Cold Service

29

WE TOOK MY car this time, which no one would recognize, and sat in it, up the street from the Ukrainian fortress on Market Street in Marshport. The rain had gone, and the cold that had come in behind it was formidable. My motor was idling and the heater was on high. The outside temperature registered six on my dashboard thermometer.

"Why is it again we live 'round here?" Hawk said.

"We like the seasonal change," I said.

The street was nearly empty. A stumblebum in many layers of cast-off clothing inched his way up Market Street. He stopped to stare down into a trash barrel and then moved on. Several windows in the three-deckers on both sides of the street were boarded over. There were no dogs, no children. Just the solitary bum shuffling numbly along.

"Think it's colder in the poor neighborhoods?" I said.

"Yes," Hawk said.

"Because God favors the rich?"

"Why they rich," Hawk said.

"It is easier," I said, "for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, than…"

"Here they come," Hawk said.

Two men wearing overcoats and watch caps came out of the stronghold and got into a Chevrolet Suburban. We saw the plume of exhaust from the tailpipe as the car started up. We all sat for a time while the defroster cleared the windows on the Chevy. Then it rolled forward and went toward Marshport Road. We let them get far ahead and cruised out after them. There were some cars on the road, and when we turned onto Route 1A there were more. On open highway, it's easy to stay with the car you're tailing but harder to avoid being seen. In the city it's easy to stay unseen, but more difficult not to lose the tailee. Fortunately I was nationally ranked in both modes, and when the Ukrainians pulled up in front of a used-furniture store on Blue Hill Ave, they thought they were alone.

The store was in the first floor of a three-story wooden building with peeling gray paint. There was a liquor store on one side, and an appliance repair shop on the other. The store looked as if it had once sold groceries. The big windows in the front were frosted with the cold. A big sign pasted inside the half window of the front door read USED AND NEW FURNITURE: BUY OR RENT. An old maroon Dodge van was parked on the street in front of the store. It had no hubcaps. The Ukes double-parked their Suburban beside it and walked to the store, leaving the motor running. As they walked toward the store, one of the two men absently beeped the remote door lock device on his key chain. The taillights flashed once. The men went into the furniture store.

"We need to be pretty close behind them," Hawk said. "They don't look like they planning to stay long."

Hawk got out of the car. He had his big.44 Mag in his right hand. I got out my.38. There appeared to be only two guys, and I was sentimental about the little revolver. Hawk walked through the front door as if he was walking onto a yacht. The big.44 hung straight down by his right side. I glanced in both directions before I went in after him. Inside, behind the counter, a short, plump black man holding a sawed-off baseball bat was trying to keep his body between his wife and the two big white men. As we came in, one of the white men gestured at the baseball bat and laughed, and patted his leather coat over the belt area. He said something to his partner in a language not my own.

A small bell jingled on the door as it closed behind us, and both white men turned. I moved away from Hawk. Two targets are harder than one. The four of us stood looking at each other.

"S'happenin'?" Hawk said.

No one spoke. Hawk looked at the short black man.

"My name's Hawk," he said. "I'm on your side."

"Man says we sign this store over to him or he gonna kill us both. Her first."

The two white men looked at us with contempt. The one with the leather coat said to us, "Go way," and gestured toward the door. Hawk looked closely at both the big white men.

"Danylko Levkovych?" he said.

The man in the leather coat said, "Ya."

Without a word, Hawk raised the.44 Mag and shot him in the forehead. The man fell backward and lay dead on the floor with his head propped against the dirty green wall of the little store. The only sound was the silent resonance of the recent explosion and the woman, still shielded by her husband, whimpering softly. Hawk had already shifted the gun onto the second white man before the one in leather had hit the floor. The second man stared at Hawk with no expression. Most people are afraid of dying. If this guy was, he gave no sign.

"You speak English?" Hawk said to him.

The man didn't speak or move. He just kept looking at Hawk.

"He talked English to me," the shop owner said.

He was still holding the sawed-off bat, for which he had no use-and, in fact, never had. Hawk looked at the second white man. The white man looked back.

"Fadeyushka Badyrka?" Hawk said.

The man nodded.

"You know who I am," Hawk said.

The man shrugged.

"I was the guy protecting Luther Gillespie," Hawk said.

The man smiled faintly.

"I gonna kill you next," Hawk said.

The man continued to smile faintly.

"But not now," Hawk said.

He jerked his thumb toward the door.

"Beat it," he said.

The man shrugged slightly and walked straight past us and out the front door without ever looking at his partner on the floor. He beeped the car doors open and got in and drove away.

"I don't think we scared him," I said.

"No."

Hawk looked at the store owner.

"You been having any argument lately with Tony Marcus?" he said.

"I don't work with Tony anymore," the store owner said.

Hawk nodded.

"I gonna clean this up," he said. "But it gonna take a while. I was you I'd take the missus to a warm climate for a while."

"And what happens to my business?"

"Same thing will happen if you dead," Hawk said.

"You think they be back?"

"They be back," Hawk said. "I ain't always gonna be here."

The store owner nodded. His wife had stopped crying.

"We'll go to my sister," she said.

Her husband looked like dying might be better.

"Go there," Hawk said.

"It's in Arkansas," the store owner said.

Hawk grinned.

"Go there anyway," he said.

And we left.

In the car, I said, "That's why you didn't shoot him."

"What's why?"

"Because he wasn't scared," I said.

"Killing somebody ain't afraid to die ain't much justice," Hawk said.

"Or revenge," I said.

"I trying to get things back in balance," Hawk said. "That seem like justice to me."

"When you do it, it's revenge," I said. "When the state does it, it's society's revenge."

"Which it call justice," Hawk said.

"Exactly," I said. "Change places and handy-dandy."

Hawk grinned at me.

"Which be the justice," he said. "Which be the thief?"

"I think Shakespeare used is," I said. "Which is the justice."

"Shakespeare wasn't no brother," Hawk said.

"I knew that," I said.