Then she said, "If it's going to work, a number of people may have to be killed."
"Yes."
"Do you mind if they die?"
"Not too much. These aren't very good people."
"But you mind killing them."
"There are circumstances when I'd be comfortable with it," I said.
Susan nodded.
"But not these circumstances," she said.
"I don't think so," I said.
"You've killed people before," Susan said.
"I always felt I had to."
"But this seems like, what, serial assassination?" she said.
"Something like that."
"And if you walk away?" Susan said.
"I can't walk away."
Susan smiled slightly.
"I know," she said. "The question was rhetorical."
"The problem is not," I said.
I was being churlish and we both knew it, but Susan chose not to comment.
Instead, she smiled and said, "A fine mess you've got us into this time, Ollie."
I nodded.
"This doesn't bother Hawk," Susan said.
"No."
"Or the hideous Gray Man."
"I doubt that either of them has thought about it," I said.
"I wish the Gray Man weren't involved," Susan said.
I shrugged.
"The other day," I said, "I remarked that he was a strange dude, and he said, 'We are all strange dudes. In what we do, there are no rules. We have to make some up for ourselves.' "
"He always said you and he were alike," Susan said.
I nodded.
"Remember in San Francisco? When you and I were separated? And you killed a pimp? Just shot him."
"Yeah."
"Did you have to do that?"
"I had to find you," I said. "I couldn't stay around and protect those two whores from the trouble we got them into. When we left, the pimp would have killed them."
"So you had to kill him."
"Yes."
"To protect the whores from a jeopardy that you caused them."
"I was looking for you."
"So in a sense you did it for me?"
"I guess I thought so," I said.
"You don't lie to yourself," Susan said. "In your world, it had to be done."
I didn't say anything.
"Hawk has to do this," Susan said.
"He does."
"He and you," she said, "for your whole adulthoods, have been a certainty in each other's lives."
Susan ate the rest of her apple fritter, except for the piece she gave Pearl. She drank some coffee and put the cup down.
"In his life," she said, "you may be the only certainty." "May be," I said.
Susan's big, dark eyes seemed intensely alive to me. Pearl rested her long chin on the table, and Susan patted her absently, smoothing Pearl's ears.
"You have to help him," she said.
"I guess I do," I said.
43
HAWK AND I were in Marshport, in a badly stocked bodega a half block up from the mouth of a weed-thick alley that ran between two paintless tenements. The alley opened at its far end directly across the street from Rimbaud's office.
"What story was the Gray Man going to tell?" I said.
"Don't know. I just told him get a Ukrainian down here at three, and let no one know he'd done it."
An uninteresting-looking gray Chevy pulled around the corner and parked by the alley.
"Well, he thought of something," I said.
Hawk nodded, looking at the car. A big man got out.
"Guy with Boots," I said, "at Revere Beach."
"Fadeyushka Badyrka," Hawk said.
"Anybody else in the car?" I said.
"We'll find out," Hawk said. "I'll watch Fadeyushka."
We went out of the bodega and walked across the street. The Ukrainian watched us come. No one moved in the car.
When we were maybe five feet away, Fadeyushka said, "What?"
Hawk shot him in the forehead with a nine-millimeter Colt. The Colt had a silencer on it and made only a modest noise. Fadeyushka went down without a sound. So easy. I stepped to the car with my gun out. No one was in it. Hawk unscrewed the silencer and slipped it into his pocket. Then he stowed the Colt and picked up Fadeyushka and moved him without any apparent effort into the alley, down between the houses, and deposited the body behind some trash cans right across from Rimbaud's big plate-glass window. I knelt down and felt over his cooling body and found Fadeyushka's gun stuck in his right hip pocket. It was some sort of European semiautomatic nine-millimeter pistol. There was a round in the chamber already. Hawk studied the dead man for a time.
"I come in the alley," Hawk said. "He's there shooting in the window. I shoot, get him in the head. He fall back there behind the trash. Gun falls out of his right hand," Hawk nodded, "lands there."
"That's where it'll be," I said.
"Okay," Hawk said. "I'll go in. I stand right in front of the front window, where you can see me. And I stay there until things are right. When I move out of sight, you shoot."
I nodded.
"The window is dead glass walking," I said.
"Then you head up the alley lipity-fucking-lop," he said, "scoot 'round the block and come running up saying, 'What happened?' "
"You already told me this once," I said.
"Never lose money," Hawk said, "underestimating your intelligence."
"Yeah, but I'm fun to be with," I said.
Hawk was looking at the office.
"Wait'll I move aside," he said
"Boy," I said, "you ruin everything."
"Don't call me boy," he said, and started across the street.
I stood beside Fadeyushka's mortal remains, holding his gun, and waited. Hawk went in the front door of Rimbaud's office. A moment later I saw his back through the window. There was no one on the street. No one but me and Fadeyushka in the alley. The people who referred to teeming slums maybe hadn't been to this one. I saw Hawk's back move left and he disappeared from view. I raised Fadeyushka's gun and fired three shots, as fast as I could pull the trigger, into the upper right-hand corner of the window. The plate glass shattered. The whole window disappeared in a cascade of shards. I put the gun near Fadeyushka's dead hand and sprinted down the alley. Out on the next street, I turned left. As I ran the block, I heard a gunshot. I knew it was Hawk. I turned left again and reached the end of the alley as Rimbaud and his two Hispanic cohorts reached it. One of them, Nuncio, whirled on me with a gun.
"I'm on your side," I said. "What happened."
Out of sight in the alley, Hawk said, "He with me."
Nuncio lowered the gun, but both he and Jaime watched me closely.
I stepped into the alley's mouth. Rimbaud was there with his gun in hand, standing just behind Hawk, who had his gun out.
"Tried to gun Mr. Rimbaud," Hawk said. "From the alley. Shot right through the window."
"Who killed him," I said.
"I did," Hawk said.
"My man was quick," Rimbaud said.
He looked a little rattled. So did Nuncio and Jaime.
"Was out the door 'fore I could even get my gun out, man," Rimbaud said.
"He was shooting from behind those trash cans," Hawk said. "He saw me coming and he, like, froze."
"Buck fever," I said.
Hawk looked at me.
"Don't call me buck," he said.
"Sho'," I said.
"So I able to drill him once in the head," Hawk said.
"You know who it is?" Rimbaud said.
He didn't seem eager to look closely at the corpse.
"Name's Fadeyushka Badyrka," Hawk said. "Works for Boots Podolak."
"The sonovabitch works for Boots."
Hawk nodded.
"Maybe Boots and Tony had a falling out," I said.
"You think Boots put him up to this?"
"Fadeyushka don't take a leak," Hawk said, "Boots don't tell him to."
"You don't even know him, do you?" I said.
Rimbaud looked cautiously at the dead man.
"Shit," he said, "I do. I seen him with Boots."
"I rests ma case," Hawk said.
Rimbaud stared at Hawk.
"Boots sent him," he said.