A Catskill Eagle

CHAPTER 41

RACHEL WALLACE ARRIVED BY CAB AT TEN twenty in the morning carrying a big briefcase. She put her arms around Susan and kissed her on the cheek.

“It is lovely to see you again,” she said. Susan nodded.

“How are you,” Rachel Wallace said.

“Better than I was,” Susan said.

Rachel Wallace turned to me and said, “I have spent the entire summer studying Jerry Costigan. I suspect there is no one anywhere, including Mrs. Costigan, who knows him as I do.”

“It’s for damn sure you’re ahead of our crack government intelligence team,” I said.

“Government intelligence is an oxymoron,” Rachel Wallace said. “Have you coffee?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll need several cups, black. Quite strong.” She patted Susan’s arm. “It is good to see you here.”

Susan smiled and nodded again. Rachel Wallace turned to Hawk and gave him both her hands.

“You too,” she said. “It is good to see you here.” She gave him a sisterly kiss on the mouth.

Hawk grinned. “You holding back,” he said.

The phone rang and Hawk answered. I was pouring coffee into the filter.

Hawk said, “Un huh?”

Then said, “You got a place we can call back?”

I stopped measuring out coffee and turned toward him.

“Okay,” he said. “You call back in ten minutes. Got to talk with my man here.”

Rachel and Susan turned to look at him and we all stood in that suspended way that people do waiting for someone to get off the phone.

Hawk said, “Un huh,” again and hung up the phone.

“So much for the safe house,” Hawk said. I waited.

“Man say if we want to know something real important about finding Jerry Costigan we should meet with him,” Hawk said.

“Have to talk with Ives about the security of his operation,” I said. “Where we supposed to meet him?”

“Man didn’t say. Says he’ll call back in ten minutes,” Hawk said.

I walked to the window and looked out. Without saying anything Susan got up and finished making the coffee. Below me Charlestown was going on undifferentiated.

“There’s no reason anyone should think we would care about where Jerry Costigan is,” I said.

“Less Ives’s people let it out,” Hawk said.

“Must have,” I said. “Guy knew we were here, had the phone number, knew we were looking for Costigan. Had to be from Ives’s people.”

“They could fuck up a beach party,” Hawk said. He looked at Rachel Wallace and made a slight apologetic head motion. She smiled and shook her head, it-doesn’t-matter.

“It’s a trap,” Susan said from the kitchen.

“Probably,” I said.

“Question is,” Hawk said, “who going to trap whom?”

“Whom?” I said.

“Whom,” Hawk said.

“We’ll meet him,” I said.

“Is that wise,” Rachel Wallace said.

“Might as well get it over with,” I said. “We’re compromised here. And the people setting the trap, assuming it’s a trap, might still be able to tell us something really important about finding Jerry Costigan.”

“If they don’t kill you,” Susan said. She was putting coffee cups, fresh from the dishwasher, onto a tray.

“Always with that caveat,” I said. “But they haven’t yet, and good people have tried.”

“I know,” Susan said. “But in this case it would be my fault.”

“Susan,” Hawk said, “we let somebody kill us, it our fault.”

“You know what I mean,” Susan said.

Rachel Wallace said, “It’s the way they live. If it weren’t your situation, it would be someone else’s. A few years ago it was mine.”

Susan nodded without speaking. But there was something in her face. I walked from the window, around the counter, and put my arms around her. She pressed her face into my neck and neither of us said anything.

The phone rang. Hawk picked it up and listened.

I murmured to Susan, “Sure we’re in this particolar thing because of things that you did. But that’s not why you did them.”

On the phone Hawk said, “Sure.”

“You did what you had to do,” I said. “The year before you left wasn’t good. So you did something to change it.”

Hawk said, “We be there.”

“I did nothing,” I said. “You took the step. Maybe not the best step. But a better step than I took. You do the best you can and you deal with the consequences. It’s all there is.”

Hawk said, “Un huh,” and put the phone back in the cradle.

Susan rubbed her face against my neck.

“Fish pier at noon,” Hawk said.

I let Susan go and walked back into the living room.

“This place is no good anymore,” I said. I looked at Susan. “Would Russell try to take you back?”

“He’d want me back. He may think you’ve taken me.”

“Would he force you?”

“No. But his father would.”

“So it could be to juke us away from you so they can take you back.”

Hawk said, “Yes.”

“What does Russell think you want,” I said.

“Time to be with myself and become someone who can decide for herself.”

“He understand that?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Me either,” I said.

“Now not the time,” Hawk said.

I nodded and went to the phone and dialed Martin Quirk.

“I need to put two women in a safe place,” I said. “One of them is Susan.”

“Congratulations,” Quirk said. “What about the government safe house in Charlestown?”

“Not safe anymore. Some of Ives’s people appear to have talked. Maybe Ives himself, for all I know.”

“Tsk, tsk,” Quirk said. “How quick.”

“Next half hour,” I said.

“Belson will come by in a car in about ten minutes.

“Where will he take them?”

“He and I will figure that out after he picks them up,” Quirk said.

“Okay,” I said. “Thanks.”

“Oh shit,” Quirk said. “No need for thanks. The entire City of Boston Police Department is at your disposal. We’ve decided to give up crime-stopping altogether.”

“Probably just as well,” I said. “You weren’t making that much progress anyway.”

“And you, hot shot?”

“Less,” I said.