Cold Service

25

A WARM RAIN was depreciating the plowed snow, which had long since turned ugly anyway. Hawk parked on a hydrant on Cambridge Street. He and I strolled through the construction near MGH and turned up Charles Street with our coat collars turned rakishly up. Both of us wore raincoats. Mine was glistening black with a zipper front. Hawk was going with the more conventional Burberry trench. I had on a Pittsburgh Pirates baseball cap. Hawk had a San Francisco Giants cap, which he wore backward.

"Aren't you a little long in the tooth to be wearing your hat backward?" I said.

"I was younger," Hawk said, "I be wearing it sideways."

We turned left and went uphill a block on Revere Street. Like most of Beacon Hill, it was lined with red brick buildings, which were mostly four-story town houses. The one we stopped at had a front door painted a shiny black, with a peephole and a big, polished brass door handle. Hawk rang the bell and stood where he could be seen through the peephole. In a moment the door opened narrowly, on a chain bolt. A black woman wearing big eyeglasses with green frames looked out.

"Yes?"

"Natalie Marcus?" Hawk said.

"Goddard," she said.

Hawk nodded and smiled.

"Natalie Goddard," he said.

When he really juiced it, the smile was amazing. It created the illusion of warmth and friendship and genuine personal regard.

"My name is Hawk," he said. "I need to talk with you about Tony's daughter."

"What makes you think I know anything about her?" the woman said.

"I know you were once married to Tony. Seemed reasonable."

"She is not my daughter," Natalie said.

Natalie had a careful WASP drawl, which seemed odd in someone as clearly not a WASP as she was.

"Could we come in out of the rain?" Hawk said. "Talk about it in the foyer, perhaps?"

Hawk is a wonderful mimic, and I thought he might be picking up her accent. She looked at me.

"And this gentleman?"

"My assistant," Hawk said. "His name is Spenser."

Hawk smiled at her again. She did nothing for a moment.

Then she said, "There's no need to come in. I can talk with you right here."

"As you wish," Hawk said.

I knew he was disappointed. He didn't mind the rain, but he hated to have the full smile rejected.

"So how old is Dolores now?" Hawk said.

"Dolores?"

"Do I have it wrong?" Hawk said.

"I thought you knew her."

Hawk looked embarrassed.

"I do, but… names… I'm terribly embarrassed."

"Jolene," Natalie said.

"Of course," Hawk said with a big smile. "Dolores… Jolene… an easy mistake."

Natalie smiled slightly.

"How old would Jolene be now?" Hawk said.

"I was with Tony ten years ago…" She did some silent math. "She'd be twenty-four now."

"She live with Tony?"

"Not with her mother."

"They divorced?"

"Tony and Veronica? I don't think they were ever married."

"But Tony acknowledges Jolene as his."

"Oh, yeah," Natalie said.

The yeah slipped out as if Natalie had shifted into another language.

"Why 'Oh, yeah'?" Hawk said.

"Tony never loved anything in his life. And he decides to love Jolene."

"What's wrong with Jolene?" Hawk said.

The rain was steady. Everything glistened, including my stunning black zip-front raincoat. Cars moved narrowly past us on Revere Street.

"Everything is wrong with Jolene," Natalie said. "Drugs, sex, alcohol, rebellion, disdain. He has spoiled her beyond fucking recognition."

Maybe the foreign language was her native tongue.

"Where does she live?" Hawk said.

"With her current husband, I suppose."

"Heavens," Hawk said. "I didn't even know she was married."

"Maybe she isn't, but I think she is; either way, she's living with Brock."

"Brock?" Hawk said.

"Brock Rimbaud," she said. "I've heard he's worse than she is."

"Do you know where they live?"

"On the waterfront somewhere."

"You wouldn't have an address?"

"Oh, God, no," she said. "I've had no connection, to Tony or his hideous family, in years."

I was not buying that.

Natalie appeared to see that as an interview-ending remark, because she closed the door after she said it.

"Brock Rimbaud?" I said.

"Don't sound like no brother," Hawk said "Maybe he changed his name," I said. "Trying to pass."

"What you think his real name is?" Hawk said.

"Old Black Joe?" I said.

"Mostly they ain't naming us that no more," Hawk said.

We walked back down Revere Street in the melting rain. I hunched my shoulders a little as a drop of water wormed down inside my collar on the back of my neck. Maybe wearing his hat bill backward was more than a fashion statement on Hawk's part. I grinned at him as we reached Charles Street.

"Smile didn't work," I said. "Did it."

"Just prove she a lesbian," Hawk said.