“You can’t tell who they have in their employ,” I said. On the room service cart were ten shrimp cocktails, each in its individual ice dish, and two forks. Hawk ate a shrimp. “Not bad,” he said. “Okay. I can dig it. You paying the ace and half a day, you say how we do it.” I nodded again. “What we going to do first?”
“We’ll eat this shrimp and drink this beer and wine and go to sleep. Tomorrow morning I’m going to watch Katherine some more. I’ll call you before I leave and you can cover me.”
“Okay. Then what?”
“Then we’ll see what happens.”
“What happens if I pick up somebody tagging after you?”
“Just watch them. Don’t let them shoot me.”
“Do mah best.” Hawk grinned, his teeth flawless and white in the glistening ebony face. “Long as I don’t get too distracted by the lady with the French bikinis.”
“You can probably bribe her with a pair of yours.” I said.
13
We followed my plan for nearly a week. No one killed me. No one tried. Hawk drifted around behind me in $5000 worth of clothes earning his $150 a day. We saw nothing interesting. We spotted no one on my list of crazies. We stood around and watched Kathie’s apartment and followed her to the British Museum and the grocery store. “You scared them,” Hawk said while we ate dinner in his room. “They sent their best people after you twice and you ate them alive. They scared. They laying low now.”
“Yeah. They’re not even watching me. Unless they are so good neither one of us has spotted them.” Hawk said, “Haw.”
“Yeah. We’d have spotted them. You think Kathie has spotted me?” Hawk shook his head. “So they don’t know if I’m still after them or not.”
“Maybe check the hotel once in a while, see if you still registered.”
“Yeah. They could do that,” I said. “And they will just keep it cool till I leave.”
“Or maybe they got nothing to keep cool,” Hawk said. “Yeah, it may not be all that organized anyway and there’s nothing in the works whether I’m here or not.”
“Maybe.”
“Could be. I’m getting sick of waiting around. Let’s put some pressure on old Kath.”
“I can dig that.”
“Not that kind of pressure, Hawk. I’ll let her spot me. If she gets scared maybe she’ll run. If she runs maybe we can follow her and find some people.”
“And when she runs I’ll be behind her,” Hawk said. “She’ll think she lost you.”
“Yeah. Keep in mind that these people aren’t necessarily English. If she bolts she may head for another country and you better be ready.”
“I am always ready, my man. Whatever I’m wearing is home.”
“That’s another thing,” I said. “Try not to wear your shellpink jumpsuit when you tail her. Sometimes people notice things like that. I know that’s your idea of inconspicuous, but…”
“You ever hear of me losing somebody or getting spotted by someone I didn’t want to spot me?”
“Just a suggestion. I am, after all, your employer.”
“Yowsah boss, y’all awful kind to hep ol Hawk lak yew do.”
“Why don’t you can that Aunt Jemima crap,” I said. “You’re about as down-home darkie as Truman Capote.” Hawk sipped some champagne, and put the glass down. He sliced a small portion of Scottish smoked salmon and ate it. He drank some more champagne. “Just a poor old colored person,” he said. “Trying to get along with the white folks.”
“Well, I’ll give you credit, you were one of the first to integrate leg-breaking on an interracial basis in Boston.”
“A man is poor indeed if he don’t do something for his people.”
“Who the hell are your people, Hawk?”
“Those good folks regardless of race, creed or color, who have the coin to pay me.”
“You ever think about being black, Hawk?” He looked at me for maybe ten seconds. “We a lot alike, Spenser. You got more scruples maybe, but we alike. Except one thing. You never been black. That’s something I know that you won’t ever know.”
“So you do think about it. How is it?”
“I used to think about it, when I had to. I don’t have to no more. Now I ain’t nigger any more than you honkie. Now I drink the wine and screw the broads and take the money and nobody shoves me. Now I just play all the time. And the games I play nobody can play as good.” He drank some more champagne, his movements clean and sure and delicate. He was eating with no shirt on and the overhead light made the planes of muscle cast fluid and intricate highlights on the black skin. He put the champagne glass back on the table, cut another slice of salmon and stopped with the portion halfway to his mouth. He looked at me again and his face opened into a brilliant, oddly mirthless grin. “ ‘Cept maybe you, babe,” he said. “Yeah,” I said, “but the game’s not the same.” Hawk shrugged. “Same game, different rules.”
“Maybe,” I said. “I never been sure you had any rules.”
“You know better. I just got fewer than you. And I ain’t softhearted. But you know, I say I gonna do something I do it. It gets done. I hire on for something, I stay hired. I do what I take the bread for.”
“I remember a time you didn’t stay hired for King Powers.”
“That’s different,” Hawk said. “King Powers is a douche bag. He got no rules, he don’t count. I mean you, or Henry Cimoli. I tell you something, you can put it in the bank.”
“Yeah. That’s so,” I said. “Who else?” Hawk had drunk a lot of Taittinger and I had drunk a lot of Amstel. “Who else what?”
“Who else can trust you?”
“Quirk,” Hawk said. “Martin Quirk,” I said. “Detective Lieutenant Martin Quirk?”
“Yeah.”
“Quirk wants to put you in the joint.”
“Sure he does,” Hawk said. “But he knows how a man acts. He knows how to treat a man.”
“Yeah, you’re right. Anyone else?”
“That’s enough. You, Henry, Quirk. That’s more than a lot of people ever know.”
“I don’t guess Henry will give you trouble,” I said. “But Quirk or I may shoot you someday.” Hawk finished his salmon and turned the big bright grin at me again. “If you can, man. If you can.” Hawk pushed the plate away, and stood up. “Got something to show you,” he said. I sipped at my beer while he went to the closet and brought out something that looked like a cross between a shoulder holster and a backpack. He slipped his arms through the loops and stepped back from the closet. “What do you think?” The rig was a shoulder holster for a sawed-off shotgun. The straps went around each shoulder and the gun hung, butt down along his spine. “Watch this,” he said. He slipped his coat on over his naked skin. The coat covered the gun entirely. Unless you were looking you didn’t even see a bulge. With his right hand he reached behind him under the skirt of his suit jacket, gave a brief twisting movement and brought the shotgun out. “Can you dig it?”
“Lemme see,” I said. And Hawk put the shotgun in my hand. It was an Ithaca double-barreled 12 gauge. The stock had been cut off and both barrels were cut back. The whole thing was no more than eighteen inches long. “Do a lot more damage than a target pistol,” I said. “And it’s no problem. Just go buy a shotgun and cut it down. If we have to go to another country I ditch this and buy a new one where we going. Take me an hour maybe to modify the mother.”
“Got a hack saw?” Hawk nodded. “And a couple of C clamps. That’s all I need.”
“Not bad,” I said. “What you going to do next, modify an Atlas missile and walk around with it tucked in your sock?”
“No harm,” Hawk said, “to fire power.” The next morning I got up early and went up and burgled Kathie’s apartment while she was at the laundromat. I was neat about it, but sloppy enough to let her know someone had been there. I wasn’t looking for anything, I just wanted her to know someone had been there. I was in and out in about five minutes. When she came back I was leaning in the doorway of the next apartment house wearing sunglasses. As she passed I turned away so she wouldn’t see my face. I wanted her to spot me but I didn’t want to overact.