Cold Service (10 page)

The big loft space on the second floor had full-length arched windows, which Cecile had opened. The big ivory drapes that spilled out onto the floor were too heavy to blow in the spring breeze, but their edges fluttered a little while Hawk made each of us a Bloody Mary. Domestic.

We drank a couple of Bloody Marys, thus ensuring that I would nap when I got home. Cecile and Susan talked about their respective practices, and I shared occasional thoughts on sex and baseball, which, by and large, were all I had for thoughts. As usual, Hawk said little, though he seemed to enjoy listening. I had been reading a book about the human genome. We talked about that for a while. Cecile served us a variation of a dish my father called "shrimp wiggle": shrimp and peas in a cream sauce. Cecile served hers in pastry shells. My father didn't know what a pastry shell was, and with good reason. We had a little white wine with the shrimp. When I went to get a little more from the ice bucket, I noticed that Hawk's big.44 Mag was lying holstered on the sideboard among the wineglasses. The stainless-steel frame was good, but the brass edge of the cartridges that showed in the cylinder clashed with the cutlery.

We were nearly, and mercifully, through the shrimp wiggle when Cecile put her wineglass down suddenly and sat, staring at her plate. Sitting beside her, Hawk put his hand on her thigh. Her shoulders began to shake and then she looked up and there were tears running down her face. Hawk patted her thigh softly.

"This is so awful," Cecile said.

Her voice was shaky.

"We had a fight about this before you came."

She dabbed carefully at her eyes with her napkin. There were still tears.

"We sit here and eat and drink and make small talk," she said, and pointed at Hawk.

"And he was almost shot and killed and now he's going to kill other people, probably already has, to get even, or get killed trying to get even, and"-she pointed at me-"he's helping. And no one will tell me anything about it or explain it or even talk about it, so we sit here and chit-chat and gossip and pretend."

Hawk continued to pat her thigh. Otherwise it was as if he hadn't heard her.

"It's not pretend, Cecile," Susan said. "Because these men aren't like other men you know doesn't mean that they are simply different. Because they are engaged in life-and-death matters sometimes doesn't mean that they can't waste time other times talking about sex or baseball."

"It's not wasting time," I said.

Susan glared at me, but flickering at the edge of the glare was amusement.

"I could accept that," Cecile said, "maybe. If only somebody could explain to me what the hell they are doing and why."

"It's a terrible left-out feeling, isn't it," Susan said.

"I'm terrified. I'm horrified. I can't understand it. And the man who is supposed to love me won't even explain himself."

I know Susan heard "supposed to love me," and I knew she knew that it could mean more than one thing. But Susan was not a proponent of freelance shrinkage over drinks on a Sunday afternoon. Thank God!

"Maybe he can't explain it," Susan said.

"So let him say he can't explain it," Cecile said.

Susan was quiet. So was I. Hawk gently took his hand from Cecile's thigh and stood and walked to the sideboard. He picked up the holstered gun and turned and walked out the front door, and closed it gently behind him. All of us were quiet for a moment.

Then Cecile said, "Oh my God!" and began to cry. We were quiet while she cried. Finally she eased up and dabbed some more at her eyes with her napkin. Some of her eye makeup had run a little in the big cry.

"I'm sorry," she finally said.

"Loving Hawk is not easy work," I said.

"It seems easy for you."

"Apples and pears," I said.

Cecile tossed her chin at me. It was not completely affectionate.

"Does Spenser talk to you?" she said to Susan.

"I'm afraid he does," Susan said.

"And you understand him?"

"Yes."

"How do you stand it-the guns, the tough-guy stuff?"

"The relationship seems worth it," Susan said.

"And you can't change him?"

"He has changed," Susan said. "You should have seen him when we first met."

She smiled for a moment and looked at me.

"How did you do it?" Cecile said.

"I didn't. He did," Susan said.

Cecile looked at me aggressively, as if somehow Hawk were my fault.

"Is that right?"

"I learned things from her," I said. "I do, after all, love her."

The minute I said it I knew it was the perfect wrong thing.

"And Hawk doesn't love me?" Cecile said.

"He loves you better than anyone else I've ever seen him with," I said.

"Oh, goodie," Cecile said.

With Hawk unavailable, she was mad at me.

"Have you told Cecile about the time the Gray Man shot you?" Susan said to me.

"Some."

"He was almost killed. It took about a year to recover. Hawk and I took him to a place in Santa Barbara, and Hawk rehabbed him."

Cecile nodded.

"What did you do," Susan said, "when you were sufficiently rehabbed."

"I found him and put him in jail."

"Did he stay in jail?"

"No, we made a deal; he solved a case for me, DA let him go."

"Did you mind?" Susan said.

"That he got let go? No. We were even anyway."

Susan looked at Cecile as if they both had a secret.

"Why did you track him down?" Susan said.

"I can't let somebody shoot me and get away with it."

"Why?"

"Very bad for business," I said.

"Any other reasons?"

"I needed him to solve the case."

"Did the police help you find him?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"I needed to do it myself."

Susan didn't say anything. She and Cecile shared their secret again. I sipped a little white wine. Some sort of mediocre Chardonnay. I didn't like it much, but any port in a storm. Then I saw it: where Susan had taken me, and why.

"I was afraid," I said to Cecile. "I was afraid of the Gray Man, and of dying, and of not seeing her again."

"Not seeing Susan," Cecile said.

"Yes. It was intolerable. I can't do what I do, or be who I am, if I'm afraid."

"So you had to get back up and ride the horse again," Cecile said.

"Yes."

Cecile was silent, looking at me and at Susan.

"He's afraid," she said finally. "Like you were."

Susan nodded.

"And he can't say it."

"He may not even know it," Susan said.

"He knows," I said.

Susan nodded. Cecile drank some of her wine. She didn't seem to notice it was mediocre.

"But"-Cecile spoke slowly as if she were watching the sun rise gradually-"either way, he has to prove that they can't kill him."

"Yes," I said.

"And you will help Hawk do that," she said to me.

"Yes."

Cecile looked at Susan.

"And you'll let him do that?" she said.

"Wrong word," Susan said. "I know why he is helping, and I don't try to stop him."

"Because?"

"Because I love him," Susan said, "and not someone I might make him into, if I could, which I can't."

"What if you could make me into Brad Pitt?" I said.

"That would be different," Susan said.

On the plate-glass window that formed the front of Rimbaud's digs on the first floor was a black-letter sign that readRIMBAUD ENTERPRISES. The black lettering was edged with gold. Nicely coherent with the neighborhood.

"You know what we're going to do here?" I said to Hawk.

"Talk with the Brockster," Hawk said.

"Aside from the pure pleasure of it," I said. "What are we trying to accomplish?"

"Hell," Hawk said, "you ought to know how this works. Start in, poke around, talk to people, ask questions, see what happens? I learned it from you all these years."

"It's known in forensic circles as the Spenser method," I said.

"Also known as I don't have any idea what the fuck I'm doing, " Hawk said.

"Also known as that," I said. "Nice to know you've been paying attention."

"Learning from the master," Hawk said.

I took my gun in its clip-on holster off my hip and put it on under my blazer in front where I could get at it easily while sitting down. I knew Hawk had a shoulder rig. We got out of the car and walked to Rimbaud's office.

"What the fuck do you want," Rimbaud said when we went in.

He was sitting in a high-backed red leather swivel chair behind a gray metal desk. There was a pigskin-leather humidor on the desk, and a phone, and a nine-millimeter handgun.

"See," Hawk said, "he remember us."

"And fondly," I said.

Rimbaud didn't seem to know what else to say, so he gave us a mean look. There were two skinny black Hispanic men in the room with him each wearing a colorful long-sleeved shirt unbuttoned over a ribbed undershirt-one gray, one white. Their shirttails were out, and the cuffs were rolled back over their slim forearms. They each gave us a mean look.

"Mind if we sit?" Hawk said.

Rimbaud nodded toward a couple of straight chairs near his desk. He was wearing a white shirt with the top three buttons undone and the cuffs turned loosely back over his forearms. We sat. The room was empty except for the desk and a few chairs. On a back wall was the only ornamentation, a large movie poster of Al Pacino in Scarface. Hawk smiled at Brock. I smiled at Brock.

Brock said, "So?"

"Come by to see how you doing with Boots," Hawk said.

"Boots who?" Rimbaud said.

He was absently fondling the gun on his desk.

"Brock," Hawk said. "Mind if I call you Brock?"

Rimbaud rolled his hand in a small, impatient circle.

"Brock," Hawk said again. "You know and we know that you up here trying to move in on Boots Podolak's operation."

"And what's that?" Rimbaud said.

"Marshport," Hawk said.

Rimbaud looked at his two companions and rolled his eyes. They both laughed. One of them brushed his open shirt away from his belt so we could see the gun he wore on his left side, butt forward.

"Look at that," I said to Rimbaud. "Just like your gun. You get a buy on them. You know, buy two, get one free?"

"You got something on your mind," Rimbaud said, "or you just come here to crack wise?"

Hawk grinned and looked at me.

"You doing that again?" he said.

"Cracking wise is my game," I said.

Hawk nodded and turned back to Rimbaud.

"You want Podolak out of business," Hawk said. "So do we. I'm looking to see if we can help each other."

"I don't need no help," Rimbaud said.

"Sure you do," I said. "Your father-in-law didn't have a deal with Boots to let you operate up here, you'd be, ah, cracking wise with the fishes."

Hawk smiled.

"Tony?" Rimbaud said.

Hawk said, "Un-huh."

Rimbaud's face flushed.

"Tony ain't got no deal with Boots," he said. "I'm in here because Boots isn't tough enough to keep me out."

Hawk smiled. He had a great smile. Even white teeth in his smooth, black countenance. The smile was bright and clean and handsome… entirely devoid of feeling.

"Son," Hawk said, "Boots had a parakeet, the parakeet would be tough enough to keep you out."

"You think so?" Rimbaud said.

The flush on his face was bright now and widespread. His voice had gone up an octave. He picked up the gun and pointed it at Hawk. The minute Rimbaud raised his gun, the other two men took out theirs.

"You think maybe I'm not tough enough," Rimbaud said, "to shoot your fucking ass right now?"

I hadn't been shot as recently as Hawk. But it isn't something you forget. Funny thing was, I never thought of the bullets hitting me. I thought of the hospital, of the lights and tubes and sounds. I remembered the weakness, the craziness, the paranoid delusions. I thought of the smells. It didn't control me; I was always able to put it away, but the memory lurked in my cell structure.

Slowly Hawk put one foot up on the edge of Rimbaud's desk. He smiled and tilted his chair back so that he was rocking gently on the back legs. He held the smile and said nothing as he rocked.

"Nothing to say, Big Mouth?" Rimbaud said.

"You need an army to shoot it out with Boots," Hawk said. "And I don't think you got one."

"We can keep nibbling at his business until we got it all," Rimbaud said.

"You nibble enough to threaten him and the deal with Tony won't hold," Hawk said.

"I don't know nothing about no deal," Rimbaud said. "He gives us trouble and we'll take him out. I'll take him out, me, personal."

Hawk nodded.

"And another guy will take over who won't want you nibbling at the business, either."

Rimbaud didn't say anything, a rare moment of relief.

"Brock," I said. "He's got an army; you got a squad, maybe. Tony may help you for a while, but if it comes down to it, he's not going to go full-bore to the mattresses twenty-five miles from his own turf. My guess is he'd throw you to the Ukrainians and take his daughter home."

Rimbaud said, "She ain't going noplace."

Neither Hawk nor I said anything. Rimbaud sat, trying to think. The gun was still raised, but I think he'd forgotten it. After a while he put it down. His two pals put theirs away. Hawk continued to rock.

"You got a plan?" Rimbaud said.

"Nope, we sort of looking for one," Hawk said.

"I got ten men," Rimbaud said. He nodded at the other two. "Nuncio and Jaime, and eight other guys. I make eleven."

"You know how many Boots has got?" Hawk said.

"I don't know. Fuck him. I don't even care."

"Better if you knew," Hawk said. "Why here?"

"You mean why try to take over Marshport?"

"Yeah."

"I'm looking for a place to do business, see. And I figure to do it smart. So I look for a place ready to blow up, you know? And here it is, Marshport, a black and Latin city run by a bunch of white Bohunks, like, ah, you know, like ripe and ready."

"Except there's a lot of the Bohunks," I said, "and all of them are tougher than Donald Trump's agent."

"I'm white," Rimbaud said. "But only on the outside. I mean, I grew up black. I'm like black inside. I know about black. I can bring these people around."

"Okay, bro," Hawk said. "You keep on doing what you're doing and we'll check in with you once in a while, let you know what we're doing."

"What are you doing now?" Rimbaud said.

He didn't sound black inside.

"Collecting data," Hawk said.

"That's all?"

"Un-huh."

"What you going to do when you get enough data?" Rimbaud said.

"Depend on what the data tell us," Hawk said. "Tha's why we gathers it."

Rimbaud leaned back in his chair.

"I guess we're after the same thing," he said. He took a cigar from the leather humidor and began to trim the end with a small penknife.

Expansive.

Hawk nodded.

"Give him a card," Hawk said to me, "case he care to call us."

"Sure," I said.

I stood, took a card from my card case, and bent over the desk to put it in front of Rimbaud. Rimbaud was too cool to look at it while we were there.

"I have anything," he said, "I'll let you know."

Hawk stood.

"Have a nice day, bro," Hawk said.

Then we turned and went out the front door.

"Bro?" I said as we walked across the street.

"You heard him," Hawk said. "He say he black inside."

"Rimbaud isn't anything inside," I said.

Hawk grinned.

"You honkies always badmouth a brother," he said.