"Why don't you zip the coat up good, and I'll just sort of keep my piece handy here in my pocket."
"Why don't you kiss my ass," he said. And turned and started walking toward The Public Gardens again. I walked with him. My gun was the short-barreled Smith & Wesson.38 and I could easily hold it inside the pocket of my green windbreaker. We reached Arlington Street in silence and crossed and went into The Public Gardens which was still bright with flowers in the early fall. Near the big statue of George Washington on horseback he stopped again.
"You going to follow me home?" he said.
"Sure," I said.
"You're making me look bad, you know? You're gonna get me in trouble, following me like this." – "Un huh."
Ahead of us the swan boats were still in the water, full of people, trailed by a convoy of hungry ducks to whom the tourists gave peanuts.
"Whyn't you gimme a fucking break, pal?"
"Naw."
He stood some more. He looked at Washington above him. He looked back at the Swan Boat Lagoon, and the boats full of people being slowly pedaled about by college kids with quads of steel. He looked back at me.
"Okay," he said.
"I'm fucked. What do you want?"
"I want to know why you are following me."
"Guy asked me to."
"Who?"
"You gotta promise me, you don't say I told you, you know. It don't make me look real good."
"Don't feel bad," I said.
"You just weren't ready for what you got. You're used to collecting overdue from some guy fixes timing chains for a living. Doesn't matter you loop your punches, you still hit him. You don't need to have your gun where you can get at it quick."
"You gotta promise," he said.
"Sure."
"They find out I let you roust me, it won't do me no good."
I waited. Behind him one of the swan boats drifted under the little bridge. The ducks glided behind it.
"Marty told me to see who you talked to," the Big Guy said.
"Marty who?"
"Marty Anaheim," he said. There was surprise in his voice that there could be another Marty.
"Works for Gino Fish," I said.
Again the guy looked startled.
"He don't work for him, man. Marty's his number-one guy," he said.
"Awesome," I said.
"You know why he wanted me followed?"
"Naw. I'm just a fucking laborer, you know. Grunt work. They don't tell me shit."
"When did Marty tell you to start following me?"
"Sent me out this morning."
"How long were you supposed to stay on me?"
"Till he told me to stop."
"Okay, here's what you do. Tell him I made you, and you decided the wisest course was to bail out on the tail. You got that?"
"The wisest course…?"
"Ad lib if you want to."
"Yeah, but Marty'll put somebody else on you."
"Tell him not to," I said.
"I can't tell Marly Anaheim what to do."
"Anyone else follows me around I'm going to speak to Marty direct."
"Jesus, you can't do that, he'll know I told you."
I shrugged and turned and walked away from him. I crossed Arlington Street at the light. Down at the corner of Newbury Street people were going into the Ritz, probably having lunch in the cafe.
The bar would be open. I wondered if they served New Amsterdam Black & Tan these days. I looked back at the Big Guy. He was still standing there beside Washington. Next to the monumental sculpture he looked small.
CHAPTER 6
I was sitting at my desk with my feet up, reading the Globe, when Hawk came into my office with a bag of donuts and two large cups of coffee. My windows were open behind me and the sound and scent of morning traffic drifted up, along with the smell of bacon cooking somewhere, and beneath it, the smell from the river five blocks away. Even though it was September, it still smelled like summer.
"Got you some delicious decaffeinated," Hawk said.
"You drinking real coffee?" I said.
"Guatemalan dark roast," he said.
"Keep drinking that stuff you'll be bouncing around like one of the Nicholas Brothers."
Hawk set out the coffee for each of us and put the bag of donuts between us. He hooked one of my client chairs over near the desk where he could reach the donuts and sat down. He was wearing a dark blue suede jacket made to look like denim, over a white silk tee-shirt. His jeans were pressed and his black cowboy boots were hand tooled from the skin of some reptile I didn't recognize.
"Just up tempo my natural rhythm," he said.
"What we going to do about Marty Anaheim?"
"Sort of a problem," I said.
"I told the slugger I wouldn't spill the beans."
"That you made him, and he told you who sent him?"
"Yeah."
Hawk stared at me for a time. Then he shook his head.
"… obedient, cheerful, thrifty," he muttered, more to himself than to me, "brave, clean, and reverent."
"I'm not too obedient," I said.
"You ain't too fucking reverent either," Hawk said, "but you still a goddamned Eagle Scout."
"I told him I wouldn't," I said.
"You know what Marty's like."
"I remember once Marty beat a guy to death with a pool cue," Hawk said.
"They playing pool, and the guy kidding Marty. Saying how Patriots folded against the Bears in the eighty-five Super Bowl. Marty likes those Patriots. So he starts hitting the guy with the butt end of the pool cue."
"Guy overestimated Marty's sense of humor," I said.
Hawk nodded.
"Your slugger probably be in some trouble, you tell Marty he screwed up the tail job."
"He's a dope," I said.
"He couldn't tail a bull through a china shop. No need to get him killed."
"Everybody know Marty's a psycho. You work with him, you gotta be prepared to deal with that."
"I sort of promised."
"Okay," Hawk said.
"I know what you like. How we going to do it?"
I ate a plain donut and drank some decaf. Hawk sipped his Guatemalan dark roast.
"Well, the best guess is that Marty, or more likely Gino Fish, knew that Julius hired me. And they wanted to see who I talked to and what I found."
"Julius hired us," Hawk said.
"You're so sensitive," I said.
"Nobody follow me."
"For cris sake I said.
"You haven't been doing anything."
"I waiting for my kind of work," Hawk said.
"I don't do gumshoe work, rattle fucking doorknobs."
Hawk stood and went to my window and looked down at the corner of Berkeley and Boylston. It was a fine bright morning.
There was a lot of foot traffic at ten of nine, people going to work at the big insurance companies that littered the Back Bay. The young women were still in their summer dresses. The young men wore no topcoats.
"Cross Boylston," Hawk said.
"Corner near Louis'."
I stood beside him and looked.
"Sort of tall with square shoulders," Hawk said.
"Fishing hat, tan raincoat, looking uninterested."
"I see him," I said.
"Newspaper under his arm."
"So he can lean on a lamppost and read it," Hawk said.
"He's doing everything but," I said.
"Your guy?"
"No," I said.
"They wouldn't send the same tail two days in a row."
"They haven't been too smart so far," Hawk said.
"You made the first guy as quick as we made this one."
"Not the same thing," I said.
"We were looking for this one."
"Sure," Hawk said.
"Why don't we just go see Marty, see what he wants?"
"You know where to find him?"
"Sure," Hawk said.
"
"Course it's possible," I said, "we brace Marty Anaheim, we get ourselves in trouble."
"Or him," Hawk said.
CHAPTER 7
The guy in the raincoat followed Hawk and me to a bar on Canal Street, near the old Boston Garden.
"Marty here about every morning," Hawk said.
The bar was called Poochie's, and through the big plate glass window in front we could see that Marty was there with a couple of other guys in suits drinking draught beer, and watching a motorcycle race on the big color television over the bar.