squared our table had moved on toward the service bar.

  “Erin was right,” I said.

  “About me?” Hawk said.

  “Yeah,” I said. “You’ve paid a big price.”

  “Never said I didn’t.”

  “And sometimes it hurts,” I said.

  It was as far as I’d ever pushed him.

  “Un huh.”

  It was as far as he’d ever gone.

  CHAPTER 44

  Across the dining area, Tony Marcus came strolling in from the outer lobby. Billy loomed behind him. Tony saw us across the room and they came to the table. “Get me couple of those chocolate croissant,” Marcus said. “Some coffee, three sugars, lotta cream.”

  Billy went silently to the counter. I’d never heard him speak. Would he order or just point at what he wanted? Marcus sat. He spoke to Hawk. He always spoke to Hawk. Unless he had to, he never spoke to me, or looked at me.

  “What do you need now, Hawk?” Tony said.

  “Need somebody to take the fall for Devona and Crystal Jefferson,” Hawk said. “Told you that before.”

  “And I gave you the kid, Johnson,” Marcus said.

  “He didn’t do it,” Hawk said.

  Marcus shrugged. “So what? He probably did something. Bag him for this.”

  “You did it, Tony.”

  Marcus shrugged again. “So what?”

  “You wanted to remind the gang kids how tough you were. Must be a little tricky doing business with the gang kids, them being kind of crazy and all.”

  “You got that right,” Marcus said.

  “So you had Billy ace the kid, Devona.”

  “Got their attention,” Marcus said. “Nobody saw the baby.” Another shrug. “Shit happens.”

  Billy came back with the coffee and croissants, and Marcus bit off half of one and chewed it carefully.

  “Billy used a nine,” Hawk said.

  Billy was standing near his boss, blocking out most of the light on that side of the room. Hawk leaned back a little more in his chair and looked at him.

  “I’ll bet you didn’t get rid of it,” Hawk said. “Dump some fourteen-year-old ghetto broad who’s going to notice? I’ll bet you still got the piece.”

  Billy made an almost indiscernible gesture toward his right hip and caught himself.

  Hawk grinned.

  “Bet you carrying it now,” Hawk said.

  Marcus finished chewing his croissant.

  He said, “Cut the bullshit, Hawk. So Billy dusted the kid, so I told him, so the kid thinks he’ll testify. So what? That’s all bull
shit. Even if he gets to talk, nobody is going to believe him, a gangbanger punk? I got twenty people will swear Billy and I were playing cards in Albany, Georgia, when it happened.”

  “Albany, Georgia?” I said.

  “Wherever you like,” Marcus said. “So cut the bullshit and tell me what you want.”

  Hawk grinned at him.

  Across the room, Quirk and Belson strolled in from the outer lobby and walked toward the table. Marcus didn’t notice. There were a couple of other cops that I recognized, in plainclothes, lingering near the entryway. Hawk opened his teal jacket and there was a microphone pinned to the black silk T-shirt.

  “Peekaboo,” Hawk said.

  Marcus stared at the microphone.

  “A wire,” he said. “You wore a fucking wire on me, you Tom motherfucker.”

  “Told you somebody had to roll over for those two girls,” Hawk said.

  Quirk and Belson arrived at the table.

  “Say all the legal shit to them, Frank,” Quirk said. “Billy-give me the piece you’re carrying.”

  Belson began to recite the formalized litany of arrest like a kid reciting the alphabet. Billy looked at Marcus. Marcus wasn’t looking at him. He was still staring at Hawk.

  “Now, Billy.” Quirk’s voice had an edge to it. Billy lunged past him. Quirk seemed to barely notice, as if he were thinking of something else. But he made some sort of efficient compact movement and Billy hit the floor like a foundered walrus. Quirk held Billy’s right arm at an awkward angle with his left hand and reached around and took the Browning off Billy’s hip. It was stainless, with a walnut handle.

  “Nice piece. Don’t you have one like it?”

  Without pausing in his recitation, Belson produced a clear plastic bag and held it open and Quirk dropped the gun into it.

  “Mine’s only got the black finish,” I said, “and a black plastic handle. Got a nice white dot on the front sight, though.”

  Belson finished his recitation and they cuffed Tony Marcus and Billy and hauled them off. Marcus kept staring at Hawk until he was out of sight.

  “I think he feels betrayed,” I said.

  Hawk nodded, looking around the room. Everyone there was staring at us or trying not to.

  “You think that the red hair and tight dress will come back in here for lunch?” he said.

  CHAPTER 45

  Susan and I were having supper on Rowe’s Wharf, across from International Place in the dining room at the Boston Harbor Hotel. I had an Absolut martini on the rocks, with a twist. Susan had a glass of Riesling, which she probably wouldn’t finish. “Was it the gun?” Susan said.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Can they convict him with it?” Susan said.

  “The gun, the tape, Major’s testimony. Sure.”

  “I’m surprised that Major is willing to testify.”

  “Hawk says he will.”

  “Because Hawk told him to?” Susan said.

  “Yeah, I imagine so. And, too, it’s a chance to be important.”

  “Interesting, isn’t it. He had to know that Hawk could beat him.”

  “Established the command structure,” I said. “I guess any order is better than none.”

  Susan rested her chin on her upturned palm. The twilight glancing in off the harbor highlighted her huge dark eyes.

  “I talked with Jackie,” Susan said.

  “Too much for her?” I said.

  “Yes,” Susan said. “She’s-overwhelmed, I guess, is the best way to describe it.”

  “Not just the violence,” I said.

  “No,” Susan said. “She saw Hawk, I suppose, for the first time.”

  “He saved her life,” I said.

  “She knows that,” Susan said. “But there might have been another way. He shot right past her head to do it without a moment’s hesitation.”

  “It was the best way,” I said.

  Susan nodded. “Yes, I’m sure it was. Maybe even Jackie is sure it was, but she can’t… do you see? She can’t be with a man who could do that.”

  “I see,” I said. “Could you?”

  “I am,” Susan said.

  I drank some of my martini. I checked the glass. There were at least two swallows left.

  “You think we’ll see her again?” I said.

  With her chin still in her hand, Susan shook her head slowly. The waiter brought menus. We read them. The waiter came back. We ordered. The waiter left. The twilight softened into darkness outside the window, and the harbor water, wavering against the wharf, was very black.

  “What do you think?” Susan said. “Is there a future for Major and those other kids?”

  “I doubt it,” I said.

  The waiter returned with food. I mastered the desire for maybe thirteen more martinis, and when Susan and I finished supper and left, I was still sober. It made me proud. We drove back to Cambridge and I parked in the driveway of her place on Linnaean Street.

  “You don’t think any of them will make it?” Susan said.

  “Kids in Double Deuce?” I said. “No, probably not.”

  “Hawk did,” Susan said.

  “Sort of,” I said.

  “That’s an awfully grim view,” she said.

  I shrugged.

  “Maybe I’m wrong,” I said.

  She leaned her head back against the seat cushion.

  “Well, as you always say, `It’s never over till it’s over.‘ ”

  “Yes,” I said.

  I could see insects little bigger than dust motes swarming in the streetlight, an occasional moth among them.

  “First night apart,” she said.

  “Yeah.”

  She put her hand out and I took it and we were quiet for a while. Then she spoke.

  “I have to say something.”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “I’m looking forward to being alone.”

  “Me too,” I said.

  “God, what a relief.”

  “I know,” I said.

  “See you this weekend,” she said.

  “Yes,” I said. “I’ll pick Pearl up tomorrow night for a sleepover. Like before.”

  “Yes.”

  Susan leaned toward me in the dark and gave me a long, happy kiss.

  “I love you,” she said and got out of the car.

  I watched her until she was inside, then pulled out and drove back across the river to my place on Marlborough Street.

  The apartment was stuffy and I walked through it opening windows so that the spring night could circulate. Then I went into the kitchen and took some vodka from the freezer and some vermouth from under the sink and made a large martini over ice with a twist. I put it on the bedside table to let the ice work while I showered and toweled off, and turned back the bed, and got in. I propped up the pillows and turned on the television with the remote. The Braves were still in first place, and they were playing the Giants on cable. Fifth inning, Ron Gant hitting. I sipped my martini and watched the ball game and listened to Skip Caray.

  Alone.

  I could feel myself smiling.

  Gant spiked a double into the left-field corner. I took another sip and spoke aloud in the dark room.

  “Perfect,” I said.