"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.
33
BROCK RIMBAUD RAN his operation out of a storefront at number five Naugus Street, which was a street just wider than an alley and not as long. There were five buildings on the street, all flat-roofed three-decker tenements, where the kitchens probably still smelled of kerosene. The storefront was on the first floor of the second three-decker in. The building was sided in yellowish asphalt shingles, with sagging porches across the face of the second and third floors. There were clotheslines in use on both porches.
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.