"So maybe she's better off."
"Turning tricks instead of cheering for Smithfield High? Better not spread that around the guidance office. Wasn't it Smithfield where heretics were burned?"
Susan smiled. "That was Smithfield, England, I believe."
"You suggesting I stop looking for her?"
"I suppose I can't say that. I suppose her parents should decide." I shook my head. "I'm not doing it for the parents."
"I know. And we both know the parents. Kyle will say he doesn't want her darkening his door, and Mrs. Kyle will cry and want her back."
I nodded.
"What do you think?" Susan said.
"I think a couple of things," I said, "maybe several." The waitress brought dessert, menus. "I think there's no point finding her and dragging her home because she'll just split again, and as far as I can tell, I don't blame her. I won't make her go home."
"Indian pudding," she said to the waitress, "with vanilla ice cream. And black coffee."
The waitress looked at me. "Same," I said. She smiled and went away.
"However," I said to Susan, "I don't think her life is all that good for her whoring. She may feel better about herself than she would at home being June Allyson, but there's not much there, either. She could get killed or onto smack or graduate to something worse than the sheep ranch"-I drank the rest of my beer-"and," I said, "there's something funny going on. They shipped her down to Providence almost the minute I started looking for her. I talked with Amy Gurwitz one afternoon, and April was off to the ranch before supper. They didn't want her found."
"You mean Amy Gurwitz is involved?"
"Must be. Or someone in Smithfield. She was on the road before I ever started talking to management."
Dessert arrived.
"All of which means what?" Susan said.
"Hell, I don't know. I can barely keep track of the news, let alone analyze it. But I think we better locate April again and see how she is, and while we're doing that maybe we can figure out what to do with her if she isn't swell."
Susan was smiling. "Also," she said, "you can't stand to have lost her, and you won't quit on this until you find her again."
I swallowed some pudding. "I'm a very neat person," I said. "I never leave an unmade bed. Want to go back to my place for a nightcap and a bit of free love?"
"We might get your bedclothes all wrinkled," Susan said over her coffee cup.
I sighed. "I know," I said. "I thought of that, but life is a trade-off.
It'll be worth it."
Susan finished her coffee and put her cup down and leaned a little toward me. Her dark eyes were enormous. "You better believe it," she said.
Chapter 18
Hawk was drinking white wine and soda at the bar in Gallagher when I came in. He had on a dark gray three-piece suit with a fine pinstripe, white shirt, pin collar, pink silk tie, and pink pocket hankie. There were diamonds winking in his gold cuff links and another glimmering in his right earlobe. His head gleamed in the bar's soft light as if he'd oiled it. I'd felt pretty good about my leather trench coat until I saw him.
"You stop somewhere and get your head buffed?" I said.
He made room for me at the bar. "That's a halo," he said.
I ordered beer. "You know something or are you just lonely and I'm the only, one can stand you?"
"Tony Marcus says they going to put you in the ground if you don't stop messing with his whores," Hawk said. He drank some wine and soda. I raised my eyebrows. "So she is his," I said.
"They all his, babe," Hawk said.
"So why does he care about one more or less?" I said.
"He didn't say. He just said tell you that you going in the ground unless you back away."
"He told you that himself?"
"Uh-huh." Hawk grinned. "I was visiting with him, being slick, seeing if I couldn't acquire a little intelligence without letting on, you know. And he say, `You still tight with Spenser?'-well, actually he say, `You still tight with that honky muthafucker?' but I knew who he meant, and I say, `Yeah,' and he say, `You tell him stay away from my whores or he going in the ground."'
"Man's a racist," I said.
"No doubt," Hawk said, "but he got enough people to do it."
"I know," I said. "Why do you suppose it matters to him. What's special about this kid?"
Hawk shrugged. "You making any progress finding her?"
"I found her and lost her."
Hawk smiled with pleasure. "Lost her? Hell, I figured you was overmatched. How old is she?"
"Sixteen."
"She didn't take your gun away, did she?"
"Hell, no," I said. "I'm no amateur."
"What you going to do now?"
"I'm going to look for her some more. How about you? You still working for me or did Tony Marcus hire you away?"
"Always happy," Hawk said, "to take your money, long as you still alive."
"Okay, pick up Red and stay with him. See if she surfaces there. If she does, bring her to me."
"What if Red don't like it?"
"Reason with him."
Hawk nodded. "You sure it wouldn't be better for me to stick with you?
Marcus wasn't jiving."
"No. I'm going over and sit in the Back Bay and watch a house and see what goes in and out."
"Okay." Hawk finished the wine and left a five on the bar. "You get aced, Susan gonna be awful mad," he said.
"At both of us," I said. "You paying for mine too?"
"Sure. It'll go on my bill."
We got up and moved through the lunch hour crowd and out to the street.
Hawk headed up State Street to Washington and I went to get my car.
I drove round and round the block until I found a parking space on Beacon from which I could see Amy Gurwitz's house. Hawk could cover the Zone better than I could, especially since April would recognize me and not him, and the other option was watching this house. It wasn't much of an option, but it was better than driving around looking in windows, which was the only other thing I could think of.
Amy and April had been friends—or so they said at the bowling alley in Smithfield-on the run, with no money-hell, no coat. April might end up there. It was sunny and clear, not too cold for November, and the sun on the canvas roof of the MG had a greenhouse effect that made it comfortable without the heater. I tilted the seat back and stretched my legs out and stared at the Gurwitz front door for the rest of the afternoon. Nobody came out. Nobody went in. No one looked out a window. No smoke signals emanated from the chimney. No sound of demented laughter echoed from its corridors.
The streetlights went on, and lights in the windows up and down Beacon Street. At about 5:15-the front porch light went on at Amy's. At a little after six the same fat guy I'd seen before came trundling down Fairfield from the same alley as before and went up the steps and let himself in. He had on a plaid overcoat that looked like the saddle blanket for a hippopotamus. Then the light went out on the front porch and that was it. I hung on until nearly eleven at night and then went home and ate a baked bean sandwich on whole wheat with mayonnaise and lettuce and went to bed.
I was back on the job on Beacon Street before eight the next morning. It was the day before Thanksgiving and the street was busy with college kids going home for the holiday. I was prepared for a long siege today. I had some caponata from Rebecca's and some feta cheese and black olives and Syrian bread. I also had a large Thermos of coffee and a portable radio. I ate and listened to jazz and drank coffee and watched the coeds in their designer jeans and thought about what Susan and I would do for Thanksgiving dinner, and the day wore on.
I was listening to Ron Della Chiesa on WGBH. He was playing an album by Anita Ellis when the fat man came his usual route and went into the house. Early. I looked at my watch. 3:20. Out of work early for the holiday. I was listening to Teddi King with Dave McKenna's thumping piano behind her, when Fatso came out of the house with Amy and two suitcases. Off to Grandma's for a turkey dinner? Off to a country inn for roast goose with plum sauce? They went around the corner, up Fairfield Street, down the alley, and in maybe two minutes came driving out in a Volvo station wagon that fit the fat guy like a tailored shirt. They headed up Beacon while I decided what to do. By the time they reached the corner of Gloucester I knew what I'd do. I'd sit here for a while and if they didn't come back I'd burglarize their home and see what was what.