Cold Service (15 page)

"It work for us," Hawk said.

"Gray Man working in City Hall?" Leonard said.

"Yes."

"Might tell him not to," Leonard said.

"When does it start?" I said.

"You'll know," Leonard said and got out of Hawk's car and walked to his own. Vinnie sat in the backseat, listening to his iPod. There was no way to tell if he'd even known Leonard was there.

"Tony going right for it," Hawk said.

"Seems so," I said.

"Going right after Boots," Hawk said.

"We want that?" I said.

Hawk shook his head.

"Gotta get the trust-fund money first," Hawk said. "And Boots be all we got for that."

I drank some coffee.

" 'Less we can find somebody else to endow the kid's future," I said.

"Vinnie?" Hawk said.

I looked at Vinnie, leaning his head against the leather upholstery in the backseat of Hawk's Jaguar. His eyes were closed as he listened to the music.

"I see your point," I said. "So, we gotta rescue him."

"Is that a bitch?" Hawk said.

"It is," I said.

Hawk smiled and did a flawless Stan Laurel.

"A fine mess I've got us into this time, Ollie."

"Well," I said, "unless Leonard had a hidden agenda when he warned us about getting the Gray Man out of harm's way, we can assume it'll start at City Hall."

"Agreed," Hawk said.

"So there should be a lot of diversionary activity."

"Should," Hawk said.

"Which might work for us," I said.

"Always see the glass half full, don't you," Hawk said.

"A cockeyed optimist," I said.

"We engineered this sucker," Hawk said. "We can't just warn Boots ahead of time. We blow the whole deal."

"Hoist on our own petard," I said.

From the backseat, holding his earphones away from his ears, Vinnie said, "You know a petard is a land mine?"

Hawk and I looked at each other.

"I did know that," I said.

Vinnie shrugged slightly and put the earphones back in his ears.

"Hard to plan anything," Hawk said, "till we know what Tony going to do."

"We know he's starting at City Hall," I said. "Let's call the Gray Man."

"Okay," Hawk said. "You in, Vinnie?"

Vinnie opened his eyes for a moment.

"Sure," he said and closed his eyes.

"Tony Marcus gonna try for Boots," Hawk said.

"Where?" the Gray Man said.

"Probably City Hall."

"When?"

"Don't know," Hawk said. "Soon."

"Are you participating?" the Gray Man said.

"We gonna get Boots out," Hawk said.

"Out?"

" 'Fore he dies," Hawk said, "Boots gonna give me money for Luther Gillespie's kid."

"Ah," the Gray Man said. "Yes. You want it all."

"Un-huh."

"Do you need me to shoot, or can I help you better by remaining covert."

"Need you to get us in to Boots, or Boots out to us," Hawk said.

The Gray Man nodded.

"Without revealing myself," the Gray Man said.

"Exactly," Hawk said.

The Gray Man looked past Hawk at the boats in the marina slip. It wasn't much of a marina, and the few boats seemed to be mostly perches for herring gulls.

"Do we know the timing," the Gray Man said.

"No," Hawk said. "Boots got a private exit?"

The Gray Man nodded. He continued to look out past the shabby marina at the dirty harbor. From here you couldn't see the open ocean. You would have thought Vinnie was asleep in the backseat beside the Gray Man, except that his head bobbed very gently in time to the music only he could hear. Probably emblematic of us all, bopping to the tunes only we could listen to. I smiled to myself. Crime buster/ philosopher.

"When the shooting starts, you think he'll use it?" I said.

"Boots don't scare easy," Hawk said.

"He doesn't," I said. "But he's not stupid."

"We need not decide," the Gray Man said. "I'll show you the route. You wait outside. When the shooting starts, I'll urge him. If he comes out, you take him. If he doesn't come out, you come in."

"You staying?" I said.

"Yes."

"You're more useful to us alive."

"I have been alive a long time," the Gray Man said. "And I have heard bullets fly quite often."

"Okay," Hawk said. "Tell us about the entrance."

"Have you writing materials?"

Hawk nodded. He took a pad and a ballpoint pen from the glove compartment and handed them back to the Gray Man, who drew silently for a few moments.

"This is the main entrance," he said.

"Here?" I said. "Where it says MAIN ENTRANCE, with an arrow?"

The Gray Man didn't smile.

"Yes," he said. "Around here, down along the side of the building on Broad Street, an alley cuts through between the old City Hall and the addition they built about ten years ago."

"Connected by an enclosed bridge at, what, the second floor?" I said.

"Yes."

"If he needed to, the mayor would walk across that bridge from his office and go down fire stairs in the new section that leads to a fire door in the cellar, which leads to a fire door that opens on the alley. But if you go down another flight to the basement level, there's a passageway that connects with the parking garage across Broad Street."

"Where are the garage exits?" Hawk said.

"One opposite the alley," the Gray Man said. "On Broad Street. One on the opposite side that empties out onto Exchange Street."

"Which is a main drag," Hawk said.

"On Exchange Street," the Gray Man said, "you are off and running. West on Franklin, north on Essex, south on Federal."

"Broad Street would just take you back into the thick of the firefight," Hawk said, looking at the map the Gray Man was sketching. "If there was a firefight, and if they surrounded the building."

"Only a fool," the Gray Man said, "would fail to surround the building."

"Tony isn't a fool," Hawk said.

"No," I said, "he isn't."

"Though occasionally," the Gray Man said, "I wonder about you two."

"So do we all," I said. "You haven't shared this information about the tunnel with Tony, have you?"

"No."

"Don't," Hawk said.

The Gray Man smiled gently and without warmth.

"I wouldn't think of it," he said.

"I think it was the English writer," Susan said, "E. M. Forster, who said that if he had to choose between betraying his country and betraying his friend, he hoped he'd have the courage to betray his country."

"The analogy is imperfect," I said.

"All analogies are," Susan said. "But it's suggestive."

"If I didn't help Hawk," I said, "I'm not sure he would consider it betrayal."

Susan nodded. It was 5:10. There was a lot of traffic on Arlington Street. People going home to supper and their families. Some probably happy about it. Some probably not.

"What would you consider it?" Susan said.

I poured a little beer from the bottle into the glass, straight in so it would foam. Beer tasted better with a head on it.

"Betrayal," I said.

She nodded again.

"But if you join him in wiping out Boots Podolak, you'll also be betraying something, won't you?"

A string of giggly young people entered the crosswalk at Newbury Street and froze traffic back to Beacon Street. The kids seemed to enjoy it as they ambled across.

"Me, I guess."

"I guess," Susan said.

With the cars still backed up, a shabby, long-haired man stumbled along between them, asking for money. He was wearing a red Nike muscle shirt, and his thin, white arms were thick with blue tattooing. Most people ignored him.

"You have any solutions?" I said.

"No," Susan said. "But I know what you are going to do."

I drank some beer and watched a black stretch limo discharge passengers into the solicitous keeping of a doorman.

"I can't back off," I said. "I have to stay with him."

"I know," Susan said.

"So why am I talking about it," I said.

"Because it's you and me," Susan said. "We talk about everything."

"What would you do?" I said.

"In the unlikely event that I were you?" Susan said.

I nodded.

"I'd stay with Hawk," she said.

"And you a Harvard girl," I said.

"And it would bother me," she said. "And I'd face the fact that I was doing something I thought was wrong rather than betray my friend, which"-she smiled at me-"would therefore make it sort of right."

"Jesus," I said. "You shrinks are really convolute."

"Whatever we are," Susan said, "we have talked enough to people who are in big messes to know that whatever you do may make you feel bad, but mostly, in time, if you're tough and don't indulge yourself, it'll pass and you'll forgive yourself."

"Cynical, too," I said.

"I think that's hopeful, that unless you're obsessive you'll forgive yourself," Susan said. "It's also the truth."

"The truth will set you free?" I said.

Susan nodded.

"And make you cynical," she said.

The traffic had thinned on Arlington Street. Most of the people heading home from work were on Storrow Drive by now. Or the pike. Or the expressway. Or the tunnels. Or the Zakim Bridge. Some were home by now, having their first drink before dinner. Maybe looking at the paper. Probably none of them were planning to shoot it out with a bunch of Ukrainian sociopaths. Susan turned her wineglass slowly on the tabletop in front of her. I put my hands out, and she let go of the glass and took them.

"Thanks," I said.

"You're welcome," she said. "Now I want to vent, briefly."

"Fair's fair," I said.

"If you let yourself get killed, I will want to die, too," she said.

I nodded. It felt as if I needed more air in my chest. The waiter brought us new drinks. Outside the window, a doorman put two fingers in his mouth and whistled down a cab. I had always wished I could do that whistle, but I never could. I inhaled a lot of air as quietly as I could. I didn't want to be caught sighing.

"So far, so good," I said.

Susan smiled.

"Yes," she said. "So far, very good."

"Leonard tell you?"

"Yep."

"Tell you the time?"

"Nope."

We were in Hawk's car, parked at the curb in the little square that fronted City Hall. It was 7 A.M. on a May morning, and even Marshport had a fresh May morning quality as we sipped our coffee and watched the few people employed in Marshport straggle along to work.

"My guess is soon," I said.

"Ford Expedition?" Hawk said. "On the corner?"

"Yes."

"Best I could see through the tinted glass," Hawk said, "there be several aggressive-looking brothers in there."

"Car's black, too," I said.

"As it should be," Hawk said.

"Bet there's some more around," I said.

"Blue Town Car over there," Hawk said. "Other corner."

"And maybe a couple back of the building."

"Pretty sure," Hawk said. "Vinnie's back there, case things go that way."

"With cell phone?" I said.

"Un-huh."

"How did we crime busters function without them all those years?"

"Yelled loud," Hawk said.

"You know what I like here?" I said. "There's a bunch of black guys waiting in cars to shoot it up with a bunch of white guys, and it's not about race."

"Be about power and money, mostly," Hawk said.

"Race can't hold a candle," I said.

"What can?" Hawk said.

We drank some coffee. Nobody did anything. The Expedition and the Town Car sat quietly.

"Gray Man know?" I said.

"Un-huh."

At eight o'clock, a few public servants began to drift into City Hall.

"They waiting for Boots to arrive," Hawk said.

"If they don't spot him when he arrives, how will they know he's there?" I said. "He might come in through his private tunnel."

"Whenever go time is, they go," Hawk said. "He ain't in there, they shoot somebody else. Be an object lesson."

"Lot of people to shoot," I said.

Hawk shook his head.

"Leonard running this," Hawk said. "He pretty slick. He know Tony don't like to shoot civilians. Civilians stay down and out the way, they be safe enough."

"Hiding behind a desk in the middle of a shootout is not what everyone would consider safe."

Hawk smiled.

"Things be relative," he said.

"Tony has Leonard running it," I said.

"Un-huh. Tony pretty good with a gun, and he ain't scared of much, but he know who he is and what he do best, and he know how to delegate. Leonard can run this."

"And he wouldn't send Ty Bop or Junior," I said. "They're specialists."

"They belong to Tony. Junior will stomp somebody if Tony tells him, and Ty Bop shoot who Tony tell him. But they main work is protecting Tony."

"Like a closer," I said.

"Un-huh."

"Age of specialization," I said.

We had some more coffee. Whoever was going to work appeared to have gone. The square was quiet. At 9:35, a small procession arrived at City Hall. A police van pulled up, and some SWAT types got out with automatic weapons and spread out in front of City Hall. Then a limo pulled up and Boots got out and walked up the front steps and into City Hall with a Ukrainian on either side of him, and four uniformed cops around them. The SWAT types got back in the van and the van pulled away.

At 10:00 Leonard and five other men got out of the Expedition. One of the men carried a shoulder bag. They walked across the square and into City Hall.

"Here we go," I said.

Hawk nodded.

"Good," Hawk said. " 'Cause we out of coffee."

"They're wearing some Kevlar," I said. "But I don't see heavy weapons."

"Something in the bag," Hawk said.

"Grenades, maybe?"

"Maybe," Hawk said. "Maybe something disassembled."

"Maybe ammo," I said.

"Be prepared," Hawk said.

We heard a single gunshot from City Hall. It wasn't very loud and, muffled by the building, it didn't sound like much of anything unless you were listening for it.

"Be the cop in the lobby," Hawk said.

Hawk's cell phone doubled as a car phone. It rang.

We heard three more shots.

Hawk pressed the speaker button.

"Yo," he said.

The Gray Man said, "They are in the building. I've encouraged Podolak to exit through the tunnel. The Ukrainians will take him."

"Car?"

"Yes, in the garage, a silver Volvo SUV."

"Exchange Street exit?"

"Almost certainly."

"You?"

I could almost hear the Gray Man's mirthless, wispy smile.

"I have my own plans," he said. "We'll talk again."

The connection broke. Hawk pressed the end button and put the car in gear, and we drove around the square and a block up, where we could see the Exchange Street exit from the garage. We were far enough away so that the gunfire, which had become more frequent, was a barely audible sequence of pops. A block from the field of fire, you wouldn't know anything was up. In the distance, I could hear a siren.

"Reinforcements," I said.

"My guess," Hawk said, "they going to run into some sort of roadblock 'fore they get here. I tole you. Leonard's pretty slick."

As he spoke, the silver Volvo SUV came out of the garage and went west on Franklin Street.

"Tally ho," Hawk said, and we drove along Franklin Street behind them.