A Catskill Eagle

CHAPTER 20

WE WERE HEADING NORTH ON 410.

“Anything in the house?” Hawk said.

I shook my head.

“We knew there wouldn’t be,” Hawk said.

“Yeah.”

Hawk reached the road atlas from the backseat and opened it in his lap. “We can pick up a major highway in Seattle and head east,” I said.

“Shit,” Hawk said.

“We knew she wouldn’t be there,” I said.

“Yeah.”

Hawk was dripping on the road map. The rain came steady and the windshield wipers beat their metronomic half-circle swipes.

Hawk had removed his jacket and thrown it on the backseat floor. But his shirt was wet and his jeans, like mine, were soaked through.

“What route we looking for?” Hawk said.

“Ninety,” I said. “Runs east all the way to Boston.”

“We going home?”

“I don’t know where we’re going.”

“Might make sense to get dry, maybe get breakfast, sorta regroup.”

“Soon,” I said. “Don’t want to show up too close to the lodge looking like a couple of guys spent the night in the woods.”

“We get the other side of Seattle,” Hawk said, “we stop and change in the car.”

I nodded. The wipers wiped. The wheels turned. The rain didn’t let up. In the parking lot of a Holiday Inn off Route 90 in Issaquah we got our extra clothes out of the trunk and changed awkwardly in the car, putting the wet clothes in a sodden heap in the trunk. Then we headed east again across the Cascade Mountains, through the unvarying rain.

“Costigan has more money than Yoko Ono,” I said. “He and Susan could be anywhere in the world.”

Hawk nodded.

“We haven’t got a clue,” I said. Hawk nodded again.

“If she tried to reach us she couldn’t,” I said. “She doesn’t know where we are either.” Hawk nodded.

“We need help,” I said. “We need to get someplace where if she has a chance to reach us she can. We have to find a way to know what we’re doing. We should go home.”

“Long ride,” Hawk said.

“Spokane,” I said. “There’s an airport in Spokane. We’ll fly out of there. We’ll use Leo’s credit card and when we get to Boston we’ll hole up and get organized.”

“You ever been to the Spokane airport?” Hawk said.

“Yeah.”

“They got food there?”

“Sort of.”

“Good. I ain’t had anything since breakfast yesterday except that goddamned. weasel food you bought.”

“Weasels don’t eat granola,” I said. “Weasels are carnivores.”

“So am I,” Hawk said. “And I don’t want to eat no more fucking seeds and dates.”

“Nuts too,” I said. “Hazel nuts.”

“Let Hazel worry ‘bout them,” Hawk said. “I’m getting me a mess of good boondock airport food.”

“Probably get a meal on the plane too,” I said.

“Lawzy me,” Hawk said, “I done died and gone to heaven.”

“But,” I said, “you know what it’s like trying to get off the West Coast after noontime?”

“No harm we stop by and ask,” Hawk said. “Maybe pick up some grub. I yearning for some stuff ain’t good for me, you know. Something with a lotta cholesterol, maybe too much salt. Some additives.”

“Can always get that at an airport,” I said.

“Good to be able to count on things,” Hawk said.

When we got to Spokane Airport we bought four hamburgers and two coffees and ate them and sat all night in the Volvo. In the morning we went and washed up in the airport and had some more coffee and were first in line to board United Airlines 338 to Boston via Chicago.

At six forty-nine that evening we stumbled off the plane at Logan Airport full of booze and airline food and feeling like the last day of Pompeü.

“My car’s parked in the Central Garage,” I said.

“And you think the cops ain’t spotted it?”

“Yes,” I said, “and I also think that you can trust what the President says on television.”

We took the shuttle bus to the airport subway station and took the subway into Park Street Station.

“Got a friend,” Hawk said, “lives on Chestnut Street, on the flat of the Hill, near the river. She be glad to put us up.”

We walked across the Common in the pleasant fall evening. Ahead of us a middle-aged man walked, holding hands with a middle-aged woman. She wore a plaid skirt and a tweed jacket with the collar turned up and a long maroon scarf hanging loose around her neck. We went through the little archway at the Charles and Beacon streets corner of the Common and walked along Charles to Chestnut. Halfway down the flat of Chestnut Street, with Beacon Hill rising in a dignified jumble behind us, we stopped and Hawk rang the bell at a glass door framed in white. There was no answer.

“She a stewardess,” Hawk said. “She travel a lot.‘

“Cabin attendant,” I said. “Have you no sensitivity to minority nomenclature, you dumb jigaboo?”

Hawk grinned and rang the bell again. No answer. Beside the door was a small evergreen in a large pot. Hawk reached in among the dense lower branches and came out with a small plastic case. Hawk took a key from the case and opened the door.

“Second floor,” Hawk said.

We went up some stairs along the left wall. The stairs were walnut, the walls were raised panels painted white. The balcony was white too with elaborate turned risers: At the top Hawk took another key from the case and opened the apartment door. There was a living room that ran at right angles to the door and looked out onto Chestnut Street. Off the left wall was a kitchenette and beside it a door that opened into the bedroom. The living room walls were white. There was a pink couch, a gray Art Deco streamlined coffee table, two wing chairs, one pink, one gray. The brick fireplace had been painted white, and a Japanese fan served to screen the firebox. The fan was pink with a gray pattern.

“Au courant,” I said.

“Yeah. Yvonne trendy,” Hawk said.

“She got a shower?” I said.

Hawk nodded and walked to the kitchen. He opened the refrigerator.

“She got ‘bout fifteen bottles of Steinlager beer, too, honey.”

“Lawzy me,” I said. “I’ve died and gone to heaven.”

“Done died,” Hawk said. “Ah done died and gone to heaven. Haven’t you ever watched any Mantan Moreland movies?”

“Give me a beer,” I said. “I’ll drink it in the shower.”