Back Story

25

Hawk came into my apartment with a long duffel bag. He set it on my coffee table and unzipped it.

"We going to the mattresses?" he said.

"What brings you?" I said.

He took out a 12-gauge pump shotgun and stood it against my kitchen counter. He took out four boxes of shells and put them on my counter.

"Susan."

"I'm surprised she didn't come herself," I said.

"Me too."

"She tell you the whole story?"

"Much as she knows."

"That would be the whole story," I said.

"How come you tell her? Makes her worry."

"If I don't tell her, she'll worry all the time."

" 'Cause she never know if you in danger or not."

"Yes."

Hawk nodded. "How long you think it took them to walk out of there?" he said.

"Given the woodsmanship they showed me, they might still be in there."

"There more where they came from."

Hawk took an M-16 rifle out of the duffel bag and leaned it next to the shotgun. He took three extra magazines and put them on my counter next to the shotgun shells.

"Sonny?" he said.

"Who else?" I said.

"Harvey with them?"

"No. I guess they figured they wouldn't need him."

"How Sonny know you up there?"

"Could have had a tail on me," I said.

"That you didn't make?"

"Unlikely," I said.

"So?"

"Only people who knew when and where I'd be were the Malones."

Hawk took a Glock semiautomatic handgun out of the bag and put it on the counter along with an extra magazine and three boxes of 9mm shells.

"The cops and the robbers?" Hawk said.

"Wouldn't be a first," I said.

"No," Hawk said. "Wouldn't."

He took a change of clothes out of the bag and folded it on top of the bookcase. He took out a shaving kit and walked to the bathroom and left it, and came back into the living room and sat on the couch with his feet on the coffee table.

"You got a plan?" he said.

"Be good if we knew why Sonny was interested in this," I said.

"That's not a plan," Hawk said. "A plan be how you going to find out why Sonny interested in this."

"Gimme a minute."

Hawk went around the counter into my kitchen and made himself a peanut-butter sandwich on whole wheat. He found a bottle of champagne in the refrigerator, opened it, and poured some into a pint beer glass and came back around the counter, moved some of his arsenal around to make room for his sandwich, and sat on a stool to have lunch. "Think of anything yet?" he said.

"How come I always have to think of stuff?" I said.

" 'Cause you the white detective," Hawk said.

"But if I always think of stuff and you don't, it just reinforces the black-white stereotype."

"I know," Hawk said.

"So why don't you think of a plan?" I said.

"You just trying to weasel out 'cause you can't think of no plan," he said.

"Okay, I admit it," I said. "You go."

Hawk grinned. "Brain, do yo' duty," he said.

We were quiet. Hawk looked ruminative. He chewed his sandwich. He sipped his champagne. I stood and walked to my front window and looked down on Marlboro Street. The colleges had closed for the summer, and the summer-school sessions hadn't started. The whole Back Bay seemed empty and pleasant. I could even see a parking space up toward Berkeley Street.

Behind me, Hawk said, "Damn."

"You think of something?" I said.

"No."

I grinned. "You just discovered you're no smarter than I am."

"Startling," Hawk said.

"Maybe we need to work on this together," I said.

"One half-wit plus one half-wit?" Hawk said.

"We can hope," I said.

Hawk poured himself some more champagne. "So how come the mob. " Hawk said.

"Or some of it," I said.

"And the FBI. "

"Or some of it."

"Both want to cover up the twenty-eight-year-old murder of some hippie broad from San Diego?" Hawk said.

"Nicely restated," I said.

"Thank you-you talk with the husband yet?"

"Daryl's father?"

"Uh-huh."

"San Diego seemed like a long way to go," I said.

"We got no place else to go."

"Excellent point," I said.